The Moon Has Waned (PG-13) 
Written by Erfan Starled22 August 2010 | 17300 words
Title: The Moon Has Waned
Author: Erfan Starled
Fandom: Film-verse Tolkien
Characters: Faramir/OMC
Genre: FCS
Rating: PG-13
Beta: Ignoblebard
Comments (and much else): Malinornë
Summary: Gondor’s watch on Mordor is not always uneventful. An encounter with the enemy surprises Faramir, in more ways than one.
Disclaimer: All characters and settings from the books belong to Prof. Tolkien. The story is written for entertainment and shared without profit.
A.N. My thanks to Ignoblebard and Malinornë for divers and much appreciated help, and to Enide for all her faithful reading, crit, endless patience and assorted noises. And for making me laugh.
Prologue
The Moon Has Waned
The moon has waned
and the Pleiades have reached the middle of their night;
youth fades,
and I in my bed remain alone.Eros shakes my heart
like wind on the mountain
which bursts among the oak trees;
and he melts my limbs and stirs his fire into them,
sweet bitter untameable serpent.But for me neither bee nor honey;
I suffer and I desire.~ Sappho ~
Gondor
The tavern was loud. Faramir grinned crookedly at the man looming at his elbow and gestured, sliding along to make room. “Esgarin! Have a seat.”
“You started drinking early?” Faramir’s friend and lieutenant seated himself with a wave across the room for service.
Faramir glanced at the emptied jug in front of him and ruefully smiled his lopsided smile. “We leave before dawn and the trail will furnish no such mead as this.” He raised his cup but his eyes were resting on the approaching tavern lad.
“And no such servitors either,” Esgarin rejoined under his breath. “But you are still going to have a hangover. Don’t expect me to prop you up.”
“That’s insubordination to a commanding officer, and my legs never failed me yet, I would have you know,” Faramir reproached him, self-mocking and with mock-dignity. His eyes were still elsewhere. He counted out four coppers in payment for the fresh jug and added a silver sixpence.
“For you,” he offered the servant. “For luck.”
The lad swept up the coins along with the old crock of mead, and tossed off the dregs with a smile.
“Well, he’s not unwilling,” commented Esgarin, with a sidelong look at Faramir. They watched the youth flirt his way through a forest of sprawling legs. Too burdened to prevent someone pinching him, all innocence he stepped back hard on an instep with a quick apology and a wide grin. The flash of dark eyes gave him a touch-me-if-you-dare expression and then he was gone, into the kitchens.
Faramir frowned a little. “Such fare is none of ours to sample.”
“Who takes notice when we are discreet? It’s not illegal among civilians. Everyone knows the soldiery are not immune, no matter the proscription.”
Faramir grimaced and let the old argument lapse. Esgarin’s father might turn a blind eye. His own father’s restraint he doubted rather more, should any such liaison come to his ears.
As the tavern emptied of those who sought their beds at a civil hour, it refilled in turn with tall men in green cloaks. The innkeep smiled and served. In the morning, his barrels would be empty, his coffers full, and the city the poorer by six score rangers.
Well-satisfied that fully a third of their number currently thronged his rooms, he refrained from cuffing Eswin back to work when he found him idling on a stool. Instead he bade him get himself a hunk of bread and cheese and a cup of milk. “The night’s not over yet. You’ll need your strength.”
Eswin grinned. “If only!”
“None of that from you!”
“Well, but look at them!”
“They’re not here for you, no matter how pretty you think you are.” The innkeeper shook his head disapprovingly.
“There’s nothing to stop me looking.” His eyes were on the Steward’s son.
Knowing the risk Eswin took, if once he bedded the Captain Faramir, the inn-keeper lowered his voice in part-rebuke, part-warning. “No encouraging them, do you hear me? This is no brothel I’m running.”
He knew the stubborn look Eswin flashed at him, and sighed. “You’re young. You don’t realize. Mark me, it’s a dangerous game lying with a soldier, especially the high-born, and not just for the soldier. All it takes for folk to express their disapproval is two men, a little coin, and a back alley.” Few would care if some light-of-love lad came to grief over a noble family’s hurt pride, or fell apparent victim to prejudiced thugs.
Eswin nodded dutifully but danced out of the door undaunted, a young man who knew the value of his looks. His master shook his head, but indulgently. He knew full well why Faramir returned here. He also knew that the captain came to look, never to touch.
Only when he was deep in drink did the Steward’s son betray his predilection, and never, even then, by more than his eyes. The inn was a favourite of the rangers, a safe place to congregate where tale-tellers and gossip-mongers would meet with short shrift, for the rangers took care of their own. Faramir betrayed nothing to the city at large by his visits.
The innkeep watched from his doorway for another moment as Faramir laughed with his fellows and let his eyes wander after Eswin around the room. That much the law permitted, even to a soldier, without reprisal.
End of Prologue
Chapter One
South Ithilien
With rare self-indulgence, Faramir intended to take a moment to enjoy Ithilien’s early burst of spring and make the most of the present illusion of peace.
“Don’t get lost!” Esgarin’s admonition followed him. “And don’t get your bow wet!”
“You would be better off taking a bath yourself than playing mother!” Faramir, walking backwards, retorted grinning. He spread his hands. “And my bow is safely stowed behind you if you have eyes to see, blind old man! I’ve got what I need.” He swaggered a little patting his belt, hung with his dagger and sword, and left Esgarin laughing behind him.
Faramir, together with two-score of the men under his command, had just finished quartering one section of hills as part of Gondor’s close watch on Mordor’s influx of troops. This momentary quiet was no promising omen, not when clouds darkening in the east brewed the storms of war. Fewer incoming troops, and a flow of supply-wains grown regular rather than increasing by the day, did not constitute any lessening of Sauron’s threat.
Yet for today Faramir revelled in the swift hill-side stream, shucking layers of sweat and dust. Sunshine and the mossy breeze felt good on his skin when he emerged, dripping and chilled. He left off his shirt, first rinsing it out and then slinging the wet garment over one shoulder. With his weapons belt hanging from the other, his respite, invigorating and brief, was over.
