Chapter LXXXI: The First Debate

They had taken their time for mirth, and now the true labours could be delayed no longer. After breakfast the following morning, Aragorn and Gandalf joined Elrond in the private library. Here tomes of ancient law and lore were kept: too sensitive or too precious or too fragile to be at the general disposal of the household. They had settled upon this place rather than the study because it was all too possible that they might need to consult the troves of resources contained therein. Already they had a map of what had once been Arthedain spread upon the table before them. Unlike the maps of Gondor, this one was detailed and painstakingly accurate. The contributions of many travellers were reflected therein, perhaps none so extensive as Gandalf’s and none so detailed as Aragorn’s. Bilbo had given his own testimony as to the towns and dells and woodlands of the Shire. It was a map the greatest strategist would envy.

‘Before we go any further,’ said Gandalf, looking from one pair of grey eyes to the other; ‘I think we ought to agree straight off that whatever we decide today shall not be final. Sooner or later we will need the guidance of the rest of what was the White Council. I would welcome Saruman’s opinion most of all, for he is learned in Ring-lore and he is wise.’

Elrond nodded. ‘Were he not so far away, I would have him present at this table. But we must do without Saruman for the time being, if for no other reason than because the details of the guarding of the Shire must be settled.’

‘Word has been sent for the patrols to be doubled, and for the Dúnedain to ensure that the watchers themselves are watched,’ said Aragorn. ‘Halbarad will see to it upon my word alone, but I would be glad to offer him at least some sense of direction upon our meeting. It is a hard thing to see taxing directives laid and to know neither the reason nor how long they are expected to endure.’

‘For the moment, the Ring is safe,’ said Gandalf. ‘That is the most important consideration. It is safe, and its location still a secret from Sauron. He may be looking, but the world is wide. However long his reach, it does not span such a distance yet. But we cannot leave the One Ring as a mathom among the curios of Bag End forever. We must decide what we intend to do with it.’

‘There are two options,’ Elrond said quietly. His forefinger was tracing the course of the Baranduin River with perfect precision, although his eyes were focused absently upon the lattice of the window beyond Gandalf’s shoulder. ‘It can be removed from the circles of the world, where it can do no further harm. Or it can be destroyed.’

‘Can it?’ asked Aragorn. ‘Surely such a thing of power would not lend itself to easy destruction. Sauron would have guarded against that from the first, knowing that Celebrimbor’s first instinct upon realizing the betrayal would be to undo what had been so wrongfully done.’

‘Easy destruction? No, you are right about that,’ said Gandalf. ‘A Ring of Power is no princeling’s bauble, to be melted in a cruet or beaten to a wire. Indeed, the only reason I am certain that they can be destroyed at all is because such was the fate of four of the Seven. In each case it was the work of a dragon: their fire or their burning gullets undid the skillful work of Elven hands.’

A sober sadness rose in Elrond’s eyes. ‘Celebrimbor too held that few fires could bring destruction upon the Rings. His own forge would have done it, he said, for it was in that white-hot flame raised by Fëanorian bellows that they were given form. It had the capacity, therefore, to take such form away. That hearth is long lost, and in any case it was not there that Sauron made the One. In the fires of Orodruin was it tempered by means known and unknown. Only there can we be assured of its destruction.’

‘It would be easier to seek out a dragon,’ Aragorn said grimly, needing words to fill a gaping chasm of dread that had opened in his breast. He had looked upon those fires with his own eyes, some distance removed and yet too near for sanity’s sake. Near enough to discern the twists and tendrils of the flows of liquid flame, the showers of sparks from fountains of incandescent destruction, and the blind, seething rage that pulsed outward from the mountain’s tainted heart.

‘Aye,’ sighed Gandalf. ‘If yet there were a dragon left in all the world whose breath yet burned with the heat of the great beasts of old. Smaug was the last, I deem. That is a twist of fortune as strange as any: that the One Ring should have been found upon a road that led to one of its likeliest agents of destruction. Yet I doubt that any dragon, scions of ancient evil that they are, could bear to destroy the work of he who is their overlord, acknowledged or no. Mayhap it was that, as much as his keen wit, that spared Bilbo from death amid the golden hoard.’

