The water crept across the dirt floor.  A long tendril of it stretched out toward us.

If it did not get any worse than this, we need fear no more terrible fate than getting our boots wet.  But I had little hope that we would get off that lightly.  If the River were angry enough to send its waters after us, it would hardly stop at wetting our feet.

“We’ve got to get to higher ground,” I said, still staring at the water.  I shook myself free of the compulsion to stare at it, and turned to Cirion.  I repeated, “we have to get to higher ground.  Let’s get everyone moving; we’ll head for the burial chamber.”

Cirion stood up, eyeing the water in disbelief.  “What in the …?” he began.

I said bitterly, “the River isn’t pleased that we took back two of its victims.”  And, I added silently, because of my damned reckless stupidity it’s now going to take all of us instead of just two.

But that hadn’t happened yet, and if I had any say, it wasn’t going to.

A little moaning yelp from Svip made me glance back toward the passage door.  Water was now seeping around the sides and the top of the rock that blocked the passageway.

“Move,” I ordered. “Now.”

I hurried to the others and leant my strength to the chore of heaving Buslai to his feet.  Even with Thorolf at one of his shoulders and me at the other, it still felt as if we were trying to lift the Pillars of Argonath.  Buslai at least seemed fully awake by now, though he did look understandably confused.  “What’s going on?” he murmured, as we got him upright.

“We’re getting out of here,” was my reply.  Time enough later for the more detailed explanations, such as, we’re getting out of here because the Anduin’s trying to drown you again.

Cirion had been striding about the room, seizing various of its contents.  He shrugged the satchels of maps onto his back, and tossed the pack of copied dispatches to Holgar, ordering, “don’t lose that.”  Holgar had helped Finn to stand; the mapmaker looked slightly more steady on his feet than Buslai, though I still wouldn’t have been surprised to see him fall over at any moment.  Cirion raised his voice in command, “everyone but Finn and Buslai, take some extra weapons with you.  We may need them before we get back in here.”  He shoved a bow and quiver at Holgar and shouldered another of each himself.

Thorolf and I took turns collecting more weapons while the other kept a steadying grip on Buslai.  The heavily-laden Holgar started urging Finn into the tunnel that led up into Lord Lilla’s burial chamber.  I helped myself to a bow and quiver and shoved an extra sword and an axe into my belts, while Svip strapped on a shield that covered his back from shoulders to ankles, making him look like a gigantic turtle.  I thought only half in jest that at least he might be able to use the shield as a boat if the water caught up with us.

That might happen a lot sooner than I cared to admit.  Nearly the entire floor was awash by now, though the water was still only an inch or two deep.  I was not sure if I was imagining it, or if the stone blocking the main passageway was moving.

Finn and Holgar had vanished into the other passage, and Thorolf was herding Buslai in after them.  From the main doorway there came a tortured groaning noise of rock scraping upon rock, and a distant rush of water.

“Get moving!” yelled Cirion.  “Go!”

Cirion, Svip and I barrelled into the tunnel nearly on top of each other, on the heels of Thorolf and Buslai.  Together the three of us heaved into place the stones that blocked this entrance.  As we did so, we saw the stone at the far side of the chamber shift and fall.

A wall of brown, muddy water churned through the opening, hurling furniture and equipment out of its path.  We slammed the last rock home, shutting off the sight.  Immediately the first vanguards of the River began to trickle in on us, through the cracks around the rocks.

“That won’t hold long,” Cirion observed grimly.  He turned and scowled at our four comrades, all standing and staring through the dim, torch-illumined corridor.  “All right then,” Cirion growled at them, “nobody told you to stop moving.”

Cirion seized the lit torch that he’d left in one of the sconces on the passage wall.  We set out at something close to a run, though the two recently drowned men would be hard-pressed to keep up this pace for long.  I sympathised with them; goodness knew I wouldn’t have been able to walk, let alone run, a few minutes after Svip had brought me back.  But behind us was the sound of water seeping over stone, and we could not wait.

The tunnel bore steeply upward.  In many places it was too short for me to stand upright, and I was not surprised to hear sounds in front of me indicating that Buslai kept bumping his head.

I wondered if we would hear anything different, any warning, before the water broke through.  Or if we would know nothing until it rushed over us.

As I hurried upward through the near dark, Svip’s footfalls slapping along behind and the stumbling steps of our comrades sounding ahead, I thought, I am getting so tired of this.

I had been starting to hope, as things settled into a daily routine with Svip, that the more dramatic segments of my voyage might finally be over.  Perhaps now that I was no longer travelling with the Fellowship, I might be able to look forward to a nice, calm, uneventful journey, without daily visits from cave trolls and avalanches and Balrogs.

I should have known better.

When all of this is over, I told myself, when we’ve booted Sauron out of Middle Earth once and for all, I’m going to retire and become a Hobbit.  I’ll move to the Shire and buy some cosy unoccupied hole, and spend the rest of my days with no more pressing concerns than tending my garden and ensuring that I get at least eight meals a day.

Behind me, Svip yelled, “here it comes!”

Now we did run, recently dead men and all.  I scooped up Svip and carried him under one arm, his turtle-shell shield bumping against my back and arm as I ran.  I could not tell how close we might be to the tunnel’s end, for the chamber ahead must be equally as dim and murky as the tunnel.

Suddenly I realised that our running comrades were no longer right in front of me.  At that moment a jet of water hit my back like a battering ram.

I twisted around and just managed not to fall on Svip.  The two of us floundered on the chamber floor, and only as the water slowed did I comprehend that Cirion and Thorolf were mounding up rocks in the passage opening, blocking off the spurting water.

The water kept spitting the smaller rocks away from the door.  There was no engineered rock door here such as had been installed throughout the rest of the refuge, and the Rangers were yanking stones away from the lining of the chamber wall.  I scrambled to help them.

At last the door seemed successfully plugged.  Yet even now, just as at the last door, water was oozing over the rocks, as if mocking our attempts to escape it.

“Get more torches lit,” Cirion ordered.  Thorolf, getting to his feet and squeezing a little of the water out of his clothes, collected two more torches from the walls and lit them from the one that Cirion must have thrust into the hands of young Holgar when he leapt to plug up the door.

We looked about us.  The burial chamber of Lilla Howe curved up around us in a great dome, vanishing into the shadows.  It was perhaps twenty feet across and thirty feet to the top of the dome, though much of my knowledge of that came from previous times I had visited the Howe.  The dark openings of the smaller burial rooms, all around the chamber’s perimeter, gaped at us like so many mouths.

One might have expected to see Lord Lilla’s ghost step out of the shadow, demanding to know why we had intruded into his realm.  But I’d never heard any reports of ghosts objecting to our use of the Howe, despite the traditional initiation ritual of telling the youngest soldiers terrifying stories about haunted barrows and then daring them to spend a night in the burial chamber.

Perhaps the Lord Lilla approved of our presence here, and was pleased that his barrow played a role in Gondor’s defences.  If so, I wished he would show his approval by somehow stopping this flood.

In a frightened whisper, Svip voiced the obvious question, “how do we get out?”

“The outer door’s blocked up,” Cirion said.  “Everyone get moving and look for it.  Look for some different pattern or colour in the rocks.”

I took one of the torches that Thorolf held, then crossed over to where Finn and Buslai stood near the center of the chamber.  “Why don’t you two sit down and get a little rest,” I told them.

“If I sit down I’m not sure I’ll get up again,” Finn said with a shaky smile.  Nonetheless both he and Buslai sat, Holgar and I helping to ease them to the ground.  Then Holgar, Thorolf and I, holding the three torches, started circling the perimeter, with Svip scuttling back and forth between us.  Cirion remained beside the blocked tunnel, watching for the water to break through.

I tried desperately to remember previous explorations, and recall if I’d ever noticed what the entrance to the Howe looked like from the inside.  I had no idea, but Cirion was right, there ought to be some noticeable difference from the paving stones used to support the dome’s interior, since presumably the work had been done at different times.

If we did not find the entrance fast, this tale was going to have a very wet and pathetic ending.  None of us would get away to tell of it, none of our families would know that we had drowned here inside this tomb.  I wondered how much water the River was willing to send after us, but I had little doubt that it would be enough to fill up the Howe.  I saw a grim image of all of us splashing about helplessly as the water bore us upward to the roof of the Howe.  Not even Svip would make it through this, not unless he managed to swim all the way back to the refuge’s entrance.  He might be a creature of the water, but he still needed air, just like a beaver or an otter did.

Where was that bloody entranceway?

Holgar yelled, “here!”, then added, “I think.”

Thorolf and I converged on him, with Svip at my heels.  The wavering torchlight showed an area of smaller stones, in a more haphazard, jumbled distribution.  There was a roughly circular frame of paving slabs around these jumbled stones, suggesting a tunnel of approximately three feet both in height and in width.

“Hold this,” I said, thrusting the torch at Svip.  Thorolf and Holgar jammed their torches into upright positions in the earthen floor, and we started desperately digging.  I was using the axe as a pick, and Thorolf used the hilt of his sword, while Holgar, trying to avoid being hit by the rocks we were loosening, kept shoving the rocks out of the way behind us.

Unless the Lord Lilla’s corpse had been taken into the afterlife along with all of his funeral goods, someone had re-sealed the entrance tunnel after the time of his burial.  I did not imagine that grave robbers would take the trouble to seal up the entrance after their visit, but someone had done so.  Perhaps the builders of the watchtower on the Howe had done it, or our men who built the refuge beneath, as a gesture of respect to the dead.  At this moment, I wished that they had been a damned sight less respectful.

