Dear All:  Well, here it is!  Just over three months in getting this chapter out to you – which is more than long enough.  My usual apologies, and my usual hopes that somebody will still read this!  The ending sequence may still be a little rough, as I was trying so hard just to get this chapter finished.  Oh, for anyone who may have been reading the story from the beginning recently, I apologise for the odd formatting and the weird symbols for some of the punctuation in the first six or so chapters.  I swear, that is not my doing – somehow it was transformed in some of the upheavals that has been undergoing.  I’ll try to get to that and fix it sometime – but not, hopefully, before I write and post the next chapter!

Chapter Sixteen:  The Battle of Minas Tirith (Part Two)

            The Nazgûl laughed, a hollow, mocking sound like the rattle of dry bones.  He flung back his hood.

            I felt Svip start as though he meant to bolt.  But my shape-shifting comrade checked that motion and stood fast.  At the edges of my sight, I saw Orcs and even the mountain-trolls fearfully shuffle their feet, shrinking back from their Captain’s side.  

            The black rider had no face.  His hood had shrouded no head visible to mortal eyes, only a dreadful blackness.  Only blackness showed between the vast armoured shoulders and a pale, gleaming crown that seemed suspended in inky nothing.  His eyes of red fire gleamed from out of that dark, like stars of ill omen prophesying our doom.

            Of a sudden I remembered the brief glimpse I’d had of him before, when he swooped down from the sky above the enemy’s bridges at Osgiliath.  I remembered, too, Faramir’s recounting of the taunts that the Black Captain had spoken into his mind.  And I felt afresh all of my determination to hurl down the Captain of our foemen and grind him in the dust.

            “Fool,” laughed the Nazgûl, in a voice of thunder and death.  “Young fool!  So the Steward’s whelp seeks to challenge me?  Did not your last death teach you to fear death when you see it?”

            “Fight me,” I answered him.  “We will see then who fears.”

            Again he laughed, and he seemed to shake his head, for the icy crown and the crimson fires moved from side to side. 

            His voice sank to a malignant, throbbing whisper.  “Your death this time will not be so swift and merciful as your last one.  But the darkness is not without mercy.  You may see at last the thing that you desire.  When you lie beyond all darkness, when the final shreds of flesh are stripped from you and you writhe in the gaze of the Lidless Eye, perhaps he may show you the prize for which you sold your comrades and your honour.  You may see the Ring of Power, and as your broken fingers reach to grasp it, he may at last take pity on you and devour you in its fire.”

            Loathing and fury welled in my throat.  But I forced my voice through the anger’s strangling grasp.

            “You should know, Ringwraith,” I said.  “Does he permit you and your brethren to see the Rings that once you bore?  When you have pleased him, does he allow you to touch them?  Does he let you kiss the trinkets for which you enslaved your countries and your souls?”

            I did not know how one might read anger in the Nazgûl’s faceless gaze.  But it seemed that his eyes changed in colour, that the crimson fires burned darker and brighter still.

            “Fool,” he hissed once again.  “You will plead for so pleasant a fate as death, until your pleading and your pain became all that you are.”

            His ice-pale sword he brought up to a position of guard.  At no visible urging from its rider, his black, silent steed took a step toward us.

            And then there came a sound: a sound that I never expected in that moment, and that I now will never forget.

            From some courtyard behind us in the White City, a cock crowed.  It seemed as pure and beauteous a sound as a fanfare of silver trumpets, with beauty and strength enough to strike terror into any creature of darkness.         

            As if in answer, there came from far away another note.  From the north and west, and echoing faintly off Mindolluin’s slopes, there sounded horns.  Hundreds upon hundreds, they seemed, all blowing wildly as one.  And I knew their call.

            I heard myself whisper, “The horns of the Rohirrim.”  Svip turned his head questioningly, and in wonder and delight I whispered to him, “The horns of the Rohirrim, Svip!  Rohan is come at last.”

            What followed next I still can scarce believe, no more than I believed it then. 

            The Nazgûl Lord seemed to raise his head, listening to Rohan’s horns.  Then as though he were indeed some hellish dream that flees at the approach of dawn, he wheeled his steed and set out at a gallop, toward the war horns’ cries.

            I heard no call from the Black Rider.  But voiced or no, something else heard his command and answered.

            Seconds only it seemed from when the rider turned his steed, when a croaking scream sounded out of the sky.  Like lightning striking from the clouds, a new monstrosity plunged out of the dark to the Nazgûl’s side. 

            “What is it?” Svip whispered desperately.  “Boromir, what is it?”

            I had no answer.  Larger than the Ringwraith’s mighty horse, it flapped outstretched wings that showed neither quill nor feather in the fire-reddened light.  Vast webs of hide stretched between fingers on which I saw the glint of claws.  Upon a long, naked neck, a beaked head bobbed.  The beak opened wide and let forth another croaking cry.

            Seconds were all we had to marvel at this latest horror.  I could not tell if the Nazgûl leapt from one mount to the next, or if he too had flown.  But in a rush of shadow, he was suddenly seated upon the demon creature’s back.  They took to the sky, vanishing in an instant into the churning blackness above us.

            The wraith’s riderless horse, no doubt used to such manoeuvres, turned once more and struck out at a gallop along the City Road, toward Osgiliath and the Great River.

            For a moment, we and our foemen simply stared at one another.

Comical alarm showed on the faces of the Orcs before us, and plodding incomprehension on those of the mountain-trolls, as the dreadful reality sank in that their Captain had deserted them. 

I would not have long to savour the looks upon their faces, I knew.  Svip and I had best beat a speedy retreat if we did not wish to be sitting there as targets when the attacking forces recovered from their alarm.

            But just as I sheathed my sword and opened my mouth to tell Svip that we should make ourselves scarce, a command rang forth from behind us on the White City’s wall.

            I thought that I recognised the voice of Ranger Captain Cirion in the shout, “Archers and catapult crews!  Independent fire at will!”

            What followed was as beautiful to me as had been the sound of the Rohirrim horns a moment before. 

The Ringwraith’s departure must have freed our Men from the terror that had held them.  No sooner had the command rung out, than it was answered by a mighty barrage of flaming arrows and catapult shot, thundering down upon our astounded foemen.           

            Our soldiers’ fear was not all that had been broken when the Nazgûl departed from among us.  So, too, had ended the seeming invulnerability of the forces that assailed our Gate.

            As the fiery arrows plunged into the scaffold of the great battering ram, first one and then many caught the wooden structure alight.  I heard yells of dismay from the ram’s guard of Orcs, and disbelieving growls from their mountain-troll allies. 

            The Orcs were the first to take to their heels.  At first only by ones and twos, then more and more as they saw their comrades running, they began to scatter from the battering ram’s flanks. 

The troll nearest my vantage point snarled at a gang of the fleeing Orcs as they raced past him.  Reaching down a vast gnarled hand, the troll seized one Orc and broke his back in two, with a snap that carried audibly through the whizzing and thuds of our barrage and the yells of the Orc troops. 

Even as the Orc died squealing in his grasp, an arrow blossomed in the mountain-troll’s throat.  An instant later a boulder from our catapults smashed into the monster’s head. 

The felled giant toppled, clutching the broken Orc in his death grip and crushing several others that huddled in terror at his feet.

             It was all that had been needed to set our attackers in full flight. 

By the hundreds, the Orcs broke and ran, scrambling over the corpses of their comrades that paved the City Road.  By the hundreds, they fell.  They fell hewn by arrow or boulder, or crushed in the mad stampeding of the mûmakil, that strove now to free themselves from the great ram chained to their harnesses and the agony of the arrows lodged in their hides.

            Svip took a few steps backward toward the shelter of the wall.  I did not blame him.  We would do well to get inside the City, and swiftly, lest our careers come to an ignominious end beneath some mûmak’s feet. 

But the spectacle before us seemed too terrible and glorious to turn from it, even for an instant.  I watched in marvelling awe as finally even the mountain-trolls opted for retreat, turning their faces to Osgiliath and carving a lumbering path through the Orcs that fled before them.

            Another troll fell.  He crawled on through the heaps of slain, arrows bristling so densely upon him that his hide and armour scarcely showed between them. 

With a trumpeting scream, one of the mûmakil thudded to its knees.  For another moment it fought to rise, then the arrow-pierced beast smashed flailingly to its side.  The ground shook from its fall.  With creaking and groaning as fearsome as the mûmak’s screams, the scaffold and battering ram plummeted at last to earth.

            In a frenzy of panic, the five other mûmakil that were bound to the ram’s scaffolding sought to run in five directions at once.  Svip and I huddled against the wall, as the beast nearest to us bucked to free itself from the chains lashing it to the scaffold.  

“Look out!” I yelled to Svip, as one of the chain links wrenched apart.  Trumpeting rage and pain, the mûmak charged past us, south along the perimeter of the wall.  Blood poured from its shoulders where the chains had dug into armour and flesh.    The four others, perhaps following the lead of the dominant creature among them, turned east toward the River.  Behind them they dragged their stricken comrade and the massive bulk of overturned scaffold and wolfshead battering ram.  Orcs and trolls alike, fleeing down the corpse-choked road, wailed and scattered as the mûmakil ploughed through their ranks.      

“I don’t believe it,” I whispered, my voice inaudible even to me in the chaos about us. “I cannot believe it.”

Of those who had come so close to felling the White City’s Gate, not one remained that was not either fallen or in flight. 

But, I told myself, the troops that had assaulted the Gate were far from the only threat we had to face. 

I turned my gaze to the south, seeking to gain some concept of the enemy’s distribution between the Road and Mount Mindolluin. 

What I saw drove from my mind all thoughts of battle and the enemy.

            In the south, where the Great River wound its course around Mindolluin’s feet, the darkness was broken.  Sunlight and a glimpse of blue sky pierced the pitiless black that had shrouded us for so long.  The River gleamed like a road paved with mithril, and through the rent in the cloud there came another marvel: wind, a wild and laughing wind that rolled in from the distant sea.  Like a charge of unseen horsemen in the air, the wind rushed upon us, the first breeze to stir over Gondor since the dark fell upon us full six days before.

            “Look, Svip!” I yelled out to my comrade, feeling near to singing or weeping in my delight.  “Svip, will you look!”

            I heard a wondering gasp – sounding bizarrely human coming from the mouth of a horse – as Svip turned to follow my gaze. 

            I felt the wind dance across my face, and I saw it ruffle Svip’s mane.  And of a sudden, now that my senses were not all honed to immediate combat, I noticed something else.

            The numbness and cold had gained pace upon me, far more swiftly than I cared to admit.  While all my being was centred on my challenge to the Ringwraith, I had been able to hurl this lesser peril from my mind.  But now it intruded on my senses once more, whispering of cold and emptiness that seemed to creep on me from the very depths of my bones.

            On an impulse I yanked my leathern gauntlet from my left hand, and held out my hand to try if the breath of the wind would have any impact upon it.

            It did not.  I yet felt the wind on my face, but my hand felt nothing.  Neither the wind, nor its own trembling, that I saw in my fingers when I held my hand out before me.

I pulled on the gauntlet again. Experimentally I reached over and squeezed my left shoulder, then tried again at various points down my arm. 

I swore under my breath.  I had some sensation still, thus far, down to just above the elbow.  But not only was my lower arm dead to all feeling, my right hand with which I’d conducted the experiment had felt nothing at all. 

It was an eerie experience, to feel the grasp of my fingers about my shoulder, but for those fingers themselves to be as void of sensation as though they did not exist.

It doesn’t matter, I repeated to myself.  I had, I argued, been able to function perfectly well at the Causeway Forts, despite not being able to feel any of my limbs.  I would just have to do so again.

Of course, I told myself ruefully, my brother would have a sharp answer for me if he heard that statement.  And, if I were honest with myself, he would be entirely right. 

Much though I wished to believe that this disability meant nothing to me, I had not forgotten the nightmare ride from the Forts to the Harlond, with unconsciousness welling up to claim me and my body as dead to feeling as though I were truly a ghost.

Svip turned his head, struggling to get a good look at me over his shoulder.  He might not have been able to see all that I was doing, but he knew well enough what my actions meant.

“Are you all right?” he demanded.

“I’m fine,” I said.  I took a swig from my canteen, and frowned over the plain.

The rip in the clouds was spreading, daylight advancing north toward us in the entourage of the wind.  Most of the field was yet in shadow, but I could see well enough the press of the foe in many places south along the City wall.  The rout of their comrades at the Gate had not halted them.  Their siege engines rolled uncomfortably near the wall, as our archers, spread far too thinly, struggled to keep pace against too many targets at once.  From the Harlond gate I saw advancing upon us long columns of cavalry and footsoldiers, the black and scarlet Serpent Banner of Harad fluttering at their head.

I glanced over my shoulder, seeking some concept of what might be passing there.  North of the Road, the curve of the wall frustrated my efforts at discerning the battle’s course.  Fighting that I could not see carried clearly to my ears.  I heard the clash of arms, the screams of mûmakil and the cries of horses and Men.  As I listened, I thought that I heard as well the strains of wild, warlike song, intertwined with the din of combat. 

The Rohirrim, I thought.  None other that I could think of were like to break into song in the very midst of battle.

The Men of Harad must have become aware of the Rohirrim’s presence to the north of the Road, for as I gazed over the field lying mottled in sunlight and shadow, I saw their cavalry and the Serpent Banner turn north, breaking off from their infantry who still marched toward our wall.

