Chapter LIV: The Dark Before Dawn

There was a rocking, inelegant rhythm to his movement that was at once a comfort and a torment to the Ranger. With his weight heavy upon his hale left foot, he dragged with his right hand to plant the stave before him. It was braced between his dead left arm and his side, the crudely cut top buried between two ribs. When he forced his weight upon it that he might lift his good foot without harrying his lame one, the pressure of the knob seemed to dig deep into his lung. Always he swung his body as swiftly as he could, striking out to gain another half-ell, and then rocked forward onto his left leg again before the ritual could be repeated. Always the pain migrated in the same sweeping pattern: fire in his right flank, penetrating pain high up on the left of his chest, grinding torment from his wrenched and swollen ankle, and last the dull pounding ache as his left heel struck the ground. There was some solace in knowing what was to come, and yet all the while he had to fight against the greater part of his mind as it begged him to lay by this torture and give himself over to sleep.

It was the urge to sleep that was worst of all, for in it Aragorn fought not only nature but the swirl of spider-poison in his veins. This was now his fourth day without slumber and he would have struggled anyhow, but with the sedating toxin to contend with he could scarcely muster his faculties to remember why he must not give in. His head was heavy and muddled with a thick fog of bewildered exhaustion. He could not keep his eyes open for more than a few seconds at a time, though his body was moving and the pain was ever-present. There was a weight between his temples that seemed to sway like the watch-bell of a ship upon a rolling sea. His thirst was terrible and his mouth felt bloated and strangely soft, but he did not know how he could drink and stand while his right hand was needed to keep the staff in place. No more could he wipe away the hot tickling rivulet running down the contour of his lip, for his nose was bleeding again; both nostrils this time.

At whiles he bestirred himself to look for Gollum, who was trundling along two steps behind. Though for the most part he kept his sullen gaze fixed on the path Aragorn caught him once, staring up at his captor with terror and awe etched deep in his unlovely visage. As he had ogled at the sight of the Ranger debriding his savaged forearm in the Emyn Muil far away, so he gaped now: as though he had not expected such a show of dour perseverance and now feared it.

That was all to the good. Aragorn had not the strength to mete out the punishment that his prisoner warranted; not yet. He had to keep moving, or the venom would drag him down into insensible unconsciousness, and so Gollum had to follow him. Fear alone could cow him now, though perhaps later there might be other means. Without fear there was nothing.

Hour upon hour they walked, for Aragorn did not dare to halt even for a moment. Again and again he tried to shift the fingers of his left hand, but they hung lifeless and useless at his side. Spider venom would wear off in time – from the muscles first, then the nerves, and then only later from the brain – but it could not do so swiftly enough for his liking. There was an ache in his right arm now from reaching across to grip the crutch, and if the need came upon him to draw his knife he was almost certain he would topple from his uneven stance. Hesitating for a half-breath he tried to twist up a fold of his cloak to cushion his body from the pounding of the staff's head. It made little difference. At last he could bear no longer the constant movement without surcease, and he hobbled to the very edge of the path where the thick bole of a beech stood waiting. Thrusting his weight upon the tree he at last dared to loose his hold on the branch long enough to lift up his water-vessel. With his teeth he dug out the bung, and he drank.

He meant to take but a sip or two to wet his lips and rinse away the worst of the sour woolly taste in his mouth, but his body had its own opinion on the matter. Ere Aragorn could stop himself he had taken three long, deep swallows that seemed to ease the misery in his skull almost at once though they sent his stomach sloshing horribly. He clamped his jaw closed and fought to keep the fluid within him. He had none at all to spare to a wanton loss by the roadside, and somehow his will fought down the nausea. The effort left him weak and trembling, clammy perspiration in a sheen across his brow and all down his back. Shivering he plugged the bottle and drew his cloak more tightly around him. The left sleeve of his shirt, bared by the torn cote, was stiff with blood. Cautiously he felt for the spider-bite with fingers that, though torn and aching, remembered still the duties of a healer. There was no fresh wetness, and he could feel no granulation in the wound. That was good. Yet though he pressed he felt no pain, not even deep in the muscle, and that was not so good. The gloom of the forest was still that of daylight, but dusk would come in time and if he could not then move his arm he would be defenceless against the dangers of the dark.

