Hello, all!  And the most massive apologies to anyone who still wants to read this, and has been waiting four months for the next update!  The summer has been crazy – and this has not been an easy chapter.  I dunno, I guess writing about doom and horror threatening the White City just isn’t a cheerful process!  Dang, it’s been so long since I started this, I’m not even sure I remember what’s in this chapter …

            Oh, as mentioned before, I am not a poet.  So the songs that appear partway through the chapter are no creation of mine, they belong solely to the members of Silly Wizard.  All appropriate acknowledgements to them, and no infringements intended.

            Anyway, hopefully the next chapter will proceed more smoothly and swiftly than this one.  Summer is coming to an end, thank goodness, so maybe life will become easier to deal with.  And there’s some fun stuff coming up in the chapter after this one … including meetings with a few more of our favourite Lord of the Rings characters …

            Thanks for your patience and thanks again for reading!

Chapter Fifteen:  The Battle of Minas Tirith (Part One)

            I glanced at Pippin, staring out upon the black and scarlet tents of our enemies.

            He said in a tense, quiet voice, “There are a lot of them.”

            “Yes.  There are.”  For a moment I pondered if I should try and say something cheering, such as, And there are a lot of us, as well.  But, I told myself, Pippin did not need me patronizing him.  I was certain he knew as well as I how grim our prospects were.  And I was sure he knew also that we had no choice left us now but to stand our ground, to wait, and when the foe came within our grasp, to fight.

            As another moment passed I studied the young Hobbit’s face, his mouth set in a determined line as if to ward off any trembling or words of fear. 

I felt a rush of anger at the fates and the beings whose combined forces had brought Pippin to this time and place.  In my thoughts I roundly cursed Mithrandir for bringing him here, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli for not stopping the Wizard from doing so, Lord Elrond for not putting his foot down and insisting that Pippin and Merry remain in Rivendell, even Frodo for not managing to sneak out of the Shire without the youngsters on his trail. 

Damn it all, I thought.  He should be home right now hunting mushrooms, not standing in a City of Men that is about to enter its death throes.

            And you, I commanded myself, should bloody well not be thinking like that. 

            The defences will hold.  They will hold, because they must.

            “We had best get down there,” I said, trying to keep my voice light.  “My father is probably hunting us already.”

            Pippin hopped down from the stool.  “I thought you said you wouldn’t get in trouble,” he said, frowning.

            “I won’t,” I answered.  “But that doesn’t mean I won’t have to listen to him lambast my character six ways from Valanya.”

            As I pulled open the trap door, the guard hastened to us from the post he had taken out of hearing of our conversation.  He bowed to me in salute.  “Good luck to you, My Lord,” he said.

            “Aye.”  I nodded.  “To all of us.”

            Speeding down the seemingly endless steps, I automatically took myself to task for cooling my heels atop the Tower while the Dark Lord’s minions closed in about us.  Though realistically, I argued, what in fact could I usefully have been doing?  Until the enemy came within range of our archers and siege engines, there was little enough that any of us could do save to fight our fear and impatience, and wait.

            My first thought when at last we emerged at the White Tower’s foot was to seek out Svip, that I might hold to my promise not to let him miss anything.  With Pippin at my heels, I circumnavigated the Tower and hurried into the Court of the Fountain. 

Far from missing out on the morning’s developments, we found our friend the water creature precisely in the thick of them. 

The torchlight and the murk of the morn revealed to us an assemblage made up of the greatest Lords of Gondor.  Standing in consultation together on the greensward by the Fountain were my father, the Prince my uncle, Duinhir of Morthond, Forlong of Lossarnach, Húrin Keeper of the Keys, and Mithrandir. 

As we made our way toward them, I noted a second, smaller group at the Fountain’s edge.  Svip stood upon the Fountain wall, his arms stuck out from his sides and a nervous, eager expression on his face.  At either side of him stood a page of my father’s household.  The young Men pulled a black and silver tunic down over Svip’s head, arranging it over a shirt of chain mail into which they must already have assisted him.

Svip broke into a grin at the sight of me, and jumped down from the wall.  He would have run to me, but one of the pages bowed and said something to him, holding out a belt and sword. 

Svip paused to let the pages help him once more, and my father hailed me, waving me over to join the assembled lords.

“There you are, Boromir,” he said.  “Perhaps the next time you will ask permission before spiriting away my Esquire.” 

Coming from my father, that was the mildest possible reproof, spoken from habit rather than anger.     I bowed to him.  “Yes, sir.  Good morning to you, My Lords,” I added.

As the lords greeted me in reply, I was struck by how vastly improved my father seemed from only the night before. 

The impending assault upon us seemed to have restored his energy and strength.  And it appeared to have put him in better spirits than I had seen him in for many a year. 

This morn the Lord Steward stood straight and tall.  His silver mail shirt gleamed where it showed beneath his tunic at wrists and throat.  One gauntleted hand was planted on his belt, the other rested upon the hilt of his sword.  All his age and care seemed vanished, leaving the indomitable figure who ruled my earliest memories, my glorious father who could accomplish everything.

My father was saying, “It appears then that we are as ready as we are ever like to be.  My Lords of Morthond and Lossarnach, I thank you for your council.  You may join your Men upon the walls.  Boromir, Húrin, Imrahil: at least until the assault begins in earnest, I believe that our most useful role will be to go forth among the Men, that they may know their commanders are with them and will share all their fortunes, for good or ill.” 

The Steward cast a glance at Mithrandir, who stood in apparent contemplation, his face half hidden in the shadow of his hat. 

“There may be some,” my father went on pointedly, “who expect the Steward of Gondor to immure himself in the Tower Hall, brooding upon doom and shadows.  Friend and foe alike will learn that this expectation is false, and will see that Gondor’s Steward stands shoulder to shoulder with his Men through what e’er may betide us.”

The Wizard bowed his head, unreadable eyes glittering out of the shadow.  “I will rejoice to see it, My Lord Steward,” he replied, in mild tones that yet revealed the one-upmanship between them if one knew to listen for it.  “As will all of your people.”

Mithrandir took a step closer to us.  His white robes shone like the sun piercing through cloud as his tattered cloak parted and then fell closed again. 

“If you do not object, My Lord,” he continued, “I too would join the defenders along the White City’s walls.   The flame of Anor has power to hold at bay that fear upon which our foe relies as his deadliest weapon.  I will walk amid the defenders of Minas Tirith, and do what I may to deflect that weapon from their hearts.”

My father shot Mithrandir his standard look of dislike, which the Wizard serenely ignored.                   

“Let us hope,” the Steward rejoined, “that the flame of Anor’s efficacy is not weakened by the fact that a good many of our Men view you as the harbinger of doom.  It will somewhat defeat your purpose, if you relieve their fear of our enemy merely to replace it with fear of yourself.” 

Mithrandir bowed and said nothing, though I thought I heard a snort of impatience from the old Wizard as he held back the words he would like to have said.

With sardonic eye, the Steward turned to the Prince his brother-in-law.  “At least we may do something to counterbalance their fears, if the Grey Wanderer walks among them at the side of Imrahil the Fair.  What say you, My Lord Prince?  Will you undertake your rounds of the City with Lord Mithrandir, that the glory of the Swan Knights may lighten the pall of the Grey Pilgrim’s presence?”

My uncle looked as though he would dearly love to rebuke the Steward for speaking so rudely of Mithrandir in the Wizard’s presence.  With a sigh, Imrahil restrained himself. 

“Willingly, My Lord,” he said, bowing.  “I will be glad of Lord Mithrandir’s company, if he has no objection to mine.”

As Mithrandir bowed to the Prince in turn, my father went on. “You will oblige me enormously, Imrahil, if you keep the Lord Mithrandir as far from me as possible.  I assure you I can keep my spirits in fighting trim with no assistance from the flame of Anor.”

            Imrahil cast an apologetic grimace at Mithrandir.  “I will do my best, sir,” the Prince replied.

            If I do not put in my oar, I thought, they may keep sniping and bowing at each other all the morn.  I took my own turn at bowing to my father, and said, “My Lord, I would beg a boon of you.  I ask that you grant me command of the Great Gate.  It is there that our foe must throw his greatest strength.  He has attempted the assault of Minas Tirith before, in long years past.  I doubt not that he recalls our indomitable walls, and that he knows as well as we that he must take the Gate if ever the City is to fall into his hands.”

            My father frowned.  I was certain that if I gave him the chance to speak then, he would deny my request. 

It was time, I judged, to try just how far I could play upon his sensibilities by again bringing up the topic of my return from the dead. 

            I said, “Sir, in those days I spent with Svip beneath the Rauros Falls, I despaired when first I learned that the conditions of my return meant I could no longer lead our Men against the darkness – unless the darkness should conveniently locate itself within a few miles of the River.  I was pulled from out of that despair when I realised that the Great Gate of our City is near enough to Anduin for me to make my stand there.  At the Gate, I may yet accomplish deeds that will play their role in saving our City and our nation.  My Lord, I vowed then at Rauros that if I reached home in time, I would seek command of the Gate.  Grant my request, My Lord.  I will hold the Gate against all enemies.  The Great Gate will hold, and Minas Tirith will not fall.”

I caught sight of troubled scowls both from my uncle and from Mithrandir.  No doubt they were thinking that I would need more than grandiloquent words to hold the Gate against the Dark Lord’s legions.  And in that, of course, they were perfectly right.

My valorous boast did seem to have swayed my father.  He frowned yet, eyeing me again with a look of dread and doubt.  Then he took a tighter grip on his sword hilt, and spoke, banishing all fears from his face and voice. 

“Your request is granted, my son,” he declared.  “I can think of none better fitted to hold the survival of our nation in his hand.”

Wonderful, I thought.  I know I just asked for it, but it does sound bloody awful when you put it like that!

Awful or not, there was no getting out of it now. 

“I thank you, My Lord,” I said, with another bow.

The Steward asked me, “Are there particular troops that you would request be stationed under your command?”

I caught sight of the now fully armed and armoured Svip, manoeuvring his way through the Men about us to reach my side.  There was no way that I could stop Svip from joining me at the Gate, I knew.  It was as hopeless a wish as my longing to get Pippin out of harm’s way. 

I disliked mightily to think of Svip facing the strain and fear of this siege.  But if there was no escaping that, then at least I could see to it that he awaited the onslaught in the company of friends.

“Yes, sir,” I answered.  “I ask for Captain Cirion’s Company of Rangers.”

“Very well.”  He turned to one of the Orderlies who stood at a respectful distance from our conference.  “Relay my order to Captain Cirion: he and his Men are re-assigned to the Great Gate under Lord Boromir’s command.”

As the Orderly bowed and departed, my father continued, “If there is no further discussion, gentlemen, let us be about our duties.  Húrin, you will accompany me.  You as well, my young Esquire,” he added, turning with a wintry smile to Pippin, who had been unobtrusively lingering at the edge of the group.  The Hobbit stood up straighter and strove not to look uncomfortable as once more all eyes turned upon him.    

The Steward gripped Pippin’s shoulder, his smile growing more kindly as he met his Esquire’s troubled gaze.  “We will await the darkness together, Master Hobbit,” he said.  “Perhaps we will find time for you to teach me those songs of your Shire of which we have spoken.”

“If it pleases you, My Lord,” Pippin replied, with a sickly smile that seemed to say he would rather be out on the battlefield this instant than be ordered to sing for the Steward of Gondor.

Our council began to disperse.  My uncle held out his hand to me.  As we shook hands he observed with his rueful grin, “You are given all the easy jobs, Nephew.  You have only to hold the Great Gate against all the minions of Mordor.  I have to see to it that the Steward and the Wizard are never on the same level of the City.”

“I have faith in you, Uncle,” I assured him.  “You will be equal to the task.”

Mithrandir added wryly, raising one bushy eyebrow, “I will strive not to make the charge too onerous, Lord Prince.  Minas Tirith is large.  The Steward and I should be able to avoid tripping over each other.”

My uncle and I smiled at each other, the smiles speaking all the words of love, trust and hope that one never manages to say even when battle is swift approaching and any words not said may be left forever unspoken. 

“Uncle …” I began, “Mithrandir … will you visit the Houses of Healing upon your rounds, when you can, and check in on Faramir?  And let me know how he fares?”

            “We will,” Imrahil promised. 

            “I can be at the Gate with you, can’t I?” Svip piped up worriedly.  “You’re not going to try and make me stay out of danger?”

            “I’m not going to try it,” I told him.  “After all, you’re my bodyguard, remember?”

            Svip grinned a little, casting a self-conscious glance down at his new livery.  The black tunic, I saw now, was blazoned with the emblem of my household, a hunting horn wrought in cloth of mithril. 

Svip’s tunic summoned a snatch of memory to my mind, and with it, a whisper of foreboding.  I thought of the dream I had dreamt at the Causeway Forts, of Svip clad in black and silver, kneeling weeping at a tomb in the House of the Stewards.    

I felt a moment’s dread as I wondered if that were merely a dream, or a vision like those of my brother and our father.

Vision or dream, I told myself, there was nothing that I could do about it.

I noticed my father watching me, with Pippin stood nervously at his side.  It was a surprise to me that the Steward had waited to exchange any further words, instead of setting forth as soon as he’d decreed that our conference was ended.  Though in the circumstances, I told myself, I should probably not be surprised if he displayed a bit more fatherly concern than usual.

With a last nod to Imrahil and Mithrandir, I stepped over to the Steward and the Hobbit. 

My father eyed me once more with a strange, dread-filled expression.  I could not help grimly wondering if he’d had some vision of the battle to come, which told him that it would be our last. 

As I crossed to him he forced a thin smile onto his face, and thrust out his hand.  His grip on my hand was as firm as ever. 

“I will see you later then, sir,” I said, with all the cheerfulness that I could muster.  “And you as well, Pippin.”

The Hobbit managed an unhappy little smile, and my father nodded briskly.  “I will see you at the Gate,” he said.

He turned on his heel and strode for the gate to the Citadel, Pippin scurrying to keep up with him and Húrin and a detachment of the Tower Guard falling into step behind.

I suppressed a sigh as I watched them go. 

It was time to go ourselves, I knew.  But now that I had gained what I sought, I felt a heavy reluctance to take up my post at the Gate. 

I chid myself for it.  But the thought still whispered through my mind that this was indeed our last stand.  And that when I took my place at the White City’s Gate, the last chapter of the tale would commence, for our family and our City and for all of Gondor.

I scratched irritably at my collarbone, where the neckerchief I’d dunked in Anduin’s water lay nearly dried against my skin.  The last dampness from the River water blended with prickles of sweat called forth by the hot, muggy air of the morn. 

As I scratched my neck, I noted Svip pointedly watching my every move. 

I had better be certain I’ve a supply of River water handy, I told myself.  Svip will hound me without mercy if I do not.

