Chapter Two: In the Great River

Author's Note (April 2002): Hey, everybody, thank you for the lovely reviews! Now I'm worried about giving you too much of this at once, for fear that you'll get bored with it. But, oh well, I guess no one's forcing anybody to read this. Anyway, enjoy, I hope!

Chapter Two: In the Great River

I woke to darkness.

Not total darkness, it turned out. The ceiling that had been blue now seemed black, except that in front of the black was a sort of milky, palely glowing iridescence, as if I were looking through a paper-thin piece of seashell. The glow of it cast enough light around the room for me to see, though the piles of Svip's salvaged furniture were indistinct, looming darkly like a room full of trolls.

I sat up. There was no sign of Svip, but I thought I could hear breathing from the room to my right. A light, wheezing sort of snore.

I don't know that any answers had come to me while I slept. But my resolve had returned.

No longer was I going to lie here, worrying. I would take action. And if my action merely led to my death, what did it matter? As a dead man already, it hardly seemed I had anything to lose.

I dressed swiftly. It was a reassuring feeling to have my clothes on again, although it would have been more comfortable if the clothing were not all damp. I had noticed before, when I took my tour of Svip's house, that the insides of my boots squelched a little when I walked. Now I found that the rest of my clothes had damp portions, particularly where the fabric had been folded underneath. My cloak was the worst. Bits of the fur were wet enough for me to wring water out of them, if I had taken the time to bother with it. The cloak of Lórien, of course, was perfectly dry, and I had an automatic snide thought of how much more comfort might be enjoyed by all the peoples of Middle Earth, if the Elves were only generous enough to share their techniques for making water-resistant fabrics.

That my clothing was still damp meant it must only be two or three days since my funeral. Not a long time, but more than ample for our cause to be irrevocably lost and my comrades to be slain.

Whatever had happened, it was my duty to find out. I had to find the others, to help them if possible and avenge them if necessary.

Or to die, if Svip had told me the truth.

I picked my way between the dark piles, toward the room on my right. I crouched in the doorway and looked in.

The floor sloped down abruptly just inside the door. There were other differences that separated this room from the others – chief among them being that it was not filled with Svip's collection.

This room was illumined by the pale, glowing ceiling, and there was another faint source of light down near the centre of the floor: the last embers of a small fire. Sitting next to the coals were the dark, round shapes of two small cauldrons. I guessed that they held my tea and my stew, though the thought did not inspire me to continue my meal.

Beyond the remains of the cooking fire, the pallid light gleamed on the surface of a pool of water, about four feet across. And lying in the pool was my host, peacefully snoring.

I could not restrain a bemused smile. At least I knew now why Svip had asked if I would prefer sleeping in water.

Most of his body was under the water. Just his head and upper torso protruded, his head seeming to rest on a rock in the middle of the pool.

I frowned and reminded myself that I had more important things to do than spy on my host's sleeping arrangements.

I looked around the rest of the room, seeking for an exit. Only one area of the room looked promising.

The room held one doorway besides the one I was crouched in. It was on the other side of the room, with the sleeping Svip between me and this second doorway. The floor sloped down further toward it. It was arched like all the other doors in this place, but one thing at least seemed different. As I squinted through the dimness at it, I saw that the floor around that doorway seemed damp. I couldn't quite tell in the uncertain light, but it looked like there was water lapping at the base of the door. The light of the pale ceiling seemed somehow reflected off the floor at that spot, glimmering back up off of water or mud.

Right, I decided. I would come back here, if I did not find any other way to get out of this place first. But first I was going to retrace my way through Svip' house.

I was not setting out without a weapon. And the only weapons I had seen here were in Svip's armoury.

This time I paid scant attention to the collector's piles. I did, however, investigate the walls and ceiling of each room.

The round window I had seen in the room I slept in did not seem to have any way of opening it. In fact I was not certain that it was at all separate from the rest of the wall. It seemed to be a thinner portion of the same weird substance that made up the bubble-like rooms. But thin or no, it was not thin enough for me to break through. It stretched and warped when I shoved against it, but just oozed back into place.

