Chapter LXXIII: Choicest Misfortunes 

In the end, it took three and a half days to break the top of the High Pass. The first night was perfectly wretched. Having withdrawn the negotiated distance, the travellers found no better shelter than an outcropping that formed a coarse corner into which Aragorn might set his back. He dared not try to lie down, for although the desperate panting had abated he was still breathing very shallowly and his lungs crackled with fluid. He would have been no more comfortable supine in any case, for the ground was stony and undulating. Every joint in his body ached with a pernicious smouldering constancy that set his teeth to clenching. The hammering in his skull abated a little, but not until well after dark. By then his exhausted wakefulness had him almost in a delirium of mortal misery.

Gandalf built a fire near to Aragorn’s feet, and did his utmost to make the suffering Ranger comfortable. He folded one blanket into a thick pad for Aragorn’s back and hips, and tucked the other neatly about him. He emptied the wool satchel of all but the bandages, and curled it about the nape of the Man’s neck so that his head might have some better support than the bare stone. He unsaddled the horses and somehow contrived to picket them a few paces down the path where Aragorn could follow Moroch’s shadowy form in the dark.

Gandalf tried to coax his friend to eat, but Aragorn’s nausea was such that he could scarcely countenance the thought of food. In the end the wizard ceased his efforts, but it was plain how much this abstention worried him. Still he made every attempt to be cheerful and encouraging as he worked, and when he was finished he knew without being told that the time had come for quiet. All that long and painful night he sat in the stony path, tending the fire and keeping the watch. He rose at intervals to offer water and quiet words of encouragement, and with these patient ministrations Aragorn found the fortitude to endure the long night.

With morning came the need to move, and a bitter struggle against bone-deep fatigue. It took most of Aragorn’s will and all of his strength to drag himself up onto heavy feet. Even then he had to lean against the rock wall, wheezing, until he felt steady enough to attempt to mount. There was no question of breakfast, for his stomach felt little better than it had the night before. Yet the pain in his limbs had improved somewhat, and his head no longer felt ready to rupture with the force of the pounding in his temples.

They rode as far that day as Aragorn’s body could withstand. When the mountain began to reel unsteadily around him and his breath was once more beginning to come in swift, inadequate puffs, they turned and retreated. Although it was only mid-afternoon there was nothing to do but make camp, and this time they found shelter beneath a low overhang. It offered welcome protection from the falling stones and the clumps of snow that tumbled from the melt-edge no longer far above, but little from the wind.

Gandalf laid out the bedding in the very back of the shielded space, and Aragorn was only too glad to stretch out upon it and rest his reeling head. He shaded his eyes with the back of his wrist, and lay long unmoving before he felt able to sit and attempt to eat. The sweetness of the honey-cake the wizard offered repulsed him, but the soft, nutty waybread of Mirkwood proved tolerable. Aragorn took only a few mouthfuls, but he could see the relief in Gandalf’s eyes as he did.

‘Perhaps we should advance more slowly,’ the wizard suggested softly as he filled the horses’ nosebags with their ration of grain. He had made no firm edict in all the time since they had first turned back; it was as if he feared to press too hard upon a strained wall, lest it should crumble. ‘There is no sense in wearing yourself to the precipice for the sake of a day or two.’

‘There can be no true relief until we are once more below,’ Aragorn said hoarsely. His voice, like the rest of him, seemed strained and threadbare. ‘It is a choice between three measures of discomfort and two, not between some and none. I would as lief bear all I can now, in earnest hope that lasting surcease may come more swiftly.’

Gandalf was not pleased with this answer, but still he bowed his head in acknowledgement of the logic. ‘If your breathing grows too laboured, I will insist,’ he warned.

‘I would expect nothing else,’ said Aragorn. He drew his cloak and blanket nearer and tried to turn his face from the wind.

For a while there were only the soft sounds of the horses feeding and Gandalf setting right their little camp. There were a couple of muttered oaths as he tried to light the fire with flint and steel, and then the scrape of leather on stone as he moved the saddles in to form a windbreak. Soon the crackle of ignited wood was heard, and Aragorn felt slow radiating warmth lapping his hip and flank. He wondered idly how long their fuel would last. They had carried as much as they could and at the time he had thought it almost prodigal, but they had not accounted for a delay in these barren heights.