There was nothing to do but press on, though his left foot protested wretchedly against the burden of his body and the urge to vomit mounted with the resumption of the cycle of various pains. Gollum scuttled after him, blessedly silent. The path wound onward through the trees and the fine hairs on Aragorn's neck prickled with a warning he had not the strength to heed.

lar

Night fell and still he could scarcely move his arm. His fingers would shift a little, spastic and unsteady, and he could cock his elbow for a moment or two at a time, but he could not grasp the staff nor free his right hand to hold his knife. At last Aragorn began to feel a little jolt of prickling pain deep in the wound when the crutch dug against him. This was a good sign, and yet he could not find it in him to be grateful. His senses were dulled and his mind so addled with the lingering poison that he seemed incapable of any emotion at all. Even his dread was muted to a soft, indifferent greyness of spirit.

He could not hold a candle and the branch at the same time, and so he limped on in the perfect blackness and groped with the butt of the stave to ensure he was still on the path. He thought he was making better time now than he had been, though perhaps it was only that the minutes blurred together into an insensible mass. He had no way of measuring how quickly he went, or how far he had travelled since the crossing of the stream. He lacked the means to gauge his position in the forest. He could only hope that he was not moving so quickly that he might pass the hidden turning in the dark before dawn.

Beside him he could hear Gollum's wheezing breaths. Aragorn had been waiting all day for the resentful muttering to begin, but still his prisoner moved on in silence. That was a mercy almost beyond the Ranger's understanding, for his patience was utterly spent and he half-feared that if Gollum fell to whining now he would be unable to restrain himself from exacting a payment for the long weeks of misery even at the cost of his own body. Each time his inflamed right foot swung after its partner his thoughts were eclipsed for a fevered instant with the image of planting his torn boot into Gollum's emaciated side. He strove to supress the thought, but however he tried he could not quite do it. That such a motion would bring him far more torment and lasting hurt than it would mete out to Gollum seemed an inadequate reason to refrain. And unworthy though the thought was, he felt certain the gesture would be grimly satisfying.

Yet for now Gollum was silent and indistinct common sense reigned. While he could scarcely muster the energy to keep himself moving against the allure of drugged slumber Aragorn could not squander his strength on acts of discipline, much less vengeance. On he went, the betrayal unanswered and his injuries unrequited, and slowly the rush of blood in his ears seemed to quiet a little and his eyelids no longer drooped in inebriated enervation. When he tried to shift his left arm the elbow bent almost to ninety degrees and his fingers scrabbled against the tears in his cote. A burning brand ignited in the meat of his shoulder and it seemed as though he could feel his blood running cleaner as little by little the poison was filtered away.

It was deep in the middle-night when he realized that the woolen slipper tugged over his right boot was heavy with moisture. Cold water seeped through the border where sole and vamp had once been joined, soaking his hose and chilling the swollen ankle where it pulsed insistently against the constricting leather. When a fresh wave of chill struck his dragging foot he realized that he was stumbling through shallow drifts of snow half-melted on the path. The realization sent an unsteady bolt through his chest that he recognized only later as thin, wary hope. He had come at last to the eastern dells where the trees were not so dense. By daylight he might have seen beeches where before there had been broad oaks and gnarled walnuts. He had come at last to the place where Thranduil's marches faded into the heart of his realm.

Aragorn went on a little longer, limping off strides enough for half a dozen miles at his usual gait. Then at last he gripped the staff two-handed, his left fingers clumsy but determined, and inched himself down its bracing length to sit in the middle of the path. He landed with a low grunt of discomfort as his spine jolted against the impact, and stretched out his faithful left leg. He kneaded it with the knuckles of his right hand, which was itself wracked with brewing cramps, and exhaled a long rattling breath. There was a mound of snow close by him, melting against the heat of his thigh. He scooped it up and flung it away, for he knew it would not be clean enough to melt for water. Then for a long while he sat, hunched low over his lap and shivering with the chill of the air and the lingering fever of the spider's poison. Close at hand Gollum was snuffling and rooting in the earth. Aragorn ignored him.