This startled Aragorn back from the edge of the chasm of dark reminiscence. Beside him, Elrond had one hand closed over the knuckles of the other, where Vilya sat concealed upon his finger. His face was serene but very pale, and the weight of millennia sat in his eyes.

‘You mean to suggest that the beast sensed the Ring’s presence, and thus forbore to make any earnest assault upon the unseen trespasser?’ Elrond said quietly.

‘Is it not possible? Perhaps even probable?’ said Gandalf. ‘It matters not either way, of course, for Smaug is lost and the Ring is found. It must be dispatched with the same expediency that the dragon received. Nay, greater: for I shall not turn my eye to other matters while this is yet undone.’

‘We are agreed that it should be destroyed?’ Aragorn asked. ‘I mislike the notion of carrying it West, and for more than one reason alone. First, it is an evil of Middle-earth, and the Valar have not in the past show great inclination to lend their aid in such matters until the very last.’

‘Yet they have lent their aid at times,’ said Gandalf. ‘It may be merely a matter of selecting the proper messenger.’

A ghost of a smile touched Elrond’s lips. ‘Perhaps I, being the son of he who last swayed their hearts, might do so again? Is that it, Mithrandir?’

Gandalf quirked his eyebrows sadly. ‘I fear not, Half-Elven. I doubt that either of us could bear to touch the One for long. I came near to it on the occasion of Bilbo’s birthday party, and it was momentum more than resolve that kept my hand upon its course. If I chance such a thing again, it will be in a time of grave need.’

There was a span of uneasy silence, during which the two Ring-bearers seemed lost deep in their own thoughts. For Aragorn’s part, he was waiting only until a judicious span of time had passed.

‘The other reason I am loath to seek to remove the Ring from the circles of the world is that to tolerate its prolonged existence seems imprudent,’ he said at last. ‘It is the survival of the One Ring that prevented the utter downfall of Sauron at the dawn of this Age. If it lives on, even beyond the boundaries of the world, will he not continue to feed upon that portion of his power locked within? That is how you described it to me, Gandalf. Am I amiss in my understanding?’

‘If you are, then so am I,’ the wizard sighed. ‘I do not know what influence the Ring might continue to exert beyond the Door of Night, but it is a desperate hope indeed to believe it will be utterly dampened. Yet at least it would be beyond Sauron’s reach until Dagor Dagorath.’

‘And then?’ asked Elrond. This time it was his voice that rang dourly on the air. ‘In the chaos that has been foretold, Morgoth’s greatest servant may recover his greatest weapon, and wreak destruction as might not otherwise have been.’

‘The unmaking of the world is not our present concern,’ Gandalf said. ‘I can look no farther than this next stumbling-block. It is for this, and not for the securing of futures yet unknown, that I have been sent.’

‘Yet it is still a consideration,’ said Aragorn. ‘Our actions will not impact our time alone, but all that is to come.’

At this Elrond nodded. ‘Once before I bent to the concerns of the present: the fall of Sauron and the breaking of the Barad-dûr, the preserving of an alliance that had endured already such great duress, and the ensuring that the deaths of two mighty kings did not utterly undo their peoples. Thus blinded by matters of imminent worry, I failed in what may indeed have been my greatest test. All that which came of it I might have foreseen, but did not. Now here we sit, because I plied my greatest gift but poorly in the hour of need. You have read the words of Isildur. You know how little I touched, much less swayed, his heart and his reason.’

Gandalf flinched and drew his hand across his mouth. ‘Perhaps I should not have told you of that,’ he murmured. ‘I deemed you had a right to know, and that is true. Yet perhaps you also had the right to be spared such things from the mouth of a friend.’