 Svip’s attention, meanwhile, had remained firmly focused upon the state of my health.  “You should get back to the River,” he advised me.

“I know I should,” I sighed.  “And I know there are a good many thousands of the enemy between us and the shore.”

“Well, but you’ve got to get there,” my friend snapped.  “What are you going to do about it?”

I had to chuckle at his nagging tone of voice.  I restrained myself from joking that Svip would make somebody a fine wife someday, for it would be far too much bother to explain the joke to him.

“Patience, Svip,” I counseled, suddenly feeling cheerful again.  “We will get there.  But we’ll need to bring some of our Men along with us.”

While Svip and I debated my health, my countrymen behind the Gate were not sitting idle. 

Captain Cirion shouted, “Men on the Gate, cease fire!”  And I heard my father’s yell of command, “Open the Gate!”

 We turned, holding our ground by the sally port while the Great Gate of Minas Tirith swung ponderously open beside us.

Before even the Gate was fully opened, a rider surged forth between the doors of iron.  As they galloped past us, Mithrandir and Shadowfax seemed living embodiments of the light that was chasing the darkness from Anduin’s shores.  The Wizard held one arm outstretched, and white fire seemed to spring from his upraised hand.

Close behind Wizard and Meara sprang forth the patchwork collection of horsemen that made up the Cavalry of Gondor.  I saw the blue-and-silver-clad Knights of Dol Amroth, on their grey steeds, a handful of green-clad horsemen riding beneath the banner of Pinnath Gelin, and a scattering of riders of different liveries and banners, the banners of Lossarnach and Anfalas among them. 

No riders of Minas Tirith itself did I see in that first charge against our fleeing enemy.  But as the Gate swung open to its furthest extent, my father’s household cavalry rode forth at a more measured pace, the Steward himself at their head. 

To his left rode his standard bearer, the banner of the White Tree proudly held aloft.  At the Steward’s right rode Húrin of the Keys, and peeking around him with one arm clutching to Húrin’s waist I saw Master Peregrin Took. 

Relief rushed my heart at seeing them safe and sound.  But my father did not allow time for any merry meetings. 

He rode up to us, while the others held back, awaiting his command.  As my father’s steed drew near, the animal shied and snorted in alarm at Svip’s unfamiliar scent.

Mouth narrowing in impatience, the Steward tightened the rein.  Svip took a step backward, and the other horse made no further protest, though I thought that it still eyed the shape-changer with a high degree of wariness.

“Boromir,” my father greeted me briskly, as though his despair in the night we had just passed had never been.  “Will you and the Lord Svip ride forth with us?”

The thought came to me that if we did, we were like to send all the other horses falling over each other in panic.  There were, besides, many fighting Men yet upon Minas Tirith’s walls, who could play their role in this day’s fighting despite the lack of horses to bear them to the field.   And I thought that I saw as well a way of answering my present difficulty – or at the least of inducing Svip to cease nagging me.

“If it pleases you, My Lord,” I said, “I will muster such infantry as may be sent forth without unduly weakening the defence of the City.  We will clear the foe from under the southern stretches of our wall, and re-take the Harlond, that they may not use it as a haven against us.”

My father considered for a moment, then nodded.  “Very well,” he said.  “I will join you at the Harlond when the field is ours.”

With no further delay, he turned to his waiting Men.  He drew his sword and shouted, “Forward!  For Gondor!”

The cavalry thundered past us, warhorses leaping over the corpses of the foe.  A few of the horses seemed to waver in their pace as they passed too near to Svip, and my friend took another few steps away from the column. 

Too late I realised that I might have made another attempt to dissuade my father from taking Pippin into battle with him.  He might have been more amenable to my request, now that he seemed no longer gripped by his deathly despair.  Now I had lost that chance, and I must hold to the hope that Húrin of the Keys would bring both the Hobbit and himself through this day in safety. 

I nearly groaned at the memory of Pippin’s pallid face poking around from behind Lord Húrin’s back, and the gleaming sword of the Barrow-downs that my small friend brandished unsheathed in his hand. 

Perhaps, I told myself bitterly, that ancient sword held some power to keep Pippin safe.  I could only hope that it would guard him better than I had done.

The last of my father’s cavalry swept past us, and I said to my trusty steed, “Come on, Svip.  Let us go back inside.”

Obediently Svip trotted into the Court of the Gate.  Men hastened to heave the massive Gate shut behind us.  I leapt down from Svip’s back, striving once more to remain undisturbed by the sensation that my feet had not hit the ground – or indeed, that my feet did not exist.

Sunlight had reached the buildings and walls of the White City.  In the clear morning light, fingers of black smoke stretched upward, thickest and most numerous to northwest in the First Circle.  The wind, that had seemed so welcome to me moments before, seemed now another enemy.  If that wind did not lessen, it might send the fires spreading to the Second Circle, performing the task that Sauron’s legions had not yet managed to accomplish.

I bellowed at the top of my lungs, “Orderlies!  To me!”

The nearest Orderlies ran to my side and saluted.  Manfully they sought to keep their eyes on me, and not to turn and stare as Svip, beside me, changed back from horse form into his small green self.

I commanded, “Relay my order to all infantry commanders upon the inner walls.  Three of every four Men now guarding the Third through Sixth walls are to be sent here to me.  Let them assemble by companies, with all practicable speed.  We are going to re-take the Pelennor.”  As the Orderlies saluted again, I singled out one of them and continued to him, “Get you to the commanders on the Second wall.  Have them send one third of their Men to reinforce the First wall, at any point where the defence may be over-taxed.  Another third is to repair to the First Level, seek out any fires that burn here and do what they may to aid in the fire-fighters’ efforts.”

The young Men raced about their tasks, and I turned to see Svip looking up at me with bright-eyed eagerness.  I swore internally at the thought that he must expect me to ride him into battle. 

His eager gaze was far removed from the pallid apprehension I had seen on the face of Pippin, but the dread I felt for the two of them was the same. 

They should not be here, I thought.  It was friendship, not any ties of blood or nation, that propelled Pippin and Svip into battle this day.  And was it not my duty as their friend to keep them safe, to prevent their generous hearts from hurling them again into the teeth of death?

I had signally failed to accomplish that for Pippin.  Perhaps I still had a chance of it, with Svip.

 “Svip,” I began, “you don’t have to go out there again.  It will be a long and difficult day, and you have not trained to bear an armed warrior through hours of combat.  You’ve done already far more than should ever have been asked of you.  I will fight with a lighter heart if I do not need to fear for you – ”

Svip had clenched his fists as I spoke, and was glaring at me in outrage.  “You can’t be thinking of taking another horse out there!” he snapped.  “I won’t let you!”

“The other horses have been years in training for battle.  They are used to enduring the strain of a warrior’s weight for hours on end, you are not – ”

“Can the other horses understand everything you say to them?” Svip shot back.  “Do the other horses know they need to get you back to the River, or you’ll die?  You’re the one who needs protecting, not me!  I’m not the one who can’t feel his hands because he’s been too long away from the River!”

I stared at him, torn between groaning and laughter.  “Svip,” I tried again, “you’ve been too long away from the River too; you shouldn’t try to keep up the shape-changing for long.  It’s just too hard on you – ”

“If I’ve been too long away from the River,” he argued, “it’s all the more reason why I have to go with you. You can’t be thinking of having me go to the River in this shape; I’d scare any other horse too badly if you had me ride on one.  There’s no other way.  I’ve got to go as a horse, and I’m going with you, that’s all there is to it.”

“My Lord Boromir!”

The voice that called out was Captain Cirion’s, from atop the Gate.  As I looked up, he called again, “Sir, if you have the time to spare, I think that you should see this.”  An unaccustomed quaver sounded in the Captain’s voice, telling that the sight he looked upon was more remarkable to him than the ordinary courses of battle.

“I am on my way,” I shouted.  I sped along the street toward the stairs, Svip scrambling to keep pace at my side.

We passed two townsmen carrying a wounded comrade upon a stretcher between them, treading the long path to the Houses of Healing far above us.  The injured Man’s clothing and one half of his face were blackened by fire.  As I started at a run up the stairs, I offered up a brief mental prayer for the wind to cease before it spread the fires beyond our second wall.  

My diminutive friend was far from giving up on our argument.  Bounding along at my heel, he shouted, “I’m going with you, aren’t I?  You won’t try to go into battle without me?”

I stopped halfway up the steps and turned back to glower at him.  Svip pulled himself to a halt just short of running into my legs, but he stared bravely up at me, my glower seeming to have no effect on him whatever.

The thought of a sudden came to me that I had been wrong the day before, when I had thought ill of Frodo for not stopping Pippin and Merry from going into danger with him.  If the two young Hobbits were but half as persistent as Svip, there had likely been no way upon Middle Earth that Frodo could have eluded them.

“Svip,” I said grimly, “I need you to take time before speaking now, and answer me in honesty.  If I do ride you into battle, will you be able to withstand a day or more of combat?  Is your back strong enough to carry me all those hours, without peril to you?  Can you swear to me by our friendship that we will not be putting both of us at greater risk if I do as you desire?”

For some moments Svip held my gaze.  Then he answered simply, “Yes.  I swear it.”

I sighed and wondered if I would be more true to our friendship to have him bound hand and foot and leave him in the City under guard.  But like as not he would just change shape and break his bonds, or if I had him chained, he’d find some way of talking his guards into setting him free.

“Very well,” I said.  “We will go into battle together.”

As a broad grin spread across my comrade’s face, there came a sudden, dreadful cry, piercing the noise of battle.  I thought that it might have come from the same beast of the air that had borne the Nazgûl from amongst us.  But if so, its cry was altered indeed, sounding now in desperation and anguish. 

Another voice sounded forth before the first cry had faded.  Words that I could not grasp were screamed out in venom-filled hatred.  Now I was certain that the first screech had come from the Ringwraith’s hellish steed, for there was no doubting that the second voice was that of the Black Captain himself.

I turned and again ran up the stairs. 

As I reached the wall, a crash rent the air as of thunder nigh upon us.  Svip and I were running to the parapet, when a new scream succeeded that crash. 

I have not heard its like before or since, and glad I am of that.  In malice and fear and despair, stabbing like a spear of ice to the depths of my soul, it wailed on for what seemed a moment stretched into eternity.

At last the wailing faded, swallowed in the voice of the wind.  It was another moment before I could move or think, or hear the noise of battle over the echoes of the thin, bodiless scream that still echoed in my mind.

“Boromir?” Svip called sharply from beside me, his voice startling me into reality.  “Boromir!”

I blinked and smiled faintly down on him.  Still feeling more than half in some nightmare, I walked to the parapet, where Captain Cirion stood eyeing me as though he feared I might vanish in the wake of that scream.

Svip scurried along to hop onto his firing platform.  Gripping the embrasure and wishing that my hands would feel any hint of the stone wall in their grasp, I stared at the battlefield before us.

Again I had to blink, and to sternly command my brain to take in what my eyes relayed. 

The darkness that had held us for so long was at last truly vanished.  Pure blue sky shone above fields that seemed impossibly green and bright after near a week of shadow.  New clouds advanced on us from the south, but they were honest rain clouds, shafts of sunlight gleaming to either side of a grey curtain of rain.

Forcibly I compelled myself to heed the events passing upon the field.

Scarce a mile from us upon the City Road, I saw my father’s cavalry, the White Tree banner snapping in the swelling breeze.  My father’s horsemen were not engaged in combat, but had pulled to a halt with their line a few paces from a cluster of fallen bodies, Men and horses that lay scattered unmoving across the Road. 

I saw a few dismounted Men standing amid the fallen.  The distance was too great for me to discern the identity of most, but I thought that I could make out upon a few of them the blue and silver of Dol Amroth, and on one, the glowing white robe of Mithrandir.

Dread gripped me as I speculated who might lie among the fallen, that Mithrandir, my uncle’s Knights, and the horsemen of Minas Tirith should stop to attend them.  I forced myself to turn my gaze from that tableau, to seek what other sights the morning’s sun would reveal.

In the minutes since last I had gazed upon the field, destruction it seemed had overtaken our foemen’s cavalry of Harad.  I could see no sign of their black and crimson banner.  Instead I saw that which sent a jolt of elation through my foreboding thoughts.  The banner of Rohan, its white horse blazoned upon a field of green, gleamed at the forefront of a charge of horsemen, cleaving their way south toward the Harlond through a tangled rout of horses and Men.

South against the City wall, the enemy’s siege engines yet pressed close, though our archers and catapults still fired in numbers sufficient to hold them from our battlements.

I turned to scan the land north along the wall.  There another detachment of siege engines and mûmakil was encircled by a great mass of horsemen, among them some of Dol Amroth’s Knights, and others that I supposed to be more of the Riders of Rohan.  Spears and arrows rained mercilessly upon the mûmakil and their handlers, for the moment holding them more or less at bay.  But wherever one of the mûmakil charged at the riders, or a horseman ventured too close to the gigantic beasts, the horses scattered in panic, and Men and steeds were trampled under the monsters’ feet.

We might, I told myself, have greater fortune sending infantry against the mûmakil, for at least then the horses’ terror would not be another foe arrayed against us.  Few Men, perhaps, would advance cheerfully against those monstrosities, but I had more faith in Men’s strength to face such horrors than in that of any horse – except, needless to say, for Svip.

