For the faithful who’ve been waiting for this (and thank you, all of you!), here at last are the next chapters.  My sincere apologies for the insanely long wait!  Writer’s block doesn’t begin to describe it.  More like writer’s no-man’s-land, complete with trenches, barbed wire, minefields and plenty of enemy fire.

Chapters Nine and Ten were intended originally as one chapter, but they grew out of all proportion (no surprise there!).  Thank you all again, and I hope you enjoy it!

            The trumpets of Cair Andros rang through the dark, in the call to arms.

            I grabbed Svip down from the embrasure, setting him on his feet again.  The enemy had not yet fired on our position; they seemed concentrating their fire on the fortress itself rather than the curtain wall about the harbour.  Yet there was no point in Svip sitting there as a target.

            The Men of the garrison poured forth from barracks and guard house in answer to the trumpets’ summons.  Up the slope from us to the north end of the island, I could see them racing to their posts on the fortress wall, barely visible in the gloom.  Here below, at the island’s southern extreme, more were running from the harbour guard house to the turrets, and up onto the wall.  As the first of the soldiers ran through the door of the tower beside us, Svip and I stepped out of the way.

            Svip tugged on my sleeve.

            “What should I do?” he asked me, in a tense, urgent voice.  “What can I do that’s useful?”

            My first impulse was to tell him to stay out of the way and not get himself hurt.  But, I told myself, in these past days he had proved his mettle to us often enough.  He did not deserve to be shunted away like a child.

            I thought for a moment.  This was hardly the moment to give Svip a lesson in archery, and besides, most of our bows were taller than he was.  But there were other ways to be of use besides manning the walls.

            I told him, “I’ll take you to the Chief Armourer and introduce you to him.  He’ll have troops re-supplying the Men on the walls.  Bringing arrows, and water, things like that.  It’s necessary work and you’d be of great help.  Particularly since you can turn into a horse.”

            Svip frowned up at me, perhaps trying to decide if I was fobbing this off on him as a way of protecting him.  Evidently I passed muster, for he just nodded firmly and said, “right.”

            I set out along the wall, with Svip hurrying to keep up beside me.  We made our way around the Men scattering to their posts at the embrasures, though several times Svip had to jump aside to avoid being tripped over.

As the Men took up their positions and had more leisure to notice us, our route turned into a sort of miniature triumphal progress.  More and more of them recognised me, calling out my name and welcoming me home.  As many as I could remember, I answered by name.  Others I merely clasped their hands, or called back greetings in reply.

            Any sense of triumph was certainly premature, yet I could not keep from seeing a victory in the fact that even in our Enemy’s darkness, Men could yet smile.

            We reached the dividing wall that separates the harbour from the main fortress.  Before us stood the Turgon Tower, at the fortress’ south western corner.  I stood at the foot of the ladder, calling upward to the small wooden door three-quarters of the way to the tower’s roof, “hail, keepers of the tower!  A son of Gondor craves admittance!”

            Without waiting for reply, I started scaling the ladder, Svip following close behind.  The door swung open and I scrambled through, to be met by a grey-haired soldier who I was certain I knew, but whose name I could not for the life of me recall.  I thought perhaps he was the successor to Buslai’s father, who had been the sergeant commanding the Turgon Tower.  It seemed that I remembered this Man standing on the tower roof with Sergeant Brynjolf, chatting and warming their hands at the brazier fire.

At this moment he was grinning fit to split his face.  As I clambered through the door he grabbed my hand in both of his and shook it effusively.  “My Lord,” he said.

            Damn, but I wished I could remember his name.  I settled for gripping his shoulder and telling him, “it’s good to see you.”

            “Aye,” he replied, still grinning but finally letting go of my hand.  As Svip climbed through behind me, the old soldier raised his eyebrows but then gave an impeccable salute.  Svip bowed in return.

            I started through the tower with the soldier at one side of me and Svip at the other.  I said, “we seek the Chief Armourer.  Does Sergeant Rüdiger still hold the post?”

            “Aye, My Lord,” the soldier answered, stopping just outside of the tower as we headed onto the wall.  “I think if ever he does not, Cair Andros will fall down.”

            “I think you’re right,” I said.  Further conversation was cut off by a whistling whine, and a yell of “incoming!” from one of the Men at our nearest catapult.

            The sergeant grabbed my shoulder and yanked me back toward the tower.  I had seized Svip’s arm and pulled him back as well.  The three Men at the catapult ducked, just as something thudded into the parapet beside them.

            There was a sound of shattering and a hollow whoosh, and of a sudden flames sprang up in the dark, licking around the stone parapet.  One of the Men gave a yell and was frantically struggling to undo his cloak, which had burst into flame.

            I ran to him, but by the time I got there his two comrades had wrenched the cloak from him and hurled it down in a burning heap.  By a miracle none of the fire seemed to have spread to the now cloakless soldier, though he stood staring at his burning cape with a look of understandable shock.

            One of the other two catapult operators picked up the water bucket standing by the nearest brazier.  He started to slosh water onto the flame, even as the third Man shouted at him, “no, you idiot!”

            The fire flared brighter, spreading over the stone walkway.  All of us jumped back, while the shouting man yelled on, “you damned fool!  It’s some kind of oil, the water’s making it spread.”

            “It’s all right,” I interjected.  “Just stay back from it, all of you.  If we don’t give it more fuel it’ll burn itself out.”  I smiled encouragingly and gripped the shoulder of the pale, cloakless Man, who managed a very shaky smile in return.

            “All right, you useless specimens,” snarled the Sergeant of the Tower, striding up to the catapult crew.  “Do you think Lord Boromir wants to see you standing around?  This catapult isn’t for show.  Get to it and keep these Orc bastards pinned down, I don’t want them getting off another shot!”

            The crew scattered back to their post, gingerly picking their way around the fiery cloak and the pale puddle of flame.  The sergeant cast a grim look at me, and said quietly, “if you’re going to the Armourer, My Lord, tell him we’ll need buckets of dirt up here, to pour on the flames.”

            “Right,” I said.  I looked for Svip, and found him crouched at the edge of the fire, sniffing at it curiously.  “Svip, come on.”

            We had no triumphal progress on this stretch of the wall.  We hurried past our archers at the embrasures, their faces sporadically illumined in the glow of their arrows as they lit them at the braziers and turned back to fire into the dark.  Shouts of command, the crack and whirr of our catapults firing, the whistling of our arrows, mingled with thuds as the enemy’s missiles slammed into the wall, and shouts of alarm as a few of them made it over, to shatter into flame.  Below all, there came a new sound: the low, steady throb of drumbeats along the shore.

            At the west intermediate tower I saluted the guard at the door and strode within, Svip scampering at my heels.  As we sped down the spiral stairway, Svip asked, a little out of breath, “you know the Chief Armourer?  What’s he like?”

            “As old as Númenor,” I said.  “In honesty, I think he must have a deal of Númenorean blood in him, that or Elven.  He’s been here as long as anyone can remember; at least my father says Rüdiger was already Chief Armourer when he was stationed here for a time, when he was still the Steward’s Heir.”

            I glanced over my shoulder at Svip, a few steps behind me.  I wondered if I should explain all this Númenor business to him.  Though even if I should, now was scarcely the moment.  Anyway, I told myself, if Svip had been around at the time of the Old Wars, he probably knew more about the Men of Númenor than I did.

            I went on as we neared the stairwell’s end, “I don’t think Rüdiger is bothered by much, so long as he’s allowed to do his job.  So he should have no difficulty adjusting to your shape-shifting.  That is if you’re willing to play pack horse for a while.”