They were speaking, Aragorn realized, of the portion of Isildur’s account of the capture of the One Ring that Gandalf had reserved for Elrond’s ears alone. He fixed his eyes upon his weathered hand where it rested near the edge of the map, and listened with as much objectivity as he could. He dared not close his ears to anything said in this council, but neither did he wish to cause any unease in what was already a painful situation.

‘It is better to know,’ sighed Elrond, his voice drawn with weariness. ‘At least it is evident that what I deemed to be a great effort served scarcely to penetrate. Would my greatest have served any better? The other alternative… I could not contemplate it then, and even now I do not know if I would.’

Aragorn raised his eyes. At the movement of his head Elrond turned, and the Ranger caught his gaze and held it. ‘The alternative,’ he said fiercely; ‘would have been unthinkable. The loss of your fidelity, your nobility, and your gentleness would have been a price too high for all the world to pay. Arda would have been diminished by it, as it could not be even in Sauron’s triumph. Bitterly though I rue Isildur’s folly, and steeply though we all may pay for it in the end, I would not have had it otherwise if the only other path would have broken you, Atarinya. Take upon yourself the failing of your powers of persuasion if you must, but never that.’

Elrond’s lips parted and his eyes eased at once out of both his surprise and the earlier self-recrimination. Love and gratitude rose instead, and Aragorn read the latter clearly. Though perhaps Elrond would always wonder over and doubt his choices, and though he might never forgive his failing, it was a balm to his heart to hear such words from one he loved and trusted so deeply. His head bobbed once, in acknowledgement more than true agreement.

‘Gracious words indeed, Aragorn son of Arathorn,’ he said softly. ‘You known not the comfort they bring me, though I think you well can guess.’ Then he opened his gaze to include Gandalf, and set his face again into a countenance of grave contemplation. ‘Yet we cannot pass our time brooding on what might have been, or arguing about what was. I too dislike the idea of sending the One Ring into the West. Your reasons are sound, Aragorn, and there is another. If once Sauron knows that the Wise are aware of its location, that is the road he will expect. It is the road that will be watched most diligently, and it winds but one way.’

Gandalf nodded at this. ‘That also is true,’ he said. ‘As for the aid of the Valar, I fear that my compatriots and I are the whole of it: all the aid they intend, and all they will lend. For all we know any ship bearing the One Ring will be unable to find the Straight Road, or upon reaching the shores of Aman be turned back. Such a perilous thing is not lightly to be borne to the Blessed Realm.’

‘Then destroyed it must be,’ said Aragorn, cold determination in his voice steadying the quake of trepidation in his heart. ‘If there is no other fire sufficient to the purpose, it must be cast into the heart of Orodruin from whence it came. From Hobbiton to Gorgoroth is a strange road to travel – one I do not think anyone has ever taken willfully. I cannot think how it might best be done.’

‘The mustering of an army as in days of old is out of the question,’ said Elrond. ‘The Elven realms have not the strength to mount it, and the amity between the Firstborn and the Mortal kingdoms has waned with the long years.’

‘The lore of Gondor remembers you, at least,’ said Aragorn, indicating his foster-father. ‘By name and as Gil-galad’s herald and trusted lieutenant if nothing more. But you are right. Denethor would not lend the strength of his armies to an uncertain venture in a distant land. Matters of temperament beside, it would be folly; for us as well as him. It is the stalwartly held border of Gondor that holds back the Enemy from sweeping across the South. It cannot be weakened, least of all now when most we have need to dissemble and delay the watchers of Sauron.’

‘And Rohan?’ asked Gandalf.

‘I do not know,’ Aragorn said. ‘That too we might ask Saruman. I did not know Théoden as a man full-grown. I cannot guess what kind of a king he is. You would know better than I, having travelled there in more recent years.’