In no other room did I even find such a window. And the only doors seemed to be those leading from one room to another.

It made sense, I supposed, that there should be only one entrance to the place, and that Svip should sleep near it. It would provide greater safety for his treasures that way, than if the house were riddled with doors.

I had paused just inside the doorway to the armoury while I scanned the walls in my fruitless quest for an exit. Having determined this last room to be as unbreached as the others, I turned my attention to the weapons sprawled across the floor.

The faint light gleamed on the heap as if it were bathed in moonlight. As I gazed, it came to me that it looked like the scene from the Tale of Arngrim, the one where Arngrim breaks into a barrow mound and fights with the dead ancient king for possession of the king's sword. I had loved that tale when I was a boy. In fact, I had delighted in telling the Barrow King sequence to my brother, because he was invariably scared silly by it.

I reflected ruefully that the only person I was likely to scare silly just now was myself.

This was, I told myself, not at all the same situation as Prince Arngrim's. The pile of weapons and treasure that Arngrim disturbed, after all, had all belonged to the dead king, and had been buried with him. Few spirits, if any, were likely to be hanging around here, just because one or two of their belongings had been added to Svip's collection.

Nonetheless, there was no reason not to do this with a little decorum. I bowed my head and said aloud, "My respects to all of you. I am in need of a sword. I humbly ask that you let me take one of yours."

Not getting any reply, spectral or otherwise, I made my way to the pile.

Most of the swords were in as hopeless a condition as I'd feared they'd be. Many, of course, were simply broken. But of those that were still whole, blade after blade was eaten with rust, raddled with pockmarks, covered with slimy plant life or rattling about in their hilts like so many loose teeth.

A few seemed more promising. Of these, the one that seemed right when I held it was a hand-and-a-half broadsword with vinescroll about its hilt. It had some tarnish, but it seemed sound, and the pattern-welding of the blade proved clearly enough the skill of its smith and the wealth of its owner. The finials of the hilt were moulded in the shape of horses' heads.

I wondered, gazing at it, if the sword came from Rohan. Of course the Rohirrim are not the only people to use a horse motif, but I had seen similar weapons, with the same sort of vinescroll and workmanship, in Rohan at the armoury of my in-laws.

Whoever had forged this sword and whoever had wielded it, I vehemently hoped that they would not mind me using it. And that it would not break apart on the first swing.

Speaking aloud once more and feeling only slightly foolish, I announced, "I am Boromir Son of Denethor, Steward of Gondor. I ask your permission for the use of this sword. You have my oath that I will use it with honour."

The sword no longer had its scabbard, but it looked as though the scabbard from my own sword should fit it. I walked around the heap until I came to the little pile of my funeral offerings.

I felt somewhat guilty at taking back the scabbard, once I had already offered it to Svip. But I wasn't going to take the time to debate the morality of it. The sword and scabbard fit as though made for each other, and I chose to read that as a sign that I was meant to take both of them.

For a moment I closed my hand around my broken sword hilt, bidding it farewell. I told myself that I should take nothing else of the offerings my comrades had sent with me; I had given them to Svip in exchange for the sword. But as I looked at it, I knew I could not abandon the Horn of Gondor, broken or no.

I silently cursed myself for my sentimentality, but I also knew how my father would react when I told him I'd left the Horn to be tossed onto one of Svip's piles. It would be used in family arguments for as long as we lived. Not that Father would be too pleased about me bringing the Horn back broken, either. But I reckoned he would forgive me for it, once he learned that I had died.

I considered how I was going to carry the Horn, now that it was in pieces. My companions did not seem to have included my pack when they selected my funeral goods, or if they had, it had not made its way into the hands of Svip. Anger leapt up in me at the image of them dividing my belongings amongst them, but I sternly fought it down. I had been dead, why should they not take my things if they could make use of them? And I had more important concerns before me. It should matter nothing to me if my pack and its contents were abandoned in the woods, scattered at the bottom of the Anduin, divided between my comrades, or if the noble Lord Aragorn had taken them and was even now distributing them as alms to the poor.