After barely a hundred paces he heard a stone grate behind him. Off his guard, he turned and came face to face with black, slanting eyes narrowly framed between cloth and metal. The interloper straddled the path with an arrogance perhaps justified by the Southron arrow nocked and aimed squarely upon Faramir.
“Be still, and you will come to no harm. Your men are disarmed,” a thickly accented voice told him.
Faramir was already diving right, catching and deciphering the last words even while he dodged. A bush, near and thick, gave cover enough that the arrow whined past leaving him unscathed as he ran, crouching in the undergrowth. The words had stabbed their target far more surely.
While he dodged through the scrub, he threw away his shirt, drew his dagger and sword and dropped his belt in the dust. With a mighty effort of his lungs, he whistled as loudly as he could while on the run, a warning signal that would carry a mile or more. Circling back to the camp, he swore to himself too late that he would never again seek to use a stream to wash without taking his bow and quiver.
Winded, he sped round the rocky foot of a hill’s outcrop only to halt, quelling screaming lungs to a hush. Seven more soldiers of Harad blocked the path.
He pressed himself flat against the rock-face, listening to the loping tread of his light-footed pursuer slow and stop, far closer than he had hoped. A foot scuffed the dirt a few feet away and the enemy, bow drawn, came into view, too far away to surprise, close enough for Faramir to see black eyes measuring him.
“Do not —”
Faramir did not wait for the rest. With his dagger poised by its blade between finger and thumb, he aimed for the other’s underarm, counting on a guessed-at chink in armour, no matter how obscured by the head-to-toe cloth and leather. His weight on the balls of his feet, he flexed his arm with a fast in-take of breath for the throw.
Perfectly timed, the ready arrow sped unerring and disastrous to strike the dagger by its haft from Faramir’s hand.
“Stop this, now. You cannot flee me. You have nothing to gain — and I have your men.” The faceless soldier spoke with all the authority of an officer giving his men an order, expecting to be obeyed.
“Only your word for that,” shot back Faramir between breaths, catching at least the gist of the speech even while dismissing it in favour of charging with his sword.
His adversary swung neatly out of the line of strike, drawing his own sword in the same fluid movement.
“You are surrounded!” His attacker parried with his curved blade, light-footed. “There is no point in this. You cannot win. You will get yourself hurt to no good purpose.”
“Look to yourself, Southron!” Faramir brought his sword down a second time, only for it to clash and slide away from the other’s defence. He disengaged swiftly, prepared for a riposte that never came. Instead, a fall of rope shocked him into whirling around, tangled in mid-turn by the rest of the net cast over him.
His struggle against this new threat had him furiously cutting at the web, breath hissing through his teeth in his frustration.
“Stop your thrashing,” uttered the soldier. “You will hurt yourself and there is no need.”
Faramir slowed his efforts to something more systematic but just as futile, too proud to give up and too stubborn. He knew he was stupid with pride: the ropes, thin but stout, gave too much to yield cleanly to his sword. Cutting through one at a time availed nothing against so small a mesh and so many of the enemy.
That they wanted him alive was the thought drumming through his mind; it would have been the work of only a moment to fell him with an arrow.
Were all his men gathered up? Even one or two still at large could summon help, a few more, and they would lay an ambush and effect a rescue of their fellows. They knew this land like the backs of their hands.
The Southron came a little closer, warily but near enough to speak quietly and be heard. “Do you want me to order my men to tighten this net around you, like some animal in a trap awaiting the butcher’s knife? There is no shame in defeat when you are outnumbered.”
Faramir stared inimically into his opponent’s eyes between the veiling helmet and cloth. Unwillingly heeding the threat, clear enough for all its altered vowels and strangely mangled consonants, and unable to deny the truth of his defeat, he let his sword fall still at last. A soldier reached a hand cautiously through the net from behind to take the weapon’s hilt. With no choice left to him, Faramir gave it up reluctantly and watched it handed to his assailant.
The officer, for so he must be, ran a finger across the edge with a grunt of approval before sliding it through his own belt. His black and umber coverings seemed part of him rather than hampering him, the leather soft enough to give, the edge of armour outlined beneath making no noise: well-padded and well-designed, it had allowed all the graceful movements of the fight.
The Southron turned his head to the other men, hands on hips, and delivered a rapid patter of words. Cautiously, they advanced on Faramir.
He braced himself, but they effected his release and led him away, barely laying a hand on him beyond a weapons inspection of his back, his waist and his boots. They found nothing. His dagger lay in the dust and his sword already hung from his enemy’s belt, to his shame. He glanced back at the officer. The man stood so still that apart from the little breeze playing with his garments he might have been a statue on the path.
End of Chapter One
Chapter Two
“Esgarin!” Faramir’s heart lightened immeasurably to see his lieutenant alive. His men were indeed disarmed, and not too badly hurt all in all. Regretful and relieved he saw that none were missing: none had escaped but nor had anyone been killed. He walked toward a couple whose wounds were being tended, not by one of their own rangers, but by one of their captors.
An irritated growl met his approach, turning into a peremptory snarl when he knelt beside the group. The guards stepped forward. Faramir retreated before they forced him away at the healer’s behest. Some sentiments were universal.
Esgarin was waiting to embrace him, with one eye on the Harad soldiers, but no-one tried to prevent it. “You’re safe. I was sure, when I heard the sound of fighting just now, that you must have gone down. I thought —” He broke off.
“What?” said Faramir evenly, back in command of himself, if not his men and their destiny, his eyes on the injured and their treatment. The pungent smell of astringent met his nostrils and the cloth in the man’s hand was pristine white. He relaxed a little.
Esgarin gave him a little shake of relief. “That you would never surrender. That they would put an arrow in you, or stop you on a sword’s edge.” He looked Faramir over at arms’ length for a moment. “You are alright? Here, you should take this.” He unpinned his cloak and swung it over Faramir’s bare shoulders.
“My thanks,” said Faramir, accepting it after a moment’s hesitation. “They had a net.” There was a world of bitter regret in his voice. He bit his tongue. He would never hear the last of this from Denethor, if he ever saw his father again.
