2/2

It did me no good to rage about it now. I could not change what had happened, and stewing over it would only distract me from the threat that was now at hand. I should let it go; it would do no good even to complain of it, if I encountered my former comrades again. They'd have no idea what I was talking about. Legolas would just look at me like I was a fool or a madman, Gimli would go into some tirade about how my complaints were an insult to the Lady of the Golden Wood, and Aragorn would tell me that I'd have no problem with it if it weren't for the evil I carried within myself. Frankly, I could do without all of that.

It was over, and we had wasted a month among the Mallorn trees, no matter how much I hated it. It was over, and what mattered was what I did now.

So what was I going to do?

I frowned at the sleeping Svip and wondered how he could look so comfortable sleeping in the rain. Of course he was used to sleeping in water, but I would have thought that the raindrops on his face might tickle enough to keep him awake.

I reckoned he'd probably had an hour's nap by now, while I had been standing here cursing Fate. His use of that hour, I told myself, had been far more productive than mine had. At least he'd been resting up for whatever might lie ahead, instead of brooding over how unjust everything was.

I shook his shoulder gently. He woke at once and blinked calmly at me.

I told him in a whisper, "I'm going to check on the Orcs again."

He nodded. "I'll go with you."

Leaving our sunken boat and gear, we swam and scrambled through the water, mud and reeds. Several times we had to swim underwater to get through particularly bad patches of reeds without resorting to our unacceptably noticeable technique of hacking through the plants at water level.

I had to grimly fight down surges of panic, when the murky yellow-green water grew so dark and thick with mud that I could barely see my arms as I swam, and when I found myself temporarily trapped where the reeds grew around each other. The water was too foul for me to see Svip through it, but twice the little creature swam back to me as I struggled to find my way around the reeds. He tugged on my sleeve to indicate the right direction, then swam on again, keeping close so he could reach back and guide me if I lost the way again.

I was loath to admit it. But as we watched from the shelter of yet more clumps of vile weeds, I knew our earlier conclusion had been correct. There was no way we would get through this stretch of the River until the Orcs moved on. There were just too many of them, spread out over treeless twin islands that rose from the marsh on either side of what passed for the River's main current. Not that the current was significant enough that it mattered whether we stayed in it or not. But the Orcs had not made it simple for us. They were camped all over those islands. I saw no way around them that offered even half a chance of slipping past without falling under a hail of arrows. We'd have no chance at all if we tried to take the boat, and precious little chance without it.

We could desert the River entirely, and strike west in the search for actual dry land. It would mean, again, abandoning the boat, but it wasn't as if the boat had done much to aid our progress over the past day. Walking might well prove faster.

Yet in the long run, following that course would probably leave us worse off than we were now.

We would have satisfied my immediate need to do something, instead of just sitting here waiting. But that was all we would have accomplished. The time spent in reaching the edge of the marsh and then circumnavigating it would likely put us at least a day's march behind the Orcs. It would do nothing to help us reach my country's outposts before they did.

And we would have lost track of this war party. I would have little to report beyond the bare fact that I had seen forty Orcs in the marshland, and I presumed that they were heading south. I'd have no idea of where they were mustering, how many their assembled troops might number, or where they intended to strike. I could guess on that last question, but any shopkeeper in Minas Tirith would be able to make as informed a guess as I could.

The conclusion could not be escaped. Our only reasonable choice was to wait, and continue our journey when the Orcs broke camp. If we kept just far enough behind for them not to see us, we could track their passage and perhaps learn something of their destination and strategy.

There was even, I told myself with sour humour, a chance that they would break down enough of the reeds for us to follow in their path, without having to carve through every inch of the way.

We swam through the reed-infested sludge, back to the elven boat. And we waited.

The rain stopped in mid-afternoon. A pallid, fitful sun tried to break through the haze.