I unfastened the cloak of Lórien from around my throat. Slipping it off from over my own cloak, I folded it until it made a sort of pouch to carry the Horn. This I knotted several times around my belt.

It was time to leave.

Once more I made my way through Svip's house. When I reached the room of the pool, my host still slept. I grimaced as I listened to his peaceful snoring. It seemed the coward's way to attempt my departure without waking him and making my farewells, but I also knew full well that I was going to make every effort to get out of there without Svip awakening. I have no taste for emotional scenes, and I was sure that if I told Svip I was leaving it would develop into a full epic poem, with him pleading and wheedling and threatening me with instant death.

I crept down the slope, holding my breath as I passed the pool where he slept. The rock that was his pillow, I noticed, was covered with a thick cushion of dark moss. Svip was smiling as he slept, and I tried to assuage my guilt with the resolution that when I was home again – and all of this was over – I would send a caravan from Minas Tirith laden with gifts for Svip to add to his collection.

As I stepped through the doorway, walking carefully through the mud, I heard Svip's breathing change behind me. But when I looked back, he did not seem to have moved, and his soft snoring started up again.

Beyond the doorway was a sort of antechamber. It was the first room I had been in here that was not made up of the strange, skin-like bubble substance. It seemed instead to be a small cave, about four feet high, dug into damp, muddy earth. The cave came to an abrupt end on the other side of another pool of water. The water was very dark, and every now and then it would swirl and slosh beyond the boundaries of the pond, seeping through the mud toward me as I crouched there beside it.

I had been trying to determine in my mind, while I searched for an exit, where exactly Svip's house might be. That it was near the River, was obvious. But I knew not whether it was on the shore, on the River itself, or even beneath it.

Wherever it was, it was looking increasingly as though the only way in or out of it was through the water.

Unless this were not the exit at all, and the real way out was hidden by magic.

If it did turn out that way, I told myself, I faced no worse fate than getting a thorough wetting. If this were only another pond, I would find that out soon enough. But I would never determine whether this were what I sought, if I just crouched here thinking about it.

I am accounted a strong swimmer. And while I am not over-fond of thrusting myself into dark, unknown places, that has never stopped me from entering them when I had to.

One thing I did not want to do was try to swim wearing my cloak. I took it off and left it there in the mud; it would serve as another gift for Svip, and I did not imagine that the mud on it would bother him. I re- fastened my sword belt so that the sword lay flat against my back, checked that the knots were tight on the improvised pouch that held the Horn of Gondor, and figured that I was as prepared for this as I ever would be.

I lowered myself feet first into the water, keeping my hold on the muddy bank. When I was chest-deep, my feet touched the bottom. I was almost convinced that this was another dead end, but since I was now soaked anyway, I might as well dive under and make sure.

I dropped beneath the surface and swam into darkness.

Reaching my hand down I felt sludgy river bottom and the caress of ghostly, trailing plants. But I did not run into the sides of a pool. The water flowed unhindered before me and above me. I felt the tug of a river's current starting to take hold of me. Looking up, I thought there might just possibly be some light visible above. Launching myself with all my strength, I swam upward.

The current was now dragging me along with it, but I maintained my upward course. Once I glanced back, and saw, below and behind me, a pale glowing structure like some gigantic growth of mushrooms, five domes clustered together and gleaming through the dark water.

It was so strange a sight that I wanted to stop and stare at it, but a whirling eddy in the current took hold of me and then suddenly I broke through the surface.

Cold air and roaring sound rushed at me. Isolated images broke on my senses: dark water, looming trees on the shores, a ruddy glare over one bank from sunset or sunrise. Upriver from me as the current swept me on was what seemed to be a huge, white wall. It took me a moment to connect the roaring noise with what I saw, and realise that the white wall was the Rauros Falls.

