fic: Triage
Title: Triage
Source: LotR
Characters: Halbarad, Aragorn, OCs-mostly, surgeon Valacar and Ranger Eledhril (on loan from dwimordene_2011). Other Houses of Healing employees get cameos.
Rating: Teen
Summary: Beyond the Door: on death, memory, and taking what you can get.
(And on AO3)
Note: Eledhril’s backstory (and much of Halbarad’s, in this 'verse) can be found in Dwimordene’s Semper Fidelis, which is preceded by Not in Our Stars. Valacar first appears in Fallen. So, if you wanted the exhaustive context, you would read:
1) Not in Our Stars
2) Semper Fidelis
and, at some point, Fallen. But you should be okay without doing that, too.
Triage
I. March 15
At the turn of the battle, Aragorn’s standard-bearer goes down. The black banner arcs towards the earth, and with it fall decades of duty and watchfulness and longing in the heart of the man who carries it. A movement at the edge of his vision, and then a crushing at his temple. Behind his eyes, something shatters.
Perhaps this is the very death Halbarad foresaw before passing through the Door. Or maybe the vision was vaguer, kinder, a dark shape crouched at the horizon. No one will will ever know, now.
Eledhril asked him, of course-couldn’t stop himself.
“What did you see?” he said, on the morning after Halbarad made his pronouncement. He’d waited until the others were out of earshot. Their exhalations were white in the chill as they stood packing kit into saddlebags, reaching up to stroke the flanks of nervous, stamping horses. “Beyond the Door, as you said?” Only then did his friend look up at him. “All our deaths lie beyond, somewhere-only a matter of distance,” Eledhril continued, with every word feeling more like a man scrabbling for purchase at a sheer rock-face.
And Halbarad-damn him-only gave a smile that did not reach his eyes, and clapped a hand to Eledhril’s shoulder. Then he turned away and made ready to follow their Chieftain.
***
They’ve nearly run out of black tags in the Houses. Valacar tells the healers on his ward to tear the cloth strips in halves; later, in quarters. The beds are full, and men and women work kneeling on the floor.
Even the little children know the rules of the triage: The ones who’ll live, no matter what; the ones who’ll heal, with help; the ones who’ll die, no matter what. These last are the ones for whom the tags are reserved.
A rumor’s out: the pain-draughts are gone, or very nearly so. The walking wounded reach into tunics and belt-pouches, bring out flasks for those about to go under the knife. I should have thought of that, Valacar thinks.
The man before him has an arrow through the side. Second group: will heal with help, maybe. The soldier’s sweating through his clothes, eyes rolled up white. No friend with a drink to succor this one.
Valacar glances around; he can’t be bothered with the sorting, right now.
“Fíriel!” he shouts to the woman crouched several bodies over, elbows-deep in blood. She’s tending to something that may have once been a man.
She doesn’t look up. “What?”
“Can you hold this lot together, for a while?”
“I can try.”
“That’s all I ask.”
Valacar turns his attention back to the wound in front of him. He steadies the arrow shaft in his left hand, snaps off the end with his right. It’s ugly and heavy, like everything that comes out of Mordor. The fletching is made from the coarse feathers of some bird-some beast-the likes of which he’s never seen. The man shudders, gasps.
“Almost through,” says Valacar. “Laeron!” His apprentice looks up from securing a black tag to some less (or perhaps more) fortunate body, and comes over. “Hold him for me,” Valacar says.
“Take a deep breath,” he tells the soldier, and moves quickly to push the arrow through to the other side of the man’s body. Steel sinks deeper into flesh, and the man grinds out a strangled moan, writhing out of Laeron’s grasp, and out of Valacar’s. “I said, hold him!” he says to the boy, who’s sitting there, pale, wide-eyed.
“I can’t.”
“You can!” The wound’s ruptured further; blood pools around the flagstones at Valacar’s knees. He grits his teeth, swears. “Put your weight into it, Laeron.”
The boy blinks, but does as he’s told. The man well nigh screams himself hoarse, but the arrowhead comes out, warm and barbed in Valacar’s hand. He stanches the wound and moves on to the next one.
***
On the field, Eledhril half-turns to see the standard falter against the raw sky. A fraction of a second, at best, but the man he’s fighting takes the opportunity to lunge for his neck. Eledhril steps back, parries. Urgency overmasters weariness, and he puts the force of a proper blow into his deflection. He grips the edge of his blade in his left hand, and, still holding the hilt in his right, shoves his sword crosswise into his opponent’s chest, knocking him to the ground. From there it’s an easy enough kill, one good thrust through the visor. By the time he pulls his sword up again, he’s looking towards where the banner once was.
Later he will only half-remember: the taste of blood filling his mouth, and smoke. The sound of his own breathing, ragged in his throat, louder to him than the shrills of horses, the cries of the wounded and dying. The dark standard pulls taut against the wind once more. Someone else has taken it up.
He will recall, imperfectly, his sword biting into mottled throats, striking mail and leather, the impact traveling up to the bones of his hand. This battle, like the one before it at Pelargir, is far from the half-lit skirmishes and ambushes he’s used to, fierce as those could be. They’re crowded back to back, shoulder to shoulder with friend and foe alike, each new advance sending deep shocks through the whole fray. He will remember stumbling, getting up, and stumbling again. And then the pain, fierce enough to drown out the other aches in his body, as something comes crashing in to his right side and the air is knocked from his lungs.
And of these half-rememberings, sharpest of all will be the glimpse of his friend at his feet, unmoving, and his face-Valar. And after that, after he looks away, he will still remember the idea of what is there, the thing that he does not want to see.
***
In late afternoon, a lull-if you can call it that. Valacar finds his apprentice sitting against the corridor wall, knees drawn up against his chest.
“Laeron?” The boy looks up. Valacar stoops, places a hand on the lad’s head, then on his brow. “You’re burning up.” That would explain his weak grip and dazed eyes earlier today. “Go and lie down.”
Laeron licks his lips, shakes his head. “I can stay. I’m all right.”
“You’re not. Go and lie down.”
“I-”
“Go.” Laeron takes a breath, then stands up in a slow, painful movement, and starts down the corridor, away from the ward. “There’s a good lad.”
Valacar rubs a hand over his face. Someone’s shouting, again-the respite is over.
One of the girls is resting near the entrance to the ward in much the same way Laeron was, the way a young child might crouch in an alcove during a game of hide and seek. Slivers of bare ankles show below the bloodstained hem of her dress. He likes her well enough- sweet-natured little thing, shy, but sturdy enough.
He says her name, and she looks up. “Laeron’s ill. Can you help me, now?” To her credit, she only nods and starts to get up, a bit unsteadily. He takes her arm and hauls her to her feet without much difficulty-this one will have to hold on with all of her weight, and more, he thinks.
***
Battle’s over. Smoke rises from the field, and to walk from one point to another is to grind a patchwork of hair and bone beneath the soles of your boots.
The rest of it’s over, too.
Eledhril stands, eyes burning. A stab at his chest every time he inhales. His hands open and close as if of their own accord. The knife is lying on the ground where he let it drop. He wants only oblivion, but that does not seem to be too easy in coming.
He remembers a long-ago day: a doe in a clearing, the arc of her body as she fled. Nights on the Road, beacons that burn all the brighter in memory for the darkness of the trials that surrounded them. The quicksilver ache of desire. All of it funnels East now, that and all the rest of it.
His breath catches in his throat. The pain in his ribs flares, as if in insult.
Aragorn’s moved on; he has business in the City. He splits the Company; to Eledhril’s surprise, he bids him go with his small party into Minas Tirith, or whatever’s left of it: “You’d do well to see the healers.”
He wants to refuse, but he knows he owes some measure of obedience. What’s more, he’s forced to admit that the pain in his chest and arm will render him of little use here on the field. And so Eledhril casts a final glance at the one particular body before him, a well-worn grey cloak the only shroud afforded it, as with so many corpses that have preceded it. The men left behind will keep watch over it. Death on the Road is an ordinary thing. You mourn on your feet.
He trails silently through the splintered gash where the city’s gates once stood-follows behind, not unlike the shades that followed them to Pelargir.
He’s been to Minas Tirith, before, as trade allowed, but never higher than the Second or Third Circle. He recognizes nothing, now. The rubble is grimed with blood and threaded with corpses: the City companies cut off from retreat, and the orcs and Men they managed to take with them.
Aragorn, mercifully, addresses him no further, keeps moving ahead as if only yesterday he were Thorongil of the White City. Eledhril’s in no mood to speak with him, nor with his Elven or Dwarvish companions. Like many in the Angle, he’s long admired the things that are foreign about Aragorn, the Firstborn qualities that he bears without effort or affectation. And sometimes-and more often than not on Halbarad’s behalf-Eledhril has resented them, as if by this token Aragorn can set himself distant from his surroundings. That’s necessary, he supposes, given who the man is-a gift, even, but now Eledhril finds that this grates at him worse than ever.
He can watch this scene as if watching someone else: here is a man in a grey cloak, covered in blood, only some of which is his own. Here he is, following his captain and his captain’s odd cohort through a stone city that teeters on the brink of the abyss.
As they climb higher, the destruction abates. He can catch glimpses of the city that once was, emerging piecemeal from the wreckage. And then, on the Sixth Circle, they pass through a wide archway and into a high-ceilinged space that is crowded with bodies, both standing and prone. Better to have stayed and be tended to on the field, he thinks, surveying the confusion.
But the healers have kept some order here, elusive though it may seem at first. After some time, a man in a blood-spattered grey surcoat pulls him aside and sits him down on a bench against the wall. He takes one look at the crescent gash in Eledhril’s right arm, and says, “That will want stitches.”
At that he only nods; it is very far from the worst he’s endured, of course, but it gapes red and the bleeding has not stopped. He rolls up his sleeve as best he can. A girl sets down a basin of water beside him-clean, as far as he can tell. She soaks a cloth, wrings it out.
“I’ll manage,” he says, taking it from her. She doesn’t argue. The wet cloth stings against the wound, and after a few moments the water in the basin has turned pink. She kneels on the floor, sitting back on her heels, uncaring of the grime and blood.
“You’re not from here, are you?” she asks. Her gaze wanders furtively over his face, the clasp on his cloak. She looks painfully young. He recalls, now, the way Gondorians look, their resemblance to the folk of the Angle; same coloring, at least, if somewhat darker, and perhaps something slighter about them, more thin and elusive. She takes his silence as a negative and goes on: “Are you from the North, then?”
“I’m not from here,” he says.
“The rumors have it that the King has come from the North,” she persists. Her grey eyes are shadowed, and full of ill-concealed expectation. To call it hope would be generous.
“Take care what rumors you heed, lass,” he says. And however young she is, she is old enough to know a hint when one is given her. She takes the basin away, and the man-surgeon, he supposes-returns and casts another glance at Eledhril.
“Ribs?” he asks after a moment, and Eledhril nods. Even as he sits he is holding himself stiffly, favoring his right side.
“Cracked, I think,” Eledhril says.
“Take a deep breath.” Eledhril does, and the man kneels by him and carefully gets a hand under his blood-caked overtunic, presses a palm to his side. Eledhril grits his teeth. It’s odd, being tended by a stranger, someone unfamiliar with the nature and breadth of his scars. “Broken,” the man amends, withdrawing just as quickly. “Naught to do but tend to the pain.” He’s already threading his needle.
