Hello to all! Well, I didn’t manage to get this posted within the three-month launch window this time – but I’m only a little bit over that. Apologies for the wait, and I hope that there are still folk out there wanting to read this …

It is also just over three years now since I started working on this tale. Very hard to believe. Anyway, again, thanks to all who have read and reviewed over the years!

I’ve revisited the question of how many chapters are left after this one: at the moment, it looks like there are probably four more. No promises, I’m afraid, on how swiftly they’ll turn up – but hopefully it will be sooner rather than later!

Cheers to all of you!

Chapter Twenty-Three: The Steward and His Brother

I spent those next days on tenterhooks of suspense. I longed for the days to pass swiftly by, and to bring Faramir home.

Now that I had made my decision, I wished the matter done with as soon as might be.

I was not to be the Steward; on that I was determined. I felt certain that my choice was the right one. But there was yet a tempting mockery in knowing that the place for which I had trained all my life could still be mine.

I had only to keep silent about the decision I had taken. I had only to toss my resignation into the fireplace and go forward as though this incident had never occurred.

I would not do so. My resignation was the proper choice. I believed in that, and I would not waver.

But by all the gods, I wanted it done. I wanted Faramir home, and convinced of the rightness of this choice, and inaugurated as Steward. I wanted it to be over, that the mocking whisper “You can still be the Steward” would fall silent in my mind.

I glanced over my resignation several times, assuring myself that all was in order. Then I locked it in the desk. Sighing and telling myself that I had another charge which I could no longer avoid, I left the office and went to find Svip, in his refuge in the Fountain of the Tree.

I sat on the wall of the Fountain. Svip’s eyes were open and he was watching me, but he did not speak. I essayed, “Hello, Svip,” and after a lengthy pause he vouchsafed a very quiet “Hello.”

I glanced away from him and leaned forward, staring down at my hands. “Svip,” I said. “Svip, I am very sorry. I should not have brought you with me to the Tombs. I should have known better; I should have known it was something I should do alone. I am sorry if I frightened you, or caused you any embarrassment. I will make it up to you if I can.”

I heard a quiet splashing as he shifted in the water. “No,” he said finally, in nearly inaudible tones. “No, it’s all right, I don’t mind.”

I looked back at him then, meeting his unfathomable gaze. I said, “Svip, can you tell me what I can do to help? It is because of me that you’re here. I brought you into the world of Men, to face our sorrows. I’m sorry I brought you into this.”

“You didn’t bring me,” he stated truculently. “It was my choice to come.”

“But I knew what you were going into. You didn’t know.”

“I would have gone anyway,” Svip argued. “I wanted to see for myself what it was like. I didn’t want …” He paused then, for so long a time that I thought he would not go on. Then at last he said, “I didn’t want to be alone any more.”

I said to him, meaning it with all my heart, “I’ve been glad to have you with me, Svip. I have been very glad. But I don’t want you to be hurt because you’re here with me. If there’s some way that I can help you, please, tell me how.”

He sat in silence for a time, before answering, “I don’t know how.” Before I could think of something useful to say, he asked me, “How do you do it? All of you – how do you face this over and over again?”

I shook my head, and tried to smile. “There is no one good answer to that,” I told him. “Sometimes – sometimes there is no healing for it, save in the passage of time. The grief does not go away. But after a time, it does hurt less – even though at the first, you think that it never will. If you force yourself to go through with your everyday tasks, in time you may find it no longer quite so difficult to think of other things besides your loss.”

Svip was studying me. I could not tell if he thought there was any value to my words. Tentatively I suggested, “You might perhaps try going back to your work at the Houses of Healing. You did feel, didn’t you, that the work there helped you before? Then it is possible that it might do so again.”

The water creature shook his head. “No,” he said, “they’ll talk to me there. I don’t want them talking to me.”

I thought of Dame Ioreth of the Houses, and I thought that I could fully sympathise with Svip’s feelings. I tried again.

“Perhaps then you could go back to working with Lady Éowyn and the horses? I am certain that Lady Éowyn would not over-burden you with talking. Of a surety she would not, if you asked her not to.”

“I don’t know,” Svip said, frowning. For a long time he paused, before going on in a hushed, miserable tone, “I think maybe I should go home.”

His words caught me by surprise. So also did the stab of dismay I felt upon hearing them.

Trying to keep my voice casual, I asked him, “Back to the Falls?”

“Yes,” he said. “I think I ought to go.”

It must be almost precisely a month, I thought, since Svip and I had met. A month, but it could equally have been years that I had known him and had the honour of his friendship, from the sorrow and loneliness I felt now on hearing him propose to leave.

I swallowed, and said, “You must do what you feel is best. If you feel that you need to go home, then of course you must go. But I will ask you, do not leave yet. We do not yet know enough of the situation in the Marches. We don’t know what numbers of the enemy may still be on the move. When the army returns from the Black Gate, they may bring us intelligence of the borderlands, along with more certain knowledge of what has befallen in Mordor. We will be better equipped then to decide how to proceed – whether we must launch an additional campaign in Anorien’s borderlands, and whether it is safe for you to journey home.”

Svip was frowningly silent, and I persisted. “Promise me that, Svip. Promise me that you will not leave, until we know it is safe for you to do so.”

“I could get past them,” he said. “They wouldn’t catch me. But, all right. I promise.”

Our conversation, it seemed, had taken a few steps toward comforting Svip’s mind. It was at least enough to let him turn his mind to something else.

He gazed at me keenly, as though trying to answer some question in his thoughts. Then he said, “Something’s different. You look – better than you did. As if you don’t … hurt quite so much, any more.”

I thought on that. Then I nodded. I said, “I suppose that is probably true.”

And there, I told myself, is your answer; the best thing you can do.

I should tell Svip of my determination to renounce the Stewardship. If I feared I would waver in my resolution, then the best way to forestall that possibility was to tell my friends of my decision.

There was a chance that my certainty might erode, while I alone knew of my intent. But I knew that I would not permit that to happen, once those for whose opinion I cared knew of my intent.

So I told him of my decision and the reasoning that had led to it.

My friend did not comment on the tale as I spoke. But when I had done, and I glanced at him to judge how he might be reacting, I was surprised to see a tentative smile on his face.

He said, hesitant but hopeful, “That’s good, then. If you’re not the Steward, then – then you can come live with me.”

I was touched and taken aback, and I pondered how best to reply.

“Thank you, Svip,” I finally said. “I’m afraid I would not be able to accept your offer. Even though not the Steward, I would still want to work in the service of Gondor.”

“But you could visit,” he insisted. “You could visit, and stay for a while – every now and then.”

“Yes,” I agreed, relieved to be able to give him some kind of positive answer. “Yes, I should be able to do that. And it would indeed be much easier for me, than it would be if I were Steward.”

There were two requests that I thought I must make of Svip. I asked him to promise me that he would eat regularly, and I asked him to still share with me our morning trips to the River. To both of these he agreed. Then as I sat in silence, wondering what else I should say, Svip said in brusque tones that surprised me, “You don’t have to sit here with me. I know you’ve got a lot of work to do.”

I told myself that this was the simple truth; it was ridiculous of me to feel hurt at his words. I stood up and tried for a rueful smile.

“You’re right on that one,” I said, “I’m afraid that is always true. But you mustn’t let that worry you,” I went on, ‘if you ever want to talk … I will always have the time, Svip. I hope you know that.”

“Yes,” he said flatly, “I know that.”

The next morn upon our return from the River, I betook myself again to the Tower office and sent for Húrin Keeper of the Keys. Continuing my campaign to shore up my resolve, I told Húrin of the decision that I had reached.

The Lord of Keys took the news a good deal less happily than had Svip.

With a thunder-cloud scowl, Húrin struggled not to let himself burst out in protest.

“My Lord,” he began, “you know that we will loyally serve Lord Faramir. I know that Lord Faramir will follow worthily in the footsteps of his forebears. And yet – and yet I would not see you renounce your right, My Lord, without the most pressing of cause. You may see such cause; I confess that I do not.”

“I do see such cause,” I answered. “Nothing must stand in the way of Gondor having the Steward who will serve her interests best. With this condition that has come upon me, Faramir is the Man to do that.”

The debate in his thoughts was clearly visible upon his face. “And do you not think then, My Lord,” he ventured, “that you were brought back from death for a purpose, to take as you were destined the office of your longfathers?”

“I may indeed have been brought back for a purpose. But that purpose was to fight for Gondor, not to become her Steward.”

It was something of a surprise for me to realise, as I spoke those words, how strongly I believed that they were true.

Lord Húrin offered no more argument. We agreed to take no steps as yet in the procedures that must accompany the accession of a Steward: the minting of new coins, the scheduling of the new reign’s first Council session, the scheduling and planning of the ceremony of investiture.

Throughout our discussion Húrin staunchly held himself back from further stating his opinions. But as the conversation closed, he blurted, “My Lord, I would never wish for ill to befall Lord Faramir. I wish him back with us, in all safety and health. I will follow him with all my heart. Yet with all my heart do I wish it could be you whom we are to follow.”

“I thank you, Húrin,” I told him firmly, clasping his hand. “That is not the path that the Valar chose for us.”

Paradoxically, I threw myself into my work with more vigour now that I knew I was not to be the Steward, than when I had not yet questioned my succession.

I began with one tangible and reachable goal: to finish reading through the bookcase-worth of our father’s files, so I could be of use in advising Faramir on their contents, if he wished it. I made my way through the files at a prodigious rate, and completed them before the day was through. When I had been reading them in preparation for my own Stewardship, it had been all I could do to make myself slog through one shelf.

With that duty firmly behind me, I turned my attention to the ongoing clean-up and reconstruction efforts.

When our people could again return to their homes, many in the Pelennor, Anorien and some also in Minas Tirith would find those homes destroyed. In Minas Tirith, our Men had cleared away all dangerous debris of the buildings that had burned on the First Level. Now we looked to take that work further.

I set a combined force of City Guardsmen and secretaries of the Steward’s Household to investigating and documenting all buildings in the City and the Pelennor that had been damaged in the Enemy’s assault.

A detachment of this force I set to exploring what alternate housing might be available. Armed with writing desks and bulging satchels of land-holding records, they sallied out to inspect all the houses of Minas Tirith that had been left empty in these last centuries of our population’s dwindling numbers.

A few of the buildings had suffered damage through time. But the majority were still sound, hewn as they were of the stone of the White Mountains, and built, or so at least I believed, with skill of which even Dwarven craftsmen could well be proud.

The clerks noted down such repairs as would be needed. Further pursuit of that must wait until a future session of the Council, when I could propose these plans and request that we open of negotiations for the work with the Builders and Stonemasons’ Guild.

I thought there should be little difficulty in gaining approval for the work in the White City. But I had another scheme that was like to prove far more challenging to sell: the restoration of Osgiliath.

My thoughts in those days turned frequently to the last ill-fated ride with my father, and our conversation on means by which Gondor’s ancient capital might be restored. I thought of my father’s suggestion for succouring those left homeless by the fighting and at the same time promoting our people’s return to Osgiliath: to offer housing, free of charge, to any who would agree to make their home in the ancient city.

If we wished to offer better housing than tents pitched within the ruins, there was work aplenty to be done: the work of years. I was under no illusion that the Council would leap at these proposals. Yet there was more chance of eventual success if the preparatory work were already well in hand – whether, in the end, I proposed these efforts to Council and Steward, or to Council, Steward and King.

In this campaign I assigned a mission to Pippin and a large detachment of the Steward’s secretaries: to search the Library of the Stewards and collect every document that touched upon the construction of Osgiliath.