Svip offered to take a turn on watch and let me nap. My decades at war stood me in good stead, for they had taught me to catch sleep wherever I could, no matter how uncomfortable the position or how troubled my mind. But the couple of hours' sleep I got that day were far from pleasant. Mocking, fevered dreams flitted through them, filled with monstrous bugs and floating corpses, huge red eyes and a golden ring that whispered to me, promising victory and glory if I would but take it into my hand.

I woke, washed my face, and vainly sought a more comfortable position among the reeds. I was glad to be awake and free from those dreams, but my waking thoughts were not much easier. My mind throbbed with thoughts that I did not want to think, but that had too strong a hold for me to shove them aside.

I kept thinking of Faramir.

I had no idea where my brother might be now. He might be in the City, or with his troops in North Ithilien, or at one of our other strongholds. But I could not shake the feeling that wherever he was, it was right in the path of an advancing army. Or armies.

I tried to tell myself that my dream of two nights ago meant nothing. Or rather, it meant only that I was worried for my family and my country. I did not need a prophetic dream to tell me that.

I watched one of the giant centipedes swim past me, and doggedly tried to banish from my mind the image of my brother standing alone as unknown foes rushed him from the darkness. And the sound of his voice whispering "Boromir, where are you?"

Sunset grew in the West like a bleeding wound on the sky. We began to hear more activity from the Orcs' camp. Brusque shouted conversations as their troops crawled out of their bedrolls and started to break down their tents. The clank of weapons and equipment. As evening closed in, a breeze caught the smell of the cook fires, their spears of smoke striking upward beyond the reeds. It brought also the smell of our enemies, the reek that spoke of old decay, fresh blood and ever-present death.

The thought came to me that I had grown up with that smell.

With as much stealth as possible we retrieved our sunken boat. We replaced our gear in it, but left it hidden while we crept forward once more to watch as the Orcs packed up their camp.

They went forth as the dark stain of sunset vanished into night. They had no boats or horses with them, relying on their own hardy limbs and tough hides to hew a passage through the plants of the marsh.

I kept as close count of them as I could, as they set out from the two islands. I was sure I had missed some. But the final total with them all together, not scattered about the islands, still came to nearly sixty. The question gnawed at me of how many such groups might be on the march even now, converging on the outposts of Gondor.

We delayed our departure longer than I would have chosen, but Svip assured me he could track them by their scent and the trail of broken reeds.

Both Svip's eyesight and the Orcs' were better suited to darkness than mine. Yet night creatures though they were, the Orcs must have decided their troops needed some standard to follow to keep them in close formation. Two of their soldiers carried torches, great brands nearly as tall as the Orcs themselves. Long after the Orcs had vanished from my sight I saw the yellow torchlight flicker ahead of us, like ghost lanterns luring us to doom.

On Svip's decision that we had waited long enough, we towed, pushed and squeezed our Elven craft through the reeds where we had fought that morning. Then as a relatively clear stretch of water spread out ahead of us, I took my place again in the boat's stern, paddling as silently as I could manage. Svip perched in the prow, now and then leaning out to touch or smell the plants that we glided past.

When I thought of it before, it had been a speculation born in sarcasm. But the Orcs had indeed carved a path for us to follow. The passage of fifty-odd Orcs through the reeds was a far more efficient means of road- building than had been my endless sword-hacking. I thought, if we tail the Orcs the rest of the way we may get home in decent time.

This was not, of course, a comforting thought. If our foes kept up their current pace, two days' march would bring them well within our borders. They could be at Cair Andros in four days at the most.

But they would not attack the island fortress with a force of only sixty. Somewhere along the way, I reasoned, this band must be planning to meet up with others of their kind. My hope was that while they gathered their troops, I could get to one of our border outposts and send a messenger to Cair Andros, Osgiliath, and my father.

It was probable that they had some knowledge of the force moving against us. But there was yet a chance that my information might fill some crucial gaps. If Minas Tirith was still the same city I rode out from all those months ago, then the Council was even now in session, day and night, debating whether the suspicious enemy movements were isolated raids or the prelude to full-scale assault.