I summoned one of the waiting Orderlies.  “Send to my town house,” I commanded.  “Give the Seneschal my order: a barrel of the water that arrived yesterday is to be sent at once to the guardhouse at the Great Gate.”

“Yes, My Lord.” 

“There, you see, Svip,” I remarked as the Orderly took his leave.  “I do remember to look after myself every now and then.”

He gave me a doubt-laden look.  “Your father didn’t look like he thinks so,” Svip said.

“Aye, well,” I shrugged, “he worries about me no matter what.”  I cast a sidelong glance down at Svip as I added, “Like certain other persons that I could mention.” 

I could afford to delay no longer.  Every moment that I lingered here only made it the harder to do what I must.

“Shall we go, Svip?” I said with strained lightness.  As I strode past the Fountain and the Tree with Svip hurrying beside me, I forced myself not to stop to gaze at the Tree as though I were bidding it my farewells.  But still I stared at the White Tree in that moment as we passed it, carving the image of it in my memory.  The water and leafless branches bore a reddish hue in the torchlight and the glow from the enemy’s fires, as if the clear water of the Fountain were transformed into blood.        

Svip took refuge in chatter as we made our way from the Citadel.  I was grateful for his words that gave me something on which to focus other than peril and doom.

“It was nice of your father to have the tunic and armour made for me, wasn’t it?  He said it would have taken too long to have a helmet forged for me, one that would fit right, anyway.  It wasn’t that hard to make the tunic and chain mail, but my head’s so differently shaped from Men’s, the helmet would’ve taken a lot longer.” 

Svip reached up and tugged at the chain mail coif he was wearing, which he had shoved off his head to lie hanging down his back.  “He said I should wear this hood instead, but I hope I don’t have to, much.  It itches.  I feel like I can’t hear right with it on, too.  Did it take you long to get used to wearing armour?  Can you hear all right with your helmet on?  Your father had his Men cut down my belt for me, too,” Svip sped on, gesturing to the now perfectly-fitted sword belt that he’d worn on our journey from Rauros Falls.  “It’s nice not to have to double it around me any more.  The chain mail’s not too bad, is it?  I thought a shirt of it would be a lot heavier.  I don’t think I’d like to go swimming in it, though.”

“No,” I agreed, when Svip’s words temporarily ran down.  “It can be done.  I’ve done it.  But I wouldn’t recommend it to you, if you can avoid it.”

We took the road down the Hill of Guard, pausing at the gates to confer with the commanders of each Level.  My own observations and the reports I received led me to agree with the summation I’d heard my father give as I joined the morning’s council.  We were ready – as ready as we were ever like to be. 

At the Seventh and Sixth Levels, the Guards of the Citadel garrisoned the walls.  The City Guard manned the walls of the Fifth and Fourth Levels, and below were stationed all the remnants of our armies drawn back from Anórien and Ithilien, and the troops from the Southern Fiefdoms. 

The Men of Morthond, justly famed for their skill in archery, were among those posted on the walls of the Third and Second Circles, for of all of us there was greatest likelihood that their shots would tell against the enemy from even the higher walls.  On the first wall of our City stood hardened veterans from the garrisons of Gondor’s northern marches, and the warriors of Dol Amroth. 

The Swan Knights’ steeds waited in readiness in the First Circle, near at hand along Lampwrights’ Street where the courtyard and outbuildings of the Brewers’ Guildhouse had been converted into temporary stables.  Should the battle reach the point in which another sortie would serve us, then what few cavalry we had would be ready.  But I doubt that many among us truly believed Gondor’s cavalry would again ride forth from the City’s Gate.      

Those commanding the higher levels, as a Man, groused of their ill fortune at being stationed too high upon the Hill of Guard to have a hand in the fighting.  On learning that I’d secured the Great Gate’s command for myself, several complained of my hogging the fun and glory, and offered to swap places with me. 

Jestingly we assured each other that I would have the foe finished off ere nuncheon.  The Men above would have naught to do but watch. 

None of us spoke the thought that those stationed on the upper levels were like to have fighting enough of their own, when the Gate of Minas Tirith fell.

 On the wall between the Great Gate’s turrets Cirion and his Rangers awaited us.  Svip broke into a beaming smile at the sight of them and would have run at once to our comrades, but he remembered at the last instant to ask his commander’s permission first.  He began, “Is it all right if I – ”

I nodded assent, and he raced over to the parapet, where Holgar, Buslai and Finn, leaning against the embrasures, grinned and bowed at his approach.  At a more dignified pace I followed, crossing to Captain Cirion who stood by the embrasure directly above the midpoint of the Gate.

“Is anything going on out there, Captain?” I inquired, as he saluted.

Cirion scowled.  “Nothing that we can do aught about, My Lord,” he answered sourly. 

The two of us turned to gaze over the parapet.  The Ranger Captain added in a mutter, “I would be deeply obliged if someone could inform me what in blazes they are actually doing out there.”

We frowned out upon the plains.

Cirion’s question, I thought, was a good one.  The enemy’s activities, for the moment, looked almost entirely mysterious. 

Through the ruddy haze I saw companies of Orcs digging.  It seemed that they were digging trenches, paralleling the City’s wall in a massive arc that extended as far as I could see in either direction.  The trenches, I judged, were just outside the range of our archers, even the celebrated bowmen of Morthond. 

Perhaps, then, this great arc of trenches was planned as a base camp from which they would extend further trenches toward us, that their troops might advance in relative shelter, under lesser peril from archers and catapults than did they march upon us across the open ground.   

Yet it made no sense.  It was sheer foolery, if the Orcs, Southrons and Easterlings believed that the meagre shelter of those trenches would save them from the bombardment of arrows and catapult shot.  Some slight protection it might afford them, but never enough.

Most of the fires that we had seen throughout the night, charting their army’s progress as for sheer brutal pleasure they set ablaze each farmstead and field and hamlet along their path, had by now guttered out.  Fires still burned without our walls, but these fires were of a different stamp.   

At points here and there along their great ring of trenches, it seemed that the trenches themselves had been set alight.  How, I could not say.  Perhaps with that same black oil they used for their incendiary missiles, if they had vast supplies of it to pour into the trenches and then ignite. 

Yet why would they do so?  I argued to myself. 

There was no need to light their ring of trenches as greater protection against us.  We had no means of reaching them, fire or no fire.  And assuredly, if they did plan to extend the trenches toward our wall, they could not then line those trenches with fire.  They would only render the trenches unusable for their soldiers.  With all of their black arts, I had seen no sign that the Dark Lord and his henchmen had the power to make their Orcs and wild Men invulnerable to fire.

“They seek to terrify us,” I hazarded finally, voicing the only theory that I could summon up.  “It is to wear down our nerves, nothing else.  They think to make us quake in our boots, with the vision of our City encircled by flame.”

Cirion gave an expressive snort.  “They will need to think up something better than that.  If a circle of fire is the most terrorizing thing they can think of, I would we had known that sooner.  We could have taken this war to them and conquered all Mordor in a month, if all we needed do was light a few fires.”

I forced a smile, though the puzzle of the fiery trenches troubled me more than I cared to acknowledge.  Some other devilry, I feared, did indeed lie behind this tactic of theirs, yet I was damned if I could see what it might be.  I said, hoping to hide my dread in my words, “Thinking has never been the Orcs’ strong point, Captain.  I suppose that we cannot blame them if their strategies are less than legendary.”

The Captain did not look convinced.  I was as little convinced myself.  Thick-witted Orcs might make up a sizeable percentage of their force, but it was no Orc chieftain or brigand king who commanded them.  For Sauron and his captains this assault was the work of centuries.  We could not afford to hope that they would blunder into it like thugs who thought merely to make faces at us and frighten us into surrender. 

I scratched absently again at my now-dry neckerchief, then noticed what I was doing.  It was time and past, I thought, that I allowed myself a drink of River water.  I took a draught from my canteen.  Frowning as I re-corked it, I said, “One thing at least they have accomplished, and that is to remind us of their missiles of fire.  Send a messenger, Captain, to the guildsmen commanding the fire-fighting crews on each level.  We must be sure that they have been informed of these incendiary missiles, and the peril of the oil which fuels them.”

Little good though that may do, I added glumly to myself.  Knowing the missiles’ composition would not give our Men the power to stop the buildings of the City from catching fire.  But it would aid morale, at the least, if the fire-fighters were not taken by surprise, and the knowledge might save a Man or two from injury by burning oil.  In our present circumstances, I told myself, that must be good enough.

I scowled out at the digging Orc companies for some minutes more, then restlessly I set out along the wall.     

Young Holgar, Finn and Buslai broke off their conversation with Svip as I approached, and bowed to me in salute.  They and the water being, I guessed, had been discussing the merits of different styles of helmets, and the Men had been letting Svip try on each of theirs for comparison.  Holgar and Buslai were bare-headed, Holgar with his helmet in his hands, and Buslai’s helmet sliding about precariously atop Svip’s head.

“The armourers should have time to make a helmet for you when this battle is over, Svip,” I said.  “If you haven’t got too sick of wearing armour by that time.”

Grinning, Svip doffed his oversized headgear and handed it back up to Buslai.  “It’s like wearing a cauldron,” opined Svip.  “A heavy cauldron.  No wonder Men have thick necks, or they’d snap the first time you put on a helmet.”

“That’s just Buslai,” Finn told him.  “He’s got the thickest neck in Gondor, so he got the extra-heavy helmet.”

“How fares it with you, gentlemen?” I asked, as Buslai snorted with laughter and donned the helmet in question.  “Buslai, have you seen your father since our return?”

“Aye, My Lord.  I was able to spend last night at home.  Though I’d have got more sleep if I’d stayed in barracks; we were up talking for most of the night.”

“And you, Finn?  I trust your family made it safely out of the City?”

“Yes, sir.  My wife left a letter for me; they’ve gone to her parents’ place in Lossarnach.  She had the boys write letters, too – well, draw letters, but I’m pretty sure Thorfinn’s is a picture of them at their grandparents’ house, and Rognvald’s is of when we all come back to Minas Tirith.” 

He smiled wistfully and shook his head.  “First time I’ve ever come home to an empty house.  Seemed stranger even than the City being so empty.  Simbelmynë cleaned the place from cellar to gable before they left, and she baked a Lithe-day’s worth of pies and left them in the larder for me with little notes telling the dates each one was baked.”  The Ranger sighed.  “I took a few of the pies over to our neighbour’s house, and he had just about everyone who’s left on the Second Level ’round for the daymeal, to welcome me home.  It didn’t seem right eating at home by myself – I didn’t want to risk dirtying up Simbelmynë’s kitchen so soon, either.” 

I had noticed young Holgar starting to look more and more dejected as his fellow Rangers spoke of their families.  Remembering that Holgar had no family in the City, and that his home in North Anórien was like as not over-run by the enemy, I sought for some means of distracting the boy from thoughts of gloom.

“Holgar,” I said, “do you go with Svip and find something to help him see over the parapet.  The Gate guardhouse should have some stool or bench that will serve the purpose.”

The young Man forced a smile, and gave Svip his helmet to try on as the two of them set out.

When they had vanished down the stairwell, Finn said quietly, “Holgar spent most of the night in the Houses of Healing, My Lord, keeping vigil over Thorolf.”

“Is Thorolf’s condition worsened?” I asked, thinking grimly of the report that the Men in this so-called dark sleep were sinking into death one by one.

“He’s not talking in his sleep any more, Holgar told us,” replied Buslai.  “They say that’s what is happening to the ones who die of this. They are falling into silence before the end.”

I nodded, seeing Faramir’s still, pallid face and feeling the burning heat of his skin.  I gripped the embrasure before me as I stared at the smoky dusk of the Pelennor and strove to put the images from my mind.

“My Lord,” Buslai Son of Brynjolf ventured tentatively, “if you don’t mind my asking, sir … Have you told the Lord your father of your return from the dead?”

I turned to look at him, away from the fire-pocked plains and the visions of my brother’s face. 

“We spoke of it last night,” I answered.  “Not that I really had the choice to conceal it from him.  He knew of my death from rumour, the report of a witness and from my brother’s vision.  And it is no easy task to keep anything secret from my father.”  I studied young Buslai’s frowning visage, and asked, “You have not told your father of your death and return?”

“No,” he sighed.  “I didn’t know if I should.  I thought that perhaps – perhaps if I’m killed in the fighting here, then it would be worse for him, to know that he’d lost me twice.  That knowing I’d come back once, might make it harder to accept I’m not coming back the second time.”

“I thought of that too,” murmured Finn, staring out at the plains.  “I wrote a letter for my wife, telling her about all of it.  But I’m still not sure if it would be best for her to read the letter, or if I just ought to get rid of it now.  I’d want her to know what happened to me, and what I thought, but I – I still don’t know.”

Good questions, I thought.  Good questions for which I fear there are no good answers. 

“It will break their hearts to lose you, no matter what,” I said at last.  “But perhaps it is better if they know all there is to know.  That instead of forever wondering what your last days were like, they know the story of those days, from you.  Perhaps there would be comfort for them in knowing that you came back from death to speak with your father one last time, Buslai, or in knowing, Finn, that you came back to see your home once more.”

“Well,” Buslai said ruefully, “I’ve not told my da’ a thing about it, so I’ll just have to hope I’m not killed until I can tell him.”

“My Lord,” Captain Cirion called out, in his grim, matter-of-fact tones.  “They are up to something out there.  Do you see them?  Along the trenches.”

Again I turned to scowl into the haze. 

“I see them.”

At four positions along the arc of trenches, each of the four a location where the trench had been set afire, their marching companies cut a swathe across the plain.  In their midst I could make out huge wains, hauled by dark shapes that I supposed must be more of their monstrous mûmakil, for I knew of no other creature vast enough to pull unaided a wain of that size.

By a segment of burning trench, that I judged must be carved straight across the City Road, the wains had already pulled up beside the line of fires.  The antlike figures of the Enemy’s troops swarmed over the wains, but instead of unloading the contents as I had expected, they began to set up some type of structure upon each, built of the materials that each huge cart had carried. 

Svip and Holgar returned to the wall, Holgar and a guard whose aid he had enlisted carrying a brass-bound chest for Svip to stand on.  I managed a perfunctory smile for Svip as the chest was shoved against the parapet, to the right of my position, and he hopped up upon it.  But my attention was riveted on the fire-torn field, where the structures on the wains were resolving themselves into enormous catapults.

“Catapults?”  Svip asked.  “Can their shots reach us from there?”

“We will find out,” I said.  “One thing I do know, is that our shots cannot reach them.”

“Can catapults be any use to them?” wondered young Holgar, from the other side of Svip’s improvised firing-platform.  “They cannot break through our wall – can they?  They might as well try to tear down the mountain itself.” 

His words were a truism that all of us of Gondor had heard since childhood, and had always believed.  The black stone of the outmost wall was unconquerable by steel or fire, unbreakable except by some convulsion that would rend the very earth on which it stood. 

But, I thought, that convulsion may be now upon us.