A few of these documents I had studied before, on previous occasions when I’d hoped to pursue my dreams of restoring our ancient capital. This time I ordered that every last document be assembled. Pippin and his cohorts ventured far into the library’s depths, to the distant, out-of-the-way shelves that would have been shrouded in the dust of ages, if my father had been the sort of Man to permit dust to linger anywhere in his household.

By the end of the search, several tables in the Stewards’ Library lay hidden beneath their findings. We had the original builders’ plans for the layout of the city, accounts of the quarrying and transport of the building-stones, logs and payment records from the years of construction. There were plans of the city’s complex of waterworks, the three great Anduin bridges, the city walls, and the Dome of the Stars. There were maps from later years that identified each building by owner, function and name. And there were centuries-worth of correspondence between Kings and Stewards of Gondor and their captains and builders, on each wave of disaster that shook the city – and on the lingering but seldom-pursued dream that Osgiliath might rise in glory once more.

The most of these documents were so ancient and fragile that the Chief Librarian would not permit of their being carried beyond the library’s walls. So our draughtsmen set about copying a selection of the maps and plans. With these copies in hand, I enthusiastically scrambled through the ruins of Osgiliath, trailing behind me a retinue that included Pippin and Svip, a handful of clerks, a few captains of our army’s engineers, and the leading members of the Builders and Stonemasons’ Guild.

Before long we were creating our own mountain of documents to add to the collection. Whenever I at last presented my findings to the Council, we would have more documents to hand than most of the Council members were likely to read, in the swiftly-growing stack of reports on the rebuilding’s cost, time estimates and judgements of feasibility.

Svip had firmly declared that he would not let me set foot outside the White City without him. The passing days seemed to do nothing to ease his darkness of mood, but yet my small green bodyguard kept ever by me, plodding sullenly over heaps of rubble, or sitting with me in silence when I stopped to pore over plans or to scribble out drafts of my reports.

More than a few times, as I wrestled with the practicalities of rebuilding the Citadel of the Stars, I knew the sneaking wish that I might simply discard the notion of resigning the Stewardship.

As Steward, I thought, I could see to it that these plans would one day come to reality, no matter how many years it took. As merely one of Gondor’s captains, it might be a dream that I would never see fulfilled; a proposal that I brought again to each new session of the Council, and that each new session of the Council again set aside.

If that happens, I told myself, you will be in good company. Your proposals will join those of your fellow dreamers from the last 1400 years.

I could not afford overstepping my authority to the extent of ordering any work begun on the city itself. But as acting Steward I was just about within my jurisdiction if I ordered that our troops begin new work for improving Gondor’s defences.

So it was that my plans focused in on Osgiliath’s Great Stone Bridge.

This middle bridge of the three was the last of Osgiliath’s bridges to fall. All of its stones save those of the massive pilings were rent asunder in battle when Boromir the First drove the enemy from Osgiliath. Since that time a succession of wooden bridges were built upon the ancient stone pilings. We tore down the last of these ourselves in the fighting of June 3018, to hold back the foe’s advance when the Black Captain first led his forces against us.

I thought, If the Dark Lord indeed is fallen, it can only improve our communications and our security if we rebuild the bridge again.

Only this time we would not build the bridge of wood. This time the bridge would rise in arches of stone, for the first time since the days of my namesake in 2475.

I made a bargain with Master Eppa of the Stonemasons’ Guild that I myself would cover the costs of the work, if the Council proved unwilling to authorise payment. My coffers at the moment could stand the expense, but they would not do so for long if I entered into many such bargains. The Guild itself contributed their Men’s wages for this effort, although Eppa apologetically pointed out that such a donation would be impossible for any future campaign of work on Osgiliath.

Of a certainty I could not authorise the quarrying and hewing of new stone, even had we the present manpower to allow any such expedition. Nor did I wish to make use of any of the fallen stones of the city, for I hoped that many of these would one day contribute to the rebuilding of Osgiliath itself. But there was another resource to hand, if we could but recover it. The stones that had once formed the bridge were present still, lying where they had fallen in the waters of Anduin.

And here, I told myself, is a practical way to make use of those changes that accompanied your return to life.

The main challenge of the task lay in locating the fallen stones. For Svip and for me, that challenge was easily surmounted.

Soldiers labouring alongside the Builders and Stonemasons’ Guildsmen, we set about constructing the arched wooden framework above which the building stones would be fitted into place. A goodly number of our Men labouring here were among the troops of Osgiliath’s garrison who had hewed down the bridge last summer. Many were their more-or-less good-natured jokes on the subject of tearing down bridges only to build them up again.

While this effort continued, Svip and I led the mission to recover the stones of the bridge.

Twice before, I swam the Anduin by the site of the Great Stone Bridge. The more recent time was in last summer’s battle. Faramir and I, with Zvonimir Son of Beric and Fjolmod Son of Branimar, were the only members of our company to reach the western shore alive, as our comrades felled the wooden bridge to halt the enemy’s advance.

Before that, I had investigated those waters when I was eighteen or thereabouts, when I was first scheming to achieve Osgiliath’s reconstruction. I’d wanted to learn for myself if the stones of the ancient bridge were still intact enough to use, when or if the bridge’s restoration became a priority. I had lowered myself into the River’s depths on a rope tied to one of the stone pilings – Faramir insisted that I tie the rope about my waist, my thirteen-year-old brother grimly declaring that he was not going to explain to our father how he had let me be swept away by Anduin’s current.

Even though that day had been sunny and clear, the murk and depth of the water made it all-but impossible for me to see the ancient stones. I’d had to locate them mostly by touch, feeling along the edges of the slippery, moss-draped stones, while the insistent current fought to pull me away.

The experience was a far different one now, when Svip and I dove in search of those same stones.

Now I could see them almost with clarity, the tumbled piles of stonework standing in the green-gold water like rows of underwater burial mounds. At the bottom of the River, the heaped-up stones seemed a warped reflection of the bridge they had once formed. None had fallen far from their positions in the lost bridge above.

And now I had no need of any tethering rope for me to hold my own against the Great River’s current.

Two of the smaller ships of the captured pirate fleet we rigged with crane-arms and counterweights. This done, Svip and I took charge of the salvage operation from either end of the bridge – Svip declaring that he should work from the eastern side of the River, so that if another attack came upon us, I would be farther from the enemy than he. Since East Osgiliath would be between both of us and any such hypothetical attack, I accepted his orders with little protest.

Time and again Svip and I swam beneath. We would tie our crane’s rope to a stone and then swim up once more, giving the word to lift the stone to the surface and thence to the shore.

Master Pelendur the Healer would not be best pleased when he learned of my frequent swims, a week after breaking two of my ribs. But in truth, I thought I had a solid defence against his displeasure. My ribs seemed to pain me less when I was in Anduin’s water than when I was on land. I thought it likely that the repeated dunkings might even speed my healing.

I grinned at the thought that for once, my usual scorning of Healers’ instructions might heal me more swiftly than the most scrupulous obedience.

The weather was marching resolutely into spring. The air was soft and warm, and the sun shone as though it disdained any notion that clouds might be able to hide its light. When I sat on the little pirate ship as we ferried building-stones to shore, or hiked through the ruins of Osgiliath comparing the ancient plans with what we could see on the ground, I glanced often to the east. There, sunlight and blue sky held sway over the former realm of fire and shadows.

That fact alone seemed to make the sun shine brighter over all of us. It seemed that it brought a feeling of purpose and hope, which had long been absent from the land of Gondor.

Our Men seemed to share in the feelings of hope and cheer. Of all those about me, only Svip seemed to spend his days in unremitting gloom.

He went about his work efficiently but with little comment. He kept a watchful eye out lest any peril should come to me, but otherwise he took scant interest in aught he saw or heard.

I could not help but contrast this behaviour against the Svip I had known a month before, when every new sight, sound and creature he encountered were sources of joyous fascination.

I am so sorry, Svip, I thought, more than once. I am so sorry that life with us has taken that joy from you.

More than once I asked myself whether the things he had learned and experienced could possibly make up for that loss.

He said he had wanted to know what it was like in our world; that he had not wanted to be alone any more. But could being alone be any worse than life as he faced it now, with bitter wariness replacing the old wonder he had felt for everything?

He was probably right, I had to confess to myself. He was probably right to say that he should go home, back to his house beneath the Rauros Falls.

I only hoped that going home would be enough. I could only hope that back in his house beneath the waters, with all his collection around him, he could regain the happiness that life in our world had stolen from him.

I was brooding on these matters one evening as Svip, Pippin and I rode back to the White City along the riverbank, after our first day of quarrying for building-stones in the Anduin.

Svip kept silent as was now his usual wont. Pippin strove valiantly for a time to keep a conversation alive, but at length Svip’s silence and mine quashed his attempts.

But when we reached the gate of my townhouse, we had an encounter in which even Svip could not fail to take a little interest.

Darkness was falling. Borna, one of the footmen of my household, was just lighting the torches at either side of the gate. As we rode out from the Fifth Level’s tunnel and rounded the corner toward my house, another Man wandered forth through the gate, with the air of one who walks in a dream. He turned back to wave and to blow a kiss to someone through the open gate. He was oblivious utterly to the nudges and whispers of Borna, who had noticed our approach and sought to make the Man stop acting like a moon-calf under the gaze of the Lord Boromir.

The kiss-blowing Man was the young Ranger Holgar Son of Armod, Svip’s comrade and mine on our journey from Lilla Howe.

Svip paused as we watched Holgar’s performance at the gate. I slid down from Svip’s back, and Pippin jumped down after me. As Svip changed to his own form, I grinned at Pippin and remarked, “Yes, it looks like it really must be spring.”

Holgar swiftly turned, and he blushed at the sight of us. The torchlight mercilessly revealed the crimson hue of his face.

My footman cast a disgusted look at Holgar and shook his head, then bowed to me and departed into the courtyard.

“My Lord,” Holgar said hastily. “I was just going back to camp. Hello, Svip, how are you?” he added, with a sickly attempt at a smile.

Holgar and the others of Captain Cirion’s company were stationed now at Osgiliath, and the most of them were on Svip’s work crew at the Great Stone Bridge. If I remembered right, their shift at the bridge must have ended in the middle afternoon. Between then and now there was just time enough for the young Man to have walked from Osgiliath to the City, to have spent an hour or so here, and now to be heading back. And I did not need to ask how he had spent this hour in Minas Tirith.

The evening before, I had glanced down from my balcony at just about this same time, and I had seen the young Ranger in the courtyard with the upstairs maid, Sigyn Daughter of Gavrilo. Sigyn and her cousin Bettris were nominally occupied in folding the laundry, but the folding process was hindered by Sigyn’s conversation with the Ranger.

Holgar, it seemed, had been recruited to help with the folding. This made but sluggardly progress, as the youth seemed compelled to stand very close to the maid, speaking earnestly and striving never to take his eyes from hers.

The romance which had blossomed in that dark day of the siege of Minas Tirith was clearly still in bloom. And just as obvious, I told myself, was the fact that all of us in my household had best resign ourselves to having very little laundry folded.

“You walked here from Osgiliath?” I asked Holgar.

“Yes, My Lord.”

“And you’ve been doing this every day for … how many days is it, now?”

“Um, well, just about a week, My Lord.” He sped on to add, “I’m off-duty, sir – I’ve got permission from Captain Cirion to leave the camp …”

“That is well,” I said quietly, letting my voice sound with more sternness than in truth I felt. “And have you permission from Master Gavrilo to be paying suit to his daughter?”

“Well, I – no, sir, I haven’t spoken with him yet – but I will, sir, I swear I will, at once, if – if Sigyn gives me reason to think I should …”

“See that you do,” said I. “I do not say that you would forget yourself, but remember this also. Sigyn and her family are people of my household, and I will not permit ill to come to them by any soldier of Gondor. Your father is not here, Holgar, so let me remind you in his stead: treat her with the respect that is her due as a woman of Gondor, that no shame may come by you to her family or to yours.”