Unmoving at last he found that sleep was clawing at him again, but it was only the sleep of honest exhaustion. He no longer felt the insidious fingers of a drugged stupor closed tight about his mind. True sleep he could fight off by strength of will alone, weary and worn down though he was, and he set about doing just that. His shoulders sagged as if beneath the weight of a millstone, and it seemed that each bone in his body had its own ache or agony or quiet complaint. Seldom had he known such utter weariness, and only twice could he recall pain more relentless or complete.

Such things did not bear thinking on, especially at a time like this, and so he busied his mind with walking the road ahead. If he regained a little more control of his left hand he could light his candle and walk on by its glow. If not, he would wait for the first grey glow of dawn. He did not remember how far, precisely, he had to walk to find the hidden crossroads where he would leave this path for the secret one that wound north to the halls of the woodland king. Even if he knew, he could not say precisely when he had come among the beeches. He was reasonably certain that the turning lay still ahead – likely far ahead – but he would not take the chance of stumbling blindly past it. Fool though he was he knew better than that. It would be no easy thing, limping down the less-trodden road, but he thought he could bring himself to do it. On the right path the Elven-road was less than half a day's march south of Thranduil's gates. He had only to find the junction.

Aragorn tried to beat back the thought that it was not likely to be so simple a task. Though he tried again and again to reassure himself that he could not possibly have covered enough ground in his present state to have passed the turn already, the gnawing fear remained. The prospect of wasting his strength to double back over land already covered sickened him. Worse was the knowledge that he might walk on for many miles before he could be certain one way or another. It had been many years since he had felt this fear, the unique terror that comes to one who believes he has lost his way in a dark and wild place. It was no less terrible now than it had been when first he had experienced it as a callow youth wandering alone for the first time.

Though the dark concealed it and there would have been no one save Gollum to see it anyhow, the lines of suffering softened a little in his face as he recalled his first lone patrol. Not yet twenty-one and walking still with his head half in legend he had lost his way one winter night. By the thin light of a waning moon he had stumbled hither and yon, tripping over tree roots and blundering into brambles as his terror mounted and he imagined himself wandering forever through the eerie shadows of Chetwood. Chetwood, of all places, that even now as the Shadow spread across the land and the dark things of the mountains and the northern wastes encroached ever further into quiet country was accounted one of the most peaceable forests of Arda. And he had been so frightened, and so young, and had thought himself so very alone – how grateful he had been when dawn came at last and he had managed to find his way out into the open country again, not three miles from the encampment where the others had been waiting.

He clung now to the memory, the sting of his youthful chagrin long lost to time. He tried to convince himself that he would one day look back upon this night, too, with fond amusement as he remembered how he had fretted over that which had come to naught. Yet he knew that would not be so. If he looked back at all, it would be with abject relief at a narrow escape and lingering dread of what might have been. This was no imagined horror, dreamed up by a young man away from home for the first time. This was a desperate situation: that of a wounded wanderer walking a dangerous road with a wily and unrelenting foe bound to his very wrist. Help, if there was any to be had, would have to stumble upon him by chance because after nearly sixteen years he was surely not truly expected. Danger, if it chose to seek him out again, would find him precisely where expected. With a hand beset with bone-deep tremors of want and weariness and pain he drew his knife.

lar

It was by might of will alone that he managed to rise when at last he realized that he could see his hand when he raised it near his face. The effort of gaining his feet – or foot, since the right one was now so bloated and sensitive that the lightest grazing against the ground sent forth blinding bolts of anguish – left him so spent that he had to stand motionless, tottering against the stout staff, until his heart sank down away from his tonsils and his lungs could draw breath once more. Even then he could do little more than inch along, left hand clutching the crutch and right hand holding the Elven blade in fingers that quivered so violently that it was a wonder they would keep their grip. He felt Gollum's eyes upon him, hateful yet wondering, but the faint half-light was driven back into blackness by the swimming spots that filled his sight. He was once more beyond fear, beyond hope, beyond even determination. He moved only because he could do nothing else; because movement was the sole constant in a world of gloom and hurt and half-remembered duty.