At least now I knew where I was, and for which shore I should be heading. I struck out toward the western shore.

I wondered, as I swam, if the swimming was easier than it ought to be. Not that I was complaining. But I was sure that I was having an easier time of reaching the shore here, than I had when my brother and I swam from the bridge at Osgiliath. Though that could be due to the fact that this time I had not just spent several hours in combat.

My wondering was cut short as jagged rocks along the shore reared up before me.

I tried to swerve my course to avoid smashing into them too badly. I scraped against one broken fang of rock and was swept on, tried to grab hold of the trailing limbs of a fallen tree stretched out into the water and lost my hold again, and finally fetched up against another outcropping of boulders, with my arms wrapped tightly around a small rock pillar.

After some moments to catch my breath I started pulling myself along, clinging to the cracks in and between the rocks, until I reached the point where the water was shallow enough for me to walk through it. I finally flopped down on a grassy stretch of riverbank and sat there, with my legs stretched out into the water.

I was surprised at how cold the air felt. I realised now, for the first time, that the water hadn't seemed nearly as cold as I would have thought. Even when I'd first lowered myself into the water, there hadn't been the shock of cold that I would have expected. And yet now, sitting here, I was starting to shiver.

But it didn't matter, did it?

I grinned as a sudden thought occurred to me.

I was still alive.

I had left Svip's house and I was alive. So much for the water creature's prediction that if I left, I'd die.

Though I supposed it was a little early yet to start celebrating my survival. It would be just the sort of joke that Fate enjoyed if I were to decide I'd made it through safely, and only then keel over dead.

It could always be that I could stay alive as long as I was in contact with the River. If I got up and walked entirely onto the shore, would I be signing my death warrant?

I figured I had only one way to find out.

I looked at the red glow of the sky across the River, gave a mental shrug and got to my feet. I started walking away from the River.

Five strides later I still lived. And thus far I felt no ill effects.

I heard a splashing behind me, a sound entirely separate from the roar of the River and the waterfall. I whirled to face it, drawing the sword from its scabbard on my back.

I brought the sword to a halt a few inches short of slicing Svip's head from his shoulders. He looked at me accusingly as he stood there dripping on the shore; or rather he stared accusingly at the sword that had almost killed him. Svip complained, "That's mine!"

I cursed to myself, and fought to conjure up a calm tone of voice from somewhere.

"I know," I said, my calm sounding slightly strained. "I left my cloak in exchange. It's a fine cloak; you won't suffer from the bargain." I felt no real need to mention that it might have been nearly a fair bargain, before I had trudged halfway across Middle Earth in that cloak, and had gone to my watery grave still wearing it.

I sheathed the sword once more. Svip scowled at me impatiently. "What are you doing?" he demanded, as if I were a child he'd caught in the middle of some ridiculous prank.

"Leaving," I said.

"But I told you, you can't! You'll die!"

My patience was running at least as thin as his was. "In case you haven't noticed," I observed, "I'm still alive."

"You haven't left the shore yet!" Svip snapped. "Give it time!" Then he shook his head. "Don't leave," he said, "please."

I sighed. "Svip, I thank you for all you have done for me. I am sorry to seem ungrateful. But I cannot stay here. I have a task I must fulfil; comrades and family who are depending on me. I can't help them here."

He countered with the not unreasonable point, "Can you help them if you're dead?"

I nearly groaned. "How do you know I'll die?" I asked. "Have you ever done this before?"

"No, but -" he looked up at me pleadingly. "But you will die, I know it! Don't go!"

"I'm sorry, Svip. I can't stay."

I turned and started to walk toward the trees.

Svip must have run after me. He grabbed onto my right leg.

I yelled in annoyance and tried to shake loose his grip.

I wasn't even sure what happened then. I think I swung my arm to try and shove him away, and then suddenly Svip was flying backward and hit the ground.