Scattered amid the rocks we dug through were scraps of pottery and the occasional animal bone, including half of a horse’s skull.  I did not know if Svip felt any real affinity for horses and if the sight of the skull would bother him, but I rapidly set it aside and made sure it soon got buried under rocks again, just in case.

When we had cleared enough of the tunnel that one of us had to crawl inside to reach the rocks, I took the first turn at it.  I wormed into the tunnel and spent a few minutes hacking, prying, digging, and shoving the rocks back toward my comrades.

“I’ll take a turn,” Thorolf called to me.  While I was crawling out of the tunnel again, Cirion suddenly yelled, “help me keep this blocked!”

I scrambled to my feet and raced across the chamber.  As I passed them, Finn and Buslai were struggling up as well.  Water spurted out between the rocks like blood from a severed artery, while Cirion fought desperately to hold the rocks in place.  I grabbed one large stone that had popped loose and jammed it back, then planted myself against the rocks, at Cirion’s side.  Buslai and Finn soon joined us, and it occurred to me that were we the heroes in some tale, our bodies alone should be enough to hold back the water.  Of course in the tale, the heroes would survive, whereas here, if the River were angry enough, the escaping water would likely have force enough to kill us.

Across the chamber, Thorolf had plunged into the tunnel while Holgar and Svip still laboured to move aside the rocks that he was clearing.

“It can see us, can’t It,” Buslai grated.  “It’s doing this because we look funny, scurrying about like rats.”

“Well, good, then,” Finn muttered back.  “Maybe It’ll keep us alive; we won’t be so funny when we’re dead.”

I thought that Buslai was probably right.  The River was enjoying itself.  It was holding back Its waters now to torment us, and would set them loose again just when the tunnel was open and all of us were racing toward it.

Unfortunately, Its enjoyment did not mean that It was any less furious.  It would get all the fun out of us that It could, but at the end of this we would be just as dead.

A shout from Holgar sounded across the chamber, “it’s clear!”

Cirion yelled back, “go on, we’ll follow.”  He continued in a lower tone, “Finn, Buslai.  You go; Lord Boromir and I will hold this until you’re clear.”

Buslai cast a questioning look at me, and I nodded.  “Go.”  I noticed that water was once more starting to jet between the rocks at my side.

The unhappy-looking Buslai and Finn started across the chamber.  By the other tunnel’s entrance, Svip was holding back.  He had taken up one of the torches again, and in its dim light I could see him looking toward us.

“Svip, go!” I yelled.  “I’ll follow you.”

“You promise?”

“Yes!  I promise.”

He waited until Finn and Buslai were inside the tunnel, then when they had disappeared Svip finally crawled in after them.

Cirion eyed me grimly.  “Well, My Lord?” he inquired.  “Do we need to argue over which of us goes last?”

“No,” I said.  “We’ll go at the same time.”  The River, I was sure, could loose its rage at us whenever it chose, whether there was one of us blocking the door or two.

For another moment Cirion frowned at me, then he sighed.  “Right.  Give them a little time to get through first.”

“Right.”

At first we waited without speaking.  Then Cirion ventured, “My Lord.  What your comrade did to them – bringing them back.  He did that to you as well.  Did he not?”

I gazed across the chamber at the dark passageway.  “Yes.  He did.”  When I turned my head to look at Cirion, I could not quite read his expression.  There seemed his usual grimness, and perhaps a trace of fear.  But it seemed there might also be relief.

“They’re probably clear by now, My Lord,” he said.

“Right.  When I count three?”

He nodded.  I counted.  On “three”, both of us launched ourselves from the door.

An explosion roared out behind us.  The water ploughed into us, knocking me off my feet.  It tumbled me into one of the side burial chambers.  I seized hold of the lintel, fighting to drag myself back into the main chamber.  Gasping and spluttering through the water, I glimpsed a sight that would have made me laugh if I hadn’t had a miniature tidal wave aimed at my face.  The water caught Cirion Son of Angantyr, lifted him off his feet, and propelled him head first into the tunnel.  As I saw the Ranger Captain vanish, I wished I could be outside of the Howe to witness him popping out the other end.

Someday perhaps I would look back upon this and laugh, but that did not change the fact that just now, the River was trying to kill me.

I heaved myself into the main room and ran to the entrance tunnel through the bombardment of the flood, though the River now seemed to be picking up rocks and flinging them at me, along with the continuing rush of water.

I threw myself into the tunnel and crawled.  Daylight gleamed impossibly bright ahead of me.  I had nearly reached the light before I realised that at some point during my crawl, the flood must simply have stopped.  Water still streamed along the tunnel’s floor, but the massive waves had vanished as though the River had tired of Its game and decided to take Its toys and go home.

As I dragged my body through the entrance, four pairs of hands took hold of me and helped to heave me through.  I found myself staggering to my feet upon a hillside mantled in spring, its soft grey-green grasses sparkling with the white stars of countless wildflowers.  Around me stood Cirion, Thorolf, Holgar and Svip, and beyond them a bit further up the slope I saw Finn and Buslai, seated on the hill and both looking as though they might be about to be sick.  The ground beneath our feet was a mess of liquid mud, water still trickling down the hillside from out of the barrow’s front door.

Svip stared up at me as if he expected me to vanish at any moment.  I tried to conjure an encouraging grin.  “There, you see,” I told him.  “I told you I’d follow.”

Holgar asked tentatively, “do you think it’s over, Sir?”

I began, “I don’t know.”

Then a distant, growling roar rose through the gentle spring air.  It rumbled up about us, and I groaned.  “No.  It isn’t over.”

For a moment we all looked around helplessly, seeking the source of the noise.  Finn and Buslai saw it first.  Buslai moaned, “oh, bloody hell,” and Finn leaped up unsteadily, shouting, “get higher up!  Climb up the Howe, now!”

It was a tribute, I suppose, both to our military discipline and to the desperateness of the situation, that we made neither question nor complaint before starting to scramble up the slope.  I grabbed up Svip and swung him over my head, depositing him as far up the hillside as I could reach.  Both Holgar and Thorolf made their way over to Finn and Buslai, and leant their aid to the other two as they began to climb.  The ground above us was at least not muddy, and afforded better purchase for our boots than did the sodden earth below.

As we scrabbled up the barrow’s side, I caught sight of the peril that Finn and Buslai had seen.  And despite all that had happened already, I could scarce bring myself to believe it.

The River Anduin had left its banks.  It was impossible, yet somehow the River had chosen a new course.  Like some vast serpent it reared upward and sent its silvery waters slithering toward us.  At the base of the Howe the serpent split into two, wreathing about and turning the barrow into an island.

And the waters began to rise.

Gondor’s people have always held that the Anduin is a deity of great power.  I could have done without this proof that our beliefs were right.

One by one we reached the top of Lilla Howe – and the point where we had nowhere to run.

I stood staring down at the churning water, debating within myself what options we had left to us.

Running was no longer a choice.  When the water rose high enough, we were going to have to swim for it.  But swim for what?  What safety could we hope to reach, when the River could apparently follow wherever we went?

Normally I would have assumed that Svip and I, at least, would have no difficulty swimming anywhere we chose to.  And I assumed that the others had at least minimal swimming abilities; they would never have made it into the Rangers if they did not.  But even if every last one of us could swim like fish, would that help us when we were in a River that seemed set upon our deaths?

Three feet below the barrow’s summit, the waters stopped.

They crept no further up the hillside, and I wondered again if the River had reached some limit It could not surmount, or if It were simply doing this to prolong the game.

The new, impossible watercourse spread out to cover an area perhaps forty feet around us in every direction.  And then it simply stopped, as if there was higher ground at that point to hold it in place.  But there was not.  The ground was far below the water level, yet that did not seem to cause any difficulty for the River.  I wondered what this scene looked like from the other side of those waters.  Frankly, I was glad that I could not see it.  The thought that the water must just be standing there, towering above the land as if held in check by some invisible wall, made me want to be sick.

The waters rose no higher around us, but they did not rest.

The muddy, white-capped torrent encircled us, like a troop of huntsmen galloping about their prey.  Cold spray filled the air.  Waves as tall as Men leapt from the water’s surface and broke upon us.

We huddled together at the centre of the tiny island, crouched amid wet grass and wildflowers.

So here we are, I thought.  So what are we going to do?

I could hear someone’s teeth chattering.  Buslai’s, probably; the young Ranger looked so pale and ill that I would not have been surprised were he just to up and die on us.  Finn did not look much better.  Svip, with his oversized shield on his back, looked more like a turtle than ever, sitting hunched forward with his shield in the air and staring miserably at the ground.  Holgar, Thorolf and Cirion all looked as if they expected me to find a way out of this.  I thought that I had better bestir myself and come up with something fast.

Another wave lashed at us.  And suddenly Svip yelled in terror.

I lunged for him.  The wave had somehow caught his shield and was dragging him off our island.  I seized one of his ankles just before he could be swept away, and for some moments he bobbed there, caught in a tug-of-war between me and the River.

I heard something break.  It must have been one of the straps of Svip’s shield, for an instant later the shield went spiralling away, lurching about on the waves like a tempest-tossed ship.  Something else, some smaller, greyish lump that at first I could not identify, went floating off after it, bounding madly through the waves.

“No!” shrieked Svip.  He tried to dive into the water after whatever it was, but I yanked him back, clutching him to me and shouting, “what are you doing?”

“My pack!” Svip sobbed out.  “My pack!  I have to get it!”

“No you don’t!  It isn’t worth it!”

“But -- ”  He stared up at me, his eyes wild with grief and guilt.  “But the Horn is in it,” he whispered.  “Your Horn.”

Cold lanced through me, colder than the chill of the spray and the waves.  For one moment I wanted to dive into the water after it myself.  But I forced myself to say, “it’s all right, Svip.  It doesn’t matter.”

