PRELUDE

I often dream of the sea, though I have rarely seen it - a gift from my mother's people, I suppose.  It whispers to me calling like the ripe and swollen fields of the Pelennor, though beneath I know it hides a secret and a greedy heart.

In my dreams it swallows me.

This city found death in flood.  Still, its bones remain and comfort me.  Though ancient it is familiar; it is of my people.  The order of its streets, the shape of its dwellings map an echo deep in my heart.  I am the product of its pride.  Its past is my future - our future.

Tharbad.  Once a gateway to the mighty realm of Arnor as it was in its strength, now it is nothing, hardly even a memory.  And I do not seek Arnor; there is nothing in the tattered North can aid us.  Minas Tirith stands in the South alone, braced against the coming deluge while I wander here seeking the undying world of the Elves.

I say wander though it has been some days since I left this chamber for anything other than to relieve myself.  My horse has abandoned me; gone sensibly home to Edoras with all my supplies and left me here lamed by a knee more twisted and swollen even than the roiling river Gwathló which was my undoing.  Still, I must offer this thanks at least to my seafaring forbears, that I was able to swim to safety and lost neither my weapons nor my wits.

But here I must stay, for a time, waiting for my body to do its work and roasting over my companionable fire any vermin ambitious enough to try and make the Captain of Gondor their meal.  I waste no effort on concealment.  Who is there to see my little flag of smoke in this wasteland?  So I stay, and lie at night amidst the ruins of this once proud city vulnerable to the unflinching gaze of countless stars.

They rebuke me.  Through all the long dark hours I gaze heavenward and see the lights of my homeland, the constellations my mother taught me and the sparkling seers with whom my father holds nightly council.  But they are false, and say only that I am farther from home than I have ever been and have turned my back on the White City to ride alone through time and legend seeking but a threadbare promise of hope, a fragment of a dream.

These same stars call me home and I must deny them.  I have made my choice, usurped from my brother this quest into myth and folly.  Though he and my father argued forcibly (and who can remember the last time they came so into alignment?) that my place was on the battlements of Minas Tirith, at the head of her armies, I would not be swayed. 

The White City is the only mistress I have ever loved and I have given over my suit to a better one.  Now she will be held by a man of heart, for my brother Faramir's is true and untainted, while a cold sea wind blows echoing through the empty and forsaken chambers of mine.

"And it came to pass, at the return of the year, at the time when 
kings go out to battle, that David sent Joab, and his servants 
with him, and all Israel ... But David tarried at Jerusalem."
II Samuel 11, vs 1-2

 

"Boromir, the proud and fearless, often rash, ever anxious for the victory of Minas Tirith (and his own glory therein)."
Faramir to Frodo, The Two Towers: "Window on the West"

SURVEIL

It was such a dream of the wild and tameless sea that roused me from my chambers and set me on this quest, though I could not see it then.  It is only now that I lie midst the bones of fable, whistling at the wind, that it seems clear to me.  Only here at the crossroads of myth and memory, where the past has no future and is beyond blame does he feel brave enough to divulge his secrets.  Here he tells me all choices are vain - all roads lead to such a place as this.

When I awoke that night a storm tide pounded my heart and I wanted only the comforting embrace of Mount Mindolluin at my back.  The corridors of the King's House seemed flooded in darkness and silences age-old; when at last I made the threshold I broke upon the Court of the Fountain aching for fresh air and cool stone.

It was barely dawn; a chill still clung to the air.  Though warmer days had long laid siege to the season, Winter had yet to give up her hold and seemed to gather strength in these small hours of morning; too small, perhaps, for the busy Spring to squabble over.  In the lengthening day his forces seemed everywhere at once about their work waking the world.  From the Citadel I had watched the Pelennor Fields dress themselves in the green of growing things and the White Mountains at long last shed their ermine cloaks of snow and raise their gray stone faces to the sun.  Now the Citadel rang with water.  Perhaps it was this had infected my dreams.

Spring had come to Gondor.

Spring had come to Gondor but not to Minas Tirith.  Unlike the ready soil, the warming rock, even the flirtatious winds that teased the great Tower of Echthelion, I and my men remained dormant in our winter hold, hibernating, heads underground.  Though for weeks my brother had tried to rouse us with messengers from the restless forests of Ithilien, warning that in the Black Land things also stirred, we remained blanketed under the watchful eye of my father.

