Faramir Fiction Archive

Shortest Night (G)

Written by Butterballer

12 January 2010 | 4175 words

author: butterballer
disclaimer: the professor made me do it
rating: G
characters: Faramir, Éomer, Damrod, Folcred
notes: written for lotr_sesa 2009, for tackerama. i sincerely apologize for the lateness of the submission. i tried very hard to make up for it through quality. i hope you all enjoy it

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Shortest Night

At the first Battle of the Fords of Isen on February 25 3019, Théodred’s position was relentlessly assailed and he was slain.

On February 26, 3019, Faramir and Denethor heard the Great Horn borne by Boromir sounding from afar in the north. Three days later, Faramir was on guard duty on the western shore of Osgiliath. At midnight, he saw a boat floating down the Anduin and he waded out to it.

The story takes place on the 25th of December 3017 / 3018, established as the winter solstice of Europe, according to the Julian calendar. Both Théodred and Boromir were still alive but their days were numbered, Éomer and Faramir feel the impending doom upon them.

Waiting in Marshes

They lost the brigand of unusually fast orcs to the weeds and the flat rock walls of the Wetwang. East of the frothing mouths of the Entwash, the marshland was a callow graveyard, stocked with shadows and the echoes of a wind rising from the north. The narrow waist of felled trees and, sometimes the brittle bones of men from the War of the Last Alliance – who had survived long enough to walk away from the bodies of comrades, to die closer to the Great River – stood upright in the shallow muck. These dead snags, picked by sharp beaks and infested by small snakes, would have bitten into the horses’ legs and flank.

Folcred scanned the horizon. Having crossed the Anduin, the orcs disappeared into the gloom of the failing winter light, into the pathless marshes. At the very least, Folcred thought, they had driven the looting savages far from the outlaying villages, and tonight, the villagers could sleep safe. Folcred had been among the twenty or so men that the captain had selected to ride on in search of the orcs. The rest of the eored had camped in the villages, if they returned.

The orcs were becoming more and more unruly, thieving and burning without restraint, faced with the desperate threat of the cold winter. The Marshalls had their hands full; the cold had infested the bones of their people, steadily descending into hunger and destitution and there was cruel gossiping against Théoden King. Folcred coughed and shivered as a gust of wind rattled his chainmail.

His captain, Éomer, had dismounted and was standing on the bank of the Anduin. Folcred saw him tilt his head back, sizing up the soundless clouds that muted the sun, strangled the light, so that their people were silent and twisted their bodies together for heat. Folcred rubbed his horse’s neck. They were standing in shallow water and his horse twitched and shifted, keeping from standing still. Today, the persistent chill threatened to freeze their muscles.

Éomer’s eored stood at a small distance away, respectfully silent. Folcred shifted on his saddle. He was sore from the five hour ride. They had ridden from their homestead, to the village and, finally, as straight as they could navigate through the Entwash to the edge of the marshes. Eyes stretched to slits to catch an occasional glimpse of black hide across brown and green country was no work for a soldier and he almost grunted in relief when the clouds turned their sweet earth pallid. He looked back, imagining the kissing streams merge into the Entwash.

Today was winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. Folcred bowed his head against the wind that refused to die down. He bit his lips to keep his teeth from chattering and set his shoulders square against the chanted prayer of the cold breeze. In turn, he chanted his father’s name under his breath, recited a short list, as he remembered, of the many nights of sleet and rain his father had spent with his eored, away from his family. As Folcred cursed the wind that whipped his exposed cheeks and blurred his vision of the captain, who had taken off his helmet, he forced his thoughts towards the heat of the summer and the smell of horse’s dung, to keep himself preoccupied. If he was going to fill the debt towards his father, for mistrusting him and misconceiving his loyalty to the eored, he must keep silent and keep awake. The twenty young men with him had huddled with their own thoughts, remembering what light and warmth they could.