Prisoners of Sauron’s forces, they were as good as dead or worse, unless they escaped. Minas Morgul was not a city from which prisoners returned. Only the cries of unfortunate captives issued forth again, bitter haunts of the cold easterly winds, exacting a heavy toll of grief from patrols who could do nothing to aid them. That dire tower’s corruption furnished the nightmares of more than children’s sleep.
On the very thought, a trio of Harad guards intruded on the prisoners’ holding ground to converge on Faramir. He was on his feet before they even halted before him, gesturing for him to come.
“Hold up there! Where are you taking him?” Esgarin bulled his way into their path, though Faramir had already stepped in the direction they indicated. He had no desire for his men to see him dragged off by brute force.
To Faramir’s surprise, they refrained from pushing Esgarin out of the way, or worse. One of his escort gestured again, saying something in their own language, sparing Gondor’s speech from the tortured accents of their leader.
The other rangers took their cue from their lieutenant rather than their captain, massing protectively in the way. They had all approached perilously close to the perimeter of narrow-eyed guards, who brought their swords up, or their bows to the ready, arrows on the string.
Faramir raised his hand to stay any further movement. “You do me honour,” he started, surprising himself by his detached delivery, including the enemy with his eyes if not his words. “And yourselves, by this courage, wanton though it is. Now stand down, lest it become mere foolishness.”
So clearly unhappy were they, that he added what little useless comfort he could. “Even if it was avoidable, I would want to meet with their officer for what I can learn.”
Seeing them slow to move, he ordered more curtly, “Check the injured. Make sure they are not thirsty or need tending to make them comfortable. They will need to be kept warm too. And make sure all minor wounds are cleansed, and thoroughly. That healer may give you something for any deep cuts. Try asking one of the guards. Esgarin, look to it.” He could feel his own abrasions from the rope, and the cuts from the brush in his earlier wild run and he was sure his men would not make any show of injuries they deemed insignificant unless he or Esgarin insisted. He left unspoken that they would find their chance to escape.
Giving in, Esgarin ordered, “You heard him! Move yourselves!” and briskly shifted the rangers into retreat from the guards to lay down more cloaks for the worst injured, and to see about inspecting each others’ various cuts and bruises. Faramir, walking quietly onwards with his strangely patient escort to face the questioning he assumed awaited him, could at least be satisfied that for the moment his captured command were not going to bring slaughter down upon themselves.
“My name is Hajiri,” his pursuer and captor began, “and I want to know what you are doing here.” Faramir was beginning to expect the odd cadences, though as before he needed to concentrate to puzzle out all the words.
“Guarding the land.” It was safe to say that. Everyone knew it.
“How many men do you have altogether?” The Harad officer was sitting on the edge of a boulder, hands cupped between his knees, elbows on thighs. Every few seconds he looked around the area before looking at Faramir again. His eyes were all that was visible of the man himself, even down to his long hands, covered by an archer’s gloves, close-fitted in fine black leather.
Faramir shook his head slowly, tension building. “What are you going to do with us? What are you going to do with my men?”
Instead of an answer, the faceless questions continued in a voice that did not alter in volume except with its natural rhythm, carryover from a language far and foreign. Faramir, listening, answered not a word. How many men did he command? Where were his forces deployed? In how many parties? What range of land did each patrol cover?
Were the stranger not an enemy, Faramir might have thought those accents pleasant. As it was, he kept his own counsel behind a mockery of stolidity, and wondered how he had so easily been identified as being in command.
When his interrogator’s questions ceased, Faramir waited across the little space of grass, waiting too across the wider divides of cause, cloth and custody. He could feel his heart’s fast beat and the blood thudding in his veins but he kept each breath even and deep, reaching within for strength to face what must surely come.
When Hajiri moved it was to sit back, remote twice-over in the wood’s shadows behind his covering garb. When he spoke, it was in his own language to the escort and not to Faramir at all.
They led Faramir away. He looked back over his shoulder. The officer nodded, still seated, as if to acknowledge their parting. The soldiers returned Faramir, sick with anti-climax, to his men. He had found out nothing. Perplexed, he spoke a quiet word with Esgarin before settling down to take stock.
His dagger hand felt stiffly sore where the hilt had spun from his grip, but bruises would swiftly heal. Questioning required him alive, but the preservation of his left hand intact he owed to an aim strangely merciful, if arrogant. Mercy, in a man of Sauron’s forces? Restraint, even courtesy, in interrogation? And the guards had given him time to settle his men before he went with them. He had no answers, not even sight of the Southron’s face to divine his intent.
End of Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Late in the night after a long march south, rather than north-east, Faramir was no less tense though he was far more tired and puzzled. He was worried about his injured men. As soon as they stopped, he would have sought the Southron healer’s aid for them, but the man came without any request necessary, as if the prisoners were of his own kind – except for the careful watch of the guards.
Faramir eyed his ministrations, that part of his mind not obsessed with how they might escape preoccupied with the curious question of their direction, as well as Hajiri’s choices in dealing with them. He wondered what else the night would bring. For the rangers, fresh water from a brook and some dried food rationed out from the enemies’ packs proved to be the answer. For Faramir himself, another confrontation was ordained.
The latter did not surprise him: the midnight hour made an effective time for questioning tired and hungry prisoners. Now distanced by many miles from the site of their capture, the enemy could afford to take a little time to find out information, at least enough to impress their dark master’s commanders before handing over their catch…
Faramir, his thoughts all of Gondor, vowed they would have a hard time getting anything from him.
Hajiri was alone and hard to recognize. His head-gear and armour lay discarded, and he seemed half-dressed with his long, black hair stuck in curls to his crown, confined in sweaty rigour under a tightly drawn cloth band. Faramir guessed the curls were increased by the dampness of sweat and he could smell from where he stood faint traces of incense or oil, perhaps used on skin or hair, perhaps to treat the metal and leather of his armaments.
Neither of them spoke as they looked one another over: Faramir, still shirtless under his borrowed cloak; Hajiri, in a thick, rough linen shirt-tunic, also sweaty, and wearing protectively heavy baggy trousers.