He lay there face upward, not moving.

I turned and stared at him.

I hadn't hit him that hard, I was sure I hadn't. It had barely even felt like I had touched him.

Yet there he lay.

I hurried to Svip's side and knelt by him, starting to feel sick with apprehension.

His eyes were closed and he still hadn't moved. I didn't know if Svip's kind even had a pulse that one could feel in the same locations as Men did, but I reached out and put one hand to his throat.

I felt his pulse against my hand, and I nearly sobbed with relief. I gripped his small, bony shoulder. "Svip, wake up," I urged. "Svip, I'm sorry, come on, please. Wake up!"

Still nothing.

"Oh, blast it," I groaned, almost under my breath. "Oh, blast it, oh, blast it, oh, blast."

What was I going to do?

I have no major skills in the healing arts. I've cleaned and bound plenty of sword, axe and arrow wounds, both on myself and on others. But faced with a creature whose race I had never even encountered before, just lying there unmoving – I was at an utter loss.

"Svip, come on, please."

I looked desperately from him to the River.

Maybe getting him back to his house would help him. He'd made such a point of how I would die if I left; perhaps the same held true for him, or nearly so. Perhaps he was weakened away from his home, and if I got him back there he would recover?

I thought it was probably wishful thinking. And how would I get him back to his house, anyway? How, without drowning him – and probably myself – before I reached it?

But I saw no other answers. And suddenly I felt a certainty that seemed to come from outside of me, almost as if in a vision.

I could get back to his house, I was sure of it. I didn't know how I knew, but I knew.

"Svip, blast it, wake up."

He did not respond and did not move.

Shaking my head and wondering what I thought I was doing, I gathered the little unconscious creature up in my arms.

I strode back into the River. I made my way out to the last point where the water was shallow enough to walk in, fighting against the current that tried to tear me off my feet. Just beyond where I was standing, the ground below the water broke off in a ledge and disappeared.

Still wondering why I thought this was going to work, I clutched Svip to me with my left arm and jumped off the ledge into the deep water.

One useful thing about doing this while wearing a sword and armour was that I had no difficulty sinking down to the bottom.

Almost without thinking about it I was half swimming, half crawling along the river bottom, against the current. The pale glowing domes of Svip's house appeared before me. I swam to the base of the house, the bottom edge where the glowing domes stopped. I wasn't at all sure I could find the tunnel that led into the house again, but while I was still worrying about it, my free hand, reaching out ahead of me, closed around the muddy edge of the tunnel.

Moments later I was sprawling and spluttering in the little mud anteroom. I had fallen back on my wet, muddy cloak, still lying there. Svip coughed against me, and I very cautiously put him down on my cloak.

He coughed again and spat out some water. Then he lay quiet again, still not opening his eyes or moving.

He was still breathing, I could see that. So at least I hadn't drowned him. But curse it, why wouldn't he wake up? What was I supposed to do to help him?

I could at least get him back to his bed – or whatever one wanted to call it. Feeling huge and clumsy and more than half convinced that I would break him, I picked him up again and moved in an awkward crouch out of the cave, back into his house.

With painful cautiousness I set him down in his pool, arranging his head on the moss-covered rock.

What now?

I sat down beside the still glowing embers of the cookfire.

Maybe Svip could use some tea. Goodness knew I didn't think the tea would be any help to me if I were injured, but Svip had cooked the stuff, maybe he liked it. I found a stick of driftwood with some charred marks and stirred the fire back into life with it, then manoeuvred the small black cauldron on its three legs over the fire.

"Svip," I said to the still, silent figure in the pool. "I am sorry, Svip. You're home again, it's all right. Please, will you wake up? Please?"

What had I done? How did I keep doing things like this? What kind of a brute was I, that I should harm the being who had brought me back to life?

I have been called Boromir the Fair, but I had a strong, miserable suspicion that I should more accurately be called Boromir the Bully.