And what did the Lord Denethor see in his tower chamber late at night and alone that kept me there, safe with caution behind those silent walls?  I know not still.

Then I knew only that in the deprivation of Winter my men had grown soft, while the Eastern flank of my army, under the command of my brother, had grown lean and strong gripping the Eastern shores of the Anduin and camping among the ruined summer palaces of Osgiliath.

We in the Tower of Guard had moldered waiting, waiting.

A ripple of recognition shivered through the men of that day's tirith-minuial as I passed.  They stood here and there about the walls stamping like so many tethered horses, their breath shivering in the moist pre-dawn.  I shook off my own damp disquiet and gave to each what warmth I could:  a brief word, a firm hand - but against the sky I had recognized the shape of young Hirningail standing the Embrasure, more watchful and proud than those scarred veterans I had thought to school him, and the sight of his thin sure silhouette drew me like a beacon.

When first my boots mounted the stone of that mighty pier I felt again as I always did - that I had stepped into the sky.  Nothing rose beyond its height but was behind me.  Before me nothing met my eyes but the still distant form of Hirningail keeping his watch.  I breathed deeply of the free air and felt my heart lift to its accustomed place again, unassailable.

We stood in silence for a time, Hirningail and I.  The young guard's fixed stillness seemed to mix with the promising quiet of the unformed day to create a surprising eddy of peace in that distant place - peace broken only by the kiss of cold steel on my throat.

"Hold and declare yourself!"

Hirningail's clear voice rang in my ear and momentarily drowned my ready answer in the memory of how I had first found him - fighting beside me, defending the village of Gobel Haeron from foolhardy Orcs trespassing too far upon our lands.  He would have died there, had I not kept his neck from a curving orc blade as he stood admiring his latest kill.  Now it was his knife held over my throat and I felt only pride.

It was I had promoted him, plucked him like a ripe seed out of the weeds of Border Patrol to plant him in the heart of Minas Tirith where now he thrived.  In Hirningail, at least, I believed I would have something to show for this fruitless winter.  Scarcely half a year he had been among us and already he had earned his place in Minas Tirith's crown.  It was never I who was deceived in Hirningail.

I worked my voice out from beneath his blade:

"Careful, Boy, or you will succeed accidentally where many Orcs of Mordor have tried and failed.  Would you rob our Enemy of so tasty a victory as the life of Gondor's First Born?"

"My lord!"

He nearly dropped me in surprise.

"Forgive me ... I did not hear you approach!"

"So I surmised."  I had to keep my voice a surly snarl to fend off laughing as he tried to straighten my cloak along with his embarrassment.  Hirningail would make a fine officer one day, I believed, and a few lessons in humility would only hasten him on the road.

At that I am reputed an excellent teacher.

Still, I could see some reassurance was needed also and readily supplied it.

"In truth, Hirningail, your speed does you credit - I hardly thought to defend myself.  But if I had-"  I spun him quickly, grabbed from its sheath the knife had so recently cooled my skin and, in scarcely a breath, had young Hirningail back over the battlement, his own knife pressing, with only the empty sky to beseech for aid.

I watched with satisfaction his hands raise slowly in surrender and his face contort in a smirk of bravado I knew hid surprise and fear.  Still I held him, and found myself savoring even this mock victory; it had been too long since my body had had the goad of battle to excite it.

But in another moment I had him on his feet and was taking a turn setting his clothes to right, equally gratified to see a true smile of admiration replace his counterfeit. 

That smile I returned and clapped him on the shoulder for good measure.

"Come then, Dauglaeb, and say what so captured your attention that you forgot the world about you."

Hirningail's ready smile only broadened as he shrugged.  "You must forgive me, Lord.  This is the first night I have stood the Embrasure and I am not used to being entrusted with such beauty!"

"Ah, Hirningail," I will admit I sighed; "for that there can be no forgiveness.  I have lived all my life here at the height of the world and will ever be in thrall to the glories of this vision."

Hands at his shoulders I returned him to his Eastward watch and together we stepped toward the open air, drawn ever farther forward until we leaned upon the parapet itself.  Were he not my guardsman and I his commander I believe we could have dangled there like boys - indeed, I could almost feel that morning as if I were a boy again and Faramir beside me once more.

The whole of Minas Tirith shone silver beneath us.  The proud moon still shed his light on all below and vainly dimmed the stars about him in his wayward path.