Dark-skinned, high-boned features with an arched nose and eyebrows to match, fine lips and the thick, curly hair were very strange to see after dealing with him unseen for so many hours. Divested of armour, face bared, he lost nothing of his air of confident capability.
Faramir hardly understood his own intense awareness of his enemy. The sight of him enabled Faramir to size the man up, that was all. Nothing mattered save escaping him, capturing him or killing him. To wonder at his odd restraint and spare courtesies, to notice his economy of movement and see his composure, were to take the measure of him, to estimate their plight and plan its remedy. Philosophy had no place here but still, Hajiri did not look like an enemy. He looked like a man the same as any other…
Faintly enquiring, Hajiri endured his prisoner’s inspection without offence. “You frown, but you do not seem afraid?”
Faramir shrugged. After a lifetime of living in Gondor, of living with men feting him as his father’s son and of living with his father’s disapprobation, he knew how to keep his feelings to himself when need be. He was afraid. Of course he was: for his men, for his city, even for himself. Bravado aside, he feared the betrayal torture would reduce them to should they fail to make their escape.
“Dharwad.” The word brought another man over with drink and food. Hajiri gestured. “Sit. Eat with me.”
Faramir hesitated, the spectre of his father rising in his mind. Taking food from the enemy as if in amity? Disgraceful. Bad enough to have been captured.
Hajiri shrugged and tore off a piece of black bread.
Faramir smiled dourly. His father was a man of large ideas of honour but no pragmatist. He folded himself to the rocky ground, and accepted the proffered hard loaf with a nod that could be seen as thanks. He would fight all the better for it when the time came and think better in the meantime. He told himself his stomach’s unease was only a reaction to the strangely spiced bread, not apprehension.
The question remained, why this restrained good treatment? At any moment, they could be hauled north for questioning in the awful confines of the sorcerous city opposite sad, ruined Osgiliath, which now looked out on gathering darkness. Long gone were the days when the stars were celebrated there.
Faramir observed Hajiri narrowly, fully expecting their direction to change once he was done with trickery.
Yet there was nothing ominous in Hajiri’s occasional glance as they ate of the small loaf and passed it back and forth with strange civility between captor and captive. Despite himself, Faramir’s tension gradually eased in the silence between them, which began to feel oddly familiar. Sounds drifted in the air, running water, a night-jar’s call, the breeze rustling the leaves of a bay-tree just outside their rocky shelter. Goats bleated from the hill-sides above. Faramir was aware of each one, all his senses wide open. They could have been two soldiers sharing a meal, tired in the evening’s peace after a long day on the alert, trusting others to watch for a while.
When the bread was finished and at last he spoke, Hajiri’s voice did not so much interrupt as compliment the gentle noises of the night, weaving its richly-accented path among them. “Listen to me, man of Gondor. War comes and our Master has only that on his mind. He fears and hates you mightily, or what you represent.” His slight shrug echoed Faramir’s awareness of Gondor’s weakness. “I want to know what you do here.”
Hajiri was leaning forward in a strung tension of his own, careful in his endeavour at clear speech. “I want to take my men away if I can, back to our home, away from this place where you can see nothing but rocks and trees, and where monsters work alongside us as common as the day. You know things that can help me.”
It was hard for Faramir to follow all the guttural vowels and twisted consonants but the sentences were fluent and he listened, astonished and disbelieving but fascinated despite himself, to the experience and view of this Southron soldier who fought for Sauron. He even sounded honest, and he certainly sounded determined, but Faramir could not afford to believe him, even had the unlikely tale been less far-fetched.
“You know I can tell you nothing. And if your story were true, you would never have told me. It would be far too dangerous to you if we were caught.”
Hajiri shrugged, smiling darkly. “Dangerous? Yes, but more so for you. I have your men — perhaps I can persuade you yet to answer me. You think I am tricking you? I tell you, we are leaving this cursed place and I must find out how we can cross this land, escaping both our Lord’s servants and your people’s watch. This, I think, will be hard to do.”
And that, thought Faramir, was an understatement. Supposing for one instant he spoke the truth, what he purposed was nigh impossible. Equally impossible was to enter into the least discussion of Gondor’s activities with him. Familiar with, if not inured to, the dangers his men must face, he replied tight-set, “I would let you kill my men before I gave you the answers you seek.”
Hajiri shrugged away this dramatic heroism with one expressive shoulder and a frown. Faramir felt foolish and off-balance.
“I tell you what I intend so that you understand. It makes your situation different, no? Perhaps it makes it more likely that you will talk to me, if I can convince you.”
Faramir could not afford to believe him. If it were true… “Sauron will never let you go. You will be hunted down mercilessly.”
The shrug was far more pronounced and Hajiri grimaced. “Our people live far away… There is much the Lord in his tower gives his attention to here. Perhaps he will think men of your city took us if we are fast enough and if we are far enough away when our absence is noted.”
His frown deepened. “Even our Master cannot control all the South. He will not find us once we cross the plains, not without using his magicks — perhaps not even then. My men and I accept that risk — our own people need us. His plans for war in the north occupy him, his enemies are here. His soldiery obediently answers his summons, and food flows into his keeps. A few missing men, taken by Gondor — no, we may succeed without attracting his wrath.”
Hope warred with risk in the troubled expression. A fleeing group of Southron deserters must certainly brave Gondor’s rangers in crossing Ithilien, as well as risk detection by Sauron’s incoming forces, or worse, be hunted and apprehended for their crime.
Faramir stared into those dark, almond-shaped eyes and found no evasion, only the realization they were perhaps of an age. Alone and responsible for what — fifty, sixty men or more? Faramir felt far older than his years. How must this man feel, in a foreign land, far from home, with a master so evil that his servants were the stuff of nightmares?
Pity stirred in him, and a treacherous sense of kinship. If Hajiri was trying to go home, he would not try and prevent him decided Faramir, though how he could be sure of his honesty he had no idea. A different matter than giving him aid, which nothing would induce him to offer.
“Take him away,” said Hajiri, after studying Faramir just as intently. “Think about what I have said, yes?” He cast a few words to his men.
To his bemusement, Faramir found one of the guards proffering his rescued shirt, which must have been collected up in the aftermath of the fight when they searched for supplies, or more likely, for information.