The wind against his head and shoulders was dispersed when Gandalf came to sit near him with his back to the rock-face. A strong, wizened hand reached to grip the Ranger’s arm beneath its woollen wrappings. It squeezed in wordless consolation, and then settled into firm reassurance that was neither patronizing nor anxious. Grateful but too spent to speak, Aragorn lingered long upon the rim of slumber.

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Rising on the second morning was less excruciating. Either the aches had abated somewhat, or Aragorn was growing accustomed to a new constant of pain. Whatever the case, he did not have to struggle to find the barest resolve to rise. It turned out to be a day plagued with the slow trickle of blood from his nostrils – both, this time, and from high up in his sinuses. He rode with his head bowed far forward to keep it from trickling down his throat instead. Within two hours, Una’s painstakingly hemmed handkerchief was a pulpy crimson lump that stained the palm of the Ranger’s mitten.

There was no leisure for heartache and homeward longing that day. Soon they came to a place where the horses could not bear riders. Moroch tried valiantly, but even her steady legs and loving determination could not overcome the changeable earth and the steep, narrow slope. Aragorn stayed her with a gentle word, ere she could do herself harm, and dismounted cautiously. Despite Gandalf’s obvious worry it was plain there was not other way, and at least the Man’s breathing was level, if still too shallow. Aragorn fixed his eyes high upon the crooked path and climbed.

His legs burned and his feet in their unfamiliar boots slipped and scrabbled. More than once he had to brace himself against the rock wall with the hand that did not hold Moroch’s reins. From behind he could feel Gandalf’s anxious eyes upon his back, but even at full strength he would have struggled with such terrain and footwear. A half-hysterical urge to shed the boots and fling them down the mountainside so that he could continue in his hose alone filled Aragorn’s heart, and it roused from him a thin, breathless laugh.

‘What is it?’ Gandalf called, concern and frail hope in his voice.

‘The boots!’ Aragorn answered, turning back so that his voice would carry with little effort from his lungs. ‘I believe I despise them, however fair.’

Then Gandalf, too, chuckled, and the horses both walked with a greater will for several dozen steps.

Soon enough, they came to a place where the way was so steep that even the weight of baggage and saddle was too much for Moroch to carry. Below, the gelding was having similar difficulties. They had come at last to the dry portage, where like boatmen before impassible rapids they had to bear their belongings on ahead before they could hope to mount again. On the westward road, it was most weary; on the eastward road, most perilous. In any other crossing Aragorn would have been glad to take the former. Now, however, it filled him with a sense of pitiful helplessness. He could be of little use this time, and all the labour would fall to his friend.

Yet there was nothing for it but to retreat some paces, guiding the horses meticulously backward, until they were at a place broad enough that the two riders could navigate safely the narrow channel between their steeds and the plunging edge of the path. Aragorn came back first, watching his feet with care because the hard soles did not allow him to feel the earth accurately enough to trust to touch alone. When he was at the gelding’s head, with Moroch’s dark tail swishing patiently beside his leg, he took the reins from Gandalf. His palm he planted on the mare’s rump to comfort her: he did not think she truly needed restraint if she knew it was his will for her to stand.

The wizard ungirded his steed and set about slinging the baggage over his own shoulders. He managed to arrange all of it quite well, even the dwindling bundle of firewood, but he would have to return for the saddle. Carefully he moved past Moroch, pausing to murmur thanks in her attentive ear. Then he planted his lead foot with care, tested it, and hefted himself up onto the steeper grade. For the first three rangar he was as reliant upon his hands as Gollum had always been, and then Gandalf found a rhythm to his climbing and straightened somewhat. He vanished around a curve in the path and out of sight, though for a time Aragorn could still hear the grinding of his boots on the sand and pebbles of centuries.

It seemed like hours before the wizard returned, inching downward with thrice the care that had been needed in the ascent. By the light, Aragorn knew that it could not have been more than a quarter of an hour. Gandalf relieved Moroch of her baggage and repeated his climb, then returned twice more to recover each saddle.