In the day there are many to extol the beauties of the White City - her soft rising hills, cool curving streets, her secret garden courts.  Even the corpse of that failed and withered tree she wears as a diadem cannot dim her proud and patient beauty.  But, like the Great Hunter, I love her most in the silence of night and often wander her streets learning every warm dark alley, each coyly hidden door.  I know nowhere in Middle Earth a sight more beautiful than the soft pale stone of Minas Tirith glowing coolly under the full gaze of her nightly suitor.  And though she revels in his attentions I know she does not encourage them.  Demurely she transforms his gifts - black shadow and silver moonlight - into the colors of my office.

All this was mine.

And as I looked down upon my White City dreaming peacefully, trustfully, the last drippings of my nightmare evaporated from me.

Then she opened an eye and sent me a vision; a vision that scorched my blood.

Out into the chill dawn stepped a woman carrying washing - an idol of fire, a tongue of flame.  Golden light flew from the door behind her to race away before, banishing the silver night from her steps, then whirling to cling possessively to her skirts and catch as sparks in her hair.  Bowing to the basket she raised her hands high to a line - a string of sodden garments became offerings to the Dawn.

It was the Dawn betrayed her to me.  As the first rays of light struggled to free themselves from their nightly imprisonment beyond the Dark Land, they spared strength enough to expose her to my sight:  tender breasts diffident beneath a cloth blouse, a girlish waist unwittingly unveiled by every lift of her arms, full woman's hips apt for purchase - wrapped together in skin sunkissed and crowned with hair enwoven with copper - so rare among my people.  All conspired to reveal a drop of the southern sun, the blood of Umbar, roiled in her veins.

Umbar:  the Ardh-ben-adar, so often won but never conquered.  Grudgingly they send us food for our tables, cloth for our bodies, and rich tea for chill mornings such as this but rarely have they accorded Gondor what she deserves most, their dutiful worship and respect.  Now, it seemed, they had given us something unexpected:  a thing of beauty.

My eye swooped down upon her as if I were the eagle and she my prey.

Was she a servant girl? so pressed with duty she hung out washing to catch a sun yet abed?  And  in whose house did she dwell?  I recognized it as a modest place in the fourth circle, Rath Thurin perhaps; but who was her master?  What kind of man could master such a creature of fire?  Something in the sway of her hips whispered to me of no other man. 

As she worked I watched, my mind idly testing images of this creature bent to other labor, perhaps here on this very parapet where I had held young Hirningail minutes before.  In place of his fear I saw her ecstasy, and my mind tore her blouse to reveal more.  I saw myself devour her breasts, her copper hair waving like a pennant to the city below.  The wind sounded her cry in my ears and caressed my back as her hands when I gripped her broad hip, raised one tapering leg and plunged myself inside her.

It was not meant for me, that vision.  Yet I looked and have now been blinded to all else.  When I close my eyes in barracks or in bed, in company or alone as I am now it is there.  Neither the light of my solitary fire nor the pressing darkness can extinguish the brightness of her image in my mind's eye.  There it stays and will not dim.

"She is a beauty, is she not, my lord?"

The voice of Hirningail reclaimed me from delusion.  The door closed below; the West darkened as the moon took his way beyond the mountains.  I straightened, and let a non-committal grunt serve my answer as I shifted to ease my stance.

Then the broad face of young Hirningail imposed itself on my sight, seeming suddenly odd and distorted in the inconstant light of the dawn aborning.  Some thought of pride normally hidden behind his eager mask of duty (though no doubt turned over secretly and often) was now pushing at his eyes and straining the corners of his mouth.  With little difficulty I read what he could barely contain.

"You know her."

His twitch exploded immediately to a polished grin.

"Aye, my lord, I do.  She is Othuiel, daughter of Gwaithuinir, newly arrived from the vales of Lossarnach."  Having thus unlocked his tongue he did not hesitate to tell me all, nearly crowing: "She is my betrothed."

So, this then was She, the one who warmed his talk by the barracks fire; promised from girlhood, brought only recently through his newly elevated influence within the safety of my walls.  A fresh and untravelled peasant girl.

This then was She.

Not a vessel for my fancy.  I thrust the embers of her fiery image from my mind and swallowed at the aftertaste of lust in my mouth, sweet but sticky.  My heart, warmed for a moment at her fire, receded before my outstretched hand.