And after a time, movement brought its reward. His head grew used to its ponderous bobbing, and eyes and mind cleared a little. His body settled once more into the painful rhythm of the road, and accustomed itself to the pain. His spirit found some small surcease in the knowledge that he was doing what he could, what he must, to continue on his road. He moved onward in a haze of myriad miseries, but he moved.

The trees were indeed more generously spaced here, and the beeches were many. As the Sun rose a light brighter than any he had seen since leaving the open lands to the west settled about him, and Aragorn found his face upturned like that of a sunflower to find it. Now and then a narrow ray of sunlight slipped unassailed between the bare branches and kissed his leaden eyelids. Once, far away, he heard the cry of a lark greeting the morning. These tiny tokens of hope filtered through the veil of wretchedness like kind words cast into a dungeon; like drops of shimmering dew upon the lips of one perishing for thirst. They bolstered his resolve to continue upon a road whose meaning he had almost forgotten, and he limped on and on.

Once he halted to brace himself against a willing trunk and to drink a little. Gollum watched him, licking dry lips and whining deeply in his throat, but Aragorn offered him nothing. They were reduced again to this, it seemed: deprivation of food and drink to starve out disobedience. There was little enough water left, anyhow: less than a pint, and no hope of more. Here and there the little heaps of snow littered the path, but they were brown and foul and laced with cobwebs and other unidentifiable filth. Aragorn broke off a small piece of honey-cake and managed to swallow, but it sat uneasy in his belly and only served to heighten his thirst. After that he put aside thoughts of eating; he would try again at dusk when perhaps the last of the venom would be purged from his body.

The light was slanting westward when the path took a sharp southerly dip around the foot of a wooded hill. Aragorn paused to look at it, leaning like a dotard on his staff and staring stupidly for a long while before something sparked deep in his memory. The hill, close by the path, and beyond it the rim of a great drainage basin almost undetectable amid the gentle fall and swelling of the path save to an experienced traveller. He was three miles or less from the turning off the main path onto the camouflaged way that led to his destination.

Those three miles seemed longer than any he had walked in all his years of wandering. Every step was bought at a dear ransom of pain, and his breath came in shallow concussive gasps. About him the daylight seemed to fade twice as swiftly as it had any right to do, and his hands shook so violently that he was obliged to sheath his knife in order to plant one over the other lest he should lose hold of his stave. He had cursed the vagueness of his mind, but now that it was stripped away for anxious alertness he longed for the comfort of insensibility. Every sound seemed magnified, intense and nigh on intolerable in his ears. He could feel even the minutest twinging in his body, and every stone or half-buried root beneath his foot. The musty forest-scent and the rotten reek that went up from Gollum and from his own cloak were almost unbearable. And he could taste the copper tang of the blood that trickled down the back of his throat from a nose still sluggishly bleeding. Overlying all of this was the other sense, the hunter's sense, that cried out its tocsin of nebulous danger and could not be heeded because it might divert him from the all-important task of moving forward.

He found it at last; the heap of pale stones at the base of a holly-bush. It had the toppled and haphazard look of a chance conglomeration left perhaps by some deranged squirrel, but the feel of Elven artifice was all about the place. As carefully as he could, laden and limping, Aragorn picked his way through the thicket. Gollum veered behind him, stretching the rope to the right as he cut a wide berth around the trail-marker, but he did not dare to halt. Beyond the hedge there was nothing but forest floor and thin undergrowth for a distance of about thirty ells, but in the shadow of two bowed beeches the first fringe of the footpath could be seen. Soon enough Aragorn was on it, his heavy lopsided tread scoring the winter moss that blunted the constant crashing impact of his battered boot.