‘Aye,’ Gandalf sighed. ‘The horse-lords are valiant, and never shirk from danger. Yet they know nothing of Elves save in stories of old more often remembered by aged grandmothers and small, dreamy-eyed children than by lords of might and majesty. I do not think they would gather to such a cause, and certainly not without hard proof and clear reasons. In this enterprise we must have secrecy, for the temptation of the One Ring is great.’

‘Then let us have secrecy,’ said Aragorn. ‘At least in the removal of the Ring from the Shire, let us do as we have always done. We shall take it by quiet and humble roads, keeping to the woodlands and the shadows. The armour of the commonplace has guarded me all my life; so may it guard this artefact for a while longer. We need not look so far ahead as the slopes of Mount Doom. Let us concentrate first upon removing it and its peril from the heart of this little land of peace and innocence.’ With his finger he rapped upon the map, indicating Hobbiton as if there were any doubt at all of what he spoke.

‘Thus speaks the guardian of simple hearts and quiet homes,’ Elrond said fondly. ‘My heart is with you in this, and for more reasons than that noblest one. I too can look little further than the first sharp bend in the road, and what lies beyond it I can no longer foretell. Eyes once clear are now clouded with cataracts, and I am utterly bereft of precognitive clarity. Indistinct shapes I see; hints and feelings, but no more. Most of those are dark and far from encouraging. All are uncertain. To fix upon a measurable and attainable end would give my heart some ease, and my mind the scope to ponder further at its leisure.’

‘From Hobbiton, then, and to where?’ asked Gandalf. ‘Orthanc is the greatest fortress under our influence, at least West of the mountains. It would be most unwise to strike out for Thranduil’s lands and risk bringing the One beneath Mirkwood’s shadow. It was likely only the army drawing down upon his doorstep that distracted Sauron from its presence the first time. Removed though he is, such of the Ularí as hold Dol Guldur will sense it.’

Elrond considered. ‘We might hold it long at Orthanc,’ he said. ‘Behind those obsidian walls the Eye cannot look uninvited, and Saruman will gladly harbour our cause. It is far from the Shire, but the road is straight – if not without peril.’

‘Not Orthanc!’ Aragorn exclaimed, the words coming out far more vehement than he had believed the thought to be. At the surprised looks of the others he coloured a little. ‘Not Orthanc,’ he repeated, his tone nearer the modulated one he had first intended. ‘If we shut the One Ring up in that impenetrable valley, what is that but an invitation to a long and bloody siege? I do not fancy sitting out the years in Saruman’s guest-houses, fighting a long war of attrition with the hellhound at our gates. If once Sauron bottled the Ring up in Isengard, bringing it any further would be impossible.’

‘We may hope he will not learn of it,’ said Gandalf. ‘As you have said, secrecy and a shabby cloak have guarded great treasures ere this. Orthanc would be but a waystation on the road to Mordor.’

‘A waystation, aye,’ said Aragorn. ‘But let it not be the first. Long are the leagues between the Brandywine Bridge and the Gap of Rohan, and that road grows more dangerous by the year. Refugees from the far South were already treading the Greenway when last I walked it. By now their numbers shall be greater, and the wild men and footpads of the Enedwaith will be on the lookout to prey upon the desperate. They are easy enough to hold at bay, if one is armed and alert, but they are a nuisance and would surely cause delays. In an enterprise of haste, that would be fatal.’

‘There is no need of haste,’ Gandalf argued. ‘We have adequate time to plan carefully and execute precisely the fruits of that planning. Nor need we follow the Greenway too closely: not if you will be joining the expedition.’

‘It seems scarcely possible that I should do otherwise,’ said Aragorn. ‘Yet if I have any say in the matter we will not strike out from Hobbiton for Isengard.’

Gandalf snorted and opened his mouth with sharp words upon his tongue, but Elrond raised his hand. ‘Feeling is running too high,’ he said levelly. ‘None of us are sure of our course, and that is not something to which any of us is especially accustomed. Let us not permit choler to divide us. If we three, who are so often in closest accord, cannot discuss this without entering into fearsome disputes, what hope is there for the others among the Wise to reach a verdict?’