A whistle cracked through the low moaning wind. The men moved southward, following Éomer, towards a shallow part of the river where the horses could swim across. He broke into a trot as the dead snags became less frequent and the bedrock underneath the marsh water peeked through the mud and moss. Folcred followed Éomer’s gaze, Firefoot was veering steadily east, to their left. In the tall shadows of the Wetwang, where rocks and boulders before the Emyn Muil had started encroaching upon the fields, dividing sky from earth and thrusting themselves up like discarded spears, like hands outstretched for rain, Folcred finally recognized the slumping shapes, the slinking half-crawl, half-run of the orc party. The dwindling light had made them disappear but now, as the first stars cast their steady glow over the landscape, their black form loomed clearer against the pale, flat rocks. The Wetwang was alive with their meandering and wading around felled trees and rock. The orcs were moving southeastwards, but they fell often, tripping on roots or slipping on the rocks. Folcred saw Firefoot climb the east bank, picking up speed, flying over the thick, scraggly thorns growing in bushes.

A Grove of Sharpened Arrows

He watched the pale rock faces disappear into the sunless day and heard the wind pummel the sparse grass flat against the boulders. He huddled closer to the ground and drew his hood lower over his eyes as he relaxed his body. He lay on his belly, torso supporting his arms. Beside him, a small pile of light metal shaped into semi-blunt arrowheads. He had picked up large twigs and begun sharpening them, shaping and smoothing the body slowly. He was no expert marksman so he practiced, constantly. He had become adept at making arrows and his aim was improving. Now and then, he looked down at the shaft of wood, carefully peeling off the bark.

Damrod was one of two assigned to the small ring of trees bordering Ithilien and Nindalf. He rubbed his hands together, and tested the leather bound across his forearms. From his tunic, he dragged a small, metal whistle out by its chain. His captain, Faramir, had given his companion, Mablung, a similar instrument.

Days ago, Faramir had taken them aside, to a corner in the stock room at Henneth Annûn. From his pocket, wrapped in soft, brown leather, he produced two small whistles on white chains. On the northern watch, Faramir said, as he handed them wrapped food and a jug of water stowed in a leather pouch, you will use this if you spy any man wounded or distressed. Damrod was five years Mablung’s junior; he was concerned, only, with the honor he felt his captain had bestowed upon them. He had grasped the well-crafted metal trinket and slipped it about his neck, underneath his tunic.

Mablung nodded, but he did not wear the whistle. He asked for the leather pouch and slipped it, carefully, between his forearm and his leather guard. Faramir said nothing, held Damrod’s stare, the way he furrowed his brow, anxious for an opportunity to do his duty well. From Henneth Annûn to their watch, Damrod fingered the whistle around his neck, until Mablung told him to put it away.
Before Damrod separated from Mablung, whose post was northeast, he asked, do you understand who the captain expects us to meet. Mablung’s voice was a register above the dry leaves rattling in the wind. Mablung turned slightly and climbed the steadily sloping land, full of trees whose roots surfaced on the shallow earth. Damrod heard him say, it had been six months since his brother, Captain Boromir, had been wandering the north, exploring the undiscovered woods between the shadow-mountains, for Imladris.

He tucked the whistle back underneath the leather vest and his tunic. He inhaled the air scented with dew. As a boy, he thought the battles all took place in open fields, sun and wind tangled in hair, all the orcs black and grimy. When he first tasted the blood of an orc he fought off, defending a small village from an evening raid, he had swallowed and forced its body off of him. Its eyes lolled in its head, looking at something beyond the firelight of the camp. He had tasted no difference between the blood of the thing and his own, seeping into his mouth from a broken lip. He had thrown this body into the dug-up ditch and spat on the earth beside the pyre. It had only been a few months since, and already he had taken to watching his hands grow large with calluses.

When he had first fought in Ithilien, from the wide fields west of Osgiliath, he had shot another ranger. The tumbling shapes of men and creatures jumbled in many bloodthirsty shadows. He had stood, confused, for a split second, until he caught the glint of a curved sword swinging down. The orcs, he knew, had bulky, sawed blades, some curved for hacking. From behind, he shot what he saw as an orc, between the shoulder blades. Damrod pelted towards it as the body tumbled forward and an orc escaped from beneath the fallen torso. After profuse apologies, Mablung cursed him for his lack of judgment, told him to train his eyes, and shoot to kill.