He makes it sound easy enough.
And, like so many healers-friends, brothers-at-arms, most of them-between Bree and Laketown and Dale, the Minas Tirith surgeon hands him a strip of leather and says, “Bite down.”
And he does.
II: March 18
At some point when becoming a surgeon, you must make a sharp turn; if you can’t come out whole on the other side, you’re useless. You start by being attentive to the pain of others. But then you must just as quickly learn to disregard that pain. The knife brooks no patience, much less pity. If you treat the body lying before you as just that-a body, a soft ordinary thing that spasms and screams-then you will flinch. And more often than not, hesitation will mean more suffering than the absolute necessity. It can mean death.
So you narrow your vision and stop up your ears. It’s a delicate combination of knowledge and ignorance, courage and cowardice. You keep it all balanced somewhere, stretched taut in the lines between wrists and heart.
Valacar worries now, because there are still times he doubts that his apprentice is safely around that bend. He has talent enough, and the Valar know he works hard, but at times Valacar can still sense hesitancy in him. Sometimes he worries that he’s been too gentle with the boy; other men won’t think twice to raise their voice or their hand to an apprentice, should they think it’s called for. That’s never been Valacar’s way of doing things, though. And what’s more, he almost never thinks it’s called for, shouting in the triage notwithstanding.
But perhaps in the end it’s only Laeron’s nature. Anyway, he doesn’t have Valacar’s advantages in this regard. By Laeron’s age, Valacar had already learned through painful trial and error what was necessary to protect himself, and if any of that has helped him in surgery, then it was a happy coincidence. Laeron, as far as he can tell, has no need of such self-defense, and for that he counts the boy to be very lucky.
Lucky, and now very possibly foolhardy.
It’s early morning; the Captains have held their council, and Laeron’s packing up his things. He’s volunteered for the march-volunteered for the Morannon. Valacar leans in the doorway of the surgery.
“You don’t have to,” he says, finally. He realizes he’s not sure whether the boy’s ever even left Minas Tirith, before.
Laeron turns around, eyes hard with insult. “I know that.” He’s already angry with Valacar, of course, though they won’t discuss it. “And why shouldn’t I go?”
The obvious answer is that he will most certainly die, violently, along with every other man in that little host. But, of course, Valacar himself will most certainly die here, violently, along with everyone left behind. So he only says, “You’ve never seen battle.”
“And I’d never been in a city under siege, until one week ago.”
To which Valacar also bites his tongue against the obvious response. They’re silent for several minutes, Laeron studiously ignoring him as he rolls kit into cloth. Coldness from his apprentice is a novel thing-bewilderment, he’s sometimes sensed from the boy, and an almost painful desire to please. But hostility is new. Perhaps his pride will afford him a little protection, Valacar thinks; a very little, at the end, but it will be better than nothing at all.
“Valacar?” And now Laeron’s standing in front of him, hand extended. Valacar remembers the day he’d been brought to him, a fidgety boy of sixteen who would only call him “Sir.” Maybe Valacar’s wrong; maybe Laeron really ought to go and meet whatever fate is in store for him, flinching or not. Probably better than awaiting it in this wretched city.
Valacar clasps the proffered hand.
“Thank you,” says Laeron, and his expression has gone closed, now. “For everything. I’ll see you soon.”
It takes him a few moments to decide what he ought to say. Then: “I’m proud of you.” The boy nods, even smiles a little. It is the truth, though Valacar’s never said as much, not out loud, in the three years he’s known him. “Take care, Laeron.”
“And you.”
And then he’s gone.
***
Holding his reins, Aragorn speaks to Mithrandir, nodding at something the wizard says. Close at hand and in the distance, the backdrop is all men. Lines and columns of them, mounted and on foot. Horses stamp and shake their manes; mail and bridles make muted clinks, and there’s the hiss of swords being half-drawn, checked for no good reason, sheathed again. Banners float in the breeze above helmeted heads, above the tips of spears set end to earth.
All waiting on his Chieftain’s word, Eledhril thinks. His Chieftain, the King. This is what Aragorn has waited and readied for all these years. The Dunedaín have waited along with him as they waited alongside his forbears, their lives as a long-held breath. For this, Eledhril and all his fellows have faithfully kept the watch, pacing trade routes and sleeping huddled against the cold. Eyes and ears never entirely shut, longing for home. To keep just the idea of the Kingdoms alive, they have cursed and rubbed their hands together before meager fires, and shed their blood-and died.
And yet Eledhril counted himself fortunate to be in Bree when Halbarad came through with the call: the message had come by way of Imladris, he said, from Lady Galadriel. Aragorn would soon have need of them. Eledhril counted himself fortunate to be among the few who could be gathered at that moment, because they would ride with an end in their sights, away from the ever-shrinking patches of safe ground in Eriador where time and blood seemed to be ebbing away from them. He counted himself fortunate, as well, to be able to ride with Halbarad one last time.
His friend bore Arwen’s gift and message over the miles, and down through the plains of Rohan, riding beside her brothers. Bore her gift, as far as Eledhril could tell, without any bitterness, though the irony must have been all too clear. For his part, Eledhril did not dare chance a look or a word about that; he knew better-had known better, for a long time. He only followed.
And, as Eledhril always knew he would, one way or another, Halbarad had followed Aragorn to the last-followed him through the Door, and beyond. As far as he could go.
Now Aragorn will say a word, and these men-all the remaining able men of the West-lands, more or less-will follow him in a gamble whose outcome rests on the shoulders of a perian. Who may very well be dead, already. They won’t speak of this last, this morning; they don’t need to. It’s evident as the bone and ash that litter the field.
Eledhril will not go with them. Were it only his arm and all the rest of the cuts and bruises that troubled him, he’d ride today. It’s the ribs on his right side that keep him from mounting his horse; he can scarce draw his sword, much less heft it, even with the aid of his left hand. He knows better than to argue-even in the rearguard he’ll be more hindrance than help. Besides himself-and Halbarad, of course-only one other member of the Grey Company will not join the host: Andir, who now lies in the Houses of Healing. A spearpoint went deep into his thigh, and though the surgeons managed to save his leg, it’s still doubtful whether he will be able to walk again without a limp.
More doubtful, still, that he will heal enough to walk at all, in the time that seems to be left to them.
Eledhril will not follow his Chieftain, and beneath fractured bones his heart aches because of this. Riding a few days more with his Company, falling beside them in battle: while these things are not exactly sweet prospects, they are palatable, especially compared to the alternatives. And more than that, the pain is of something left unfinished. The last few miles of the road lie beyond him still; he will not be able to complete what he and Halbarad began together.
For that, he will have to trust Aragorn, who, for the moment, at least, still stands before him. He steps away from Mithrandir, now, and walks towards Eledhril.
“Soon?” Eledhril asks.
“The muster is ready,” Aragorn nods. “We’ll not delay much longer. You’ve your instructions.”
“And will keep them as best I can.” His instructions, and Andir’s: should the Host fail, they’re to return north to alert the remaining Ranger companies, clear any remaining folk from the Angle, and join up with Elrond’s folk-what is left of them, at any rate. It is a sound enough plan, with contingencies and fallbacks should the first layer of things prove impossible. And still, Eledhril can see that it’s built on a lattice of ifs, first and foremost being, if we yet live. Long have the folk of the North prided themselves on their status as survivors, but there are limits to these things. Aragorn, he knows, can see that, too.
“I know it. Though the lack of you in the ranks will be sore.”
“Aragorn-” he begins, but his Chieftain only places a hand on his shoulder, leans in and says something in a voice lowered so that only Eledhril can hear. And then, to his surprise, Aragorn pulls him in to a brief embrace. “We’ll meet again.”
“Aragorn,” he says, again. The other man has already half turned away from him now, but he pauses, looks back. Eledhril lifts his chin slightly. “Deal them some hurt, will you?”
If Aragorn’s smile is mirthless, his eyes are yet alive. “As best I can.”
Aragorn will ride under the banner woven by his betrothed, the banner that slipped from Halbarad’s grasp when he went down on the Pelennor. And though he stands dark and solemn as always, Eledhril can see what compels these men to line up and follow him east. Men have always followed him: he’s the Hope, and it burns at the heart of him. Grim, and hard and knowing at the edges, but there, nonetheless. It survives in dark places, all the brighter for that.
And though Eledhril can see that-can admire it, even-it is not a spark that can catch in his own heart. All the embers there have gone cold.
And then he turns away from all this, thinking of Halbarad. Of Halbarad, and Aragorn, and of Arwen, and then of his own wife, their sons. His mother and father. And then a blankness, behind which strands of memory and want twine together, resting not quite at the forefront of his thoughts, but skimming at the edges. Just behind his eyes.
It’s sort of a second sight, this thing behind his eyes-not like Halbarad’s, of course. Eledhril doesn’t need any foresight to know their ends. He’s looked into the darkness, seen all he needed to see. And though he has plans to carry out, the thing behind his eyes wants only to rest. To stop. It cases the heights of the walls, notes the weight and sharpness of the daggers Eledhril still carries on him.
There are plans, it seems to say, and then there are plans.
***
At the edge of the gardens Valacar leans forward, resting his forearms on a stone ledge. The field is the color of ash. Beyond it, the Shadow’s a smear that obscures the horizon. As always, he tries to discern shapes in it; as always, it proves impossible.
“Fine sight.”
Valacar starts, turns; he’s heard no approaching footsteps.
He recovers, recognizing the speaker. “One of the joys of living here,” he replies, nodding at the man. “Your arm?”
“Mending. Thank you.” The man leans carefully against the wall, left side to the ledge, of course. “Strange that you’d remember a wound so small from so great a battle.”
“Only because there were so few of your folk on hand.” He glances at the clasp of the man’s cloak, the star pinned to the left shoulder. He only realized afterwards with whom he’d been dealing. “How is your friend?”
“Mending. Your people did well by him.”
“We try.”
They’re silent for several moments, and Valacar looks away again. Then he hears the hiss of a match striking. The other man is putting a light to the bowl of a wooden pipe.
“Do you smoke?” Valacar shakes his head. The man shakes out the match in his right hand, smiling wanly. “Foreign ways.” He lifts the stem to his mouth, breathes in and holds for a beat, then exhales smoke.
“Northern ways,” Valacar says, and the other nods confirmation. “You rode with the King?”
“For a ways.”
“Do you know him well?”
The other exhales anew. The smoke smells sweet, but vaguely so, like something half-remembered. “I’ve known him many years.”
“And he is Isildur’s heir?”
“He is.”
Valacar considers this a few moments. “And what manner of man is he, this Aragorn? This healer?”
The answer comes seemingly without irony: “He is Aragorn.”
Valacar can’t help but smile. “Is that a good thing?”
“Perhaps.”
The man turns towards him, pipe cradled in his left hand. He extends his right, not without some pain, Valacar can see. “Your name?”
“Valacar.”
In spite of his wounds, the man’s grip is firm. “Eledhril.”
“Well met.” Valacar studies the newcomer, who returns his stare through tendrils of smoke. He’s got a sharpness to his stance that seems unrelated to his recent wound, as if he were balancing some ill-weighted object. His eyes are rimmed red and he holds Valacar’s gaze a beat longer than necessary, until Valacar glances away, unsettled.