He whispered, “but I know it’s important to you.”

I shrugged and tried to look calm.  “Your things are important to you too.  They’re not worth risking your life for.  The Horn isn’t, either.”

Svip and I knelt there, watching the waves.

It figured, I thought.  It was just like me, that of all the Steward’s Heirs over all the centuries, I should be the one to not only break the Horn of Gondor, but to lose it.  When I came home without the Horn, my father was going to skin me alive.

“It doesn’t matter,” I repeated, more to myself than to Svip.

I could feel my soul bleeding at the Horn’s loss.  But there was no escaping the fact that losing Svip would have been worse.

“My Lord,” said Cirion Son of Angantyr.  I turned to face him.

He said, as calmly as if a wave had not been breaking in his face as he spoke, “perhaps you and your comrade would care to explain to us what is happening?  And what we can do to stop it?”

I studied the faces of my fellow Men as they awaited my answer.

Buslai made me think of a half-drowned puppy: drenched, shivering and wretchedly weak, yet still gazing at me with an expression of trust.  Finn looked appalling as well, as if he were hanging on to life by sheer force of will, yet he too seemed to be watching me with total faith, that I would come up with an answer to save all of us.  That trust was visible on Holgar’s face as well, while Thorolf showed merely the soldier’s look of stolid suffering.

Captain Cirion eyed me as if I were an unblooded novice that he expected to go to pieces at any moment.  I had passed one test, perhaps, when I admitted to him that Svip had brought me back to life.  But he was not going to be surprised if I failed the next challenges.

I knew that I had better tell the others the whole story – or a short version of it anyhow – if I did not want Cirion to be disappointed in me.  And I owed them the truth, after what we had been through together – and what my reckless idiocy was putting them through.

I glanced over at Svip, who sat huddled in on himself, looking as if he wanted to sink through the earth.  It did not seem that he would object if I spoke for both of us.

I said, “Svip knows an ancient remedy, that was used for healing wounds.  It can also revive the dead.”  The next words I spoke directly to Buslai and Finn.  “He has used it twice.  Once on the two of you, today.  And once nine days or so ago, on me.”

Finn shuddered and stared down at the ground.  Buslai kept his eyes fixed on me, as if seeking confirmation that one could be resurrected as we had been and live to tell about it.  I saw young Holgar reach out to Finn and grip the other Man’s shoulder.  Holgar’s face bore one of his wide-eyed stares, but I could not tell whether the stare was of awe or of fear.  I could not read any expression on Thorolf’s face or on Cirion’s, only the impassive patience of old soldiers awaiting the next development.

I did not want to tell them this next part, but I went on.  “When Svip first explained it to me, he told me there were some dead that he is not allowed to revive.  He said that he cannot bring back those who have drowned.  Those the River keeps for Itself, and It will punish any attempt to take them back.”  I said, wondering if the River was listening and if I could make any impact on It, if It was, “Svip argued against angering the River.  The blame for what is happening now is mine.  I begged him to use his skills, and he did it only on my urging.  The responsibility is mine alone.”

I half expected a wave to reach out and pluck me away to another watery grave.  But the response to my words came from Finn Son of Thorstein, instead.

“Well, that’s it, then,” he said quietly.  “All we have to do is give ourselves back to the River, and all of this will stop.”

Buslai looked at him, then nodded.  “Yes.  Looks like that’s it.”

Damn it, I thought.  I was afraid they were going to say that.

I said, “no.  I forbid it.  We have not gone through all of this just to give you back.  By your oath of service to Gondor, I charge you not to sacrifice yourselves in this.  No men of Gondor will feed the River today; we will find another way.”

Well and good, my mind answered treacherously, so what other way are you going to find?

Cirion spoke up, “does the River only have a taste for Men?  Or would other victims do in exchange?  Orcs, for example?”

I thought about that.  “I don’t know.  Svip?”

Svip looked up at us, frowning.  “I’m not sure,” he said.  “But I think it ought to work.  It’s more the numbers It cares about, I think.  Not so much the type of victim.  Maybe.”

“Right,” said Cirion.  “I’ll go get us a couple of Orcs and we can drown them.”

Finn muttered, “too bad we didn’t keep some of the ones we had earlier.”

I stood up.  “Cirion and I will go,” I decided.  “The rest of you, wait for our return.  Your orders are simple: do whatever it takes to keep all of you alive.”

Cirion stood, grimacing as another tall wave spat into his face.  “Very well, My Lord.  Any ideas of how we get through this, without the River taking us in exchange?”

I shrugged, then turned from my comrades to face out toward the water.  I had not the faintest idea if this would work, but I supposed it was worth a try.

“Anduin!” I called out.  “Great River!  Boromir, Son and Heir to the Lord Steward of Gondor, greets you!”

It might have been my imagination, but I thought that the waves grew shorter, ever so slightly.

“My people have long honoured you,” I continued.  “You are the lifeblood of our realm.  Today I ask that you hear me.  I humbly beg pardon for angering you, and I ask that you give me the chance to make amends.  Hold off your wrath.  Do not harm my comrades, and give leave for me and one other to pass through your waters in safety.  We will fetch other victims for you, in exchange for those that we have taken.  If our gift pleases you, then we will respectfully request your leave to continue our journey.”

I don’t know what sort of answer I expected.  Probably some booming voice speaking out of the deep.  When no such reply was forthcoming, I looked over at Cirion and gave another shrug.

“What do you think?” I asked.  “Shall we give it a try?”

He smiled grimly.  “Let’s.”

Buslai managed to unsteadily heave himself to his feet, I think to the distress of all the rest of us.  We were likely all imagining that he would immediately topple over again.  Finn stared at Buslai in shock and then leapt up as well, wavering a bit as the rest of us waited poised to catch either or both of them when they fell.

“You shouldn’t risk it, Sir,” Buslai insisted stubbornly.  “If you’ll only let us -- ”

“No,” I told him, in a tone that I hoped held both firmness and sympathy.  “You have received your orders.”  I gripped his shoulder, adding, “and I will give you another order: sit back down again, please, before you fall over.”

Holgar and Thorolf hastened to help our recently deceased comrades seat themselves once more.  Cirion, meanwhile, had crouched down and was rummaging in his pack.  “We’ll want rope,” he commented, “if we’re to bring our Orcs living to the River.”

Svip tugged at my sleeve.  “Let me go with you,” he said.  “If I change shape, I can help carry the Orcs.”

I closed my hand around his.  “No.  I need you here, Svip.  Keep an eye on this lot for me.  Someone has to make sure they don’t go drowning themselves.  I need you to keep them alive for me until I get I back.”

Svip gazed hard at me, then he took his hand from mine.  “All right,” he said.  “I will.”

Cirion had stood again, a sturdy length of rope coiled and fastened at his belt.  “Shall we, My Lord?” he inquired.

I nodded, eyeing the churning water.  “Aye,” I said.  Cirion and I glanced at each other, probably both wondering exactly why we had thought this a good idea.  “We’ll make for those trees,” I told him, pointing out a line of trees visible on a ridge just north of us beyond the impossible plateau of water.  That ridge was probably the closest point that we could reach, and should require the shortest amount of swimming time to attain it.  Not that that was likely to matter, I admitted to myself.  If the River were decided upon our doom, it would need only seconds to seal our fate.

“Aye,” Cirion agreed.  “Whichever of us reaches the trees second owes the other a drink in Minas Tirith.”

“Done,” I said.

There was nothing to be gained by waiting longer, little though I relished the prospect at hand.  With a deep breath and an attempt to mentally resign myself to the likelihood of dying again, I dove into the waves.

My body sliced into the murky water, and it seemed as though the waves suddenly stilled around me.  As I swam, Cirion slightly behind and to the right, I marvelled at the sensation that the water about me had become as calm and untroubled as that in the Fountain in its Courtyard, beneath the limbs of the White Tree.  For a few feet in every direction around me, my own motion was all that disturbed the water.  Yet just beyond, where Cirion swam, the waves still churned and tore at him, threatening to drag him under.

I heard a yell, and turned my head to see one of the waves catch Cirion, tossing him backward almost as far as the island.  Then it reversed direction, pulling him away from the island again and sucking his body underneath the water.

I struck out toward him, and the stretch of calm water moved with me.  As the smooth water surface spread over the spot where Cirion had vanished, the Ranger’s head suddenly popped up above the water once more.

I reached out and grabbed hold of him, holding him above the surface with one of his arms over my shoulders and my right arm under both of his.  At the corner of my vision I could see the others, crowded at the near edge of our island.  They were too far away to have done anything to help, unless they dove into the water after us.  A quick head count told me, to my relief, that none of them had done so.

Cirion spluttered, looking disgruntled at needing to be rescued.  Then his eyes widened as he noticed the calm patch of water that had spread to encircle us.  He managed, “what -- ”

“I may have a safe conduct,” I told him.  “Keep hold of me, we’ll see if it covers both of us.”

I waited while Cirion got a grip around my sword belt, then I started to swim, Cirion clinging to me and doggedly swimming using his one free arm.  Again the smooth water moved with us, but the waves kept pace on every side, like a mob that nipped at our heels but did not quite dare move close enough to attack.

I wondered what would happen, when we reached the water’s edge.

The water simply ended, as in the sailors’ yarns about ships that ventured too far and sailed off the edge of the world.

Could we dive down to the bottom of this plateau, and reach the land by dragging ourselves out through the bottom?  Or would we just have to leap off the top – and probably break our legs, when we landed?

I slowed our forward progress and brought us to a stop.

The water cut off just ahead of us, its break clear and sharp like the edge of cliff.  I stared at it, and had to swallow back an exclamation of fear.