‘The way is clear to the gully,’ he said when he returned the last time and took the lines of the Lórien-mount so that Aragorn could return to Moroch’s head. More to fill the silence than from any illusion that his travelling companion had forgotten these landmarks, Gandalf went on. ‘The peak is cloven, and we can ride abreast with solid mountain on either side. From the look of things, it was choked with snow only a week or two ago. Perhaps our leisurely departure from Mirkwood was for the best.’

Aragorn did not answer. He was steeling himself for the climb. He harboured no shred of overconfidence. This was going to be hard going with his body in its present state, and it seemed almost impossible that he would win through to firmer ground without some aggravation of his sickness. All that he could do was level his breath as best he could and hope that neither his feet nor his balance failed him until he had once more some small quarter for weakness.

‘Swift and steady, my brave lady,’ he whispered to Moroch, leaning near enough to her ear that he could feel the brush of her forelock against his cheekbone. She nickered gently, as if to offer him what small assurance she could. She trusted him, but also she feared for him: his present state was no secret from her.

He pulled off his mittens and tucked them into his belt. Moroch’s reins he wrapped once about his left wrist before taking a firm hold of the leathers. Then Aragorn bent his will upon the way ahead, and began the difficult ascent.

Again the boots were as much a hindrance as a help, but he found that if he walked out-toed and dug the hard lip of the rand into the thin layer of sand and grit he could secure decent leverage even without the responsiveness of pliable soles. His bare hand upon the cliff face offered further aid not only in balance but propulsion, and the need to focus utterly on his smallest movements blotted out the soreness of his body and the agony behind his eyes and even the smothered, stifling struggle to breathe. Unburdened and trusting, Moroch followed spryly behind.

Each of Gandalf’s trips had seemed to drag on endlessly, but Aragorn’s own was over almost before he knew it. All of a sudden feet that had been digging for purchase skidded easily over almost level ground, and legs that had been straining to hoist him trembled with sudden relief. Moroch left the last of the treacherous incline behind her with a clatter of eager hooves, and trotted up abreast of her rider with a happy little prancing step. Only a few feet ahead the path passed into the shelter of the cleft, rutted with rills of the runoff that had ceased, as Gandalf had rightly estimated, no more than a fortnight before. Aragorn stared at these grooves with bleary eyes for a moment or two before remembering that they had to clear the way so that their travelling companions might win through to the high ground also.

He took three heavy, not-quite-stumbling strides forward, with Moroch keeping step. Then the reeling sickness that he had been fighting back all through the exertions of the climb overcame him utterly. Dropping the reins, Aragorn stumbled and fell to his knees. He turned his face from the mare’s nimble hooves, slapped his palm upon the rock wall to brace himself, and cast up the remains of his frugal breakfast into the dust.

He scarcely heard the clatter of hooves and the rustle of robes, or the gelding’s worried whinny as the wizard dropped the lines. But ere he was through with his convulsive retching Aragorn felt a strong hand buoying each shoulder and the mercifully reassuring presence of a trusted body at his side. When at last his stomach ceased its spasm and he spat the last of the thin acid from his mouth, one arm drew him back away from his mess and against the firm support of a chest and strong shoulder. The other hand was gathering his hair back from his clammy face. Gasping thinly and trying to orient himself, Aragorn was only too glad to lean into the wizard’s hold.

‘There,’ Gandalf murmured. ‘You have made the hardest climb of our road. It is all behind you now. We can rest a while before we go on, Aragorn. You can rest. But we should go on, for I do not fancy having to backtrack past that tonight.’

Aragorn nodded unsteadily. Of course they would go on: they had not even gained three miles today. But doing so immediately or even with reasonable promptness was out of the question. Gandalf helped him to his feet long enough to lead him away from the puddle of foulness, and then eased him to the ground and went to search the pile of baggage and tack that had been waiting for them. He returned with a cloth, one of the bottles of water, and the Ranger’s blanket. This last went about his shoulders, while Gandalf wet the rag. He held the bottle so that Aragorn could drink, first taking a mouthful to rinse the vile taste from his throat before sipping cautiously between shallow gasps of air. Then with deft and tender hands Gandalf bathed the Man's face, wiping away dust and sweat and the residue of his sickness.