"Then I must wish you all happiness, Hirningail."

He clasped me firmly, gratefully.  "Thank you, Lord Boromir."

His use of my name did not escape attention.  Perhaps in this, if nothing else, he felt himself more fortunate than I, to be taking a wife where none yet had tempted me.

I withdrew and turned away, turned back.

"But that house, Hirningail, can hardly be suitable for your betrothed.  Perhaps another can be found, more befitting circumstances of such promise.  I will look to it, if you will allow me—"

"If I will allow you?!  Lord, I would forever be indebted-"

There.  My offer of support returned the natural order between us.  I nodded.  It was done.

For a few moments more I watched the shadows of the Ephel Duath, themselves many leagues away, gradually withdraw their cold hands from the White Tower of Echthelion.

Then, acknowledging Hirningail's salute, I turned my back on the sun arising and retreated once more to the cool dark corridors of the King's House.  There was work to be done.

INTERLUDE - Tharbad

These are restless days.  Though all of Eriador and Eregion seem to pass the torpor of Urimë in a humming sleep, I cannot.  The tide of activity I have watched ebb from this land has found fertile ground in my idle heart and now calls on me to leave this place.

Soon I will obey.  Even as the once turbulent Gwathló now slides slow and sleepy between its banks so the swelling in my knee subsides and ability to walk some distance increases, though my progress is dwarfed by the untold leagues I must yet accomplish.

In the coolness of evening I work the strength back into my limbs, one more ghost among the twisted and broken avenues of Tharbad drawn along by songs only the wind remembers.  But the way - any way - too soon disappears beneath stone and earth, subsumed by the patient footsoldiers of wilderness.  The waste - it wears at me.

So proud, this city, once.  Not content to lay upon one shore she spread herself over both and from that vantage cast her nets o'er all the known world.  Here Men and Elves once met as equals in their vessels from the sea.  Here all the peoples of Middle-Earth once passed North or South in peace watched over by my forebears.  Now all is ruins.

This is what comes of the strength of stone.  It is a child's game we play in Gondor:  Stone blocks Wind, Wind drives Water, Water drowns Stone.

Flesh is the weakest of all.

I have taken better lodgings:  a short corner of wall and shred of roof within easy distance of the river which, in recompense for my injury, sometimes soothes my aches and reclaims the dust from my skin.  And now I dine on tender fish and sweet rabbit - even wounded as I am, the hawk and the fox have found they are no match for my hunting skills.  The same winds that so many nights whistled waking about the towers of my home here sing me sighing to sleep.  A shallow bed, composed of ferns and moss dressed up in my cloak, offers greater ease even than did all the silks and linens of the King's House of Gondor these few months past.

In this place void of Duty's regimen that stranger Peace, so long an exile from my home, begins to show herself.  Were it not for indolence, I would welcome her company.

But that which impelled me from ructious Gondor must soon impel me from this place.  I have brought it with me.

"And the hunger inside, won't go away
it's starting to rise, 
and the sea rushes in - "
Crowded House  "King Tide"

 

"He was a masterful man, and one to take what he desired."
Gandalf to Pippin, Return of the King "Minas Tirith"

FORAY

In the weeks that followed, the disquiet in my heart took on the shape of Othuiel and my dreams became as flame.

It was some days before Chance thrust her across my path again, days overflowing with every rumor and sign of War but none of the fact of it.  From Lebennin to Anfalas every wind shift seemed to bring fresh report of black sails clouding the horizon, while from the scorching southern sands our spies sent whispers that the rootless Haradrim were swarming.  Nearer to hand, and to my heart, missives came fairly flying from my brother in the watchful forests of Ithilien - leaves on a wind, signaling storm.

But from all this my father turned his face.  

"It is not yet time."

Though all I knew gainsaid this - "The Enemy is coming."

"No... It is not yet time."

So the orbit of my days was fixed:  waking I daily labored under the twilight of my father's reticence, and at night bathed in the sun of my undiminishing desire for Othuiel.  For the more I defied that desire, the more it seemed to heat my flesh and sear my heart.

Using discretion long-neglected I secured the promised house.  Clinging to the rock and once elevated terraces of Rath Lanc, I counted the place nonetheless near enough to the barracks for Hirningail's, no doubt, frequent use yet sufficiently far that his visits might go unnoticed and unremarked.  Like so many others it stood, silent, testimony to the seeping wound my city suffered.  But with Othuiel stowed within and the place reclaimed from doubt I thought to fashion myself two victories, though I kept in the end just one.