My left hand, closer to the edge, was underwater.  But if I reached it forward, it would cleave through the water and pass into mid-air.

We hung there treading water.  The land must be seventy feet below, if it was an inch.

I thought of the time when I was thirteen or so, when some friends and I had dared each other to climb down all the levels of Minas Tirith using neither gates nor roads.  I made it down the walls from the seventh level to the fourth, which was more than any of my friends managed, and I always maintained that I could have made it all the way down if my friends hadn’t told on me.  But it had been something of a relief, when I was scrambling down the third wall, to find the Officer of the Day waiting beneath to drag me home by my ear.

It looked as though we should be able to climb down this wall, just like the walls of Minas Tirith.  Only this wall was water instead of stone.

“Right,” I said.  “We’ll dive for it.  Ready?”

“Yes.”

He may be ready, my mind grumbled sourly, but I’m bloody well not.

We dove.

As we ploughed into the murky depths, I thought that I heard some strange voice, part whispering and part singing.  It did not seem like the usual dull ringing in the ears that one always hears underwater.  It seemed that if I really strained to hear, I would be able to catch the words.  But if words there were, they danced just at the edge of my hearing.

The thought came to me that perhaps it was the voice of the River.  If it was, I wondered if the River expected me to hear and understand – and if It would be angered at me, when I did not.

What did the River think of all of this, I wondered.  Was Its main motivation outrage over Its stolen victims?  Was It more interested, now, in the amusement It could get out of us?  Would It be moved to spare us, if we did pull this off and bring It a different sacrifice?  Or would It just swallow up all of us anyway?

As we cleaved downward, I wondered too what the River thought of me.

Its water and mud had been used in the spell that brought me back, or so Svip had told me.  Did It know that?  And did that make It think of me as – what?  One of Its creatures?  A sort of client, as if the River were some High King and I a lesser ruler who reigned at Its behest?  Did It recognise my status in the realms of Men, and if It did, did that status matter to It in the slightest?

My hands touched trailing tendrils of grass, drowned in the flood.  I felt along farther, and found fairly level ground stretching out beneath us.  It seemed we had reached the base of the plateau.  Now we had only to head for the light that gleamed beyond the wall, and see if the River would allow us to break free.

We swam toward the edge – and the River changed Its tactics.  Of a sudden, instead of holding back in that impossible wall, the water around us surged forward, hurling us along with it.  In an instant we were spat out, flailing on the ground with water spewing over us.

We might not have chosen that method of egress, but at least we had reached the ridge of trees we’d been aiming for.  I fetched up on the protruding root of one, my momentum stopping an inch or two short of whacking my head into the tree trunk.

Water trickled in rivulets down the ridge about us, but when I forced myself to turn and look back, the water wall still stood, seemingly unaltered by having spewed us forth.  I struggled to my feet, staring up at the wall with a feeling of wonder and dread.

It stood like a tower of rippled green glass.  I thought of the Rauros Falls as I gazed at it, but this was no waterfall, for the simple reason that the water was not falling.  There was no spray at its base, no rush of current dragging the water onward to fling itself over the cliff.  It just stood as though frozen, yet I could see waves splashing at the top of the plateau, and I thought, inside of it as well.

“Right,” muttered Cirion, getting to his feet beside me.  “That was fun.”

I nodded and started my soggy way along the ridge.  I wanted to see if I could catch a glimpse of our friends atop the Howe, to assure myself that they were still there.

Twenty paces or so took me to a point where I could see our little island refuge poking up out of the water.  I saw the tiny figures grouped on it as well, appearing like toy soldiers in the distance.

I could not at first tell how many there were; some were seated and impossible to distinguish from each other.  I waved at them, and Cirion, walking up to join me, did the same.  One by one I saw the seated figures leap to their feet.

At last I could distinguish five of them: four more or less of a height, and one about half the height of the others.  The smaller figure jumped up and down excitedly and waved.

That was all right, then.  For now, at least, the River seemed to be abiding by the terms I had proposed.  It had at least not drowned our companions.

I turned to Cirion.  “So,” I asked, “any notion of how we swiftly find a few Orcs?”

He said, “if we head along this ridge and then cut west along one of the gullies, we’ll come to an area where we observed several bands of Orcs yesterday.  It seems to be an established meeting point for them; there were signs of fairly lengthy habitation.  It’s likely, I believe, that any of their groups in the area would routinely stop there, just as any of our Men would stop at Lilla Howe.  Even if none are there when we reach the place, we should not have to wait long for some to arrive.”

“Maybe,” I said.  “Assuming that all the bands moving through this area have not already done so.”  But it did seem a better plan than just wandering around aimlessly hoping to run into some Orcs.

“We’ll try it,” I decreed.  “Perhaps we’ll meet some on the way there, and save ourselves the wait.”

We paused briefly to adjust our clothing and our arsenals, after the disarrangement caused by our journey through the flood.  Then we set out, Cirion in the lead.  We moved at a steady lope, keeping under the camouflage of the trees wherever possible.  It was probably sheer habit for the Ranger to travel as inconspicuously as he could, though I wondered if in this case we might be better served by sticking out like a troll at a tea party.  If we made ourselves conspicuous, at least it might bring the Orcs to us faster.  Though since we could not pick and choose the number that might see us, perhaps discretion was wiser after all.  It would not really aid our cause if we succeeded in bringing hundreds of them down upon us.

As we reached the gully that Cirion advocated following, he halted and knelt down, studying a mass of footprints.  The ground had been churned up all along the bottom of the gully, with the footprints heading off toward the riverbank.  They were Orc prints; that much was plain enough from the size of them and the unmistakable imprint of their iron-nailed shoes.  But how many there had been was impossible to tell, from the way the prints were trampled over each other.

“From this morning,” Cirion decided, as he ran his hand over one of the prints and examined a chunk of mud.  “No more than five hours old, I would venture.”

I frowned.  “If we cannot tell more precisely than that, I assume there’s no sense in following them?  We’ve no guarantee we’d catch up with them – and no guarantee of how many there’d be, if we did catch up.”

Cirion stood.  “Not even reckoning,” he added, “that these may be the same Orcs we killed this morning.”

We set out once more, scaling to the top of the ridge along the gully’s southern edge.  Should we encounter Orcs along the way, at least we’d be able to hopefully see them first and fire down into the gully upon them.

Our plan was sensible enough.  But I could not stop myself from mentally grumbling about it.  It still seemed there ought to be some better way to go about this, some way of guaranteeing that we’d find some Orcs instead of just sitting about on our backsides waiting for them to turn up.  We’d no idea how long it might be before more Orcs decided to visit this meeting place of Cirion’s.  How did we know how long the River would be willing to wait, before it got bored and decided to eat our comrades?

Typical, I thought.  When you don’t want Orcs around, they’re ten a penny.  And then when you do want to find some …

I thought back to Finn’s grim joke, that we should have kept some of the ones we had this morning.  It was too bad, I thought, that we weren’t in the habit of carting a few prisoners around with us on a regular basis, just in case we might need them to sacrifice.

I wondered if perhaps our ancestors had done so, in those supposed bad old days when sacrifices, and all of a Lord’s followers immolating themselves on his funeral pyre, and suchlike uncouth acts, were a matter of course.  Though if they had, I thought I could see why they’d given it up, since the gods and such beings are notoriously unreliable and might be just as likely to betray you to your death if you did sacrifice to them as if you did not.  Certainly that was the way Svip spoke of the River.  He’d said time and again that you could never tell what It might do.  So if regular sacrifices had failed to make the gods any more reliable, it was no wonder if somewhere in the mists of time our ancestors had just decided to stop bothering with it.

Near to an hour since we’d been spat out of the water, we reached Cirion’s Orc meeting place.  True to my fears, no Orcs were currently in residence.

I had to bite my lip to keep from yelling out my frustration.  We hunkered down in a nest of scraggly bushes growing over a gap amid an outcrop of boulders.  From that gap, the bushes shielding us from sight, we had a clear view of the rendezvous point.

Below us was a large hollow, a clearing surrounded by hills on every side.  The only easy outlets were the two points where the gully entered it on the western edge of the clearing and emerged again on the east.  The hills were steep enough that the Orcs likely presumed any attackers would tumble downhill and announce their presence.  Though that would not, of course, provide defence against attack by archers.

As Cirion had said, this place had seen plenty of use.  The remains of countless campfires darkened the ground, and I saw a few rough lean-tos fashioned of uprooted young trees and battered bits of canvas.  There were some dark openings as well, cave mouths at the base of the hills.  Several of them had piles of dirt scattered about their entrances, and I supposed that the Orcs had recently dug these caves, to provide better shelter against the sun.

That was one worrying consideration, among the many, about these latest patterns of enemy movements.  Cirion, Thorolf and I had spoken of it last night, and it did not look any less grim after our discussion.  We had all seen more evidence than we cared to that a new breed of Orc was about.  Too many of the creatures we’d observed over this past year or so seemed undisturbed by sunlight.  There had been many of them, I was certain, in the battle at Osgiliath last summer.  Cirion’s party had seen some of them in these last few days, and he’d reported that the messenger from Rohan had spoken of such creatures as well.  At least one of the groups that Svip and I had trailed for all those days, the band that came out of the West, had also seemed made up of these hardier Orcs.

And, I supposed, so had the Orcs we met at Amon Hen.  The Orcs who had killed me.

It was no great stretch of the imagination to hypothesise that they were some new creation of our Enemy.  The Orcs’ loathing of sunlight had been an advantage to our side for centuries.  It should be no surprise to us if the Dark Lord had determined to take that advantage from us.

This would not be the first time we’d faced enemies who had no fear of daylight.  The Nameless One had plenty of Men under his sway, Southrons who were no more daunted by the sun’s rays than we were.