            We hastened from the tower.  A few paces more brought us to the armoury, that takes up several long rooms in the ground floor of the fortress wall.

We stepped inside into a whirlwind of activity.  One of the trapdoors to the cellar was open, and unseen Men below were heaving barrels of arrows out of it to those above, who manhandled the barrels to stand in waiting wheelbarrows.  A few of the younger and skinnier Men, less able to easily heft the barrels, were hurrying from the second room with a score or so of empty buckets hanging from each hand, on their way to fill the buckets from the well in the courtyard.  Another lad followed them, pushing four empty wheelbarrows stacked precariously on top of each other.

            Among the men heaving the barrels I saw the stocky, white-haired form of Sergeant Rüdiger himself.  It seemed he was still living up to his eyes-in-the-back-of-his-head reputation, for he grunted as the youth with the wheelbarrows rushed past behind him, “easy with those barrows, son, I don’t want my Men repairing wheelbarrows in the middle of the battle.”

            “Sergeant,” I greeted him.

            He looked up from shoving the barrel into place, and nodded.  “My Lord,” he said.  He gave the brief twitch of the mouth that was his version of a smile, then asked, “what can we do for you?”

            I said, “I bring a volunteer for your command.  This is my comrade-in-arms Svip of Anduin, who has travelled with me from the Falls of Rauros.  He has skills which I believe should prove useful in your work.”  I glanced down at Svip with a smile and asked him, “Svip, if you’d be so kind?”

            I did not watch Svip as he changed, instead permitting myself a little entertainment by watching the reactions of the others.  Sergeant Rüdiger remained predictably impassive, betraying surprise only by the slightest jolting of one eyebrow.  But the Men moving the barrels froze in drop-jawed amazement – to the accompaniment of irritated yells from below, as their fellows waited for them to take the next barrels.  Near the door, behind me, I heard a clattering and a quickly stifled oath, that I thought was likely the poor kid running into his wheelbarrows.

            I glanced over at the big grey horse.  In a flicker of motion it vanished, as a wisp of smoke.  Svip stood there in his usual person, looking quietly pleased with himself.

            Rüdiger said dryly, “any comrade of yours is welcome, My Lord.”  He commented in a mild tone to his Men standing by the trap door, “there are still barrels down there.”

            Recalling the burning oil of the enemy’s missiles, I told the sergeant, “the enemy is firing incendiary missiles, that burn with some kind of oil.  We can’t use water to douse these fires; we’ll need buckets of dirt on the walls and around the fortress.  I’ll set some troops to digging, if you’ll provide the buckets.”

            He gave a brief nod.  “Aye, My Lord.  I’ll see to it.”

            I glanced at Svip again, and had to hold back a sigh.  Now that I came to it, I found that I was loath to leave him.  Yet it was not as if he’d be in more danger in Sergeant Rüdiger’s command, than anywhere else in the besieged fortress.  Indeed he was probably safer than he would be trailing after me, considering my usual skill at attracting trouble.

            I nodded to Svip.  “I’ll see you later, then,” I said.

            He nodded back, with a determinedly cheerful smile.  “You’ll tell me everything that happens, won’t you?  I don’t want to miss anything.”

            “Right,” I said, with a salute.  “We’ll swap stories over supper.”

            I left with alacrity, before I could get cold feet about leaving my small green friend in the midst of a battle.  Ahead of me I noticed the lads from the Armoury with their buckets and wheelbarrows, hastening across the courtyard to the fortress’ well.  I smiled at their hasty, awkward gait.  They had probably fled the Armoury just before I left it, to avoid receiving one of Rüdiger’s mild-voiced, ironic lectures.

I headed for the east side of the wall, nodding to the boys as I caught up with them and passed them.  Then I climbed the stairs of the east intermediate tower, directly opposite where Svip and I had descended.

On the eastern shore, all seemed quiet.  Nothing greeted our Men who gazed eastward over the wall, but ruddy darkness and the sounds of combat behind them.

In discussion with one of the catapult crews I found their officer, a red-haired lieutenant with a build that suggested he had troll blood somewhere in his ancestry.  “Lieutenant Golasgil,” I hailed him, as he and the catapult crew saluted.  “Pretty quiet out there?”

He gave an irritated snort.  “So quiet, My Lord, we’re thinking of starting up a rock-skipping tournament.  You can’t get the boys on the west wall to change places with us, can you?”

“I doubt it.  But I do have a job for some of your lads, though it’s nothing exciting.  We need supplies of dirt to douse the oil fires from these missiles they’re sending.  Send a third of your Men down to the courtyard to start digging; they’ll be working under the command of Sergeant Rüdiger.”

Golasgil nodded briskly.  “Yes, My Lord.”  He hesitated a moment, then added, “Sir -- it’s good to see you back again.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” I said.  “Good luck with the rock-skipping contest.”

As I headed along the wall once more, I heard Golasgil mustering his troops.

“Every third Man, down to the courtyard!  Your comrades need you digging up dirt.  First Man I hear complain is on digging duty for the rest of the battle.”

Once again I made a tour of the wall.  As I passed the farthest north point of the fortress, walking through the arched doorways of the North Tower, I passed from the quiet of the eastern side to the tumult of the west.  Each step brought closer the shouts and the crashing of missiles, the smell of smoke and the sharp, stinging reek from the burning oil, as if all of the medicines in the Houses of Healing had been gathered together and set alight.

Captain Eradan stood with the catapult crew nearest the west shore guardhouse, giving orders for its destruction.  Near him, amongst the archers at the embrasures, I saw two of my Ranger friends, Captain Cirion and young Holgar.  I saw no sign of Thorolf, Finn or Buslai.  I wondered with a twinge of worry if the three of them had been declared unfit for duty, or if they simply were stationed elsewhere in the fortress.

His conference with the catapult crew concluded, Eradan walked over to me, his face bearing a nervous expression that I’d not seen on him in decades.  I had to suppress a smile.  It was the same look he used to have when I was drilling him on his swordsmanship, and he was never sure if I would commend his progress or tell him to run the whole drill over again.

I thought, Valar help the commanding officer whose superior drops in on him unannounced in the midst of an invasion.

I reported to him on the troops I’d set to digging in the courtyard, then asked, “Where would you like me?”

            Eradan looked taken aback.  “You’ll not take command, My Lord?”

            I shook my head.  “This is your command, Eradan.  I’ll go where I’m most needed.”

            There was a mixture of emotions on Eradan’s face.  I read them as relief that his best friend’s elder brother had not come striding in to take his job away, combined with a sneaking regret that he still must bear the weight of command.

He squared his shoulders, and the momentary look of uncertainty passed.  “If you’ll command the harbour wall, then.  We’ve seen no activity there as yet, but if the enemy turn out to have any boats at their disposal, they’d be mad to keep pounding at us here when they could strike at the harbour.”  Eradan turned back toward the catapult crew, raising his voice in command.  “Corporal Amandil.”

A burly, dark-bearded soldier stood up from where he’d been shoving on the right wheel of the catapult, helping its crew to shift it to its new location.  He crossed to us, rubbing his palms on his tunic.

Eradan said to me, “Corporal Amandil will serve as your orderly, My Lord.  You can rely upon him.”

The corporal bowed, looking decidedly as though he wished that I would not rely upon him.  I wondered if his discomfort were due to my exalted rank, or to the rumour that I’d come back from the dead.

“Good to see you, Corporal,” I said, thrusting out my hand at him.  The poor Man managed a polite smile and we shook hands, though he first surreptitiously wiped off his hand again.