Ha, I thought, that's probably where Faramir is right now. Never mind my accursed dream. He wasn't in the River facing foes who splashed out of the darkness, he was sitting in the conference chamber arguing with Councillors who wouldn't know an Orc from an Elf.

And, I thought, better him than me.

Being Faramir, he would doubtless get through the Council session with more grace than I would. At least he usually kept his temper, instead of threatening to bind the Councillors hand and foot, abduct them from the City, and deposit them on the front lines to see for themselves if we were under attack. It must be going on fifteen years since the meeting where I uttered that particular threat. But there were Councillors who apparently still had not recovered from it, and had maintained a wary distance from me from that day to this. That was fine by me, but unfortunately their scare had not increased their ability to see beyond the ends of their noses.

Our journey that night seemed as strange and haunting as any of my dreams. The ghost lights of the Orcs' torches flickered in and out of sight in the distance. They were almost the only light I could see. The young moon, that we had glimpsed the evening before, sank this night before ever it could break through the cloud. Here and there patches of the marsh glowed a faint whitish-green. It was only some kind of glowing moss, I was sure, but the cold glimmer reminded me uncomfortably of the light that had surrounded the Elven boat in my dream. I did not ask Svip about it. I fully believed he would agree that it was moss, but a superstitious corner of my mind feared he would matter-of-factly tell me it was the spirits of the drowned.

It was fortunate that we had Svip's eyes and nose to guide us, for I was virtually paddling blind. All I would have had to guide me were the noises of the troops ahead: steady splashing, an occasional grunt or growl followed by the crack of breaking reeds, now and then weapons clanking on armour. From this distance, there was little in the sounds to distinguish them from a troop of Men passing through this same country. Only the speed of their progress set them apart. Powerful Orc legs and the brute strength that tore through the water plants assured them passage at a speed twice what Men could have accomplished.

The night must have been half gone when Svip whispered to me that we were passing another stream on our right-hand side. It might be some smaller creek, but the timing seemed about right for it to be Geirthjof, Entwash's Fifth Mouth.

If it was Geirthjof, then we had one Mouth left to go. And forty miles beyond that would lie the main current of Entwash, at the southernmost boundary of the marsh.

We would leave the marshland behind. And then we, and the Orcs, would pass into Gondor proper, into the Sun-land itself.

Hour after hour we glided through the dark. Only occasional touches of reality – the weight of the paddle in my hands, and sharp-edged reeds that had survived the Orcs' onslaught, slicing at my skin as we floated past – served to assure me that this journey was not another dream.

Svip's whispered voice woke me out of the trance-like state I had slipped into. He hissed, "I think they're stopping."

"Want me to stop paddling?" I whispered back.

"In a minute. Hang on." I heard the familiar faint scratching noise as the fingers of the reeds brushed against our boat.

Svip spoke again. "I don't think they'll see us in here. Wait here; I'll go check on them."

I rested my paddle on my knees, and waited. I listened, but the faint sounds that I caught did not seem to tell me anything. Orc voices, possibly, but too indistinct for me to guess anything from their tone. Though when I thought about it, I supposed the lack of sounds told me something after all. Either they had got much farther away from us than they had been through most of this night, or they were indeed stopped, as Svip had said. Through the night there'd been a tapestry of sound as they marched through the reeds and the water. Now there was no splashing, no crackling of trampled reeds. Only the distant, muted hint of their voices.

Another, well-known voice rose out of the water, as Svip reappeared at the boat's side.

"They're stopped, all right," he reported. "Doesn't look like they're setting up camp. They're just sitting there."

"Where?" I asked. "More islands?"

"No. Looks like there's some fairly dry land on the Western bank. They're just sat along the shore. A few are lying down, but I didn't see any bedrolls or tents out. I guess they sent out a patrol something; anyway a really big one gave some orders and ten or so of them headed inland." He paused, then went on again, a frown in his voice. "Why would they stop so early? They've got a couple good hours left till dawn."