And still I saw her.  She came to me often, and in secret:  a discarnate vision which nonetheless awoke in me such relentless desire as held me captive 'til I had surrendered to it.

Yet every morning from my bed I woke dissatisfied, and every day that dissatisfaction grew.

As the advancing Spring lengthened the days in Minas Tirith, so my patience at remaining there diminished.  Becalmed by my father's will we stayed, preparing to meet war but not to wage it.  And as the great army of Gondor loitered within all that favorable season, the walls of the White City seemed to grow about me and even my steadfast love for her to sour.  My jealous eye roved to the green and open fields of battle.

There, on the practice field I found little more challenging than comrades trained by my own hand and boys fresh from their mother's arms.  Amongst these I would make my way like a fishwife:  weighing out, choosing, as many stood green and trembling under the East wind like spring wheat, ripe for cutting.

From the stone fields of Lamedon they came to us, from the patient vales of Lossarnach, trickling determinedly upstream against the steady flow that ebbed from the City's gate.  They came, though we had yet to call and for this I loved them.  How often it is that on the lowliest soldiers we place our highest hopes!  those we will thrust first upon the knife's edge.  Yet experience teaches us a word for such as these and it swirls about in ranks:  orchaes, as if youth and pride could be smelled across the field. 

From this, at least, I swore to shield Hirningail lest a wasteful end mock the gift of herself Othuiel had given him, and to no other.

So under the sunset bells I would return to deference we'd not earned and climb the weary streets to home knowing there, at least, I would face true contest, as nightly I vied with the sharp-honed tongues of my father's councilors.

Each night, from their well-feathered chambers to the King's Hall they came to dine with us, eager to chew over the day's news and nurse my father's wariness.  Like buzzards before battle they seemed to me.

How had it come that I squandered evenings parrying words with such as these? Old men who planned wars and never fought them.  How had our places become reversed, my brother Faramir and I?  I lacked his gift for patient counsel and he my skill at arms.  Why was it he, not I, had been sent forth from our home in the company of warriors to sleep rough in the perilous wood while I, his brother, with every advantage of safety and comfort, slept not at all?

The answer was clear enough, and only too well known to both of us.  Our father held me alone in his love, like a shined and sharpened sword ever dangling above the Enemy's breast, dangling between the White tower and the Black.

"It is not yet time."

"But, how can you know this?!"

"Do you doubt me?  My son - " he would ever honey his barbs with praise - "you are my greatest weapon:  you must be ever ready to my use.  Be patient."

"Too many men I send to die in my place."

"Your place can never be theirs.  Your only place is here, at my side, at the head of our armies.  These men you prize so dearly, would you leave them leaderless?"

"There is another they would follow ..."

But that argument lay down an old road, one my father had turned from long ago and barred with a smile; such a smile as to make an ambassador lose his tongue or prince his will - bright as steel and just as sharp.

"It is not yet time." 

From this wealth of dispassion I could not soon enough take my leave for the barracks and less diplomatic company.  There, long into the night, I drilled my captains over each choice of battle or defense we could envision until I had them all snarling at each other like dogs over a bone.  I counted it a day well spent if midnight found me unfit for anything but sleep.

Yet my bed betrayed me, and as within the White Tower my father kept solitary vigil each day so I, through all those long nights of Lótessë, stalked the battlements of Minas Tirith marked only by the moon and the tirith-dínen.  Undeterred by reason, my restless blood boiled with visions of Othuiel.  The very idea of her grew in me like a fever, and left me dream-tossed between visions of a swelling sea and a vibrant, seductive, shimmering flame.  Neither gave me rest.

So burning, heated, aflame each dawn I rose shivering, and reached for the fire of Othuiel in my bed, sheets tangled around my naked waist as I had dreamed her legs and pillow bunched beneath my head as I had kneaded her breasts; all soaked with sweat, the shape of her burned into my flesh.

The only antidote to this infection was Hirningail, and of him I allowed myself liberal doses.