After that, mercifully, Aragorn was able to lie down for a time whilst the world spun beneath him. First it whirled very rapidly, seeming to wobble alarmingly after every fourth or fifth rotation. Then it slowed to a more deliberate rhythm, like a dancer in a tight repeating turn. Finally it swept as sedately as a spinning wheel left to purr quietly to a stop. After that he merely lay there, chest still heaving of its own accord, and relished the stillness and the fading of the manic lights that leapt across the backs of his eyelids like Gandalf’s fireworks in a midnight sky. He could hear the hush-whush of the currycomb as the wizard rubbed down the horses after their exertions.

When at last Aragorn felt able to rise and to ride, they went on. The way was gentler here, but still it rose towards the pinnacle of the pass. This time they did not wait until the border of the Ranger’s endurance before withdrawing to halt for the day: it had been tried sorely enough on the deadly slope. That night despite his pains and the wild drummers beating out their rites within his skull, Aragorn slept almost without interruption until dawn.

The third day was the easiest. At last he dared to hope that his body was learning that if it endured the upward rigours it would get its surcease in time. The headache persisted with a brutal ferocity that would have been quite terrifying without such a clear cause to explain it. His joints, however, were less tortured and with Moroch’s gentle gait he rode in tolerable discomfort instead of steady anguish. As for his breathing, it troubled him little apart from the persistent cough. That night they retreated a shorter distance, which was a balm to Aragorn’s spirit. He was struggling to keep back the frustration that welled up within him whenever he thought too long on the delay and its cause. Much as he might understand that such measures were necessary, his heart had its own longings. Though he might master them he was powerless to change them. He lay awake long into the night, listening to the noises of the mountains and trying to think of anything but his destination.

On the fourth morning, neither pain nor breathlessness nor the persistent dim perception of unbalance could have kept Aragorn under his blanket past dawn. He had to restrain himself from leaping up to saddle the horses when Gandalf seemed to be moving too slowly. All that prevented him was the certainty that if he overexerted himself now and brought on a fit of gasping, it would be two hours or more before he would be able to convince his travelling companion that he was well enough to move on. So he waited as patiently as he was able until it was time for him to mount, and then settled on Moroch’s strong back and tried not to slump beneath the weight of persistent exhaustion that was on him. He knew that he was strong enough to ride even in his present state, but that did not make it easy, or pleasant, or even free from torment. Yet he had endured far worse than this in his long life, and indeed upon this very quest. He endured again.

That was their longest day of travel since the mountain sickness had grown too obvious to be explained away, for about an hour after midday they came to the end of a broad horseshoe-like ascent that ended in a sudden outward curve. Rounding this, they found themselves all at once looking down upon the other side of the pass.

It wended its twisted way along the side of the mountain and out of sight amid great prows of rock and curves of stony contour and blind corners that thrust themselves out at impossible angles, but it was unmistakable. And further away on the high shoulders of the neighbouring peak it was taken up again, leading away towards a place where the summits themselves grew shorter and shrank away in time to low, tree-covered mountains and then to craggy foothills and finally to the scattered slabs and gullies of the Trollshaws on beyond Imladris.

But Aragorn had no interest at all in what lay beyond Imladris. He cared only for the fact that from this point on each step would carry him nearer to that beloved valley. No more would he have to drag himself forward just to limp back again two miles or more so that he might regain his breath through the night. No more would he have to bear the grinding discouragement of losing a step for each two that he gained. And with each forward yard, the tightness in his chest and the ache in his bones and the agony in his head would all ease. In that moment, his weary thankfulness burned in his breast like the hot tears he refused to shed.

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In that glorious moment the breaking of the pass had seemed almost like the end of the road, but it was not. The downward grade was for many miles a gentle one, and that evening Aragorn lay in almost as much discomfort as he had endured on the first night of prudent withdrawal. It was impossible to gauge by any measure how far they had descended, but his body told him plainly that it was not far enough. Morning found him short of breath, riddled with pains, and well nigh ready to claw into his own temples if only it would stop the hammering between them. He swallowed two mouthfuls of waybread and a small slice of dried apple, but his stomach was again threatening rebellion and he dared not take more. Aragorn rode in stooped misery, leaning low over Moroch’s neck with one arm hugged to his ribs. There was a sharp sting deep in his lungs now, and that boded little good, but there was nothing better he could do for it than to press on as quickly as circumstances allowed.