“I will, My Lord,” the boy said in steadfast tones. He managed to meet my gaze, though from his expression he was suffering the most excruciating embarrassment. He went on, “Neither her father, nor mine, nor you, My Lord, will have any cause for wrath.”

“I am glad to hear you say it,” I said. I smiled, and another deep blush suffused his features.

I remembered that feeling well from my own youth. Smiles can be worse torment to endure than scolding.

“Get you gone, then,” I said. “’Tis no little hike back to Osgiliath. Good night to you, Holgar.”

“Yes, My Lord. Good night. Good night, Master Peregrin; good night, Svip.” The young Man bowed and took to his heels, as swiftly as he could without actually running.

Pippin chuckled quietly as Holgar rounded the corner and disappeared. “Poor lad,” the Hobbit observed, grinning up at me. “You were a little harsh on him, weren’t you, Boromir?”

I grinned back. “It is one of the privileges of growing older,” I replied. “We get our turn to dish out a little of the humiliation we suffered in our youth.”

Frowning, Svip voiced a question – something which was all too rare from him in these recent days. “What was that about?” he asked. “What’s wrong with Holgar?”

Pippin glanced at the water creature in surprise. Then he hurriedly put his hand over his mouth, in the attempt to hide another grin.

“Ah,” said Pippin, “well. That’ll take some explanation. What do you say, Boromir? Can I have leave to walk Svip to the Fountain, and explain to him, um – the young gentleman’s situation?”

“You may indeed,” I granted.

The two of them set out along the Citadel Road. I walked through the courtyard gate, exchanging greetings with the two broadly grinning guards, who had witnessed this little comedy.

In the courtyard the young lady in question was nowhere to be seen. From somewhere within the house I heard the voice of Dame Weltrude her mother, in strident tones that could only be those of a strict maternal lecture.

I carefully avoided walking in on that particular scene. Instead I held a brief conference with the maiden’s father.

My seneschal, as always, did his best to maintain the good servant’s calm and expressionless demeanour. But that slipped a bit as Gavrilo assured me that he and his family were keeping a watchful eye on any developments, and that if young Holgar should overstep his bounds, he would wish that the Black Riders had got him.

Late in the morning following this encounter, a Rider from one of the Rohirrim’s patrols galloped like a madman through Osgiliath’s eastern gate. He rode across the pontoon bridge, then made for the site of the Great Stone Bridge, where I and the rest of my salvage crew were bringing in another stone to the shore.

I leapt into the shallow water and hastened ashore to meet the Rider.

Dismounting, the Rohirrim saluted me and launched into his report. “My Lord, the compliments of Éoban Son of Éosterwine, commander of my patrol. He sent me to report that a force of foot is approaching south along the Morannon Road. We were just over three leagues from Osgiliath when we spotted them; if they’ve continued at their same pace, they must be closer to two leagues distant, now. They were too far for us to be certain of their identity when I set out, but from the dust they raise and what we could see of them, the force should number upwards of four hundreds. Our patrol is advancing with care, to learn who they may be before we become known to them. Éoban will send another messenger when we know who they are. But he thought you should be informed as soon as might be, that Osgiliath may be prepared in the event that they are troops of the Enemy.”

“Éoban did well,” I answered. My thanks to him, and to you.”

The messenger remounted and departed to rejoin his patrol.

“Shall we go to battle stations, My Lord?” The question came from Captain Eradan, erstwhile commander of the Cair Andros fortress and currently my second-in-command at Osgiliath.

“Aye,” I said. “We shall.”

Eradan set out to pass the word to the trumpeters of the garrison. With the steady efficiency of those who have answered full many a call to arms, our Men left off their work to obey the trumpets’ command.

Two of our people were already at their battle stations before ever the trumpets sounded. Pippin had come running to me from the mountain of building stones. He had been lugging about a brush and a bucket of paint, painting numbers on stones at the orders of the stonemasons as they deciphered which stone of the bridge, long ago, had fitted against which. Svip, meantime, had started swimming across the River toward me as soon as he spotted the Rohirrim messenger. My two small friends now made it clear that they had no intention of letting me move an inch without them, until any danger was well and truly past.

Sometimes riding on Svip and sometimes with the three of us on foot, we spent the next hour touring the defences and speaking with the officers and Men at their posts along Osgiliath’s newly re-built eastern wall.

If an attack did come, it would be the first time that our new-built wall faced combat. I think that a few of our Men almost hoped for an assault, that their handiwork on the wall might receive a proper test. Far more than actually hoped for this loudly declared that they did, in the boasting talk with which we ever seek to convince ourselves that what we feel is not fear.

This time, at least, it was not long that such talk was needful.

Near an hour after the first alarm had been raised, a second Rider of Rohan arrived bearing more certain tidings. This second message from Éoban Son of Éosterwine told that the force of foot they had encountered were none other than our own Men, returning from Mordor – a detachment of the Army of the West that marched from Minas Tirith a fortnight past.

With that news, dread departed from the Osgiliath garrison. But it did not depart from me.

The messenger had brought no more precise word of who these Men might be, or what had led to their separation from the army’s main force. The fear came to me that these four hundreds, as the first Rider had estimated their strength, might be all that were left of the seven thousands who had marched from the White City.

It could not be so, I assured myself. The second messenger’s report stated clearly that they were a detachment, not the remnant of the army itself. Besides, I argued, grasping at straws, we had the eagle’s fabled message telling us of “our king’s” great victory at the Black Gate – if the bird had indeed sung any such message at all, and if its message could be trusted.

Would the eagle have sung of a “great victory”, if scarce one in twenty of our Men had survived the battle?

Aye, he might, I thought grimly. We do not know he would not.

What did an eagle care for the numbers of our dead? If the Dark Lord indeed had fallen, then the eagles – and the Wizards, and the Elves – might see it as a victory even if none of the Army of the West lived to return home.

I figured up the days in my mind, and I found in that reckoning no respite from my dark conjectures.

It was seven days now since we accompanied my father’s body into the City; seven days since the earthquake and the departure of fire and darkness from the eastern sky, and since the eagle’s song of the Dark Tower being thrown down.

Seven days should be just enough time, at a forced march, for these Men to have made their way to Osgiliath from the Black Gate of the Morannon.

These speculations did not cease sounding in my mind, until the Men had marched through Osgiliath’s eastern gate.

Svip, Pippin and I rode to meet them. There was a grim and troubled look about most of the Men, but I saw few wounded among them – with the notable exception of four Men near the head of the column, who were being carried on stretchers rigged from spears and blankets, and sheltered by sunscreens contrived out of tents.

The officer at the column’s vanguard bellowed, “Company, halt!” As we rode up to him I recognised a Man who had been in my thoughts just a day or two before: Sergeant Zvonimir Son of Beric, one of the two Men who survived to reach the shore with Faramir and me, that June day when the last bridge was felled before the Black Captain’s advance.

“My Lord,” Zvonimir said in dour tones, as I dismounted and hastened to his side.

He would have continued. I interrupted him, dread nearly choking me as I asked, “How is it, Zvonimir, that you return with such small numbers? The rest of our army …”

“We parted from them, My Lord, six days out from Minas Tirith. The army continued onward through the Desolation, while we – we returned.”

Zvonimir’s words were enough to ease my sickening fear. But the sergeant himself seemed labouring through the throes of blackest despair.

He went on, “I beg leave to report to you – in private, if such may be. I ask that you grant us leave to rest here in Osgiliath until you have heard my report, and – and until you have decided what is to be our fate. The Rohirrim we met on the road told us of the loss of the Lord your father, for whom we grieve. You are the Lord of the City now; it is you who must hear my report and receive the messages I bring, and who must decree judgement upon us. Only these four wounded Men are not of our number; we found them nigh to the Crossroads only yesterday morn. They bear no taint of our shame. They are sore in need of the Healers’ care. I ask that they be taken onward to the White City, while the rest of us halt here.”

I frowned as I tried to determine the meanings behind his words. “Your requests are granted, of course,” I said. “The Men may stand down and rest here, and the wounded will be conveyed on to the City – ”

The Men bearing the stretchers had halted just behind Zvonimir. Now suddenly one of the wounded Men, I suppose hearing my voice, struggled suddenly to a sitting position and cried out, “My Lord Boromir!”

His bearers carefully set down their burden, while I hurried to them. The Man had fallen back to the stretcher once more. As I knelt beside him he reached out and seized my hand. His skin burned with fever; I felt it in his skin and saw it in his sweat-drenched face and in the wild desperation in his eyes.

I knew the Man, of that I was certain. I knew him as one of our soldiers; I recognised him, I knew I had spoken with him somewhere – the question was, where.

“My Lord,” he murmured frantically, “My Lord, we have failed the Lord your father. We have failed him … We have failed Gondor. We do not deserve to be here, My Lord, we do not deserve to come home …”

“That is nonsense,” I stated, even as I wracked my brain to recall who in the Valar’s names this Man might be. “Of course you deserve to come home. You are home and you are safe, and all will yet be well – ”

Then suddenly I remembered him.

He was a Ranger of Faramir’s regiment. His name came to my mind as Amyntor, though I did not yet recall his patronymic. I remembered speaking with him once when I had visited Faramir in Ithilien. I thought that I could also picture him in my memory, returning from patrol and reporting to the officer of his company –

And that officer was Damrod Son of Daeron. The Man whose company my father had sacrificed, in his desperate bid to gain the Ring of Power.

The company of Ithilien Rangers that my father had described to me from his vision, eighty Men lying slaughtered amid the rocks of Ephel Dúath.

“Amyntor,” I said. I saw from the flicker of acknowledgment in his face that I had indeed hit upon the right name. “Amyntor, you are of Damrod’s company?”

“Yes,” he murmured. His gaze was haunted with horror and pain. “They’re all dead … all of them … there’s only the four of us … we should be dead too. We should be. My Lord, how can we face your father? How can we ever face him, when we failed him? We failed …”

“No,” I insisted, gripping his hand more tightly. “No, you did not fail. I know that, Amyntor, and my father knows it also. Now listen to me. Gondor needs you. It is your duty now to recover your strength. Let the Healers tend to you; do not fight them, that is a direct order. Do you hear me? You are to get well, you are to live; that is my command.”

He frowned with a puzzled look as though he had not understood my words. But at last he whispered, “I will try, My Lord. I … I will try.”

“Good Man,” I said. “I will hold you to that.”

Cautiously I worked my hand free from his. Getting to my feet, I commanded that the stretchers be transferred to carts, and Amyntor and his comrades be brought at once to the Houses of Healing.

Of Zvonimir Son of Beric, I asked, “You say you found them yesterday, near the Crossroads?”

“Aye, My Lord. It was Amyntor Son of Kænmar there whom we found. He had lost consciousness just at the edge of the road. A little water and brandy revived him, and when we’d rigged a stretcher for him he was able to guide a party of us to where the others were hidden – in a cave in the woods, about a league back toward the foothills. Two of them were unconscious, in delirium, as they are still. The third of them, Sirnir Son of Steinthor, was awake, but only barely – trying to care for his two comrades, though he is wounded and feverish himself – even as is Amyntor. Amyntor had left them and set out alone to seek help, but his fever had caught up with him. They would not speak much of what has happened to them, but their wounds must be more than a week old. The Valar only know how they have lasted this long.”

I nodded. “We must pray that they will be rewarded for their courage,” I said. “And that the Valar will sustain them now that their strength can sustain them no longer.”

I fervently prayed that myself – for the four Men themselves, but also, I confess, for my brother.