I hazarded the guess, "They're waiting for someone. This must be their rendezvous point."

There was nothing to do but wait ourselves. Svip dove underwater to fetch us an early breakfast of fish, which I ate without really thinking about it. Only as I was flicking the last few fish bones over the side did it occur to me that I was probably going to start enjoying this stuff, if I wasn't careful. I had to grin at the thought of how scandalised Dame Weltrude, the Mistress of my Kitchen, would be, if I started sending back her culinary creations and ordering raw fish instead. Although, like most servants, I supposed, no doubt she was already firm in her conviction that we of the ruling classes are irretrievably mad.

With the fish gone, Svip suggested I let him take the first watch. I could get some sleep, then take my turn on watch once it was light enough for me to see.

That made sense, so I settled down in the boat once more with the elven cloak wrapped about me. This time, I told myself, I was not going to have any dreams. I did not care if the dreams tried to come to me; I just was not going to notice them.

Perhaps it worked, for I do not remember any dreams that came in those hours. When I woke it was not a nightmare that had torn me from sleep, it was the pre-dawn cold. I sat up and rubbed my hands to get some life into them. Coldness seemed to have seeped into my bones.

The air had grown chill with the passing of the night. As light crept in on us, the water's warmth congealed in the colder air. The night's blackness melted into grey clouds of mist.

Svip whispered that he would check again on our foes. When he returned, it was to report that they had scarcely moved since his last reconnaissance. They were still sitting by the water's edge, though he thought that more of them were asleep than had been before. A few small fires had been lit. He'd seen two of the Orcs standing inland from the rest of the group, facing West.

Svip took his pack from the boat and curled up with it to sleep. I leaned back in the boat, propped on one elbow, and watched as tendrils of mist rose among the reeds.

I could not see the sun itself, but it must have risen, for the mist was turning a sort of gleaming white as light sifted through it.

Blast, it was cold. I eyed the mist, thinking sourly that the morning was going a little far out of its way to put me in a setting appropriate for a slain warrior. With the cold and mist, I might just as well be in the barrow world, standing eternal guard against the mortals who might covet my funeral goods.

I told myself, that is quite enough of that. I decided I would do some reconnaissance of my own. As quietly as I could, I lowered myself over the side.

I moved forward cautiously, keeping as much under the cover of the reeds as possible.

The Orcs were still there, just as Svip had described them. The spreading daylight had lured more of them into sleep, but the two sentries still stood statue-like, inland. One huge Orc with a gilt breastplate and plumed helmet paced back and forth through the ranks of his seated or sleeping comrades. He kept glancing out to the water and back to the shore again, and I thought that he must be their leader, grown impatient with waiting. I wondered if his gilded armour had been taken from a slain chieftain of Men, but he would have searched long to find a Man high-ranking enough to own that armour, and massive enough for his armour to fit the Orc.

I frowned, thinking that the land around here looked familiar. I was not sure how I could tell that, shrouded as it was in the mist. But something about it stirred a memory.

I turned and crept my way back to the boat and Svip. As I neared our concealing clump of reeds, I saw something through the mist beyond. And I knew where we were.

I had been here before. Twenty, no, twenty-three years ago, I supposed, by now. It was in the Noman-Lands Campaign of 2996, the last time I saw the tree that now loomed out of the mists.

Our troops in the Entwash borderlands knew the thick-trunked, twisting cypress as the Gallows Tree. I did not know of a particular instance when anyone had been hanged from it. It was a border marker, and a place of warning. When there had been fighting nearby, the victors traditionally festooned the tree with corpses of the defeated. Twice I had seen its boughs laden with Orcs and their allies of Harad, and once, the branches had borne Men of my own company. I had helped to build the barrows under which they now lay, half a league inland along the Sixth Mouth of Entwash.