Amongst my men, decorated more by scars than by accolades, Hirningail shone as yet untarnished.  Indeed, the cut of his eagerness was so keen he appeared to me like a new blade - like my first blade had at age fourteen and made for my use alone.  I took it upon myself to teach him all the arts of war and, under regular polishing, brightened him further.  Our sparring - sometimes playful, more often fierce - drained me well and made the visions of his intended in my bed recede leaving, like the ebbing tide, only a faint residue of decay.  Yet to look at Hirningail was as to gaze in the back of the mirror, and know that I had changed.

If he became my shadow so I became his light, and often of a barracks eve might beg:  "my lord, they say you killed twenty Orc your first sortie ..."

But I would demur, or lead the talk astray that another might take up the tale aright.  And I know he admired me for it.  But it was not humility stayed my tongue:  it was impotence.  Hirningail knew nothing of true war; that men shaking with fear could perform remarkable feats while valiant others might die mewling for their mother in a pool of blood, bile and excrement; that each end was noble and base altogether.

In that I had no wish to school him, knowing with fatal certainty that school must open soon enough.

And so it did, but it was I the unknowing student and Edros rang the bell.

"I believe this belongs to you."

If in my captain's voice that night there was aught of a warning, I'd not the foresight to hear it; now in the silence of Tharbad it shivers the dark like a tocsin.  What little vision I had then groped ever eastward toward my brother in the woods of Ithilien.  How I longed to go to him, sit chilled by a struggling fire in the damp woods and counsel him long into the night but had only pen and paper with which to bolster his besieged spirit.  His letters recounting all our enemy's dealings and, to a brother's eye, his deeper wonderings and worries had often counseled me in my exile from the field.  Now, mingled with the maps on my barracks desk they told me well what I had known all along - the tide at last was rising.

Through this eddy of portents Edros blithely sailed, bearing a surprising cargo.

It was Hirningail, wavering at the edge of consciousness, one arm draped across my second's shoulders, one foot dragging scratching along the wooden floor.  Without ceremony, Edros dropped this burden across my desk and spun to kick shut the door.  My papers scattered, and even Mordor's end was overshadowed by the collapse of young Hirningail.

His face was pale like a drowned fish as I rose to examine him.  What circumstances had rendered him so completely undone I could well imagine - some unsanctioned duel, an errant blade - but as I passed a hand over his clammy brow he coughed up a belch and grumbled a few indiscernible words which told me all I needed to know.

Edros's eyes slipped groggily away from mine.  It was not from benefit of our long acquaintance I could see that he, too, was drunk.

"Did you do this?"

"I?"

Edros tossed me his bark of a laugh and dropped into the seat he'd by that time worn well into the shape of his backside.

"Nay, Captain, this is not my handiwork.  You can see it carries none of my subtlety!"

There are only two officers from whom I would brook such familiarity, and the other was at that moment slaying Orc in Ithilien.  To curb Edros's tongue would have been to lop it off in the cradle, and we'd neither of us then the strength to grip a sword.  But a glare did much to sober him and he straightened as he shrugged.

"I rescued him from a game of Cenaith."  Edros jerked his head back toward the door and then cringed, clearly regretting the gesture.

So!  Hirningail had undergone his first initiation at the hands of my officers; I knew their restless games had been more fierce of late.  Away from my eyes one moment and they had repaid the boy my favoritism.  I could only wonder, given Hirningail's present condition, if he had passed. 

Edros sniffed and spoke through a yawn:  "I fear he may not stand the tirith-avaur.  His heavy head will ring like the Tower bells at sunrise.  I knew you would not want me to leave him there to be crowed at in the dawn, or at the refectory table losing his breakfast, but knew not where to stow him."

So ... it came to me at last.

I knew but one answer to Edros's puzzle; only one path could I see from the heart of the maze.

So.

"I know a place."

She had sparked a light to answer our knocking, but needn't have bothered.  Wrapped merely in a shift and a shawl, Othuiel nonetheless shone candescent in my sight, her beauty losing none of its temptation in proximity.  If anything, her pull on me increased as I saw her eyes, meeting mine, widen in surprise born of recognition.  She made way for us at once.

We moved in swiftly, Edros and I, bearing our charge from the street.  Veterans of numerous campaigns and almost as many carousals, we had long ago learned to care for the bodies of our fallen comrades.  But I had never before waged a battle such as this:  to subdue my desire within that house.  I can only imagine how I might have greeted Othuiel, at last so close, had I not been then burdened by the still unknowing form of Hirningail.  I bent and took the full weight of him upon me.