Eradan was right about this attack, I thought as the Corporal and I made our way to the harbour.  Orcs are not known for their skill as boatmen, yet there seemed little point in attacking Cair Andros at all if they just intended to stand on the shore shooting at us.  Burning missiles or no, we could pick them off one by one and wipe them out before ever we felt the privations of a long siege.  It would be rank foolishness to launch such an attack.  Particularly since no external force had compelled this army to attack us.  If they chose to they could easily have kept their path further to the east, and drawn nigh to Osgiliath and the City without ever facing the defenders of Cair Andros.

No, they were after our destruction, and I could not but think that they had some other plan besides standing around as targets.  They were here at the command of the Dark Lord and his captains, and if the Nameless One himself had spawned their battle plans, then they ought to be worth something.

He had had centuries to plot his invasion of Gondor.  After all that time, I thought, he ought to do it right.

On the harbour wall, we waited, all through that morning that brought no light.  The smoke grew heavier about us, deepening the unnatural dusk.  Eradan’s bowmen along the fortress wall had set fire to the grass on the western shore, to give the Orcs something to do besides lob missiles at us.  For some time it had worked, enemy troops running about in satisfying confusion in their attempts to douse the fires.  We even had the pleasure of seeing two of their siege engines catch alight, and be damaged beyond use before they could put them out.

But our fun could not last.  The grass fires were stamped out, with all of the grassland within range of our archers too burned to provide further fuel.  The enemy had closed ranks about their siege engines, troops with thick fire-resistant shields ranked in their defence, and extra water buckets at the ready about each.  Their catapult crews kept falling to our arrows, but there were always more to replace them, and those who survived suffered no worse from our efforts than getting soaked when their fellows cast water on any equipment touched by our fire.

And still they sent their missiles to our walls, and still under everything, the drumbeats went on.

I made several tours of the wall on both sides of the harbour, engaging in brief conversations with the defenders and assuring myself that all was in readiness.  At each of the twin harbour towers, I inspected the winch mechanisms for the chain across the harbour mouth.  The view from the tower windows, as from the wall, showed no sign yet of any water-borne assault.

“Do you think they’ll strike here, Sir?” one of the tower guards asked me in a nervous tone.  I did not think I remembered him from previous times I’d been stationed at Cair Andros, and he looked young enough for this to be his first battle.

“I don’t know,” I said, hoping that I seemed appropriately bold and encouraging.  “But if they do, we’ll give them a run for their money.”

He grinned.  “Yes, Sir,” he said, sounding a good deal more confident than before.  I set out again, climbing the stairs to the wall.  While I stomped upward, Corporal Amandil following at a respectful distance behind, I let my fearless confidence slip, scowling instead in the maddening frustration of waiting.

We could take two of the ships in the harbour, I thought, man them with half of the Men on the harbour walls, and take the fight to the enemy instead of waiting for them to come to us.  For a moment I let myself wander in imaginings of coming to grips with our foe at last, feeling my sword bite into enemy flesh.  I grimaced ruefully as I banished the images.

You are not fifteen, I reminded myself.  You are not fifteen and this is not your first combat.  You are Captain-General of Gondor, and your Men and all the kingdom depend on you, as they have always done.  They count on you to defend them, and to lead them to victory.  And there are times when it is the part of a leader to wait, and to give his Men the courage to endure the waiting.

I stepped onto the wall, wishing I would feel the breeze that usually plays along the battlements of Cair Andros, and feeling only the sultry, smoke-shrouded stillness.

The archer at the first embrasure nodded to me, then glanced up at the brooding sky.

“What time do you think it is, My Lord?” he asked.

The first reply that jumped to my mind was “I’m damned if I know,” but I restrained myself.  “Late morning, perhaps?” I hazarded.  “I believe it was around dawn when they first made their appearance, and I’d reckon it at six hours or so, since then.”

The bowman gave a quiet, humourless laugh.  “Six hours, or an age.  I half expect we’ll find the Third Age’s ended, and the Fourth one’s begun without our noticing.”

The two Men nearest along the wall stepped closer, drawn by the conversation that at least provided some diversion from waiting.

“If an Age has passed,” one joked, “I expect we’re overdue for some dinner.  Begging your pardon for mentioning it, My Lord.”

“You,” the third one snorted, elbowing he who had just spoken, “you’re always thinking with your belly.  Don’t you know soldiers of Gondor dine on combat and wash it down with glory?”

“Aye, I do,” the hungry one returned, “it’s just that combat and glory go so well with mushroom pie.”

I smiled, the conversation and the mention of mushrooms reminding me of my lost friends the Halflings.  I was about to contribute some comment about pies and glory, when I saw the posture of the bowman I’d first spoken with stiffen, his face going grim as he gazed south along the River.

“They’re coming,” he said.

All of us turned to follow his gaze.  The blood-tinged twilight seemed at first unchanged.  Then I saw a small, darker blotch upon the surface of the water, and a flicker of movement that might be an oar.

“Archers at the ready!” I shouted, even as the conversationalists scattered.  “Trumpeter, to me!”

The young trumpeter ran to my side, to pass on my orders to the Men on the east harbour wall.  All along the walls archers leapt to the embrasures and nocked their arrows.  I loosened my sword in its scabbard.

The first shape that we had seen moved out of the dusk, resolving itself into a long, flat-bottomed boat.  I could make out eight oarsmen seated on the bottom, and other shapes crouched together at the boat’s centre, in one hulking mass.  Behind and to either side of the first boat came others, some long and low like the first, some small rafts and coracles scarcely large enough to hold two of our foes.

I leapt up the few steps that led to the roof of the tower, where I could command a clearer view of their approach.  The trumpeter and Corporal Amandil took up position at the foot of the stairs.

The first craft drove like a spear for the harbour’s mouth.  The others, rapidly approaching in its wake, divided to either side, making for our walls.

“Men on the walls!”  I yelled.  “Hold your fire!  Archers on the towers, independent fire at will!”

Just before they would have slammed into the harbour chain, the first boat’s Orcs had shipped their oars.  The Orcs at the centre of the boat sprang up, and passengers and oarsmen alike were now swarming at the chain, hacking at it with axes and swords.  Our Men on the towers fired down upon them, in a withering hail.

The Orcs on that first boat crumpled in seconds.  Some fell shrieking into the water, others lay mounded upon their craft.  But even as their boat started to aimlessly drift, the next boats drew near.

“On the walls!  Mark your targets as they approach!  Independent fire at will!”

The wave broke on us.  And our foes’ strategy became clear.

As the longboats pulled beneath our walls, the Orcs within flung up ladders, jamming them between keel and harbour wall.  They swarmed upward like vast insects.  Falling to our arrows, they crashed down on their comrades who followed, or were trampled as the next Orcs leapt from boat to ladder.  The crews of the smaller boats, I realised, were archers, drawing alongside the longboats to cover their fellows’ attack.

Orc archers notwithstanding, our Men had scarcely any challenge in finishing the Orcs of that first wave, and hurling their ladders from our wall.  But behind them came the next assault, and beyond, out of the darkness, came more.

Orcs in the next boats were dragging the now unmanned crafts away from the walls, though a few bounded from their own boats onto those of their slain compatriots, turning the fleet into a huge pontoon bridge.  Two who had taken this route, carrying a siege ladder between them, were cut down as arrows blossomed in the chest of one and the forehead of another.  But three more raced just behind them, grabbing up the ladder and jamming it to the wall before our archers above them could fire again.

I bellowed, “light your arrows!  Set fire to the boats!”