The wizard sighed and sat back in his chair. Aragorn shook his head. ‘We are wrong to make for Orthanc. I do not know why it is such an unsuitable path, but it is. The long road, the chance of entrapment and siege, these ought to be reason enough. Nor will Saruman know to look for us.’

‘I will carry tidings to Saruman and make known our designs before anything is begun in the Shire,’ Gandalf promised. ‘He may have greater wisdom to lend than I can muster.’

‘Yes,’ said Elrond. ‘And I shall send missives to Galadriel and Celeborn, as soon as we are settled upon our own opinions. But whither should the Ring be brought, Aragorn, if not to Orthanc?’

‘Here,’ said Aragorn. ‘It should be brought to Imladris, at least at first. The way is shorter, and better known to me and to Gandalf. It is less perilous than the Greenway, and the Dúnedain will be within a few days’ summoning if aid is needed. Because the road is not so long, the journey will be swifter and the time that the One Ring will be loose in the Wild will be greatly reduced. The road to the West will be expected, you have said. So will the desire to shut up the Ring in our stoutest fortress. Let us bring it instead to this house of peace.’

‘You would sooner bring peril here than to Isengard, where Saruman has walls and soldiers to hold it?’ asked Gandalf.

‘I would never willingly bring peril on this House or any of her folk,’ Aragorn said, deathly solemnity in his voice and in his eyes. ‘Yet ever has Rivendell been a refuge for those on journeys of danger and desperation. Here alone would I trust the One Ring to be secure, save perhaps in Caras Galadhon. It is not safe in the Shire, and my heart forebodes it could not be safe even in the fastness of Orthanc. Yet here…’

He gestured broadly and sighed, weary in body and in mind. The midmorning sun was high beyond the tall windows, but it was not yet noon. Already he felt as if he had done a full day’s labour.

‘The final road leads eastward as well as south,’ said Elrond quietly. ‘This would be a reasonable waystation whatever the ultimate route over the mountains. From here one may travel by secret woodland ways to Isengard, if that is what is at length decided. It delays the choice without delaying action, and it removes the Ring from the Shire. What say you, Gandalf? From Baranduin to Bruinen?’

Gandalf made a unsettled sound in the back of his throat, but he nodded his head grudgingly nonetheless. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I allow this is the logical place to gather for a southeasterly journey, even if it will add many miles to the road. A swift extraction from the Shire has its merits as you say, Dúnadan. I hope that you, Master Elrond, do not take my reluctance amiss. I do not question the fastness of your realm or the loyalty of your people. Yet if ever there were a time to take comfort in parapets and walls of stone, surely this is it.’

‘I have never known you to seek such comfort before, Gandalf,’ Elrond said kindly. ‘Do not let fear lead you to question your long wisdom.’

‘Agility is surer than stone,’ agreed Aragorn. He smiled almost wistfully. ‘So said a grey-bearded wanderer to a young soldier, long ago.’

Gandalf grinned appreciatively at this, though the shadow that lay in all their hearts still showed dark in his eyes. ‘So he did,’ he said. ‘It seems that there are others to keep my wisdom when I myself forget – or question – it.’

Now Aragorn leaned forward to consider the map, turning it a little so that he was looking from an eastern vantage instead of a southern one. It was how he was accustomed to thinking of the Shire.

‘If it is to be taken from the Shire to Rivendell, someone must bring it,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘A small force would be best. You and I, Gandalf? And perhaps Elladan and Elrohir?’

‘They would gladly do it, and they are already deep in our counsels,’ added Elrond, nodding.

‘No,’ said Gandalf, and nothing more.

‘No?’ Aragorn echoed at last.