That was twice now, in what could only be three days at the most. Twice that I had attacked creatures barely half my size. Twice that I'd hurt a person whom it was my duty to protect, or to whom I owed my life.

Curse it. Curse it. I ought to have stayed dead. It was all too clear that when I was alive, all I was good at was hurting people.

I thought bitterly that the Fellowship, my family, my City, all would be better off without me. They were better off with Aragorn.

You wouldn't find him in this situation, I told myself. He wouldn't have sneaked out in the night to avoid saying farewell to the person who'd saved him, and he never would have sent Svip flying along the shore. No doubt Aragorn would have become Svip's best friend and would have passed a charming, gracious evening with him, singing songs about Elves. And somehow he would have got out of here without hurting anyone, and with Svip still thinking he was the greatest thing since mithril.

I picked up the stick of driftwood and jabbed disconsolately at the cookfire.

That was when I saw, from the corner of my eye, that Svip's eyes were open. And he was watching me.

I started to turn my head toward him and his eyes snapped shut immediately.

I thought, The little bastard.

He'd cooked up this whole thing. From the instant I hit him, he must have been feigning all of it, so I would panic and feel guilty and bring him back here and wouldn't leave. Which was exactly what I had done.

Fury welled up in me. For a moment I wanted nothing more than to wring his scrawny neck. Only then I really would have killed the creature who had saved my life, and I would have to go through all of this, all over again.

"Svip," I said, "I know you're awake. Sit up and look at me."

He still didn't move.

I snarled, "Sit up now."

Svip sat up in the middle of his pool, suddenly staring at me with very wide, alarmed-looking eyes.

Now it was my turn to sound like I was addressing a recalcitrant child. "That little stunt of yours was not funny," I snapped. "Don't ever try that again!"

"It wasn't supposed to be funny," he argued. His voice was growing louder as he spoke, and he ended on a yell, "I can't let you leave!"

"Listen to me. I cannot stay. When I died, I failed the people who relied on me. If I stay here, I'll be failing them again."

"Won't you fail them if you die again, too?"

"I can't help that," I said, hearing my barely controlled rage quivering in my voice. I took a deep breath and fought to shore up my slipping control. I said, "While I'm alive, I have to try."

Svip suddenly launched himself from the pool, and almost before one could blink he was crouching there, dripping, beside me. His big eyes gazed up in entreaty and he grabbed hold of my sleeve, almost as wet as his own. "At least stay another day," he pleaded. "There's so much I want to ask you. We haven't got to talk at all, yet. Please, I just want to talk with you, just another day, then you can go."

I pulled away from him.

Perhaps I ought to do as he asked. It wasn't so much to ask of me, was it? After all, I owed him my life. To his credit he didn't remind me of that, but he didn't have to.

But the thought of staying filled me with a desperate sense of frustration, resentment and near panic.

I had no idea of what might be happening, out there. Whether Frodo and the others were still free. What dangers might be menacing them even now, while I sat here debating with Svip the water creature. And more, a thought that would drive me mad if I allowed my mind to dwell on it – what might be happening to my country, to my City. I'd been away so long. Too long. Our case had been desperate even when I left. I'd been gone over half a year, and I had no word, no hint of what horrors the people I loved might be facing. Those thoughts had been growing stronger and more troubling to me for weeks now, through all the last days of the journey with my comrades. Now they swept back at me so strongly that I felt I would choke on them.

"I can't stay," I said hoarsely. "You'll just have to resurrect yourself another Man. I'm sorry."

I got to my feet and walked down the slope to the entrance of Svip's cave antechamber. Svip stayed crouched beside the cookfire. He didn't follow me, but when I reached the cave entrance he yelled out, "Wait!"

I turned back to face him. "I'm leaving," I said. "Now. For your own good, don't follow me."

I was not proud of myself as I swam away from Svip's house once again.