The Sun was setting: high above the silvery boles were stained orange and red, and the light at the forest floor was growing dim. All around the noises of the forest swirled in the flurry of activity that accompanied the fading of the day. As twilight's blue-grey shadows crept up around him Aragorn shuffled unsteadily to a level place and eased himself to the ground. Shunning both his company and the slender path, Gollum retreated as far as the rope would allow to crouch in the mulch beside their road. Aragorn glanced after him but did not trouble himself to draw in the cord. While he could still see he dug through his baggage and brought out his flint and steel and the last of Torbeorn's candles. Through his fumbling exhaustion he spared a thought of deepest gratitude for the boy's gift. Likely it had been every bit as impulsive as the beads the little ones had offered; merely something the child had on hand to give the guest. Yet the boon of light in this place where no stars shone was a treasure more precious than pearls.

Striking a light proved far more difficult than Aragorn had anticipated. His hands were unsteady and his fingers cold and clumsy. In the muddle and desperation of the last two days he had forgotten the mittens and neglected the application of Eira's salve. Though the air was not so cold as it had been, the labour required of his hands had been heavy and unrelenting. Their skin was once again raw and chapped, riven with deep cracks that wept and bled. The sores on his knuckles were open and oozing again, and from beneath the bandage wrapped under the cuff of rope thin orange trails were showing: blood and pus from the torn flesh beneath. Yet none of these things could be tended in the eyeless dark, and so Aragorn fumbled with his tinder and the inelegant firesteel he had changed for his own, and struggled to ignite the candle.

By the time it was accomplished he had been working by feel alone for ten minutes, and he was wracked with irrational frustration. Weary as he was he knew that he was not himself, and the storm of emotions blunted by pain and toil was brewing up afresh. He fought against it like the master of a sea-haven securing his quays against a rising flood, dripping beeswax onto a stone and settling the candle so that he could see to his hurts.

Without water to spare for washing there was little he could do. He removed his cloak and checked the spider-bite again, finding it red and glossy but already knitting together along neatly severed edges. He cut away the wrappings on his left wrist and changed them for fresh when he was assured that the traces of infection in the torn skin were not spreading into his blood. He smeared the sweet-smelling beeswax unguent generously over his hands, scarcely feeling the sting as it settled into the many sores and the shallow abrasions that covered his palms. Then he tugged off the sodden felt shoe and wrung it out as best he could before cautiously feeling the hard, swollen mass of his ankle beneath the leather of his boot. His toes still obeyed him, though not without pain. He took his last mouthful of water and with one of Una's handkerchiefs blotted timorously at his nostrils. Then his hands fell to the earth, unable to do anything more.

Panting softly against his upraised left knee, Aragorn struggled to beat back a wave of exhaustion. Now that he had ceased his moving the pains were settling into a hushed but perpetual blanket of torture that clung to every limb and gripped his very marrow. The throbbing of his deeply bruised back, hidden before amongst the more urgent hurts of walking, rose up now like a forest fire fanned by a wild wind, sending its tentacles into the very root of his being. A hot rivulet cut through the grime and splattered blood – both carmine and black – upon his right cheek. He was weary, so terribly weary, and he did not see how he could go on. Half a day's march, he thought with a quiver of despair. It might as well be another nine hundred miles.

He thought at first that the low grating growl came from Gollum, and his impatience flared white-hot as a goldsmith's forge. Misery forgotten for a moment in anger he jerked up his heavy head, a stinging reprimand upon his lips. Then he saw them, pale and glittering as beryls in the blackness just beyond the reach of the candle: two slanting green eyes.

They were not aloft amid the trees now, but level almost with his own. As he stared the growling rang out again, deep and timbrous and terrible. Then there was a harsh hissing noise and two broad crossed paws slid forward into the ring of flickering light. Even before the great cat edged forward Aragorn thought he could see its head: broad and rimmed with a ruff of fur, twin tufts on the chin like a forked beard and fine feathered fronds rising from the tip of each ear. Dark fur speckled still darker on head and back – darkened and coarsened through the generations bred in Mirkwood's gloom.