Returned to his men, Faramir bore and passed Esgarin’s hard inspection, though neither man spoke more than a few words with every ranger straining to hear. He wanted time to think. He shook out the shirt and struggled into the damp cloth, body and mind chill, thinking of Hajiri’s patience running out, of his men, captive, of Sauron’s commanders hunting for deserters, and of their southern progress. His chief fear was that it was a ruse, that when the trick failed, the enemy would show their true colours, and that he and his men would, after all, be taken north and east and in Minas Morgul find their dread Master’s will made manifest.
That Hajiri’s expressive face kept coming to mind while Faramir parsed his words for truth was perhaps only natural. The look of a man would often betray his lies. When Faramir lay down at last, his hand’s bruised pain spiked the image of an arrow pointing directly at him. The last-moment realignment that saved him from graver injury was another question to add to the rest, but all his pondering reaped only uncertainty. After seeing his enemy’s face, Faramir’s most careful review could not shake the impression of honesty.
End of Chapter Three
Chapter Four
In the aging dark of night, two of the Harad Soldiers lay injured. One lay dead. Faramir and his men had been two days in captivity, with their direction veering persistently toward the Ephel Dúath and the upper reaches of the Poros, not west to the fords of the southern road. The derelict lands of South Gondor to the south and the walls of Mordor to the east grew nearer with every march and the rangers’ first attempt at escape had ended in ignominious failure. Faramir stood mute among the enemy, viewing the consequences and hiding his dismay.
His rangers knelt at sword-point, arrows ranged on them near and far, where higher ground gave vantage. The Southrons had rounded them up relentlessly, on their heels too soon to evade. Three of the prisoners were held apart, on their knees. All were bound fast save Faramir, their stolen weapons confiscate and returned to Southron hands.
Earlier, after midnight in a thick haze of heavy rain, Esgarin and Faramir had been the last to ease with all a ranger’s stealth from their night’s resting place. Behind them on the ground they left their guards unconscious. Before them fled their men as quietly, through trees which they knew thickened into widening, wilder forest, crossed with streams and blind gullies. Silent and swift, the two officers had followed after.
Too late in their flight had Faramir discovered his misjudgement of Hajiri’s caution. Silent they might be, but not wholly invisible, even in bad weather. Their camp-ground guards had been augmented by others unguessed at by the prisoners, in a more distant encircling watch and their alarm, raised loud and all too soon, had brought the rangers and their pursuers into violent conflict.
Faramir had not thought it possible to regret their failure more, until Hajiri came into view and he saw the anger in his swift stride, heard it in the steady, deadly stream of quiet words. Incomprehensible the litany may be, but it was not hard to guess at curses when one of Hajiri’s men lay dead, another dying, and the rangers who fought and felled them had been identified by Southron witnesses. That Hajiri intended lethal reprisals was beyond all doubt when he halted before the three separated men and swung his sword high over one of the prisoner’s heads.
“Wait!” Faramir spoke before he knew he was going to say. “Are you a murderer, to kill prisoners out of hand?”
Hajiri froze, outrage in every line of him from the curve of his up-stretched arms and high-held hands, down his taut back to his heel, every part of him poised for a deadly sweeping strike. Faramir had fought him once; he had no doubt that in those hands the fine-edged sword could behead a man with one clean blow.
“Will you go home washed in the blood of unarmed men? Men who are already at your mercy?” With no time to think, Faramir fell into the tones of rebuke he used for subordinates in need of reprimand.
Hajiri turned his head with what must surely be a glare at Faramir. Never had the blank anonymity of the Southron’s veiling head-dress seemed more ominous.
“And what mercy did your men show mine?” The coldness of his words coupled with his delay suggested he had not made up his mind. He still held his sword high. This was to be a trial, fast and bitter, in which instinct must serve to save men’s lives.
“They did a prisoner’s duty, in trying to escape,” Faramir said, steadily addressing the man he had shared bread with, the man who wanted to go home. “Loyal to their home, and their fellows. Your men failed in their watch, or their skill, or were unlucky in the fortune of war.”
Hajiri turned on him fully, fast and close, hostile even in the lowering of his sword. Every line of him spoke anger and contempt, though he said not a word.
Faramir held his ground and held his head high, his gaze fixed unflinching upon the other man. “We gave you no promise to come quietly. Treating us well does not make us your tame dogs to follow at your heel, obedient to orders for the sake of a scrap of food and fair treatment. You invaded our land. We resisted our captivity. It does not make us murderers.” In unthinking urgent appeal, his hand moved and he lowered his voice, “But if you execute them in reprisal or to intimidate the rest of us, you make of yourself a killer, not a soldier. Is that what you are, what you want to be?”
He hardly breathed. Had he judged rightly? This man was surely more likely to respond to a challenge to his honour than to any plea made for pity’s sake. The three prisoners at risk did not move a muscle, awaiting the decision stoically proud, at least in outer show.
Hajiri raked Faramir from head to toe, and then the other rangers, before vehemently shedding another string of bitter phrases in his own tongue directed at his men, punctuated by harsh chops of sword-hand and sword. Then he whirled away, striding off on his own.
The Southron force exchanged uncomfortable glances, visibly wondering whether one of them should follow him. No one did. Faramir was not surprised. Hajiri’s wrath had not been reserved for the rangers alone. Surely their unhappy guards had just been held to account, and harshly.
Weak with relief, Faramir stopped himself sagging and watched impassively as their captors finished binding his men one to another with rope and thong. They were completing their work when he felt a heavy hand on his shoulder. He shook it off, only to be twisted around forcibly by one of Hajiri’s largest soldiers.
Wordlessly, the man tightened his grasp and pushed Faramir into a walk, away from the rest of the rangers. This time not even Esgarin said a word. His friend’s concerned eyes and his men’s followed Faramir, but no cries of protest.
Weary as he was, apprehension touched Faramir only to find that nothing happened whatever, save only the separation from his countrymen. Once set amongst those of the enemy not presently on guard elsewhere, no-one spoke to him, or molested him, or even bound him. They checked him again for weapons and bade him sit, monosyllabically pointing to a place between two of them, secured for the night in their midst.