Glancing down to the courtyard, I saw that perhaps a hundred of our Men had gathered thus far, with another company approaching, the street vanishing in a river of helmets and spears. 

Wait, I ordered myself.  They have not had time yet to assemble, they will be here soon, you must simply wait. 

There was nothing else to be done, but yet I longed to go racing onto the field with what few Men had now assembled, rather than wait an instant longer before going to our comrades’ aid.

Fighting back my impatience, I turned to Captain Cirion.  “What did you see?” I asked him.  “Did you see what transpired when we heard those screams?”

“Aye, My Lord,” he said with a grimace, “though I cannot say I know what it is that I saw.”  For a moment the Ranger frowned in thought.  Then slowly he continued, “The Riders of Rohan charged against the horsemen of the Haradrim, and they met upon the Road.  The Riders did great slaughter, and Harad’s vanguard and their banner were thrown down.  Then – ”

He paused and shook his head, then went on once more.  “Then the sky went black above the fighting, and a great cloud seemed to descend upon them.  And the cloud became that – that thing that bore the Black Captain from the Gate, with the Captain still upon its back.  The foremost of the Riders of Rohan were stricken to earth, and then I saw one of them, unhorsed, stand alone facing the Black Captain and the beast.  What followed I do not know that I clearly saw, for each time the Black Captain moved it was as though a cloud moved before my sight.  But I think that I saw the lone Rider strike down the beast, cleaving its neck in twain.  And the Captain rose up from the wreck of his mount … and then I saw the Rider swing his sword at the darkness.  And then there came that sound.  And the darkness was gone.”

“What became of the Rider?” I asked eagerly.  “What followed then?”

Cirion cast me a quizzical look.  “I cannot rightly say what followed then, My Lord.  I was then staring at you, for you looked as though you would be struck down by that sound.  Are you well, sir?”

I shrugged.  “I am well enough,” I said.

He nodded doubtfully.  “Aye, My Lord.  When next I looked on the field, more Riders of Rohan were approaching the Road from the north.  They halted a few moments where the others had been stricken down, then the leaders of their column remounted and they drove south against the footmen of the Haradrim.  And a moment later the horsemen of the Lord your father, who had been engaged against the remnants of the detachment that attacked the Gate, reached the place where the Rider had hewed down the darkness.  That is all, My Lord.”

“Look!” Svip piped up.  “Some of them are coming back.”  As Cirion and I both turned to see, he went on, “It’s some of your uncle’s Knights, and – ”

“And Mithrandir,” I whispered.  The horsemen, five in number, approached at a gentle canter, taking time to detour around the corpses in their path rather than climbing over them. 

As I frowned, striving to see them more clearly, I thought that I glimpsed some small, darker shape set before Mithrandir upon Shadowfax’s back.  At the very moment that I saw that, Captain Cirion murmured, “One of the Knights, My Lord.  He bears a wounded Man before him.”

I glanced from the Wizard to the Knight riding beside him, and saw that indeed his horse was double-burdened as well, the foremost figure slumped back against the Knight in unconsciousness or death.

If I remained on the wall speculating who these Men might be, I thought it would drive me to madness.  I shouted to the guards at the Gate, “Ho there, below!  Open one door of the Gate!”  Turning to Svip, I said, “Come on.  We will ride out to meet them.”

Once again Svip and I raced down the stairs.  My friend the water being must have been as anxious as I to learn the riders’ identity, for the instant his feet hit the street’s cobbles he surged upward into his horse form.  A company of Morthond’s archers approaching along the street halted in astonishment, their commander’s horse rearing and neighing its complaints as I pulled myself up to Svip’s back. 

The commander was swift to bring his steed under control.  Svip and I turned to the Men of Morthond to apologise, and I recognised their officer as Lord Duinhir of Morthond himself.

“My apologies, My Lord,” I called.  “Horses seem to find Svip a little unnerving.”

“So I see, My Lord,” he answered dryly.  “Have you commands for us, Lord Boromir?”

“Remain in the Court of the Gate until the muster is complete.  I will return post-haste.  We march south to clear the enemy from against our wall.”

“Good,” said Lord Duinhir, with a grin.  “We were starting to get bored.”

I tossed Duinhir a salute and said to my comrade, “All right, Svip, let us go.”

As we passed beneath the Gate and Svip commenced hurrying around and over the mounds of Orc and troll corpses, I struggled again to keep my mind free from its useless speculations.  We were a quarter-mile perhaps from the Gate, and the five horsemen were near enough to us that their identities would soon be seen, when the rain from the south reached the City Road.  It hit us in a great gust of wind, seeming to smell of the ocean dashing its waves against the Belfalas shore.

Grey mist swirled about us, blown from the bosom of Anduin.  Dark though were my thoughts, I could not help but smile as the cold raindrops hit my upturned face. 

I might have little or no feeling left to me in my limbs, but my face could still feel the rain. 

A thought hit me with the rain: If this rain keeps up, it may quench the fires in the City.

Valar, I prayed, let not the rain stop until all the fires are dead!

Svip hesitated by the huge mass of a fallen troll, looking about for the best route of picking his way around it.  “Let us wait here, Svip,” I told him.  “They are almost upon us.”

The first of the Knights rode out of the mist, around the splayed mountain-troll.  The Knight kept his head lowered against the rain, and his cloak pulled up to shelter as much as possible the limp figure leaning against him. 

The horse snorted nervously as its rider drew in rein a few feet from us.  Svip took his obligatory few steps back, to give the other horse a chance to calm itself.

I called, “Hail, My Lord Knight.  Who is it that you bear?”

And then I stared in astonishment.  I heard a startled gasp that I suppose I must have made myself, for Svip turned his head slightly to me and whispered, “Who is it?”

The unconscious warrior that the Knight supported might have been a young Man of Rohan, for a slender form and long golden hair are fairly usual attributes among the youths of that nation.  But I recognised the pallid face framed by that bright cascade of gold. 

It was the face of the Lady Éowyn Daughter of Éomund, cousin to my late wife and adoptive daughter to Rohan’s King.

            I would have thought that my eyes and the rain played mad tricks upon me, but the Knight called back wearily, “Hail, My Lord Boromir.  I bear the Lady Éowyn of Rohan, wounded in combat.  The Lord your father gave orders that she be carried to the Houses of Healing with all possible haste.”

            “Of course,” I said, swallowing my amazement.  “Ride on, Sir Knight.  You may use my authority as well as my father’s, to secure any aid you may require in the City.  Say from me to the Chief Healer that the Lady is to be given his immediate attention.”

            “Yes, My Lord,” the Knight said.  He shifted to pull his cloak tighter about the unconscious woman, and rode on.  As they passed us I was yet staring at her pale, rain-drenched face, asking myself again if I were dreaming or mad.

            “Who is she?” Svip whispered to me.

            “My wife’s cousin,” I answered blankly.  Recalling Svip’s unfamiliarity with the family structures of Men, I blinked and tore my eyes from the Knight’s departing back.  “My wife’s father’s sister’s daughter,” I endeavoured to explain, though I am sure that explanation likely muddied the waters further.

            We had no more occasion then to discuss the complexities of family, for the next horseman was approaching, his white robes gleaming like a beacon through the mist.

              “Hail, Lord Boromir,” came the voice of Mithrandir.  I thought that his voice held more grief and weariness than I could remember ever hearing from him.  But before I could ask what grieved him, another familiar voice cried out gladly, “Boromir!”

            They rode to us from the curtain of rain.  And I have no shame in admitting that a tear or two sprang to join the rain as it coursed down my face.

            Pippin rode before Mithrandir against Shadowfax’s neck, but not Pippin alone.  The Wizard’s arm encircled two drenched Hobbits, Peregrin Took and Meriadoc Brandybuck.

            Merry looked as pale as had the Lady Éowyn, and only barely more conscious than she.  His head was slumped against Pippin’s shoulder, and he blinked like an owl in sunlight as Pippin shook him gently and whispered, “See, Merry, see!  I told you so.”

            Merry’s eyes widened as they gradually fixed on me.  Mithrandir spoke quietly, “It is all right to come closer, Master Svip.  Shadowfax will have no fear of you.”

            Svip turned his head in question, and I nodded and stroked his mane.  “It will be all right, Svip,” I repeated.

            He took a few gingerly steps toward the Meara, who held his ground and eyed Svip in what seemed a gaze of curiosity.  The three other Knights of Dol Amroth rode past us following their comrade and the lady, each Man nodding or bowing to me as he passed.

Slowly Merry reached out his hand to me.  I closed my hand about his, wishing with all my heart that I could feel it.

            A faint smile touched Merry’s face as he blinked at me through the rain.

            “Boromir,” he murmured.  “Pippin told me … he said that … but I didn’t … I couldn’t …”

            Merry looked down at our hands, then up again to my face.  He whispered then, “I’m glad.”

            “As am I, Merry,” I said, forcing the words past the lump in my throat.  As carefully as I could, I extracted my hand from his, fearful that in my hand’s lack of feeling I would grip the Hobbit’s hand more tightly than I intended.    

Merry’s head fell back against Pippin’s shoulder.  As Pippin tightened his arms about his cousin, I could not stop myself from exclaiming, “You look terrible, Merry, are you wounded?”

“Not me,” he breathed, in a voice that began to wander into tones of dreaming or delirium.  “But Éowyn … Éowyn …”

“The lady and Merry killed the Black Rider!” Pippin put in excitedly.

Merry shook his head slowly.  “I didn’t kill him,” he insisted.  “Éowyn did.”

“Well, you wounded him, anyway,” said Pippin.  “You told me you did.”

These intelligences would have been amazing enough even without Merry’s participation in the Ringwraith’s slaying.  Several hundred questions seemed falling over themselves into my mind. 

“How came the Lady Éowyn here?” I asked, turning to Mithrandir.  “I cannot think that Théoden King would give her permission to ride with the Éored into battle – ”

The Wizard opened his mouth to reply, but Merry burst out with a sudden surge of strength, “She did not wait for permission!  She rode with the army, disguised.  She let me ride with her when the King would have left me behind.  The King never knew she was here, even – even at the end …”

Merry’s voice faltered and sank to silence.  Mithrandir spoke, his quiet tones heavy with grief, “Théoden King has been slain.” 

I stared.  The empty cold that I felt in my limbs seemed to stab at my heart. 

“That is ill news indeed,” I managed to speak at last.  “How did he die?”

“He did great deeds of valour and threw down the King of the Haradrim,” the Wizard answered.  “But he fell himself to the Nazgûl’s assault.  I was too late to save him – by a few moments too late.”

I found myself cast in the unexpected role of attempting to comfort the Wizard.  Awkwardly I said, “If it was the Lord Théoden’s fate to fall on this day, Mithrandir, not even you could have prevented it.”

            Grimly, he nodded.

            I sought about for some other words of comfort, but found none.  “What arrangements have been made for the King’s body?” I inquired.

            “Several of his household follow us, bearing him to the City.  The Lord Denethor ordered that the body of Théoden King be laid in state in the House of the Stewards.”  Seeming to pull himself out from bitter reflections, Mithrandir glanced down at his young Hobbit charges.  The ghost of a smile touched his face as he said, “And we should not dally much longer in talk, if we are to tend the hurts of the King’s defender who has faced down the Nazgûl and yet lives.”

            Meriadoc gave a weak little snort of a laugh.  “Faced him down?” he murmured.  “I couldn’t even look at him.”

            “No more could Rohan’s greatest warriors have looked upon him.  But your love for your Lord gave you the courage that size and strength of arms could not.”  The Wizard gently smiled at Merry and went on, “You have well repaid my trust.  If Elrond had not yielded to me, you would not have set out from Rivendell, and then far more grievous would the evils of this day have been.” 

            Mithrandir looked up from our small comrades-in-arms.  His voice turning business-like once more, he said, “I will get Master Meriadoc to the Houses of Healing, and do what I may to aid him and the Lady Éowyn.  Lord Boromir, I ask that you keep a sharp lookout for the lady’s brother – he who is now Éomer King.  He saw her fallen body beside that of their uncle, and he was at the foe again in an ecstasy of grief before any had time to tell him that his sister was not slain.  I much fear that young idiot may get himself killed in the transports of his despair.  The Rohirrim should not have to bear the loss of two kings in one day.”

            I could not help but smile at that, reflecting that Mithrandir was probably right in his summation of Éomer’s peril.  The Men of Rohan are people of extremes.  It would be just like Cousin Éomer to throw down his life in a sheer excess of misery.

            “I will look out for him,” I promised.  “I will tell him that his sister lives, at the first opportunity.”   

            I glanced down to the Hobbits, and met the worried gaze of Pippin.  Merry’s attention had drifted from us.  His head rested on Pippin’s shoulder, and his eyes appeared focused on some distant scene that none of the rest of us could see.

            “Let us make haste for the City,” I said.  “We are delaying too long.”

            We set out side by side, Shadowfax holding his gait to an easy trot to avoid unduly jostling Merry, and Svip regulating his pace by that of the Meara.  Several times I saw Svip and Shadowfax glance at each other, and I had to smile at my speculations of what both Meara and shape-shifter might think of the other.  But darker questions took precedence over such musings.

            Merry was all but unconscious.  His eyelids would flutter open when Pippin shook him or spoke his name, only to droop shut again almost at once. 

