Faramir Fiction Archive

The Moon Has Waned (PG-13)

Written by Erfan Starled

22 August 2010 | 17300 words

Chapter Five

In the morning Faramir was kept strictly separate from his men, marching near the fore of the file. The miles had rolled back behind them and the Ephel Dúath’s shadow fell visibly nearer as they headed for the marshy, mosquito-ridden headwaters of the Poros. Grimly, he contemplated Hajiri’s determined success thus far. He had few grounds left to believe their progress was a trick and if he hoped for Hajiri’s failure, he feared it just as much. Gondor’s forces were not the only ones to be found in this hilly borderland where Mordor’s dark walls started their rise out of Ithilien’s green tracts. South Gondor’s grassy wastes now lay nearer despite their eastering, but the river still lay between.

Night brought release for the rangers for a time to eat dried fruit and smoked cheese, handed round to everyone alike.

“You should let us go,” said Faramir, as soon as Hajiri stopped beside him. “We can only cause you trouble.”

“So you can raise the alarm? I think not.” Where Hajiri’s eyes looked out amidst his fighting gear, Faramir could see only a different darkness. “No. Our road is a long one and your people’s patrols venture far in their guard.”

“What happens when we cross the river?”

“You may yet prove useful to me. Your men, however, will be permitted to make their way home a day or two after we have crossed out of your lands.” He delivered Faramir’s doom in a dispassionate voice, watching as if curious to see his reaction.

Faramir blinked. Hajiri underestimated his men’s tenacity. Once turned loose, they would never go home without him.

As if Hajiri had read his thought, the Southron officer squatted on his heels to say, “Of course it will be a risk, but I have been thinking it might be worth it…” He reached out a hand to lift a lock of lank, chestnut hair. In the moonlight it gleamed faintly where it lay over the matt leather of the archer’s glove. “Maybe I would like to take something back with me to show for our time in your cruel, northern intrigues.”

Faramir tensed and stared, questioning his hearing. “A trophy? You surely cannot think you can keep me?”

Hajiri stood up. “No? Perhaps not.” His eyes wandered over Faramir’s face. In a brief slippage of time and place, he could have been a chance-met youth in a tavern, assessing him through the smoke of fire and candle. Then he squared his shoulders and put his hand on the hilt of his curved dagger, the soldier despatching illusion as he might an enemy at his mercy, though Hajiri had twice stayed his hand from killing.

“To get my men home, I will do whatever I must. Whatever I must. Gossip is the true trade of soldiers. Do you have that saying in your city? The Steward’s sons are known to us, of course, the younger with hair unlike his city’s people and fair to look upon, a prince among his people. A great prize, and one my men are proud of. They would think it strange indeed if I cast back their biggest catch.”

He shrugged and smiled at Faramir’s shock. “One of your men let slip your name, before we sprang our ambush. They did not even know we were there. It was not his fault we overheard him.”

It was the first time, as Hajiri walked away, that he had seemed cruel.

Faramir stared across the camp where Esgarin sat, frustratingly out of reach. If Hajiri kept to this track along the vale, their route would narrow against the southern hillside. Could they escape into the broad depths of the valley below? The cliff-drop to the north would make arrows hard to aim down upon them once they were over the lip of the rocky edge. The rangers knew those paths, steep as they were, and the enemy could not possibly catch them on those slopes, unknown to the Southrons and treacherous with pits and boulders once off the track. This time their captors would pursue at their peril.

Hajiri, now surrounded by his men and their conversation, turned his veiled head toward Faramir. His hand rested on his dagger, and unwillingly Faramir felt his scalp alive from the touch of leather drawn through his hair. The memory was hard to dispel, a visceral, disturbing counterpoint to Hajiri’s dark words.

In many ways, this Harad officer disturbed Faramir, and not just by his mimicry of many a soldier of Gondor, in being dangerous, implacable and skilled. Admiration was tantamount to treason and went against the grain, yet the quiet discipline of Hajiri’s men was as impressive as their fighting abilities and surely a tribute to their officer.

A soldier’s duty lay in fighting for his people, his home and his comrades. Like fish thrown together by currents beyond their control, this war was catching up men by forces greater than their own choosing, setting them one against another as enemies. Yet still honour persisted like gold, untarnished. Even Sauron could not squeeze it out of all his servants.