Eledhril indicates the pipe with a slight inclination of his head. “And have you any vices?”
Valacar looks at him again, considers the question. “The usual,” he replies. He looks at the pipe in the man’s left hand, and then at the hand itself, at the plain gold band on his finger.
“The usual,” Eledhril repeats, with what might be a half-smile. “Me, too.” And then his breath catches, and he coughs several times, half doubled over and bracing himself against the ledge for support.
“All right?” Valacar asks as the other man straightens himself, right hand over his ribs, breaths shallow.
Eledhril nods, grimacing. “As you said; naught to do but tend the pain.”
And though the Siege is over, the heavy-footed waltz of the triage is still pounding in Valacar’s mind. He tries to sort this man, now. When he first came to the Houses, he’d have been a One: will live. Ones can wait. But there’s something strange in his affect, now, at once vague as the pipe smoke and sharp-edged as a freshly-cracked bone. He could be a Two, Valacar thinks: might live, with help. But maybe even a Three.
And then he turns his surgeon’s eye on himself, tries to determine what place in the triage he’d occupy. But the system is failing him. He doesn’t know, anymore. And so he speaks again, quickly, because he knows if he waits a few moments more he’ll change his mind: “I may have something for that.”
The other cocks a brow. “Rumor says the pain draughts are gone.”
The system, Valacar thinks, has been failing him for a very long time, now. He shrugs, tries his best-a surgeon’s best, which is not inconsiderable-to look unconcerned.
“There are always alternatives,” he says.
Eledhril considers him for a long moment, exhales more smoke.
“No,” he says. “Not always.” His farewell is a brief incline of his head to one side, and then he turns and walks away from the city walls.
***
Eledhril sits with Andir. The covers on the narrow bed are bunched and wrinkled where Andir’s fists have clenched. Neither man is much in the mood to talk. Even if they were, there’s nothing Eledhril particularly cares to discuss.
After a time Andir sleeps, pain draughts or no. Eledhril, listless, wanders through the wards, sifting through rumors and murmurs in the glances of conversation he hears. The pain in his ribs catches and needles at him like a dog intent at his heel. Instead of obscuring the ache that is lodged deeper in his chest, it seems to have joined with it so that he can scarce tell where the one ends and the other begins. In the corridors he seems to come up against dead end after dead end, doors barred and locked. He turns around, doubles back, longing for the weight of his sword balanced in his hand.
There are plans, and then there are plans.
***
At the third knock on his door, Valacar decides to pour another drink instead of answering. It is not a difficult choice to make. There are only so many people who could be stopping at his rooms at this moment, and he knows that he does not want to speak to any of them. At the fourth and fifth knocks, he is rotating his glass on the table, and the sound continues, heavy and deliberate. Not impatient.
He waits, takes another sip, decides to answer. Enough long moments have passed so that he might expect his caller to have given him up for absent, but when he slides the bolt and pulls the door open, the Ranger is standing there.
“Tell me about the alternatives,” says Eledhril.
***
From the look on Valacar’s face, Eledhril gets the impression that he will not be let in. But then the other man simply steps aside, gesturing towards a chair within.
The surgeon’s rooms are small and sparsely furnished, and the flickering light from the fire in the grate make them seem closer than they actually are. Tables, mantle, shelves; Eledhril’s first impression is one of neat and mostly bare surfaces. Not married; almost certainly. The only things that call for notice are several shelves full of well-bound books, and, on a narrow table, a collection of bottles of various heights and colors. Still, enough sign of permanent occupancy to give him the small pang of envy that he still feels now and again, as all Rangers do from time to time when wandering into other people’s dwellings on the Road.
“How did you find me?” Valacar asks, after he finishes bolting the door. He’s standing, arms crossed, apparently watching Eledhril as the latter scans the room. “Please sit,” he adds, before Eledhril can answer.
Eledhril obliges, settles down in one of the chairs next to the broad table. “I asked one of your healers where the surgeons have their quarters. And then only one door with light beneath it.” A pause, and then he adds, “Your name did not come up.”
“I see.” Valacar considers him for a moment more, then takes a glass from a side table and places it before Eledhril. He sits down opposite him, and, without asking after preference or desire, nearly fills the glass with deep amber liquid from the thick-glassed bottle between them. “Not a fair match for poppy, of course,” he says, “but it has its own curative properties.”
Eledhril raises an eyebrow. “Alternatives?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
With the barest hint of a smile, Eledhril raises his glass. “To ‘alternatives.’”
***
Eledhril remarks on the bitterness of the liquor, but it does not seem to be a complaint. He is a dark, heavy presence, a counterweight at the other side of the table. They drain their glasses in near silence.
As Valacar refills both of their drinks, Eledhril says, “Do your people come from the City?”
Valacar puts down the bottle, shaking his head. “I grew up in the south. In Amroth. I was apprenticed to a surgeon in the Houses.”
The other man swallows. “How do you find it?”
“Minas Tirith? It’s a strange place.” He pauses. “The children grow up too anxious, on the edge of the darkness.”
“Yet you stayed.”
For a moment, Valacar considers laying out a complete explanation. But then he shrugs. “I haven’t any children.”
“Is that all?” Eledhril snorts.
“It’s enough,” he replies. When the other man says nothing more, he asks, “And what of your home?”
“It can be very cold.”
Valacar waits for him to go on, but he says nothing else.
“Is that all?” Valacar asks.
“Enough.” And this time it is Eledhril who reaches for the bottle to refill their glasses.
***
The surgeon is right, Eledhril considers, as common sense dictates he would be. While the drink does not leach away the pain, it blunts and warms the edges of it. Takes away some of the urgency. At the same time it does nothing for the pain lying in wait behind the pain, every stab of it, and the thing that urges him forward in spite of everything. He drinks more. So does Valacar. They empty the first bottle, move on to a second.
“And if the City is here,” Eledhril hears himself saying, resting his left hand on the table in a fist, “then they should be here by now.” With his eyes he measures out a distance across the worn wooden surface, then taps another spot with his right forefinger. “As the crow flies,” he adds. “And I expect they’ll camp here, for the night.”
Valacar blinks, then asks, “And the Morannon?”
Eledhril thinks a few moments, then pushes the empty bottle to the far edge of the table. “Here,” he says. “No, wait.” He pushes it a few inches to his right. “Here.” A pause. “You can check that, if you want. On a real map.”
“I believe you,” says Valacar. “Do you always do that?”
“Do what?”
“Carry a map in your head?”
“Yes.” He considers the other. “And what do you carry in your head, Valacar?”
“Nothing.” Valacar is refilling both glasses once more, sets down the second bottle with an unnecessary heaviness, perhaps to match the other man’s placement of the Morannon.
“Quick to reply,” Eledhril observes. “What have you got? Bodies?”
“Haven’t we all?”
“Some of us have more than others. Some of us have particular ones.” When Valacar says nothing, Eledhril nods, as if this confirms something. “No matter, then,” he goes on, his voice seeming to float, unconcerned, on the surface of the drink. “We’ll all be corpses soon enough.”
Valacar leans forward, resting his forearms on the table. His sleeves are rolled up, and in the firelight Eledhril can discern the pale, unmarked skin of a man who has never seen battle. Or never faced it head-on, leastways. The surgeon glances towards the empty bottle that Eledhril has set up to stand in for the Enemy’s gates. Then he meets Eledhril’s eyes, and asks, “How soon?”
Now it is Eledhril’s turn to shrug. “I couldn’t rightly say. Days. A week, at the very most.”
Valacar nods slightly. “Do you wish you had gone with them?” he asks.
“Yes.” He pauses. “I would take the hastier death, if that is what you mean.”
“I didn’t say that,” Valacar says.
“You meant it.”
“I-” he begins, but Eledhril cuts him off. Behind the heavy-tongued fog of the liquor, he can feel some part of his mind clearing, some elemental part of himself.
“All the Grey Company riding into the maw, beneath their last banner. Try to imagine that. All but the two they left in your Houses.” He drains his glass, then adds, “And the one they buried before your Gate.” A pause. “Did you know that?”
“Did I know what?” Valacar asks quietly.
“That Aragorn lost his standard-bearer. Well, of course not. One more body among the thousands. There were the funeral fires, yes, but we wouldn’t have him burned. We saw to that.”
“Your friend.”
“Yes.” Eledhril stares at the other man. Caution around outsiders is one of the many rules of his life, as it is for all Rangers. Outside of the Angle, beyond whispered conversations with your fellows, little or nothing is shared. Or rather, nothing of true importance; a man might choose to share his bed on the Road, transactions of coin or favor, and his trusted fellows turn a blind eye. But beyond that, there are things that are perhaps easier said to a stranger.
“They’ve gone to the heart of it, you know,” Eledhril goes on. “I’ve only caught glances. And we’ve fought against it so long, and all the blood we’ve given has never been enough.”
“In the North?”
“Yes, in the North. Eriador, the Iron Hills. And in the Eastfold, and Harlond and Pelargir. And it’s never been enough. All of your blood, and all of ours, won’t sate it. The best of us will not sate it.” His voice is steady enough, but he’s breathing a little harder, now, and he is thinking again of Halbarad. “He was Sighted, our standard-bearer. We stood before a door, and he saw his death beyond it, and all the same he passed through to meet it.”
“What was his name?”
“Halbarad.” Eledhril pauses; not a week buried and already the name feels strange on his lips, as if it is something he has whispered to himself in an empty room. Then he smiles. “You don’t believe me.”
“I…” Valacar shakes his head, returns the smile. “I don’t know. Perhaps not.”
“It doesn’t matter. He followed. He followed our Captain, to meet his death.” He takes a breath, then: “What would you call that?” His voice is low.
“Courage,” Valacar replies, after a moment or two. He stares into his glass.
“Love.”
“I see.”
“No.” Eledhril leans back in his chair, arms folded, and he is no longer smiling. “I don’t think you do.”
And then he takes out a dagger.
***
Valacar sits up in his chair. He has often thought of his life after the age of thirteen or so as a series of ill-advised choices. This evening does not seem to be a break from this pattern.
The dagger, plain, brown-sheathed, lies on the table between them. Eledhril has his right hand resting over it, fingers splayed. For a moment the Ranger looks at it, then glances towards the empty bottle near the table’s edge. He slides the weapon a few inches nearer to it.
“And this, I suppose,” he says, “is near where they would make camp. For the last time.”
“What do you want?” Valacar asks, without taking his gaze from the dagger.
The other seems to ignore his question. “Good man, are you? Know where to cut.” He takes his hand off the dagger and leans back once more. Any relief Valacar might have felt is eclipsed by bafflement.
“What do you-”
“I heard you were taken off the rounds after the Siege.”
“What of it?”
“The wards are still full. They’d not take an able man off the rounds unless he had a dire charge against him. Simple enough to see.”
Valacar says nothing.
Eledhril says, “Murder or rape?”
“What?”
“What’s the charge against you? How many bodies do you carry around in your head?”
Valacar takes a deep breath. “You need to leave.”
Eledhril does not pick up his glass, or place his fingers on the dagger. Nor does he stare into the hearth, or shift in his chair. He does not make any move to go.
“I did none of those things,” Valacar says, very quietly. “One corpse made of my own intent. But not murder.” He is surprised to feel a small measure of relief as he says this. He shakes his head. “The pain draughts were gone. I had a girl helping me. I sent her to the gardens.”