The reeds where we had hidden our boat were mere yards from the tree, and from the wide, sluggish stream that emptied into Anduin. We had reached the Sixth Mouth at last.

It was hard for me to believe that I had not known where we were. Somehow I felt that, even in the dark, I should have sensed the Gallows Tree reaching out its limbs above us.

I swam closer to the tree, struggling to see its branches through the mist. I drew a breath of relief when I saw that today the tree was empty.

At least it made sense now, that the Orcs would have stopped here. If they were waiting for others of their forces to join them, the Gallows Tree and the Sixth Mouth were landmarks that all would recognise.

Almost against my will I gazed up into the tree.

The memories had not faded in twenty-three years. It seemed that if I let the memories take me, I would live all of it again. I would feel it again when we first realised what was hanging from the tree. And again I would scale that tree, to cut down the corpses of my men.

I had felt that I owed it to them, but another motivation had set me to climbing the Gallows Tree. When I was up there, it gave a few moments when none of my living comrades could see my face. So they could not see that Denethor's heir was crying, with tears that had broken forth the instant I knew I was out of their sight.

Movement, inland beyond the Gallows Tree, jolted me to the present.

Orcs. I counted ten of them, tramping toward the shore. They must be the scouting party that Svip had reported. I assumed they had not found what they were sent after, for their dogged trudge was that of soldiers whose report will not be good.

I lowered myself deeper in the water, hoping that the Elven cloak's hood and the reeds along the riverbank would hide me from their eyes.

Then I realised it was not myself for whom I should be worried.

It was one of those moments when one seems gifted with preternatural understanding, yet it will not be enough to stop things from going horribly wrong. I could see how to avert disaster if I could go back mere seconds in time, but that didn't exactly help.

The reeds where we had hidden our boat – and where Svip was sleeping – looked thick enough from the water. And, probably, from the shore downstream, as well. Unfortunately, neither of us had bothered to check what the sight lines were like from the shore just up river.

The Orcs were stomping along by the bank of the Sixth Mouth. The one in front suddenly stopped and called out something to his fellows, pointing toward our clump of reeds.

My heart lurched with dread. Then I slipped underwater and swam toward our hiding place.

I might be making things worse, of course. Perhaps movement caused by my arrival in the reeds would lead to discovery we might otherwise have avoided. But if the Orcs had already seen the boat, they were bound to investigate it anyway. How could it get much worse?

My hands touched the base of the reeds, in the sludgy bottom. I felt my way along until I thought I should be far enough into them to perhaps avoid discovery. Then with agonising caution I raised myself toward the surface.

As my head broke through the water I found myself staring into the wide, startled eyes of Svip. In the same instant each of us put a finger to his lips, in what I suppose must be a world-wide gesture for silence.

Orc shouts sounded very near us. I heard splashing as several of them waded into the water.

I pulled out an edge of my sodden Elven cloak, and draped it over Svip. Underwater, I eased my sword from its scabbard.

The voice and splashings of the nearest Orc were all but on top of us.

Ten of them, I thought. We could perhaps take them – I had put paid to eight myself, in the fight outside Svip's house, and Svip and I had accounted for another seven, yesterday. Yet this time, the odds were not good. Even if we did conquer this ten, there was little chance that the noise of the fight would not reach their comrades. Or that we would be able to defeat all fifty, or however many Orcs might be left.

Then suddenly Svip closed his hand around my arm. I glanced at him and saw him looking even more wide-eyed than before. In a minimal gesture he nodded his head toward the boat.

I followed his gaze. And stared in utter confusion.

The boat was moving. We could see it sliding its way out of the reeds as if someone were pulling it. And yet it did not seem as if anyone was.

For one moment before the reeds began blocking it from my sight, I was sure I could see the entire boat. I could see that no one was touching it. No Orc hands had closed around the gunwale, no stick or weapon was being used to snare it. I could even see the rope, hanging from the ring on the prow. It drooped loosely into the water, with no sign of anyone using it to pull the boat free.

