The Thrum of Tookish Bowstrings

(Title taken from a turn of phrase in The Deputy Mayor)

Chapter 1. Commission 

(About a year after Pippin becomes Thain. Faramir, his son, is four, nearly five.)

‘You want me to teach your son to shoot?’ Ferdi said. It was not Pippin’s most unreasonable request to date, and he could be certain it wouldn’t be the worst, measured against future demands, either. But... ‘He’s but a faunt!’

‘He’ll be five on his next birthday,’ Pippin somehow managed to both counter and agree in the same argument, ‘practically an old gaffer in terms of faunthood.’ Absurdly, he added, ‘I’ve been teaching him to hold and swing a sword since he could stand unaided, as has been the custom in Gondor for centuries, but he’s a Took, and he wants to learn to shoot like one.’

The Thain wanted to put a Tookish bow – a deadly weapon! – into the hands of a tot who’d only recently emerged from toddling, by Ferdi’s reckoning. Though... he scratched absently at his neck, thinking, while Pippin stood waiting patiently – relatively patiently, considering the impulsive nature of that hobbit – for Ferdi’s answer. He had to admit that the young child who’d arrived at the Great Smials with Diamond when Pippin had become Thain had sometimes seemed more like nearly-four, going-on-forty. 

Still, it was the principle of the thing – and his ire grew at the picture in his mind of a toddling faunt flailing about with something as dangerous as a sword. Yes, he’d seen Pippin and Farry at practice, both of them waving sticks in a seemingly controlled manner, but he hadn’t realised until this moment that the sticks represented swords. Swords! 

You’re a Took, Ferdi wanted to say, but didn’t, and never learning to shoot has not seemed to stop you from achieving your aims.

Truth. Though Pippin could hold his own against any other hobbit in a contest of casting stones, put a bow in his hands... and it was time to seek shelter. Well away from the shooting line. Preferably behind him, though that was no guarantee of safety, as Ferdi knew all too well.

‘To – to shoot,’ the head of escort stammered now, and cursed his traitor tongue. He’d kept his stammer in check, the last few years, relatively well, but now it betrayed his perturbation.

‘He can use a child’s bow,’ Pippin said implacably. ‘He’s tall for his age, and so I think he might well be able to manage such a thing and not have to wait until he turns ten or so.’ He levelled a serious look at Ferdi. ‘And as you’re head of escort, I expect you know something of shooting.’ Considering that the head of the Thain’s escort traditionally earned that exalted position by winning the annual Tookland Tournament, Pippin was certainly not wrong in his estimation.

Ferdi opened his mouth to protest further, but no additional words came.

Pippin nodded satisfaction. ‘You may start tomorrow,’ he said in the quiet tone that his head of escort had come to know all too well. Ferdi knew, after nearly a twelve-month of serving this Thain, that all argument was done. ‘That will give you enough time to fit him with a bow and quiver, and to make sure the targets are set properly for one of his height and reach.’

‘Sir,’ Ferdi grated in return.

Pippin nodded and turned away, ready to address the next order of business on his plate for this day, leaving his head of escort alternating between ire and alarm. What if young Faramir shared his father’s talent – or lack thereof – for shooting?

With this Thain, failure was not an option. On the morrow, it seemed, much of Ferdi's time and attention would be given to a shooting lesson.

***