Had it been worth the attempt? Was his judgement faulty? Faramir was too tired to think clearly. They had travelled far and fast with sleep on short commons and the aftermath of tension was hitting hard. they had survived, and there would be no escape tonight: for just this little while, until the dawn, he had no need to stay alert. He was barely aware of lying down.
In his stupor, he wondered where Hajiri was, remembering the sword upraised and the retreating swirl of man and cloaking garb. He lay listening to the familiar noises of a martial camp, with conversation, laughter and argument of soldiers around him. It could have been any camp of Gondor, except they wound words around him he could not decipher, and the ubiquitous smell of spices from their food which was wholly foreign. On the edge of sleep, he thought he heard Hajiri’s low tones.
That’s alright then, he thought, confusing the rumble with Boromir’s deep laugh, dreaming now. Later he cried out, trying to reach his brother across a divide filled with armed enemies wearing faceless masks.
“Hush. Your men are safe,” came the answer close by.
He relaxed, trusting the low reassurance absolutely. “Boromir,” he said, and smiled. All was well. He and his brother were together and everyone was safe.
He woke again, tangled and thrashing. Disorientated, he won free of the cloak Esgarin had insisted he keep, and peered around him through mazy exhaustion and the cloudy dark.
“Go back to sleep,” ordered a voice nearby. “Sleep and leave your troubles for the day, for the sun’s light. Dawn comes soon enough, even here.” The voice was not Boromir’s.
Faramir turned toward it. Hajiri was sitting as still as the rock beneath him, hands loosely clasped, back straight, quiet as the night among his sleeping men. Faramir let out a long sigh, of resignation and, a little, of relief. Hajiri was no longer the vengeful judge ridden by anger, but the man of calm reflection he had first met. The thought dissipated with his sigh, his tired grasp surrendering conscious care back to night’s oblivion.
The pre-dawn rousing of men found Faramir stiff and cold from more than rest curtailed too soon and the ground’s hard bed. Memory returned swifter than agility, after two long days of punishing speed and yesterday’s fight and failure. Under the eye of his impersonal guards, he wondered at another more confused memory. Had Hajiri intruded in his dreams or had he been sitting sentinel beside him, speaking words of quiet reassurance in the dark?
End of Chapter Four
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
Chapter Six
Faramir’s hopes reposed unshaken in his men until late that night, when shouts and cries broke out. The clash of metal rang on the air, but to Faramir listening anxiously, the numbers seemed too many and the distance too far away to be his men engaging Hajiri’s.
While scouts swiftly despatched pursued their calling, Hajiri ordered the rest to form themselves into defensive rank which they did in formidable silence, equally prepared for attack, defence or flight. Faramir felt like a hunting dog with his ears straining for the least signal to launch himself into action. He barely took note of their precaution of binding his hands at his back once more. He would still be able to run.
However, as soon as the absent men slipped back to their commander to report with hasty gestures and low-voiced words, no time was lost. The fugitive company headed into the darkness, pulling Faramir with them. Their haste left the sounds of strife fading rapidly behind them — and with them Faramir’s hopes.
“A force of our Master’s,” Hajiri informed Faramir breathlessly when first they slowed to a walk, “are fighting men of your city who were lying in wait, it seems. Perhaps our Lord sent forces after us. Perhaps they were troops trying to avoid ambush on the road, even lured in chase far from it. In any case, your countrymen engaged them. If your own men have gone to investigate in search of you, I intend to be far from here when they realize their mistake. We travel fast.” He delivered the bad news succinctly without sign of satisfaction, and left Faramir with his guards to compose himself as best he could.
Faramir stumbled through the hours that followed, aided by a change half way through the night when Hajiri caught him out of a fall and slashed his wrists free from the ropes. “Don’t fight them,” he warned, tilting his head to the two soldiers appointed as guards. “I would be a dangerous man to cross tonight.”
Faramir knew his duty but he could also calculate his chances and they were slim to nonexistent in this frantic flight, close-guarded, out-numbered and unarmed as he was. During that endless night they crossed into the upland marshes of the very source of the Poros, which lay cupped between Mordor’s mountain walls to the east and an outcrop of lower hills to the west. Hajiri led them on, out of the Ithilien Faramir loved, until the rocks and pits of the rising climb forced them to wait for first light to dawn slow and stubborn in the sunless vale.
Hour after hour, they slogged through harsh brush and mossy, treacherous bog, where they sank knee-deep or more in places, before they emerged onto hard ground. There was a reason why the Fords of the South Road were so well-used. They rested only briefly before travelling on in wet clothes that stank as well as clung, until by mid-morning the wind had dried Faramir’s garments and it grew easier to walk. With every step, Mordor’s walls receded behind them. So did Ithilien.
That day they ran when they could, and walked when they had to, south and west through bracken and heather, heading around the last hills toward the plains. A brief rest in the evening saw them maintaining the punishing pace, alternately walking, jogging and running steadily on through the night.
Only on the second dawn did they stop for any length of time, by a stream in the scrubby, sunlit brush of South Gondor where everyone splashed water on faces and feet and refilled their water-skins. The soldiers drank deeply. Everyone was thirsty. Everyone was tired and Faramir was no exception.
He lay half-prone on the bank, washing his face, trying to readjust while catching his breath for the first time in hours. The clash of forces could have confused sign in all directions, especially if men had scattered in the fighting. He could still hope, but he was in all likelihood far out of reach of his men, his trail lost to them. Unless he found a way to extricate himself, he was now on his way into foreign lands as Hajiri’s prize.
He drank his fill of water, tended his feet, and beat his clothes free of some of the ingrained marsh-mud that had survived their flight. When Hajiri loomed over him, dismissing the two soldiers presently watching him, Faramir schooled his reactions. His thoughts were all of escape but there was no need to put Hajiri on his guard.
Hajiri reached for him and Faramir avoided the touch, remembering too vividly the last liberty Hajiri had taken.
Hajiri opened his hands to show in one of them a slim roll of cloth and a small box. “The ropes from yesterday — they hurt you when we ran, I think?” He took hold of Faramir’s arm and turned his wrist over to inspect the abrasions. “You’ve washed these? This will discourage infection. It will sting but it should prevent the rope damage turning bad and help the itching.”