Damrod saw, coming down from the northeast, an orc passed through the tall grass and weeds to his left. It was a few hundred yards or so away from him, its legs were covered in brown and green mud, its crooked, dull blade splintered with grass stalks. Two more orcs stumbled into view. They were larger than the spindle-legged orcs from the Black Land that he had fought off, south of Ithilien. He could see their faces and necks white with paint. They were well-armed and obviously tired. The three orcs squatted behind a tall rock a distance removed from the grasses. Damrod watched with them, waiting for their full party to emerge.

Damrod hoped most of his fifty sturdy arrows would find their marks.

Death in the Waters

It had been six months since Boromir kicked the dust from the travelled paths leading to the White Tower. Faramir remembered his brother had melted into the heavy air of a molten July. Faramir pushed back the mug of hot tea as he studied the maps his scouts from south Ithilien had scrawled during a fortnight exploring the mountains of shadow’s scraggly feet. When no word of Boromir reached them after two months, he had not been worried, but the winter solstice had cloaked Middle Earth in frost. Even here, in the south, the ground had turned hard and unyielding.

Boromir had left in the summer. More than orcs, Boromir was contending with the wretched wild, its unpredictable tantrums punishing the earth with sleet and blizzards. Faramir smiled at the thought of his brother huddled underneath a lip of rock. Between them, Faramir was more capable of forethought and planning. His brother was keener on action, instead of rationalization. In battle, Boromir’s intuition guided him as he anticipated his opponents’ next move because he knew what he would do were their positions reversed.

The angry waterfall behind him, guarding the entrance to Henneth Annûn, sprayed water a few meters into the cave. His nine men were arranging stacks of food and water, laying out thick blankets, or rubbing hands together near the fire they had tended near the center of the main hollow. Dusk was setting in with a deep layer of cold that settled on the flesh. Faramir rubbed his neck and cheeks, cold from thoughts of fresh snow stacked upon trees. Ithilien succumbed to the heavy white silence as all living things, both earth and water froze together, resisting men, elves, and orcs. His company had enough to eat for a month; the stock of dried meat was untouched. They had dry wood to heat snow and ice, but his thoughts turned away from his comfortable cave, his men in the firelight keeping warm, towards the disaster of his heart. Boromir, if he was still out there, was caught underneath the hard snow swarming in the heavens. The stars would be veiled, the fire in his brother’s eyes put out, closed underneath shadows of rock, ice.

Faramir took the stairs cut into the rock floor that spiraled downward and westward, behind the falls and out of the spray. The entrance was cut a meter beyond the falls, leading out towards a terrace of rock and water, from which he could overlook the pool. The wind, trapped in an ally of water and stone, blew back and forth noisily. In the stables below the first, main hollow, he could hear the horses kick up straw, chew the hard carrots and potatoes.

Light snow was falling. At Osgiliath, the stone city streets would be slick with ice and water running towards the Anduin. He could not remember when Boromir brought him to Osgiliath before the orc attacks forced him to join his brother trying to regain contested territories. In the ghost city, they had hidden and waited for the orcs to cross the Anduin and creep among the wrecked stone buildings. He remembered Boromir’s face most clearly in battle. His lips were contorted between a smile and a grimace, his hands ended in swinging blades. In either the early morning or the deep night when they waited, he never looked at his brother’s eyes. He was terrified that he would not recognize Boromir, who loved to kill to know he could survive.

Boromir had insisted on taking up the journey to Imladris and, for the first few weeks, Faramir woke up disappointed that no dream of him had come. It had been months since he dreamt. It had been six months since Boromir had left; it had been six months since Faramir had been home. His blood ran cold as the gloom darkened around him. Nights of dreaming up his brother galloping home, waiting by his window as a boy, the way he waited for the clarion call of a whistle, came back to him. He had grown up waiting for Boromir; life was not so different.