Pippin asked, his voice going high with fear, “What is the matter with him, Gandalf?”

            “He is falling under the Nazgûls’ shadow,” the Wizard answered.  “As have so many others … the Lady Éowyn among them.”

            “And Faramir,” the Hobbit added, speaking for my own thoughts as he glanced up at me in apprehension and sympathy.  “But the lady and Merry killed the Black Rider.  Shouldn’t that make the shadow go away from them?”

            “I wish that were so, Master Peregrin,” Mithrandir said gravely.  “Alas, the destruction of one of their company – even though he be their chief – is not enough to banish that darkness.”

            “Is there aught that you can do for them, Mithrandir?” I asked, looking from Merry’s ashen visage to Pippin’s, and trying to silence the voice of despair in my mind telling me that Faramir and Merry and all the rest of them were lost to us.

            The Wizard’s sorrowful reply did not bring much comfort.  “I will do everything that I can,” he said.  “I would counsel you not to despair, my friends.  But I fear neither can I give you much of hope.”

            “Well, if anyone can help them, you can,” Pippin said stoutly.  “Isn’t that right, Boromir?”

            “Yes,” I agreed, forcing a smile for our stalwart young comrade.  “Yes, that is right.”

            We reached the City without event.  Svip and I halted in the Court of the Gate, while Mithrandir and his charges rode onward to the Houses of Healing – Pippin leaving me with the determined parting injunction, “They will be all right, Boromir, you’ll see.”

            Not for the first time, I found myself wishing that I could see the world through the eyes of a Hobbit.

            Dismounting from Svip where we had paused just within the Gate, I commented to him, “We must be almost all assembled.  I’ll speak with the commanders; we should be setting out soon after that.”  Meeting the gaze of my horse-shaped friend, I made one last desultory attempt at persuading him. “You still do not have to go out there, Svip, if you don’t feel that – ”

            “I’m going,” declared the horse, in decidedly un-amused tones.

            “I’m sorry,” I sighed.  “All right.  You’re going.”

            Svip went on, with more of his usual eagerness, “Is there anything I can do while we’re waiting?”

            I considered a moment, then said, “Yes.  If you don’t mind, you can go refill our canteens.  Have a good long drink yourself before we set out.  I can guarantee you’re going to need it.”

            My friend paused; thinking, I have no doubt, of the room in the Tower of the Gate that held our barrel of River water and the heads of our fallen comrades.  For a moment I regretted asking it of him.  But I told myself, if he planned to face the carnage of a battlefield, he had best be able to endure worse than mere proximity to our warrior’s severed heads.

            Svip nodded decisively.  An instant later he had shrunk back to his own small form.  As I unfastened my canteen and held it out to him, I saw that he was eyeing my hand, on the watch for its telltale trembling.   Belligerently he voiced his usual demand: “Are you all right?”

            “I’m fine, Svip,” I gave my usual reply. 

This time that reply was not enough for him.  “If I’m going to carry you into battle,” he argued, “I’ll need to know when you’ve got too weak and I have to get you to safety – ”

            I cut in, “You will know it when I fall off your back.  There is no question of getting me to safety.  I will reach the River at the head of our troops, or I will die.”              Svip glowered darkly and grabbed my canteen from my hand.  As he stomped away, I thought I heard him mutter, “Men!”

            Boromir, I chided myself, there was no need at all for that remark.  I nearly called out to Svip in apology.  But watching him stalk off, with his anger clear to be seen in every move, I argued that it would be best to wait ’till both of us were in better humour. 

Sighing, I took off my helm and raked a hand through my hair.  Neither of those actions did I feel.

            Yet again it struck me how very like were my arguments with Svip, to those in which I had so often engaged with my brother.  And with that thought came the inescapable realisation that Faramir and I might never share such an argument again.

            There was another point in which this argument matched my many arguments with Faramir.  Svip was entirely in the right.          

            I glanced to the sky, and at the raindrops that I saw but could no longer feel.

Once more I donned my helmet, then I turned and strode into the courtyard.  As I called out for the commanders of our assembled troops to report, I thought, I really do have to apologise to Svip. 

In that moment I asked myself if I were mad to even contemplate leading our Men into battle. 

I would have no respect for a commander who cared so little for his Men’s fate that he rode to combat at their head while he was feverish or drunk.  How was it different what I was doing, to think that I could lead them without disaster when I felt nothing but vague, disembodied cold?

I met the gaze of our commanders, and I prayed for the steadiness to maintain the fiction that I was yet myself.

            “Gentlemen,” I addressed them, “it is time for us to play our role in our country’s battle.  Our task is to clear the foe from against our wall, from the Gate south to Mindolluin.  We then are to march east and re-take the Harlond.”  As smiles of pride and anticipation touched the commanders’ face, I continued.  “Many of you I know.  Some I do not.  Give me your names, your fiefdoms, and the numbers you have now under your command.”

            I listened to the muster-roll of our troops, and I fought to still the whispers of fear in my thoughts.          

            Among those assembled were some two hundred Men of our regular forces, their ranks a combination of City Guards, soldiers from the Rammas forts, and troops from the Anórien marches.  Around a hundred, in addition, were there of our Anórien Rangers, Faramir’s Men commanded in his absence by Lieutenant Anborn. 

The largest single force present was that of Morthond, near four hundred of them under the command of Lord Duinhir and his sons.

            Upon all of these, I knew we could rely.  There would be more question of the others: not of their courage, for of that I had no doubt, but of the ease and speed with which they might be unified into one larger fighting force.  The contrast was plain to see between the troops with actual training, and those militias pulled together from out of the fields and hills and fishing fleets of the kingdom.

            Three hundreds were there of the Men of Ringló Vale, commanded by Dervorin Son of Lord Kirilhir.  The Men of Ringló, I knew, had long years’ experience fighting beside Dol Amroth’s troops against the pirates who sought to establish footholds in the Haven of Cobas and along the coast.  Dervorin himself was scarce out of the schoolroom, and he had a reputation for hot-headedness to boot.  But there was hope that he and his Men would perform well, provided that Dervorin could compel himself not to go running about attempting to perform individual deeds of heroism.      

Of the Men of Pinnath Gelin, two hundreds and fifty were mustered in the Courtyard, and of Lossarnach, one hundred and fifty.  Both of these lands, I knew, boasted warriors of experience and skill.  But I was not best pleased to find both groups commanded by secondary lords of their people, their own Lords Forlong and Hirluin and their few mounted warriors having ridden forth among my father’s cavalry. 

These Men would fight better, I thought, with their own Lords at their head.  But yet, I told myself, they should acquit themselves well.  I would do better to cease my worrying upon the matter.

            Nigh two hundreds were there of the Men of Anfalas, under the command of Golasgil their Lord.  They were Men doughty and hardy, but the most of them were hunters and herdsmen, not soldiers.   The majority were equipped with weaponry that I knew to have come from the City’s own stockpiles, and I could only hope that they had at least some experience in those weapons’ use.  In like case were the hundred or so fishermen of the Ethir, who had rallied to Minas Tirith’s aid without even any lord to lead them forth.  They too had been armed largely with weapons from the City’s armouries, although a few retained their fishing spears in addition to the swords and axes they’d received since their arrival in the White City.

            The smallest force was that of Lamedon, fifty or so Hillmen armed with their own distinctive bone-hilted daggers and with weapons from the City armouries.  Like the fisherfolk of Ethir, they had come forth with no captain at their head.  I smiled to see their grim-faced determination and their defiant stances.  I thought that they were like to fight as well as any; if for no other reason, then to prove that Lamedon’s Men could hold their own beside the veteran warriors of Morthond and of Minas Tirith.

            Our plans were swiftly made.  I divided our forces in two: the troops of Morthond, Lamedon, Lossarnach and Pinnath Gelin to fight under the command of Lord Duinhir of Morthond, and our regular troops, the Anórien Rangers, and the Men of Ringló, Ethir and Anfalas to fight under mine.  We would move south, Duinhir’s force encountering first each enemy column that yet attempted to breach our wall.  My troops would then drive them east, finishing them off while Duinhir’s Men regrouped from each assault.

            Svip returned as we neared the end of our council, and stood silently beside me, my canteen clutched to his chest.  His gaze was still angry as I glanced down to meet it, and I promised myself that I would give him a lengthy apology as soon as we were out of the hearing of others. 

            And there was more that I needed to do besides merely apologising.

            As the commanders bowed and began to return to their troops, I called Lieutenant Anborn of the Rangers to me.

            “Anborn,” I said quietly, “I have a particular command for you, one of vital importance.  You know of the … limitations placed upon me by the manner of my return from the dead?”

            Anborn grimaced slightly, but he kept his voice undismayed.  “I have heard something of it, My Lord.”

            “I cannot remain long away from the Anduin, without ill effects.  Thus far I believe I am able to function fully,” this I said with a glance down at Svip, “but that may not remain the case throughout the battle ahead.  It is possible, even probable that I may begin to lose consciousness.  You have a horse available to you?” I asked the Ranger.

            “I have, My Lord.”

            “I ask that you remain near me, and join Svip in the task of keeping an eye on me.  If it becomes clear that I am no longer fit to command, you are to relieve me and take command of our force yourself.” 

I smiled at the unhappy look that spread over Anborn’s face.  “I know it may sound a daunting mission to convince me that I must relinquish command.  But I promise you, in such a case I will be too weakened by far for me to contest your decision.”

            “Very well, My Lord,” the Lieutenant said, still looking far from delighted at the responsibility that I had handed him.  He hesitated, then he asked, “Have you any word, My Lord, of how Lord Faramir does today?”

            I wished that I could have better news for him.  “There was no change, the last I heard,” I answered.  “He was still unconscious, and still speaking in his sleep.”

            Anborn nodded.  “My Lord …” he began awkwardly, then he continued in a rush.  “I am more gladdened than I can tell you, by your safe return.  The news of your loss was more bitter to Lord Faramir than any wound.  I hope – My Lord, I pray that I may live to see the day when Denethor’s Sons again ride forth together against the foes of Gondor.”

            “I thank you, Anborn,” I told him, clasping his shoulder.  “It is my prayer as well.”

            The troops under Duinhir of Morthond moved out first through the Great Gate.  As we followed, I at last essayed to make my apologies to Svip, back in his horse form and maintaining an angry silence beneath me.

            “I am sorry, Svip,” I said.  “You were right, you know.”

            He kept silent some moments more before answering.  “Of course I was right.”

            “If it makes any difference, it is true what I said to Anborn.  I do believe, truly, that I can still function, for now.  I cannot feel anything, but I do not think that my mind is yet affected.  I can yet see and hear … and I’m not yet hearing any voices inside my head.”

            Svip snorted grudgingly.  “That’s something, anyhow.”

            I smiled and patted Svip’s shoulder, and I thought that Faramir would approve of his surrogate’s efforts in the challenging duty of nursemaiding me.

            We rode forth, into a battle that to this day remains unique in my memory.

            Or rather, its uniqueness lies in my lack of memory.

            In ordinary circumstances, my senses seem to me to keener in battle than they are at any other time.  And my memories of each battle hold that same sharpness.  Never have I had difficulty recalling every detail of a conflict, be the battle from an hour before, or from years in the past.  When I penned each battle report to my father, it was always as though my reports were composed already and just waiting for me to commit them to paper and ink, and as if the diagrams of the battle were already drawn up inside my head.

Now and again I have thought that, should I reach so advanced an age that my memory commences to fail, I will yet remember every moment of each battle in which I played a part.  I may perhaps forget the names of my children and grandchildren, and all else of import to me, but I will remember the battles still when everything else is gone.

            It is not so, with the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. 

            I remember, as we turned south from Gate, vowing to myself that I would keep hold on my consciousness.  Somehow I would stop myself from wandering into the delirium that had claimed me on our retreat from the Causeway Forts.  What though I might have no weapon left to me but my pigheaded determination.  Somehow I would force myself to remain fit for command.

            As though I had managed to ride into battle drunk, I clung to my focus and control with the desperation of one who struggles to convince each Man who sees him that he is indeed sober.

            I remember the unearthly feeling of cold that seemed to enfold me in its grasp.  I felt as though my body existed as nothing but an icy wind, such a cold, deathly breath as the fallen must feel about them in the black corridors of the Barrow World.

            I remember starting to speak to Svip.  We were speaking of the mûmakil, and of what tactics we were best to use against them.  I remember saying that we would have to rely on our archers to take them down, and remarking to Svip that regular horses seemed unable to go near the vast beasts without falling into panic.  Svip declared that he would not panic, and I recall saying to him that he must promise me he would not take too great risks in proving his lack of fear.

            And there my memory seems to drop from the edge of the earth.

            The next thing I can clearly recall is sitting up straighter on Svip’s back, and gasping as, with a shocking jolt, some sensation returned to me. 

I felt still infernally cold and numb.  But of a sudden I felt again the wind on my face, the weight of my sword brandished in my right hand and the comforting solidity of Svip’s shoulder beneath my left.           

            I stared at my sword and found it dripping with blood.  A dull, distant sort of pain began to impose itself on my mind, focused on my left leg.  I looked down to see a bloody slash across my thigh, and below, a similar wound on Svip’s side, apparently from one long blow that had continued down from my leg, into Svip.