That should hold them off for a few minutes, I thought, as boat after boat flickered into flame.  In that darkness the harbour must have seemed some castle out of legend, walls ringed about by fire.  Yet already Orc boatmen were reaching with oars and spears to pull the burning boats from their path, despite the arrows of fire that seared down the instant they approached.

There will be too many of them, was the thought that sprang to my mind.  Beyond the fiery belt, the River seemed paved with them, vanished entirely beneath their hulls.  That five hundred we had estimated could no longer account for all of these, not if they yet maintained any presence along the fortress walls.

I wondered, with a sudden chill, where this Orc fleet had sprung from.  I had been assuming they were part of the same force that had first attacked.  That they had moved south in the darkness while their comrades assailed the walls, their boats perhaps loaded on wagons, and they had likely taken to the water not far south of the harbour.

But there was another possibility, one more grim than I cared to imagine: that this fleet had originated from the south.  That Osgiliath had already been lost to us, and that these Orcs were but a mopping-up operation sent to finish us off.

It sent a shiver of horror through me, before I sternly ordered myself not to entertain the thought.

If Osgiliath were taken, and the enemy felt confident enough to spare these troops for our destruction, then the logical assumption would be that the City was taken as well.

That was a possibility that I would not admit.

A young Man ran up to me, saluting and calling breathlessly, “Captain Eradan’s compliments, My Lord.  He asks if you require anything.”

Yes, I thought, about two thousand more Men.  Instead I asked, “what’s the situation at the fortress?”

“Still enemy troops along the west shore.  More have been spotted approaching from the east.  The Captain says he has sufficient Men to keep them pinned down, and can spare some for the harbour if you require them.”

“My compliments to Captain Eradan, and tell him we can put another forty Men to work if he can spare them.”

As the youth raced off, I set out along the wall.  “Count off by threes,” I ordered.  “Ones and twos, you’ll form the first and second ranks of bowmen.  Every third Man, put aside your bows.  You’ll cover for your comrades who are still firing.  Be prepared to hold the wall at any point they may break through.”

We had barely enough Men to pull this tactic off.  Any fewer, and the three companies would be too small to effectively perform their tasks.  Yet I thought there were just enough of us to make it work. 

Certainly there would be if Eradan sent those forty Men.  Though even then, our force would be dispersed more widely than the builders of Cair Andros intended. 

The fortress and harbour were built to support a garrison of a thousand.  With scarce over two hundred to man the entire island, any defence we mounted must lean heavily on improvisation and luck.

“My Lord,” came the urgent voice of Corporal Amandil, hurrying toward me.  “There are more boats approaching the harbour mouth.  They’ll be out of the line of fire of our Men on the wall; the Men on the Tower will not be enough to hold them.”

I nodded.  “Get you to the harbour catapults, give them my order to fire on any craft that nears the harbour mouth.”

“Yes, My Lord.”  He saluted and sped away.

A long, rending crash sounded beyond the wall.  I sprang to the nearest embrasure.

All along the wall, the next assault smashed into the boats we had set afire.

The Orc boatmen drove at us, some shoving the burning boats aside with their oars, some abandoning their own boats and bounding through the flames.

“First rank!” I bellowed.  “Fire!”

The line of running Orcs wavered as fiery arrows rained upon them.  But for each that dropped, it seemed two more followed on his heels.

“Second rank, fire!”

Now the first of those who had stayed in their own boats succeeded in shoving through, grabbing up siege ladders and slamming them against our wall.

“First rank, fire!”

Over and over I yelled the commands.  Arrows flew.  Orcs fell.  Still they came on.

It came to me that much of these Orcs’ equipment had to be fireproof.  The cloaks and jerkins they wore, without doubt, were treated with some fire-resistant substance.  I saw burning arrows skewer many an Orc, yet their clothing did not burn.  One huge monster I saw pluck a fiery bolt from his arm and keep climbing, as if the arrow were no more to him than a mosquito.

Only the Orcs’ hair seemed susceptible to fire.  As one plummeted with an arrow in his skull, his hair caught alight.  For an instant he burned like a gigantic torch, before vanishing in the water below.

Nor could we set their ladders afire, for they were forged of metal.  We heard it as they clanged on the stone wall, and saw it as arrows hit them and veered harmlessly off.

Behind us I could hear the whirr and splash of our catapults firing on the harbour’s mouth.  I had little fear of attack from that direction.  Between them, the tower archers and the catapult crews should easily keep the foe from our backs.

Our front was another question.

The bowmen fired tirelessly.  Yet first one Orc, then another and another reached the crest of the wall before our Men could mow them down.

As the Orcs leapt from their ladders to the embrasures, Men of the third rank sprang to the attack.

Swords rang on axes, and the cry of “Gondor!” sounded against wild Orcish snarls.

Those three Orcs did not survive long.  One of them I saw topple backward with his ladder, crashing into the boat beneath and breaking it in two.  In the corner of my vision I saw another fall to his opponent’s sword.  The Man wrenched his sword free and kicked the corpse away, sending it rolling off the wall to the flagstones below.

As if those three had carried with them the spirit of the attack, the Orcs’ assault slowed.

More of them rushed the wall and flung up ladders.  More of them climbed to us, and more of them fell to our archers’ fire.  But no more lived to reach the embrasures and the welcome that awaited them.

The boats beneath us, illumined by flame, were empty of all save the dead.

In the distance I could see another rank of boats.  They were far enough away that I wondered if they were there at all, and not some trick that the darkness played on my sight.

They floated just within seeing, but they did not advance.

Out of the dark we heard the call of a conch shell horn.  I thought I recognised it as the Orcs’ signal to stand by.  Certainly that was the import it seemed to have, for the line of boats held position, wavering in and out of seeing.

For a moment it seemed as though all of us held our breath.  In the sudden quiet we heard no fighting on the east harbour wall, and no sound of our catapults.  The only sound near us was the crackle of flames from the boats below.  Distantly there came still the noise of combat from the fortress walls, and the drumbeats along the shore.

“At ease,” I commanded.  “Get the rest of these boats burning.  I don’t want to see any of them not in flames.”

Somewhere along the line Corporal Amandil had reappeared behind me.  I stepped away from the embrasure and addressed him.  “Take over here, Corporal.  If they strike again before I return, you have command of the archers.”

I had noticed two lads from the armoury making their way along the wall.  Both of them bore large, bulging satchels slung over their arms.  They were handing out bundles of arrows to those archers who noticed them, and setting the bundles down beside those who still fired.

I started toward the two boys.  Their progress halted temporarily as they came to the third of the Orcs that had made it onto the wall, lying sprawled across their path.  They stopped for a moment, then walked gingerly toward it.  Leaning against his embrasure, one soldier greeted them with a cheery, “hello, boys!  He won’t bite.”

“Did you kill him, Sir?” one boy asked in an awe-filled tone.

“No, that was Lothar here,” he said, jerking a thumb at the Man standing next to him.  Lothar was busy unfastening his helmet, but he paused to nod to the boys before he pulled the helmet off and set about mopping sweat from his face.  “He hogs all the fun,” the first Man went on.  “Won’t let anyone else have a chance.”

Lothar grunted.  “Next Orc that comes running at me that you want to jump in and kill, be my guest.”  He noticed the boys gazing wide-eyed at him, and grinned.  “Want any souvenirs?” he offered.  “Some nice Orc jewellery to take to your girls back home?”

Both lads spoke at once.  “No, thank you!” one said emphatically, while the other said, “he doesn’t have any girl.”