I had not behaved myself fittingly here, and I knew it – certainly not in a manner becoming to the son of Gondor's Steward. As I swam, I tried to force the anger out of myself with each stroke of my arms through the water. I was angry at myself, at Svip, at everything – at this whole pointless quest that had lured me away from my home just when Gondor needed me most. Surging upward, I allowed myself to imagine that instead of slicing through the water I was hacking up the bodies of the people I blamed most for all of this: Elrond of Rivendell, Gandalf Mithrandir the grey mischief-maker, cursed arrogant Aragorn the Ranger, with all of their eloquent, myth-spinning nonsense. Why had I ever listened to them, let myself get caught up in this fools' mission to walk into the realm of the Enemy and try to drop his Ring down the Mountain of Fire?

If they insisted on committing themselves to this foolishness, why on earth had I not left them to it? Let them jaunt into the arms of Sauron and his minions, if they cared to. I should have left Rivendell the day after I got there, the moment they started planning this errant idiocy.

I broke through the water, once more gasping in the harsh, cold air.

The sun was rising over the trees on the eastern shore. I turned away from it, swimming again to the west.

Even now, I wasn't free of it. I couldn't now turn my steps toward home, as I had meant to when we camped below Amon Hen. This morning I had the chore of scaling the cliff face beside Rauros – by the old North Stair if it still existed and I could find it; otherwise just up the rocks – searching our last campsite and our battleground, and finding out, if I could, what had happened to my companions. It seemed as much a fool's errand as did all of the rest of this, and I almost hoped I would find no trace of them. Then I could go home, assuring myself that I had done all I could. But it wouldn't be true. I had to find them, somehow, whatever it took. I had given my word to stand by them, and now I must hold to my oath. Although, I assured myself, if I did manage to find them and be of some use to them, the moment they were out of their current peril I would tell Lord Aragorn exactly what I thought of him, knock out a few of his teeth, and leave them to their madness and go home as fast as my legs could take me.

I was so caught up in my anger, I paid scarcely any notice as I successfully caught hold of one of the fallen trees jutting into the River, negotiated my way along it, and reached the shallow water once more.

Before long my feet were planted on the shore. I shoved my dripping hair out of my face, and grimly regarded the slope at the edge of the Falls.

This was not going to be any fun at all. But neither would it get any better the longer I put it off.

I wrung a little of the water from out of my sleeves, emptied the water out of my helm that I had hanging from my belt, adjusted the sword belt so it lay more comfortably on my back, and began to trudge toward the trees and the hill.

As I stomped along, I tried to ignore the unsettling sensation that I was walking in the wrong direction.

All through our journey over these past weeks, one thought at least had helped to sustain my patience amid hardships and humiliations. We were heading toward Gondor. There was still a chance that Aragorn would hold true to his word and accompany me to the White City, little though I believed that this supposed king would be any real help to us. I had scant faith left in the cursed riddle or prophecy that had sent me seeking for Imladris and the wisdom of the Elves. But yet if there was any chance that Aragorn and his broken sword of legend could help turn back the tide of darkness from our shores, then all this trouble and foolishness would have been worth it.

Even if it should prove that Aragorn and the others did not turn their path to Minas Tirith, I had always been able to glean comfort from the fact that I was heading toward home. If they did not choose to go with me, I would give them what aid I could while our roads were the same, and then turn west and south, to my own land.

But now I had turned my back toward Gondor, and even if my path lay northward for only a day or two, I could not shake the grim feeling that something was terribly wrong. That somehow, perhaps, my people needed me more than ever, and I was deserting them by pursuing this mad quest and trying to aid fools who cared more for the cryptic utterances of Elven hermits than they did for words of good sense from a comrade with whom they had fought side by side.

Stop it, I ordered myself. Stop thinking, Boromir, and just walk.

And then I stopped walking, as well. I froze in my tracks, about ten feet away from the edge of the trees.

From the forest ahead of me I smelled wood smoke. I heard the harsh, guttural language of the Orcs.

While I was brooding over the injustices of my life, I had nearly walked straight into an Orc war party.