“Act of mercy.”
“For him, or for her?”
“Both. Him, mostly.”
Valacar smiles mirthlessly. “Here, we don’t name it as such. In the Houses, many would call it breaking our oath.”
“We would call it keeping ours,” Eledhril says evenly. “A last act of friendship. In some ways, the greatest.”
Valacar realizes his throat has gone dry. He takes another drink. “That’s well for you, then.” And then everything seems to hit him in a wave, and the room tilts slightly, this way and that. “He was a stranger to me. And my people don’t take oaths lightly,” he adds.
“Nor do mine. Not at all.”
“Why are you here?”
“Why did you ask me here?” Eledhril counters in the same even tone.
“And do you make a habit of breaking any oaths?” Valacar asks, ignoring that last. He has never considered himself an exceptionally brave man, not in any of the ways that matter. Still, he is a good and steadfast asker of questions. And that must count for something.
“Many men,” says Eledhril, slowly, “would take ill to such a question.”
“Do you?”
“What would you do if I did?”
There is the sound of chair legs scraping on stone. In what seems like a single motion, the Ranger stands, crosses to the other side of the table and seizes Valacar by the front of his shirt, hauling him none too gently to his feet. A clatter as Valacar’s chair falls backwards to the floor. Eledhril’s eyes are rimmed red, the grey reflecting firelight.
“What would you do?” he repeats, his words still coming slowly.
With the moment-clarity of the intoxicated, several things occur to Valacar at once. He notices that, although he is struggling to breathe, the other man still clutches him by his garments and not by his throat. He also notices that, in the ensuing moments, they seemed to have switched from the second bottle to a third without him registering much difference. And he remembers the thing that he has known all along, that even footsteps away from death, the body is made to grope and clutch at whatever life is left to it.
His right hand is clamped instinctively around the other man’s wrist, but his left is free. He drives a fist into Eledhril’s ribs, on the side that, as best as he remembers, the worst of the wound is.
Eledhril drops him, doubles over. Valacar, released, staggers back, gasping. He takes the dagger from the table, unsheathes it.
The Ranger’s sunk to the floor, hand over his ribs.
“What do you want?” Valacar repeats. The weapon is heavy in his hand, and, he can see now, as sharp and well cared-for as any surgeon’s scalpel. Of course it would be.
Eledhril’s only reply is a look that shocks Valacar not only for its lack of enmity, but also for the sheer hunger and taunt in it. Not for Valacar, himself, it seems, but for what he might stand for at this moment.
Valacar sets both dagger and sheath back on the table, not bothering to fit them back together.
Still breathing hard, he rights the chair that has fallen to the floor, slumps back in it.
“If you are death-wished in such a manner, you’d best look elsewhere for satisfaction,” he says.
“No more death-wished than you, I’d wager,” the other responds hoarsely, hand still at his side.
“Choosing the hastier way out.” The chair seems to have gotten away from him again. He sits down on the floor, opposite the other man.
“If that’s what you mean.”
“At any rate,” says Valacar, realizing only now that is very lightly slurring his words, “what would I have done with the body?” When Eledhril says nothing, he goes on: “No, you wouldn’t have thought of that, would you?” He feels his heartbeat slowing down.
***
Eledhril thinks that he can stare down the distance of the rest of his life, as if looking down a short corridor. All hewn of stone, like this City, the thatch and wooden beams of the Angle far behind him. The thing behind his eyes seems to have quieted for the moment, but still, all he can think is: Couldn’t have held out any longer, could you, Hal? Couldn’t have gone any farther?
After all, he’d only known what they all had, waiting for Aragorn to summon up the oath-breakers: that they would never bring anything home again.
He clears his throat, and says: “I would not have taken ill to the question.”
“What question?”
“About the oath-breaking.”
“Look,” Valacar says, and he moves closer and takes Eledhril’s left wrist, pushes up the sleeve, holding his arm elbow-down. His hands are rougher than Eledhril might have expected, but free of calluses. “If you want to make it fast, you do it like this.” With one finger he traces an almost-steady line down the center of Eledhril’s forearm, the way that Eledhril traced the armies’ route over the tabletop. “And then the other,” Valacar continues. “But you knew that.”
Eledhril did know that, of course. But he says nothing.
“Here, not as good,” Valacar says, and taps a finger lightly over the left side of Eledhril’s chest. His left hand is still at Eledhril’s wrist. “Too easy to miss, if you do it yourself. A surgeon wouldn’t even trust himself. This won’t work so well, either,” he continues, and moves his fingers to the hollow at the base of Eledhril’s throat, then just below his jaw, where his pulse lives, strong as ever.
And Eledhril leans forward and kisses him.
***
In a sharp breath of liquor aftertaste and tobacco, Valacar recognizes this at once for what it is, knows it well. As much a dare and a counter-move as it is a kiss. Seeing if the other will flinch, will step away or to shrug off the moment. Valacar’s got some long-ago, poorly-lit experiences with girls, from before he realized that for him, contact and curiosity would never turn into desire. He has never loved women, but somehow he knows that even if he did, he would never kiss one in this way.
He breaks it off, stares at Eledhril, tries to discern the look in the other man’s eyes.
He can feel himself standing at the edge, blinking down into the darkness, as everyone must, these days.
And then he leans in again, kisses back. Eledhril reaches around to the nape of his neck, pulls him closer. There are all the expected things, the harsh breathing, the fumbling to get hands under clothing, the promising warmth of living skin. They’re still on the floor, on their knees, awkward as a couple of boys. Valacar braces himself for balance, puts a hand in the wrong place, and Eledhril winces. Valacar draws back, almost smiles for the absurdity of it.
“This” he says, pausing for air, “is only going to hurt, isn’t it?”
“Most likely,” Eledhril replies, and pulls him in again.
***
Eventually, one or other of them-Eledhril will not remember, later-says, Enough, and pulls them both up from the floor and over to the bed in the corner. The same wound that now prevents him from drawing his sword is also proving a hindrance in other ways. Valacar undoes buckles and laces for both of them; Eledhril extracts daggers one by one.
“Do you need all of those?” Valacar asks as the last one is pushed aside.
Eledhril responds as he always does, on the occasions-now exceedingly rare-that that question is put to him: “Sometimes.”
The fire has all but died in the hearth. Neither one bothers to shift the embers, and a slow chill creeps in. The room has gone dark. Eledhril pushes the other man down on his back, grips his shoulders, dips his head down to kiss the skin of his neck, tasting sweat. He feels the body beneath his shift and strain, and memories rise to the surface one by one, as he thought they might. As he knew they would.
Unlike Halbarad, though, Valacar seems to grapple with himself as much as with the man in bed with him. He keeps his voice in his throat, breathes through his nose, bites down-on his own lip, on Eledhril’s shoulder. Eledhril looks down at him as best he can in the darkness.
“Are you always this quiet?”
What might be a surprised moment of hesitation, then says, “Yes,” and pushes up against him. Eledhril draws in his breath, pins one of Valacar’s wrists lightly against the mattress.
“Walls here are thick,” he persists.
“Not thick enough,” the other man replies, and presses his mouth against Eledhril’s collarbone, running his free hand down his chest, then holds it against his hip, pausing before going lower.
Eledhril shivers, lets him continue a few moments, then says: “Say something.”
“Your standard-bearer,” Valacar replies. “Did you love him?”
“Yes,” says Eledhril, and goes in for another kiss.
As he did the first time, Valacar pulls away. Then he takes Eledhril’s left hand in his, places his thumb over the plain gold band on his ring finger.
“Do you love her?”
“Yes.” Another kiss, harder.
Valacar props himself up on an elbow, pushes Eledhril over. “Take a deep breath,” he says.
And after that, neither of them says anything at all. They work their way into the silence as best they can, until things are as they have always been: bodies moving against one another and clinging to one another and trying to carve out some sort of space in the chill and the darkness in which they can live, if only for a little while. There is a strange sort of makeshift tenderness to the intimacy of people who meet only once or twice behind bolted doors or closed drapes. A sort of apology for not being able to offer more.
You take what you can get.
***
And sometimes all you can offer is an act of mercy.
But this is not precisely what Eledhril thought as the ashes and dust of the Siege were still warm on the ground before the ruined Gate of Minas Tirith. Not precisely what he thought when Aragorn placed the dagger in his hand, asked him if he might do what needed to be done.
And then there was the thing he did not want to see. The feeble rise and fall of the chest beneath the brave failure of field dressings. And then above that the red, shattered ruin of the face, eyes dulled yet somehow alive within the wreckage. Somewhere behind them, all the duty and watchfulness and longing.
He did not think about Halbarad’s mother and sister, somewhere far north. Nor did he think about Halbarad’s love for their Captain, doomed only in some ways. Eledhril did not think about Halbarad’s service on the Road, about all the scars he bore. The courage and faith and the long grey vigil.
He did not think about his own wife, nor about his children. He did not even think of the smell of pipe smoke, nor the smell of flax rotting in the Bruinen, nor that long final tumble into bed, the memory sharp and sweet with pain after all these years.
No time. Swiftness was, after all, the point of mercy.
Instead he thought of the handle of his bow in his hand, the arc of the doe’s body as she fled the clearing. The moment just before he and Halbarad fell, together, for the first time.
He pushed in the knife, drew it out just as quickly. Eyes widened and glassed over. Breath hitched once more, then ceased. Eledhril’s world folded up to a sharp point, and he let the dagger fall from his grip.
He turned on Aragorn then, needed the relief of striking at someone who could hit back. And because he knew that from then on he would sleep with ghosts in his bed. Not the shades that trailed after them to fulfill their oath after Aragorn summoned them, but subtler things, trailing tendrils of memory and regret. And because he knew then that Halbarad truly had passed beyond a Door, was now in a place that was barred and locked. He knew that this would be the beginning of his life without Halbarad, a life that he did not know at all how to live, no matter if there were only a few days of it ahead of him.
Aragorn turned away the blows, caught Eledhril’s fists and pushed them down. Eledhril remembers hearing him say only his name, repeated twice, then three times. And then one other thing: Eledhril. He knew. It’s all right. He knew.
Ribs freshly cracked, mind numb and chest aching, Eledhril did not take it in then. He would not take it in until he stood again on the Pelennor with Aragorn, this time before the departing Host, when his Captain lowered his voice and repeated it: He knew.
And perhaps, just perhaps, Halbarad had known; had seen Eledhril standing over him, dagger in hand, as he had his vision before the Door. He knew, and rode on, banner in hand.
***
In the morning, Eledhril pushes the drapes aside slightly and flinches at the brightness.
“Faces East,” Valacar says, unnecessarily.
“Do you mind it?”
“I used to.”
The light stings Eledhril’s eyes, but he cannot tell whether it is coming from in front of the darkness, or from behind it. In spite of it.
“Do you see anything?”
“No,” Eledhril replies. “Nothing.” But he stays where he is.
Another note: The lines in the second-to-last section that begin with He did not think about… are a blatant ripoff of Tobias Wolff’s very wonderful (and very short) story, Bullet in the Brain.
Many thanks to Dwim for the characters, the feedback, and for helping me puzzle out just how two laconic, closeted guys in a homophobic society might go about trying to pick each other up.