‘No. Our hope lies not in might of arms, as has already been proven,’ the wizard said. ‘The sons of Elrond are great warriors and indeed deeply trusted by us all, but it is not they whose skills and nature are needed. Who is to carry the Ring in your scenario, Aragorn? I dare not. Would Elladan be a fit Bearer, with his politic ways and his flair for leadership? Or Elrohir with his grandmother’s temper but not her wisdom born of many Ages, his hatred of the orcs black upon his heart? Yourself, then. Are we to risk our long-held secret upon this new one?

‘Then there is the peril of compelling the Ring to change hands. That has always proved a moment of greatest danger from which only one Bearer has yet escaped more or less unscathed. Bilbo gave the Ring to his nephew, not to any of us. It is Frodo who should carry it, so long as he may.’

‘Frodo?’ Again Aragorn was parroting his friend, but he was too astounded by this suggestion to make any more astute an answer. ‘Frodo Baggins of the Shire, peaceable and prosperous master of Bag End: he you would have bear this thing into the Wild, where watchers will look for it and Ringwraiths will seek it? Gandalf, I know the esteem in which you hold hobbits as a rule, but this is madness!’

‘Is it?’ Gandalf tilted his head and regarded the Ranger. ‘Bilbo bore the Ring for many years, with little temptation and few ill effects. Even Sméagol, who got it by murder, resisted its evil for hundreds of years.’

‘I would not say resisted,’ sneered Aragorn distastefully, hating the loathing in his voice and his heart but unable to restrain it.

‘I would,’ said Gandalf. ‘Consider the great lords of Men who succumbed to the Nine in less than a lifetime. Consider even Isildur, who after two scant years’ possession was so entranced by his treasure that he forgot his broader duty to the great detriment of his men.’

Aragorn cringed as if beneath a whip at these words, haunted still by Isildur’s failure of his people more even than his greed for Sauron’s Ring. Elrond placed a hand upon his forearm, but Gandalf went on.

‘Yet Gollum did not bring about his own destruction. He is no wraith, as your own scars attest. He is wizened almost to the bone, but he is tough as a tree-root and still in his own strange way very much himself.’ He clicked his tongue once, thoughtfully. ‘And the Ring had so little sway over Bilbo’s heart that in the end he was able to give it away. That has never been done, save with the Elven Rings. Even then, one occasion was more a bequeathal than a gifting, was it not?’

‘It was,’ said Elrond, his fair voice unwontedly hoarse and his eyes bright with old pain. Aragorn reached with his free hand to lay it upon the slender one holding his arm. A tiny twitch of the Peredhel’s lips acknowledged the act of consolation.

‘What I mean by this is that there appears to be something in the nature of hobbits that guards them from the One Ring’s incursions, or at least slows them. Frodo Baggins, once of Buckland, may well be the surest Bearer we could hope to have for the Ring. He was young when last I saw him, but by now he will be drawing up on the age at which Bilbo took his own great adventure. I think that in light of that, Frodo may prove eager to undertake the journey.’ Gandalf’s eyes were distant, considering, but his voice held only certainty.

‘He may indeed prove eager, but he could not possibly understand the danger,’ said Aragorn. ‘How can you ask such a thing of one who knows not the peril into which he walks?’

‘Did you know the peril into which you would walk, when first you undertook the hunt for Gollum?’ Gandalf challenged. ‘What of the day you first went forth into the Wild as Aragorn son of Arathorn instead of Estel son of Elrond? Did you understand then what you had undertaken: its dangers and its hardships, its toils and its pains, its scant but beauteous joys and its demands upon your spirit? Would you have found the courage at twenty to go forth, if you knew then all you now do of the road? Sometimes it is better not to know.’

To this Aragorn had no answer. With the faintest pressure of support from his fingertips, Elrond withdrew his hand. ‘I must agree that it is a great risk to have the Ring change hands again, particularly under some compulsion or coercion. How could Gandalf persuade the hobbit to give it up, save with a telling of the need and the danger?’

‘Then you also believe that the gifting of the Ring will protect Bilbo’s nephew,’ Aragorn said in faint wonderment. The substance of these talks was so vast that it seemed to smother his mind like a pile of too many quilts upon a feverish body. ‘That because he received it freely, without desire much less artifice, the Ring will have less to manipulate within him.’