Gandalf knew this also, and was no longer quite so inclined to offer the chance of a halt at any moderately widened place in the trail. He insisted on stopping near noontide, and again in mid-afternoon when they came to a bubbling rill that danced down over the path. Here the wizard refilled their bottles, and the horses were allowed to drink their fill and feed a little. Their grain, like the riders’ provisions, was holding out well. That evening, however, it became plain that they were nearing the end of their firewood.

When Gandalf had laid the frugal little hearth, he examined the remains of the last bundle of wood and sighed. ‘It seems I should have had us gather more,’ he said grimly. ‘I had not anticipated spending so many days above the treeline, and we have yet more before us. It is always in such matters that my foresight fails me. Wizards too may fall to overconfidence: let no one tell you otherwise.’

‘Let us have no words of blame in this matter,’ said Aragorn, trying to find a more comfortable position in which to sit. His back was against a jutting promontory of stone that arced out above and to his left to cut the wind. ‘For we have no third party to judge who is most culpable. I am the reason for the delay, after all, though it please you to forget it. As for the fuel, we brought more than I should have done, had the decision been mine. We have no grave need of fire.’

Gandalf did not look so certain of this, but he inclined his head in vague assent. ‘Let us warm our supper at least, and enjoy the embers while they last,’ he decided. ‘The wind at least is not too fierce tonight.’

‘No…’ Aragorn murmured, looking aloft and scenting the air as best he could through blood-crusted nostrils. There was a change in the wind beyond its lesser speed, though its prime direction was constant. It was an intangible shift, like and unlike a new taste in a long-familiar dish. In the lowlands he would doubtless have been able to pinpoint the difference and what it might forebode, but he had not spent time enough in the lofty places of the world to know by instinct what was amiss. ‘It is not too fierce tonight.’

‘What is it?’ asked Gandalf, his voice low with unease and his eyes bright with fresh wariness.

‘I do not know,’ Aragorn admitted uncomfortably. ‘There is something in the air: can you feel it? What it is I cannot say. I will take the first watch tonight, and attend any further change.’

‘I think it best if we wait for that until tomorrow,’ Gandalf said levelly. ‘It is not as if you have slept well these last few nights, barring perhaps the one.’

‘That may be,’ Aragorn allowed, trying not to feel ashamed of being caught out. ‘Yet you have had no rest at all, and it will do neither of us any good if you are not at your keenest when I am incapable of my own. You may possess endurance beyond the scope of your form, but if you are too long without sleep your faculties will still be blunted.’

Gandalf’s lips twitched in discontent, but he could not argue this. They had travelled together too often over the long years: Aragorn knew the limitations of the wizard’s strength as well as the wizard knew the Ranger’s. At length Gandalf gave a curt nod. ‘You may watch for three hours, if you will not be dissuaded,’ he said. ‘But if you fail to wake me, I promise you will feel my heartiest displeasure.’

‘That is only just,’ Aragorn said, easing his grave tone with softly smiling eyes. He would have attempted as much with his lips as well, but with the rest of him his jaw was fissured with aches. It was easier to keep as still as possible.

They ate a sparing supper, for if their wood could dwindle the other supplies would do likewise in time. Then Gandalf made ready for slumber. He spread the oilcloths to shield him from the cold stone, and laid out his blanket. The other he refused to use, insisting with dreadful earnest that Aragorn must keep warm as the fire slowly died. He left a full bottle of water within the Man’s easy reach, so that he should not need to stir for anything less than calamity. Then he unbelted Glamdring and lay down with his sword and staff between his body and the mountainside. He tilted his hat over his face to shade his eyes, and soon enough the deep, slow breaths of sleep rose from beneath the broad brim.

Left now with nothing to do but listen to the growl of falling stones and the grinding creak of breaking ice high above, Aragorn found himself hard pressed to keep his mind from roaming dangerously towards anger and impatience. It was true that they no longer had to play the aggravating game of advance and retreat, but it would be some days yet before he could hope to endure a reasonable pace. Until they reached a height at which his body could shake the manifold miseries of the mountain sickness, they could not press too hard. And for many miles the descent would be slower than the climb, for it was delicate work for horses to navigate down a moderate slope with the precision needed on these narrow paths. Already this afternoon the gelding had show a worrying wish to trot, though Gandalf had managed to hold him fast. On a steeper descent, the problem would be magnified.