Captain Cirion said flatly, “They do not seek to break through our walls, but to send their missiles over them.”

“Send another messenger to the fire-fighting crews,” I ordered.  “Warn them to stand ready.”

“Aye,” the Captain grunted, in a tone that questioned whether standing ready would aid us.

“My Lord?”

I turned to see one of the City Guard, the same, I thought, who had helped Holgar carry the chest.  Behind him near the stairwell stood a delegation from my household. 

At their vanguard was Sigyn, the upstairs maid transformed into a shield maiden with a shortsword at her belt and a bow and quiver slung over her shoulder.  One pace behind stood her young cousins, my esquire Balamir and his sister Bettris, similarly armed.  All three wore expressions of nervousness crossed with defiance, the look of children who expect a reprimand but are fully determined to have their own way regardless. 

“My Lord,” the guardsman said, “a barrel delivered from your townhouse is now in the guardhouse below.  Your servants have requested leave to speak with you.”

“I will speak with them, of course,” I said, loudly enough for the three children to hear me and, I hoped, take courage from my tone.

The guard bowed and stepped aside.  Balamir, Sigyn and Bettris exchanged a glance, then Balamir stepped forward.  It was fitting, of course, that he should take the lead in addressing me, both as the one male in their party and in his role as my esquire.  But the look on the boy’s face left me in no doubt that he wished his elder cousin could do the talking for all of them.  From Sigyn’s wary expression as she watched young Balamir, she wished that she were doing the talking as well.

“My Lord,” Balamir said, bowing, “we have brought the barrel of River water as you ordered.  If it pleases you, My Lord, my cousin, my sister and I ask permission to join the fire-fighting crews on the First Level.  Master Gavrilo has directed that the people of your household join the crew on the Fifth Level, if need arises.  But we would be where we may be of use the sooner.  If there should be fires in the First Level, give us leave that we may be here to help, My Lord.  We would not be waiting atop the hill while the City below us is burning.”

The boy fell silent, looking abashed at having brought his speech to so spirited a conclusion.  I approved of the speech myself, but there were other points to consider.

“Have you Master Gavrilo’s permission to make this request of me?” I inquired.

“We have, My Lord,” said my esquire, producing a crisply folded sheet of paper from the pouch at his belt.  As he handed the note to me I recognised the paper and the tall, angular lines of the Seneschal’s handwriting in the words “To the Lord Boromir”, though from Balamir’s patent nervousness I wondered if the lad might have forged his uncle’s message.

Gavrilo’s note was supportive as far as it went, but I imagined that the children would not find its contents entirely satisfactory.  My Seneschal wrote that Balamir, Sigyn and Bettris had his approval to ask me for whatever assignment among the fire-fighting crews I might think fitting.  But he added, “I trust Your Lordship to assign them a role suited to their youth and inexperience, that they may be no hindrance to the efforts of the City’s defenders.”

I handed the message back to Balamir, and asked, “Did Master Gavrilo give you leave to take those weapons from the armoury, as well?”

Balamir seemed suddenly incapable of speech.  He cast an imploring glance back at Sigyn, who stepped to his side.  “We do not have Master Gavrilo’s leave to take the weapons, My Lord,” she said, keeping her voice respectful but looking as though she would like to give her cousin a swift box on the ears.  “Dame Weltrude gave us her permission to take them.”  

“I see,” I said.  And I wondered how in blazes I would best answer their request.

The most sensible course was probably just to send them home, with orders to return the weapons to my armoury and to make themselves useful to Gavrilo and Weltrude, rather than running about trying to play warriors.  I did not want to weaken Gavrilo’s authority by giving tacit approval to his wife’s decision to let the children take the weapons with them – nor did I have any wish to find myself in the midst of a conjugal dispute between Gavrilo and his worthy spouse.

Yet their request not to be left waiting in the upper levels while there was work to be done to save the City, was a plea with which I could sympathise all too well.  I’d had more than enough of watching helplessly while our country was dragged ever nearer to the abyss.  I was loath to condemn others to watch and wait, when there was useful work to which they might put their hands.

“Very well,” I said.  “Report to Master Rađobard – he is commanding the fire-fighters on this level, is he not?” I turned to ask of Captain Cirion.

“He is, My Lord.  They are headquartered at the Merchant Adventurers’ Guildhall.”

“Report to Master Rađobard at the Merchant Adventurers’ Hall, and inform him of my request that he find service for you among his fire-fighters.  Yet mark me in this, the three of you: you are not to put your lives at un-necessary risk, nor are you to place other defenders in jeopardy by compelling them to rescue you.  Your duty is to serve our City, but still more, your duty is to survive.  If the White City’s children do not survive this siege, than all else for which we fight will count as nothing.”

As the three bowed their heads to me, I went on.  “Balamir, you have turned thirteen now, have you not?  I count on you to keep the women safe from harm.  Sigyn, I know that I can trust you to hold your cousins back from peril.  Bettris, I charge you with preventing these two from trying any heroics.  Is that understood?  Young though you be, you are children of Gondor.  I do not expect any of you to fail in your duties.”

“Yes, My Lord,” the three of them answered, Balamir and Bettris in whispers and Sigyn with all the pride and strength of a true daughter of Minas Tirith.

“Then get you to Master Rađobard post-haste.  The crews will have work aplenty, soon enough.”

“I thank you, My Lord,” said Sigyn, pausing a moment longer as her young cousins hastened for the stairs.  When Sigyn turned and strode after them, I caught an amused grin from Captain Cirion.  He jerked his thumb toward Holgar Son of Armod, who stood frozen at his embrasure, staring after the departing Sigyn as though Elbereth Gilthoniel had descended to Middle Earth before his awe-stricken eyes.  It took Holgar several moments to notice that all of his fellow Rangers were grinning at him. 

“Gentlemen,” I said, turning once more to face the Fields of Pelennor, “pray don’t forget that some of us ought to be watching the enemy.”

The enemy’s troops had not been wasting their time.  Already two catapults at least seemed constructed in full, with several more of them nearing completion. 

With gall in my heart, I watched, fighting to think of some action we could take, even as their catapults were set to launch their assault. 

Was it worthwhile setting Men to constructing massive catapults of our own, in the hope that we could craft them large enough to reach the enemy’s line and stay their work against us? 

But we had not the craftsmen to spare for the task, nor the lumber for such constructions unless we sacrificed whole houses to create them – nor the time to make the efforts worth our bothering, for in the time it took for us to build even one untested catapult, the vast engines of our foe would have set loose a tide of destruction that no catapult of ours could halt. 

Face it, Boromir, the bitter words whispered through my mind, there is nothing that you can do.

And then at least one stage in our waiting was ended.  With yells from countless throats, with creaking of rope and winch borne across the distance to reach us upon the wall, they loosed the first of their missiles against the Shining City.

Yells of “incoming!” sounded along the wall.  Men ducked to the cover of the parapet, as like black hail their shot tore through the smoke-thick air. 

There was little need for those on the wall to duck.  One missile did fall short, smashing on the exterior of the wall.  For an instant we saw it blossom into flame against the parapet, ere the sparks rained to earth before the Great Gate. 

But their shots were aimed beyond we who stood on the wall.  The black missiles soared over our heads, to thud down at last in the First Circle behind us.  With the shattering, the whoosh of flame, and the stinging reek that I recalled too well from Cair Andros and the Causeway Forts, they toppled down upon street and house and warehouse, flames springing up behind us to mirror the burning trench beyond our wall.

Trumpets called the alarm, sounding from a score of locations throughout the First Circle of the City.  Here and there we could see from our post as the fire-fighters’ carts, loaded with water barrels and buckets, tore through street and alleyway to reach some building that had flamed to light.

We had been ready, I told myself; as ready as we could have been.  Yet if the bombardment continued at this rate, fire would spread through the First Level swifter than we had power to arrest it. 

Perched beside me on his firing-platform, Svip alternated between leaping up to stare through the embrasure, and crouching, looking back into the City, hissing in a gasp through his teeth each time fire sprang from the darkened streets.  He was muttering something almost under his breath that I could not understand; words in his own tongue, I guessed, but whether they might be curses or prayers, I did not know. 

I turned to him to attempt some words of calm and comfort, when of a sudden he leapt to his feet again, staring fixedly into the streets directly north of the Gate.  Even as I began, “Svip, what is it – ” the water being cried, “The horses!  Can you hear them?  They’re afraid.  The building they’re in is burning.  Get them out!”

In the next instant another trumpet sounded, near at hand, and sparks of flame broke through the dimness from the Brewers’ Guildhouse, where the horses of Dol Amroth were stabled. 

“Every other Man!” I shouted.  “To the Guildhouse of the Brewers!  Get the horses to safety – directly under the outer wall may be the safest place for them.  Then remain below to assist the fire-fighters as needed.  Above all else, we must keep clear the road to the Second Gate.  Go!”

“Should I go and see if I can help?” Svip asked me worriedly, as young Holgar and Buslai, of the Men nearest us, ran for the stairs with the others.

“No, Svip.  I want you to stay here.”

I thought to keep Svip safe the longer by keeping him there at my side.  But keeping him by me would not protect him from the horror of the next assault that was to come.

The neighing of horses called through the streets as the Dol Amroth steeds were led free from their erstwhile stable.  Suddenly a terrified whinny cut the air, and below us by the Gate one horse reared as some small, roundish missile landed nearly under the animal’s hooves.

This shot did not break into flame as the missiles before it had done.  As I peered through the gloom attempting to determine what manner of object the shot might be, several more like it fell to the street nearby.  One explosive missile fell among them, but it found no fuel, flaring brightly for a moment before guttering out in the cobbled street.

Men sprang to calm the rearing horse, while others ran to investigate the small, round shot.  Each Man who drew nigh the mysterious missiles froze in his tracks.  One uttered an incoherent cry, another burst into a string of curses that seemed as though it would have no end.  I thought I heard other cries break forth along the First Level’s streets, rage and grief sounding clearly in the voices even when I could not decipher their words.

“What is it?” I yelled down to the Men near the Gate.

One of them seemed to shake himself loose from a waking nightmare, and walked nearer to the wall.  He called up to me, grief trembling in his tones, “They are heads, My Lord.  The heads of our Men, belike those fallen at Osgiliath and the Causeway and the Pelennor.”  His voice broke on a sob, then he spat on the cobbles and shouted, “The bastards taunt us by defiling our dead, My Lord!  We cannot let one of them leave our plains alive!”

“We will not,” I shouted back, nearly sobbing myself in fury.  “We will spare none of them!”  It was a pointless vow, I knew full well; an oath of vengeance squealed out by a rabbit already crushed in the jaws of a wolf.  But shouting defiance seemed the only alternative to sinking under the horror.

Svip seized hold of my hand, hanging on with a grip that I distantly noticed was tight enough to hurt.  At my other side, Captain Cirion stood whispering profanities as though they were a prayer. 

I rubbed sweat from my face, feeling dizzy and telling myself that I just needed a drink of River water.  As more of the heads flew past us to land on the cobbles below, I heard myself say in a tear-roughened voice, “Captain.  We must not let them remain untended.  Our people’s hope stands on shaky enough foundations; it may not survive with the heads of our slain strewn in every street and alleyway.”

“Aye, My Lord,” Cirion muttered hoarsely.   

“Pick out such Men as you believe can best withstand the task, and set them to collecting up the heads.  Relay my order to the commanders along each stretch of wall, that they must do the same.  Have the heads brought to the guardhouses; we will tend them later with the honour due to them, if we survive long enough to do them that courtesy.”

“Aye, My Lord.”

I suddenly thought again of the children of my household, and cursed myself for permitting them to remain on the First Level.  I would have given much to shield them from such a sight as this, though the Valar knew that they would see worse and suffer worse as well if the day went ill for us – as would we all.

At least I could hope that Pippin would not see this, that he was on one of the upper levels now with my father, and that he would never see the heads of slaughtered Men rain upon the streets of Minas Tirith.

Svip let go of my hand and retreated to his firing-platform chest, where he sat huddled against the parapet.  I crossed back to the parapet myself, and stared into the murk.

The dark masses of our enemy waited yet just outside our range.  Beyond their trenches of fire lurked rank upon rank of their antlike hordes, and the monstrous forms of their accursed mûmakil.  Interspersed amid the swarming figures, the great catapults fired on without respite.  And as each catapult fired, the distant creak and thud of its mechanism was swallowed in the cackling cheers of the carrion creatures who worked it.

If sheer vicious anger were enough, I could have slain every Orc and Southron and mûmak that now defiled our fields. 

We must use that anger, I thought, if we hope to live and call our enemy to account.

“Men on the wall!” I shouted.  “Let not the horror of their contrivances succeed in turning our eyes from the ranks of our foe.  They think to blind us with our grief, and advance upon us while we are weeping too sore to see them.  Give them not that satisfaction!  Watch them; watch them as though you were so many birds of prey.  And when they step within our range, then take your revenge for our comrades whom they have profaned!”

  A few bitter cheers answered my harangue, and I counted that at least good enough for now.  I uncorked my canteen and took a swig that drained it to its dregs.  I stared at my hands for a moment as I refastened the canteen to my belt, flexing my fingers to test that they still had feeling in them. 

I did not feel yet, I thought, the symptoms that had marked the last time I stayed too long away from the River.  I yet had feeling in all of my limbs, and I felt no hint of the deathly chill that before had taken hold in my bones. 

I felt weary and a trifle sore, as though from the last vestiges of a night of too great excess.  But that, it seemed, was the extent of my indisposition. 

I smiled grimly, forming a silent prayer to all the gods that my health should last at least until I had torn the lives from a good few hundreds of our foes.

And if I expected the gods to heed that prayer, I told myself, I had bloody well better refill my canteen while I had the chance.

“Svip,” I said to my friend who still sat huddled against the parapet.  “I’m going down to the guardhouse to get some more water.”

He roused himself from his seeming stupor, and jumped to his feet with apparently all of his old eagerness.  “I’m going with you,” he said.

“No, Svip,” I told him quietly.  “You don’t have to.”

“No,” he insisted.  “I’m going to.”

I studied him for a moment.  His eyes gleamed bright with unshed tears, and his mouth had a fierce set to it that told me he approved of my doctrine of revenge.

“All right,” I said.  “Let us go, then.”

We made our way down the stairs paralleling the wall, then doubled back to the guardhouse in the Gate’s south tower.  There I paused just inside the doorway, looking at Svip, who hung back at the threshold. 

“Svip,” I tried again, “you can go back to the wall if you want, it’s all right …”

He shook his head fiercely and stepped inside.

My barrel with the stamp of the Orc’s Head Inn stood off to one side, beneath the window that opens onto the Court of the Gate.  But I did not go to it at once.  On the room’s one table stood open a chest like the one we had borrowed for Svip’s firing platform.  The armaments and supplies that would normally have filled that chest were stacked against the wall, and into the chest two of Cirion’s Rangers were unloading the contents of a bag that rested upon the table. 