‘It is my hope, and Gandalf’s,’ said Elrond. The wizard nodded. ‘I had not thought you would consider that aspect yourself.’

‘Of Ring-lore I know little,’ said Aragorn; ‘but in logic I had the best of teachers.’

Elrond smiled, a little wanly. Clearly the debate was wearying to him as well. ‘Now I am glad indeed that it has been decided that the Ring should be brought here,’ he said. ‘The road between the Shire and Imladris has proved passable to hobbits ere this. If Frodo hath but a measure of his uncle’s mettle, the journey should be well within his scope.’

‘Precisely,’ said Gandalf. ‘In any case I shall be with him; and Aragorn, too, if he consents. Such an escort would be equal to most dangers that might assail that road, even to a Ringwraith or five. We can spare the debate of whether further guard is needed until the departure is at hand. It will take time to be sure of the situation in the North, to divine the Enemy’s movements, to scope out the watchers. Saruman must be consulted, and Galadriel informed. Most important of all, Frodo must be told the truth of his Ring, and the matter must be explained to him so that – yes, my friend: I heed your hesitancy to send him blind into the fray – he can comprehend in part the risks and how far he is already entangled. All this will take time.’

‘How much time?’ asked Aragorn uneasily. The longer they delayed, the better Sauron’s odds of locating the Shire.

‘I would prefer not to plan to speak to Frodo until Yuletide,’ said Gandalf. ‘I have much to resolve in my own mind first, and much yet to learn of the theory of the matter. You have Celebrimbor’s private chronicles, do you not, Elrond?’

‘Those that survived the fall of Eregion, aye,’ said Elrond. ‘Others still were taken by Sauron under the guise of Annatar. His pretext was to enrich his own stores of knowledge with the fruits of their joint labours, but I suspect he was more interested in thwarting the dissemination of that knowledge after his betrayal.’

‘Then my first act shall be to explore those,’ Gandalf decided. ‘If our courageous Chieftain is to enjoy a few weeks more in the Last Homely House, surely I cannot be begrudged the same.’

He smiled teasingly at Aragorn, who returned it with an effort. His heart was heavy and his thin limbs ached. It seemed such an uncertain thing: to bring the Great Ring, the One Ring that ruled all the others, through leagues of open country beneath the watch of the Enemy. That they were to ask a hobbit to carry it seemed folly. Yet Gandalf had great faith in that little race, and at least in Bilbo that faith had always borne rich fruit. Aragorn would simply have to trust to the wizard’s wisdom and to quiet his own qualms with frequent reminders of the courage and resilience of the elder Master Baggins.

‘That is the great luxury you have won for us by sweat and blood and suffering, my son,’ said Elrond quietly, nodding to the map as if he could see the green downs and peaceful farms of the Shire laid out before him instead of crosshatched lines and neat notations. ‘You have bought us time; time to plan, to consider, to act with deliberation. In the end, that time may prove more important than all our more ostentatious efforts.’

‘Time,’ Gandalf agreed. ‘The one thing Sauron cannot smelt in his furnaces or churn forth from his mills. I shall put it to its best use: have no fear of that.’

For all these confident words Aragorn knew they were no more easy in their hearts than he. What lay ahead was a cataclysm that would equal the exploits of the Last Alliance, if not the unmaking of Beleriand itself. They seemed such tiny players upon a vast board of stratagem, and yet on the side of light they were the prime movers, the great captains, the Wise.

Yet Aragorn had faith in the wisdom and perception of Elrond, in the knowledge and surety of Gandalf, and (though he often forgot it) in the steadfastness of his own will. Until lately he had trusted the strength of his arm, too, and that he could regain. While Gandalf read and Elrond pondered, he would regain it. When the time was ripe, he would be ready. All his life he had fought in this great war. For good or ill, its last campaign had begun.