I felt Othuiel slip past - a whisper, a sigh, and then a groan as she mounted the stairs.  I rose like smoke in her wake, drawn upwards by the heat of her passing.

Edros remained below.

Up the stairs and down a hall her taper led me, its jealous light seeming to fall on Othuiel alone.   Though her clothes conspired to show me little more than the silk-secreted girls in the bazaars of Brandarân, my practiced eye, like the candle, drew her from shadow.

Too soon we arrived at a largish room - their room, I imagined - sufficiently furnished yet spare and neatly kept:  a soldier's room.  I addressed myself to a generous bed, shrugged and (with some reluctance) discharged my duty upon it.

Thus I yielded up the care of Hirningail and made as to withdraw.

But could not.

As her hands busied themselves about him she held me - buttons sliding obligingly from their places, lacings almost sighing with the release of her touch.  In what passed as only a few dexterous moments - and with an absence of feminine fuss I must say that I found admirable - she had him wiped up and tucked down:  ready for the morrow's use. 

It was a tableau I could not resist, all the more, perhaps, for having no place in it.  To this realm of private mercies we have no right - rulers and motherless sons.  My own house, I knew, held no such comforts.

But what was there about my soldier could entrance this creature so?  My eye slid reluctantly from her to him.

That doting old nursemaid Sleep had washed from his face any evidence of the evening's defeat and soothed it to a mask of peace, both slack and strange.  Gone were the firmly set mouth, the determined jut to his chin, his ever eager eye - expressions grown to me almost more familiar than my own - and in their place now lay a sallow vacancy wholly unrecognizable.  Indeed, in that candle's inconstant and jaundiced light, much I had come to look for in Hirningail seemed wiped away, and what was left to me but a boy, no more ready for battle than the tin and painted soldiers Edros and I used to order about as children.

I know, it was a poor trick, a petty manifestation of my own discontent yet it repulsed me, and I turned, sickened, only to be caught by the piercing gaze of Othuiel.

She stood by the door watching me with a keenness I had only before imagined - instantly I was spitted and roasting.

Immediately her eyes met mine her cheeks blazed and her lids dropped like a veil, but not quickly enough:  for I had seen the crackling hunger that smoldered there. 

I longed to stoke that flame to raging.

In another moment she was gone, flickering down the corridor and away, yet in her furtive steps retreating I heard the flutter of a pinioned heart.  

So I knew.

Though in betrothal Hirningail had brought her north, Othuiel here remained untouched.  He had not availed himself of the gift I had proffered him.  

So.

In this, if nothing else, I had imagined my guard might outdo me, but it seemed I was mistaken.  Perhaps, the thought flickered, I had taught him too well.  Perhaps, if not for the example he made of me, Hirningail would have taken her to wife already; certainly, if not for his sake, I'd have taken her to bed long before.

I glanced a last time at Hirningail, restored now to the image I had spent these last months shaping, and watched as his face slipped finally into darkness.

Then I went after Othuiel.

"Now, don't worry about him, Mistress."  Like a cat caught napping, Edros arched his back off the wall as Othuiel and I alighted.  He smiled and cocked his head back up the stairs.  "Oh, his head may feel a few sizes too big tomorrow - and his stomach too small! - but it's nothing a bucket of cold water won't cure.  Just be sure to administer it on the inside as well as the out, and leave it empty where he can find it!"

But in the airless silence engendered above Edros's levity rang like a shield ill-made, a stroke mis-timed.

The final toll of my hour had struck.  Tacitly I ordered Edros to the curb and as always he heard my order clear.  The door closed behind us and I felt myself expand into the cool night and the White City again embrace us.  Edros and I passed through an arch and so away from Rath Lanc, but my thoughts slid back, and with every climbing step a plan grew in my heart.

While in more peaceable times Hirningail's temperance might seem more than honorable, now under the glare of Orodruin's flame it seemed to me all but profligate, a waste of that we fought to preserve.  In my haste to love him I had imagined Hirningail more politic than that.  One of us was a fool.

It is an irony keenly felt that the right we are most often accorded - to have what we want, when we want - is the one we must never allow. Success must never complain, the favored must never want.

But this would I take for myself.

The Enemy himself furnished me my excuse.  My brother's voice came crying to me out of the wilderness and I alone sent an answer echoing from the White Tower:  I sent him Hirningail.