Source: LotR
Characters: Halbarad, Aragorn, OCs-mostly, surgeon Valacar and Ranger Eledhril (on loan from dwimordene_2011). Other Houses of Healing employees get cameos.
Rating: Teen
Summary: Beyond the Door: on death, memory, and taking what you can get.
(And on AO3)
Note: Eledhril’s backstory (and much of Halbarad’s, in this 'verse) can be found in Dwimordene’s Semper Fidelis, which is preceded by Not in Our Stars. Valacar first appears in Fallen. So, if you wanted the exhaustive context, you would read:
1) Not in Our Stars
2) Semper Fidelis
and, at some point, Fallen. But you should be okay without doing that, too.
Triage
I. March 15
At the turn of the battle, Aragorn’s standard-bearer goes down. The black banner arcs towards the earth, and with it fall decades of duty and watchfulness and longing in the heart of the man who carries it. A movement at the edge of his vision, and then a crushing at his temple. Behind his eyes, something shatters.
Perhaps this is the very death Halbarad foresaw before passing through the Door. Or maybe the vision was vaguer, kinder, a dark shape crouched at the horizon. No one will will ever know, now.
Eledhril asked him, of course-couldn’t stop himself.
“What did you see?” he said, on the morning after Halbarad made his pronouncement. He’d waited until the others were out of earshot. Their exhalations were white in the chill as they stood packing kit into saddlebags, reaching up to stroke the flanks of nervous, stamping horses. “Beyond the Door, as you said?” Only then did his friend look up at him. “All our deaths lie beyond, somewhere-only a matter of distance,” Eledhril continued, with every word feeling more like a man scrabbling for purchase at a sheer rock-face.
And Halbarad-damn him-only gave a smile that did not reach his eyes, and clapped a hand to Eledhril’s shoulder. Then he turned away and made ready to follow their Chieftain.
***
They’ve nearly run out of black tags in the Houses. Valacar tells the healers on his ward to tear the cloth strips in halves; later, in quarters. The beds are full, and men and women work kneeling on the floor.
Even the little children know the rules of the triage: The ones who’ll live, no matter what; the ones who’ll heal, with help; the ones who’ll die, no matter what. These last are the ones for whom the tags are reserved.
A rumor’s out: the pain-draughts are gone, or very nearly so. The walking wounded reach into tunics and belt-pouches, bring out flasks for those about to go under the knife. I should have thought of that, Valacar thinks.
The man before him has an arrow through the side. Second group: will heal with help, maybe. The soldier’s sweating through his clothes, eyes rolled up white. No friend with a drink to succor this one.
Valacar glances around; he can’t be bothered with the sorting, right now.
“Fíriel!” he shouts to the woman crouched several bodies over, elbows-deep in blood. She’s tending to something that may have once been a man.
She doesn’t look up. “What?”
“Can you hold this lot together, for a while?”
“I can try.”
“That’s all I ask.”
Valacar turns his attention back to the wound in front of him. He steadies the arrow shaft in his left hand, snaps off the end with his right. It’s ugly and heavy, like everything that comes out of Mordor. The fletching is made from the coarse feathers of some bird-some beast-the likes of which he’s never seen. The man shudders, gasps.
“Almost through,” says Valacar. “Laeron!” His apprentice looks up from securing a black tag to some less (or perhaps more) fortunate body, and comes over. “Hold him for me,” Valacar says.
“Take a deep breath,” he tells the soldier, and moves quickly to push the arrow through to the other side of the man’s body. Steel sinks deeper into flesh, and the man grinds out a strangled moan, writhing out of Laeron’s grasp, and out of Valacar’s. “I said, hold him!” he says to the boy, who’s sitting there, pale, wide-eyed.
“I can’t.”
“You can!” The wound’s ruptured further; blood pools around the flagstones at Valacar’s knees. He grits his teeth, swears. “Put your weight into it, Laeron.”
The boy blinks, but does as he’s told. The man well nigh screams himself hoarse, but the arrowhead comes out, warm and barbed in Valacar’s hand. He stanches the wound and moves on to the next one.
***
On the field, Eledhril half-turns to see the standard falter against the raw sky. A fraction of a second, at best, but the man he’s fighting takes the opportunity to lunge for his neck. Eledhril steps back, parries. Urgency overmasters weariness, and he puts the force of a proper blow into his deflection. He grips the edge of his blade in his left hand, and, still holding the hilt in his right, shoves his sword crosswise into his opponent’s chest, knocking him to the ground. From there it’s an easy enough kill, one good thrust through the visor. By the time he pulls his sword up again, he’s looking towards where the banner once was.
Later he will only half-remember: the taste of blood filling his mouth, and smoke. The sound of his own breathing, ragged in his throat, louder to him than the shrills of horses, the cries of the wounded and dying. The dark standard pulls taut against the wind once more. Someone else has taken it up.
He will recall, imperfectly, his sword biting into mottled throats, striking mail and leather, the impact traveling up to the bones of his hand. This battle, like the one before it at Pelargir, is far from the half-lit skirmishes and ambushes he’s used to, fierce as those could be. They’re crowded back to back, shoulder to shoulder with friend and foe alike, each new advance sending deep shocks through the whole fray. He will remember stumbling, getting up, and stumbling again. And then the pain, fierce enough to drown out the other aches in his body, as something comes crashing in to his right side and the air is knocked from his lungs.
And of these half-rememberings, sharpest of all will be the glimpse of his friend at his feet, unmoving, and his face-Valar. And after that, after he looks away, he will still remember the idea of what is there, the thing that he does not want to see.
***
In late afternoon, a lull-if you can call it that. Valacar finds his apprentice sitting against the corridor wall, knees drawn up against his chest.
“Laeron?” The boy looks up. Valacar stoops, places a hand on the lad’s head, then on his brow. “You’re burning up.” That would explain his weak grip and dazed eyes earlier today. “Go and lie down.”
Laeron licks his lips, shakes his head. “I can stay. I’m all right.”
“You’re not. Go and lie down.”
“I-”
“Go.” Laeron takes a breath, then stands up in a slow, painful movement, and starts down the corridor, away from the ward. “There’s a good lad.”
Valacar rubs a hand over his face. Someone’s shouting, again-the respite is over.
One of the girls is resting near the entrance to the ward in much the same way Laeron was, the way a young child might crouch in an alcove during a game of hide and seek. Slivers of bare ankles show below the bloodstained hem of her dress. He likes her well enough- sweet-natured little thing, shy, but sturdy enough.
He says her name, and she looks up. “Laeron’s ill. Can you help me, now?” To her credit, she only nods and starts to get up, a bit unsteadily. He takes her arm and hauls her to her feet without much difficulty-this one will have to hold on with all of her weight, and more, he thinks.
***
Battle’s over. Smoke rises from the field, and to walk from one point to another is to grind a patchwork of hair and bone beneath the soles of your boots.
The rest of it’s over, too.
Eledhril stands, eyes burning. A stab at his chest every time he inhales. His hands open and close as if of their own accord. The knife is lying on the ground where he let it drop. He wants only oblivion, but that does not seem to be too easy in coming.
He remembers a long-ago day: a doe in a clearing, the arc of her body as she fled. Nights on the Road, beacons that burn all the brighter in memory for the darkness of the trials that surrounded them. The quicksilver ache of desire. All of it funnels East now, that and all the rest of it.
His breath catches in his throat. The pain in his ribs flares, as if in insult.
Aragorn’s moved on; he has business in the City. He splits the Company; to Eledhril’s surprise, he bids him go with his small party into Minas Tirith, or whatever’s left of it: “You’d do well to see the healers.”
He wants to refuse, but he knows he owes some measure of obedience. What’s more, he’s forced to admit that the pain in his chest and arm will render him of little use here on the field. And so Eledhril casts a final glance at the one particular body before him, a well-worn grey cloak the only shroud afforded it, as with so many corpses that have preceded it. The men left behind will keep watch over it. Death on the Road is an ordinary thing. You mourn on your feet.
He trails silently through the splintered gash where the city’s gates once stood-follows behind, not unlike the shades that followed them to Pelargir.
He’s been to Minas Tirith, before, as trade allowed, but never higher than the Second or Third Circle. He recognizes nothing, now. The rubble is grimed with blood and threaded with corpses: the City companies cut off from retreat, and the orcs and Men they managed to take with them.
Aragorn, mercifully, addresses him no further, keeps moving ahead as if only yesterday he were Thorongil of the White City. Eledhril’s in no mood to speak with him, nor with his Elven or Dwarvish companions. Like many in the Angle, he’s long admired the things that are foreign about Aragorn, the Firstborn qualities that he bears without effort or affectation. And sometimes-and more often than not on Halbarad’s behalf-Eledhril has resented them, as if by this token Aragorn can set himself distant from his surroundings. That’s necessary, he supposes, given who the man is-a gift, even, but now Eledhril finds that this grates at him worse than ever.
He can watch this scene as if watching someone else: here is a man in a grey cloak, covered in blood, only some of which is his own. Here he is, following his captain and his captain’s odd cohort through a stone city that teeters on the brink of the abyss.
As they climb higher, the destruction abates. He can catch glimpses of the city that once was, emerging piecemeal from the wreckage. And then, on the Sixth Circle, they pass through a wide archway and into a high-ceilinged space that is crowded with bodies, both standing and prone. Better to have stayed and be tended to on the field, he thinks, surveying the confusion.
But the healers have kept some order here, elusive though it may seem at first. After some time, a man in a blood-spattered grey surcoat pulls him aside and sits him down on a bench against the wall. He takes one look at the crescent gash in Eledhril’s right arm, and says, “That will want stitches.”
At that he only nods; it is very far from the worst he’s endured, of course, but it gapes red and the bleeding has not stopped. He rolls up his sleeve as best he can. A girl sets down a basin of water beside him-clean, as far as he can tell. She soaks a cloth, wrings it out.
“I’ll manage,” he says, taking it from her. She doesn’t argue. The wet cloth stings against the wound, and after a few moments the water in the basin has turned pink. She kneels on the floor, sitting back on her heels, uncaring of the grime and blood.
“You’re not from here, are you?” she asks. Her gaze wanders furtively over his face, the clasp on his cloak. She looks painfully young. He recalls, now, the way Gondorians look, their resemblance to the folk of the Angle; same coloring, at least, if somewhat darker, and perhaps something slighter about them, more thin and elusive. She takes his silence as a negative and goes on: “Are you from the North, then?”
“I’m not from here,” he says.
“The rumors have it that the King has come from the North,” she persists. Her grey eyes are shadowed, and full of ill-concealed expectation. To call it hope would be generous.
“Take care what rumors you heed, lass,” he says. And however young she is, she is old enough to know a hint when one is given her. She takes the basin away, and the man-surgeon, he supposes-returns and casts another glance at Eledhril.
“Ribs?” he asks after a moment, and Eledhril nods. Even as he sits he is holding himself stiffly, favoring his right side.
“Cracked, I think,” Eledhril says.
“Take a deep breath.” Eledhril does, and the man kneels by him and carefully gets a hand under his blood-caked overtunic, presses a palm to his side. Eledhril grits his teeth. It’s odd, being tended by a stranger, someone unfamiliar with the nature and breadth of his scars. “Broken,” the man amends, withdrawing just as quickly. “Naught to do but tend to the pain.” He’s already threading his needle.