The soldier, the stoic and the philosopher in Faramir did not lend him to dwelling on shame over his captivity. Rather, it was Hajiri’s mirror-like being which disturbed him to the core and, most especially, the fracture in the reflection. Hajiri had seemed altogether blithe in his hint of attraction, as if such a thing were nothing untoward.

Uneasily, Faramir told himself he might have misread the impression, but recalling that hand running through his hair he shivered. While his heart and mind rationalized the reasons it was hard to hate Hajiri, his body needed no words to understand his ambivalence. Firmly, Faramir went back to considering geography and ways and means, abandoning philosophy and treasonous thoughts alike.

On the morrow, at a point where their path curved gradually along the steepening side of the hilly vale, Faramir managed to look to his left behind him and catch Esgarin’s eye. The defile he hoped to use would soon come into view. He received a slight nod in return. He would be surprised if some of the rangers had not managed to secrete a flint, or one of them had not retained some small, secret knife unobserved. Their captors were wary and watchful, but they were still only human. Since the Kin-strife, Gondor’s tradition of carrying hidden knives had never wholly lapsed, and had even in some circles evolved into an art. A boot might harbour a blade in its sole, as might a belt. Even a seam could secrete a narrow blade. Faramir had never subscribed to such covert fashion but he prayed now some among his men had done so.

One of the Gondor contingent tripped and cried out loudly on attempting to rise. Voices rose in angry protest as the injured man was lifted to his feet. A delay ensued as Hajiri, true to form, refrained from ordering brute force to start them all moving. Surreptitiously, some of the rangers would already be at each others’ bonds if they had the slightest chance to do so unwitnessed. How effectively remained to be seen.

Eventually, the seeming injury inspected and strapped up, the Southrons urged them on. The hillside steepened, though the drop to the left was not as sheer as it seemed, not to men who knew the paths the animals used, invisible between the bushy, ankle-high gorse and taller bracken. Faramir, listening but too far forward to see, heard the first shout and clatter of dispute, of weapons drawn and blows, and of men moving fast.

Faramir’s own chances were lower, being one alone among many of the enemy, but at least Hajiri’s whimsical courtesy had ordered his hands bound in front of him. He felled his closest guard with a twisting attack to the man’s lower legs, followed by a fist to his jaw as he was going down. Faramir pivoted, shoving his shoulder hard into the next man, who lost his feet at the onslaught. Faramir caught up a sword from the man’s belt to cut himself free. Men were moving in on him, shouting, and then the enemy was beset from behind. The rangers were attacking to get to him.

They came close, so close, to reaching him but then, from the eastern path ahead, the Harad vanguard arrived, a score of men advancing hard on Faramir.

Faramir shouted furiously to Esgarin, and gesticulated wildly for his men to get away while they still could. He saw their hesitation and then their reluctant obedience in the last seconds before Faramir was taken down. With a few last parting thrusts and blows they abandoned the fight in a rush, disappearing over the rocks like peculiarly heavy goats down the steep incline. With one last agonized look, his friend and lieutenant plunged over the edge of the path after the rest.

The Southrons ran to follow, but a sharp command abruptly halted their pursuit.

Hajiri had apparently surveyed the land and had his objectives clearly in mind — and he had Faramir. Losing his men to the cliff’s treacherous footing, or to delay for a hunt while those who knew the territory intimately picked them off one by one, obviously formed no part of his intentions, not when the border was so close.

Instead, the foremost of the soldiers easily knocked the stolen sword from Faramir’s hands with a hard blow from his own sword. Faramir gestured his surrender with a shrug and spread hands. Alone, still bound, he waited for what came next.

Hajiri scarcely glanced at him before nodding to the soldiers with a brief word. He had other business than securing one lone prisoner.

Faramir’s hands were loosed, jerked behind him and rebound. His stiffening bruises did not distract him from trying to predict Esgarin’s next step, though at the relentless pace Hajiri now set, they would cover ground fast. They could keep up this speed for days, with his men well-supplied with food and no prisoners to slow them down, bar one. The Southron wounded had a man either side to aid them and Faramir pitied them as they too kept up, stifling their groans.

Hajiri thought he could outdistance pursuit with fleet and hardy flight. Faramir’s hopes rested in Ithilien’s rangers proving him wrong.

End of Chapter Five

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