The gods knew that the survival of these four would not make up for the loss of their comrades. And yet, I thought, it would be something – something at least for Faramir to hang onto, on that day when at last he came home, and I was forced to tell him how our father had sent his Men to their deaths.

I had to remind myself that those four Men, and Faramir, were not the only ones for whom I must be concerned now. There were yet the Men under Zvonimir’s command, and whatever trouble led him to speak so darkly of their shame.

Captain Eradan offered the use of his tent, set up with those of most of the garrison on the shore of West Osgiliath, that Zvonimir might report to me in private as he had requested. Sergeant Zvonimir was grimly silent as we crossed the pontoon bridge. In Eradan’s tent, he declined my offer of a seat, standing stock still with an expression of doom upon his face as I seated myself in one of the captain’s folding camp-chairs.

“Be at your ease, Zvonimir,” I urged him. “Will you take some wine?”

“No, My Lord, I thank you,” he said in tones of misery. “But some water would be very welcome.”

I gestured for him to help himself from the jug and goblets upon a table near the wall of the tent. When Zvonimir had done so, and was clutching his goblet to him as though it were some kind of talisman, I said quietly, “Speak, my good friend. How is it that you were parted from the army?”

He blurted out, as though in echo of the wounded Amyntor, “We have failed you, My Lord. We have failed Gondor. We … It was six days’ march from the White City. Three days before, the army met battle with a force of Orcs and Easterlings. We had been well warned by our scouts; we slew many and the rest of them took to their heels, with but little loss to us. But that very night … the Black Riders, flying high above us, came to dog our steps, and they followed ever near us as we continued our march. So at least said the Elven lords among the people of the Lord Aragorn, for none of the rest of us had eyes sharp enough to see them.

“We could not see them, My Lord, but we could sense them … we could sense them, the dread of them, all about us – in the very air, and in the ground beneath our feet. We came to the Desolate Lands, and the desert stretched before us – and in the Valar’s truth, My Lord, I do not know how it was, but it seemed as though the land itself were our enemy. Each breath we took brought more fear to us; fear worse than that of the demons above us, worse than that of the Black Captain himself, when we faced him here this midsummer past. The four hundreds and thirty-four of us who have returned – fear lay so heavy upon us that we could scarce move; we could not walk nor ride one step farther north.

“The Captains took council amongst themselves, and at length decreed that those of us who could go no farther should return to Minas Tirith, to join the garrison defending the White City and perhaps have occasion to erase some of our shame with deeds of courage, if the City should again come under attack. The horsemen among us gave up their steeds to the use of others who kept still the courage to go forward, and we turned back from the Desolate Lands on foot. So we have returned, My Lord – and though we rejoice that no threat menaces our City, it leaves us nothing but to stand before you shamed and defeated by our own fear.”

“I thank you for your honesty, Zvonimir,” I said. “I cannot but think that the fault lies less with you, than with the evil that you faced. Was it the Lord my brother who placed you in command of this force?”

“Aye, My Lord, it was.”

His words confirmed my thought. Faramir and I both knew first hand the courage of Sergeant Zvonimir Son of Beric, and many an Orc now in the underworld knew it also. The burly old soldier had fought at our sides, facing with no sign of fear the army of Mordor under the King of the Nazgûl himself.

Faramir had chosen Sergeant Zvonimir to command this mission because he knew that I would remember that, and that I would understand it was some force other than cowardice that had defeated these Men.

I asked, “You said that you bear messages for me?”

“Yes, My Lord.” He took from the satchel over his shoulder a packet of dispatches which he handed to me. There were two letters from Faramir, one to our father and one to me, and there was one also from Éomer King to Marshal Elfhelm.

I bypassed the letter addressed to Father, and opened Faramir’s letter to me.

My brother had written:

“Twenty-Fourth Day of March, On the Morannon Road, six days’ march from Minas Tirith.

“To my brother Boromir, Captain-General of Gondor, I send my love and greetings.

“I’ve explained in my letter to Father what has led these four hundreds and thirty-four of our Men to return.

“I promise you, these Men bear no blame for what has brought them to you.

“The most of them are young, Men for whom the war and Mordor have never been more than distant legend. They are herdsmen and farmers, whose loyalty to Gondor brought them to serve at our country’s call, but who have never so much as seen an Orc, leave alone the nightmares they’ve experienced since they left their homes.

“Even for many of our seasoned warriors, the terrors of this land have proved almost more than they can bear. The hearts of all, from highest to lowest, are downcast, and foreboding of evil grows heavier on all of us.

“It is more than natural fear afflicting these Men. The Nazgûl are trailing us, as they have been now for two days. The wraiths have uttered no cry nor yet stooped down upon us, and they are out of the sight of all save for Prince Legolas and the Sons of Elrond. Yet they are with us always and their presence is felt by all, as a deepening of shadow and a dimming of the sun.

“We came today into the lands of the Desolation, and the marsh and the desert seem to magnify tenfold the fear that Nazgûl have brought upon our forces.

“This fear is oppressing all of us. But today the horror’s hold grew so deep on these four hundreds that they could not physically go on.

“I have thought it best that these Men be sent back to Minas Tirith, to add their strength to our numbers that guard the White City. But the decision has troubled me, for I know that they may suffer at the hands of their comrades or their commanders, when it is learned under what circumstances they were sent home.

“I beg you, as much as you can, see that these Men are neither punished nor victimised for their return. The terror is more than mortal that has been heaped upon them. They should earn no blame that it has been more than their mortal strength could endure.

“Your Loving Brother,

“Faramir.”

I sighed as I folded Faramir’s letter closed.

“Zvonimir,” I said, “my brother confirms for me what I already believed. I am certain that no blame is due to you and those with you. All of us saw when Minas Tirith was besieged that the fear of the Nazgûl is more than mortal Men can withstand. I know your courage; you have never given me any cause to doubt it. It is some cursed magic of the Dark Lord, not any failing of yours, that has led you to stand before me now.”

“Yet, My Lord,” the sergeant countered bitterly, “six thousands and more of our troops were able to go on, and only we were not.”

“Magic works differently upon each of us,” I stated. “Do not be so eager to take the blame upon yourself. If you would continue to serve our country, then Gondor will need you in the strength of your courage as before, not broken by what you mistakenly see as your shame.”

They were, perhaps, less than sympathetic words. But Zvonimir, I think, took some comfort in them. He stood up straighter, then he bowed to me. Firmly he said, “I will obey you, My Lord.”

From further discussion with Zvonimir I learned that just over one hundred of the Men who had returned with him were of the troops of Rohan. These I ordered on to Minas Tirith, to the Rohirrim’s barracks to report to Marshal Elfhelm.

The others were our Men. Three score of them were from among our troops of various postings in Anórien, Ithilien and along the Rammas. The majority, as Faramir had written, were of the volunteers of the Outlands who had marched to Minas Tirith’s succour, Men of the Anfalas, Ringló Vale, the Ethir and Pinnath Gelin. All of these I ordered added to the garrison at Osgiliath.

Faramir had been right, I knew; it was too much to expect or hope that unpleasantness would not ensue, when our Men here learned of what had brought these their fellows home. I spoke with Eradan of it and set him to pass the word amongst his officers, that conflict between the garrison and those newly returned would not be tolerated, and that three consecutive shifts on construction duty would await any caught fighting over this matter.

If nothing else, I thought, we can see to it that the Men are simply too exhausted to fight each other.

As that afternoon waned, Svip, Pippin and I returned to Minas Tirith. Pippin, as usual, I gave leave to seek out Merry. Svip returned to the Fountain of the Tree, and I took myself to the Houses of Healing, to inquire after Faramir’s four wounded Men.

The Warden of the Houses was able to give me a truly heartening report. All of the four, he believed, would make full recoveries. They had a variety of sword, axe and arrow wounds, but none of their wounds should have been life-threatening had they received prompt attention. It was the Men’s travails following the battle that had brought on them the fevers from which they suffered.

Amyntor, the Warden reported to me, had told him a little of what they had endured. The Ranger spoke of a tortuous journey through the mountains, always in dread of discovery, wounds reopening frequently when Men fell from missteps in the jagged rocks. Days had passed when they found nothing of food or drink, then they found a stream that must have been tainted, for the two lesser-wounded Men, Amyntor and Sirnir, fell ill after drinking from it.

The Chief Healer declared, “They were in very real peril of their lives by the time they reached us here, My Lord. But as soon as they had treatment, that peril fell off at once. We have cleansed their wounds and given them draughts against the fever; all four of them have responded as well as ever I could wish. Their fevers have faded almost entirely. Three of the Men were sleeping peacefully when last I checked upon them. Amyntor Son of Kænmar was awake a few moments ago; he likely wakes still, if you would wish to visit him.”

Gladly I took the Warden up on this offer. I found the Ranger indeed vastly improved since our meeting a few hours before. His gaze was clear and alert, and his skin no longer burned.

I sat in the chair by his bed, and inquired how he fared. This question, Amyntor did not answer. Instead he murmured faintly, “My Lord – the Healers have spoken of your Lord father’s death. I am so very sorry, My Lord.”

“I thank you, Amyntor,” I told him, putting my hand over his.

He spoke on, in bitter grief. “We can never forgive ourselves for failing him. The four of us – we would not even have sought to return home, save that we thought the Lord Steward might perhaps need to hear our report. But … it would have been justice if we had died with the others, instead of returning, to live with our failure …”

I hesitated a moment. Then I decided that there was no way to proceed save by telling him at least something of the truth.

“Amyntor,” I said, “it is difficult for me to speak of this, but you and your comrades deserve to know. The Lord Steward had been ill. He was suffering from the strain brought on by Gondor’s peril. He hid his illness from all of us, but – but I cannot but think that he was … not fully in his right mind, when he assigned your company that mission. It was little else but suicide; no Men in Middle Earth could have accomplished it. I cannot believe that he would have sent you thus to your deaths if he had been fully himself.”

“I – ” Amyntor began, then he stopped and pondered that. “I … thank you, My Lord,” he whispered at last. “Thank you for telling me.”

I asked the Ranger what he could tell me of their mission, and the company’s fate. He answered that Damrod had told them they were to make for Mount Doom in search of the two halflings who carried the Ring of Power, and to bring them back to Minas Tirith.

Their instructions from my father were to watch as well as possible the Morgul Road from Minas Morgul to the Mountain of Fire. That was the route that the halflings were believed to be taking. But the Rangers had orders from my father not to attempt reaching Mordor through Minas Morgul itself, for the evil that dwelt there would be more than they could hope to defeat.

They had sought a passage across the mountains just north of Minas Morgul, and it was there, near the crest of Ephel Dúath, that they were surprised by a war party of Orcs, that ambushed them out of a chain of hidden caves.

“There – there was one mercy, My Lord,” Amyntor continued faintly. “The Orcs were in a hurry. They did not stop to make certain that all of us were dead. They took a few of our comrades’ bodies with them, as … as provisions …” he closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again and went on, “but not many, may the Valar be thanked. They did not stop to make sure of us, but moved on at a swift march, heading east across the mountains.

“I had regained consciousness while they were leaving, and when I was certain they had gone, I searched over the battlefield and found three others that yet lived. The four of us – we held council on whether we should continue on, and attempt to complete our mission. At last we decided that wounded as we were, we had no real chance of succeeding. We judged it was better that we try to make our way home to report to the Lord Steward, that he might send out another force, if need be. And … and the rest you know.”

“I am glad that you chose as you did, Amyntor,” I said. “I grieve in my heart that you needed to make that choice.”

When I left the Houses of Healing, I made my way through the lengthening afternoon shadows across the Seventh Level, to Fen Hollin and the Mansions of the Dead.

Faramir’s letter to me weighed heavily on my mind.