“And lessen any scarring?” Faramir stared at him with hostility.
“You did not like what I said the other day. I hope we may come to understand each other better. Our customs are different but we are not the barbarians you have been led to believe.”
The long fingers deftly applied the warmed salve and wrapped cloth around each wrist.
“I am sorry for this,” said Hajiri, tapping Faramir’s arm above the rope burns. “I was not expecting such haste so suddenly.”
Oddly, Faramir believed his regret sincere. His wrists burned from the salve. Hajiri’s proximity suddenly angered him with his sympathetic understanding and Faramir’s own uneasy responses. “Are you done?” He stood up abruptly.
The men nearby looked over, immediately on their guard.
“Yes. Don’t get these wet. They will keep it clean.” He lidded his box and stared at it, revolving the dovetailed wood in his hand. “‘The fortunes of war are the vagaries of fate.’ You have this saying? I know you hoped your men would retrieve you. I am sorry.”
He walked swiftly away, leaving Faramir staring after him.
Despite the barriers between them, he believed Hajiri. His wrists stung, his whole body felt stiff from the long run, his feet ached and bled with blisters and cuts. None of it stopped the insidious sense of something in common with his gaoler.
Off-balance, Faramir drew on his shirt and took a place among the others where his guards gestured him to sit. He drank his share of their strange tea when Hajiri permitted a rare fire and he ate their food — fruit again and tough, dried meat, but enough to stave off the weary pangs of hunger. Then he lay on his side, dazed from more than the last days’ events and relentless leagues of travel. This chance to rest, so welcome to his body, dealt less kindly with his heart and mind. Worried about his men, worried about his whole city, even a Captain of Gondor could still fall prey to personal fears failing activity to ward him.
At noon they moved on. Once they cleared the hills, they turned south and a little east once more, keeping well away from the Harad Road. Even avoiding the smallest paths. Hajiri gave no sign of difficulty in choosing their way down onto the flatlands where the going was easier and the travelling faster.
One evening they stopped earlier than usual. The sun still offered one or two leagues yet of light and three men slipped from the little camp. Hajiri saw Faramir looking around, wondering what was toward.
“We cross out of your country tonight, if all is clear at the river.” Hajiri tilted his shoulder, as if to say something else, but turned back instead to his sentries to await the scouts’ return.
Crossing the Harnen proved an easy matter in the dusk, but Faramir hesitated in the water. Dwarf aspen strung themselves as voiceless sentinels along each bank, a graceful arcade of living tracery. Fog wisped off the water between them, subduing the lap of water and the plash of their steps. A creaking flight of late-homing swans emerged from the mist, winging with startling noise swift and low overhead.
In the odd quiet of their wake, one of the Southrons beside Faramir grunted at him over the delay, and Hajiri looked back enquiringly. Strange, how it was possible to learn to read a body’s language as one might a face. When Faramir stepped onto the grassy bank, Near Harad felt no different than Gondor underfoot, and still he felt strange. Never had this journey seemed more unreal.
End of Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
The strangeness did not wear away. Faramir, used to stone walls and overarching cliffs or green-tree’d hills stretching for miles around, had spent little time in South Gondor’s broken wastes. Near Harad, a land where endless plains of waving grasses two and three feet high unrolled before them, was truly foreign soil.
The year was yet young enough for the nights to fall cold and swift, and in the chill clarity of cloudless skies the stars arced unbroken from horizon to flat horizon in a way Faramir had never seen before. They seemed ten times in number, and brighter, close enough to touch. Like a spell cast over him, the great silence filled him with nightly wonder. He felt small, and Gondor far away.
Only Hajiri had ever strung as much as a sentence together intelligible to Faramir, yet the Southrons nonetheless treated him as one of them, save only for their watch on him and his weaponless state. Again and again, he reached to settle his quiver or bow in the habitual check of a dozen years and more of soldiering, only to find yet again the empty place, or wonder what was amiss and realize it was the lightness of his burdens — only his clothes and a water-skin, no more than that.
During the quiet days of travel, he went over the conversations Hajiri had held with him, aware of the distance they were covering and his failure to escape. Hajiri was ever-present in his mind, by day — and by night…
In the cool of the dark, Hajiri always stripped off his leather, and unwound the layers of cloth. With even the least part of a cup of water, he would ceremonially wash his face and neck and hands, and then brush out his hair, stroke after stroke until it fell gleaming from his bent head, a curly dark mass half way to his waist.
Faramir would glimpse this ritual if he turned unawares, glancing in the wrong direction. Then, as he sat quietly accepting food from the guards, Hajiri’s quiet rumble would rise and fall with the evening’s needs and in social pleasantries with his men, until sleep brought a different escape than Faramir looked for, and in its train another day.
They travelled on. Hajiri led them through wide plains dotted with sparse-scattered shrubs, while above hung birds on the wing unseen in Ithilien, hawks eyeing the ground for snakes, small birds and rabbit-kits, or for mice and their cousin voles. Fatter fowl tip-tipped along the ground: half-hidden quail and partridge, and others new to Faramir. He walked amid the tall grasses breathing the new smells of the hot plains, knowing they would in time give way to desert sands, broad and uncharted in Gondor’s records. That desert was a land Faramir would never find his way back across alone.
“You do know,” said Hajiri, quietly one night when no-one was near, “that where I come from, it is considered shameful for a lord or master to fail to command his subjects? You do realize my men will think I am weak if I do not subdue you?”
Faramir could feel him as if they touched but it was not so, only an illusion of his reactions. His pulse was raised, his skin alert, his senses all on edge as if poised in readiness.
“I have their loyalty to think of on this journey and my reputation to safeguard against the day we arrive home.” Hajiri was still talking, and he was close, too close. Faramir would have turned away but some strange mesmerized quietness was in him, conjured by the soft voice.
Hajiri placed leather-clad fingers under his chin. “No,” said Hajiri and those fingers tightened a little. “My men are watching.” His voice, for the first time, hardened briefly in a warning which Faramir took note of. Warily, he prepared to reject with force what came next, but Hajiri released him.