They worked as carefully as they could, one Man removing each head from the bag and handing it to his comrade, who placed it inside the chest.  I heard a hissing gasp from Svip, but I did not take my gaze from the Rangers’ grim task. 

Suddenly and absurdly I found myself wishing for honest daylight, as though the touch of sunlight upon this scene would render it any less hideous. 

Sunlight or torchlight, I told myself, it would be the same. 

Several of the heads were crushed or hewn to be barely recognisable as having borne the faces of Men.  But others still had features that could be told.  Faces forever twisted in anguish sat above necks that seemed less cut than cruelly ripped.  There was little blood left upon them, save for caked and blackened chunks which clung still to their wounds. 

The image sprang to my mind of the journey that must have brought the heads here.  I saw them jolting over our burned and ravaged fields, heaped high upon each other in the enemy’s wains.

One other token of mockery our foe had sent to us with the heads of our slain.  Upon each, even those so mangled that they bore no remnant of a face, was burnt the black brand of the Lidless Eye.

Again my thoughts screamed for vengeance.  And into them leapt a thought that I did not expect.

Frodo, my mind pleaded, Frodo, please succeed!  Make it through to the Mountain of Fire; cast Sauron’s Ring in deep.  Let him feel all the pain that he has sent to us.

I wished that I could see the Dark Lord’s face, as his Ring melted in Orodruin’s flames.  I wished that I could hear his screams.

“What’s that on their foreheads?” Svip whispered.  “On all of them.  What is it?”

“The Eye of the Enemy,” I said flatly.  “He does not wish us to forget that he is watching us.”

“I know this one, My Lord,” one of the Rangers said suddenly in a strange, distant voice.  “Sergeant Minardil.  He was stationed on the Rammas.”

I crossed to the two Men and placed my hand on the shoulder of he who had spoken.  The second Ranger looked in concern at his comrade, who stared down at the bruised and battered face of Sergeant Minardil.  Then, with a quiet sigh, the first Man handed over the head to be placed with the rest of them.

“Do not labour at this too long,” I said.  “I will send others from the wall to relieve you.”

“Thank you, sir,” said the second Ranger, in a voice barely over a whisper.  His comrade nodded.

 “We can bring back the chest I’ve been using to stand on,” Svip said earnestly.  “I don’t need it, I can use something else.  If it’s needed here …”

The second Ranger spoke again, sounding ever closer to tears, “There’s another here yet that we can move on to, if we fill this one …”

“Here’s the last from this sack,” put in the other Man, gingerly removing one last mangled head from the bag.  This last head was placed with the others, and the two Rangers closed the chest as gently as they could.  Both Men sighed then, as though closing the heads away from sight had lifted the pall of horror.  But none of us needed reminding that they were still with us, and that all around us were more, waiting to join them.

Trying to sound matter-of-fact, the second Ranger said, “We’ll go and get another batch, My Lord.  And then – if there are others who can relieve us …” 

“There will be,” I promised.

The Rangers departed on their dismal errand.

“Do you want some River water, Svip?” I asked, crossing to the barrel.

He nodded and made haste to follow me.  “I’ll take a little of it to wash in,” he said, still speaking in hushed tones as if to avoid disturbing the heads of the slain.  “If it’s all right.”

I worked as swiftly and as quietly as I could manage, ever feeling under brooding observation from the chest and its contents.  I unsealed the lid of the barrel and used my canteen as a dipper to pour water out into Svip’s cupped hands.  While he splashed the water over his face, I filled the canteen and drank most of it in one go.  Once more I dunked the canteen and poured some water over my neckerchief, then I topped up the canteen one last time as though the few extra drops would make the difference between survival and failure.

As I corked the canteen and tied the neckerchief, I wondered again if I were deluding myself with the belief that these rituals were aiding me. 

If I am, I thought, it does not matter.  Better to have something that you believe you can rely upon, than to have no hope at all.

Hurriedly we betook ourselves from the silent guardhouse and back up to the wall.  I relayed to Cirion the order to find Men to replace his two Rangers, an order he received with a sceptical grimace as though inquiring whether I believed that any Man could perform such a task as theirs without sorrow.

“It will be easy for none, I know that,” I said heavily, barely able to restrain a shudder as I thought of the scene below.  “But none should have to bear it for too long, or we will do the Dark Lord’s work and steal our Men’s courage from them.”

The morning crept onward.  The bombardment of fiery missiles continued unchecked.  Still the trumpets called our fire-fighters to battle, and ever and anon we caught glimpses of their labours throughout the smoke-dark streets. 

But there was one comfort to be seized, if one wished to call it that.  As the day dragged on, the barrage of heads slowed and came finally almost to a halt. 

I told myself, At least that is something.  The enemy has not yet gained an inexhaustible supply.  There are not so many of our slain that they can keep up their salvoes of heads through all the day.

I thought darkly of the supply that they would have if they breached our wall, then exiled the thought.  Once more I repeated in my mind as though the words were some magic spell, Minas Tirith will not fall.

I began to wish that I’d assigned myself to the fire-fighting effort, rather than condemning myself to cool my heels upon the wall.  The fire-fighters at least could take action, could do something other than stand and watch the enemy.  And for much of that morning, the enemy did not provide anything terribly interesting to watch. 

They continued to dig and fire their ring of trenches – trenches that I started to suspect were primarily intended as light sources for the catapult operators, for there were Men among them, no better able to see in the Dark Lord’s murk than we were.  They continued to fire upon us, explosive missiles for the most part, with one of their victims’ heads every now and again.  And at a slower pace than during their first wave of construction, they continued to set up new catapults.  That, to my eyes at least, was all. 

Peevishly I wondered which weapon they deemed would be more effective against us, the despair engendered by the bombardment of severed heads, or the boredom that they now let loose upon us.

But the time was to come soon enough when I wished for a return of that boredom.

Another weapon our foe held in his arsenal, and as the morning staggered toward a shadowy noon, he sent that weapon forth.

I was not sure that they were there, at first.  Hints of sound that could perhaps be imagination hovered at the first far above us, half out of hearing.  There came whispers of voices from fevered nightmare, half-seen glimpses of darker shadows that wheeled through the inky sky overhead.  Along the wall I saw Man after Man glance upward nervously, frown and inquire whether his neighbour had heard or seen anything, start to fidget with his weapons or rub suddenly sweating palms upon his clothes. 

Svip was sitting on his firing platform again.  I turned from watching these nervous reactions spread among the Men, to see Svip huddled in on himself, knees drawn to his chest and arms clasped tightly about them, staring with enormous eyes up to the looming sky.

“Svip,” I whispered.  “What is it, can you hear something?”

“Yes,” he whispered back.  “It’s them.  They’ve come, they’re up there.”

Slowly they drew closer, or at least they allowed their voices to sound more clearly upon our ears and minds.  The moment came when one could doubt their presence no longer.  They were up there indeed, circling the City, screaming their cries of malice and horror.  Up there, but out of bowshot and out of our sight, that the fear of them might spread through our ranks the faster than if we faced a visible foe.

Ever they circled above us, as vultures looking to gorge upon our flesh.  And as before, at Osgiliath and at the Causeway Forts, I saw the terror of them grow upon our Men, until it became near the only thing that they could hear or think or feel.

I gripped Svip’s shoulder, smiling encouragement at him as he dragged his gaze down from the sky and blinked at me. 

“Stay close by me, Svip,” I said.

Eyes still wide in fear, he nodded and slipped from the chest, padding silently beside me as I set out along the wall.

As before, even as the fear seized hold of everyone around me, I could feel no trace of it.  I felt only anger, furious outrage that the Dark Lord’s household cavalry could strike such a crippling blow against us without riding into combat, without ever risking injury or defeat to themselves.

They were brave Men there along our wall, every one of them tested in combat and accustomed to peril and death.  They stood, struggling to give battle to their fear.  Some gazed at the sky, as silent tears coursed down their ashen cheeks.  Others stared instead at the battlement, shaking their heads or muttering to themselves as they fought to block the voices from their minds. 

Desperation trembled and grew among us, as warriors of Gondor wept and prayed aloud for strength to put the fear aside.

 Svip and I walked as far as the third tower to the south of the Great Gate, then turned and retraced our steps to make the same journey to the north.  I did not think I could risk going any farther from my post, and perhaps even that was too far.  Nor could I assure myself without doubt that my rounds of the wall were accomplishing any good. 

I stopped to speak with each Man we met along the wall, all the words that I could conjure of comfort and courage.  I clasped their hands or their shoulders, joked of the Nazgûl’s impotence in only screaming from the shadows but never meeting us in fight, spoke of whatever I could think of in the effort to turn their minds from the fear.

I was rewarded by trembling smiles, shaky-voiced answering jokes, looks of anger and shame from veterans who counted it a wound to their honour that their Captain had seen their fear. 

I told myself that my presence was doing something.  But I was not, I thought, so great a talisman of hope that when I walked on, the memory of my visit would yet hold the terror at bay.

Father should make me Court Jester, I thought sourly, it appears to be all that I am good for at this moment.  It was too bad, I told myself, that we had not the time for me to send to the Steward’s Library for a manual of jokes that I might teach myself.  I had never seen one there, but doubtless there was one.  No doubt Faramir could tell me precisely which shelf it sat upon – it and every other book in the place.

Faramir, I thought, I wish you were awake, and here with me.

Faramir would know what to do, to armour our people’s hearts against their fear.

As we once more reached our post, on the battlement atop the Gate, a band of our warriors strode out from Tanners’ Lane into the Court of the Gate.  I thought certain that I recognised the two Men in their vanguard, though I was surprised to see them appear from out of the fire-threatened alleyways of the First Circle.  Then one of the two stepped forward and raised his voice in greeting, and there was no longer any question of who they might be.

“Hail, keepers of the Gate!” called the Lord Steward Denethor of Gondor.  “We request permission to walk upon the wall.”

“Permission freely granted, My Lord,” I called back, and my father, Húrin of the Keys, and their attendants crossed the plaza toward the stairs. 

As they climbed and drew nigh to us, I saw that they had done more than merely pass near the fires in the City.  All of them, from my father to the last of the guards, had acquired a dusting of soot that clung to clothing and armour, faces and hair.  A few of the guards, I noticed, were passing a grimy cloth between them as they climbed the stairs, taking turns in the attempt to wipe the soot from their faces.  Some even showed marks of burns upon their clothes, and one guard appeared to have been burned or wounded, for a bandage improvised from some piece of brightly-coloured fabric was wrapped about his forearm.

My father and his entourage reached the battlement.  I advanced to meet them, and could not hold myself from smiling at the sight they made. 

The Lord Steward, the Keeper of the Keys, and Peregrin Took of the Shire looked as though they had held a wrestling match inside a fireplace, all three streaked and splattered with soot from their helmets to their boots.  It was not too surprising a vision to see Pippin looking like some household sprite that dwelt up a chimney, but I thought that I would long treasure this image of the Lord my father, with black smudges on his face and flecks of ash caught in his beard.  Not that the Lord Steward was made any the less his impressive and intimidating self, even looking as though he had tried his hand at chimney-sweeping.

“Sir,” I said, bowing.  As I straightened I saw Pippin cast a worried little smile at Svip, who had scurried at my side to meet the Steward’s party.  Pippin then looked up questioningly at the Steward.  My father noted it too, for he turned and declared to his Men, “You may be at ease,” then added to the Hobbit, “Master Peregrin, you have my leave to go and speak with the Lord Svip.”

Svip remembered to look up to me for permission as well.  “Go on,” I granted, smiling as the two of them burst into hushed but animated discussion.  They were still talking at a pace that would make any other creature’s brain spin, as Svip led Pippin to take a seat on his firing-platform chest.

Briefly I reported to my father such developments as I had witnessed or in which I had played a role: the trench-ring and the assembly of their catapults, the enemy’s vile use of the heads of our slain and our efforts to deal with the heads as befitted our fallen comrades, my sending a portion of my troops to join the fire-fighting effort, and now the accursed winged shadows and the effect they were having upon the morale of our defenders. 

My father commented little, though his expression grew grim and dark at many points in my narrative.  Several times, I noticed, his glance flickered upward, to the heavy sky where the Nazgûl circled us with their screams of evil and despair. 

It shook me a little, though I knew that it should not, to see fear warring with the anger in my father’s eyes as he looked skyward. 

I told myself it was not the first time I had realised that my father could and did know fear.  I had seen it more often than I wished to, since my return home.  I was no longer a child, to believe that my great and glorious father could never be afraid.  And the Lord Steward was yet a Man.  When every other Man and every creature knew fear at the Nazgûl’s wails, why did I expect that my father would be the exception?

My thoughts replied, Every other Man except myself. 

That, I thought, was why it seemed so wrong to see my father’s fear.  It was hard to accept that my father feared the dark Riders, when I myself was yet unafraid.

I asked, to turn my thoughts and his from the shadows above, “How fares it with the fire-fighting in the City, My Lord?”

He sighed in impatience, his eyes and mouth narrowing.  “It did proceed well,” he snapped, “until our foe sent forth his carrion-eaters to howl above us.”  This time the glance he cast toward the unseen Riders was one of pure irritation and resentment.  “The fire crews had made good strides in holding the fires’ spread to a minimum, until the wraiths arrived.  Now we may be fortunate if we succeed in saving one-quarter of the First Circle.  Fire-fighters are easily outpaced when a wail overhead can strike them into immobility.”

“You should not blame them for their fear, My Lord – ” I began.

“I do not blame them,” my father interrupted, with an aching weariness that again took me by surprise.  He went on, taking off his helmet for a moment to wipe sweat from his brow, “We joined in the fight for a time, to prove by example that the fires could still be combated even with the Nine screeching through the skies.  The crews that we worked with rallied well.”  His voice grew darker as he said, “But our strength to rally will fail before ever the foe runs out of fire or screeches of doom.”   

“We will fight on, sir,” I insisted – perhaps more out of habit and stubbornness, than of belief.

“Aye, we will fight – if they see fit to give us more tangible opponents than our own despair.”

I did not know what to say to that.  Fortunately my father spared me from having to think of something.

“We should be moving on,” he said, donning his helmet once more.  “I will visit your post again later, Boromir.”

He gripped my shoulder, and I reached up to close my hand over his.  “Till then, My Lord.”

The Steward called out in command, summoning his Men to attend upon him.  As the entourage assembled, Pippin reluctantly dragged himself from the shelter of the parapet, where he had sat huddled in whispered conversation with Svip.  I saw both of them glance unhappily at the sky, then they shook hands before Pippin jumped down from the chest.

The Hobbit did not go at once to my father’s side, but hastened first to me.  He held out his hand to me, studying me with solemn gaze.  I crouched down and for a moment we clasped hands, then without a word Pippin turned and crossed to take his place by my father.

I walked to Svip, and we watched the Steward’s party set forth northward along the wall.