I told myself that there was little cause for me to be cast down by it. The letter was written over a week ago. The dread that had menaced our forces then must be long past.

I knew that they had gone through battle since the time that Faramir wrote that letter. But if we could believe in the eagle’s famous tidings, then they had been victorious. I had to believe that victory had been theirs, and that my brother was safe, and would soon return home.

Wherever our army was now, that unheard-of sunlight over Mordor must shine in their gaze, even as it shone for us.

As I stepped into the House of the Stewards, I saw that I was not alone in choosing that afternoon to pay a visit to the tombs.

Standing silently by the bier of Théoden King was the fallen king’s niece, the Lady Éowyn of Rohan.

The sun, near to taking its rest behind the shadows of Mindolluin, gleamed down upon her through the high windows, setting her hair to sparkling as though she wore a veil sewn with gems. The sling on her left arm was starkly white against the deep blue of her gown. I noticed suddenly that the dress she wore was one of those her brother had purchased for her here in the City, that had not fit her properly and that I had sent Dame Weltrude and Sigyn to see about altering.

There were, I thought, no complaints that could be made about the dress’s fit now.

She had not yet noticed my presence. As I gazed at her another thought struck me, called to my mind by the midnight hues of her dress.

I thought suddenly of the cloak my mother had worn, of the same night-blue shades as the Lady Éowyn’s dress. I thought of the silver stars that were embroidered at the cloak’s clasp and hem, and my glance went again to Lady Éowyn’s hair, gleaming as brightly as those stars.

The lady bowed her head at last to the King her uncle, and she stepped away from his tomb as though she loathed to leave him. She turned to my father’s bier, and curtsied low before the body of the Lord Denethor. Then she rose and turned to leave the tombs, pausing for only an instant when she saw me standing in the doorway.

I walked forward to meet her. “Your pardon, Lady Éowyn,” I said. “I did not wish to disturb you.”

“I thank you, My Lord,” she said, curtsying in return. “You did not disturb me.”

“It is well with you, Lady?” I asked.

“It is well enough,” she answered, with her usual solemn gaze. “And with you, Lord Boromir?”

“Aye,” I said. “It is well enough, as well.”

She hesitated, a faint frown touching her forehead, and opened her lips suddenly as though there were something of which she meant to speak. But she changed her mind on that, and only bowed her head to me again, saying quietly, “A good day to you then, My Lord.”

“Aye, Lady. And to you.”

The Lady of Rohan walked from the House of the Stewards. I sighed – at what, I could hardly have said – and crossed to my father’s tomb.

I had thought that I owed a visit. It was days since last I had stood here. But now that I was here, I found that my thoughts were not, for the most part, of my father.

I prayed for my brother’s safe return, and that of all our Men. Then my thoughts raced on once more.

I thought of the last time I had seen my mother wear that blue, star-embroidered cloak.

I thought of what a beautiful vision the Lady Éowyn had been, standing here with the sunlight playing in her hair.

I thought of Éowyn’s cousin the Princess Théodhild of Rohan, my wife whose earthly remains lay here behind walls of cold stone. I thought also of our son. I remembered the joy and pride upon my father’s face as he held his grandson on his knee. I heard again my father’s laugh when he handed Findemir his first toy sword, a weapon of wood which the one-year-old immediately commenced to chew.

I wondered suddenly if that wooden sword with the tooth-marks in it still existed somewhere, packed away in some chest and forgotten, far from the sight of Men. Packed away like our mother’s midnight-dark cloak, like the memory of those whom we had loved, and who had left us.

I thought of how our father had smiled, when first he held his grandson in his arms. And I thought, I’m sorry, Father. I am sorry that I waited too long, and kept you from the joy of doing that again.

The reflection came to me of how many of my kin lay here, embalmed on tables of stone or buried behind the cold walls. I thought of how many were here, and of how few still lived, to walk in the sunlight upon this Middle Earth.

We had come near, far too near, to all of us lying here.

I thought of the deadly perils that Faramir and I had passed through – and I prayed that indeed the immediate perils were past, where Faramir was concerned. I thought of how slight were the changes in events that would have led to Faramir and me lying here as well, with our father and our mother and the women we had loved.

And did we lie here, and our wives and my son by us, then there would be the end – the end of the House of Húrin, of the line of the Stewards of Gondor.

I whispered, “My love to you, to all of you,” before I turned and walked from that cold, silent House.

To my surprise I saw that the Lady Éowyn still lingered upon the Silent Street. She stood at the base of the stairs to the House of the Stewards. She was gazing east, to the cloudless sky above that distant land, beyond the Mountains of Shadow. But she turned at the sound of my footsteps, and she smiled that faint smile of hers, like the pale warmth of the winter’s sun.

“My Lord Boromir,” she said, when I stopped by her side. “I did not wish to disturb you in your visit. But there is something of which I have been meaning to speak with you.”

“Of course, My Lady,” I answered. “What is it?”

“No one can have failed to notice how poorly Svip has seemed, in these last days. I have wanted to ask if you think there is aught I could do to help him. He … he is mourning for the Lord your father?”

“Yes, he is,” I said, “though he may not know that he is mourning. He may not even know the word. I don’t know if he has spoken to you of his people, My Lady – but they do not live in each other’s company; their world is built upon being alone. He has lived for thousands of years, without ever knowing the pain of losing any being for whom he cares. To meet that pain for the first time, after so long a life without it – I dread to imagine what it must be like for him.”

“Yes,” she answered quietly, nodding. “Yes, so do I. Do you think – would there be any good in me offering to continue his training with the horses of the Citadel? I will do so gladly if you think there would be any good in it. But I have hesitated to ask.”

“I suggested that to him a few days ago,” I said. “At that time he did not seem welcoming of the idea. He’s refused to leave me out of his sight when I am beyond the City’s walls. I suppose – gods help him, I suppose he hopes that by keeping a close rein on me, he can protect me, can keep me alive. As none of us were able to do for my father.”

“Poor Svip,” the Lady of Rohan murmured. “We are trained from childhood to endure this kind of loss, and even then it is more terrible than any other sorrow. To encounter it without that training …” helplessly, she shook her head. “You are right, My Lord. It is worse than I can imagine.”

“Will you speak with him, My Lady?” I asked her suddenly. “The Valar know that my words to him have done little good. But perhaps something you will say may bring some hope to him, as my words have failed to do.”

“I fear that my words will prosper no better than yours. But, yes,” she said. “Yes, I will gladly try.”

I walked with the lady up the Road of Stairs, and across the Seventh Level to the Citadel and the Court of the Fountain. Before we reached the Court I bade my farewells to Éowyn, for we had agreed that Svip might take umbrage at the notion that she and I had been scheming together for ways to cheer him up. When I had parted from the lady I followed my familiar path to the roof of the White Tower, my steps considerably slowed by my pondering thoughts.

From the Tower’s roof I looked down and saw Lady Éowyn seated on the wall of the Fountain, with Svip a small dark shape in the water by her side.

I glanced away quickly, unwilling to seem to myself to be spying upon them. But my thoughts did not stray far from that valiant lady, who faced a friend’s grief with the same unflinching spirit with which she faced all of her foes.

The memory came to me of my father’s file on me, with its list of potential candidates to be my bride. I thought of the note that my father had written by Éowyn’s name: “B. seems to like her.”

All right, Father, all right, I thought, you were right, as always.

I do like her, thanks very much for noticing.

I like her. The question is, I told myself, do I like her enough to try doing something about it?

It surprised me at first to realise that I had thought that. But as I thought of it further, it did not seem so surprising after all.

By the gods, I wished I had brought myself to think of such matters when my father had wanted me to, when he was still alive. I wished with all my soul that I had married when he wished me to, and that I’d given him the chance to hold a grandchild again, before death took that chance from him.

It was too late to do that for my father. And yet, I thought, one’s father’s wishes are not the only reasons why Men contemplate such actions.

I thought, The Lady Éowyn is a woman worthy of the greatest admiration. She has the courage and strength of the greatest warriors of her line. On the battlefield she has triumphed where all others have failed.

And, I thought, it is not only on the battlefield where admiration is due to her.

The evening’s shadows drew in about me little heeded, as Éowyn’s image shone before my eyes.

By the time I climbed down from the White Tower that night, I had made up my mind.

Etiquette, of course, demanded that I speak first to the King her brother, before I had any speech on the subject with her. But instinct told me I might do well to bend slightly my obedience to that rule, where it concerned a maiden who was so firmly the mistress of her own mind.

It was not, I told myself, that I thought Lady Éowyn would utterly flout convention. I would not wish her to, nor would I wish to do so myself. But yet the lady had shown often enough her independence of thought, and her dislike for having her path chosen by her male relations.

If I am to ask her brother for permission to woo her, I thought, I may do well to first ask that permission of her.

Éowyn had gone by the time I crossed the Court of the Fountain, a fact for which I was absurdly grateful. My breath hitched and my heart beat decidedly faster at the thought of encountering her, until I had to grin at myself and take myself to task for my ridiculous alteration of mind.

Two hours ago, I told myself, you were a mature and sensible Man. Now you decide that you will ask a lady to marry you, and you turn into as hopeless a moon-calf as Holgar!

The Lady of Rohan had maintained her schedule of riding with Marshal Elfhelm’s patrol upon every other day. She would ride with the patrol again on the morrow, and their patrol, I knew, passed always through Osgiliath late in the afternoon.

Now I awaited that afternoon, eagerly yet with more than a few twinges of fear.

In my thoughts I mocked myself for my sudden upsurge in vanity. But that did not stop me from bringing a change of clothes with me that day to Osgiliath. I had been doffing my outer tunics at any rate before my recent swims, in deference to a polite reminder from Master Gavrilo that silks, velvets, leathers and furs do not fare all that well with frequent drenchings in the Anduin. But this time I brought with me changes of the rest of my clothing, stolidly ignoring the questioning glances from my household and Pippin at the satchel I carried with me. In vain did I tell myself that if the lady were put off by my frequent dunkings of myself and my clothing in River water, then the damage to her opinion of me had doubtless already been done.

As the hour of the patrol’s return drew nigh, I excused myself from the building-stone retrieval detail for the remainder of the day. Captain Eradan carefully did not comment when I requested the use of his tent in which to change my clothes. Pippin restrained his comments as well, though his eyes nearly popped and his eyebrows bade fair to jump off his head when he saw me reappear in fresh clothing, with my hair as dried as I could make it and neatly combed.

When Elfhelm’s patrol rode over the pontoon bridge, I contrived to be near at hand. Merry, seated to the fore of Lady Éowyn’s saddle, hailed me with typical Hobbitly enthusiasm. The lady also smiled, though her greeting was a good deal more restrained.

I bowed and bade good afternoon to both of them, then begged Merry’s pardon and requested of Éowyn if she would do me the favour of speaking with me alone.

She frowned a little in puzzlement, but she answered, “Of course, My Lord.”

Éowyn gave Merry leave to join Pippin in his ongoing work painting the numbers on building-stones and otherwise assisting the Stonemasons’ Guildsmen. I then had to dissuade Svip from accompanying us. My friend had seen that I’d left off my work, and when I’d emerged from changing my clothes he swam over to the western shore to keep an eye on me.

“It’s all right, Svip, I promise you,” I told him. “I’d like to speak with Lady Éowyn alone. But I promise you I won’t get into any trouble, and we’ll stay on this shore. If there’s an attack, you’ll know of it long before any danger reaches us. I’ll not leave Osgiliath without seeking you out first, I swear it.”

“All right,” Svip said at last, sullenly scowling. He swam, with exaggeratedly loud splashing, back to his work crew on the eastern side of the River.