But it was yet one more weapon in the armoury that our Foe was building up against us.  Orcs that could fight in the sunlight, Men lured by the promise of plunder – and the grim warriors of shadow whose very approach spread terror.  I could not help fearing that this time the Enemy would fling at us more than we could withstand.

Aye, I snapped at myself, and that fear is another of his weapons.  Stop playing into his hands.

The morning died and the afternoon wore on.  Over and over the image played before my eyes of the River losing its patience and rising up to devour our friends.  It was a good thing that I had my gauntlets on, or I would have been gnawing my fingernails into non-existence.

I wondered how long we could afford to wait, before attempting to follow another course.  How long did it have to be, with no Orcs strolling into the hollow, before we decided that none of them were coming?

And if we did come to that decision, what would we do then?  What other likely tactic did we have?  We could cross the River and head east; there was generally no shortage of Orcs on the Eastern shore.  But would the Anduin give us time enough to find them?

At last a more mundane consideration came to distract me from my dread.  My stomach reminded me I’d not eaten since early morning.

It was a trivial concern, I told myself with scorn; I had not turned into a Hobbit yet.  But the hunger was at least an irritation that I could focus on for a while -- and thus stop from driving myself mad over the fate of our comrades, and of Gondor.

For the first time, I thought I was sorry to have no more of that blasted lembas the Elves had given us.

The portion of it I’d had was lost to me with my pack and the rest of its contents.  I had not missed it until now, not even when subsisting on Svip’s fishy diet.

I’d become deathly tired of it in those weeks after leaving Lórien, though of course I had to admit that it was a good subsistence food, easily portable, and would be a useful addition to the provisions of our armies.  I’d even considered that perhaps we should enter into trade negotiations with the Elves to see if they’d supply the stuff for us, or sell us the recipe – unlikely, considering the way Elves guard their secrets – or even send us Elven cooks who would make it for us.  I didn’t reckon we’d get all that far with such negotiations; it’d be a cold day in Mordor before Elves looked kindly on trade relations with mere Men.  But perhaps there was something they wanted that we could offer in exchange.  Although I couldn’t imagine what.  A fleet, perhaps, so they could get their poetical Elven rears out of Middle Earth the sooner?  Though I supposed that went against Elven nature.  Why do anything swiftly, when one could spend millennia on it instead?

If I did manage to introduce lembas to our armies, I was under no illusion that our Men would bless me for it.  It is, after all, the time-honoured right of all soldiers to dislike the rations supplied to them.  Likely it’d come to be known as “Boromir’s bread”, and would be so known for generations, long after anyone remembered who I was.  I grinned to myself as I thought of it, and of all the soldiers’ tales that were sure to grow up around the stuff.  I wondered how many incidents there’d be of Men whose lives were miraculously saved by wafers of lembas in their pockets that turned aside arrowpoints.  Too bad I hadn’t had any on me at Amon Hen.  It might have helped me out against those Orcish arrows.

Out of the gathering shadows of the waning afternoon light, harsh voices approached from the West.  As we watched, a ragged column of dark, bulky shapes marched into the hollow.

“Got ’em,” Cirion whispered.

I counted fifteen of them entering the clearing before their column stopped.  I’d wondered if they would just be passing through and we would have to follow, but it seemed that the Orcs were going to make things easier for us.  We watched them start to divest themselves of weapons and packs.  The largest of the Orcs, presumably their leader, stood near the centre of the clearing directing the activities of the others.  He sent two of them to the clearing’s edge, on the quest for firewood.  Two others took up position guarding each of the clearing’s entrances, while a fifth started scrambling up the hill by the eastern entrance to the gully, sent, I supposed, to stand guard on the ridge.  This last Orc’s path would probably bring him directly to us.

“We can take them from up here,” Cirion hissed.  “I’ll silence this one, then attempt to get to the other side.  If we fire at them from above and keep moving, we should be able to keep them pinned down and make them think they’re surrounded.  All right?” he added, finally remembering that he was speaking to a very superior officer.

“Right,” I said.  I wished I could be down there within sword’s reach, but Cirion was right; we should keep clear of them and pick off as many as we could without risking ourselves.  We owed it to our comrades not to get killed, for our fate would seal theirs as well.  “Disable as many as you can,” I whispered to him.  “Remember we need at least two alive.”

“Yes, My Lord.  Give me a couple of minutes and start firing.”

Cirion crept away through the rocks and I swiftly lost sight of him.  But before long I could see the Orc watchman, walking unconcernedly toward my hiding place.  Likely he intended to take a seat atop the boulders that I was crouching beneath.

He never reached them.  As the Orc moved in among the rocks, I saw Cirion leap up like the strike of a serpent.  Before the Orc even glimpsed his danger, Cirion had seized him, slit his throat, and pulled the body down into the shelter of the rocks.

I listened for a shout of alarm from below, but none came.  The Ranger Captain had moved fast enough that the Orcs below had missed all of it.

Cirion vanished from my sight again.  I presumed he was creeping through the rocks on his way to the other side of the clearing.  I readied the bow that I’d taken when we fled our flooding refuge, then I crept out from the gap and wormed along, seeking a vantage point from which to take my first shot.

My route took me past the Orc watchman’s corpse.  I spared a moment’s regret that Cirion had chosen such a permanent method of silencing him.  Not that I regretted the Orc himself, but the time might come when we’d wish we had him as a reserve.  It is not always a simple matter to wound rather than kill.  We did not have the option of failure; we had to keep two of them alive if we were to provide enough victims for the River.  Our comrades’ lives could not afford the delay of seeking out more victims.  We had no choice but to succeed – but I wished I were a more accomplished archer, and more certain that I would not end up killing every Orc that I hit.

The gully became very narrow at the point where it entered the hollow from the East, no more than three feet across.  I caught an instant’s glimpse of Cirion, as the Ranger jumped over this gap and started his way along the northern rim of the clearing.

I wondered what was wrong with the damned Orcs.  They must all be blind or asleep, if they had not seen that.  Although, I reminded myself, I had been watching for it and they had not.  And they had no reason to expect an attack such as ours.  Their lookouts were watching for attack by a larger force of Men – or for some defenceless refugees they could attack and plunder – not for a couple of madmen on a kidnapping mission.

I had lost sight of Cirion again, but I figured I had given him enough time.  I sought out the leader of the Orcs, he who I presumed would have the best chance of restoring order among them when we attacked.  He was seated on a log near the centre of the clearing, apparently haranguing a smaller Orc that was unloading pots and pans from his pack.  Promising myself that I really would try to just disable all of the other ones I shot at, I aimed at the leader’s chest, and fired.

The arrow struck him in the sternum, and as he reared to his feet with an anguished roar, a second arrow blossomed in his back.

Well, that one’s dead, I thought.  Cirion and I had better hope that we didn’t keep aiming for the same Orcs throughout all of this, or we would never get any sacrifices for the River.

As shouts erupted from below, I scrambled low to the ground to another nearby clump of rocks.  I fired at the watchman on the eastern edge of the clearing.  My first shot missed him.  Swearing under my breath I nocked another arrow and took a second shot at him, this time the arrow seemingly grazing his thigh.  He fell, but swiftly staggered up again.

Deciding to abandon him as a target for the moment, I made another running crawl to a point near where Cirion and I had hidden.  Here I fired at another of the yelling, running Orcs.  This one took the arrow somewhere around his midriff, and I snarled another curse to myself, wondering whether he’d survive that wound or not.

I was beginning to wish I could go back in time and come up with a different plan.  This business of shooting to disable, not kill, was going to drive me mad.  Orcs aren’t the type to lie down and groan when they get an arrow in an arm or a leg.  A wound that’s enough to knock an Orc down might just as well be a fatal one, for little short of death will stop them long enough for one to be able to capture them.

Cirion had kept firing from his side of the clearing.  I kept seeing Orcs fall, and some of the fallen were still moving, but I could not pause long enough to study them and make any guess on which were likely to survive and which not.

I scrambled a few feet to my left and fired, then doubled back further to the right and fired again.  One of my Orcs fell, again with a wound the severity of which I could not judge.  The other arrow missed its target entirely, ploughing into the earth.

A swift count showed five Orcs still left on their feet.  One of them, the Orc I had just missed, had either figured out there were only two archers firing, or had determined to charge the enemy regardless of how many we were.

That was fine by me.  I would have a better chance of disabling him if I could reach him.  This Orc seemed undaunted by the steep slope of the hillside, and he was churning upward at me sword in hand, his feet creating a rooster tail of fallen leaves and rocks.

I wriggled along to a different location, to the left again of where I had last fired.  Hopefully my Orc had not actually seen me.  He did not seem to have, and kept charging toward the rocks I’d been hiding behind when I shot at him.  As he reached those rocks, I jumped him, keeping low in case some other of the Orcs decided to take a pot shot at me.

I barrelled into him, catching him about the waist and knocking him over.  We rolled a few feet down the slope, sending rocks, leaves and twigs flying in all directions.  For a moment I’d had him pinned, then he heaved me off.  I fell onto my back as he surged up at me.

I had drawn the battleaxe that I’d taken from Lilla Howe.  As the Orc struck at me I managed to roll out of the way, then hacked at his sword arm while he was off balance from his lunge.  My first blow sliced across his forearm and staggered him a little, but the second, before he could recover, lopped off his hand at the wrist.  Hand and sword went flying.

The Orc snarled and reached, left-handed, for the dagger at his belt.  I reversed my grip on the axe and swung it at his head, the axe handle connecting with his skull with a dull thud.

My Orc crumpled, seemingly out cold.  But I’d no way of knowing how long that would last.  Knowing the Orcs, he could be up again in seconds.