A few minutes later, I wondered if my father’s departure had been occasioned by one of his premonitions.

Down the Citadel Road, from the direction of the Second Gate, came another company, that I recognised even in the distance and the smoky murk. 

At their fore I saw Mithrandir in his gleaming white robe.  I saw also the strange effect that I had witnessed before at the Causeway Forts, the impression that the Wizard somehow gave off his own light. 

By Mithrandir’s side strode a Man who I had little doubt was my uncle Imrahil.  He and the Men who followed wore the gleaming scale mail and the blue surcoats blazoned with the ship and the swan, that declared them Knights of Dol Amroth.

As they approached, and my uncle called out his request to walk upon the wall, I thought that I sensed some subtle difference of emotion come over the Men about me.  I thought that the defenders’ stances relaxed slightly, that they looked less frequently to the sky, that their voices sounded louder and more freely, suffering less from the fearful constraints of the unseen Riders’ presence.

Bloody hell, I reflected.  If Mithrandir spoke true of his power to turn aside our Men’s fear, it will irritate my father no end.

Perhaps it did not have to be mentioned to the Lord my father.  I thought, What he does not know cannot annoy him.

If the Steward would not have appreciated the seeming calm which spread upon our Men at Mithrandir’s arrival, he would at least have approved of one comment that greeted their party’s approach.  From his post at the parapet, I heard one of the Rangers remark, “That’s splendid.  That is all we need, to have the Messenger of Doom pay us a visit.”

“What are you worried about?” his comrade at the next embrasure snorted.  “We are doomed already.  We cannot get any more doomed.”

As my father had done, Imrahil ordered his Men at ease when they reached our post upon the Gate.  Mithrandir bowed to me, then said, “Hail, Master Svip.  What can you see from your perch there?”

Svip hopped up eagerly and began pointing out to the Wizard the various catapult stations of the enemy.  My uncle smilingly watched Wizard and water being for a moment, then he turned to me.

“You are cutting it close, Uncle,” I told him.  “A few minutes earlier and you’d have run smack into my father’s party.”

“Valar forfend,” he said, with an exaggerated shudder.  “I count on Lord Mithrandir’s wizardly instincts to spare us from such a catastrophe.”

I began, “Have you – ”

I halted a moment, loathing to finish the question for fear of the answers I might receive.  Then I spoke again.  “Have you seen Faramir this morning?”

Imrahil nodded.  “We have,” he answered.  “Two hours ago, by now.”  The Prince gave a quiet sigh.  “I wish that I had something more to tell you.  His state seems little changed.  He was unconscious still when we visited him.  And the Healers say that he has shown no sign of waking.”

“Does he – does he yet speak in his sleep?”

“Yes.”  Imrahil’s sudden frown told that he knew as well as I what fate was foretold when the Black Sleep’s victims ceased to speak.  “I could not understand everything that he said.  I know that he called for you, and for your father.  He may, I think, have spoken also of his meeting with the Hobbits in Ithilien.  And I believe we heard him speak of the dream that you and he received, that sent you seeking for Imladris.  That at least was Mithrandir’s interpretation of his words, and I believe he was probably right.”

“Thank you,” I sighed, wondering how long we had left before Faramir fell into silence.

“Boromir?”

The voice that called out was that of Svip, standing at the parapet with Mithrandir.  My uncle and I turned and walked to them.

“I think the enemy’s shots are getting slower,” Svip said.  “There’s not as many of them as there were, and it’s taking longer for each catapult to reload and fire again.  Do you think so?”

We watched, frowning into the dusk.  I saw the catapult just to the north of our position fire shortly after Svip had spoken.  But it was then nearly five minutes, I judged, before that catapult fired again.  Only three others that I could see fired in that time.

“Are they running out of shot?” Svip wondered.

Prince Imrahil observed, “Even Orcs should have the foresight to bring shot enough, that they would not run out in less than a day of siege.  Though perhaps they have supplies yet to catch up with the vanguard, in their baggage trains.”

The Wizard spoke quietly, “It may be no scarcity of missiles that ails them.  The cries of the Riders above sound as clearly beyond the White City’s walls, as they do within.  Their armour as well as ours can be pierced by the voice of fear.” 

Imrahil and Svip both involuntarily glanced at the sky.  I scowled, then I said, before I could talk myself out of asking, “Lord Mithrandir.  I would ask a question of you, if I may.”

He turned his gaze upon me, one eyebrow quirking upward in surprise.  “I cannot promise that I hold the answer, Lord Boromir.  But ask freely; I will answer if I can.”

My uncle must have read in my face that I would prefer no audience for my question.  He bowed to Svip and said, “My Lord Svip, many knights of my household have requested the honour of meeting you.  I would introduce you to them, if you have the time to spare.”

Svip looked to me, and I contrived a smile and a nod. 

“What’s a knight?” Svip asked, as he jumped down from the chest.  My uncle was commencing a précis of the ranks of Dol Amroth’s forces when they passed out of my hearing.

A smile softened the shadows on Mithrandir’s face as he gazed after Svip and the Prince.  “You had a question, My Lord?” he prompted then, while both of us watched my uncle’s Swan Knights take turns bowing and shaking hands with Svip.

“Do you fear the Black Riders?” I asked him.

The Wizard fixed his eyes upon me again, and at first he did not reply.  “Not as most others fear them,” he answered at last.  “I know well to dread the power their voices wield against the peoples of Middle Earth.”

A twisting wail sounded from the shadows above, as though the Dark Lord’s Riders knew they were the topic of our discussion.  I glanced upward in dislike.

“I do not fear them,” I said.  “And I don’t understand why.”

Both of the Wizard’s eyebrows climbed into the shadow of his hat.  “You have feared them in the past?”

“Yes.  Last summer at Osgiliath Bridge, and again with the Fellowship, on the River above Sarn Gebir.  But not since.”

I thought I saw a glimmer of amusement in Mithrandir’s eyes, though it seemed that I could read sympathy there as well.  In the tones of a patient schoolmaster whose student cannot see the most evident of answers, he asked, “Has anything of importance happened to you between the time when you feared them, and when you did not?”

Obvious though it was, it took me another moment to realise it.  When I did, I wished heartily that I had not asked. 

“Aye,” I admitted grimly.  “I died.” 

Another mocking cry sounded above us.  I wished that we had Legolas here with us, to shoot the bastards out of the sky as he had done at Sarn Gebir. 

“What does it mean, then?” I demanded of the Wizard, thinking that this answer was likely as painfully clear as the last one.  “Does dying and coming back mean the promise of death in their cries holds no further terror for me?  Death would take just as much from me now as it did the first time.  Why then should I not fear their screams that promise it to us?”

“Do you wish to fear them, Lord Boromir?” Mithrandir inquired, in his tone of quiet amusement that invariably made my father want to strangle him, and had very nearly the same effect on me. 

Before I could reply, he said, “The theory you state may have truth in it.  It may be that some portion of your mind recalls the experience of your death, even if it seems that no memory of it remains with you.  And that recalling it, though without your active recollection, your mind knows that there is no cause to fear.

“But,” he went on, “I believe there is something else.  You have died and returned – as have the Nine Riders.  Perhaps in some way that has made you kin unto them.  I mean no slur against you, My Lord,” the Wizard added swiftly, holding up his hand against the anger that automatically appeared on my face.  “I do not say that you are like to them.  But the very fact of your death has taken you a few steps into their world.  Sharing that world, even if only its edges, has left you without fear of it.  And it has left you to wrestle with your guilt, when you see your people afraid and can neither give them your lack of fear, or share their fear with them.”

I frowned, trying to determine if I understood what he had just said.  I supposed it did make some kind of sense, when I thought that I had found my way through the maze of his words.

A howl from the Riders of the Enemy tore the sky once more.  Mithrandir smiled again in what seemed to be genuine amusement, as he gazed upward at the dark.

“I said that you share the edges of their world,” he mused.  “Perhaps I should rather have said that they share the edges of yours.  It would surprise me not at all if the Nine Riders envy you, Lord Boromir.  You have returned to life in truth.  They have returned to only such shadows of life as their Dark Lord doles out to them.”

I could not restrain a grudging smile at the notion that the wraith lords would envy me – or indeed that my existence might impinge upon their thoughts at all.  I wondered how they might express their envy.  The image leapt to my mind of the Black Riders at their local tavern down the road from Barad-dûr, challenging each other at darts and using a portrait of me as their dartboard.

Boromir, my friend, I advised myself, you have lost what little was left of your mind.  If that is what talking with Wizards does to you, your father is right to recommend avoiding it. 

I snorted, “They may satisfy their resentment against me whenever they wish, if they see fit to face me in combat rather than flying about screaming from the shadows.”

Mithrandir sighed and shook his head, his smile taking on a tinge of melancholy.  “I doubt that fighting you is among their plans.  They know they can inflict more pain upon you by hurting the people that you love.”

“What is the good of it, Mithrandir?” I demanded suddenly, exasperation and anger surging through me in reply to his words.  “Is there any use for my lack of fear, and yours?  How can it aid our cause that you and I are unafraid, when our people are crushed beneath their fear?  You at least seem able to ease the fear of those around you.  I can do nothing at all!”

“You are selling yourself short, Son of Denethor,” the Wizard said.  “As I believe you so often do.  Do not underestimate yourself.  Do not underestimate the power you have to do good in this Middle Earth.”   

I swallowed back a groan of despair, and turned to glare out at the enemy’s trenches of fire.  “I think Frodo would disagree with your estimate of my goodness.”

Mithrandir said in a tone that surprised me in its gentleness, “I hope you will have the chance to ask him, and hear his own answer to that.”

“Aye,” I whispered.  “So do I.”

“One thing I have learned since first I saw these shores,” the Wizard went on in his musing tones, “and that is how little occurs by coincidence alone.  I do not believe chance brought any of our Company to Rivendell.  It was not chance that chose any member of the Fellowship. Each one had – and I believe still has – his role to play.  It was far more than chance that led you to your death and your return, and that leaves you now free to face the Nine without fear.”

I sighed, “I hope you are right.”

At the next turret along the wall, I saw Imrahil looking at us, as though questioning whether it was yet safe for them to return.  Svip stood at his side, deep in conversation with one of Imrahil’s Knights. 

I nodded to my uncle.  He turned and said something to Svip and the Knight, and the three of them commenced strolling back toward us.

“Well, Nephew,” the Prince hailed me as they drew nigh, “I suppose it is time for us to leave you, and go on spreading cheer along the next stretch of wall.”  He grinned ruefully and added, “Heading in the opposite direction, I think, from that taken by the Lord your father.”

“I think that would be best.”  

As Imrahil, Mithrandir and the Knights took their leave, it seemed to me almost as though the sky darkened further, clouds swallowing up one last ray of daylight.  If that impression had made its way through to my mind, I thought, it was likely the faintest echo of the darkness that those around me must feel descending on them.  The motionless air seemed to grow thicker and heavier yet, the reek of smoke clinging to our nostrils even as the cries of the Nazgûl hung upon the air.

For some moments the Men at the embrasures stood watching, as the party of the Prince and the Wizard moved off along the wall.  Svip reached up and closed his hand around mine, saying nothing. 

I heard sighs and a few whispers, but the first voice that carried clearly was that of our Ranger comrade Finn Son of Thorstein.

“I think it’s time we showed one needn’t be born on Dol Amroth’s shores to face death with a light heart.”  He unslung from his back the small, red-painted lute that I remembered him playing on an evening that already seemed so long in the past, the first night we had spent in the refuge of Lilla Howe. 

“My Lord,” he went on, “permission to try a tune or two?  I haven’t had much chance to practice lately, but I reckon it can’t sound any worse than them.”  He jerked his thumb, indicating the unseen Riders above. 

I said emphatically, “Permission granted and gladly.”  

A distant, howling wail dragged Finn’s gaze to the sky.  He stood for a moment looking upward.  Then he bit his lip and looked down once more, plucking a first few tuning notes from his lute strings.

I leaned against the parapet to listen as Finn began to play.  In the corners of my vision I saw others do the same. 

Little by little, Svip’s grip on my hand grew less tight.  As Finn’s first tune ended and another began, Svip let go of my hand and sat down cross-legged on the battlement, watching the Ranger with a fascinated gaze that reminded me of the way he had looked at me when first I opened my eyes from death and saw him.

A few of the pieces Finn played I didn’t know, haunting, melancholy tunes that I thought were perhaps compositions of Finn’s own.  For the most part, he played the old tunes; tunes known, I had no doubt, to every Man among us. 

They were songs that all of us had sung or heard, by campfire or barracks fireplace.  He played songs of lovers sundered by fate and war, songs of soldiers dreaming of their homes, songs of the Men left alive to remember comrades slain.  

As Finn was bringing one tune to its close, Svip asked quietly if he could try playing the lute.  For a moment I thought again uneasily of the heaped chaos in Svip’s house, and the utter lack of care with which he treated the items in his collection.  But when Finn sat on the battlement by Svip’s side and handed the lute to him, Svip held it cautiously, following Finn’s instructions with as much respect and attention to detail as he had shown to all the ways and belongings of Men he had encountered on this journey.

Finn showed him where to place his hands and how to finger the strings, and to my wonder Svip began to pick out the tune that Finn had just finished playing.  He did not try the harmonies that Finn had played, but the melody sprang forth clearly from under Svip’s fingers.

The Ranger cast a marvelling smile up at me.  Then softly he took up the words of the song, as Svip played on.

“The soldier’s life won’t suit me

Sweet music is my trade

I’d rather melt the hardest heart

Than pierce it with a blade.

Let the time be short till I return

To the White City so high

And the loving girl who stole my heart

With these words as I passed by:

“Last night we spoke of love

Now we’re forced to part

You leave to the sound of the marching drum

And the beat of a lover’s heart.”

Svip handed the lute back to Finn at the verse’s close, smiling shyly as the Men about him broke into exclamations of praise.  Finn urged him to continue, but Svip shook his head.  He sat back against the parapet beside me while Finn took up the lute once more.

The music lilted on.  Sometimes the lute sounded alone.  Sometimes Finn sang, his light voice piercing the sullen air as though a breath of breeze had arisen to cut through the smoke that surrounded us.

I wondered, as that afternoon passed, if I were deceiving myself in the thought that the Black Riders’ cries were becoming fainter, and much farther between. 

It would be foolish, I told myself, to believe that Finn’s lute had got the wraiths on the run.  Perhaps in fairy tales music had the power to hold Evil at bay, but not in our world.  Yet still it seemed that the Riders drew back from us as the hours crept onward, until at last their screams remained only a troublous memory.

The memory was not all that troubled me.  In the feeling almost of peace that settled over us as the cries of the Nazgûl faded, I asked myself what it was that would make the Riders fall back. 

The strongest answer that came to me was that they were ordered into silence to give respite to the Dark Lord’s own troops, that fear of the wraiths might not hinder their armies when they launched their next assault.