Bloody hell, I thought. If it does transpire that I’m to be paying court to this lady, I will certainly have a time of it trying to snatch a few moments alone!

Éowyn of Rohan smiled at me quizzically, and inquired, “Where do you wish to speak, My Lord?”

I forced myself not to clear my throat, and I clasped my hands tightly behind me to ensure that they would not be fidgeting.

“Have you seen the Dome of the Stars?” I asked, hoping that I sounded a good deal calmer than I felt. “It is one of our landmarks in Gondor. I fear there’s been little time or occasion for sight-seeing while you have been here with us.”

The lady looked more puzzled than before. She answered, “No, My Lord, I have only seen it from a distance. I would be glad to see the Dome, if you have the time to guide me.”

So Lady Éowyn and I walked the short distance to the hallowed ruins that once housed within them the throne room and council chambers of ancient Gondor. As we walked I gave a brief account of the building’s history and its destruction during the Kin-strife, to which she listened politely but with still a deeply puzzled look.

When we walked under the remnants of the great Dome itself, she gazed upward respectfully for some moments. Then she said, “I am sorry, My Lord, that I did not report to you earlier on my conversation with Svip. I fear I had no particular success. He listened to me patiently enough, but he would speak little himself. In truth I do not know if my words made any difference to him or not.”

“I thank you, My Lady,” I said. “I fear that for now, that is all that any of us can hope to accomplish.”

She turned that frank, direct gaze of hers upon me. She asked, “Is there something else of which you wished to speak?”

“Aye, Lady, there is. Will you sit?” I suggested.

The ruin of the Dome had left a profusion of heaped, fallen stone strewn over the bright mosaics of the ancient floor. There was no shortage of vast, carven stones to serve as benches. On one of these the Lady Éowyn now sat, smiling warily at me. I sat myself down on another stone block near to the one she had chosen, and I told myself, Speak, then, you fool! This was your idea, you know, not hers!

I’d decided in my ponderings that I could not speak to her of more personal intentions, without informing her fully of how matters stood with me.

I did not think that the lady’s decisions would necessarily be guided by the status of the Man who expressed his intentions to her. But yet it would not be the honourable part were I to speak to her, as she thought, as the Steward of Gondor, when I had no intention of ever taking office.

So as we sat there I spoke to her of my choice to renounce the Stewardship, and of the factors that led to that decision.

Solemnly and attentively she listened. To my relief, I found that at least this topic of discussion was one on which I could speak to her without excessive nerves.

I hoped that my calm would endure when I turned at last to the question I wished to ask of her.

As I closed the recital of my reasoning, Éowyn gazed at me steadily, weighing her words with care before she spoke.

“I know, My Lord,” she said in her quiet, measured tones, “that you have not undertaken this decision lightly. I know as well, that you alone can know in truth whether you are able to fulfil the Steward’s duties or no. But if you will permit me to offer an opinion, I cannot say I am convinced that Gondor would suffer for it did you take your place as Steward – your dependence upon the River notwithstanding. Your people, I am certain, hold no fear that you will fail them. They would hail with joy your accession to the office of your longfathers, and such limitations as you suffer would cause them scant concern. I make bold to say that neither, perhaps, should they cause such concern to you.”

I held back a sigh. “I thank you for your words, Lady of Rohan,” I answered. “And I cannot deny that they hold some temptation for me. But nor can I deny my conviction that this is the right course to take. I would see Gondor with a Steward who suffers no restrictions in his ability to serve our country. My brother is the Man who will best fulfil that duty, not I.”

She nodded. “If that is truly your belief, then it would be ill of me to attempt to turn you from it. I know … I know the suffering that can come to a country when its ruler has not the health sufficient to fulfil his duties.” She studied me then as though I had presented her with some complex problem of battlefield tactics. “Forgive me for speaking of so ill-favoured a subject. Yet I know I say nothing of which you have not also thought. What if, as the Valar forbid, the Lord your brother should not return from this campaign? What then?”

She was right; I had thought of it, and more than once. Though every time I did so, I sought to shove the thought as far as might be from my mind.

I said, “Then I will be the Steward. I wish Gondor to have the Steward who can serve her interests best. I do not wish her to have no Steward at all.”

For a time then neither of us spoke. I glanced up again at the jagged remains of the Dome, at the faded glimmers of time-weathered paint and gems that once had made up that ceiling’s legendary field of stars.

“May I ask of you a question, My Lord Boromir?” said the Lady Éowyn.

My gaze turned once more to her. “Of course.”

“I do not think this question of the succession is one on which you seek advice. If your mind is at peace with your decision, why then did you speak of it to me?”

“Your perception does not fail you,” I told her. “I spoke of it because I wished you to have full knowledge of my situation, before I asked of you another question.”

The lady raised her eyebrows a little at that. “And that question, My Lord?” she inquired.

Now that we had come to it, I rather wished for some way of delaying the question. But the shieldmaiden would have no respect for any attempts at evasion. There was no worthy course for me to follow now, save to go forward.

I said, “I ask of you, Éowyn Daughter of Éomund, whether you would be prepared to consider me as a suitor for your hand in marriage.”

For a moment she made no reaction, either in expression or in word. Then haughty anger showed upon her face as she sat there on her chair of rubble, spear-straight and as proud as any Elven queen.

The Lady Éowyn demanded, “Did my brother put you up to asking me that?”

I had imagined many answers that she might give, but this one had never been among their number.

I pointed out, striving not to sound too annoyed, “There are a good many gracious ways that a lady might answer that question. That was not one of them.”

At that she blushed, and her glance dropped suddenly from mine. In that moment I was reminded of how young in fact she was, her queenly demeanour and her battlefield prowess notwithstanding.

“I ask your pardon, Lord,” she said stiffly. “I see now that he did not.”

“If I may ask, Lady,” said I, “why should you believe that he would have done so?”

The lady looked up again, fixing me with her familiar defiant gaze. “My Lord,” she said, “I do not say that my brother wishes to be rid of me. But it can be no very comfortable position for a young warrior to find himself flung not only into kingship, but also into being the guardian of a maiden whose escapades may whiten his hair and deprive him of his sleep. My brother may feel some pride in my achievements. But I do not doubt that he would also be glad for another Man to share some of the worries that go with being protector to so troublesome a woman.”

“If you will permit me,” I said, “I believe that you sell your brother short. You may indeed cause him some anxious moments. But I believe that he feels more pride for you than concern. He knows, I am sure, that you are as skilled and fearless a warrior as any in Middle Earth, and as fully capable of fending for yourself. Or if he does not know that, he should.”

“I thank you, My Lord,” she said warily, seeming not quite certain of whether she should still look defiant or not. After a moment’s hesitation, she went on, “You have not spoken of this matter with my brother?”

“I have not. It is true of course that protocol decrees I should first seek his permission to pay my addresses to you, before speaking of it to you. But I thought it not unlikely that you may have your own opinion on the question, regardless of what Éomer King may think. It was my thought that I could save all of us unnecessary strife, by first asking you if this quest could have any prospect of success. If you tell me that you have no wish to consider my suit, then shall there be an end to it, and we will spare the King your brother any embarrassment on the subject.”

The lady eyed me still in some trepidation, as though seeking to determine whether she was the target of a cruel jest. “And may I ask, Lord Boromir,” said she, “why it is that you think me worthy of your addresses?”

I have, it is true, no wide experience with seeking young ladies in marriage. I had only done so once before that day. But whatever I had expected of this venture, I had not expected the conversation to proceed like this.

“Because, Éowyn of Rohan,” I said, “you are a lady beautiful and valiant. You have won renown that shall live far beyond our days, yet you have proven that your valour and strength are constant also in the days of ordinary struggle, not only in those battles that are destined to become legend. And,” I went on, “you have proven that you have your own mind, and that you do not fear to speak it. I ask of you, then, Lady of Rohan: do not hesitate to speak your mind now. Do you wish that I shall not speak of this matter to the King your brother? For I judge from your expression that you may find it no agreeable concept. Only tell me, Lady, that you wish me not to speak of it again, and you will hear no more of it.”

At the first she did not speak. Then she answered, her expression solemn and thoughtful, “No, My Lord; that is not what I will tell you. I will tell you that if indeed you find me worthy of such regard, then I will be proud and honoured to consider your suit.”

The full weight of what she had just said seemed suddenly to strike home to her, and a hint of fear sparked suddenly in her eyes. “You understand, of course,” she added in some haste, “I can give to you no guarantee upon what my eventual answer to your suit may be.”

“I understand that, Lady,” I assured her. “I did not expect any, and I wish for none.”

For some moments more her fair, grave eyes sombrely regarded me. Then a hint of colour came again to her face. She rose from her improvised chair, and as I hastily stood as well, she held out her hand to me. “I know that you have work to do, My Lord,” she said, “and I would not keep you from it. I thank you for your words to me. We will speak of this again when my brother has returned to Minas Tirith.”

Taking her hand in mine, I wondered if it were appropriate for me to kiss her hand, or if that were likely to send her fleeing in utter confusion. The ground was too shaky yet, I decided, to warrant such a step. So I only bowed slightly as I kept hold of her hand, and said, not taking my gaze from hers, “I thank you for your consideration, Éowyn Daughter of Éomund.”

She slipped her hand free, bowed her head to me and then started away, striding from the ruins of the Dome of the Stars. She did not quite break into a run, but I thought that she would have done so, had she not known that I would still be watching her.

For some little time I stood there, marvelling upon the oddities of life.

I told myself that I had been spoilt by my previous experience of wooing. Our marriage had been more or less arranged, and Théodhild had, or so at least she had told me, never entertained any real thought of refusing me.

I wondered how Men who had done this repeatedly maintained the courage to keep trying. It was a new experience, and one of which I thought I was not entirely fond, to know there was at least an equal chance that her answer would be “no” as that it would be “yes.”

Do not complain, I advised myself. At least it will add some piquancy to your life. And it will give you something different to worry about, besides the Stewardship and our returning King and whether or not your brother lives to return home.

It was the morning following my conversation with Éowyn, when that fear for Faramir could finally be put aside.

We had only a few of the bridge’s building-stones yet to retrieve. Svip’s crew and mine had completed the retrieval of the stones from the eastern- and western-most arches. Now our crews together were working on those from the middle arch, our boats stationed at either side of the pilings to avoid running into each other.

I had been below, and when I surfaced to tell the Men to bring the stone in to shore, I spotted Pippin on the western bank. He was jumping up and down on one of the great blocks of stone and waving his hands above his head.

“Boromir,” Pippin shouted at the top of his small Hobbit lungs. “Boromir, look!”

He yelled out more, but the rest of his words were drowned in the rapidly approaching sounds of a troop of horsemen.

Holding on to the side of the boat, I looked over my shoulder.

As I looked, the first of the horsemen started across the pontoon bridge.

There were, I judged, perhaps two hundred of them; I could see the last few in their column in the distance, just having ridden through the gate of the east wall.

At the head of the column rode two standard bearers. The White Horse of Rohan was one of their banners. The other was the White Tree of Gondor with a bow and quiver blazoned beneath the Tree: the banner of my brother.

As they reached the western bank, the foremost riders spread out along the shore and dismounted to water their horses. I saw several of our Men hasten over to two of the dismounted horsemen. And I had no doubt that I recognised those two Men.

Svip, as ever, was keeping a wary eye on all my doings. As soon as the tumult began, he swam over from his own boat to mine. Though he did not voice any questions, there was at least a question in his gaze.

“Svip,” I called to him, hoping that this might stir him if nothing else would, “Svip, it is Faramir.”

This time I was not disappointed. For a brief instant I even saw a smile upon the water creature’s face.

“Come on!” Svip said. I needed no further urging, and the two of us struck out for the shore.