            Panic leapt in my throat as I realised that I did not remember either of us receiving those wounds.  Nor did I remember even drawing my sword, let alone wielding it in battle this morn.

            “Svip!” I gasped out.  “Are you all right?  Your wound – ”

            “I told you, I’m fine,” came Svip’s cross-voiced reply.  “What about your wound?  Are you all right too?”

            I blinked and looked wildly about us.  This action did nothing to still the tide of panic rising within me.  For somehow, we were two miles at the least from our last position that I remembered.

            I looked behind us and saw the White City, proud and gleaming in the sunlight.  Almost no trace of fighting could I see along the City’s wall, only the smouldering wreck of a siege engine here and there and the dark mounds of corpses, of mûmakil and of countless smaller combatants.  At the far south of the wall, up against Mindolluin, I could see a force that seemed to be largely Men on foot, running at full tilt upon the heels of another force in retreat, their race or allegiance indistinguishable in the distance except by the galloping mûmakil that carved a deadly swath through their ranks.  Pursuers and pursued were heading east toward the Rammas wall and the River.

            For ourselves, I realised, we were perhaps two miles south of the City Road, and scarce a mile from the Harlond Gate. 

None of the foe stood living nigh to us, but the evidence of battle lay all around, in a jumbled multitude of corpses.  Some there were, unavoidably, of our own Men.  But the numbers were far greater of such a variety of foemen as I had never seen upon one field: swarthy bejewelled Easterlings with their great battle axes clutched in lifeless hands, Variags of Khand in their bright yellow cloaks, Southrons with the scarlet paint of their armour overlain with blood, and a breed of Men that I did not know, half trolls perhaps, their hulking, butchered bodies seeming more like some nightmare statuary than like anything that had once held life. 

The corpses lay scattered amid puddles of blood mingling with rainwater.  But the rain, I realised, had passed us, moving off to the north and leaving us with a blustering spring wind, and the sun shimmering gaily upon the battlefield’s pools of water and blood.

            All around us stood our own Men, most breathing hard and leaning on swords and spears as though but moment past they had come through the end of combat.  And there were others amongst us: horsemen of Rohan, with long yellow hair showing below helmets of silver, spears in hand, and the figures of horses painted upon their shields.

They as well had the look of Men who had just made their way through a mighty struggle.  But in the midst of cleaning their spears, or unfastening their helmets to mop sweat from their brows, more and more of the Rohirrim Riders nearest us were halting their actions in mid-motion and were staring at me.

            “Damn it to hell,” I snarled, “where is that idiot Anborn?”  I wiped my sword on my cloak, shoved it into its scabbard, and bellowed, “Anborn!”

            The Ranger Lieutenant was near to hand.  He broke off conversation with two of his comrades standing by him, and rode over to us, with an expression on his face of startled alarm.  His steed neighed and shied as it came near to Svip, but the Ranger pulled it under control.

            “My Lord?” Anborn said.

            “Valar blast you, Man, is this how you obey a direct order?  You were to remove me from command at the first sign of incapacity.  You bloody fool, you will be demoted for this, that I promise you.  Do you know how much you have risked, what damage you may have done to our cause, by ignoring that command?” 

            “My Lord,” the unfortunate Ranger protested, “I saw nothing amiss with you.  You have looked and sounded entirely yourself, from the moment you gave me that order, to this!  What should I have seen that I did not?  In what have I failed you?”

            I began disbelievingly, “In what have you failed – ?”

            Svip cut me off.  “Stop it, Boromir!” he snapped.  “He’s right.  You’ve seemed perfectly fine.  What’s matter with you?”

            “What’s the – ” I echoed, only to trail off stupidly in confusion.  I stared at Anborn, who was still watching me with a look of bewildered dismay. 

“Forgive me, Anborn,” I managed.  “Ignore all that I have just spoken.  I – I am myself again.”

            The Lieutenant nodded warily.  “Aye, My Lord.”  He rode away a few paces, to give me time and room to recover myself.

            “Svip,” I hissed, “is this true, then?  Have I indeed seemed fit for command?”

            “Of course you have,” he said.  “Don’t you remember?”

            “Not a moment of it.  Not since we rode from the Gate.  I – did I not seem … strange, then, or anything?”

            My horse-shaped friend answered jokingly, “Not more than usual.”

            “Damn it, Svip, I am serious!” 

We had no chance then to pursue the discussion further.  One of the Rohirrim Riders was approaching.  His steed snorted in protest, nearing Svip, but it made no other move or noise of complaint. 

The white crest of the young horseman’s helm, his pale gold hair, and his face alike were spattered with blood.  But behind the blood and the mask of his helm’s eye-guard, I had no difficulty in recognising Éomer Son of Éomund, lately Third Marshal of the Mark and now the King of the Men of Rohan.

Éomer leaned forward in his saddle, staring desperately at me.  Then he demanded, “My Lord Boromir?” 

Wearily, I smiled.  “Hail and well met, Cousin Éomer,” I greeted him.

 “Hail and well met, Cousin Boromir,” he replied as one dazed.  The King of the Rohirrim stared at me a moment longer, then he burst out in protest, “They told me that you were slain!”

“I was,” I admitted.  “But not permanently.  I will tell you the whole story, I vow it to you.  But now is not the time.”

Éomer glowered at me, as though trying to decipher if I were some figment of witchery.  In tones almost of dread, he asked, “Will you tell me the truth, My Lord Cousin?  Are you a spirit sent back to Middle Earth for the duration of this battle only?  Will you return to the barrow world when the battle ends?”

            If truth were indeed to be told, I was not entirely convinced but that the answer to that might be yes.  I certainly felt as though I were only half in bodily form, if that.  But I said, “I will tell you the truth.  I am no spirit, Éomer of Rohan.  I live, and there is an earthly explanation for all of it – well,” I added, patting Svip’s neck, “a fairly earthly explanation.”    

            The young Man swallowed.  Then he nodded, striving to clear the astonishment from his face. 

 I held out my hand to him.  As we shook hands, an involuntary gasp of wonder escaped him at this proof of my corporeality.

            My next words were ones that I loathed to give the reality of speech, but they could not be avoided. “Lord Éomer,” I said.  “I grieve with you the loss of Théoden King.”

            Sorrow sprang to life in his eyes.  “I thank you, My Lord,” he answered heavily.  He glanced over the battlefield, as though seeking more foemen on whom he might vent his grief.

            Before I could go on, we were interrupted by the drumming of a single steed’s hoofbeats, approaching from the south and west.  I turned to see a wild-eyed horseman in the livery of Morthond, who galloped to us and saluted.

            “My Lord Boromir,” he said breathlessly over his horse’s frightened whinny, “Lord Duinhir’s compliments, and he begs leave to send a detachment of his Men back to the City.  His sons the Lords Duilin and Derufin are fallen in combat.  Lord Duilin, I believe, is slain, and Lord Derufin is sorely wounded, trampled by the accursed mûmakil.  My Lord asks permission to send a few of Morthond’s Men to escort Lord Duilin’s body to safety, and bring Lord Derufin to the Houses of Healing.”

            “Valar’s blood,” I exclaimed, “he should not have awaited my permission for that!  Yes, for gods’ sakes, Man, go; take your Lord my order that he send as many Men as necessary to convey his sons to the City in safety.”

            “Thank you, My Lord!”  The Man saluted again and was once more off at a gallop.  I stared after him, and beyond, to the distance where we could yet see what presumably was Duinhir’s force, relentlessly driving the foe toward the River’s edge.  For a moment I imagined that I could see Lord Duinhir, bellowing in fury and mowing down the Orcs that fled before him, while tears streaked the blood on his face. 

“Valar damn it,” I muttered under my breath.  “Damn it all.”

            Éomer murmured, “This day is a dark one for us all.  In spite of the sun shining upon us.”

            I nodded and turned back to the young King of Rohan.  “My Lord,” I said, returning to the subject that Duinhir’s messenger had interrupted, “Théoden King was a great Man.  He lived and died a true scion of the Line of Eorl, and Eorl will welcome him to his Hall.  But Éomer, we must think now of the living.  The Lady your sister – ”

            The grief that shone now in Éomer’s gaze was wild almost to madness.  He broke in upon my words, “I did not even know she rode with us!  My sister was there, on all the long ride from Dunharrow to Minas Tirith, and I did not know her!  How many times must my eyes have passed over her amid the Riders, yet I never saw her?  And now – now – ”

            “Éomer!” I interrupted.  “Éomer, stop.  Stop.  Listen to me.  Your sister lives.”

            He stared once more, dread and hope warring on his face.  His gaze bespoke confusion and shock more painful by far than the stunned look with which he had greeted my return.

            “What did you say?” he whispered.

            “Éomer, the Lady Éowyn lives.  Mithrandir told me that you believed her dead.  He charged me to bring the truth to you as soon as I might encounter you.  She has been injured, it appears; I do not know what her injuries may be.  I cannot speak to that with any use.  I saw no wounds myself, but it was only for a few moments that I saw her – ”

            He breathed in disbelieving echo, “You saw her?”        

            “Yes.  On the Lord Steward’s command, Knights of Dol Amroth bore her and the halfling Meriadoc to the Houses of Healing in the City.  They will receive there all the care that mortal Men can give.  Perhaps more, for Lord Mithrandir has made them his special charge.  He will ensure that no path is overlooked in guiding them to health and strength.”

            For a moment more the face of Éomer King was blank in unbelief.  Then at last he broke into a marvelling smile. 

“Éowyn lives,” he whispered.  He reached up in an attempt to wipe the sweat and blood from his face, though in fact all he succeeded in doing was smearing it around.  A long, shuddering sigh escaped his lips, then the Horselord repeated his words in a shout.  “Éowyn lives!”

His sudden joy almost made me regret bringing the news to him.  How much blacker, I asked myself, would be his grief after this joy, if we made it through the day of battle only to learn that Éomer’s sister had succumbed to her wounds?

            But no, I argued.  Mithrandir was right.  We would have time enough in that hypothetical future to deal with the young lord’s despair.  I had less dread of that than I had of how he might sacrifice himself in grieving battle frenzy.             

“Yes,” I told him.  I smiled despite my concerns, at the pure joy lighting Éomer’s face.  “Your sister lives.”

Laughing aloud, the Horselord drew his sword and cast it up in the air.  Sunlight gleamed upon it as he effortlessly caught hold of the weapon’s hilt, while Svip took a step away from him and I cast up a silent prayer that no future son of mine would ever perform that singularly moronic stunt.

            It may not be the most politic of moves to inform a neighbouring nation’s king that he is behaving like an idiot, but I considered that my greater age and our ties of blood should give me some latitude on the question.

            “Cousin,” I said, “May I beseech you to do me one favour?  Cease flinging your sword about in that ridiculous fashion.  I’ve no wish to be the Man who must explain to the Lady your Sister how you came to impale yourself.”

            He looked at me a moment in startlement, then broke into a sheepish grin.  He admitted, “Éowyn tells me off for doing that too.”

            “And well she should.”  I shook my finger chidingly at him, keeping my voice stern despite my grin that insisted on breaking forth.  “Since your sister lives, you are honour-bound to emerge from this battle alive.  Would you leave her robbed of all her kin, with no protector upon this Middle Earth?”

            Éomer chuckled.  “She would say it is I who needs the protector.  I promise you, My Lord, I will do all that I can to remain alive and avoid Éowyn’s wrath.  I will not hurl away my life if there is any way I can avoid it.”

            As though they had awaited the most appropriate moment in our conversation, it was then that the enemy made their next move. 

I frowned toward the Harlond, and remarked to Éomer, “Here come our next foes who’d like to help you hurl away your life.”

            Seeming hordes of them spilled forth through the Harlond Gate, advancing with wild, mocking yells that carried easily across the mile lying between us.  For a moment I wondered what it was that had inspired them so to confidence, that they thought it time to abandon the shelter of the Harlond and launch this strike against us. 

Perhaps, I thought, reinforcements had reached them from across the River.

            And then we saw the answer.  Reinforcements had come indeed, but not from Anduin’s farther shore.

            “Damn, damn, damn,” whispered Éomer of Rohan.  He turned to me with a grim, hopeless smile, and he said, “Do you know, My Lord, I had almost come to believe that we might actually win.”

            Sailing into view around the bend at the Harlond came two ships, then another, and another, great ocean-going vessels tall-masted and black-sailed.

            All about us Men’s voices broke forth in cries of alarm and dread. 

            Svip, who had held silent thus far through my meeting with Lord Éomer, could maintain that silence no longer.  He asked desperately, “Whose ships are those?  Who are they?”

            From the corner of my eye I saw Éomer turn his head sharply to stare at the talking horse.  But this was not, I thought, the time for explanations of Svip’s nature.  From the way the battle seemed turning now, Éomer King might well go to his death without ever hearing that explanation – as were Svip and I very like to die without explaining.

Stroking Svip’s mane, I answered him, “Pirates, Svip.  Most likely the Corsairs of Umbar.  For months now, there’ve been rumours that they had allied themselves to Mordor.  I suppose now we know the truth of the rumours.”

            Ship after ship yet rounded the bend of the Anduin.  Their whole fleet, it looked to be, every last vessel that had harried the Anfalas and Belfalas coasts these decades past.