The last of the murky light dwindled into evening.  Fires burned yet here and there in the First Circle.  Any glance to the plain showed the dark mass of their forces waiting still, and the sinister glow of their trenches of fire.  But the Ringwraiths were silent, the crackle of flames distant, the creaking and thuds of the enemy’s catapults so rare as to all but have ceased entirely.        

Finn’s voice rang clearly amid the gloom.

“Prepare, you sweet flowers

For winter advances

And drink well the sunlight

That touches your form.

Take strength from the earth

And repay her with beauty.

For the dark days are coming,

And they’ll do you harm.

“When the chill eastern winds

Replace summer breezes,

And the long summer days

Are remembered no more,

Then you know how it feels

When a woman’s love changes

When at last she has told you

She loves you no more.”

“I could use a chill wind just now,” murmured one of the Men at the parapet.  “I wouldn’t mind if it did come from the east.”

“My Lord,” Captain Cirion called to me quietly, an amused note in his voice.  “Come and have a look at this.”

I turned from staring out on the Pelennor Fields, to see the Ranger Captain gazing grinningly down at some sight in the street below us.  I crossed to his side, leaving Svip listening in rapt silence to Finn’s song.

In the light of the torches along the wall, we could see one of the firefighters’ wagons, drawn up before the house at the corner of Brewers’ Street and the Citadel Road.  No fires burned in this section of the City, that I could see, and this crew of firefighters’ were taking advantage of the lull to listen to Finn’s music. 

I saw my young servants Balamir and Bettris sitting in the wagon, with others of their crew standing nearby.  Among these, two lingered a little ways apart, standing close to each other and speaking with all the intensity of youth. 

I had to grin as I watched Holgar Son of Armod reach out timidly and take the hand of Sigyn, my Seneschal’s daughter.  The shield maiden gazed into the young Ranger’s face, and she did not pull away her hand. 

“Youth,” Cirion snorted.  “To be young enough that you can think of picking flowers as the ground crumbles beneath your feet.”

“Do you grudge it them, Captain?” I asked him, smiling.

“No, My Lord.  I wish that I could see some way to prevent the flowers from all being trampled.”   

Darkness closed on us in truth.  Finn re-shouldered the lute and took his place at the parapet.  In the quiet that followed, I am sure I was not alone in listening to hear if the Nazgûls’ cries would sound forth again.

The screams did not come.  The enemy’s catapult barrage increased in pace, fiery missiles erupting with grim regularity in the streets and buildings behind us.  But the bombardment of Gondorians’ heads did not gain pace alongside the missiles of flame. 

It seemed that at least our foe’s supply of heads had run low.  That, or they chose to lob our Men’s heads at us only in what passed for daylight, that we might more fully suffer the pain of seeing them.

There was yet no wind to pierce the air’s leaden stillness.  But the fires spread swiftly now through the First Circle, even without the aid of any wind. 

The time would come, I thought, when we could spare no more Men from the wall – and when however many we threw into the firefighting, it would not be enough to stop the spread of the blaze. 

Yet for now, there was little enough that the Men on the wall could do of any use.  And we could at least keep clear of flames the road to the Second Gate, that the defenders of the First Circle would have an avenue of retreat left to us, if at the last we came to require it.

I ordered every other Man, from the fifth tower north of the Gate to the fifth tower south of it, to report to the firefighting companies.  This time Finn Son of Thorstein was among those who left the wall.  Before setting out he unslung his red lute from his back once more and asked Svip to look after it for him until he got back. 

Regretfully I realised that I had now all but defeated my purpose in requesting Cirion’s company be stationed at the Gate, since I had sent to the firefighting details every one of Svip’s oldest friends among us save for Cirion and myself.  As I looked at Svip standing with his elbows on an embrasure and his chin propped in his hands, with Finn’s lute resting against the wall beside him, I wished yet again for some way to turn aside the fate that was drawing in.  

I wished for some way that I could rescue Svip from this darkness.  I wished that I could rescue Pippin, and Faramir, and our father.  And all of our people. 

Again the whispering thought came to me, You held the way in your hand, and you cast it aside. 

If only you had kept your grasp upon it.  If only you had taken the Ring.

I heard the distant jeering, laughing howls as the enemy’s catapults loosed their fire upon us.  And although the thought brought a lump to my throat, I felt of a sudden a fervent thankfulness that Théodhild and Findemir had died before this day.

There was despair and anguish enough in knowing that before many days passed, Minas Tirith might be naught but smouldering ruins – and her people might be no more than carrion, ammunition for the Dark Lord’s catapults.

I thanked the Valar that I no longer had a wife and child for whom to fear, that I need not now be tormented by visions of what they would suffer at the hands of Sauron’s legions.

Without, I think, fully noticing that I was doing so, I had been taking periodic swigs from my canteen as I scowled into the darkness.  It was only when I uncorked the canteen and found that my last drink had all but emptied it, that I paused to take stock again of my physical condition.

Nothing to worry about yet, I told myself.  But neither was my condition all that I would have wished it to be. 

It was starting, I thought: the first whispers of chill in my bones despite the smoky heat of the air, the first intimations of the numbness that would steal all feeling from my limbs if I let it work upon me long enough.

An irritatingly irrelevant question sprang into my mind: I wonder if dependence on the River would still trouble me if I had the Ring?  Or would the Ring’s power overwhelm that of the River?

There’s a useless speculation for you, Boromir, I snapped to myself.  Might just as well waste time wondering what would be different now if you’d never died – or if you never went looking for Imladris in the first place.

I took another pilgrimage to the guardhouse to refill my canteen, with Svip trooping silently beside me.  Before we set out, Svip asked my help in opening up the chest he was using as his firing platform, to stow Finn’s lute safely inside it. 

I glimpsed an expression of dread on Svip’s face as the chest creaked open, and it was no difficult task to guess what he might be thinking.  I would have been willing to wager that for an instant as the chest opened, Svip envisioned piles of severed heads within it, as in the chests in the room below us. 

In the guardhouse, I swiftly filled the canteen, wet my neckerchief and poured out water for Svip to rinse his hands and face.  We made our return in haste, getting away as rapidly as might be from the imagined accusing stares of the heads of butchered Men.

It was three hours perhaps after true night sank in on us, that the Lord Steward again arrived on his rounds to visit the defenders at the Gate. 

Rather than simply ordering his Men at ease, this time my father commanded his entourage to disperse and take up position along the wall.  He strode to the embrasure atop the centre-point of the Gate, where he exchanged a few words with Captain Cirion.  Then he stood at the embrasure stiff and motionless like a guardian statue, staring out at the black expanse of the Pelennor Fields.

At most other times in my life, these actions on his part would have annoyed me, as I speculated whether the Steward believed me incapable of holding the Gate without his reinforcement.  That night, I found, I felt no such annoyance.  I was glad simply to have my father there, even standing at my side with bleak expression and eyes dark and cold as the shadows of Moria.

The dim day of fears seemed to have taken its toll on all of us.  My father’s Men looked on the brink of exhaustion, as though they had spent the day locked in combat rather than patrolling the walls.  My brief conversation with Húrin Keeper of the Keys, before he stationed himself at one of the embrasures above the Gate, was entirely lacking in the banter we both would usually have mustered.  Húrin’s voice seemed weighted down with weariness and foreboding. 

Pippin, for his part, did manage a pallid smile at me as he hurried to join Svip on his firing-platform.  But I thought that I read worn desperation in the young Hobbit’s face.

Darkly I wondered which burden had been more painful for Pippin and the others to shoulder: the Nazgûl circling overhead, or the constant struggle to live up to my father’s expectations.

And my father, I thought, seemed more borne down by the day’s trials than did any other of us. 

Perhaps others would not have seen it to look at him.  Perhaps they would only have seen the all-knowing Steward of Gondor, icy eyes judging every move and every thought.  But to me, the contrast between the Lord Steward’s bearing that morn, when he had seemed ready to overcome any challenge, and what I saw that night, could not have been more stark.

It came to me that there was a look I had seen often upon his face since my return, that I could barely remember ever seeing from him before.  Too often now, his gaze seemed to turn from the scenes around us, to wander down dreary pathways lit by no gleam of hope.

A pessimist and a cynic my father had always been.  Or he had been, at least, for as long as I had known him. 

But always before, in his darkest moments and his most cutting flights of cynicism, I had never doubted that he still held some hope.  Always he made me believe that he yet believed we had a chance of victory, and that our duty as the Lords of Gondor was to turn that chance for victory into reality.

That night, as I studied his haunted face, I could not avoid the thought that my father’s last spark of hope had guttered out.

We stood in silence.  I took a swig from my canteen.  As I brought the canteen down from my lips, I realised that the Steward was staring fixedly at my hands.

Looking down, I saw what he had seen.  I had not felt it, but the fingers of my left hand, grasping the canteen, were trembling.

Grimly setting my jaw against the curses I wanted to utter, I corked the canteen and replaced it at my belt.  I clasped my hands behind me, clinging stubbornly to the fiction that if neither my father nor I could see that sign of my weakness, it was not happening.       

I thought of asking him if he had visited Faramir that day, and what was the latest news of my brother’s condition.  But I held myself back from asking those questions.

I had no wish to hear the probable answer, that he had not visited Faramir at all. 

With the foe and the dark closed around us, I had to face the possibility that my father and I might have few conversations left between us.  And if fate turned forever against us, I did not wish one of our last discussions to become just another argument.

“How fares it with you, My Lord?” I asked at last, when I’d concluded that if I waited for him to speak first, we’d be waiting till the next Age.

The Steward looked at me with an expression of mild surprise, as though he’d forgotten anyone around him was capable of speech.

“Well enough,” he said.  “How fares it with you, Boromir?”

“Well enough, as well,” I said stolidly, thinking that of our two statements, his was most certainly a bigger lie than mine. 

I hesitated a moment, then I determined to face the Kine of Araw head on.  I asked, “Will you tell me what it is that troubles you, sir?”

“What it is that troubles me?” he repeated.  “Your return from death has rendered you deaf and blind, my son, if you must ask that question while our friends from Mordor howl without.”

  It was with an effort that I restrained myself from rolling my eyes.  “Sir,” I argued, “you know as well as I that the mere presence of the enemy has never put such despair on your countenance.” 

As he opened his mouth to snap a reply, I charged on.  “The foe has never reached the White City’s walls in our lifetimes, either, that I know.  But there is more to it than that.  Something else preys upon your mind, and tells you that it is vain even to hope.”

His gaze lingered on me, irritation and impatience vying for dominance with his new, chilling aura of despair.   

“Will you not tell me, My Lord?” I pursued.  “Will you not tell me what it is that burdens you, that I may share the burden?”

“No,” he said.  “I will not.”

Those brief words hurt far more than I was willing to let him see.  Nevertheless I ploughed onward.  “It is the duty of the Steward’s Heir to share his father’s burdens.  Will you not let me share yours?”

“Not these burdens, Boromir,” my father said, his voice barely over a whisper.

I heaved a sigh.  For a moment I stared out at the enemy’s trenches of fire.  “You have seen visions of our fate?” I tried again then, turning to look at him.

For a moment there was a wild, almost hysteric glint in his eyes, that made me think he might launch into some angry reply that would reveal the answer I was seeking.  But he gripped hold of his emotions again, and said only, “Aye.  I have seen visions.”

“And you will tell me nothing of them?”

The Lord Steward studied me.  Then he spoke, almost as though speaking to himself.

“I have asked myself still, throughout this day, if I can truly believe that you are my son.”  I started to protest at that, but he waved my words aside. “For this moment, it does not matter if you are my son or if you are not.  If you are the tool of our foe, then I will not betray to you the future that is revealed to me.  And if you are indeed Boromir, I would not have you see what I have seen, before you must.”

His speech shook me; that I will not deny.  But I was far from through with arguing.

 “Sir,” I said, “you have told me that visions do not always speak the truth.  They show futures that may be, but are not yet certain.  They are couched in riddles, and played out on the stage of dream worlds, where nothing may be as it appears.  Why would you believe that this vision speaks true, more than any other?  Why, except that the Nameless One wishes all of us to despair, and you most of all, for it is on you that Gondor pins her hopes!  It is the voice of the Nazgûl that I hear speaking now, My Lord, not yours!”

That last shot of mine sent anger springing into his eyes, as I had hoped that it would.  He did not give me the satisfaction of shouting out one of his tirades, but at least there seemed more life in his gaze than there had been a moment before. 

He observed with a sneer, “I suppose it is vain to speaking of giving up hope, to one who has returned from the dead.”

“Perhaps you are right, sir.  And if I have returned, why should it not then be possible for your hope to return as well?”

“My hope?” he echoed, painful mockery in his voice.  “Will you tell me, Lord Boromir, what cause you see left for hope?”

“Aye, I will tell you, My Lord,” I snapped.  “I see the cause that you taught me throughout all my life.  Even if a leader sees no hope, his duty is to act as though he does, for the sake of those who follow him.  Will you tell me now that those words apply to every leader save for you?  Our people need you, sir.  They need you to be their Steward as of old, their proof that the hope of victory lives yet.”

He studied me still, anger and despair glittering in his eyes.  For a moment I turned away from him, that I might master my own anger before making the attempt once again. 

My gaze lit on Pippin and Svip, standing on the chest nearby.  They were speaking in low tones, Svip holding his crossbow between them and apparently instructing Pippin on the weapon’s workings.

I turned back to my father.  “I will give you another cause for hope, My Lord,” I said, “if our people’s need is no longer enough for you.  What of Master Peregrin?  If we are driven near mad by horror, how much worse must all of this be for him, who does not even have the comfort of seeing the walls of his home?  He has pledged his sword to you, and bound his fortune to yours.  Were they empty words when you vowed to reward his fealty with love, and his valour with honour?  If they were not merely words, then you owe it him to let him see you yet strong.  My Lord, prove to him by your hope and courage that our City will not fall!” 

“And how if those are the words which are empty?” the Lord Steward whispered, his voice creeping through my mind to send shivers along my bones.  “How if all the hopes we yet cling to are naught but lies?”  

“Then we will die, My Lord,” I said.  “But since we must die, let us die fighting for our victory, not cringing, moaning our despair.”   

Through long, silent moments he stared at me.  Then his gaze dropped to his hands, clasped together tightly on the embrasure before him.

His voice, when he spoke again, was so soft I could scarcely hear it.

“You asked what it is that troubles me, son,” he murmured.  “It is this.  I cannot see how – I cannot see how I am to bear the pain of losing you a second time.”

Fire crackled in the City behind us.  Emotion welled in my throat, cutting off all words.  I reached out and put my hands on both of his.

“None of us need lose the others, Father,” I told him.  “If our fate is as grim as you say, then we will all dwell in the Barrow World ere long.  And we will all of us be together there.”