He makes it sound easy enough.
And, like so many healers-friends, brothers-at-arms, most of them-between Bree and Laketown and Dale, the Minas Tirith surgeon hands him a strip of leather and says, “Bite down.”
And he does.
II: March 18
At some point when becoming a surgeon, you must make a sharp turn; if you can’t come out whole on the other side, you’re useless. You start by being attentive to the pain of others. But then you must just as quickly learn to disregard that pain. The knife brooks no patience, much less pity. If you treat the body lying before you as just that-a body, a soft ordinary thing that spasms and screams-then you will flinch. And more often than not, hesitation will mean more suffering than the absolute necessity. It can mean death.
So you narrow your vision and stop up your ears. It’s a delicate combination of knowledge and ignorance, courage and cowardice. You keep it all balanced somewhere, stretched taut in the lines between wrists and heart.
Valacar worries now, because there are still times he doubts that his apprentice is safely around that bend. He has talent enough, and the Valar know he works hard, but at times Valacar can still sense hesitancy in him. Sometimes he worries that he’s been too gentle with the boy; other men won’t think twice to raise their voice or their hand to an apprentice, should they think it’s called for. That’s never been Valacar’s way of doing things, though. And what’s more, he almost never thinks it’s called for, shouting in the triage notwithstanding.
But perhaps in the end it’s only Laeron’s nature. Anyway, he doesn’t have Valacar’s advantages in this regard. By Laeron’s age, Valacar had already learned through painful trial and error what was necessary to protect himself, and if any of that has helped him in surgery, then it was a happy coincidence. Laeron, as far as he can tell, has no need of such self-defense, and for that he counts the boy to be very lucky.
Lucky, and now very possibly foolhardy.
It’s early morning; the Captains have held their council, and Laeron’s packing up his things. He’s volunteered for the march-volunteered for the Morannon. Valacar leans in the doorway of the surgery.
“You don’t have to,” he says, finally. He realizes he’s not sure whether the boy’s ever even left Minas Tirith, before.
Laeron turns around, eyes hard with insult. “I know that.” He’s already angry with Valacar, of course, though they won’t discuss it. “And why shouldn’t I go?”
The obvious answer is that he will most certainly die, violently, along with every other man in that little host. But, of course, Valacar himself will most certainly die here, violently, along with everyone left behind. So he only says, “You’ve never seen battle.”
“And I’d never been in a city under siege, until one week ago.”
To which Valacar also bites his tongue against the obvious response. They’re silent for several minutes, Laeron studiously ignoring him as he rolls kit into cloth. Coldness from his apprentice is a novel thing-bewilderment, he’s sometimes sensed from the boy, and an almost painful desire to please. But hostility is new. Perhaps his pride will afford him a little protection, Valacar thinks; a very little, at the end, but it will be better than nothing at all.
“Valacar?” And now Laeron’s standing in front of him, hand extended. Valacar remembers the day he’d been brought to him, a fidgety boy of sixteen who would only call him “Sir.” Maybe Valacar’s wrong; maybe Laeron really ought to go and meet whatever fate is in store for him, flinching or not. Probably better than awaiting it in this wretched city.
Valacar clasps the proffered hand.
“Thank you,” says Laeron, and his expression has gone closed, now. “For everything. I’ll see you soon.”
It takes him a few moments to decide what he ought to say. Then: “I’m proud of you.” The boy nods, even smiles a little. It is the truth, though Valacar’s never said as much, not out loud, in the three years he’s known him. “Take care, Laeron.”
“And you.”
And then he’s gone.
***
Holding his reins, Aragorn speaks to Mithrandir, nodding at something the wizard says. Close at hand and in the distance, the backdrop is all men. Lines and columns of them, mounted and on foot. Horses stamp and shake their manes; mail and bridles make muted clinks, and there’s the hiss of swords being half-drawn, checked for no good reason, sheathed again. Banners float in the breeze above helmeted heads, above the tips of spears set end to earth.
All waiting on his Chieftain’s word, Eledhril thinks. His Chieftain, the King. This is what Aragorn has waited and readied for all these years. The Dunedaín have waited along with him as they waited alongside his forbears, their lives as a long-held breath. For this, Eledhril and all his fellows have faithfully kept the watch, pacing trade routes and sleeping huddled against the cold. Eyes and ears never entirely shut, longing for home. To keep just the idea of the Kingdoms alive, they have cursed and rubbed their hands together before meager fires, and shed their blood-and died.
And yet Eledhril counted himself fortunate to be in Bree when Halbarad came through with the call: the message had come by way of Imladris, he said, from Lady Galadriel. Aragorn would soon have need of them. Eledhril counted himself fortunate to be among the few who could be gathered at that moment, because they would ride with an end in their sights, away from the ever-shrinking patches of safe ground in Eriador where time and blood seemed to be ebbing away from them. He counted himself fortunate, as well, to be able to ride with Halbarad one last time.
His friend bore Arwen’s gift and message over the miles, and down through the plains of Rohan, riding beside her brothers. Bore her gift, as far as Eledhril could tell, without any bitterness, though the irony must have been all too clear. For his part, Eledhril did not dare chance a look or a word about that; he knew better-had known better, for a long time. He only followed.
And, as Eledhril always knew he would, one way or another, Halbarad had followed Aragorn to the last-followed him through the Door, and beyond. As far as he could go.
Now Aragorn will say a word, and these men-all the remaining able men of the West-lands, more or less-will follow him in a gamble whose outcome rests on the shoulders of a perian. Who may very well be dead, already. They won’t speak of this last, this morning; they don’t need to. It’s evident as the bone and ash that litter the field.
Eledhril will not go with them. Were it only his arm and all the rest of the cuts and bruises that troubled him, he’d ride today. It’s the ribs on his right side that keep him from mounting his horse; he can scarce draw his sword, much less heft it, even with the aid of his left hand. He knows better than to argue-even in the rearguard he’ll be more hindrance than help. Besides himself-and Halbarad, of course-only one other member of the Grey Company will not join the host: Andir, who now lies in the Houses of Healing. A spearpoint went deep into his thigh, and though the surgeons managed to save his leg, it’s still doubtful whether he will be able to walk again without a limp.
More doubtful, still, that he will heal enough to walk at all, in the time that seems to be left to them.
Eledhril will not follow his Chieftain, and beneath fractured bones his heart aches because of this. Riding a few days more with his Company, falling beside them in battle: while these things are not exactly sweet prospects, they are palatable, especially compared to the alternatives. And more than that, the pain is of something left unfinished. The last few miles of the road lie beyond him still; he will not be able to complete what he and Halbarad began together.
For that, he will have to trust Aragorn, who, for the moment, at least, still stands before him. He steps away from Mithrandir, now, and walks towards Eledhril.
“Soon?” Eledhril asks.
“The muster is ready,” Aragorn nods. “We’ll not delay much longer. You’ve your instructions.”
“And will keep them as best I can.” His instructions, and Andir’s: should the Host fail, they’re to return north to alert the remaining Ranger companies, clear any remaining folk from the Angle, and join up with Elrond’s folk-what is left of them, at any rate. It is a sound enough plan, with contingencies and fallbacks should the first layer of things prove impossible. And still, Eledhril can see that it’s built on a lattice of ifs, first and foremost being, if we yet live. Long have the folk of the North prided themselves on their status as survivors, but there are limits to these things. Aragorn, he knows, can see that, too.
“I know it. Though the lack of you in the ranks will be sore.”
“Aragorn-” he begins, but his Chieftain only places a hand on his shoulder, leans in and says something in a voice lowered so that only Eledhril can hear. And then, to his surprise, Aragorn pulls him in to a brief embrace. “We’ll meet again.”
“Aragorn,” he says, again. The other man has already half turned away from him now, but he pauses, looks back. Eledhril lifts his chin slightly. “Deal them some hurt, will you?”
If Aragorn’s smile is mirthless, his eyes are yet alive. “As best I can.”
Aragorn will ride under the banner woven by his betrothed, the banner that slipped from Halbarad’s grasp when he went down on the Pelennor. And though he stands dark and solemn as always, Eledhril can see what compels these men to line up and follow him east. Men have always followed him: he’s the Hope, and it burns at the heart of him. Grim, and hard and knowing at the edges, but there, nonetheless. It survives in dark places, all the brighter for that.
And though Eledhril can see that-can admire it, even-it is not a spark that can catch in his own heart. All the embers there have gone cold.
And then he turns away from all this, thinking of Halbarad. Of Halbarad, and Aragorn, and of Arwen, and then of his own wife, their sons. His mother and father. And then a blankness, behind which strands of memory and want twine together, resting not quite at the forefront of his thoughts, but skimming at the edges. Just behind his eyes.
It’s sort of a second sight, this thing behind his eyes-not like Halbarad’s, of course. Eledhril doesn’t need any foresight to know their ends. He’s looked into the darkness, seen all he needed to see. And though he has plans to carry out, the thing behind his eyes wants only to rest. To stop. It cases the heights of the walls, notes the weight and sharpness of the daggers Eledhril still carries on him.
There are plans, it seems to say, and then there are plans.
***
At the edge of the gardens Valacar leans forward, resting his forearms on a stone ledge. The field is the color of ash. Beyond it, the Shadow’s a smear that obscures the horizon. As always, he tries to discern shapes in it; as always, it proves impossible.
“Fine sight.”
Valacar starts, turns; he’s heard no approaching footsteps.
He recovers, recognizing the speaker. “One of the joys of living here,” he replies, nodding at the man. “Your arm?”
“Mending. Thank you.” The man leans carefully against the wall, left side to the ledge, of course. “Strange that you’d remember a wound so small from so great a battle.”
“Only because there were so few of your folk on hand.” He glances at the clasp of the man’s cloak, the star pinned to the left shoulder. He only realized afterwards with whom he’d been dealing. “How is your friend?”
“Mending. Your people did well by him.”
“We try.”
They’re silent for several moments, and Valacar looks away again. Then he hears the hiss of a match striking. The other man is putting a light to the bowl of a wooden pipe.
“Do you smoke?” Valacar shakes his head. The man shakes out the match in his right hand, smiling wanly. “Foreign ways.” He lifts the stem to his mouth, breathes in and holds for a beat, then exhales smoke.
“Northern ways,” Valacar says, and the other nods confirmation. “You rode with the King?”
“For a ways.”
“Do you know him well?”
The other exhales anew. The smoke smells sweet, but vaguely so, like something half-remembered. “I’ve known him many years.”
“And he is Isildur’s heir?”
“He is.”
Valacar considers this a few moments. “And what manner of man is he, this Aragorn? This healer?”
The answer comes seemingly without irony: “He is Aragorn.”
Valacar can’t help but smile. “Is that a good thing?”
“Perhaps.”
The man turns towards him, pipe cradled in his left hand. He extends his right, not without some pain, Valacar can see. “Your name?”
“Valacar.”
In spite of his wounds, the man’s grip is firm. “Eledhril.”
“Well met.” Valacar studies the newcomer, who returns his stare through tendrils of smoke. He’s got a sharpness to his stance that seems unrelated to his recent wound, as if he were balancing some ill-weighted object. His eyes are rimmed red and he holds Valacar’s gaze a beat longer than necessary, until Valacar glances away, unsettled.