I walked up to them.  As they noticed me Lothar and his comrade straightened and saluted.  The boys executed rather uncomfortable bows, managing to avoid overbalancing their satchels of arrows.

“Good work,” I said to Lothar.  “Now let’s get this fellow out of here so we’re not tripping on him.”

“Yes, Sir,” and “Aye, My Lord,” Lothar and the other soldier chorused, seizing the dead Orc by arms and legs and preparing to heave him over the wall.

I turned back to the lads from the armoury.  I asked, nodding at the Orc’s corpse, “you’re sure you don’t want any spoils of war?”

“No, thank you, My Lord.”

“No, really Sir, thank you.”

I had another question for them, which was what had taken me to them in the first place.  “Have either of you seen the Halfling who’s working with Sergeant Rüdiger?”

Both of them nodded with enthusiasm.  “The shape-shifter?  Yes, My Lord,” eagerly answered the older-looking one who’d said that the other had no girl.  “Last I saw he was with Corporal Kaspar, re-supplying the east wall.”

“He’s all right, then.”

“Yes, Sir.  That was just a few minutes ago that I saw him.”  The boy hesitated a moment, then asked, “can he change into anything else besides horses, My Lord?”

“Not that I know of,” I said.  “But I have seen him trample Orcs to death, and shake them to death with his teeth.”

“That’s great,” whispered the younger boy, while the older just breathed, “whew.”

I had to smile at their bright-eyed awe, but we did have a battle to be fighting.  “Carry on with your duties,” I said formally, then I asked as they both saluted, “is someone bringing water?”

“Yes, Sir, Erling and Castamir are just a little behind us.”

“Thank you.  Carry on.”

As the boys went about their task, I saw another group hastening along the wall from the direction of the fortress.  From the look of their numbers, they must be Eradan’s forty Men.  Good, I thought; I would intersperse them with the troops on the harbour walls, for they should be fresher than our archers who’d just had to deal with Orcs racing up ladders into their faces.  If the foe held off for just a bit longer, and if the promised water arrived swiftly, we should all be in good shape, rested enough to take whatever new forces the enemy flung at us.

I consulted with the lieutenant that Eradan had sent, and set him to dividing his men between the two harbour walls.  The boys with water buckets appeared soon after.  Convinced that all was as well as I could make it, I returned to my post by the tower and relieved Corporal Amandil of command.

The corporal, I thought, was looking rather less jumpy around me than he had been.  Hopefully being under fire had steadied his nerves, or convinced him that he had more serious concerns than worrying himself over how to act around a Captain-General who was back from the grave.

The news of Svip had done much to ease my mind.  It seemed that he was fitting in well; at least the boys from the armoury seemed very taken with him.  I presumed that their elders would treat him with respect, if not with as much enthusiasm as did the boys.  If nothing else, they would respect him because they knew they’d have both Sergeant Rüdiger and me to deal with if they did not.

I wondered how Svip was enjoying his first siege.  Whether he still thought that journeying to the realms of Men was an interesting adventure, or if he was wishing that he had never heard of us.  After what he had got into trailing around with us, I wouldn’t blame him much if he started to think that Sauron could walk all over Gondor and be welcome to it.

A hint of movement drew my eyes to the dark River.

“Oh, damn,” murmured the soldier standing next to me.  “Here we go again.”

The line of boats was on the move.

“Attention!  Archers at the ready!” I shouted once more.  The trumpet’s clear notes relayed my orders to the Men on the east wall.

This time no conch shell’s call had announced the Orcs’ movements.  I wondered briefly what signal they’d had that told them to advance.

The grim notion occurred to me that perhaps the Black Captain or one of his Riders was here with the Orc army, as at Osgiliath last summer when we lost the eastern shore.  It was only yesterday, though I found that hard to credit, that we had felt the dark one’s passage overhead as we hid in the midst of their army.  If those shadows of the air were here, they could give the signal to advance merely by flying over their forces.  In this accursed darkness the signal would be too far away for us to ever see it.

But no, I told myself.  If those Riders were here, we would know it, from the fear that was more difficult to fight than any mortal foe.

Here we had only flesh and blood enemies to deal with.  And their flesh would be torn and their blood spilled, I vowed, before this day was gone.

The fleet had moved close enough that we could see the boatmen’s faces, blood-red in the dying glow from their comrades’ boats.

“Mark your targets!” I shouted.

A whine and a crash cut the air, and the wall shook.

“Down!” I bellowed, through the shouts around me and another whistling crash.  “Get down!”

“Bloody damn,” muttered Corporal Amandil.  He and I had both flattened ourselves to the parapet, and now we peeked our heads through the embrasure.  “Is that coming from the boats or the shore?”

“The shore, I think,” I answered.  A swift scan of their boats showed me none with any catapults aboard.  The fleet came on, undaunted by the destruction whining over their heads.

Two more crashes sounded, almost on top of each other.  The familiar medicinal reek of their incendiary missiles stung at my nostrils.  Then a rush of motion in the dark sky ended as a roundish boulder slammed into the tower wall not four feet to my left.  In a burst of sound and a cloud of pulverised rock dust, the boulder bounced off, smashing down on one of the enemy’s boats.   Boulder and boat vanished amid splashes, splintering wood and screams.

I coughed in the swirling dust.  “Damn it to hell,” I snarled.  “They’re using fire and rocks, now.”  Stepping out of the dust cloud, I shouted my orders.  “All of you, keep down when you can.  Don’t present a bigger target than necessary.  Third rank, stand ready.  First and second ranks, independent fire at will!”

A second boulder overshot the tower, the splash behind us proclaiming that its flight had ended in the harbour.  I hoped it had not annihilated any of our ships in the process, but I did not take the time to check.

They must have moved three siege engines into place against us, from the number and frequency of the shots that they fired.  My best guess was that they were firing their explosive missiles from two catapults aimed at the harbour wall, and boulders from one aimed at destroying the tower. I did not hear any echoing fire to the east; they must be concentrating their two-pronged attack on this wall, while giving their troops to the east a better chance of reaching the wall without being smashed by their own fire.

I turned to Corporal Amandil.  In his coating of dust he looked to have been in an explosion at a flour mill.  I imagined I looked the same, but it was scarcely the moment to trouble ourselves with grooming.  “Corporal,” I commanded.  “Get to Captain Eradan.  Present my compliments and my request that the fortress’ southwesternmost catapults be brought to bear upon these that are firing on us.”

“Aye, My Lord!”  He saluted and ran.

There was a strong chance, I knew, that the fortress catapults could do nothing to aid us.  Their crews could not use sight to guide them this day, though the catapult crews are among the keenest-sighted Men of Gondor’s forces.  I could see nothing of the enemy siege engines’ locations, yet I judged from their missiles’ trajectories that they must be near directly across the water from where I stood.  That our catapult crews farther north on the fortress wall would be able to glimpse them I did not believe, even were their vision as keen as that of the Elves.

If they could use the enemy’s own shots to successfully plot their locations, so much the better, and I would personally recommend each and every one of those crewmen for promotion.  For now, my chief concern lay elsewhere: with the Orcs whose boats had reached the base of the wall, and who even now swarmed up their ladders toward us.

 There must be twenty boats at the least, spewing forth Orcs with their siege ladders all along the west harbour wall.  I could not tell how many might be ranged against the east, but from the line of boats I’d seen earlier and the haste with which our Men on the east were firing, it must be as many or more.  

Arrow-spitted Orcs plummeted from the ladders.  A missile smashed into one of the embrasures and erupted in flame, engulfing two of our Men in an instant.  Another missile, aimed too low, hit the topmost Orc on the ladder nearest my position, knocking him from his perch.