A piercing, high cry scattered a row of bats roosting above him. Faramir looked up from the swelling pool, swirling water reflected in his eyes. He had given Damrod the slighter, higher-pitched whistle, whose call ruptured the descending silence.

Blood on the Snow

After the stories Boromir brought home, when he talked as the wine rouged his chapped lips, Faramir expected the Rohirrim to be loud and reckless. He imagined them roaming the wide planes, almost half horse themselves. Here, in Ithilien, whose trees closed in upon them, brooding and obtrusive, the broad-shouldered light-haired men were silent. Something in the way their captain held his head, high and forward, told him he distrusted the unfamiliar trees. The captain twisted his head left and right, memorizing the way shadows fell across tree trunks, the way his body sloped in the saddle from the uneven terrain. The captain shifted on his saddle. He must’ve been used to branches that spread out towards the horizon in the grassy sea of his country. Faramir looked up into the night sky, the trees’ vertical branches seemed to pierce the dark, releasing bursts of light, star, and cold air. Faramir urged his horse to a faster trot, hoping to reach Henneth Annûn as quickly as possible. He looked at Damrod riding behind one of the three men he took with him to answer the whistle call.

Faramir had set out quickly with three companions. As he led his horse out of their stable and galloped north, he knew Boromir was far removed from him. Their lives had diverged and separated. He could no longer feel his brother in the world as the earth moved slower, slackened, felt more alien to him. As the hood flew off his brow and his steed moved quickly through the trees, its hooves thudded on hollow ground, the trees conceived shadows and echoes, and the starlight glared bright, merciless. This world bereft of his brother was no more his, than his brother’s laughter, his brother’s secrets, his brother’s journey into the wild.

He stopped abruptly a few yards away from the cluster of rocks nearest Henneth Annûn. He turned back to the captain and pulled down the mask covering his face. The captain’s lips were dark blue. In his arms, a bleeding young man coughed up blood onto the rough blanket his fellows had provided.
This is a secret, sacred place, Faramir began, looking at the captain, who did not respond, barely looked at him properly, studying the rocks that littered the forest, the large boulders that resisted the tempering wind. We need to blindfold your men, Faramir said.

Your boy shot Folcred, the captain replied. Faramir looked towards the captain’s men, who stared back. If we reveal our position, we are vulnerable to attack – not from your men, I trust that, Faramir added, but we cannot risk this information compromised.

Wherever this glorified cave lies, I swear to you, the captain lowered his voice as the horses pawed the ground, restless among the confining trees, it will be safe with us. But your man shot this boy in my arms. I have no use for dead bodies. Certainly, yours will not pay for the service Folcred pledged me.

You will not blindfold my men, the captain said, voice soft as the falling snow, weighted with the lives he brought from their house fires. Folcred had started shivering in the cold. Faramir took a small knife from his boot and held it out towards the captain. You will pledge with blood and I will take you to Henneth Annûn.

The captain, whose arms and hands were soaked with Folcred’s blood, twisted his neck, revealed a smooth patch of flesh between his jaw and collar bone. So be it.

Shortest Night

Among the captain’s men was a physician trained in treating war wounds. The arrowhead, caught between two bones, did not pierce the heart. The arrowhead would need to be removed, the Gondorian was adamant.

His men moved into the antechamber, the receiving cave the captain designated for them. His men gathered around the fire with the nine black-haired Gondorians. He sat down at the scrubbed table, a short way from them. He faced the waterfall, regarding it warily. He listened to the turbulent wind teasing the water as it splashed into the pool below him.

Folcred’s blood had dried on his chainmail, soaked by the leather. The tunic he wore underneath stuck to his skin with the blood on his neck. In the quiet, misgivings broke over him like noisily. His crashing heart thundered loudly in his ears. He had told his men that Folcred was out of danger, the arrowhead could be removed, and they could wait out the storm here. By next light, they would ride for Rohan, back to the homestead.