Eledhril indicates the pipe with a slight inclination of his head. “And have you any vices?”
Valacar looks at him again, considers the question. “The usual,” he replies. He looks at the pipe in the man’s left hand, and then at the hand itself, at the plain gold band on his finger.
“The usual,” Eledhril repeats, with what might be a half-smile. “Me, too.” And then his breath catches, and he coughs several times, half doubled over and bracing himself against the ledge for support.
“All right?” Valacar asks as the other man straightens himself, right hand over his ribs, breaths shallow.
Eledhril nods, grimacing. “As you said; naught to do but tend the pain.”
And though the Siege is over, the heavy-footed waltz of the triage is still pounding in Valacar’s mind. He tries to sort this man, now. When he first came to the Houses, he’d have been a One: will live. Ones can wait. But there’s something strange in his affect, now, at once vague as the pipe smoke and sharp-edged as a freshly-cracked bone. He could be a Two, Valacar thinks: might live, with help. But maybe even a Three.
And then he turns his surgeon’s eye on himself, tries to determine what place in the triage he’d occupy. But the system is failing him. He doesn’t know, anymore. And so he speaks again, quickly, because he knows if he waits a few moments more he’ll change his mind: “I may have something for that.”
The other cocks a brow. “Rumor says the pain draughts are gone.”
The system, Valacar thinks, has been failing him for a very long time, now. He shrugs, tries his best-a surgeon’s best, which is not inconsiderable-to look unconcerned.
“There are always alternatives,” he says.
Eledhril considers him for a long moment, exhales more smoke.
“No,” he says. “Not always.” His farewell is a brief incline of his head to one side, and then he turns and walks away from the city walls.
***
Eledhril sits with Andir. The covers on the narrow bed are bunched and wrinkled where Andir’s fists have clenched. Neither man is much in the mood to talk. Even if they were, there’s nothing Eledhril particularly cares to discuss.
After a time Andir sleeps, pain draughts or no. Eledhril, listless, wanders through the wards, sifting through rumors and murmurs in the glances of conversation he hears. The pain in his ribs catches and needles at him like a dog intent at his heel. Instead of obscuring the ache that is lodged deeper in his chest, it seems to have joined with it so that he can scarce tell where the one ends and the other begins. In the corridors he seems to come up against dead end after dead end, doors barred and locked. He turns around, doubles back, longing for the weight of his sword balanced in his hand.
There are plans, and then there are plans.
***
At the third knock on his door, Valacar decides to pour another drink instead of answering. It is not a difficult choice to make. There are only so many people who could be stopping at his rooms at this moment, and he knows that he does not want to speak to any of them. At the fourth and fifth knocks, he is rotating his glass on the table, and the sound continues, heavy and deliberate. Not impatient.
He waits, takes another sip, decides to answer. Enough long moments have passed so that he might expect his caller to have given him up for absent, but when he slides the bolt and pulls the door open, the Ranger is standing there.
“Tell me about the alternatives,” says Eledhril.
***
From the look on Valacar’s face, Eledhril gets the impression that he will not be let in. But then the other man simply steps aside, gesturing towards a chair within.
The surgeon’s rooms are small and sparsely furnished, and the flickering light from the fire in the grate make them seem closer than they actually are. Tables, mantle, shelves; Eledhril’s first impression is one of neat and mostly bare surfaces. Not married; almost certainly. The only things that call for notice are several shelves full of well-bound books, and, on a narrow table, a collection of bottles of various heights and colors. Still, enough sign of permanent occupancy to give him the small pang of envy that he still feels now and again, as all Rangers do from time to time when wandering into other people’s dwellings on the Road.
“How did you find me?” Valacar asks, after he finishes bolting the door. He’s standing, arms crossed, apparently watching Eledhril as the latter scans the room. “Please sit,” he adds, before Eledhril can answer.
Eledhril obliges, settles down in one of the chairs next to the broad table. “I asked one of your healers where the surgeons have their quarters. And then only one door with light beneath it.” A pause, and then he adds, “Your name did not come up.”
“I see.” Valacar considers him for a moment more, then takes a glass from a side table and places it before Eledhril. He sits down opposite him, and, without asking after preference or desire, nearly fills the glass with deep amber liquid from the thick-glassed bottle between them. “Not a fair match for poppy, of course,” he says, “but it has its own curative properties.”
Eledhril raises an eyebrow. “Alternatives?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
With the barest hint of a smile, Eledhril raises his glass. “To ‘alternatives.’”
***
Eledhril remarks on the bitterness of the liquor, but it does not seem to be a complaint. He is a dark, heavy presence, a counterweight at the other side of the table. They drain their glasses in near silence.
As Valacar refills both of their drinks, Eledhril says, “Do your people come from the City?”
Valacar puts down the bottle, shaking his head. “I grew up in the south. In Amroth. I was apprenticed to a surgeon in the Houses.”
The other man swallows. “How do you find it?”
“Minas Tirith? It’s a strange place.” He pauses. “The children grow up too anxious, on the edge of the darkness.”
“Yet you stayed.”
For a moment, Valacar considers laying out a complete explanation. But then he shrugs. “I haven’t any children.”
“Is that all?” Eledhril snorts.
“It’s enough,” he replies. When the other man says nothing more, he asks, “And what of your home?”
“It can be very cold.”
Valacar waits for him to go on, but he says nothing else.
“Is that all?” Valacar asks.
“Enough.” And this time it is Eledhril who reaches for the bottle to refill their glasses.
***
The surgeon is right, Eledhril considers, as common sense dictates he would be. While the drink does not leach away the pain, it blunts and warms the edges of it. Takes away some of the urgency. At the same time it does nothing for the pain lying in wait behind the pain, every stab of it, and the thing that urges him forward in spite of everything. He drinks more. So does Valacar. They empty the first bottle, move on to a second.
“And if the City is here,” Eledhril hears himself saying, resting his left hand on the table in a fist, “then they should be here by now.” With his eyes he measures out a distance across the worn wooden surface, then taps another spot with his right forefinger. “As the crow flies,” he adds. “And I expect they’ll camp here, for the night.”
Valacar blinks, then asks, “And the Morannon?”
Eledhril thinks a few moments, then pushes the empty bottle to the far edge of the table. “Here,” he says. “No, wait.” He pushes it a few inches to his right. “Here.” A pause. “You can check that, if you want. On a real map.”
“I believe you,” says Valacar. “Do you always do that?”
“Do what?”
“Carry a map in your head?”
“Yes.” He considers the other. “And what do you carry in your head, Valacar?”
“Nothing.” Valacar is refilling both glasses once more, sets down the second bottle with an unnecessary heaviness, perhaps to match the other man’s placement of the Morannon.
“Quick to reply,” Eledhril observes. “What have you got? Bodies?”
“Haven’t we all?”
“Some of us have more than others. Some of us have particular ones.” When Valacar says nothing, Eledhril nods, as if this confirms something. “No matter, then,” he goes on, his voice seeming to float, unconcerned, on the surface of the drink. “We’ll all be corpses soon enough.”
Valacar leans forward, resting his forearms on the table. His sleeves are rolled up, and in the firelight Eledhril can discern the pale, unmarked skin of a man who has never seen battle. Or never faced it head-on, leastways. The surgeon glances towards the empty bottle that Eledhril has set up to stand in for the Enemy’s gates. Then he meets Eledhril’s eyes, and asks, “How soon?”
Now it is Eledhril’s turn to shrug. “I couldn’t rightly say. Days. A week, at the very most.”
Valacar nods slightly. “Do you wish you had gone with them?” he asks.
“Yes.” He pauses. “I would take the hastier death, if that is what you mean.”
“I didn’t say that,” Valacar says.
“You meant it.”
“I-” he begins, but Eledhril cuts him off. Behind the heavy-tongued fog of the liquor, he can feel some part of his mind clearing, some elemental part of himself.
“All the Grey Company riding into the maw, beneath their last banner. Try to imagine that. All but the two they left in your Houses.” He drains his glass, then adds, “And the one they buried before your Gate.” A pause. “Did you know that?”
“Did I know what?” Valacar asks quietly.
“That Aragorn lost his standard-bearer. Well, of course not. One more body among the thousands. There were the funeral fires, yes, but we wouldn’t have him burned. We saw to that.”
“Your friend.”
“Yes.” Eledhril stares at the other man. Caution around outsiders is one of the many rules of his life, as it is for all Rangers. Outside of the Angle, beyond whispered conversations with your fellows, little or nothing is shared. Or rather, nothing of true importance; a man might choose to share his bed on the Road, transactions of coin or favor, and his trusted fellows turn a blind eye. But beyond that, there are things that are perhaps easier said to a stranger.
“They’ve gone to the heart of it, you know,” Eledhril goes on. “I’ve only caught glances. And we’ve fought against it so long, and all the blood we’ve given has never been enough.”
“In the North?”
“Yes, in the North. Eriador, the Iron Hills. And in the Eastfold, and Harlond and Pelargir. And it’s never been enough. All of your blood, and all of ours, won’t sate it. The best of us will not sate it.” His voice is steady enough, but he’s breathing a little harder, now, and he is thinking again of Halbarad. “He was Sighted, our standard-bearer. We stood before a door, and he saw his death beyond it, and all the same he passed through to meet it.”
“What was his name?”
“Halbarad.” Eledhril pauses; not a week buried and already the name feels strange on his lips, as if it is something he has whispered to himself in an empty room. Then he smiles. “You don’t believe me.”
“I…” Valacar shakes his head, returns the smile. “I don’t know. Perhaps not.”
“It doesn’t matter. He followed. He followed our Captain, to meet his death.” He takes a breath, then: “What would you call that?” His voice is low.
“Courage,” Valacar replies, after a moment or two. He stares into his glass.
“Love.”
“I see.”
“No.” Eledhril leans back in his chair, arms folded, and he is no longer smiling. “I don’t think you do.”
And then he takes out a dagger.
***
Valacar sits up in his chair. He has often thought of his life after the age of thirteen or so as a series of ill-advised choices. This evening does not seem to be a break from this pattern.
The dagger, plain, brown-sheathed, lies on the table between them. Eledhril has his right hand resting over it, fingers splayed. For a moment the Ranger looks at it, then glances towards the empty bottle near the table’s edge. He slides the weapon a few inches nearer to it.
“And this, I suppose,” he says, “is near where they would make camp. For the last time.”
“What do you want?” Valacar asks, without taking his gaze from the dagger.
The other seems to ignore his question. “Good man, are you? Know where to cut.” He takes his hand off the dagger and leans back once more. Any relief Valacar might have felt is eclipsed by bafflement.
“What do you-”
“I heard you were taken off the rounds after the Siege.”
“What of it?”
“The wards are still full. They’d not take an able man off the rounds unless he had a dire charge against him. Simple enough to see.”
Valacar says nothing.
Eledhril says, “Murder or rape?”
“What?”
“What’s the charge against you? How many bodies do you carry around in your head?”
Valacar takes a deep breath. “You need to leave.”
Eledhril does not pick up his glass, or place his fingers on the dagger. Nor does he stare into the hearth, or shift in his chair. He does not make any move to go.
“I did none of those things,” Valacar says, very quietly. “One corpse made of my own intent. But not murder.” He is surprised to feel a small measure of relief as he says this. He shakes his head. “The pain draughts were gone. I had a girl helping me. I sent her to the gardens.”