As he plunged into the water, the Orc who’d been climbing behind him yelled a battle cry and charged.  Launching himself from the ladder to the wall, he tackled the archer to my right, knocking him backward.

A horrified cry from the prostrate archer and a bloodthirsty snarl from the Orc blended with my own war cry and one from another soldier nearby, as both of us rushed to the archer’s rescue.  We struck at almost the same instant, my sword blow lopping off the Orc’s head while the other sliced his torso nearly in half.  I let the soldier help our stunned and blood-spattered comrade from under the dismembered corpse, while I ran back to the parapet.  Already more attackers were getting through the archers’ fire, leaping from their ladders onto the wall.

“Gondor!” I yelled, hurling myself at an Orc who had reached the top of his ladder and was swinging his battleaxe at the nearest archer.

The Orc ducked out of my way.  With an arm-jolting clang my sword met his axe.  He wobbled on his ladder, the force I exerted on our locked weapons nearly knocking him loose. 

The archer to my right fired, skewering the Orc neatly in the chest.  The Orc swayed and toppled backward, his squealing scream ending in a distant splash.

That archer and his nearest neighbour seemed to have this ladder under control, one firing down on the topmost Orc while the other nocked his next arrow.  But a clang to my left told me that a new ladder had been flung against the wall, at a position we did not have guarded.  I ran toward the sound.

A massive Orc in a gold-embroidered cloak leapt over the parapet, landing in a crouch directly before me.  Even as he landed, he was swinging at me a huge, curved sword with two extra blades, that stuck out from the main blade like lethal tree branches. 

I had to duck away from his first blow, then parried the second.  One of the secondary blades caught my sword and held it in place, the Orc pulling me toward him.  I caught a glimpse of a dagger in his other hand, and I managed to kick him in the gut while twisting my sword free.  I jumped backward, as the Orc roared and then charged at me again.

In the corner of my vision I saw another Orc jumping from the ladder toward me.  His war hammer was swinging for my head, as the first monster’s sword sliced in a gigantic arc.

I ducked and rolled away from both blows, impaling the first Orc with a thrust from below as his rush carried him past me.  He crumpled, smashing down on me before I could get out of the way. 

The Orc with the hammer was still charging like a maddened bull.  I heaved on the fallen Orc with my left hand, failed to budge him, and swung up my sword in a wild parry, halting the hammer just before it would have landed in my skull.  Sliding my sword along the hammer, I managed to hook it and flip it out of its owner’s grasp.

With the Orc momentarily disarmed, I turned my efforts to hauling myself from under his comrade’s corpse.  The Orc seized his hammer and ran at me again, just as I wormed my way out.  I struggled up on one knee, raising my sword as the hammer made another swing.

My sword blow met a sudden lack of resistance, as the hammer dropped from my opponent’s hand.  The Orc fell as well, collapsing onto his gold-cloaked fellow.  An arrow bristled from his back, and the archer who had fired was hurrying toward me, reaching out his hand to help me up.

“Thanks,” I said, as I clutched the archer’s hand and pulled myself to my feet.  He grinned, saluted, and turned back to the parapet.

I grimaced as I followed him.  That had been entirely too close. 

Normally when I fight, I am gifted – or afflicted, as my brother would say – with a sense of invincibility.  But this time death had come close enough that it chipped at my illusion of omnipotence.

I will not let myself be slain again, I thought fiercely.  Not now.  Not when I am this close to getting home.

Well, I’m sure that will help, I sneered at myself.  Why didn’t you tell that to the Orcs at Amon Hen?  I’m sure they would have apologised and let you go.

The wall shuddered as another boulder slammed into the tower.

There seemed no sign of the assault diminishing in force.  Rank after rank of Orcs still rushed the ladders, missiles and boulders still bombarded our wall.  We fought on until all the Orcs of this wave were slain, their corpses littering the wall and choking the water beneath.  Yet their deaths brought scant respite, for as the last of them were falling, a conch shell sounded and the next line of boats appeared out of the dark.

A soldier near me muttered, “I have really had enough of these bastards.”

I called to the defenders, “ranks one and two, get the rest of those boats burning.  We should have a few minutes at the least until they come again.  Get what rest you can, while their next wave approaches.”

Restful it was not, for the bombardment kept up unabated.  Keeping low as the missiles whistled and crashed, I made my way along the wall.  Here and there I paused to exchange a few words with the Men.  I stopped longer at the point where a missile had hit two Men, their bodies now lying covered by the cloaks of two of their comrades.  Four soldiers sat by them in a makeshift vigil, while a fifth stood at the embrasure to give the alert when the enemy drew nigh.

“Who were they?” I asked quietly, kneeling beside the vigil-keepers.

“Gwydion Son of Gryffud and Tarannon Son of Valdemar, My Lord,” one of the watchers answered.  “Gwydion hailed from Halfirien, and Tarannon’s father leads the Vintner’s Guild in Minas Tirith.”

“Aye,” I nodded.  “I know the family.”  I sought for something meaningful to say, but found nothing.  I clasped the hand of each of the watchers in turn, then continued along the wall.

Only a little ways on, I found two others I had spoken with earlier that morn.  The one whose name I did not know, who had joked at the young water-carriers over the body of the slain Orc, was kneeling by his comrade Lothar, the Orc’s killer.  Lothar’s body was burned from head to foot.  Only one arm seemed to have escaped the fire.  His friend held Lothar’s unburned hand, and tried to hold him still, to stop him from scraping his burns on the paving stones as he writhed.

The uninjured Man looked up and smiled wanly at me.  “My Lord,” he said.

Again I knelt, feeling the hateful, desperate uselessness of the commander who watches his soldiers die.  Again I wished for some supernatural power – for Svip’s silverweed, or for the Ring.  

Lothar’s comrade spoke rapidly in a shaky tone, as though by speaking of something else he could cancel the reality about him.  “They’re made of pottery, My Lord,” he observed.  “The missiles.  They’re some kind of pots with oil inside them, and a burning wick in the mouth.  So the oil catches fire when they break.  We ought to see if we can make them ourselves.  When we get out of this.  Though I’ve never seen oil that burns that fast.”

I nodded, unable to keep my gaze from Lothar’s burned face.  “It’s from the southlands, I think,” I said.  “I’ve heard travellers’ tales from Harandor, of black oil that bubbles from the ground and burns faster than any fuel.”

“Oh.  That will be it, then.”

Lothar moaned, and the other soldier gripped his friend’s hand in both of his.

“We’ll get some water for him,” I promised, putting my hand on the grieving Man’s shoulder.  “I’ve just seen Men from the armoury along the east wall.  There should be some here soon.”

“Aye.  He was asking for water earlier, My Lord.”

I stood, to see if I could spot any water-carriers approaching.  I saw those on the east harbour wall again, two figures making their way through the ranks with water buckets, and two others distributing bundles of arrows.

I looked north toward the main fortress.  No one was approaching along the wall, but below us, descending the Great Stairs from the fortress gate, was a small procession made up of three Men and one horse.  The Men were burdened with satchels and buckets, and the horse bore at least as much again as all three of the Men together.

I smiled, for even at this distance and in the hazy dusk I was sure that I recognised the horse.

I glanced back over the wall.  The next line of Orc boats was nearly upon us.  As I watched, a catapult shot that fell too short plummeted into the path of one of their boats and vanished in the water.  Seemingly undaunted by their near miss, the oarsmen ploughed on.

I grimaced at the thought of how many troops the enemy must have, if they were so unconcerned at the risk of wiping out their own soldiers.  Not for the first time, I thanked the fates that I had not had the misfortune to be born an Orc.