In near silence the boat glided from the reeds. And out of our sight.

The Orcs' voices sounded again, but this time in tones of amazement and disbelief. I wondered if they saw what we had seen: the Elven craft moving on its own, upstream.

The splashes of our enemies' footfalls started up once more, but this time moving farther away from us.

For several moments more Svip and I stayed motionless, as the splashes sounded ever further in the distance. Then the water creature whispered to me, "Wait here." Before I could stop him, he dove under and had swum out of my reach.

I swallowed back several curses. I wanted to follow and stop him, but if there was a chance the Orcs might not notice him, there was very little chance they would not notice me.

But I heard no shouts of discovery. Only the Orcs' voices, increasingly distant, murmuring in what sounded like confusion and wonder.

Svip popped back out of the water at my side. He whispered, "I think you should come see this."

I wondered if he had taken leave of his senses. But I sheathed my sword, and as silently as I could manage, I obeyed.

Svip dove under again and I followed, just managing to keep him in sight ahead of me in the green soupy water. He tugged on my sleeve and stopped, cautiously rising to the surface once more.

I had scarcely believed that we could avoid being seen. Yet as I poked my head above the water, I saw why he had been so confident that we could.

Svip had brought us to the point where Glammad the Sixth Mouth meets the Anduin. As we gazed along the Sixth Mouth's course, we saw our Elven boat, still gliding steadily upstream. The morning sun started to break through the mist, casting a golden light over the grey wood of the boat, and the tendrils of mist that played around it.

Our ten Orcs were following the boat, as if it had bewitched them. Some of them kept pace with it along the shore; some waded behind it. Ever it seemed to keep just out of their reach, gracefully slipping through the water as if it were the most natural thing in the world for a boat to pass upstream on its own.

We watched the Elven craft and the Orcs, until they rounded a bend in the stream. The reeds along Glammad's banks hid them from our sight.

The boat had taken with it a good deal of our gear: the shield, the bow and quiver, and the majority of Svip's collection of bottles. But I had no intention of following to get them back.

A moment's horror shot through me as I thought that the Horn of Gondor had been in the boat, as well. But no, I remembered, it was all right. We had stowed the Horn in Svip's pack after we started using the cloak of Lórien. And Svip's pack, that he'd been using as his pillow, was back amid the reeds.

There was nothing left to do now but go back to waiting. We swam to our last hiding place, where Svip retrieved his pack. Then we made our way across to the East shore, where the ground was still more marshy and treacherous. Here we found ourselves another nest of reeds, from which we could observe our foe across the River. I watched for them, but saw no sign of the ten Orcs returning. I half expected to see the boat return as well, making its stately way down Anduin. But I did not see it, then or ever again.

Perhaps two hours later, the Orcs' waiting was rewarded. My attention had wandered, as I stared unseeing at the Gallows Tree and tried to remember the names of the men we had lost here. I had thought I would never forget, but now two men's names were missing from my memory. I vowed I would look up their names as soon as I reached home. Then a shout from one of the sentries dragged my attention back.

A party of perhaps thirty Orcs came striding across the land. They seemed untroubled by the sunlight that had now burned off the last of the mist. Even from across the River, we could see the signs that they had recently been victorious in combat. Many of them carried bags that I assumed held their loot. I saw two Orcs carrying what were clearly saddlebags, and another with a huge sack formed of some red and gold cloth, that must have been a cape or some wall-hanging, refashioned for the Orc's purpose. Four of the Orcs were leading horses. As I watched, one big sorrel jerked at the reins and fought to tear them loose from its captor's grasp. The Orc walking alongside slammed his shield into the sorrel's neck.

I had to bite my lip to keep from yelling in frustrated rage. And had to remind myself that if I'd not thought we could successfully fight fifty Orcs, I had damned well better not go attacking eighty of them.