They had smiled at him, relieved, finally warm enough to remove the heavy chainmail digging into their necks, the various pieces of leather strapped to their bodies. Some of them will remove their swords, unclasp their belts, and sleep, but he waited for and hoped for their crass noise, their heavy-handed jokes, the crude ale house banter that came with a day in the fields, working the horses. He wanted laughter to overpower the sound of water grinding into stone and the wind scoring the sky white, benumbing the tips of trees and freezing their rivers.

Théodred had ridden north from Edoras, towards the river Isen where it flowed across the gap of Rohan. He hoped to route a large orc party that had come out of the Misty Mountains. Orcs had been travelling in larger and larger packs throughout the winter and they had become faster. Hunting orc had become necessary soldiers’ work. Éomer was a son of the green fields and had no love for the overcast sky, it reminded him too much of shady monarchy politics. His vision clouded and his heart heaved within him. His body was cold from the gloom.

The day Théodred decided to ride north, he had been at Edoras visiting his sister. From the distance, the Golden Hall slumped underneath the cloud-infested sky, the sun barely peeking through the course, ragged curls at high noon, its yellow thatched roof blunted by the unnatural dusk. Éowyn’s hands had been cold when she placed them on his neck. Her grey eyes were metallic, smoking like cooled metal. She glanced around her, wary of the shadows, even as he walked her down the
familiar halls.

The physician looked capable, taking care to force half a bottle of gin down Folcred’s throat, never mind that he had been knocked unconscious as he fell backwards, from the blow of an orc, the force of the arrow in his chest. Éomer had slain the orcs who attacked when Folcred picked his way through the tall reeds from the marshes.

The captain sat beside him with a cup of hot tea and gin. His man arranged a small bottle of brandy, a full steaming pot of warm water, a bowl of herbs, and some roughly cut strips of linen, upon the table. The captain cleared a larger space for them, pushing aside his maps, notebooks, a small lamp.
Folcred will live through this. Our physician has lost no one. The captain sipped from the tall mug and pushed it away from him. Éomer took the peace offering and nodded his appreciation for the truce.

We were chasing a party of orcs across the Riddermark. They gave us good chase until twilight caught us east of Wetwang and they disappeared across the Great River. I spotted them as they took flight south towards your woods, Ranger.

He sipped the tea, his chapped lips breaking into new wounds. I’ve spilt blood into the cup. He
pushed the cup away from him.

Damrod had been instructed to keep watch on our borders. He told me the first three orcs had broken into a scuffle, fighting in the shadow of rocks. When Folcred burst from the bushes, he had notched his bow, and fired, anticipating more orcs. Folcred will be fine, he’s in good hands.
The captain’s eyes reflected the firelight and Éomer recognized the cold-eaten weariness that he harbored behind his own gaze. His eyes had been blackened by some anxiety hardening into despair. There was smoke behind his eyes. Éomer inhaled the captain’s hot breath and tasted something bitter, like bile, rising up from some deep warmth.

We were both caught between the dark and duty, there is nothing to apologize for, and nothing to forgive, Éomer responded to the shade of guilt that surfaced when the captain returned his gaze.
The captain chuckled darkly. Duty contorts us into forms often we cannot recognize. But we are our duty, especially in the wilds of the world.

Éomer shifted in his seat. The men had opened one of the barrels of ale and some of the Rohirrim were teaching the Gondorians a bawdy song about a loose woman and a drunk captain.
The cold will blast through flesh, muscle, and bone tonight. You will stay as our guests here. There is more than enough room, and my men enjoy your songs. It sounded more like a request, Éomer felt the captain was no more adept at giving out orders than he was. The captain’s voice dropped into a murmur at the end of each sentence, inviting contradiction or argument. Éomer smiled to put him at ease.

We are grateful although I am unused to such hospitality. Before they are rendered speechless by your ale, my men would like to thank you for the ale and lodging. Éomer folded his hands on the table before him. The captain started to move away, misreading Éomer’s mannerism. Stay, sir. The long night is before us and none of us can shut the darkness out. Even our hearts give way to shadow.

The captain nodded, sat down and asked for the cup of tea. He poured them a cup to share, to make the warmth last longer as they shuffled the mug between them. They partook of the warmth each offered and the darkness receded until dawn broke through.

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