Distantly, I heard the thwack and whirr of a catapult’s shot.  It took me a moment to realise that the shot came not from the shore, but from the fortress.

Another shot soared through the dark, then another.  Scattered cheers broke out among our Men as realisation came that the catapults which had been hammering us, were at last under fire themselves.

This assault on their ground forces did not seem to alter the plans of the fleet.  Their boats rushed in at us, knocking aside the burning hulks of their predecessors’ crafts.

“At the ready!”  I yelled.  “Keep under cover as much as you can; their catapults are still firing.”  Once again I shouted the order, “first and second ranks, independent fire at will!”

For a time again all other thoughts were shoved aside in the serious business of combat.  Again Orcs stormed the parapet.  Again our arrows mowed them down.  Again we hacked down any foeman that made it onto the wall.

But as I stabbed another opponent, stepped back from him and nearly lost my footing on the blood-slippery flagstones, I wondered how long all of this could last.

How many troops did they have?  Was their commander willing to sacrifice them all, to keep flinging them at us until they had either taken the harbour or all of them were slain?

If things went on as they were, I thought that we could hold them off indefinitely.  Particularly if Eradan sent fresh Men to the harbour’s aid, either adding to our forces or substituting out the harbour defenders and putting Men from the fortress in their place.

But things would not go on as they were.  For unless we could take out their siege engine that was spitting boulders at us, eventually they would breach the tower wall.  Once the tower was down, it could not be much longer before they gained the entrance to the harbour. 

Then we would have two choices: to retreat to the fortress, or to die where we stood.

I stepped to the parapet to check on how many of this assault we had left to kill.  At that moment, in the darkness where I knew the riverbank must lie, there came an eruption of flame.

Fire roared upward, piercing the dark.  It looked as though a bonfire had been lit in one instant upon Anduin’s shore.

We stared, then cheers broke out all along the harbour wall.

“They got it!” someone near me yelled.  “Valar bless them, boys, they got the damned thing!”

There was only one reasonable explanation.  One of our catapult shots had hit an enemy siege engine, or at least it had hit a supply of their pottery and oil missiles.  One way or another, the missiles had shattered and the oil had caught alight.  And the whole affair had gone up in flames.

We could not spare long for rejoicing, for Orcs were still storming our walls.  But as we fired and hacked at our besiegers, something else occurred that I did not expect.

The conch shell trumpets sounded again.  They sounded in a call I had not heard throughout this battle: the Orc army’s signal to fall back.

Those Orcs who were already on the ladders charged onward.  But as our archers   picked them off and the rest of us waited at the ready, we saw a glorious sight.  The boats that had been waiting in the distance pulled away, fading from sight.  Shouting incomprehensible jeers, presumably promises that they would return, the Orcs still in the boats below us started to row into the dark. 

Shouts of mocking encouragement and arrows of fire urged them on their way.

I yelled, “it’s not time to party yet.  They’ll be back.  I want a Man to each embrasure, on watch.  Take it in turns; you can work out the shifts amongst yourselves.  The others, get some rest.  There’s water on the way.”

I hurried to check again on Svip and the Men from the armoury.  I saw them close below me, at the door to the west wall’s intermediate tower.  They had stopped, and the Men were unloading the barrels and saddle bags they’d rigged to hang over Svip’s sides.  I had to smile as I thought of it.  Even a horse of Svip’s peculiar talents would have difficulty manoeuvring the tower’s spiral stairs. 

I called to two soldiers sitting nearby, “the two of you, with me.  We’ll help bring the supplies up to the wall.”

We met the first of the armoury’s Men on their way up.  They handed off their barrels to the two I had with me, then the armoury Men and I hastened down the tower stairs.

At the doorway I nearly ran into Svip, in his usual form.  He was staggering with his arms about a water barrel nearly as large as he was.

“Svip, for heaven’s sake!” I exclaimed.  “Let me take that.”

He smiled wearily as he handed the barrel over to me, then scampered back outside for a satchel of arrows that at least was lighter than the bucket.

On the battlement the Men from the armoury set about prying loose the lids of the barrels, and carrying water and arrows to the defenders of the wall.  I stopped one of them who would have taken the last of the barrels.

“Let me keep it a moment,” I said.  “There is one who requires the water first.”

With Svip and the soldier from the armoury at my heels, I carried the barrel to Lothar and his comrade.

Lothar still lived, although I thought that he could not last much longer. 

Or rather, with those burns, I hoped that he would not.

I set down the barrel and knelt, dipping the communal ladle into the water.

Lothar’s comrade shook his head.

“I’ve got a cup here, My Lord,” he said, unfastening a silver-mounted cup of horn from his belt.  “It may take a while to get him to drink.”

“What’s your name?” I asked quietly, as he dunked his cup in the barrel.

“Fingal Son of Frithjof, My Lord.” 

“Drink some yourself, Fingal,” I told him.  “All of us have earned it.”

He hesitated, then quickly drained the cup.  Fingal dipped his cup again and turned back to Lothar.  Cautiously he put one hand behind Lothar’s head to raise it, bringing the cup to the wounded Man’s lips.

“Go on about your duties,” I said to the soldier who stood by the barrel, eyeing Lothar’s burned form with a horrified look on his face.  Then I added, “no, wait.”  I dunked the ladle and thirstily emptied it.

I nodded to the soldier, and he hefted the barrel, heading south along the wall. 

I’d only just realised how thirsty I was.  I hadn’t drunk any when the water-carriers came before, which I knew had been ludicrously stupid of me.  My father and all my teachers of old would have shaken their heads in disgust if they’d known of it.  Even Steward’s Heirs cannot survive without water.  It was not as if I would help the cause of my Men by depriving myself in the misguided effort to leave more water for them.

The thought occurred to me that the water tasted better than it ever would have done in my previous battles, no matter how thirsty I might have been. 

The water supply of Cair Andros comes from the River, the well in the fortress courtyard striking down all the way through the rock to the River Cave beneath the island.  It seemed as though the Anduin itself had sent me its bounty, to replenish my strength.

“Do you have time to talk a bit?” Svip asked timidly, alternating his gaze between the wounded Lothar and me.

“Yes,” I said.  “Let’s find a seat.”  I glanced once more at Fingal and his dying comrade, then led Svip to an unoccupied stretch of wall.

I sank down by the parapet.  Svip sat beside me.  The River water I had just drunk seemed to dance like magical healing elixir through my veins.

            I looked over at Svip, and found him also looking at me.  His expression was troubled, as if he were struggling to say something but could not think how to put it into words.

            Again I wondered if he regretted becoming involved in Gondor’s troubles.  If he wished he were back at home right now, in his snug little house under the water.

            “How are you doing?” I asked him.

            “Fine,” he said quietly.  He watched me for a moment longer with that unhappy look, then he went on.  “I was just at the – the building where you tend the sick and wounded.”

            “The House of Healing.”

            He nodded.  “Yes.  Thorolf’s still in there.  He’s got a bad fever.  The Man in charge told me that Orc arrow was probably poisoned.”

            “Damn,” I whispered, leaning my head back against the parapet.  I sat there unmoving for a moment, feeling the comforting solidity of the stones against my head.  Then I turned to Svip again.  “Did you get to speak with Thorolf?” I asked, then added, “is he speaking?”

            “Yes, he’s speaking.  He asked about you and the others, if you were all right.  And he keeps swearing about how he didn’t see that Orc who shot him.  He tried to get out of bed, but he got dizzy and nearly fell over and the Man in charge said he’d set an armed guard over him if he didn’t promise to stay lying down.”