With a howling sound infused with a hauntingly human quality the lynx sprung forward in a brief abortive arc, forelegs swinging outward to cross again as it crouched low. It was a she-cat, large and lean and bristling with feral menace. She had tracked him for days, through the thick underbrush and down the path, over the stream and through his encounter with the spider. It had been a hard winter; prey was scarce. And while a Man was never a tempting target, being large and dangerous and often armed, Gollum surely looked like an easy meal. No doubt the beast had tracked them all this way, haggard and hungry, waiting for the moment when the Ranger should show weakness enough for her to dare a strike.

Keeping his eyes fixed upon her over the glow of the candle, Aragorn felt along his belt for the hilt of his knife. With the other hand he gripped the rope. 'Gollum,' he said, his dry throat grating upon the syllables. 'Gollum, do not move quickly, but come near to me.'

He did not dare to take his eyes from the cat. She was watching him as one predator watches another, gauging his mettle and measuring the threat in his gaze. Seeking deep within himself for the fires of his spirit, Aragorn strove at least to keep his eyes unblinking, his stare steady. Off to his left he heard a noise of terror catching in Gollum's gullet, but there was no movement. The lynx leapt again, this time jerking in place. The halo of fur about her face bristled as she called out her challenge again. This time it was the shriek that he had heard in the darkness: the cry like that of a soul in torment. It stilled his heart within him and raised the hairs on his forearms. Silently Aragorn cursed his ill luck. At any other time he would have sprung to his feet, thrusting out the sides of his cloak to make himself appear as large and as menacing as possible. But with his turned ankle he would fall if he tried that. He would tumble in a pain-wracked heap, and the lynx would spring not after Gollum but onto him.

'Come!' he breathed, twitching the rope. 'Slowly and carefully: do not take your eyes off of her.'

Yet even now Gollum proved stubborn, unyielding and unwilling to obey. Aragorn's fingers flexed against the hilt of his knife and he drew it slowly into a position of readiness, trying to keep it from glinting in the candlelight. The candle was an advantage, or at least a factor to level the field a little. In darkness a lynx saw far better than a man; in these woods where Aragorn could see nothing at all at night the cat could hunt and travel. In candlelight neither was any better than the other, and a Man at least did not fear fire.

The lynx made another threatening half-pounce, this time skirting a little to her right. There was no mistake that it was Gollum she was after. Her tentative approach and the tense bristling dance were but to see whether the Ranger would make any move to interfere.

Such was his weariness and his anger at the creature that had once more all but brought him to his death, and left him bruised and lame and sickened, that Aragorn might have considered leaving the wretch to his own devices. Mayhap Gollum, slippery as he was, could evade a wild cat; mayhap he could not. Either way it seemed unlikely that he would escape unscathed, and he had certainly done nothing to earn the Man's protection. Yet there was still the need that had sparked this long and tiresome hunt; the need that had driven Aragorn to seize the wretch in the Dead Marshes, stinking and vile though he was; the need that had taken them over perilous Anduin and across the hard and hungry miles; the need that had proved greater than the yearning for sleep, for food, for warmth and for peace. What Gollum knew – whatever Gollum knew – might prove to be invaluable in the relentless war that Aragorn had waged almost from boyhood; the war in which those whom he trusted and loved had fought without rest for many hundreds, many thousands of years. The secrets locked in that unwieldy skull, buried deep beneath malice and madness, might set them firm upon the right path or save them wasted labours guarding that which need not be guarded. Aragorn had failed to win the creature's trust, and he had been unable to mount a proper interrogation in the open wilderness: he could not fail to bring him safely to where others might continue the labour. Whatever the cost Gollum could not be lost now.

Letting go of the rope, Aragorn reached for his staff instead. He made sure of his grip, still not prepared to trust untried a limb until lately paralysed. Then he brought it up in a broad arc and set the heavy branch down with a crack across the back of the lynx.