Again Aragorn found himself humbled with gratitude for Losfaron’s gift of Moroch’s company. She had been as steady today as at any other time on their journey together, obeying his signs promptly and fully. In the pains she took to keep from jostling her rider, she showed an almost matronly concern that was remarkably endearing. Although she would never hold in Aragorn’s heart the place reserved for his own sturdy Northern steed – stabled in luxury in the selfsame valley that now intruded upon his every idle thought – he would always think fondly of the brave young mare. She stood near him as he watched, still nibbling thoughtfully at the grain in her nosebag. When he clicked his tongue, she drew nearer and shook loose her mouth so that she could nuzzle at the side of his head.

‘In a few more days, we shall be in Imladris,’ he promised her softly, whispering so as not to rouse Gandalf. ‘There you shall rest and run free, unsaddled and without my sorry bones to carry. When you are ready, feet fleeter than mine will run homeward with you.’

She nickered softly and nibbled at the warm brown wool before lowering her head near his shoulder so that she too might sleep a little. Just beyond her, the Lórien-horse was already deep in a stuporous rest. Aragorn wondered if the grooms and horse-handlers of Rivendell would be able to coax the poor beast up out of the valley at all, once he had a taste for its comforts and serenity. At the moment, he wondered how he would be able to coax himself.

At the appointed hour he woke Gandalf. There had been no further change in the wind, nor in any other quality of the alpine night, and Aragorn had nothing to report. He lay down in the wizard’s place, his sore body relishing the warmth that lingered in the blanket. He drifted to sleep with more ease than he would have thought possible, while Gandalf settled with his back to the stony slope and warmed his hands over the last dying embers of the little fire.

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An icy slap across cheek and brow awoke Aragorn with a start. For a dazed and awful moment he did not know where he was, but felt certain that the ice had broken and Gollum was scrabbling at the rope. Any moment now he would be off down the swift-flowing current and he would be lost forever…

But Gandalf’s irritated exclamation brought him back to merciful reality. Not so merciful after all, he realized as he opened his eyes just in time to be struck again with a backsplash of water off the rocky ground. The familiar percussion of falling rain reached his ears at last, and he got up on one aching elbow with a low groan.

‘Sudden as the tipping of a washtub!’ Gandalf muttered, climbing to his feet and ramming his hat wrathfully onto his head. It was the time just before the break of dawn when the world was illuminated faintly in an eerie almost twilit glow. Even in that poor light, the pelting rain could be seen as paler streaks in the blueness. It was hammering down with enough force to splash up off of stone that moments before had been perfectly dry, and it would surely drench them within minutes.

Illogically, Aragorn tucked his face into the fold of the blanket so that he might salvage just a few more moments of consoling warmth and near-comfort. He could hear Gandalf moving swiftly around, no doubt trying to secure the flaps of the saddlebags before the rain could creep in and soak all their foodstuffs. He knew that he ought to get up to help, but his mind was sluggish and his body reluctant to obey it. He lost several seconds that might have been spent in action as he came to the slow realization that this must have been the change he had felt the previous evening: the inexplicable alteration in atmosphere as the rains rolled it.

It was a bitterly cold rain, too: so cold that it was almost a wonder that it did not come down in shards of ice instead of thin, stinging drops. When he finally found the wherewithal to emerge from his woollen shell and creak up into a sitting position, Aragorn could not suppress a shudder as the frigid water found his skin once more. Hastily he slid from the oilcloths and snatched them up off of the ground before they could be soaked on both sides. He retreated as far under the outcropping as he could and shook out the blanket, folding it deftly before beginning to roll it. Gandalf was doing the same with the other, wizened hands working with swift efficiency. In the moment of clear need and keep purpose, Aragorn forgot his aches and the persistent, grinding fatigue that clung to him much as his clothes soon would. High mountain rains were relentless and slow to move on.

He put the blanket on the drier side of the oilcloth square, and began folding the tawny tarp around it. If they could keep the blankets dry, they would at least have something to huddle under when the storm passed at last. Aragorn flung the other square to Gandalf, just as the wizard tossed a pair of binding thongs to him. Experienced wanderers both, they needed no conference to execute this hasty breaking of the camp.