Before I could make any move to secure him, an arrow zinged past my head and drove into the earth.

I risked a glance at the clearing and saw two more Orcs running across it, toward the hillside and toward me.  One hulking monster was waving around some enormous sword that seemed nearly as tall as he was, while the other, only slightly less massive, was clutching a great two-headed battleaxe.  A third Orc, the one who had fired at me, was standing near the edge of the clearing, readying another arrow.

I could use my unconscious one-handed Orc as a shield, but that wouldn’t do anything for our chances of being able to keep him for a sacrifice.  I seized hold of him and managed to drag both myself and him behind the nearest cluster of rocks.  The next arrow splintered against a rock.

Huge Sword and Big Axe were storming up the hill.  Working as swiftly as I could, I yanked one of my Orc’s belts off him and used it to bind together his one remaining hand and the other, severed wrist.  As an afterthought I ripped off a couple of feet of cloth from his tunic and wrapped it around his mangled wrist.  The River would probably like Its sacrifices better if they weren’t in the process of bleeding to death.

My next two Orcs were getting much too near for comfort as I lunged for the bow I’d left lying behind the rocks and nocked an arrow to it.

Big Axe was first, leaping over the rocks with a particularly blood-curdling roar.  The roar broke off abruptly as I fired up from where I was crouched on the ground, and the arrow impaled his throat.

Damn, I hoped some of those other Orcs were still alive.

I gained my feet as the one with the massive sword came charging through the rocks and leapt over his prostrate comrade.  I drew my sword, but had to jump backward as the Orc swung his enormous blade at me like some giant’s scythe.  I stared in disbelief at the sheer size of that sword, and thought of the muscles that must be necessary for the Orc to be able to wield the thing without falling over.

The Orc saw me staring, and laughed.

In guttural tones he mocked, in the Common Tongue, “come here, little Man.”

Come here, eh? I thought.  Fine, but I don’t think you’ll like it.

I feinted to his left, then ducked out of the way again as the monstrous sword arced in another huge right-to-left swing.  I suppose the Orc was expecting me to just keep jumping away from him.  It certainly took him by surprise when I struck, beating his sword further to the left and throwing him off balance.  He stumbled, and I lunged under his arm.  I was still desperately trying to secure some of these bastards for our sacrifice, so instead of gutting him I slashed my sword across his massive thigh.  My attack carried me behind him, and as he wheeled to face me I brought up my sword and smashed the flat of it down across the Orc’s head.

He staggered, and I saw a trickle of blood emerge from under his leathern skull-cap helmet.  But he kept his feet, and he studied me with an ugly, gap-fanged grin.

“What are you playing at, little Man?” he inquired.

I thought, you don’t want to know.

No more arrows were flying at me, but I could not risk glancing away from my opponent to see what had become of the archer.  I hoped Cirion had finished him off.

I had my back to the hillside.  If I managed it properly, perhaps I could lure this fellow into lunging at me and throwing himself down the hill.  Though Orcs are not all entirely stupid, and there seemed a fairly good chance that this one would see what I was doing and just laugh at me.

Nonetheless, I started backing away toward the hill’s edge, as the vast sword swung at me once, and then again.  On the third swing, when I felt the ground beginning to slope down beneath my feet, I ducked away to the side, at the same time slicing my sword across both of the Orc’s thighs.  He yelled something, partially lost his footing and slid a few feet down the slope.

It wasn’t as dramatic a fall as I’d hoped for, but it was something.  While he was swinging at me I’d noticed he didn’t seem to be wearing any dagger or other small arms.  He could of course be carrying concealed ones, but if he didn’t have any, then I wouldn’t be in much danger once I got inside his guard.

I leaped at him, and his feet finally skidded out from under him.  He hit the ground hard and slid a little ways further down the leaf-carpeted slope, with me hanging on atop of him as if I were riding some bizarre Orc-shaped sled.  I closed my left hand around his windpipe, and with my right I pounded my sword hilt into his skull, again and again.

The Orc had dropped his sword, and was bucking, clawing and kicking to force me off him.  As he dragged my hand away from his neck, snarling up at me, my hilt landed with a sickening crunch and the Orc suddenly went limp.

“Bloody hell,” I muttered.  I felt his wrist for his pulse, which was still there and still strong, then I wrenched the battered leather helmet off his head.  There was blood all through his matted black hair, but at one point, over one ear, his skull offered no resistance to my cautiously prodding fingers.  The bone must have shattered there, though at least it had apparently not been driven into his brain.  I had better be careful not to shove it in now; it would be a lot of work wasted if I impaled his brain with his skull fragments before we could drown him.  Though I wasn’t at all sure he would make it to the River alive, anyway.  If we had any other victims to choose from, perhaps we’d be better advised just to finish this one off and take some less likely to perish along the way.

I looked about me.  Two Orcs unconscious and one slain.  Down in the clearing, no Orcs were left standing.  I could see seven bodies down there, but I couldn’t tell if any still lived.  Movement drew my eyes to the rim of the hollow, and I saw Cirion jogging along toward me, bow in hand.  He jumped the gully again and loped up through the rocks.

“How did you do?” I asked him.  “Any alive down there?”

He shrugged.  “Should be.  We’ll have to investigate.  Four of them ran away, back the way they came, so we’ll just have to hope they don’t bring reinforcements.  What about these?”

I grimaced.  “Got two alive.  For now.  Don’t know if this one’ll last long enough to be worth it.”

            Cirion crouched down and took his turn at carefully prodding the Orc’s skull.  “He might do,” he said.  “We should try, anyway.  He’s big enough, maybe the River will take him in exchange for Buslai.”

I got to my feet, sheathing my sword and brushing the leaves and dirt off me.  “If we’ve got enough, we should bring extras,” I said.  “In case some kick off along the way.  And we could give the River a few extra as a sign of good will.”

The Ranger had drawn his dagger and was cutting some shorter lengths off the rope he had brought.  He tossed a couple of pieces to me.  “Let’s get their hands and feet tied,” he said.  “It’ll be easiest dragging them along the gully; we can get these two down there and then see if there’s any others worth taking.”

It was a minor engineering project figuring out the most efficient way of dragging our Orcs.  We ended by passing the main length of rope between their legs and each of us taking hold of one end of the rope.  It drew their bound ankles together and made it fairly easy for us to lug them along.  My one-handed Orc, I noticed, woke up partway through the jolting passage down the hill, but we had stuffed bits of cloth into their mouths, so he could not voice any complaint.

At the base of the hill we abandoned our bound victims and paced over the field of battle.  Three of the remaining seven, we found, were still alive.  One was pinned to the earth with an arrow that had passed through a lung, to judge by the pinkish foam at his mouth.  One was painfully inching his way along the floor of the clearing.  An arrow still sticking in the back of one knee must have cut through the tendon, for he moved like a half-crushed bug, crawling lopsidedly and collapsing every time he tried to force himself to stand.  He snarled out some Orcish curse at us, but he had not enough mobility to avoid the blow from Cirion’s axe handle, that knocked him out cold.

The third had an arrow in his stomach.  He was grasping the arrow with one hand, and his swarthy face was twisted in pain and sheened with sweat.  I had to swallow back welling nausea as I thought of how I must have looked in the moments before I died.

Forcing myself not to stop and feel the places where my wounds should have been, I knocked out this Orc with my sword hilt.  Then, sheathing my sword once more, I drew my dagger, crossed to the one with the arrow in his lung, and slit his throat.

“Let’s get going,” I said.  “We’ll take these four; some of them ought to make it.”

We dragged our first two captives to the centre of the clearing and cut more pieces of rope to bind those with the cut tendon and the stomach wound.  Passing the rope through their legs, like the others, we took up the rope ends and set out again, like two workhorses pulling some peculiar piece of farm equipment.  A tiller, perhaps, I thought; if we turned the Orcs over on their fronts, their nails ought to be rather good at loosening up the soil.

It was awkward going, for the first stretch through the gully.  It was narrow enough that Cirion and I could not really walk abreast; we kept ending up having to walk partially on the slope, and the Orcs kept jumbling up on top of each other as they bounced along behind us.  The gully finally widened out, and from there we made fairly good time.  But I could not banish the insidious thought that we might already be too late.

If the River had already taken our comrades – well, yes? my mind demanded.  If It has already taken them, what then?  It was not as if there was anything I could do.  I could hardly take revenge on the Anduin.  What did I think I would do, try to dam it up and stop its flow?  Create a miles-wide zone on either side of the River that no Man was permitted to enter, to deny Anduin any future victims?  That’s splendid, I told myself.  Your reign would forever be known as that of Boromir the Mad.

The River greeted us with a cool, dancing breeze and the raucous cries of the seagulls.  The sun, moving downward in the western sky, gilded the scene around us as it sank into a grey-gold sea of clouds.  As we climbed the ridge once more, dragging our Orcs behind, it might have been any other spring afternoon upon the shores of the Anduin.  Except for the detour that the River took around Lilla Howe.

The wall of water was still there, rising up from its banks like a vision of delirium.  The gleaming green wall stood before us, tinged gold from the sunlight, encircling the barrow with only the tomb’s peak visible above the waves.

At first I thought that our friends were gone.  Then I discerned shapes on the little island – lumps that might be Men seated on the ground, and other figures that were probably Men lying down.  And one small standing figure not tall enough to be a Man, a motionless sentinel standing on guard, as the watchtower had stood upon Lilla Howe centuries before.

Of a sudden the sentinel moved.  It started jumping up and down, and it waved.

I glanced at Cirion, whose pallid, shaky smile revealed that he’d felt the same fears as I had.  Then he frowned, and nodded his head toward the wall.  “Well?” he asked.  “Do we just throw them in there?”