Svip could have easily outpaced me, but he was careful to match his speed to mine. He reached the bank only a few seconds before me, turning to his horse form as he surged out of the water.

I was pulling on my outer tunics while Pippin ran over to us. The Hobbit arrived just in time to get himself drenched as Svip shook the water from his mane. I laughed out loud at Pippin’s spluttering protest, and boosted myself to Svip’s back, almost without noticing the obligatory dull twinge from my ribs.

One of the Stonemasons lifted Pippin up to sit behind me. Then Svip, Pippin and I made our way at near a gallop to the pontoon bridge.

Faramir, with Éomer of Rohan by his side, was speaking with his old friend Captain Eradan. From the solemn expressions upon all of their faces, I had little doubt that they were speaking of the Lord Steward Denethor.

They turned toward us at the sound of Svip’s approaching hoofbeats. And for that moment at least, Faramir’s face was lit by a smile undarkened by shadow.

Svip pulled to a halt beside them. Pippin jumped down from his back, and I followed a shade more cautiously. In the next instant, my brother and I embraced.

“You’re alive,” Faramir said. He smiled at me in melancholy as we stepped apart and clasped each other’s arms.

“So are you,” I gave our ritual answer, smiling in return.

Immediately he frowned, gazing sharply at me. “What’s the matter with you?” he demanded. “Are you hurt?”

“A couple of broken ribs,” I said. “They’re not bad any more. They’re … over a week old.”

“Idiot,” Faramir snapped. “Why didn’t you tell me about that before I hugged you?”

“What about you?” I queried, eyeing him critically and finding a few visible signs of recent combat. There was a fading but still sore-looking bruise on his right cheekbone, and a distinctive straight, horizontal scab across his nose, where the nose-guard must have cut him while his helmet fended off some glancing blow. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” he answered, “no new wounds of any consequence. The arrow wound is healing very well; it hasn’t troubled me for days now.”

I studied my brother’s face, and a knot of worry deep within my heart was eased. He seemed, indeed, almost in full health, his cuts and bruises notwithstanding. He was too pale still, perhaps. But he looked worlds improved from when he had set forth with the army a fortnight before.

Faramir greeted Svip, who had remained in horse form, and who nodded in reply to him. Pippin, by contrast, was beaming as Faramir asked how he was, and he answered enthusiastically, “I’m very well, thank you, My Lord!” Éomer King and I exchanged greetings, and a hearty clasp of hands.

Then we could no longer delay speaking of darker matters.

“You have heard about Father?” I asked.

An all-too-familiar haunted look appeared on Faramir’s face.

“Aye,” he said. “Eradan was just now telling us. But, I have known – or, I have almost known, I believe, since the night that it happened.”

Before I could ask Faramir anything further on that subject, Éomer put in, “My Lords, I grieve with you the loss of the Lord your father.”

He hesitated, struggling not to insert his personal concerns into the solemnity of the moment. Then he lost that struggle. He said, “Forgive me, My Lords – Lord Boromir, can you tell me how things fare with my sister?”

“Your sister is well, Lord Éomer,” I assured him, “and I believe that you will find her at the White City. She is like to be at the barracks of the Rohirrim on the Third Level; or if she is not there, you will at least find there news of where she is.”

The grin that spread across Éomer’s countenance was a sight all too rare in these times. But there was news that I too must seek. And there were questions that, just as Éomer must have done, I grimly dreaded to ask.

“What news can you tell us?” I began. “Uncle Imrahil …?”

“Uncle Imrahil is very well,” answered Faramir, smiling faintly once more. “Or he was, at least, at the time of our departure.” Faramir continued, his voice growing stronger and more resonant as he spoke, “The news is that we are victorious. A great battle we fought before the Black Gate. But although our Men fought valiantly, we cannot claim that the victory was our doing alone – or even that it was primarily ours. Boromir – ” my brother paused then and shook his head, with a smile of wonder. “I still can scarce believe that we can truly say this. We had the victory because even as our forces clashed before the Gate … the Dark Lord fell.”

I nodded. “We have heard something of it here,” I said. “And we saw something of it as well. On that morn, we saw a great shadow rise up above the Mountain of Fire, and the ground shook as though in an earthquake, although no damage was found. And since that day we have seen no trace of fire in Mordor’s sky.”

“Yes,” Faramir said. “In truth, you probably saw more of it than we did.”

“Aye,” agreed Éomer. “I think all that most of us saw was the ground, as we were flung from our feet.”

“Boromir,” my brother continued softly, “and Master Peregrin, this news is for you as well. The Ringbearer and Master Samwise are safe.”

I found that I could not speak. It was all that I could do to swallow back the sudden lump in my throat.

Pippin managed to find speech first. He asked in a voice that wavered on the edge of tears, “You’re sure of that? Have you seen them?”

“I have. Mithrandir and the Great Eagles found them and carried them in safety from the slopes of Mount Doom, even as it was crumbling in flame. They are with the army. I am sorry; there is little more I can tell you. I had only a brief glimpse of them when they were brought in to camp, and they were unconscious then. Lord Aragorn was tending to their hurts when Éomer and I set forth. But I spoke with Mithrandir, and he said there is every chance that they will recover fully. I do not think he had any fear for them then. If Mithrandir believes in their recovery, I feel certain that we can believe him.”

“Yes,” whispered Pippin. “Yes, that’s true. Well – that’s all right, then.” Our young friend gave a brief, choked-off sob. Immediately he rubbed one hand across his eyes, then he grinned up at us and said, in only slightly shaky tones, “Wait till I tell Merry. I can’t wait to see the look on his face.”

I patted Pippin’s shoulder, and I asked Faramir, hearing my own voice shake a little as I spoke, “What news of Legolas and Gimli?”

“They were well when we parted company.” He smiled and added, “When last I saw them they were disputing which of them had slain more enemies in the battle at the Black Gate. But the debate, I think, was more in friendship than in rancour.”

For a moment Faramir collected his thoughts. He went on, “The plan of the Captains was to march to Cair Andros and re-take the fortress, if the enemy should still hold it. Then they planned to continue on to the White City. I could not bring myself to remain with them longer once the great battle had passed, for I knew that evil had befallen our father. I feared it might also have befallen you.”

“There is much that we must tell each other,” I said to him, reaching out and gripping Faramir’s arm. “Do you need more rest before riding on to the City?”

Faramir shook his head, and Lord Éomer told us, “If you wish to ride on ahead, My Lords, please do so. I will remain here and follow when our troops have had time to water their horses.”

So Faramir remounted his steed that one of our soldiers had been holding for him by the riverbank. The horse gave the usual dismayed whinny and nervous sidelong glance as it drew near to Svip. I got back onto Svip, and this time it was Éomer King who lifted Pippin up behind me, after first bowing and asking if Pippin would permit Éomer the liberty of helping him.

We set out for Minas Tirith, following my River-bound route along the shore. Svip kept a wary distance from Faramir’s horse, in the hope that he could avoid distressing the beast, so we had to raise our voices somewhat to converse. But for the majority of that ride we were silent, as each of us grew lost in his own thoughts.

Faramir inquired after Svip’s health. Svip vouchsafed that he was well, in the brusque tones that had become usual for him in these recent days. The shapeshifter volunteered no further information, and Faramir cast a glance of question and worry at me. I could only give a helpless look in reply.

As they had done for this week past each time I returned to the City, the trumpeters at the Great Gate sounded the welcome for the Steward. Faramir started in surprise on hearing it. Then he looked over at me with a shaky smile.

I did my best to smile back at him. I tried not to think of what he would say when he learned that as far as I was concerned, that fanfare had sounded for him, not for me.

We parted from Pippin and Svip on the Fifth Level, at Faramir’s townhouse. Pippin asked my leave to find Merry and bring him the news of Frodo and Sam, which leave I gladly granted. Svip – his tones still flat, but with more interest than he normally evinced these days – asked Pippin if he could go along. To this Pippin gave his ready assent. As Faramir and I watched the big grey horse start down the street once more, with the Hobbit perched upon his back, the hope raced through my heart again that for Svip all would yet be well.

The joyous welcome that Faramir received from the people of his household was inescapably muted by grief at our father’s passing. Their greetings came with as many tears as smiles. Faramir offered his handkerchief to Dame Kunegund his cook, who had been nursemaid to both of us in the distant past. The good woman brushed aside his offer and hurried away, drying her tears on her own sizeable handkerchief, to fetch the tea that Faramir had requested.

We made our way to Faramir’s chambers. He quietly closed the door behind him. Then he glanced about him in a dazed, distracted fashion, as though the familiar spaces were suddenly become unknown to him.

As his gaze lit on me, he shook his head and murmured, “It is so odd … not to have to report to him. It is so odd … not to be planning what I will say to him … not to be worrying over what he will say to me …”

His expression crumpled as I remembered it doing when he was a little boy, when nightmares sleeping and waking left no other refuge but tears. “I cannot believe it, Boromir,” he whispered. “Oh, gods, I can’t believe it is true …”

I reached him in two steps and pulled him to me. I held him close as he sobbed, the bitter, broken sounds surrounding us as though there were no other sound in the world.

At length his sobbing quieted and stilled. He drew away from me, rubbing the tears from his face with an angry, shame-faced look.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I’m behaving like a fool.”

“No, you are not behaving like a fool,” I snapped at him. “Gods damn it, brother, don’t ever let me hear you say that again.”

“You aren’t crying,” he pointed out.

“I did my crying a few days ago. And I will probably do more. Right now, I don’t think I have any left.”

He accepted that, with an apologetic half-smile. Taking a big, shaking breath, he nodded toward his balcony and said, “Let’s go outside.”

The sun was far along in its journey to the west of us, but the gleaming stone of the benches still radiated warmth from the noon’s sunlight. We said little as we waited for Dame Kunegund and the tea – which, when she brought it, she had accompanied with sizeable portions of the poppyseed cake that was Faramir’s favourite in his childhood.

When Kunegund had departed, we did not touch either tea or cake. His expression resolute and very grim, Faramir said, “Tell me everything.”

I could think of several places where I could begin the tale. All of them would be more or less telling the story backward. At last I determined to begin with our assault on Father’s Tower chamber, the discovery of the palantir, and what followed.

As straightforwardly and with as little emotion as I could, I made my way through our fight in the Tower and Father’s subsequent collapse, the chase through the woods, and the battle with the Orcs at Ostoher’s Hill.

Faramir spoke little as I recounted these events. He only watched me, with a tense and haunted look. But when I was relating Pippin’s account of our father’s last battle, he hissed in a breath and said, “That is what I saw. I must have seen it at the same time as it happened. How long ago was it, again?”

“Ten days ago,” I said. “It must have been … the early morning hours of March the Twenty-Fifth.”

Faramir nodded. “Yes,” he said, very quietly. “That’s when I saw it. It was two nights before the battle at the Gate. Night oft brings news to near kindred,” he added, quoting the old saying. Then he shivered and went on. “I couldn’t sleep, so I was visiting the guard posts. When I had left one post and was walking to the next, I began to hear … Father’s voice, shouting our battle-cry. I heard sounds of combat all about me. I heard shouting in Orcish. Then I saw it, as well. It was dim and murky – you mentioned the bonfire that Svip and Pippin lit; I suppose that’s the light I saw. It seemed as though I were the one fighting, though I knew that I was not. I saw Orcs rushing up a slope toward me – I saw myself, it seemed, firing down at them, then throwing my bow aside when they got too close. I heard Pippin cry out; I saw myself cut down the Orc who was rushing him. I heard other voices shouting our battle-cry. I thought I heard you, but I couldn’t be sure. I saw myself fall, then fight back to my feet again. I saw Orcs fall as I swung at them, and I kept hearing Father shouting the battle-cry. Then – then there was nothing.”