The next important business was to saddle the horses before their backs grew too wet. Aragorn rubbed Moroch down with a corner of his cloak before hoisting the tack over her. She made a soft, happy sound at the pleasant sensation, but it was meant for her health rather than her pleasure. On a wet back a saddle might easily chafe and raise sores.

Quickly the horses were girded, and then there was no reason to linger here. The shelter of the shelf above was inadequate: already the water was beginning to pool on the path and run back towards the root of the mountainside. If the travellers were going to be wet and miserable, they might as well be wet, miserable and moving. The saddlebags were swiftly slung, and the covered blankets lashed atop them. In what Aragorn thought to be a fit of delirious optimism, Gandalf picked up the shrunken bundle of firewood and settled it across the gelding’s hips. Without a word the two friends mounted, and the wizard and his gelding led the way down the westward path.

It took twenty minutes for the first icy fingers of damp to penetrate the heavy wool of Sigbeorn’s cloak to tickle Aragorn’s ears and neck. By the one-hour mark, the whole garment was a sodden weight across his back and bowed shoulders. The hood dripped a steady curtain of water before his eyes, and chill rain was trickling into his hair. Less than half an hour after that his wet linen shirt was clinging to his back and arms, draining away his body’s native warmth. It took little more time for his front and his lower garments to be similarly sodden.

After that, there was nothing to do but shiver. He kept a firm hold of the reins, first with wet mittens and then – when their soggy, squelching weight was more a torment than a comfort – with bare, reddened hands. Moroch bowed her head against the lashing torrents, but she walked on as gently and as steadfastly as before. Ahead, Gandalf was a bedraggled grey lump upon the back of the long-suffering gelding, his hat bowed and dripping. The going was slow indeed, for they could not risk stumbling unknowing into a washout or a sudden flood from some swollen spring. Yet it was better to keep moving than to halt and freeze utterly.

The dreary hours dragged past, and as soon as the initial rush of urgent purpose left him, Aragorn’s pains and exhaustion settled back. The cold weight of his hood only served to to deepen rather than ameliorate his pulsing headache, and not one of his tender joints appreciated the frigid weight of his clothes. As he had feared when first he saw them, his boots with their artfully flared tops caught the rain and funneled it neatly down to bite at his toes. His most determined efforts to ignore all these bodily distresses succeeded only in settling him into a sort of muted delirium of unreality. He seemed one with Moroch, rocking with her as she walked, swaying forward when she took a steeper downward slope, swaying to one side when she moved to follow a sharp curve of the trail. Cold and wetness and dull, weary pain were his constant companions all that long, dreary day.

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They found no shelter better than a towering boulder that night, but in its lee they crouched with the horses picketed close beside. The question of fuel was irrelevant now: there would have been no chance of catching a flame or keeping a fire alight in this downpour. By wordless agreement they kept the blankets snugly wrapped, though they did remove them from the saddles and tucked them into the driest corner of their sparse sanctuary. Gandalf brought the baggage too, but there was no use in removing the tack from the horses: it was better to keep the flesh beneath it dry. Neither steed seemed to question this necessity, and they both fell upon their measure of grain with a single-minded eagerness that Aragorn envied.

His own stomach was still unsettled, and a supper of damp and crumbling honey-cake did little to comfort it. The rain had crept into the saddlebags after all, and what of their breadstuffs they did not eat in the next day or so would soon moulder. The fruit would keep a little longer, though it would be an unpleasantly slimy, sticky mess from now on. The nuts and parched grains would stay edible longest, and these they would hoard for last. All these choices, too, were self-evident: there was no need for discussion as there would have been with less experienced or less familiar company.

Shoulder to shoulder with their doused backs to the mighty rock, Gandalf and Aragorn settled in to wait out the night. They drew up their knees under their sodden cloaks and tucked their heads to keep the worst of the runoff from their faces. Neither slept, precisely, though now and then Aragorn was conscious of drifting in indistinct half-waking dreams of warm rock pools in summer. At other times he could feel Gandalf’s weight more heavily upon his side as the wizard drowsed shallowly, head nodding beneath his now-misshapen hat. Pressed so near to one another, they shivered less than they might have done, but the night was wretchedly cold.