The cat let out a yowl of pain and fury, and her lithe body scissored towards him. Strong jaws snapped and she whipped her paws around in a menacing sweep, but she did not quite dare to leap at him. With a creaking of overtaxed joints Aragorn managed to get up onto his knees, swinging the stave again. The lynx cringed and took a wary leap to her right. Then she lunged again, this time straight for Gollum. The prisoner let out a blood-curdling shriek of terror and the rope tugged at Aragorn's wrist as the bound wretch tried to hurl himself away from the beast. The next swing of the staff went awry and the lynx, unhindered, sprang upon her prey. Pale claws flashed and dark wheals appeared down Gollum's right flank. With another eerily sentient cry the lynx dove in to bite, but now Aragorn had his left foot under him and he stood unsteadily, right foot trailing. He brought down the stave again, squarely upon her skull, and the big cat reeled with an insensible snarl. Gollum was weeping and wailing and beating his arms against his head in a deranged attempt to shelter his face and throat from the beast. Again Aragorn struck her, and this time she pounced in the direction of her assailant. The flailing forepaws struck the branch and the claws snagged deep into the wood. Aragorn lurched forward, dragged by his gripping hand, and would have lost his balance save that his right leg thrust out in a motion driven more by instinct than by sense.

Anguish burst forth like the many-coloured sparks from one of Gandalf's fireworks: vast and blinding in its very splendour. Aragorn's jaw snapped to with such force that had his tongue been between his teeth they would have bit it in two. He could see nothing, could feel nothing but that explosion of all-consuming pain, but he knew – as only those long-accustomed to peril and combat can know – that there was danger here, and it was near, and that he could not fall.

He did not fall, and his left side found its ballast again and somehow contrived to take the worst of the pressure off of the traumatized limb. His arm yanked back on the staff and it was the lynx that foundered now, falling heavily on her side with her strong limbs thrashing and her claws still deep in the wood. In a smooth sweeping motion Aragorn knelt, his right leg slipping behind as his hand swept out with the knife, aiming for the beast's jugular where it was laid bare for a moment as she fell. Then suddenly there was a crashing weight upon his back and he felt something raking deep into his shoulder, tearing the threadbare cloth of his cote and the fine linen of the shirt beneath, digging into the flesh over his scapula and dragging down in a long rending stroke that skipped over his spine and sank in afresh against his ribs. Something struck the back of his head and he felt sharp teeth scrabbling, trying to tear at his scalp but snagging instead in the thick knotted yarn of the woollen hat he wore. He threw his body forward, driving his chest hard against his left leg but yanking his head free. The clawing, snarling burden rolled off of him and as he twisted he saw it was a second lynx: a male, and surely the mate of the one before him.

The she-lynx had her claws free now, and she whipped her legs to spring back to her feet, retreating out of range of Aragorn's staff and watching him out of one eye as she swept back towards Gollum. The male showed its mouth full of bright tearing daggers and lunged towards the soft flesh beneath the Ranger's arm, exposed by his position and the loss of his left sleeve.

Swiftly Aragorn twisted. There was no time to let go of the stick, nor to turn his whole body, and so his right hand swept across his chest and under his left. The stretching of the battered tissues in his right side was almost more than his sanity could bear, but he was rewarded for his suffering when the blade found its mark. It sank in and upward into the floor of the animal's jaw, and the lynx gave a harsh, guttural yowl. The wound was not deep, but it brought a gout of blood and it sent the cat retreating almost out of the firelight. Scrambling after it on hands and knees Aragorn swung again. This time he scored the creature's side and it lunged again. The Ranger had lost his grip upon the pole at last, and he thrust up his empty hand to fend off the attack. The bared teeth missed his arm and he sank his fingers deep into the collar of fur, holding fast in a desperate attempt to keep the jaws from his face. One heavy forepaw swiped, and the patch was gone from the right knee of his hose. Blood showed dark by the light of a candle still miraculously upright on its stone. The lynx pulled back, yanking free of Aragorn's grip. Crouching low for a brief and terrible moment, it sprung with jaws wide.