No Man who saw that fleet, I think, needed to be told the inescapable conclusion: if the Corsairs’ fleet had reached Minas Tirith, it could only be after scouring all our lands to the South.  Dol Amroth, the Ethir Anduin, Lebinnin, Lossarnach: all of their lands along the coast and the Anduin shores were like to be ravaged long ere now, for it was not like any force of pirates to obey Sauron’s bidding without plundering all that they could reach along the way.

            I turned and shouted, “Lieutenant Anborn!  Re-form our ranks!”  To my Rohirrim cousin, I said, “What say you, Éomer King?  Instead of sitting here awaiting our death, shall we ride forth to meet it, as befits the Lords of Gondor and Rohan?”

            With his bitter smile, Éomer answered, “Aye, we shall, Boromir Son of Denethor.”  He too turned, and bellowed to his Men, “Eorlingas!  Riders of Rohan!  Form ranks!  We will charge those scum and crush them under hoof, and we will hold their pirate friends from setting foot upon Gondor’s shore!”

            Every Man there, I am certain, knew the unlikelihood of those statements.  But that did nothing to stop the fierce cheers that rang forth from Gondorians and Rohirrim as one.

            Then suddenly the cheers dwindled into silence, a silence born of bewilderment rather than of fear.

            From the mast of the foremost ship a great standard broke forth, dancing upon the wind as the vessel turned toward the Harlond.  It was a standard that no Man living had seen, save in the pages of history books, and as a tattered relic preserved behind glass in the Steward’s Armoury.  But I will wager that near every Man of Gondor knew it, as did most of the Riders of Rohan beside.

            The banner bore the White Tree of Gondor.  About it gleamed seven stars, and above, the crown of the King: the signs of Elendil that no Lord had borne in nigh a thousand years.  Stars and crown blazed in the morning’s light.  Slowly at first, then in their hundreds, the cheers rose up again; cheers, and cries of wonderment, and laughter, as the banner of the King of Gondor soared high on the winds of the morning.

            Svip shifted impatiently beneath me.  I realised that I had a death-grip on his mane, and let go of it, hoping I had not been hurting him badly.  He made no mention of that, but he did cry out, “What is it, Boromir?  What does it mean?”

            I opened my mouth to reply, but found that I did not yet have any voice with which to answer.  Lord Éomer, smiling bemusedly at Svip, murmured, “The Lord Aragorn.  He is here, even as he said.”

             I bit my lip, recalling only then that from Mithrandir and Pippin’s accounts, Éomer and his Riders had indeed encountered Aragorn, in the course of the Fellowship’s adventures.

            It was a strange mixture of reactions that I felt, in what should no doubt have been so pure and glorious a moment.

            I was glad, most certainly: glad that the ships seemed likely to bear to us allies instead of yet more foes, joyous and thankful that perhaps this meant that the lands of South Gondor in truth yet survived.  And I will not deny that it sent through me a thrill of pride and awe, to see for the first time the Standard of the King of Gondor borne aloft.

            But with those emotions came a sinking of my heart, as I thought of what that banner’s presence must mean. 

            Aragorn, here at last: Aragorn, as the King’s Standard seemed to proclaim before all, here to claim his birthright of Gondor’s crown.  To lay claim to his birthright that many might challenge – not the least of whom, my father.  To rescue us, perhaps, from the hosts of Mordor, and to set in motion a chain of events that might lead us to civil war.

            With desperation in his voice, Svip repeated, “What does it mean?”

            I wish I could tell you that, I thought.  I wish I knew what it will mean, for all of us.

            But I only said quietly, “They’re friends, Svip.  Our friends must have seized the pirates’ ships.  Things are not so black, after all.”

            Our foemen who had been swarming from the Harlond Gate wavered in their advance, as their guards on the Rammas yelled out the truth of the fleet’s identity.

            Éomer King laughed aloud, and he called to me in joy, “The hunt is up, Cousin Boromir!  We will meet you at the Harlond!”

            “At the Harlond, Cousin Éomer,” I rejoined.  “May you have good hunting.”

            With their young King at their head, the Riders of Rohan charged, striking east and north to halt the enemy from making any break for freedom in that direction.  The laughter and singing and battle cries of the Rohirrim broke forth like bells of triumph upon the morning air.

            Moments only had it taken to marshal our foot soldiers into orderly ranks once more.  Now we too charged, cutting southward to trap our foe betwixt Rohan’s force and ours.  Svip had learned – perhaps in those minutes or hours that I seemed to have forgotten – to regulate his pace to that of the Men, so that he and I should not outrun their charge.  Our own battle cry, “For Gondor!” rang forth in a thousand voices, among them my voice, and Svip’s.  

            Dreamlike that battle was to me, but unlike our previous combats of that day, it was at least a dream that I remember. For me it was as though every daydream of victory that I had dreamed since I was a boy, since the day I first understood that my family and I lived for the defence of Gondor, had come to life in that morning.

            But if my daydreams had come to life, it seemed it was a life that I did not fully share. 

As we rode down the foe, racing into the sun and the wind, I felt as though I had scarcely more substance than the wind itself.  Swinging my sword down upon screaming Easterlings and Haradrim, seeing their blood arc upward in the sunlight-gleaming sky, I found myself wondering if indeed I were dead, and reborn as a spirit of battle that rode upon the winds.  I remember thinking that if so, it was no ill fate.  For such a fate any warrior would be glad, to spend his eternity striking down the enemies of his country, in death as he had in life.

            Falling over each other in their precipitous flight, some flinging down their weapons that they might run the faster, the troops of the Enemy raced for the Gate and the shelter of the Harlond.  But there they found no haven.  For as our Men of Gondor and Rohan herded them to the Harlond Gate, from out of that gate strode a new force of foot soldiers.  At the head of their ranks flew the banner of the Tree and the Stars and the Crown.      

            That fight was not eternity, no matter what my wild imaginings had told me. As in every battle there came a time when blood no longer flew, when the shrieks and the battle cries sounded no more.

            To the north I heard still the shouting and singing of the Rohirrim, as they hunted down what few remnants of this band of foemen still lived.  From beyond the Rammas also there came the sounds of combat; Men from the ships, I thought most likely, clearing the buildings of Waterfront of whatever enemies had occupied them.

            Where our charge had reached its end, a quarter of a mile from the Harlond, not a Man of the enemy stood alive between my own troops and the Men who had leaped from the ships and swept through the Gate, breaking the foe’s last hopes upon the wall of their axes and swords.

            Svip, I realised, was panting heavily beneath me.  Swiftly I wiped and sheathed my sword, and slid down from Svip’s back, to stand by him rubbing his back and neck and studying his face in concern.  I asked, “Are you all right, Svip?  You don’t have another wound?”

            The horse shook his head, giving me an apologetic glance.  “I’m not hurt,” he managed.  “Just tired.”

            “We’re almost to the River,” I said.  “We’ll get you to the water, you can have a swim.  You’ll feel better then – ”

            And then a Man’s voice that I knew full well cried in a tone of wonder, “Boromir?”

            I turned. 

Scarce an arm’s reach from us stood Aragorn Son of Arathorn.  The sword of Elendil was unsheathed, gleaming and bloody in his hand.  A leathern circlet with a gem like a star shone upon his brow. 

To Aragorn’s either side were Legolas Son of Thranduil and Gimli Son of Gloin.  All three of them stared, stunned, upon me.   

            I was only too familiar with the looks that tended to greet my return from the dead.  But seldom can any Man have confronted such a trio of flabbergasted expressions as I saw now on the faces of Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli. 

For a long moment the three of them stood motionless and robbed of speech. 

            Aragorn was the first to recover his voice.  Shaking his head slightly and frowning as one who finds himself in a hopelessly illogical dream, the Man of the North murmured, “You?  Is it possible?”

            As though the sound of Aragorn’s voice had broken some spell that held him silent, Legolas burst into a torrent of speech.  The words I did not know, but their basic meaning, I thought, was clear.  I still do not know precisely what curse words the Wood Elves include in their vocabulary, but I am willing to wager that we heard most or all of them there, in the bloody rain puddles of the Pelennor Fields.

            Gimli made a sort of desperate growl, a sound torn between anger and fear.  Then he stepped forward of the other two, brandishing his axe.

            “Come no closer!” he threatened me.  “Touch my friends and I’ll send you to the darkness you sprang from, wraith!”

            My friend the horse turned his head questioningly to me, and made a rather unhorselike growling noise.  Tired out or not, I realised, if Svip thought that I was at risk he was likely to charge the Man, the Elf and the Dwarf, and do his best to trample them to death.  The sooner I reassured him that we were all on the same side, the better. 

I turned to Svip, patting his shoulder and smiling at him.  “It’s all right, Svip,” I told him.  “I promise it’s all right.  These are friends.”

Still smiling, I turned back to the staring three.    

I still felt more or less like death, as cold as a barrow and nigh as disembodied as the wraith that Gimli took me to be.  But I grinned as I stood there, looking from the face of one of my old comrades, to the next, and the next. 

I ought not, I told myself, to take pleasure in their confusion.  But there had been little enough to take pleasure in of late.  I did not try very hard to halt the grin from spreading over my face.

            “Peace, Master Dwarf,” I said.  “I’m no threat to your friends or to you, I promise you.  And I’m no wraith, either.”  Forcing my face to some semblance of solemnity, I bowed to them and said, “Welcome to Minas Tirith, gentlemen.  You took your time in getting here.  I died and came back and I got here sooner than you did.”

            A faint, wondering smile touched Aragorn’s visage.  In tones that told he yet could scarce credit that he was not dreaming, he asked, “Boromir?  Is it you indeed?”

            “In the flesh.” I cast a glance at Gimli and added, “The living flesh, believe me.”

            I held out my hand to Aragorn.  For another moment he gazed into my face.  Then he wiped his sword clean and sheathed it, and reached out to clasp my hand.

            “I cannot believe it,” the Ranger marvelled, his smile growing wider.  “First Gandalf and now you!  Are we then to find all of our slain comrades brought to life again?”

            “I fear not,” I said.  “I wish that we were.”

            Legolas stepped closer and held out his hand.  I shook hands with the Elf in turn.

“I am glad to see you, Boromir,” Legolas said.

            “And I you.”

            Still glaring at me suspiciously from under his bushy red eyebrows, Gimli at last shoved his battle-axe into his belt and thrust out his hand to me.  “Couldn’t you have come back to life earlier, then?” he demanded, as we shook hands.  “We had to carry you, you know.  Nearly broke our backs, we did, hauling you around.”

            “Sorry,” I grinned.  “I will endeavour to lose some weight before the next time.”

            Legolas stared at me open-mouthed in surprise.  Then he shook his head and laughed.  Gimli snorted and muttered something under his breath, then burst out, “All right, I’ll ask it, if these two aren’t going to!  How the bloody hell are you alive?”

            Aragorn put in, frowning as he gazed across the field, “The telling of tales must wait.  There are foes aplenty yet abroad, that we must put to rout before the day can be ours.”

            The Dwarf protested, “And how if he’s killed before he can tell the story?  Or if we are?  I say tell the tale now while we are all alive!”

            “Aragorn is right, my friend,” I said, marvelling a little to hear myself saying that.  “We must fight now and tell tales later.  We shall just all have to strive not to get slain before the story-telling.”

            Gimli opened his mouth to object once again, but our debate was ended by the arrival of Éomer Son of Éomund.  His spear, broken halfway down the shaft, was strapped to his saddle. In his hand he held his longsword, dripping gore, and his armour and clothing were spattered and drenched with blood from the crest of his helmet to the toe of his boots.  As he rode to us the Horselord cried out, “Lord Aragorn!”

            The Northman smiled up at him.  “Thus we meet again,” he said, “though all the hosts of Mordor lay between us.  Did I not say so at the Hornburg?”

            “So you spoke,” my young cousin replied.  “But hope oft deceives, and I knew not then that you were a Man foresighted.”  Éomer glanced at me with a rueful smile, and added, “Although you spoke nothing of Lord Boromir’s return.  I shall be sore aggrieved, My Lord, if your foresight revealed this to you and you told me not of it.”

            Aragorn’s smile turned melancholy.  “There is much, my friend, that foresight does not reveal.  It did not show me this reunion.  But my heart rejoices that I see it now.”

            “It is well that we have something in which to rejoice,” Éomer went on, his expression and voice growing sombre in turn.  “Much loss and sorrow has befallen us this day, and more is like to come.”

            “Then let us avenge it, ere we speak of it,” said Aragorn.

            My reunion with my comrades of the Fellowship might have taken place upon an unpeopled plain, for all the notice I had taken of the other warriors around us.  Now I noted for the first time the large numbers of Men gathering about us, observing our meeting in undisguised curiosity. 

Close by Svip and me were Lieutenant Anborn and many others of our Men.  Near to Aragorn and his companions stood a tall, grim faced Man who reminded me much of Aragorn, or at least of Aragorn as I had seen him at the first, a weather-beaten and world-wearied Ranger.  This Man held the staff to which the King’s Standard was now fastened.  Among the others about Aragorn I saw many whom I presumed to be followers of his from the Northlands, but others were there that must have joined his advance in whatever circumstances the pirate fleet had been seized, for the cut and colours of their clothing and the insignia they bore identified them as Men of our southern fiefdoms.

            Approaching now through the open Harlond Gate were Men leading horses of proud and noble bearing, that I thought likely to be steeds of Rohan.  Several of these horses were led to Aragorn and those about him. 