            “Damnation.”  I thought that Thorolf had probably an even chance of surviving; that is, if any of us survived this.  The poison had not been of the most virulent kind that Orcs are known to use, or he would have been paralysed within seconds of the arrow piercing his skin, and dead minutes later.

            “Boromir,” Svip began haltingly, “if he – if any of them – I don’t think that I – that is, I mean, I can’t -- ”

            He was interrupted by a shout.

            “Here they come again!”

            I sprang to my feet.

            The enemy had a new tactic.  The destruction of one of their catapults must have convinced them that firing on the harbour wall was no longer practicable.  They had moved the other catapult that had been bombarding us along the wall.  Their two remaining siege engines were now both dedicated to the task of lobbing boulders at the tower by the harbour’s mouth.

            And both of them, I thought, must be out of range of our catapult crews in the fortress.  And the walkway along the harbour battlements was too narrow to support our catapults, even had we managed to move them onto the wall before the enemy battered us into the next Age.

            Firing on the tower was not the only feature of their strategy.  Out of the dark came rank after rank of boats, heading for the harbour’s mouth.

            “Trumpeter!” I bellowed.  “Give the harbour catapults the command to fire.”

            This new assault, I thought, gave us a good deal more to fear.  From the layout of the harbour, fewer of us could get clear shots at them than when they attacked all along the wall.  The best vantage point to fire from was now the tower – the same tower that was being pummelled by boulders.

            I yelled again for the trumpeter, commanding the Men on the east wall to move forward to their tower.  There, at least, they could get closer to the attackers, without too great risk from the enemy’s catapults.

            “West wall!” I shouted.  “One Man remain on guard at every third embrasure.  The rest, move forward.  Concentrate your fire on any boat nearing the harbour mouth.  Five Men, to the tower.  I want the Men on the tower replaced every five minutes; no one is to remain there longer.”

            I turned to tell Svip that he should return to the fortress.  He was no longer at my side, but I saw him running toward me, carrying a bow in one hand and a stocked quiver in the other.

            “You can use these,” he said breathlessly, holding them out to me.  “They belong to the Man with the burns.  I asked the other one if you could use them, he said it would be all right.”

            “Thank you,” I said solemnly, accepting Lothar’s quiver and bow.  I glanced to where Lothar lay, and saw that Fingal had taken up position on guard at the embrasure.

            As I shouldered the quiver, I said, “go back to the fortress, Svip.  There’s not much you can do here.  The battlement here isn’t wide enough for a horse to fight on it properly.”

            Svip shook his head.  “No,” he said quickly.  “I’ll stay.  I can still hand out arrows.”  Before I could say more he set out at a run, to catch up with one of the Men with the satchels of arrows.

            I hissed in a breath through my teeth.  I felt like having Svip tied up and sending a Man to carry him back to the fortress.  I had to forcibly remind myself, again, that Svip was not a child.  He was not a child, nor was he even formally under my command.  His decisions were his own.

            That would be no comfort, I thought, if his decisions got him killed.

            I ran to join the others, a long line of Men along the inner edge of the battlement.  The braziers had been moved to stand behind every fourth Man.  As I joined the line, I held my nocked arrow in the brazier flame, the fabric at the arrowhead’s base swiftly catching alight.

            The cursed dusk hung over the harbour mouth, the enemy boats visible only when they were illumined by the tower braziers, and when our arrows hit home.  I hoped that some of the Men could see better than I.  To be sure, I was near the far end of the line.  The Men who stood closer should be better able to see their targets.  But it stuck in my craw that I should have to be firing so nearly blind, as if I were some ancient grandfather dragged out of his armchair for the last-ditch defence of Gondor.

            There might be many such in days to come, I knew, if this advance were not halted before it reached Minas Tirith.

            I could scarcely see our attackers, but I did see when a new threat drove toward us.

            A craft larger than the others of their fleet loomed beside the west tower.  In the vague fiery light I saw figures moving upon it.  I thought I saw one of them stand and throw something over the side.  The next moment, others along the boat were doing the same.  I did not comprehend what they might be up to, until a Man near me murmured, “they’re dropping anchors.  They’ve got anchors, all of them.”

            I lit my next arrow and fired.  As I reached into the quiver again, I heard another voice inquire irritably, “what are they doing?  Are they trying to scale the tower?”

            It certainly seemed that a large number of the figures were now lifting something, some long, dark shape that might be a ladder.  But metal though they were, none of their siege ladders we had seen thus far had required so many to lift them.

            Of a sudden I knew what it was.  I heard myself whispering, “bloody hell.  They have a battering ram.”

            In the next instant I repeated the words in a shout.  “They have a battering ram.  Concentrate your fire on their westernmost boat.”  The trumpeter repeated my order to the eastern wall.

            They should have crumpled under that sustained fire.  The boat indeed caught alight, and in the brief glare before it was extinguished, I saw the explanation for why the Orcs did not fall. 

He who had planned this assault was no stranger to military tactics, for a defensive shell had been constructed about the Orcs at the battering ram, out of their comrades’ thick, fireproof shields.   Around the Orcs at the ram, the others massed in a rough but effective tortoise formation.  To the sides and above, the shields locked together, our arrows bouncing harmlessly away as though they were but children’s toys.

            I saw their craft rock as the battering ram crew charged to the prow.  I gritted my teeth as I fired, wishing the damned boat would capsize.  The ram smashed into the tower wall, low above the waterline, with a sickening thud.

            For the moment, the tower held.  On the wildly rocking boat, the Orcs moved back for another run.

            The crews at our harbour catapults were firing for all they were worth.  But to hit that boat would be a near-impossible shot.  It was so near to the tower that a minute error of trajectory could send our own shot careening into the tower’s wall, and do the enemy’s work for them.

            In our hail of arrows, the battering ram boat again caught fire.  As I sighted along my arrow, I saw one Orc fall, his shield tumbling into the water.  I fired.  Silhouetted as inky shadows in the light of their burning boat, the Orcs at the ram charged.

            With a terrible, groaning crash, the ram breached the wall.

            In the next instant, many things happened at once.

            A shot from the harbour catapults told, slamming a moment too late into the battering ram boat’s stern. The boat reared upward at the prow, dark figures of Orcs flying in all directions.  The ram with Orcs still clinging to it vanished in the water.  I saw several Orcs leap for the tower and start climbing into the breach their ram had torn.  I took aim and fired at one of these, but I do not know if my arrow reached him or not.  Whether fatally weakened by the blow it had suffered, or simply through coincidence, the tower did not withstand the next shots from their catapults upon the shore. 

            Stone blocks erupted at us, and in a cataclysm of sound like the cry of the dying Númenor, the tower shattered. 

            Almost a third of the tower crumbled in that blow.  Along the wall, Men were flung prostrate by the concussion, or threw themselves down to escape the fusillade of stone.  I kept my feet, fighting to see through the flying rock dust and the dark. 

As the first dust sank through the air, I saw that the entire tower roof was gone.  There was no movement; no sign of our Men who’d been posted on the roof, nor of any making their way out from within the tower itself.  The Orcs who’d been crawling into the tower had disappeared, nor was there any trace of the battering ram boat and its crew. 

In the fitful light of flaming arrows and the braziers on the walls, the chain across the harbour mouth tore free from the splintered tower.  With what seemed like ponderous slowness, though I’m sure it can only have taken an instant, the chain swung downward and plummeted into the water.

It’s done, I thought.  We’ve nothing left but to retreat or die.