For the moment that followed, Faramir stared into nothingness. I reached out and grasped his hand. He blinked and tried to smile at me.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “Faramir, I’m so sorry.”

He took a deep breath, and nodded. “It was all I could do not to turn back for Minas Tirith that very night. I was certain – I was almost certain that Father was dead. But I didn’t know what might have happened to you. I thought I had heard you fighting, but I wasn’t certain of it, I hadn’t heard enough to know … I kept thinking of it over and over, trying to bring on another vision … trying to see what had happened to you after – after Father fell. But I’ve never been able to bring on the visions; this time wasn’t any different. As soon as some order was restored after the battle, I told Aragorn why I had to return home at once. Éomer was eager to learn how Lady Éowyn is faring, so he asked permission to return as well. We set out the morning after the battle.”

“You didn’t – ” I began hesitatingly, “you didn’t sense anything of what Father was thinking, or feeling?”

“No,” he whispered. “Nothing. I only heard. And saw.”

He squeezed my hand tightly and tried to smile again. Then he freed his hand from mine and poured himself a cup of tea. His hands were shaking.

“The tea’ll be cold by now,” I said. “Want me to go get some more?”

“It doesn’t matter.” He swigged the tea in a couple of swallows, put down his cup and then stared blankly at the slabs of Kunegund’s poppyseed cake. He tore off a piece of the cake, looked at it for another moment and put it back down on the plate.

“Go on,” he said to me quietly. “What happened then?”

I sighed and poured myself a cup of the cold tea. I told him what I remembered of our return to the River, and what I remembered and had been told to me of the River’s part in carrying me to the western shore.

“Valar,” Faramir murmured in wonder. This time he did manage to smile. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at that, should I? That sort of thing happens to you all the time, these days.”

“Something like that,” I said.

I frowned, for there were several portions of the story that I hadn’t yet told to him. Some of them, I knew, would hurt him more than any he had yet heard.

“Faramir … there’s more. One thing that’s been some comfort to me at times, as I’ve thought of it … Father knew his death was coming. He saw it, before the Orcs attacked. I didn’t realise it then, but I’m certain of it now. He knew it, and I think … I think he enjoyed that last fight. I think he enjoyed doing everything he could to get Pippin and Svip and me out of it alive – and knowing he didn’t need to worry about anything else. I think he enjoyed not having all of Gondor to worry over, for once. Not having to think of anything except the fight.”

“I hope so,” Faramir whispered.

“He said something,” I went on, “just before Svip first smelled the Orcs. He told me that if I made it home and he did not … he wanted me to tell you that he apologises.”

My brother stared at me, all the colour seeming to drain from his face.

“Apologises?” he repeated. Grief and anger warred in his face and his voice. “Apologises for what?”

“That’s what I asked him,” I said. “He wouldn’t answer me.”

Faramir stared a moment longer. Then he shook his head, with a short, bitter laugh. “Of course he wouldn’t! Valar forbid the Lord Denethor should deign to explain himself! Apologises,” he said again, and I winced at the angry sarcasm of his tone. In that moment, he sounded very much like our father.

“He apologises, and that’s supposed to make everything all right? That’s supposed to make up for the last thirty years?”

“It doesn’t,” I said. “I know it doesn’t. But … is it better than nothing? Would you prefer it if he’d left no message for you at all?”

“I’d prefer it if – ” he began furiously, then his words ran out. “I don’t know,” he muttered, staring down at his hands. “I don’t know. I’d prefer it if he’d cared enough to apologise to me for anything when he was alive. Preferably, to my face.”

“I know,” I said. “I know it doesn’t help. But – he did care, Faramir. Or he wouldn’t have said anything.”

“Maybe,” Faramir snapped. “Maybe he just wanted to leave me guessing, as always. Maybe he just wanted to leave me asking myself whether he loved me or despised me!”

“He did not despise you!”

“How do you know he didn’t?” my brother shot back at me. “Did you see a vision that told you so?”

“I know it because our father was not a fool!”

Then I could only shake my head. I said to him desperately, “He loved you, Faramir. There was just ... just some damned stupid reason in his mind why he couldn’t let you see that.”

Faramir gave a sound between a laugh and a sob. “He did a damned fine job of hiding his love.” He sighed, and for a moment he closed his eyes.

“I’m sorry, Boromir,” he said, when he opened his eyes again. “It isn’t your fault. It’s never been your fault.” His gaze wandered to the tray with the tea things, and he asked me apologetically, “Do you want some cake?”

“No,” I sighed. “Thanks. Kunegund will have to live with the disappointment of us not eating it.”

“I don’t think she’ll be surprised.”

“Faramir … I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. There’s more that I have to tell you. It’s worse. It’s a lot worse.”

Watching me warily, Faramir nodded, and waited.

I took the tale back to my earlier encounter with our father, and his revelation to me of the eighty Rangers’ mission and their fate.

My brother listened to me as pale as death. His eyes burned as he watched me and his lips were clamped mercilessly shut against whatever words he might have uttered.

Only once in the tale’s recital did he speak. He grated out “Who were they?” when I had miserably recounted what our father had said of the Rangers’ loss.

Upon my answer that they had been Damrod Son of Daeron’s Company of the Ithilien Rangers, Faramir sprang to his feet. Like a caged beast he paced thrice the small space afforded to him by his chambers’ balcony. Then he stopped and turned suddenly to me.

“I asked Anborn where they were,” he began. His tone wavered on the edge either of weeping or of roaring fury. “He told me they were part of the garrison left to patrol the Pelennor, and I believed him … I suppose that is what Father told him. Gods damn it!” he yelled suddenly, smashing one fist into his other hand. “Gods damn him!”

I leapt up and grabbed Faramir’s shoulders, uncertain of what I should say, if anything. He gazed at me with an icy coldness like our father’s in his eyes, and he said, “It’s a good thing I learned of this after Father was dead.”

“Faramir,” I said, “I’m certain it was not his doing alone. Sauron’s influence led him to it, through the palantir. He would never have done this in his true mind.”

Faramir pulled away from me and sat down again on the bench, leaning forward and burying his face in his hands. “I wish I could be sure of that,” he said.

“You can be,” I insisted, sitting down beside him. “We both can be. Father’s whole life was spent in trying to win more security for our people, not in throwing away their lives. He would not have done this of his will alone, I know that.”

“He was a strategist, Boromir,” Faramir said, taking his hands from his face but not looking at me. “A commander of Men. A commander’s duty is to know when some few of his Men must be sacrificed for the good of the kingdom.”

“Not like this. Not when there wasn’t any chance. When did he ever choose the desperate strike instead of a solid defence? I should know; I argued with him enough over that, through the years! Faramir, this was Sauron speaking to him. It was Sauron speaking to him always of the Ring, telling him all was lost without it, telling him that with it, there was hope.”

Faramir looked at me then, bleak misery in his gaze. “We should have seen it, shouldn’t we?” he whispered. “I should have seen it. How difficult could it have been for me to see? How many times have I read of the Seven Seeing-Stones? How hard could it have been for me to realise that the Stone of Minas Anor was still here?”

“I’ve thought of it too,” I admitted. “I think we attribute too much power to ourselves, if we give ourselves the blame for that. What was there for us to see? How should we have seen and stopped it? He didn’t show any sign that he was not himself – did he? – until the end. When did he let us close enough to see any trouble to him; did he ever share with us any of his sorrows or fears? I didn’t know ’till he collapsed in the Tower that he’d been wearing armour under his clothing every day for five years! If he wouldn’t let us close enough to him to know that, how were we to know that the Dark Lord was speaking to him in his Tower chamber in the night?”

“That’s true,” said Faramir, with an anguished smile. “If he wouldn’t share his troubles with the son he loved, what chance did I have?”

I stopped myself from launching into another diatribe about how our father had loved him. There were more urgent things to tell him. And we would have our entire lives, I thought, to argue about that.

“Faramir,” I said, “there were four survivors of Damrod’s company.” As his eyes widened in disbelieving hope, I hastened on. “Amyntor Son of Kænmar, Sirnir Son of Steinthor, Sæmund Son of Dagfari, Hunthjof Son of Eythjof. They’re in the Houses of Healing; they were brought in only the day before yesterday, by the Men you sent back from the Desolate Lands. Amyntor told me that the battle took place at the crest of Ephel Dúath. The four of them had made it to the edge of the foothills, but it’s doubtful they would have made it much farther. Sæmund and Hunthjof were the more badly hurt, and the other two had stopped to care for them. Amyntor set out on his own to try and summon help; he had collapsed by the road, where Zvonimir’s troop found him. All of them were wounded and feverish, and when they were brought to the Houses even Amyntor and Sirnir were weakened to the point of danger. The Warden tells me that all four are out of danger now. But if the troops you sent had not found them …”

Faramir murmured wonderingly, “We nearly didn’t send them. Lord Aragorn suggested that they should be sent to Cair Andros, to re-take it if the enemy still held it. I argued that our duty was to hold the line at Minas Tirith, and that they should be sent to join the defence of the City.”

“It’s a good thing you did,” I told him.

Faramir nodded, looking stunned. Then he pulled together his thoughts. “I have to go to them.” He stood, and I did the same. “I’m sorry, Boromir,” he went on distractedly. “I know we need to talk more … but I have to go to my Men …”

“I know you do,” I said, gripping his arm. “It’s fine, don’t worry. We’ll talk again. Perhaps at daymeal tonight? Here, perhaps, if you don’t mind me inviting myself over?”

It had occurred to me that the conversation yet to come should take place on Faramir’s territory. In no way did I wish him thinking that I had staged the encounter on my own ground – or worse, on territory that we both thought of as Father’s – when I set before him the reasons why I believed he should be Steward.

He blinked at me in surprise. “No, of course I don’t mind,” he said, “if you have the time tonight. I understand if you don’t …”

“I have the time,” I said.

Faramir hugged me briefly and then turned and set out almost at a run, into and across his chambers and down the stairs. I followed more slowly, wrapped in my thoughts.

As I crossed his bedchamber I paused to look at the painting on the wall: a portrait of our mother, with one-year-old Faramir on her lap. It was painted at the same time as the family portrait of all four of us together that hangs in the great hall of my own townhouse, and as the portrait of Mother, Faramir and me that is displayed in the Portrait Hall of the King’s House.

I gazed at the quiet happiness in Mother’s storm-grey eyes, at the contemplative look of her smile – and at the very much broader smile on Faramir’s infant face. And I sorrowed, as I had when Faramir moved from the King’s House into his own household when he turned eighteen, to know that there was no portrait of our father in Faramir’s home.

There were portraits of Mother, Faramir, me, and of Éoflæd. But there were none of the Lord Steward Denethor II. I grieved at that even though I knew that no one was to blame for it except our Lord father himself.

I stopped at the kitchen to warn Dame Kunegund that Faramir and I would take the daymeal at his house, and to apologise to her for not eating any of the cake. Her eyes still red from weeping, Kunegund tried to look disapproving and said, “Well, I suppose you’re not likely to waste away any time soon. But your brother, now, he’s skin and bones. You’re to make sure he eats something tonight, you hear me?”

“I will endeavour to do your bidding, Madam,” I said, bowing low.

Our old nursemaid snorted at that, but could not quite restrain a smile. “Oh, get along with you. You’ve got more important things to do than chatting up an old woman.”

I protested that nothing could be more important, and she ordered me to be gone if I expected to find my daymeal ready in time.

I went through the Fifth Level’s tunnel and to my own townhouse. I let them know that I would not be dining at home, and then took myself to my study and a duty that I had been avoiding: writing in answer to the piled-up letters of condolence for our Lord father’s death.

There were letters from our people in all wal