“Act of mercy.”
“For him, or for her?”
“Both. Him, mostly.”
Valacar smiles mirthlessly. “Here, we don’t name it as such. In the Houses, many would call it breaking our oath.”
“We would call it keeping ours,” Eledhril says evenly. “A last act of friendship. In some ways, the greatest.”
Valacar realizes his throat has gone dry. He takes another drink. “That’s well for you, then.” And then everything seems to hit him in a wave, and the room tilts slightly, this way and that. “He was a stranger to me. And my people don’t take oaths lightly,” he adds.
“Nor do mine. Not at all.”
“Why are you here?”
“Why did you ask me here?” Eledhril counters in the same even tone.
“And do you make a habit of breaking any oaths?” Valacar asks, ignoring that last. He has never considered himself an exceptionally brave man, not in any of the ways that matter. Still, he is a good and steadfast asker of questions. And that must count for something.
“Many men,” says Eledhril, slowly, “would take ill to such a question.”
“Do you?”
“What would you do if I did?”
There is the sound of chair legs scraping on stone. In what seems like a single motion, the Ranger stands, crosses to the other side of the table and seizes Valacar by the front of his shirt, hauling him none too gently to his feet. A clatter as Valacar’s chair falls backwards to the floor. Eledhril’s eyes are rimmed red, the grey reflecting firelight.
“What would you do?” he repeats, his words still coming slowly.
With the moment-clarity of the intoxicated, several things occur to Valacar at once. He notices that, although he is struggling to breathe, the other man still clutches him by his garments and not by his throat. He also notices that, in the ensuing moments, they seemed to have switched from the second bottle to a third without him registering much difference. And he remembers the thing that he has known all along, that even footsteps away from death, the body is made to grope and clutch at whatever life is left to it.
His right hand is clamped instinctively around the other man’s wrist, but his left is free. He drives a fist into Eledhril’s ribs, on the side that, as best as he remembers, the worst of the wound is.
Eledhril drops him, doubles over. Valacar, released, staggers back, gasping. He takes the dagger from the table, unsheathes it.
The Ranger’s sunk to the floor, hand over his ribs.
“What do you want?” Valacar repeats. The weapon is heavy in his hand, and, he can see now, as sharp and well cared-for as any surgeon’s scalpel. Of course it would be.
Eledhril’s only reply is a look that shocks Valacar not only for its lack of enmity, but also for the sheer hunger and taunt in it. Not for Valacar, himself, it seems, but for what he might stand for at this moment.
Valacar sets both dagger and sheath back on the table, not bothering to fit them back together.
Still breathing hard, he rights the chair that has fallen to the floor, slumps back in it.
“If you are death-wished in such a manner, you’d best look elsewhere for satisfaction,” he says.
“No more death-wished than you, I’d wager,” the other responds hoarsely, hand still at his side.
“Choosing the hastier way out.” The chair seems to have gotten away from him again. He sits down on the floor, opposite the other man.
“If that’s what you mean.”
“At any rate,” says Valacar, realizing only now that is very lightly slurring his words, “what would I have done with the body?” When Eledhril says nothing, he goes on: “No, you wouldn’t have thought of that, would you?” He feels his heartbeat slowing down.
***
Eledhril thinks that he can stare down the distance of the rest of his life, as if looking down a short corridor. All hewn of stone, like this City, the thatch and wooden beams of the Angle far behind him. The thing behind his eyes seems to have quieted for the moment, but still, all he can think is: Couldn’t have held out any longer, could you, Hal? Couldn’t have gone any farther?
After all, he’d only known what they all had, waiting for Aragorn to summon up the oath-breakers: that they would never bring anything home again.
He clears his throat, and says: “I would not have taken ill to the question.”
“What question?”
“About the oath-breaking.”
“Look,” Valacar says, and he moves closer and takes Eledhril’s left wrist, pushes up the sleeve, holding his arm elbow-down. His hands are rougher than Eledhril might have expected, but free of calluses. “If you want to make it fast, you do it like this.” With one finger he traces an almost-steady line down the center of Eledhril’s forearm, the way that Eledhril traced the armies’ route over the tabletop. “And then the other,” Valacar continues. “But you knew that.”
Eledhril did know that, of course. But he says nothing.
“Here, not as good,” Valacar says, and taps a finger lightly over the left side of Eledhril’s chest. His left hand is still at Eledhril’s wrist. “Too easy to miss, if you do it yourself. A surgeon wouldn’t even trust himself. This won’t work so well, either,” he continues, and moves his fingers to the hollow at the base of Eledhril’s throat, then just below his jaw, where his pulse lives, strong as ever.
And Eledhril leans forward and kisses him.
***
In a sharp breath of liquor aftertaste and tobacco, Valacar recognizes this at once for what it is, knows it well. As much a dare and a counter-move as it is a kiss. Seeing if the other will flinch, will step away or to shrug off the moment. Valacar’s got some long-ago, poorly-lit experiences with girls, from before he realized that for him, contact and curiosity would never turn into desire. He has never loved women, but somehow he knows that even if he did, he would never kiss one in this way.
He breaks it off, stares at Eledhril, tries to discern the look in the other man’s eyes.
He can feel himself standing at the edge, blinking down into the darkness, as everyone must, these days.
And then he leans in again, kisses back. Eledhril reaches around to the nape of his neck, pulls him closer. There are all the expected things, the harsh breathing, the fumbling to get hands under clothing, the promising warmth of living skin. They’re still on the floor, on their knees, awkward as a couple of boys. Valacar braces himself for balance, puts a hand in the wrong place, and Eledhril winces. Valacar draws back, almost smiles for the absurdity of it.
“This” he says, pausing for air, “is only going to hurt, isn’t it?”
“Most likely,” Eledhril replies, and pulls him in again.
***
Eventually, one or other of them-Eledhril will not remember, later-says, Enough, and pulls them both up from the floor and over to the bed in the corner. The same wound that now prevents him from drawing his sword is also proving a hindrance in other ways. Valacar undoes buckles and laces for both of them; Eledhril extracts daggers one by one.
“Do you need all of those?” Valacar asks as the last one is pushed aside.
Eledhril responds as he always does, on the occasions-now exceedingly rare-that that question is put to him: “Sometimes.”
The fire has all but died in the hearth. Neither one bothers to shift the embers, and a slow chill creeps in. The room has gone dark. Eledhril pushes the other man down on his back, grips his shoulders, dips his head down to kiss the skin of his neck, tasting sweat. He feels the body beneath his shift and strain, and memories rise to the surface one by one, as he thought they might. As he knew they would.
Unlike Halbarad, though, Valacar seems to grapple with himself as much as with the man in bed with him. He keeps his voice in his throat, breathes through his nose, bites down-on his own lip, on Eledhril’s shoulder. Eledhril looks down at him as best he can in the darkness.
“Are you always this quiet?”
What might be a surprised moment of hesitation, then says, “Yes,” and pushes up against him. Eledhril draws in his breath, pins one of Valacar’s wrists lightly against the mattress.
“Walls here are thick,” he persists.
“Not thick enough,” the other man replies, and presses his mouth against Eledhril’s collarbone, running his free hand down his chest, then holds it against his hip, pausing before going lower.
Eledhril shivers, lets him continue a few moments, then says: “Say something.”
“Your standard-bearer,” Valacar replies. “Did you love him?”
“Yes,” says Eledhril, and goes in for another kiss.
As he did the first time, Valacar pulls away. Then he takes Eledhril’s left hand in his, places his thumb over the plain gold band on his ring finger.
“Do you love her?”
“Yes.” Another kiss, harder.
Valacar props himself up on an elbow, pushes Eledhril over. “Take a deep breath,” he says.
And after that, neither of them says anything at all. They work their way into the silence as best they can, until things are as they have always been: bodies moving against one another and clinging to one another and trying to carve out some sort of space in the chill and the darkness in which they can live, if only for a little while. There is a strange sort of makeshift tenderness to the intimacy of people who meet only once or twice behind bolted doors or closed drapes. A sort of apology for not being able to offer more.
You take what you can get.
***
And sometimes all you can offer is an act of mercy.
But this is not precisely what Eledhril thought as the ashes and dust of the Siege were still warm on the ground before the ruined Gate of Minas Tirith. Not precisely what he thought when Aragorn placed the dagger in his hand, asked him if he might do what needed to be done.
And then there was the thing he did not want to see. The feeble rise and fall of the chest beneath the brave failure of field dressings. And then above that the red, shattered ruin of the face, eyes dulled yet somehow alive within the wreckage. Somewhere behind them, all the duty and watchfulness and longing.
He did not think about Halbarad’s mother and sister, somewhere far north. Nor did he think about Halbarad’s love for their Captain, doomed only in some ways. Eledhril did not think about Halbarad’s service on the Road, about all the scars he bore. The courage and faith and the long grey vigil.
He did not think about his own wife, nor about his children. He did not even think of the smell of pipe smoke, nor the smell of flax rotting in the Bruinen, nor that long final tumble into bed, the memory sharp and sweet with pain after all these years.
No time. Swiftness was, after all, the point of mercy.
Instead he thought of the handle of his bow in his hand, the arc of the doe’s body as she fled the clearing. The moment just before he and Halbarad fell, together, for the first time.
He pushed in the knife, drew it out just as quickly. Eyes widened and glassed over. Breath hitched once more, then ceased. Eledhril’s world folded up to a sharp point, and he let the dagger fall from his grip.
He turned on Aragorn then, needed the relief of striking at someone who could hit back. And because he knew that from then on he would sleep with ghosts in his bed. Not the shades that trailed after them to fulfill their oath after Aragorn summoned them, but subtler things, trailing tendrils of memory and regret. And because he knew then that Halbarad truly had passed beyond a Door, was now in a place that was barred and locked. He knew that this would be the beginning of his life without Halbarad, a life that he did not know at all how to live, no matter if there were only a few days of it ahead of him.
Aragorn turned away the blows, caught Eledhril’s fists and pushed them down. Eledhril remembers hearing him say only his name, repeated twice, then three times. And then one other thing: Eledhril. He knew. It’s all right. He knew.
Ribs freshly cracked, mind numb and chest aching, Eledhril did not take it in then. He would not take it in until he stood again on the Pelennor with Aragorn, this time before the departing Host, when his Captain lowered his voice and repeated it: He knew.
And perhaps, just perhaps, Halbarad had known; had seen Eledhril standing over him, dagger in hand, as he had his vision before the Door. He knew, and rode on, banner in hand.
***
In the morning, Eledhril pushes the drapes aside slightly and flinches at the brightness.
“Faces East,” Valacar says, unnecessarily.
“Do you mind it?”
“I used to.”
The light stings Eledhril’s eyes, but he cannot tell whether it is coming from in front of the darkness, or from behind it. In spite of it.
“Do you see anything?”
“No,” Eledhril replies. “Nothing.” But he stays where he is.
Another note: The lines in the second-to-last section that begin with He did not think about… are a blatant ripoff of Tobias Wolff’s very wonderful (and very short) story, Bullet in the Brain.
Many thanks to Dwim for the characters, the feedback, and for helping me puzzle out just how two laconic, closeted guys in a homophobic society might go about trying to pick each other up.