Svip attempted to step back away from the other horses, but he found his way impeded by the press of Men.  To my surprise, I saw that none of the horses seemed particularly troubled by Svip’s presence.  There were a few uneasy snorts, but not one of these steeds seemed any more disturbed than had that of Éomer, when Svip and I first encountered him.

            An idea occurred to me.  I asked of Aragorn, “Do your steeds hail from Rohan?”

            “These do, yes,” he replied, looking puzzled. 

“Lord Éomer,” I said, turning to the Horselord, “if by chance there is any of your Rohirrim horses available, I would beg the use of one for the remainder of this day.”

Svip made a sort of little gasping noise that I read as a protest.  I turned to face him, saying firmly, “You have gone through too much already, Svip.  I’ll not ride you for the rest of the day.”  Affecting not to notice the quizzical looks of the watchers around us, I went on.  “You can ride with me if you like.  That’s why I’ve asked Lord Éomer for one of his steeds; they seem less afraid of you than others.  But I won’t have you serve as a warhorse any more today.  That’s my final word on the subject.”

            Éomer King had at least heard Svip speaking earlier, so he presumably did not think me as mad as he might otherwise have done.  He said solemnly, “We have steeds available in plenty, My Lord Boromir.  Their riders will need them no longer.  I shall have one brought to you.”

            “Then come, My Lords,” said Aragorn, forestalling any possible questions on my unusual discussion with my horse.  With ease Aragorn mounted the large, dark grey horse that had been brought to him, a beast somewhat thicker of build than Gandalf’s Shadowfax, but still looking close kin to the Meara.  A smaller, lighter horse was led to Legolas.  As the Elf leapt to its back, I noted that, like Svip and I, Legolas and his steed interacted without use of saddle or rein.

            Far less comfortable with the horse in question was Gimli, who groaned and muttered some Dwarvish imprecation when Legolas held down his hand to pull Gimli up after him. 

“Not again,” the Dwarf complained.  “Can’t you leave off tormenting me?  I can kill plenty on foot, I promise you.  I fight all the better when I’m not worrying about falling off some great beast’s rump.”

“Yes, friend Dwarf,” said Aragorn, with a smile, “but if you fight on foot today you will spend your day walking between one group of foes and the next – and mayhap you will never catch up with any of them.” 

            “And your tally of kills will fall so far behind mine,” Legolas added, with an innocent gaze that spoke of some in-joke between the Elf, the Dwarf and the Ranger, “that you’re never likely to catch up with me, either.”

            Gimli growled back, “That’s the only argument you could use that would work on me, and you know it!”

            With seemingly no effort the Elf pulled Gimli up to sit behind him.  It was my turn to gaze in wonder for a moment, at the unheard-of sight of an Elf and a Dwarf together on horseback. 

            I was not the only one, I told myself, who had gone through some unusual experiences in the weeks since I’d parted from the Fellowship.

            In tones more respectful than I would have expected from him while smarting under his high-handed manner of leading our company, Aragorn asked, “Lord Boromir, is there aught that we should know of the course of the battle, that would decide where we will be of most use?”

            “Not at this point, I believe,” I said, wishing like mad that I did not have a gaping hole in my memories of the morning.  “There are scattered groups of the enemy about the plain; as I see it our task now is to rout out these pockets of them and ensure that none survive in any bolt-hole or stronghold within the Rammas.”

            “So I see it, as well,” agreed the Ranger chieftain.  “Will you and your Men ride with us, My Lord?”

            I shook my head.  “The most of my Men are afoot.  Do you go your way, and we will go ours.  I doubt not that there are enough of the foe about.  We shall all have successful hunting.”

            Aragorn nodded.  He hesitated a moment, then he rode over to where I stood, leaned over and asked in a low voice, “Are you well, Boromir?  You look … paler than you used to.  As if you have been ill.”  With a rueful smile, he added, “And I feel like a damned fool saying that to a dead Man.”

            I managed to smile faintly back at him.  “I am not entirely well, as such,” I admitted.  “But I will be.  It is part of the story that I will tell the three of you – when the day is ours.”

            Aragorn straightened in the saddle.  “Then we will see you again,” he said quietly, in parting.  “When the day is ours.”

            While Aragorn’s followers mounted up and rode off at his command, I issued my next orders.

            During the encounter with Aragorn and the others, I’d determined in my mind that I would divide my force.  I would leave the City Guards and the troops of our regular Army to garrison the Harlond, securing it against any further incursions by the enemy.

            I could, of course, have asked Aragorn to provide some of his Men for that duty.  But several considerations – unworthy perhaps, but practical – spoke against that option.

            Until our political position grew more certain, and we had some notion of Aragorn’s plans, I had no wish to leave his troops in command of one inch of Gondor’s lands.  Nor did I wish to explain to my father how Aragorn’s followers had gained control of any fragment of territory.

            One of Éomer’s Riders led to me a sorrel horse that he said was named Fengel; an ill-omened name, I would have thought, but one that he assured me was bestowed in jest, due to this horse’s gentle and placid nature.  I would just have to trust, I told myself, that Rohan’s new King was mature enough not to play pranks by providing a horse that would send Svip and me flying head over tip the instant we sat on its back.

            The beast endured Svip’s presence patiently enough, nor did it give me any difficulty as I rode it to the Harlond Gate, with Svip in horse form plodding along at my side.  Fengel grew restive at last when I dismounted within the Gate, and Svip changed back into his own form.  My small green friend wobbled a little, then suddenly sat down, looking up at me in surprise at the fact that his legs had given out. 

            I called for one of the Men to take charge of Fengel, as the horse sidestepped away from the transformed water being.  Then I knelt and scooped Svip up in my arms, ignoring his protests that he was all right, really. 

            I had given my orders to Anborn.  Under his direction, detachments of our Men spread out through the battered settlement. 

The marks of the enemy’s recent presence were clear.  Many buildings’ doors were torn off their hinges, windows were shattered, all manner of drygoods, crockery and the possessions of Waterfront’s inhabitants were scattered over the cobblestones.  Here and there, as well, was the corpse of a Southron or Easterling.  But no living foe seemed left, on the Harlond nor across the River.

            The erstwhile pirate fleet dominated Waterfront’s skyline, black-sailed ships docked cheek-by-jowl with the burnt-out, crippled remains of the vessels that had been in dock when our foes made their assault.  As I hurried to the water’s edge I found myself eyeing the pirate ships, and wondering if one would do as a replacement for the Merchant Adventurers’ lost flagship.  But there would be time later for all such reckonings.  For now my first need, and Svip’s, was to get both of us into the River.

            At the top of the jetty stairs, Svip squirmed in my arms.  He commanded, “Put me down.”  The instant I had obeyed, he raced down the stairs and dove into the water.

            I could feel my hands shaking again as I divested myself of helm, cloak and sword, discarding them in a heap on the pier.  The rest of my gear I left on, and I hastily followed Svip down the jetty stairs. 

The thought occurred to me that Anborn, maintaining a respectful distance from us but keeping a wary eye on my every move, must expect me to sink like a stone, the instant my weary, armour-clad body hit the water.  

I thought, I should tell him he doesn’t have to worry.  Then I stepped into Anduin’s waters, and for those first few moments all other thoughts were gone.

It was perhaps five minutes later, when Svip and I made our dripping way back to the quay.

            How many times do you think you can pull that off? I demanded of myself, as I gave my hair a desultory towelling on my cloak and donned my helmet once more.  How many times do you think you can push yourself to the edge of death, and then just jump in the River and make everything right again?                

            Someday, Boromir, you will push it too far.

            Someday, perhaps, my mind answered cheerfully.  But not today.

            I had no need of asking Svip, to be assured that his brief dunking had done as much good as had mine.  The best evidence was his talking a blue streak on the topic that I’d been wrong in deciding to ride Fengel instead of him, and I ought to let Svip be my warhorse for the rest of the day, after all.

            On that decision I remained obdurate.  The water creature did not cease in his arguments until he was mounted before me against Fengel’s neck.  He was struck into silence then by his dread of frightening the mighty horse.

            A long and bloody day of it yet stretched before us. 

The Nazgûl, it seemed, had vanished with the dark, or perhaps with the slaying of their Captain.  There seemed as little trace left of the Orc hordes, save for corpses.  I presumed that on the Black Rider’s flight, the majority of the Orc armies had fled the field, as speedily as their legs could carry them. 

But the Men who had answered the Dark Lord’s call were not so easily swept from our fields. 

Haradrim and Easterling alike are reputed as war-hardened peoples, who will fight to the last without thought of quarter.  Many among them upheld their reputation on that day.

Wherever Men could make a stand, there they did.  Behind the long stone pasture walls, in cottage and farmhouse and inn; almost, it seemed, in every miniscule dip in the ground, the Men of Harad and the East entrenched themselves, fighting until life was hacked from them.

Many times I offered to Svip to send him back to the City.  Each time he held firm, insisting that he had to remain with me to keep me safe. 

In solemn and wide-eyed silence Svip clung to Fengel’s neck, as we rode beside our foot troops of Ringló, Ethir, Anfalas and Anórien, tracking down each straggling band of our foe.

 Not until day faded at last, the sunset dyeing sky and River the same bloody hue that stained our fields, did our mounted scouts bring back word that no enemies lived to be hunted down.

The scouts who bore these tidings brought other news that I had asked of them.  The troops from the ships, and their mysterious leader who rode under the Banner of the King, were bivouacked a mile from the City, at the Crossroads of the White Tree Inn.

As the sun sank behind the shadows of Mindolluin, I ordered my foot soldiers to return to the City.  With the small party of Anórien Rangers who were on horseback, Svip and I set out for the Crossroads. 

            We were not alone in following that road.  The thought struck me, not without some bitterness, that Aragorn was like to a magnet, drawing to himself all other powers in Gondor.  When we drew near enough to discern the tents of his Men through the red dusk, with the King’s Standard planted before one of them, I saw also the horsemen and banner of Rohan.  Éomer himself I saw standing in conversation with Aragorn outside his tent.  Approaching along the City Road from the direction of the Rammas was a troop of my uncle’s Swan Knights of Dol Amroth.

            I alighted from the stolid Fengel, the horse making no protest as I reached up to take Svip from his back.  Afoot, Svip and I started toward Aragorn’s tent.

            In the lengthening shadows of dusk I might not have noticed Gimli where he sat huddled in the roots of a great oak that stood by the roadside.  But the distinctive odor of the smoke from the Dwarf’s pipe alerted me to his presence.  As we drew near, Gimli leapt to his feet, with a startled cry that he cut off before it could form into words.

            “Hail, Gimli Son of Gloin,” I greeted him quietly.  “What is amiss?”

            “Nothing,” he answered in gruff tones.  “For a moment I took … your companion for one of the Hobbits.”

            “Pippin and Merry are both in the City,” I told him.

            “They are!” cried the Dwarf.  “Then they are safe?”

            “Pippin is well.  Merry … has been wounded, but Mithrandir is with them and tending to him.”

            “Aye.  Well.  That is well, then,” Gimli said, and he swiftly took a puff on his pipe, as though to take refuge from the emotion that was sounding clearly in his voice.

            I glanced down to Svip, who was eyeing Gimli in curiosity, and wrinkling his nose as he sniffed at the pipe smoke. 

“Gimli Son of Gloin,” I said, “let me introduce to you my comrade Svip of Anduin.  You encountered Svip earlier today,” I continued, “when he was in the form of my horse.”

            From his comically suspicious expression, the Dwarf was about to accuse me of pulling his leg.  But before Gimli could speak, Svip’s natural garrulousness broke forth.  “I could turn into horse form and show you,” Svip offered, “but you don’t like horses much, do you?  I don’t either.  Well, they don’t like me, anyway.  I suppose it comes to pretty much the same thing.”

            Gimli cast a bewildered look at me, but he answered gamely, “Horses are well enough.  So long as I am not on them.  A Dwarf’s feet are made to be on the ground, or under it.  Not kicking about in the air around some horse’s midriff.”

            “You could ride me, if you like.  When Boromir doesn’t need me, that is.  I’d promise not to throw you.  I’ve never thrown you, Boromir, have I?”

            “No,” I answered Svip, smiling down at him, “it’s true, you’ve never thrown me.”

            Three figures were approaching us on foot from the direction of Aragorn’s tent.  As they neared, the figures resolved themselves into Aragorn, Legolas, and Éomer of Rohan. 

A few words of greeting were all that we had time to speak.  Moments after the three of them reached us, the Knights of Dol Amroth rode into Aragorn’s camp.  Foremost among the Knights, springing from his steed and striding toward us, was Prince Imrahil himself.  

My uncle called, “Hail, Nephew!  I have not had the chance to greet our unexpected and most welcome allies.  Will you present me, that I may shake hands with the warriors who have saved Minas Tirith – ”

            Of a sudden Imrahil froze in the middle of his enthusiastic speech.  He was near enough to gain a clear view of Aragorn’s face, and now the Prince of Dol Amroth stood as though stricken dumb, staring at the Ranger chieftain in a mixture of amazement, disbelief, and I knew not what. 

I thought that the look on my uncle’s face spoke of dread, but I could not imagine why that would be.  What was there to be seen about Aragorn’s person that should cause the Lord Imrahil any dread?

            Aragorn bowed and said quietly, “Hail, My Lord Prince.  I know that I speak for my companions as well as myself when I say that is our honour to have been of service.”