He heaved a shuddering sigh.  Then he looked up to meet my eyes.  A smile touched his face – a smile rueful and infinitely weary, but still the first smile I had seen from him since this discussion of ours began.

“How can I fail to take heart,” he observed wryly, “since you the state the case with such cheering sentiments?”   

I smiled back.  “I learned my pessimism from a master of it, My Lord.  The same teacher from whom I learned that despair is a luxury of ordinary Men that the family of the Stewards can never have.”

He gave a brief snort that might have been a laugh.  “Very well, Master Boromir,” he said, gazing on the plains once more.  “Since you wish me to cling to hope, my hope is that you will live for a son of yours to lecture you on your duty.”

I could not help chuckling a little at that.  “So do I, sir,” I answered.  “And I hope that you will live for a grandson of yours to lecture you.”

He spoke in tones of disdain, “You clearly presume that your son will be a prodigy, if he is to be giving lectures while I still walk upon this Middle Earth.”

“Of course he’ll be a prodigy, sir,” I pointed out, “being your grandchild.”

He sighed impatiently and shook his head, but I knew very well that he was pleased.

Together we watched the darkness and the flames.  Not until nearing the middle night, did the strategy of our Foe advance to its next stage.

For hours they had kept us waiting.  Their fiery missiles they continued to launch at us with bitter regularity.  Behind us, a good two-thirds of the First Circle was now ablaze.  I did not need even to turn and look to see the evidence of that.  It seemed that scarce a minute passed without the fire-fighters’ trumpets announcing that yet another building had caught alight.  The glow from the fires cast its bloody-hued light over all of us, as though Mount Doom had picked itself up and migrated to a new home on the slopes of Mindolluin.

I knew from glances behind me and from the periodic reports that my father received, that the fire crews were succeeding still in keeping the main roads clear, and holding open our route of retreat to the Second Level.  As doughtily as Men could fight, the crews were fighting to hold back the fires’ spread. 

But I knew also that they could not fight forever.  Unless something changed, to slow or halt the fiery bombardment, the time would come when the sheer exhaustion of our fire-fighters did the Enemy’s work for him.

Nigh to twelve hours had passed since the barrage of fire began.  We could not afford to keep these fire crews on duty much longer; not if we yet held hope of preserving any portion of the First Circle.  And not if we intended to fulfil our Men’s trust in us, and not demand more of them than Man could physically endure.

“My Lord,” I began, bowing to my father.  He did not turn to look at me, his grim gaze fixed unchangingly upon the fire-pocked plains.

“My Lord, we should commence operations to transfer out the fire-fighters here and replace them with fresh Men from the higher Levels.  These Men have laboured for twelve hours straight.  We should not ask more of them when there are fresh troops who can take over their task, and who have had naught to do all this day but to cool their heels and wait – ”             

“Be quiet, Boromir,” my father snapped suddenly, thrusting out his hand in a peremptory gesture.  I froze with my mouth open, contemplating some angry retort but thinking better of it.  Resignedly I shut my mouth and scowled into the dark, trying to catch some sight or sound of whatever my father was watching.

For another moment he stood in silence, motionless as the statues in Rath Dínen.

“They are coming,” he said then, matter-of-fact as though announcing guests for the daymeal.  He turned and commenced firing off orders to his attendants.

“Let the braziers be lit.  I want arrows of fire loosed at the enemy the instant they move within range.  Command the archers and the catapult crews to stand ready.  My compliments to Lord Duinhir, and relay to him my request that his archers on the Second and Third levels open fire as soon as he believes their shots have any chance of telling.  Find the Lord Imrahil and request that he and his Knights report to me immediately.”

Men scattered to carry out my father’s orders.  No sign or movement from the enemy could yet be seen, but the preparations commanded were set into motion without murmur of protest or doubt.  It was an experience that all of us were used to, who had fought before under the Steward Denethor’s command.  I thought, indeed, that I saw glimpses of new cheerfulness and confidence amongst the Men around us, at this evidence that the Lord Steward could yet see things concealed from ordinary Men.

I wondered if my Uncle Imrahil’s steps had been guided by presentiment as well – a presentiment of his own, or perhaps more likely, of Mithrandir’s.  For the Prince, the Wizard and the Swan Knights hastened into the Steward’s presence almost at once, far swifter than the time that would have been required for my father’s command to reach them unless they had been virtually right under our feet. 

“Imrahil,” my father greeted his brother-in-law without ceremony.  “Go you, with all of your followers who may be horsed, to the Court of the Gate.  Mount up and hold yourselves in readiness to make counter-charge against any incursion, when the Gate is breached.”

“When the Gate is breached – ” Imrahil echoed in astonishment.  He bowed low, giving himself a chance to take control of the expression on his face.  “Aye, My Lord,” he said, straightening once more.

“Have you commands for me, My Lord Steward?” Lord Mithrandir inquired in mild tones. 

I more than half expected that my father would tell the Wizard in no uncertain terms where he might insert himself.  But in that belief I was mistaken.  With only a trace of his usual dislike, the Steward answered, “You may choose your own ground, Lord Stormcrow.  In this extreme, your aid will be welcome.”

“I thank you, My Lord.”  The Wizard smiled and bowed, needing no words to complete the logical next clause of the Steward’s statement, that in any other than our present extreme he would be as welcome as the pox. 

“Shadowfax and I will join your company at the Gate, Lord Prince,” Mithrandir continued to Imrahil, “if you will have us.”

“You are welcome,” the Prince confirmed, unlike my father sounding as though he meant it.

My father turned to confer with Húrin of the Keys, and Imrahil stepped to my side.  “When the Gate is breached?” he asked me in an undertone.  “Is this his pessimism solely, or – ”

“Visions,” I finished grimly.  I shrugged and went on, “I intend to see to it that these visions do not come true.”

My uncle looked on me with troubled gaze.  Then he managed a smile, thrusting out his hand to me once more.  “Aye,” was all that he said as we clasped hands.

For a few moments again all seemed quiet, after Imrahil’s party took their leave.  I sent one of the orderlies to fetch a longbow and quiver for me, but apart from his departure and return, nothing about us seemed to move. 

Again my father and I stood at the embrasure together.  In the stillness, almost I doubted that the assault was as imminent as the Steward seemed to believe.  Then out of the dark there came something else. 

Softly at first, even as the cries of the Nazgûl had begun too quietly for our ears to truly take hold of them, a new sound commenced.  It throbbed at the edge of hearing as the roll of distant thunder.  Then it rose, and we knew it for what it was.

Drums.

The drums of the enemy sounded forth, in the slow, steady, mocking drumbeat that had haunted the Fellowship’s flight through the caverns of Moria.

I shared a grim glance with my father.  Then a sudden gasp from Pippin drew my eyes to him, at the embrasure to our right.

The young Hobbit had fallen asleep perhaps an hour before, his head and arms resting on the embrasure where he stood at Svip’s side.  Unlikely though it seemed, he had somehow managed to sleep through all the commotion about him, of my father barking out commands, orderlies racing hither and yon, and Imrahil and his Swan Knights marching nigh to the spot where Pippin stood. 

I had been a little surprised that my father permitted him to sleep on, but the Steward had many other things on his mind.  Now, however, Pippin woke, the drums cutting through his sleep as all other noise had not.  With a sudden intake of breath he jerked his head upright and stared wildly into the dark.

Svip reached out and grabbed Pippin’s right shoulder to steady him, at the same moment as I reached out to grip his left. 

The Hobbit turned to smile shakily at each of us in turn.  When he looked up at me, I saw horror in his gaze, as if his thoughts, just as mine, had followed the drumbeats back to Moria’s lightless tunnels.

Almost as though I spoke from some force outside my own volition, I heard myself quote words that Mithrandir had read in the last grim testament of the Dwarves of Moria.

“Drums,” I murmured.  “Drums in the deep.”

Pippin nodded, his eyes as haunted as though in truth we stood in Moria once more.  Whispering, he added, “We cannot get out.”

I shook my head then, trying to loose both of us from the horror.  “Aye, but we did get out,” I told him.  “All of us, in the end.  Even Gandalf, though his route was rather longer than the one the rest of us followed.  Do not fear, Pippin.  We can conquer again, drums or no drums.”

“Aye,” Pippin managed, with an effort.  His troubled glance moved from me to my father.  He hesitated.  Then Pippin gulped down a breath and squared his shoulders.  With more courage than many Men would have mustered, he stepped to my father’s side and bowed. 

“Have you commands for me, My Lord?” the Steward’s Esquire piped up, drawing the bleak, icy gaze down upon him.

My father studied him a moment.  Then ever so slightly the Lord Steward’s expression thawed. 

“I have, Master Peregrin,” he said.  “Join those re-supplying the defenders’ arrows.  See that no Man’s quiver stands empty, and you will do as much as any to secure Minas Tirith’s survival.”

“Yes, My Lord,” Pippin said.

The Steward turned to stare outward once more, interrogating the darkness with his glance.  Looking rather lost, Pippin cast about him, seeking to identify some personage to whom he might report and commence his new duties.  

I crouched down by Pippin’s side and pointed to one of the Orderlies.  “That young fellow over there should be able to give you your assignments.”

Pippin gave me a grateful smile.  He turned to wave at Svip, who waved back.  Then, as if feeling that any hesitation might lead to disaster, Pippin squared his shoulders once again, strode over to the Orderly and saluted.

I stood and stepped back to the embrasure.  Beside me on his firing-chest, Svip was fitting a bolt into his crossbow.  Suddenly he stopped and cocked his head, as though some new sound had reached him through the doom, doom of the enemy’s drums.  The water being stared fiercely into the dark.

“They’re moving,” he hissed to me.  “There they are.”

I squinted at the blackened plains.

“There,” Svip repeated tensely.  “Can you see them yet?”

I sighed a little as I answered, “Yes.”

Their vanguard advanced, passing through the wall of fire by pathways of uncut ground that they had left at intervals along the trenches. 

I grimaced as my eyes better made out the tightly-packed columns approaching.  It did not need Svip’s eyesight to show that their numbers were vast; the vanguard alone could over-run Minas Tirith if once they made it past our wall.

That, I told myself, we are here to ensure that they do not achieve.

Their captain, wherever his talents might lie, must have little interest in the doings or fate of his infantry.  This was made abundantly clear to me in the scraggly disarray of their columns.  Many the columns were in truth, spilling from behind the trenches at point after point like great hordes of ants.  But ants, I thought, would have better order in their advance.  These creatures were huddled together as though proximity to their neighbours would make them invincible, little reckoning the havoc our archers would wreak on them the instant they moved within range. 

That truth was soon to be revealed.  My father’s voice rang out in command, “They are moving into range.  Catapult crews, stand by.  Men on the Gate, number off by twos. Prepare to light your arrows and fire by volleys.”

Even as the defenders on the First Wall obeyed, we heard behind us the shouts of command from the Second Wall.  In the next instant the first volleys from the archers of Morthond on the Second Level sang out far above our heads.  A curtain of arrows sailed forth directly above us, aimed for the enemy column that was roughly following the City Road toward the Gate.  To south and north of our position I glimpsed others of Mothond’s volleys, each targeting one of the bunched and ragged columns.

It was a beautiful sight, I thought, as the myriad darts of flame soared through the blackness and then arced downward upon our foes.  Scattered cheers sounded along the wall, as through the murk we discerned the deadly impact of Morthond’s arrows.  Like scythed wheat the foremost ranks of their columns were mown down. 

I thought I saw a moment of wavering in their ranks that were now so rudely thrust to the fore.  For an instant I thought that they might even break and retreat.  But their commanders must have shouted some threat that made them think the better of it.  The columns pressed on, stepping over, around, or upon their comrades’ crumpled forms.

The Steward’s voice rang forth once more.  “Light your arrows!  Volley fire by ranks!  First rank, fire!”  An instant’s pause followed, punctuated by the zinging of the arrows’ flight.  Then came the next command.  “Second rank, fire!”

For a brief, blessed time we had naught to think of but the rhythm of the volleys.  I fired with the first rank.  Svip fired with the second, though again he had to face the frustration of his crossbow’s range being lesser than the longbows’.  For now, he was forced to content himself with aiming only for those few of the enemy who raced past the rest of their column. 

Their columns marched on, heedless of growing piles of dead in their path.  The column that we faced, on the road to the Great Gate, was mirrored countless times to north and to south. 

They are counting our archers, I thought uneasily as I fired.  They are testing our firepower with their infantry’s lives. 

It was, I thought, another mocking jibe from our Enemy, rubbing our noses in the fact that he had troops enough to care nothing for how many he sacrificed.

But I could see no help for it.  I did not see that we had the choice to hold our fire.  It mattered little if he knew our garrison’s strength to the last Man.  Every foeman we did not slay now was one we would face later, one who might yet live to bring slaughter and horror to Minas Tirith’s streets. 

Of a sudden the form of their advance altered.  The ragged, battered columns lurched to a halt, then spread out a rough skirmish line, taking cover where they could behind their comrades’ corpses.

“Archers and catapult crews!” my father yelled.  “Independent fire at will!”

It was a comfortless few minutes for their troops upon the plain, as arrows and boulders poured upon them like hail.  But we were to have little time to rejoice in their discomfort.

The drums rolled louder, until they seemed to sound within my skull.  From behind the trenches of fire came vast black shapes as of houses moving through the dark, their accursed mûmakil dragging behind them catapults and many-storied siege towers.  In the paths marked by the corpses of their infantry they came, trampling their fallen beneath them. 

I had thought I’d accepted the bleakness of our situation, that no device of the enemy would have any power to surprise me.  Even so I was hard-pressed not to swear at the numbers that pressed forward now, seeming to my bitter gaze as though they had a mûmak and a siege engine for every Man in Minas Tirith. 

Through the din of the drums I heard my father heave a long, weary sigh.  I glanced to him, but for only an instant did I surprise on his face again his look of empty despair.  Then he seemed to throw that feeling from him, as once again he yelled out in command.  “Archers, re-form ranks!  Concentrate all fire upon those engines.  None of them is to reach our walls!”  Studiedly my father did not look at me, as though he knew but would not acknowledge that I had seen the despair upon his face.

The night waned.  One hour vanished into the next, and the next.  We fired on.  Their engines crawled across the plain. 

Here and there, the wooden scaffolding of siege engine or catapult leapt into flames.  Screams of Orcs and Men caught in the towers of fire carried eeriely over the roll of the drums.  Now and again wild trumpeting sounded over the fields, that at first I thought must come from some strange war horns of the enemy.  Only when we saw one mûmak running at full tilt parallel to the wall and bellowing its terror of the blazing tower that jolted in the animal’s wake, did I realise the sounds of the trumpets came from the beasts themselves.

None of their engines yet had survived to reach our wall.  But now there came something else, a strange vast construction lurching down the corpse-choked road toward us like some gigantic long-legged insect.

I heard Svip breathe out, “What is it?”

For longer than I liked, I was asking myself that same question.  Then in the fire-reddened light I saw it and I knew.