All the next day the rains persisted in their violent assault. They had come to a steeper section of the pass, and had to dismount and lead the horses much of the way. The one bright spot to this slow and unpleasant venture was that Aragorn became very quickly aware that his breathing was much improved. The deep crackle was still present in his chest, and at times he lost himself in painful flurries of coughing, but never did he find himself sucking in swift, shallow gasps that seemed incapable of sating his need for air. They had reached a level where he could respire without duress, and surely the other signs of the mountain sickness would fade in due time as well. Already his nose bled with less frequency, eased no doubt by the rain as well as the lower ground.

As evening fell the hammering floods withdrew to a steady, smoother rain that offered no prospect of drying out but at least did not beat upon head and shoulders like hard, drumming fingers. They fared a little better in that night’s quest for shelter. Searching the dusk with eyes that were still keen despite weariness and a sore head, Aragorn spied a low hollow in the rock. It was not quite a cave, but was large enough to accommodate two huddled bodies provided they were willing to lie upon their sides and press close against each other. With his legs tucked up and Gandalf near at hand, Aragorn managed a couple hours’ sleep – though he feared the poor patient horses found little.

By morning the rain was little more than a heavy mist. It offered them no hope of drying their sopping garments, but at least they could fling back soaked hoods and relieve their necks of the weight. Their breath came in billowing clouds, and the horses’ nostrils sent up flares of vapour. Aragorn’s hands burned with fiery needles, and after a time he surrendered his hold upon the rains and tucked them up under his arms. Even there he was not dry, but at least his fingers warmed a little. Moroch did not need him to guide her here, for they were far down the shoulders of the mountains now. It was impossible to tell if his joints were any better for the change, for Aragorn’s body would have ached as much with the incessant shivering as it ever had with the mountain sickness.

Still on they journeyed, now riding in dogged discomfort, now walking in boots that squelched and wept water. There were places where the trail was flooded and the horses’ hooves sent up plumes of splash, but they found no washouts and fell afoul of no mudslides. It seemed as if the mountains were choosing which misfortunes to shower on the travellers, and that they seemed determined to settle upon the most unpleasant but least deadly. Aragorn supposed there was some call to be thankful for that.

That afternoon, at last, the clouds dispersed. When they did so, they vanished with startling speed. One moment, so it seemed, the travellers were enshrouded with the penetrating mists. The next, they were bathed in the golden glow of springtime down below as the sun broke through in a broad swath that warmed their faces almost at once and cheered their hearts still more swiftly. The last mile and a half of that day’s trek were almost pleasant, and when they halted it was at a place where the path grew broad as a highway. The thin earth was already dry, and almost without a word the two travellers unsaddled the horses. Then they began shucking layers of waterlogged clothing. They wrung out what they could, and spread cloaks and cote and robes to air.

Moroch and the gelding, glad to be free of their burdens again, pranced happily about the broad space that after the cramped passages above seemed gloriously broad. Only the temptation of the nosebags finally calmed them enough that Gandalf could give them each the thorough brushing they needed. With only the one brush, Aragorn’s conscience was salved a little as he sat in a patch of orange-tinted sunlight and rested his pounding head on his knees. He felt as thoroughly wrung out as his raiment, and his lower ribs burned broadly within him, but his spirit felt lighter than it had since first his head had started to plague him on the upward slope. He could feel the sinking sun upon his forearms and his shoulders and the crown of his head. It was warming the wet cloth of his hose and would soon reach through to shin and knees. Best of all, the storm had kept them moving at a slow but constant pace – without any of the frequent rests on which Gandalf might otherwise have insisted. Every step upon that wet, frigid road had been one more step towards Rivendell.

The wood was too damp to burn well, and so they did without a fire that night. The blankets, however, had escaped the worst of the soaking. They were each damp in places and they reeked strongly of linseed, but they made for a welcome guard against the night’s chill. Leaving their outer garments to continue to dry as best they could, Aragorn and Gandalf each bundled up in a blanket and sat back to back in the shelter of the mountain. As the last of the light faded, Aragorn realized with tired awe that he could make out the branches of the squat little trees on the slope across the gorge below. They had almost reached the treeline.