            I looked from Imrahil to Aragorn and his comrades.  Aragorn’s expression seemed one of understanding and sympathy, as if he comprehended all too well the embarrassment from which my uncle was suffering.  If Aragorn did comprehend it, I thought, it seemed that he was the only one who did.  Legolas and Gimli appeared both as out of their depth as I, glancing first at each other and then at me with looks of helpless bewilderment.  For Éomer’s part, the look on his face was fully as blank as the expression that I felt certain was on my own.

            Imrahil cast a hasty, almost furtive glance over his shoulder.  Then the Prince took control of himself, and bowed to Aragorn.

            Belatedly recalling that I was supposed to be performing introductions, I said, “My Lord Uncle, I present to you the Lord Aragorn Son of Arathorn, and his companions, Prince Legolas the son of King Thranduil of Mirkwood, and Gimli Son of Gloin, of Erebor.  These three gentlemen and I were among the company that journeyed together from Imladris.  Sirs,” I continued, “I present to you Prince Imrahil of Dol Amroth.”

            Respectful bows were exchanged all around.  My uncle said, “Gentlemen, I thank you.  And for my own part, I bid you welcome.  It is not my place to welcome you to Gondor.  But for myself I welcome you indeed, and I thank you from the depths of my heart – both for the quest that you undertook at Imladris, and for your services to Gondor on this day.”  He turned then toward Éomer, bowing again and welcoming the Rohirrim in terms that seemed less guarded by far than those he had used to Aragorn and his companions.

            I glanced again at Legolas and Gimli.  The face of the Elf bore a frown of preoccupied thought, while the Dwarf looked near to bursting with exasperation, impatiently drumming his fingers upon his axe-head. 

            One of us will have to ask it, I thought with a sigh.  I began, “Uncle; Aragorn; forgive my presumption.  But it appears that the two of you comprehend some meaning in our situation that is lost upon the rest of us.  I must ask what it is that so troubles you.”

            The thundering approach of another troop of horsemen put paid to any continuance of that conversation.  My uncle looked over his shoulder again, and to my amazement he muttered, “Damnation.  Now we shall have some fireworks.”

            The Prince my uncle is the most courteous of Men, notwithstanding his odd sense of humour which can reveal itself in some rather peculiar circumstances.  It astounded me to hear him make such a remark in the presence of Aragorn and the others, even more than I had been astounded to see him allowing his confusion to show so plainly.

            “Uncle,” I protested, “I must know what – ”

            Grimly my uncle observed, “Here comes your father.”

            Again I glanced at Aragorn, suddenly curious to see how he would react to this latest information.  The Northman stood straight and tall, the last remnants of the sunset glowing in the depths of the brooch that Galadriel had given to him, and glinting from the star that shone upon his brow.  He appeared calm, as usual.  But the resigned and wary look upon his face reminded me suddenly of his expression just before the commencement of combat. 

Even thus, I thought, had he gazed into the shadows as we awaited the attack of bewitched Wargs in the snowstorm, and as he and I took our stand behind Mithrandir, at the edge of the Bridge of Khazad-dûm

            Legolas and Gimli stepped forward and stood at Aragorn’s either side.  Svip stepped forward to stand beside me.

            My father rode up to us at the head of the White City’s surviving cavalry, drawing in rein and gazing silently at we who stood before him. 

I half expected from him some surprised reaction akin to that of the Prince, but in that I was disappointed.  I should, I suppose, have known better than to expect my father ever to show surprise.  But there was much to be read upon his face nonetheless.

            With mouth bitterly set and eyes blazing as keenly as the gems that the Northman wore, my father stared at the Lord Aragorn.  It was such a look, I thought, as I had on many occasions seen him turn upon Mithrandir: angered, impatient, and boiling over with dislike. 

But yet it seemed more than that, stronger and more bitter by far than any gaze he had aimed at the Wizard.  It was as though the annoyance that Mithrandir caused him were the merest shadow of the anger and loathing he felt now, gazing upon the Ranger of the North.

Wrenching his gaze from the face of Aragorn, my father launched into a speech of welcome and friendship to Éomer, which Éomer answered in like terms.  Only when these pleasantries were concluded, did the Steward turn again to Aragorn and his comrades.  

With voice calm but as biting as the winds off the Ered Nimrais, my father said, “My Lords, I bid you welcome on behalf of all Gondor.  Your assistance this day was as timely as it was unlooked-for.  For Gondor, I thank you and all of your Men, and I extend to you the hospitality of Minas Tirith.”

As Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli bowed, the Steward’s glance turned on me.  “Boromir,” he said, “will you perform the introductions, since I perceive that you are acquainted with these gentlemen?”

“Yes, My Lord,” I said, striving to keep both my voice and my face expressionless.  From his tone, my father might as well have accused me of consorting with the lowest conceivable collection of vagabonds and mountebanks.

Again I recited the names and patronymics of my erstwhile companions.  As I spoke the name “Aragorn Son of Arathorn”, my father’s mouth twisted in a sneer of scorn and distaste.

“You in particular are welcome, My Lord Aragorn,” the Steward spoke with honeyed malice, “if that is the name by which you prefer now to be known.  It is long since we have seen you within Gondor’s realm.”

“It is indeed, My Lord,” Aragorn agreed, bowing his head and then looking up to calmly meet my father’s gaze.  “I rejoice in my heart to look upon the White City’s walls again.”

This little interchange meant to me precisely nothing. 

A glance around at the assembled warriors did not bring me any enlightenment.  Húrin and the others of my father’s Men kept a respectful distance, a few feet behind the Steward.  Their faces bore the careful, stoic blankness of any follower seeking to look as though he is not overhearing his master’s discussions.  Uncle Imrahil frowned in worry, looking back and forth between Aragorn and my father.  Legolas’ face was unreadable, and Gimli wore his belligerent scowl, as though daring anyone to speak a cross word at Aragorn.  Éomer again looked simply bewildered, in which I felt a great deal of kinship with him.

Gazing beyond the group immediately surrounding us, my father’s eyes settled upon the King’s Standard, stars and crown gleaming crimson in the ruddy dusk.   Speaking still in smooth and venomous tones, the Steward inquired, “Do you come to us now to press your claim, My Lord?”

“I claim nothing, Lord Steward,” Aragorn answered quietly.  “When peace at last is upon us, if indeed it ever comes, then I would seek leave to state my case to the Council.  It will be for them to decide its merit or lack of such.  But while the hatred of Mordor is yet loosed against us, I have come to wield my sword in Gondor’s service, no more and no less.”

“Do not believe that Gondor is ungrateful for your services, Lord Aragorn,” my father returned.  “You and your troops have leave to billet in the City.  The garrison of Minas Tirith boasts not now its manpower of ages past; I doubt not that we have room enough for all.”

“I thank you, My Lord,” Aragorn replied.  “I would not have it said by any that I entered the City in force, and that future decisions of the Council were influenced by the presence of an army within Minas Tirith’s walls.  I will not enter in, nor yet make any claim, until it be seen whether we or Mordor shall prevail.  I will await here what the morrow may bring.”

The Steward smiled, eyeing Aragorn with a gaze of pure loathing.  “I would not have Men say that we of Minas Tirith left our saviour to linger as a beggar upon our doorstep.”

“Say not as a beggar,” Aragorn countered, smiling back.  “Say rather as a Captain of the Rangers, who are unused to cities and houses of stone.”

My father kept his smile firmly set, although I saw his right hand tighten into a fist, and I could only guess at the bitter words that he was holding in check.  “Let it be as you will have it, My Lord Captain of the Rangers,” he said at last.  “And let the morrow bring first a council of war, that we may determine how best we are to proceed.  Since you choose not to pass the City’s gates, then let the assembled Captains meet at your tents upon the morn.  If you will have us, My Lord, of course,” the Steward added snidely.

“Of course, Lord Denethor,” assented Aragorn, bowing once again and affecting not to notice the Lord Steward’s glaring hatred.  “The Captains will be welcome indeed, as will be the wisdom that you bring to our council.”

“Very well,” said my father.  “At the first hour past the dawning, here we will meet in council.  I wish you pleasant rest this night, Captain of the Rangers.”

His gaze turned upon me once more.  “Boromir, will you return to the City with me?  Or do you prefer passing the evening with your comrades?  I would have thought you had enough to draw you back within our walls, with your brother lying mayhap upon the door of death.”

Mentally I cursed the Lord my father for so blatantly using Faramir’s condition against me.  “I will follow you shortly, My Lord,” I told him, biting off the other words I wished to fire back at him.

“My Lord Éomer,” the Steward continued then, “I have not yet had the opportunity to express the sorrow that all of us feel with you, in the loss that you and your people have suffered.  Be assured that we will proceed according to your wishes.  While the body of Théoden King remains in the White City he will lie in state in the House of the Stewards, if that meets with your approval.  All respect shall be paid to him, as you may direct.  You and your Riders are welcome to the hospitality that Minas Tirith yet can offer.”

 “Thank you, Lord Steward,” Éomer said, “for myself and for the people of Rohan.  I long to pay my respects to Théoden King, but I confess that another thought pulls me to the City with yet greater force.  My sister, I have been informed, lies in your Houses of Healing.  I would not let another hour pass without seeing her, and I fear that I may have let too many hours pass already.”

I noticed Aragorn start in surprise, and he turned swiftly as though to ask some question of Éomer.  Whatever question he might have asked, however, he apparently thought better of it.

“Then I will see you at the City, My Lord Éomer; Imrahil; Boromir.”

With no further speech and without a backward glance, the Steward wheeled his horse and set out toward the City, the cavalry parting to allow him to ride to the fore of their ranks. 

Éomer King bowed to the rest of us.  He began, “Until the morrow, Lord Aragorn.”

“Cousin, wait for me,” I interjected.  “I will ride with you to the City.”

The Horselord nodded, exchanged goodnights with the others, and walked over to rejoin his Men. 

My uncle of Dol Amroth yet lingered, a profoundly uneasy expression on his face.

As the hoofbeats of my father’s cavalry grew muted by distance, I snapped, “I hope that at least one of you gentlemen can be prevailed upon to explain to me what the bloody blazes that was all about!”

No answer was spoken.  My uncle looked unhappier still, if that were possible, and Aragorn looked as inscrutable and uninformative as the carven kings that line the Tower Hall. 

I glowered at Prince Imrahil, vowing to myself to hound him without mercy until I wormed from him some elucidation of the encounter we had just passed.  Then I turned back to my three old companions.

“Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli,” I said, “if you cannot accept the invitation of my father, perhaps you can accept one from me.  Visit me at my townhouse whenever your duties may permit; it will be open to you at any hour of the day or night.  We have still to recount those tales that we have promised each other.  My townhouse stands upon the Fifth Level of the City, just beyond the tunnel’s southern door.  Anyone of the City can give you directions, should you require them.  Accept my invitation, if you will, and know that you are truly welcome to enter the City, as friends.” 

Aragorn smiled with a touch of melancholy.  “Thank you, Boromir,” he said.  “I do not yet know if I will prove able to avail myself of your welcome.  But our Elven and Dwarven friends, I think, would not pass up an opportunity for the swapping of tales, nor would I wish them to do so.”

“Come when you will,” I answered, “any or all of you.  You are welcome.” 

At last I glanced down to Svip, who had watched in silence all of these mysterious doings of Men.  “All right, Svip,” I said.  “One more horseback ride.  The last one for today, I promise you.” 

We rode for the White City as the sunset’s last glow faded.  To one side of Svip and me rode Éomer of Rohan; to the other, Imrahil of Dol Amroth.  Each rode in silence, wrapped in thoughts that I had no doubt were as troubled as my own.

I thought of Aragorn Son of Arathorn, and his gleaming banner out of legend.  I thought of whatever mystery bound together my father, my uncle, and Aragorn.  I asked myself how I might unravel the secret that caused my father to gaze upon Aragorn with such unrelenting hatred.

Most of all, I thought of my brother as I had last seen him, lying pale and silent and as motionless as death.

For once, I was not entirely glad to see the circles of my City rising before us. 

This time, I dreaded what I might find within its walls.

Lord Éomer’s thoughts were following similar paths to mine.  The Horselord turned to me and asked, “The Steward said that the Lord Faramir is wounded?”

“Yes,” I said.  “He is in the Houses of Healing.  His wound would be no threat to him, in itself.  But it seems he is suffering from the malady that has struck down many of our Men – from the black shadow of the Nameless One’s henchmen.”  I hesitated, then I said, “Éomer – I ought to have told you when we spoke before.  Mithrandir fears that the same malady has struck the Lady your sister.  That in slaying the Ringwraith, she ventured too close for her safety, and she lies now in the dark sleep of the Wraith Lord’s touch.”

The Great Gate was almost upon us.  A sickly, dread-filled smile touched Éomer’s face. 

The King of Rohan stared at the Gate.  He whispered in tones almost too low for me to hear, “I know not which to feel, My Lord Cousin.  Eagerness to reach Éowyn – or fear of what I may find.”

Svip looked up at me in concern, his hand closing over mine where I held to Fengel’s reins. 

I tried to smile reassurance, both at Svip and at Éomer.  Whether or not I reassured either of them, I did not succeed in reassuring myself.

“I know, Lord Éomer,” I whispered.  “I know.”