Here, I thought, is the weapon the Dark Lord has relied upon to cast down our Gate.

Six armoured mûmakil dragged behind them a wheeled creation of scaffolding, twice again as tall as they.  From the scaffolding swung mighty chains, their creaking sounding forth like the caws of great birds of prey.  From them a battering ram hung suspended, swinging forward and back as the nightmare structure rolled on.

A company marched at the scaffolding’s either side, bawling out some cackling song of blood-lust and hatred.  No Men or Orcs, however great in number, could wield the battering ram they guarded.  But they would have no need to wield it.  Behind the ram lumbered creatures that could only be mountain-trolls.  Tall as the scaffolding some of them stood, and as huge and misshapen as though chunks torn from the mountains themselves had been ensorcelled into hideous life. 

I glared at the trolls, and hoped that Pippin would not contrive to stick his head over the parapet and see them.

My father gave a short, harsh laugh, that made me turn in surprise to stare at him.  Noting my regard, he snorted derisively and fixed a bitter smile on his face. 

“Well,” he remarked, “they have taken long enough.”   

Before I could inquire what the blazes he meant by that, he turned and commenced bellowing orders.  “Lord Húrin!  You are with me.  We will take horse and join our cavalry in the Court of the Gate.  Where is my Esquire?”

I looked around in search of Pippin.  At the same moment my father and I caught sight of the white-faced and wide-eyed Hobbit.  Pippin thrust a basket of arrows at the youthful squire standing next to him, who already carried one basket and had to juggle them precariously until the Man at the next embrasure turned to take one basket and set it down on the battlement.  Pippin was running toward my father, heedless of the unfortunate youth’s predicament.

“There you are,” the Steward snapped.  “Master Peregrin, you will ride with us.  Húrin, I am sure your steed can bear the halfling’s weight along with your own?”

Neither Húrin nor Pippin looked delighted with the prospect, but the Keeper of the Keys only bowed and acknowledged, “I am sure she can, My Lord.”  He crossed to Pippin, who cast a panicked glance at me.  “Shall we go, Master Halfling?” Húrin said politely.

I tried to smile encouragingly at Pippin, but I fear my smile held little comfort.

“Thank you, My Lord,” Pippin managed.

They set out for the stairs, Lord Húrin attempting a conversation with the question, “Are there many horses in your homeland?”

I did not hear Pippin’s reply.  My father turned to me and said briskly, “Boromir, I place the Gate in your command.”

I was tempted to remind him that he had done so once already this day and then had come striding in and took command himself.  But I forebore to comment.  Likely he would not have dignified my words with a reaction in any case.

“Aye, My Lord,” I said.  I stepped closer to him and demanded in an undertone that I hoped few of the Men around us would hear, “Sir, why must you take Pippin with you?  What use do you believe that he will be in battle?”

The Lord Steward questioned haughtily, “Where else should an esquire be in combat save at the side of his master?”

“Yet you have never taken any of your other esquires into combat, sir, until they are old enough and trained enough to stand a fighting chance.  Why will you treat Peregrin any differently?”

My father’s expression unexpectedly softened.  He said quietly, “Calm yourself, Boromir.  Húrin will guard him well.  He will keep Peregrin from harm if he can.”

I snapped, “Aye, so you condemn Húrin to death as well, to be cut down as he neglects his own defence in seeking to protect the halfling!”

My father gazed at me with an expression of pity.  “We are all condemned to death,” he answered, barely over a whisper.  “Better the halfling dies swiftly in battle, than for his fate to hunt him down street by street through the burning City.”

I gasped out, “My Lord – ” but my father cut me off.

“Goodbye, Boromir,” he said, with a melancholy smile.  He turned on his heel and strode away from me.

I forced myself to face the foe, instead of chasing down my father and screaming curses at him.

“All Men on the Gate!” I heard myself shout.  “Concentrate all fire on that battering ram and the trolls!” 

While the Lord Steward and I argued, the ram and its guardians had advanced close enough for us to truly see what we were facing.  I cursed beneath my breath.  The ram seemed a creation of devilry, a fitting weapon for the vast, hulking trolls that strode by its sides.  It seemed fashioned of the trunk of some gigantic tree, more massive I thought than any I had seen in my life except for perhaps a few of the trees in Lothlórien.  The head of it was likely black steel, but in the fitful light it seemed the living reality of the beast in whose likeness it was carved: a great black wolf, fangs bared as it snarled a promise to rip the life from every creature in its path.

Whether spells of magic guarded that battering ram I know not.  But whether by spell or by craft, no flames from our arrows took hold on its scaffolding or the ram itself, though many an arrow lodged in the structure’s timber and gradually burned itself out.  Arrow upon arrow pierced the armour and hides of mûmakil and mountain-trolls, till the monsters bristled like demon porcupines.  Yet still they plodded over hills of slain, though twice we saw mûmakil frenzied by pain trample scores of their Orc attendants before they could be whipped back under control.

The ram was all but upon us.  It was near enough that I could see the maddened glare of the mûmakil’s crimson eyes.  Still we fired, flaming arrows plunging into ram and scaffold, mûmakil and trolls.  Still none of our targets caught alight; still none of the monsters fell.

The drums thundered.  The Orcs below screamed taunts and curses up at us.

Suddenly the Orcs fell into silence.

Behind them on the road, amid the hills of trampled dead, a black shape appeared.

It was a horseman, though he seemed larger and more menacing than any Man should seem.  I could not tell if I had merely not noticed him before, or if he indeed had appeared out of nothing.  He sat astride a black horse, and was cloaked and hooded all in black.  Slowly and calmly he rode toward the Gate, as though he had nothing to fear from any dart or arrow.

And truth to tell, it seemed that he did not.  For as he rode toward us, all sound of bow and catapult ceased. 

I looked about me.  Every Man that I could see had frozen where he stood, eyes wide with terror and hands trembling at their sides

Wildly I cast a glance behind me, down to the Court of the Gate.  I could see my father and the cavalry of Dol Amroth waiting in good formation below.  I could not tell if the same terror gripped them as had seized our Men above.  Many of the horses champed and shied, whinnying in protest.  But it seemed at least as though their riders retained enough of their own wills to hold the horses under control.

I thought I saw a reason for that.  In the first rank of the Knights stood a grey steed with a rider clad all in white.  A pale, pure light seemed to glow from that rider’s form.  His horse alone made no move of fear.

I turned back to the road before the Gate.  The black rider had drawn his steed to a halt at the side of the mountain-trolls.  Somehow he did not seem dwarfed by them, though his head reached scarcely to their knees.  Reality notwithstanding, it was the trolls that seemed shrunk into insignificance by him.

The rider raised one black-gauntleted hand.

With roaring yells, the trolls seized hold of the massive wolf-headed ram. 

Once, twice, thrice they swung it, on the third swing letting it fly at the Gate.

The ram hit with a bone-jarring thud, sending tremors shivering through the wall beneath our feet.  But the Great Gate held firm. 

I heard yells of outraged frustration from the Orcs on the ram’s flanks, and snarls from the maws of the mountain-trolls.  I smiled at the sounds of their rage. 

Their great weapon’s blow had made no more of an impact than a nearby thunderclap, fearsome to the ears of Men but as nothing to the iron and steel of Minas Tirith’s Gate.

But the satisfaction I felt was to be short-lived.

Their drums rolled again, then seemed to fall suddenly silent. 

The Black Captain rose in his stirrups, brandishing an ice-pale sword.  He cried aloud words that I did not know.  But I knew that his words spoke of malice and of power, and hatred deeper than the chasm of Khazad-dûm.

The cry rang forth, echoing about us.  My comrades stood frozen.  Some had their hands pressed to their ears; some hid their faces.  Others simply stared in horror. 

The mountain-trolls seized their monstrous ram once more, swinging it on its chains.  One last time they swung it back.  Then with all their might they heaved it forward, against the Gate.

The impact this time knocked me from my feet.  All around me, the defenders of the Gate were flung to the wall like toy soldiers swept aside by the hand of a petulant child. 

I staggered up again.  To one side of me I saw Svip, lying face down on his firing-platform with his head buried in his arms.  At my other side, Captain Cirion was yet standing.  He clung to the parapet as though battered by a deadly tempest, that at any instant might carry him off in the arms of the winds.

The Gate still held.  But of a sudden I knew, with a certainty that brooked no questioning, that it would not hold for long.

There was more than the strength of the ram and the mountain-trolls in this second strike.  The Black Captain’s shout, I was certain, wielded more power than any blow that the massive trolls could muster. 

I thought, Another cry from him, and the Gate may fall.

In my memory I heard myself, demanding to know of Mithrandir where lay the good in my lack of terror at the Nazgûl’s screams.  I heard the Wizard tell me that more than chance had guided our paths, and had left me free to face the Nine without fear.

The idea that sprang to my mind was a fool’s hope, of that I had no doubt. 

You are not Mithrandir, I told myself scornfully.  What do you think you are going to do, plant yourself in front of the Black Captain and tell him “You cannot pass?”

That tactic had not worked out all that well for Mithrandir.

But it gave the rest of us the time that we needed, to get out of Moria.  In that sense, I reminded myself, it had worked out after all.

I did not truly know what I thought I could accomplish in our current plight.  What good would it do even if I could hold back the enemy as the Wizard had done at Khazad-dûm?  It was not as though Minas Tirith’s people had anywhere to run.

But in this extremity, a fool’s hope was better than no hope at all.

I seized Captain Cirion by the shoulder.  If I shouted loud enough, I hoped I could reach him through the thunder of drums, the taunts from a thousand enemy throats, and the terror.

“Captain!”  I yelled.  “I am going out there.  I leave command of the Gate in your hands.”

The Ranger Captain’s wide, horrified eyes blinked a few times, which I hoped indicated some level of understanding.  I turned and started for the stairs. 

To my surprise, the Captain moved.  He lunged after me and grabbed my arm.

“Do not do it, sir!” he forced out, his voice hoarse and painful as though from years without speech.  “You’ll be killed.  Do not go.  My Lord, stay here!”

“I am going, Cirion,” I repeated steadily.  “You have command of the Gate.”

I raced down the stairs.  Hitting the street at a dead run, I doubled back toward the guardhouse tower.  I made my way through a confusion of Men and horses clogging the streets as the animals bolted from the Court of the Gate in the madness of the Wraith King’s cries.

In the Court I caught sight of my father, still facing the Gate.  He yet held his steed in his command, though the horse tossed its head and stamped the cobblestones in terror.  Imrahil, and Húrin with Pippin clinging desperately to his waist, had managed to keep their seats as well, but both horses fought their masters’ control as though they might bolt at any instant.  Only Mithrandir’s Shadowfax stood unmoving, the Meara and the Wizard as still and steadfast as though horse and rider alike were graven of stone.

As I raced the last few feet to the tower door, I glimpsed a diminutive figure running the same perilous route that I had just taken, weaving a path between the flying hooves of maddened horses.  He reached my side at the guardhouse door, and stood panting for breath, staring up at me.

“What are you doing, Svip?” I cried.  “Go back to the wall; Cirion needs all the archers he can get.”

Svip shook his head.  His eyes were wild with fear, but his face was stubbornly set.  Through the din of the drums, the yelling Men and the horses, I heard him shout, “I’m going with you!”

“Aren’t you afraid?” I yelled back at him.

“Yes!  But you’ll need a horse, won’t you?”

I felt tears sting at my eyes.  I wanted to argue with him, but we did not have the time. 

And Svip was right.  I had little hope in combating the Nazgûl, in any case.  But at least I might stand slightly more of a fighting chance, if I met him on horseback rather than wandering afoot into the mass of Orcs, trolls and mûmakil.

I shouted, “Come on, then!”

As I turned to step into the tower guardroom, the voice of the Black Captain once again rent the air.  The Nazgûl’s incantation rang out, rolling upon us with the boom of mighty ocean waves. 

In the midst of that cry there came another thunderous crash.  The impact hurled Svip to his hands and knees and threw me against the tower wall.

I almost did not dare to turn my head as the massive tremors began to subside, and look toward the Gate.

But the Gate still stood.  Somehow, it still stood.

I could no longer pick out my father and the others amid the mass of rearing and fallen horses in the Court of the Gate.  But I told myself that I had no time to fear for them.  Reaching down to seize Svip by the hand and drag him to his feet, I propelled both of us through the guardroom door.

The Nazgûl’s fell voice sank into silence at last, succeeded by the steady doom, doom of the enemy’s drums.

One of our Men crouched beneath the arrow slit window, his arms flung up to protect his head and his bow fallen from his hands.  I strode across the floor that still seemed shuddering beneath my feet, gripped the Man’s shoulders and pulled him to a standing position.  His eyes stared wildly into mine.

“Listen to me!” I shouted.  “You are a warrior of Gondor.  Gondor has need of you now.  I am going out of the sally port.  You are to bolt the door behind me.  Do you hear me?  You are to bolt the door, and remain on guard to open it for me on my return.”

Not, I thought, that I was likely to return. 

“Yes,” the soldier managed faintly.  “Yes, My Lord.”

He remained standing when I let go of his shoulders, as I had not been entirely certain he would be able to do.  With Svip at my side, I crossed to the dark iron sally port door.  Then I heaved back the thick steel bar that held it bolted closed.

I felt almost in a dream as I walked through the sally port, into the domain of screaming thousands of our foes.  It occurred to me to wonder if the calm I felt was the calm of a madman, for surely no other but a madman would act as I was acting now. 

The black steel wolf’s head of their battering ram swung from its chains before me, mountain trolls swinging it in preparation for another shattering blow.  At their side, the Nazgûl sat astride his motionless steed, forming a grim mirror image of Mithrandir and Shadowfax at the other side of the Gate. 

I heard, but scarcely heeded, as Orc guards at the ram’s flanks broke into amazed exclamations, more and more of them turning to stare at Svip and me.

I heard the sally port door thud closed behind me.  I prayed that our comrade had indeed remembered to shove the bolt home.

In the corner of my eye, I saw a tall, grey shape surge into view.

“Get on!” Svip the horse shouted.  “Now!”

I sprang to his back, for once not even remembering to feel any concern over my usual awkwardness on horseback.  Gripping his flanks with my legs and winding my left hand in his mane, I drew my sword.

“Nazgûl!” I bellowed.  “Turn and face me!”

Slowly, the vast figure turned.  Eyes of red fire blazed from the black shadows of his hood.

I felt Svip trembling beneath me.  But even under the wraith lord’s burning scrutiny, my friend held his ground. 

I rubbed my left hand over Svip’s quivering shoulder, hoping against hope to transfer some of my calm to him.  And I drew in breath to yell out my challenge to my enemy.

“Ringwraith!” I shouted.  “I challenge you!  I, Boromir Son of Denethor, challenge you to single combat.  If you have any courage left in you, then stand and fight!  Fight me if you dare, Wraith Lord.  You cannot pass.”