“I suppose so,” I said doubtfully.  We had spoken of it a bit on our way through the gully, trying to determine whether we should take our sacrifices to the wall, or to a spot where the River still flowed in Its normal course.  We had both agreed that the wall of water seemed the obvious place, circling as it did around the focus of the River’s rage.  But now, looking at it, I could not help wondering if the wall would still be permeable as it had been when we were spat out of it, or if the Orcs would just hit it and bounce right back off.

Well, we had only one way to find out.  If they did bounce off, we would just have to haul them over to the riverbed and try it again.

Cirion knelt and pulled out the rope from between the assembled legs of our captives.  He stood again and matter-of-factly went about coiling the rope again.  Two of the Orcs, One Hand and Leg Wound, were awake, glaring up at us in impotent rage.

“Check if the others are alive,” I told Cirion.  “We don’t want to offend the River by giving It one that’s already dead.”

He hooked the rope at his belt and knelt by them again.  “They’re both breathing,” he reported.  “Think the River’ll mind that they’re a bit battered?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

Now that the moment was at hand, I felt a weird nervous dread creeping up within me.

What if it didn’t work?  What if we flung these damned Orcs into the River and nothing whatever happened?

Cirion stood beside me.  “Will you address the River, My Lord?” he asked me.

I grimaced.  Of course I knew that I should address the River, rather than just casually tossing them in.  But I had no idea what to say.  It is at such times that I wish someone else were the Steward’s Heir and Captain-General of Gondor.  If they were, that someone else would have to make all the speeches.

But we had waited more than enough.  I drew a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and resigned myself to the inevitable.

“Great River!” I called out.  “We bring you our duty and respects.  We humbly ask that you look with favour on our gift.”

I glanced over at Cirion and shrugged.  It was not much of a speech, but I was damned if I could think of anything else.

Cirion nodded.  We took hold of our nearest victim, he of the cut tendon.  We picked him up, I at his head and Cirion at his feet.  And we heaved him at the gleaming green wall.

He did not bounce back.  Water splashed onto us as the Orc passed within.  For a moment we still saw him, suspended inside the wall.  Then something seemed to seize hold of him, sucking his body into the depths and out of our sight.

I shuddered, despite myself.  I have never felt a twinge of conscience for any Orc I have slain.  But this seemed so unnatural – and the River which had swallowed him had come so close to swallowing us – that I almost felt I was betraying the Orcs by giving them up to the River.

I told myself, better them than us.  I turned to pick up the next Orc.

One by one we flung them in.  As we went on, we moved faster, heaving in each Orc while the splash was still dying from his comrade before him.

One by one they were swirled through the water.  One by one they vanished.

I stared into the glowing green darkness.  Then I heard Cirion’s voice, low and urgent.  “Stand back, My Lord.  My Lord.  Get back.”

He reached out and grabbed me by the shoulder, yanking me away from the water.  For another moment we both stood staring, then we stepped back farther, to the edge of the trees.  Not that I had any faith that the trees would help us, should the River come for us.

It was moving.  The waters swirled around Lilla Howe, circling faster and faster.  Waves bucked and churned on the plateau’s crest.  As we watched, the waves somehow moved further down, racing around the side of the wall as well as its top.  The white horses of the waves raged through the tower of water, sending out juts of spray that once again drenched us where we stood.  Two or three times I thought I saw the bodies of the Orcs, spiralling by amid the waves.  But they were gone before I could be sure.

“Oh, Valar,” breathed Cirion, in a tone of awe.  “Oh, Valar, will you look.”

Everything had stopped.  With impossible suddenness the vast green wall stood frozen, white-capped waves arrested in mid-air.  Then, just as suddenly, the River surged into life.

The water reared, so high that I could no longer see the island of Lilla Howe.  The River flung Itself toward Its banks, with a roar that swallowed all other sound.  As the waves raced past us, there moved with them an icy wind, that chilled me like the fingers of death as it brushed over us and was gone.

The roar was succeeded by silence.  Tentatively, as if they felt the same stunned wonder as we did, the seabirds started up their cries.

Cirion whispered, “I don’t believe it.”

Before us lay a landscape sodden and battered, but still a landscape that we knew.  Beyond the ridge where we stood, the Lilla Howe headland jutted into the River.  The Howe stood upon it, once more visible in its entirety.  Long grasses drooped broken and bent, wildflowers lay flattened, water dripped from the plants and gleamed in puddles at the barrow’s base.  Mud torn loose by the torrent oozed down the hillside in vast dark gashes, as if some monster’s claws had raked the Howe and scored deep into the earth.

From atop the Howe someone shouted, and the spell of awe that had held us was broken.

I ran toward the barrow, Cirion a few paces behind me.  Several times each of us slipped in the mud, but we regained our footing and kept running.

Our comrades were scrambling down the Howe.  One small figure raced ahead, half running and half sliding down the slope.  Behind him four taller figures followed more slowly, two holding back to support the other two who unsteadily picked their way down the hillside.

As I started up the slope of Lilla Howe, Svip charged down the Howe toward me.  He slammed into me as if shot from a catapult, flinging his arms about my neck and sending me skidding downhill in an avalanche of mud.

I yelled in laughing protest as we tobogganed down the hill.  We slid to a muddy halt, Svip perched on top of me and grinning like the family dog that has knocked over its master in its eagerness to welcome him home.

I had to wipe away tears of laughter.  “Easy, Svip!” I begged.  “Easy!  You’ll break me!”

Svip beamed at me in untarnished delight.  “You’re alive,” he said.

I nodded, feeling suddenly solemn.  “So are you.  I am very glad of it.”  I had to force myself to keep the smile on my face, for the exchange had become almost painfully familiar.

Those were the words with which my brother and I had greeted each other these two decades past, each time we met again after passing through hardship and danger.  I thought of the many times I had clasped Faramir’s hand and then reached out to pull him to me, as he said, “you’re alive,” and I answered, “so are you.”

I glanced up toward the others, still finding their way down the hill.  “And they are alive,” I said.  “I thank you for that, Svip.”

He hopped off of me, sitting down in the mud a little uphill from me.  “It wasn’t too hard,” he said.  “They didn’t try flinging themselves in the water.  Finn and Buslai slept most of the time.  Except when the River threw waves at us.”  He paused a moment in thought, then added, “I think It wanted to remind us It was there.”

I chuckled at the thought that the River might believe it needed to remind us of that.

The seven of us had a bedraggled but heartfelt reunion, as Cirion caught up to Svip and me, and the others reached the foot of the barrow.  There were few speeches, but much hand-clasping and gripping of shoulders.  Thorolf’s face bore an uncharacteristic grin.  Holgar gazed about him in awe, as if he had suddenly found himself travelling in the company of Eärendil and his mariners.  Buslai and Finn seemed much improved by their hours of sleep, though they still looked as though they could use another several days of it.

Cirion sent Holgar and Thorolf around to the regular entrance to the refuge, to investigate what damage the River might have done from that direction.  The rest of us circled the Howe until we reached the burial chamber’s entryway, through which we had fled just that morn – though already it seemed weeks in the past.

Back through the tunnel we crawled, into Lord Lilla’s burial chamber.  The chamber had survived with little damage, though the earthen floor was a sodden mire and thick mud oozed off the smooth stone slabs of the walls.  Scattered here and there were bits of equipment from the refuge: a bench, a broken spear, a sack which had held loaves of waybread and was now become nothing more than a lumpy bag of flour paste.  All this detritus must have been washed into the chamber through the tunnel from the refuge, and it bore grim tidings of the sight that awaited us in the refuge itself.

Cirion shook his head and wiped the sticky flour paste off his hand onto the wall.  Then, muttering to himself, he led the way into the tunnel.

We spent the remainder of that day in the clean-up effort.  In the jumbled chaos of the Lilla Howe refuge we found a couple of soggy cots which had sustained no serious damage.  Onto these we bundled Finn and Buslai, who fell asleep immediately, oblivious to the damp.  The rest of us laboured through the afternoon and into the night: dragging weapons from the mud and cleaning them, repairing furniture, re-sealing the tunnel entrance to the burial chamber to forestall discovery and attack from that approach, rescuing our supplies of foodstuffs and determining what could be salvaged and what was now fit only for very hungry rats, hanging up dripping clothes and bedding from a clothes-line that we suspended from one end of the burial chamber to the other.  It would have dried faster outside, of course, but we had already done enough to draw attention to ourselves.  The refuge would hardly count as secret any longer if the approach to Lilla Howe were festooned with clothes-lines.

Two hours past sunset or thereabouts, we woke Finn and Buslai and sat down to a scanty but welcome meal of only partially mushy bread and no longer quite so dried apricots.  Then our recently drowned comrades immediately betook themselves to bed.  The rest of us followed suit, except for Cirion who left to take up his shift on watch.

My bed consisted of a half-dried blanket spread out on the squelching mud floor.  Sleep came swiftly, but it brought with it dreams I could gladly have done without.

I saw silver-grey waves, and whirlpools with drowned Orcs spiralling in their depths.  I saw myself reaching into the water for something just out of my grasp.  It kept changing from Svip into the Horn of Gondor, into a gleaming gold ring, and back into Svip again.  Each time my hand nearly touched it, it was washed out of my reach.

At some point in the night my dream changed.

I was standing in my father’s study, clasping my hands behind my back to keep them from visibly trembling.  I do not know if I was my current self, or if I had become a boy again.  Probably my age kept changing from one moment to the next.  But my father’s words did not change, whatever age I might be.