The upward thrust of the knife seemed almost to be the work of another arm. Certainly in his moment of shock Aragorn could not imagine how the appendage that had quivered so with fatigue only minutes before could make such a smooth, deft and powerful sweep. Yet sweep it did, and the knife slipped silently between two ribs. The cat's outstretched forelegs crumpled, the tearing claws that had been aimed at the Man's bare head rendered useless and inert. Aragorn jerked back his hand, freeing his knife, and there was a noise like air draining from a pig's bladder. The weight of the lynx landed hard against his chest and his bleeding shoulder, and it tumbled off of him, limp and whimpering in its breathless throes of death.

Aragorn had no time to comprehend what had happened; he had not time even to draw a deep breath. For there was a jerking on his left hand, bringing pain to the torn skin beneath the bandage, and his attention was drawn to the edge of the path. There Gollum was engaged in his own desperate struggle. The she-lynx was atop him, broad paws batting as she tried to clear the way to sink her teeth. This was not such an easy task, for beneath her the wiry creature wriggled, hands bent into vicious claws and grasping feet battering her underbelly and clutching at her fur. She growled but Gollum shrieked, and his sparse teeth gnashed with a fury unmatched even by her own. One of his bony hands dug too close to her eye and she jumped back, shifting her position as she came down again and trying once more to subdue him.

In that moment Aragorn's sympathy was with the cat, for he knew what a strong and slippery thing she had in her clutches. Her face and one shoulder were bleeding, and her left ear was missing a chunk of flesh. She might fight to the limit of her strength, and though she would likely prevail she would be left only with a lean and desiccated thing as unfit for eating as it was for travelling with. She was courageous even to try, but in the end he could not let her succeed. He was a hunter too, after all, and Gollum was his prey. He could not let him be lost to another, even if it cost him his life – which in his present state it might well do.

So he scurried forward on his knees, left hand digging into the mossy path to propel him along. His right, still clutching the knife, was ready. He could feel the blood flowing down his back where the he-lynx had mauled him, and his body was aflame with the exertions of battle. But he raised his arm and drove the blade into the hip of the great cat.

She thrust back her head, yowling. Even in routine calling her voice held the sound of one in torment. That note was heightened tenfold now. Above in the trees unseen creatures scurried: squirrels and small game roused to terror by the unearthly noise. Aragorn pulled back his knife, and not a moment too soon. For the she-lynx whirled, abandoning Gollum with one last swipe of her paw as she turned on the larger assailant. In the glint of her green eyes Aragorn fancied he could read her wild heart as she looked at him. He was large and he was armed; he had killed her mate, yes. But he was bleeding and he could not even stand. He had been wounded long before she challenged him, and she had seen the spider sink its fang into him. He was deadly, but he was weak, and she was hungry and she was hurting and she was angry. It was a fair match.

Again she let loose her terrible voice, and this time it seemed to echo far away like the cry of a hunting-horn in the cold night. Down went her head, her rolling shoulders. Next crouched her haunches, taut with the strength of wild things bred in dangerous lands. Coiled like a viper she drew down to spring.

Aragorn tightened his hold on his knife, but his hand was trembling again. It seemed impossible that he should strike true this time, whatever he had done before. Yet try he must, for there was no other choice. Behind her Gollum lay twitching and bloodied at the end of a rope now slack between captor and captive. If the cat bested the Ranger he would not long survive. Calling upon his last shreds of strength, on the well of courage buried deep within and the small bright spring of hope that suffering and weariness and his hated companion had been unable to quench entirely, Aragorn stilled his quaking arm and made ready to strike.

The she-lynx tightened, rising up in the first arc of her spring, and then quailed – green eyes uncertain as she looked upon his face. The tension of the leap melted suddenly from her body and she whined piteously, casting her eyes away as though she could not bear his gaze. Then she whirled and suddenly she was gone: a blur of fur and claws and trailing blood scrambling up the trunk of a tree into the canopy above. Bewildered Aragorn looked after her, but only for a moment. Then he heard the horn again and suddenly there was a clatter of galloping hooves reigned suddenly in and a ring of torchlight appeared among the trees, borne up by slender arms clad in woodland green. Gollum's shrieks redoubled and the Ranger let the desperate strength ebb out of his unsteady limbs as he sank down onto his curled left calf.

Thranduil's folk had found them.