The leader of these new Orcs, in a black suit of armour and a rakish red cape, stood conferring with the gilt-armoured chieftain of the group we had followed. Whatever they had decided, it did not seem welcome news to Gilt Armour's troops. Their groans and snarls of protest reached us across the water. Then a bark of command from Gilt Armour silenced them and dragged them to their feet.

Gear was collected, marching order was established in a few brisk commands. The two bands set off, along the Western shore.

We followed. But it was soon clear that we had no chance of keeping up. With the boat no longer there to aid us, the Orcs outpaced us without the slightest effort.

When they were finally, irretrievably lost to sight, we altered our method of travel. We had both been swimming while the Orcs were still within eyesight. Now I got out of the water and trudged along the riverbank, while Svip alternated between swimming along beside me in his own form, and getting out and plodding on the shore for a few miles as a horse.

The Orcs were still ahead of us. That much was clear from their footprints that had churned through the mud.

In this manner we passed the next two days.

All through the day on which we had lost the boat, from dawn to dusk of the next day, and far into the afternoon of the third, we slogged along the shore. Three times we thought we saw figures moving in the distance, twice on the East bank and once on the West. But they never got close enough for us to tell what they were, or apparently, for them to see us.

The signs of the Orcs' passage went ever onward, marring the muddy bank that stretched unending ahead of us.

On the afternoon of that third day, the River Entwash broke through land that had become less of a marsh than a green, rolling plain. As I watched the Entwash pour its waters into Anduin, I felt like falling to my knees and kissing the ground. We had come to the end of the marshland.

We had also come to point where the Orcs' path diverged from ours.

Their prints and those of the captured horses veered off down the riverbank, and headed into Anduin. Svip swam across the River to check, and reported that the prints continued on the East shore, heading almost due east into North Ithilien.

I hated to lose track of them. It made little sense, I supposed, to keep following them. I needed to get to my own people, in the shortest possible amount of time. But it infuriated me to have trailed the Orcs this far, and now be left again to guess where they might be heading. They might have their eye on our North Ithilien outposts – outposts that were far- flung and isolated enough that if the Orcs found them, they could pick them off one by one with little chance of the garrisons receiving any help. Or they might still rendezvous with other war parties, massing for an attack that I thought would almost certainly be aimed at Cair Andros. If they took the island fortress, they would have its boats to aid them. Boats that would help them make a crossing further downriver. And that might turn the tide in their favour when they struck at our country's heart. A dark image played before my eyes: our troops holding the shore at Osgiliath, hewing down the Orcs that rushed at them, ever on the brink of being swept away as countless more of the enemy spewed forth from the boats they had taken from us.

I shook my head. This was not the time for visions.

We must nearly have reached my first goal. Within two miles of Entwash and Anduin's meeting point is the refuge of Lilla Howe, the hidden outpost that nestles beneath the barrow of an ancient warrior of Gondor. I did not know if any of our men would be there, but if not, I could at least leave a message there before heading on again. Our Rangers stop there frequently, and even if I could not send a messenger from Lilla Howe at once, there was every chance that one would pass through soon, find my message and send it on.

And, I thought suddenly, at Lilla Howe there would be supplies. Supplies including food – food that did not consist of weeds and raw fish.

I was almost cheerful again, despite losing the Orcs.

I was on solid ground. And it was my own ground, at last.

Svip was in good spirits, too. As the afternoon sun began moving lower in the sky, he switched into horse form – after first handing me his pack to carry, so he would not have to worry about keeping it on his back. Then he tried out his legs, galloping along and sending sprays of earth flying from his hooves. I grinned as I watched him. The air was growing warmer as we left the marshland behind. Ahead of me, Svip was galloping in great circles. I paused in the shade of a grove of trees, to take a drink of river water from one of the two canteens that had been in Svip's pack.

With the canteen to my lips, I froze.

A voice behind me said flatly, "Don't move if you want to live." And the point of a dagger pressed into my back.