He stood behind his desk, the torchlight imparting an unearthly gleam to his eyes.  He waited in silence, long enough to make me want to squirm from the chilling scorn of his gaze.  Then he said, in his quiet tone that was a thousand times worse than shouting, “you know how much you have disappointed me.”

I stood as straight as I possibly could.  “Yes, Father.”

“I expected better of you.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“You know what the Horn meant to our family.  What it should have meant to you.  Stewards’ Heirs have borne the Horn for twenty-seven generations.  Now tell me, of all those Heirs, why it should be you who brings the Horn home in pieces.”

“I’m sorry, Father,” I said, fighting to stop myself from blushing.

“I don’t want to hear that you are sorry.  I want to see you do better.”

“Yes, Sir.”

He pulled back his chair and sat down, starting to sort through a stack of parchments on his desk and not looking at me as he spoke.  “I want you to go to your room and think about what you’ve done.  When our armies depart from the City tomorrow, you will remain here and attend to your studies.”

I gasped in shock.  “But, Sir --”

“I don’t want to hear any debate.  You have leave to go to your room.”

“My Lord!” I blurted.  “I cannot let my troops go into battle without me.”

“You can and you will.”  He glanced up from the documents before him, with a look that would have frozen Mount Doom.

“But My Lord, they need me.”

“Your Men have no need of a commander who has not learned to face the consequences of his failures.”

            I stood at attention, my voice and my hands trembling with anger.  “I have learned to face them, Sir.”

            “Not well enough.  Perhaps this will teach you how.  Perhaps remaining here while all your friends go to Mordor will teach you to accept responsibility for your actions.”

“Father, please --”

He looked up from the parchments with an expression of mild surprise.  “Did you say something, Boromir?  I believe I gave you permission to go to your room.”

I woke to find that I had shifted off the blanket in my sleep.  My face was pressed against the mud floor.  I sat up, grimacing, and blinked at the room about me in the light of the one glimmering torch.

The Rangers had changed their shift on watch.  Cirion was asleep, wrapped up in another of our half-dry blankets, and the blanket that had made up Holgar’s bed was empty.  Thorolf, Finn and Buslai all slept, and I noticed that neither Finn nor Buslai seemed to have changed their positions by the fraction of an inch in the hours since I had fallen asleep.

I watched them for a while in the dim torchlight, just to be sure that they were both breathing.

“They will be all right.”

The whispered voice came from Svip.  I started in surprise, and noticed him sitting up in his wooden wash basin.  He had been hidden from me before by three barrels, all that was left intact of the fourteen barrels of wine and foodstuffs that had been stored here before the flood.

Svip went on, still in a whisper, “it took you a day and two nights before you were really up and about.”

I stood and crossed to sit down again beside Svip’s washing-up bowl.

I whispered, “will they be tied to the River?”

He shook his head.  “They shouldn’t be.  I didn’t have to do anything special with them.  The Silverweed was all it took.  With you – there were all those wounds.  That’s why I needed the mud and the River water.  It was simpler with them.  They should be able to go anywhere they could before – I think.”

I nodded.  I was glad for them, though if I were to be truly honest I would admit to a twinge of disappointment, that I would not now have two comrades bound by the same limitations as I was.

“What are you doing awake?” I asked Svip.  “You need your sleep too, you know.”

Svip nodded back, his gaze fixed on Buslai and Finn.  “I’ll sleep soon,” he said.  “I’m just – watching.”

I wondered what he was thinking.  If, in the long run, he was sorry or glad that he had brought Finn and Buslai back.

And if he was sorry or glad that he had brought me back.

He’d said he wanted to learn about the ways of Men.  Now he was learning.  He had learned from me that Men were capable of manipulating, and hurting, and forcing others to their will, to gain something that they wanted.

I wondered if the River considered our slate wiped clean, and if it would let Svip come back to live in it again.  Or if my affront to the River had closed his home to him forever.

I wanted to ask him about it, but I did not dare.

“Get some sleep, Svip,” I whispered.

I went back to my muddy blanket, and my dreams of the River and my father.

All the next day we remained at Lilla Howe, cleaning and repairing the refuge and giving Finn and Buslai another day of sleep.  I longed to be gone, to set out once more on our interrupted journey.  But I knew it was our duty to leave the refuge in some kind of usable state, for the next Men of Gondor who would stop there.  And I knew we would make scant progress if we did not give Finn and Buslai some time to recover their strength.

Late in that afternoon I left the others, on the pretext of checking if the things on the clothes-line were dry yet.  Alone in Lord Lilla’s burial chamber, I sat down on one of the rock slabs we’d torn loose from the wall, in our desperate attempt to hold back the River.

We had come through alive.  All of us.  This battle at least, we had won.

Yet the knowledge gnawed at me of how close I had come to getting us all killed.

As their commander, it was my part to be concerned for the lives of my Men.  Yet it was not my part to heedlessly endanger four others, and myself, in a mad quest to restore two lives that were already lost.

It was not my part to trample over Svip’s protests, to ignore all of his pleas, because my pride refused to accept that two Men had died and I had failed to save them.

If it was my duty as Captain-General to safeguard Gondor’s people, then surely I should have accepted the loss of two, to protect the others.  The families of Cirion, Thorolf and Holgar would not have been comforted to know that their loved ones had perished because the Lord Boromir insisted on throwing his gauntlet in the face of death.

And yet.  Accepting the loss of two that I might safeguard five, was an arithmetic problem which looked simple enough on paper.  But it would bring scant consolation to the families of Buslai and Finn.

At least their families now had the chance to welcome them home again.

Svip appeared to have forgiven me, but it was a forgiveness I did not deserve.  I had shown no regard for his advice.  I had wantonly risked not only his life but his standing in the eyes of the River, that was at once his home and the being that defined his existence.

As I had so often done, when some decision I had made came back again to haunt me, I asked myself what Faramir would have done.

None could accuse him of not caring for the lives of his men.  Had he been here instead of I, the loss of Buslai and Finn would have wounded him as deeply as it did me.  His might even be a more honest grief than mine, for it would not be tainted by the pride that sees every loss as an insult to one’s own prowess.

He would have grieved for them.  But would he have pressured Svip to bring them back, had the chance been offered to him as it was to me?

No, I thought.  He would not.  He would not have used Svip as I had.  He would not have risked the lives of the others in order to bring back two.

If he had been here instead of I, Buslai Son of Brynjolf and Finn Son of Thorstein would still be dead.

But was that the better choice?  I argued the question in my mind, as I would have argued it aloud had Faramir been sitting beside me to debate it.

It was the proper choice, the sensible choice.  But did that make it the right one?

It was not the right choice for those who would grieve when Finn and Buslai did not return.

And I knew, even as I imagined Faramir stressing all the wise and honourable arguments against my actions, that I would not act any differently were the choice given me again.

It might be sensible and wise and honourable to let Finn and Buslai go.  But if I had the chance to bring them back, I would never let that chance pass by without seizing it.  Even knowing what I did now, knowing how close I had come to killing all of us, I would not let the chance pass.

I could not.

“My Lord.”  Cirion stepped out of the passageway that led up from the refuge.  After a moment’s hesitation, he sat down on another rock next to mine.

He had his grim look again, but this time I was fairly sure that the grimness was not aimed at me.  I nodded to him and waited for him to speak.

“My Lord,” he repeated.  There was another pause, then he said, not looking at me, “I want to thank you.  For saving their lives.”

I almost laughed; the statement was so unexpected and so jarringly at odds with my own gloomy musings.  But if I’d laughed he might think that I mocked him, so I held my peace.  “And risking the lives of the rest of you,” I pointed out.

“We do not grudge that, My Lord,” he said, turning a sharp, keen-eyed gaze on me.  “You did what all of us would have done, if we’d had the power and the knowledge.”

Or, my mind added silently, if you’d had a trusting, innocent friend that you could manipulate into doing what he knew he should not do.  I said, “I doubt your families would applaud my actions that heartily, if I had succeeded only in getting all of you drowned.”

“They are not here to make our decisions for us,” Cirion said quietly.  “We are here to do that.  And we must make the best decisions we can, here and now, rather than worrying over what they would think of every action.”

I sighed.  It’s good advice, I told myself.  Advice that perhaps you should remember, whenever you start tormenting yourself over what your brother would have done.

Or over what your father would say.

Cirion looked at me for another moment, then shrugged.  “You can blame yourself for it if it pleases you, My Lord,” he said.  “But I thank you.  For doing what I would have done, if I could.”  He stared into the dimness of the Howe, absently fingering the handle of his axe.  “There is the chance that at the end of this mission I need not pen any letters of condolence.  For that chance, I would risk much.”

We sat in silence, as I turned his words over in my mind.  Finally I nodded.

“Is it your plan that we set out tomorrow morning?” I inquired.

“Aye.  Finn and Buslai seem much improved; by the morrow they should be rested enough to attempt the journey.”

“Good,” I said.  This two days’ delay was maddening to me, but there was no help for it.  I knew that it must be just as maddening to Cirion and the others; to Buslai and Finn as much as to any of us.

The taunting question whispered in my mind, what if Minas Tirith falls and you are not there in time to fight for it?  What if you reach it two days too late, the two days that you spent at Lilla Howe?

I thought of my father’s words in my dream.  That I still had to learn to face the consequences of my failures.

I wondered if that truly meant anything.  If it had some crucial meaning like my father’s dreams, and Faramir’s.  Or if it was just nonsensical ramblings and fears, like anyone else’s dreams.

I wondered if facing my failures had anything to teach me.  Or if failure was merely a challenge to spur one on to victory.

I wondered what I would do, if someday I faced a failure out of which no victory could be gained.

As I stood and crossed to the clothes-line spread out across Lord Lilla’s tomb, I prayed that I would never learn the answer to that question.