In low, intense tones, Hajiri continued, “Listen to me. My people fear Mordor’s Lord, and they know that he would abhor even the smallest band such as ours defying him. Some are worried he will not believe us taken up by Gondor’s forces. So I must be sure of leading my men strongly. What we are attempting, this desertion, is not a safe thing for our people though we live far to the south, far even for his overseers’ reach. In truth, they know little of our ways and we are more nomadic than settled. Still, there are those who will disapprove — at home, and even a few among my men, though I doubt any of them are truly sorry to get away from that place.”
He paused, and when he spoke again it was more slowly. “Your capture does much to help me. You make an excellent trophy of successful leadership. You are so very proud… a man of honour. We know how to value honour.” Gravely, Hajiri contemplated him, as if he were in very truth a valued symbol to admire.
Faramir set his lips in distaste, honest enough to know he was disturbed by more than a recounting of barbaric custom. Hajiri’s proximity, his voice, conjured a second rebellion of quite another kind.
“You, my friend, are a prince among your people. I would be a fool to let you go. By all our custom you are mine, mine to keep, to make my own, to sell, to gift in exchange for some power or favour. My men will not respect me if I do not make you mine. Yet you were not born to our ways. I can subdue you but the cost to you would come very high. I have a different proposition, one I suspect you will not dislike. One you should consider.”
Faramir let himself look into the dark eyes and held his ground like any soldier under unwelcome review. It was not hard, when pride and the civilisation of centuries revolted. He was no trophy, no chattel to be prized or traded, not for advantage and not for coin.
Unwillingly apprehensive, he listened for what came next. Hajiri’s pauses to consider him reassured Faramir not at all.
“We have another tradition, of fond foolishness to those we take to ourselves. Gifting them, even with their freedom, is an ancient custom among us…
“Lie with me — and my men will accept my reasons for releasing you. It will not be many days more, before we reach the great desert. From this side, you could make your way home alone, but from the south of the shifting sands — no. You would never survive a lone crossing.”
Faramir shook his head, not trusting his voice to remain calm. Outrage and desire made bedfellows which filled him with roiling conflict. Lying with a man did not dismay him of itself — when he remembered his younger years, he almost smiled to think what sort of state this suggestion would have reduced him to — but lying with the enemy, lying under coercion such as Hajiri’s was an enormity that even to contemplate it left Faramir wondering where Gondor’s famed pride had fled. Perhaps he was a changeling and no get of his father’s at all. It was dignity that kept him still while Hajiri talked, but what he felt was not dignified, what he felt, and what he wanted, were not dignified at all.
Hajiri extended his hand. Faramir already knew his touch. He already knew its effect on him. He shook his head again and stepped away.
“You can still change your mind,” rumbled Hajiri in his accented version of Gondor’s speech, and then murmured something else in his southern tongue. “I think you would not hate it. I believe I can promise you that…”
He refrained from running his gloved hand down Faramir’s arm, but even his shadow mime of the gesture as he let his hand fall to his side evoked the reaction Faramir had hoped to avoid. “You can submit to me but once, as man to man, and I will free you. Honour will be satisfied. You can take your chances to travel home when we reach the desert’s edge. It will be dangerous, but I will give you food and water.”
Faramir refused to look away but feared his eyes betrayed him.
“You look dismayed. I wonder if it is because you dislike the prospect — or because you are tempted?” Hajiri touched Faramir’s lip with his forefinger, butterfly light. The glove smelled of leather, and more faintly of spice and sweat. “You have until the sands lie before us to make your decision.”
Faramir stared into the darkness where Hajiri disappeared. Hajiri had seen his nature and had stripped away pretense. Faramir could choose, he could refuse, defy — but he doubted he could deny and be believed.
How strange that an offer of freedom should strike more dismay in him than any threat of captivity. What treason would he commit in agreeing to this? What would be the worst of his betrayals if he lay with this soft-voiced stranger with his keen eyes and his touch, soft as kidskin? Betrayal of Gondor? Of her laws? His office as a soldier? Or of himself?
Honesty was a hard habit to abandon. Hajiri knew what Faramir was, knew it and — most assuredly no stranger to the arts men used one on another — was enjoying that knowledge, and still he did not represent Faramir’s darkest fears.
Out here, his father would never learn what he did. Out here, Gondor felt far away. In night’s large dark, the idea came that perhaps the true betrayal he committed was to his own nature, in his long denial of it. While outer walls lay leagues behind, inner walls, never of his own making, were crumbling in the dust-dry heat.
No. What he feared the most was not Hajiri, but his own response.
End of Chapter Seven
A.N. j_dav sent me the poem by Sappho, thank you!
Chapter Eight
The moon has waned
and the Pleiades have reached the middle of their night;
youth fades,
and I in my bed remain alone.Eros shakes my heart
like wind on the mountain
which bursts among the oak trees;
and he melts my limbs and stirs his fire into them,
sweet bitter untameable serpent.But for me neither bee nor honey;
I suffer and I desire.~ Sappho ~
Days passed. Faramir refrained from the indignity of escape attempts bound to fail, but nor had he yet conceived any way he might succeed, while mile after mile they walked on into the southern plains. The sun burned in the wide skies before ever it reached half-way toward its roaring zenith. The heat took its toll on him. He was faltering and knew it, but hid his weakness. Even so, the sheer expanse of these lands still awed him.
In Gondor, on Mount Mindolluin’s peak, a man could stand and gaze around him as if seeing all the world. Here too a man could see all around and still, everything was different. The land was so flat, and in the cold of each dawn the light so clear, that the horizon took on an immensity he had never imagined. Even trudging in the daylight heat, when thirst was a problem for him that seemed not to affect the others, the unbroken horizon without mount or forest in sight seemed extraordinary.
Hajiri took on stature as they strode into the flatlands under the bright rising sun, his men equally at ease though they kept up their careful guard. The change, when it came, was gradual as the grasses grew shorter and the earth turned sandy. Narrow-leaved thornbrush and other spiky vegetation made their first appearances followed by fat, fleshy growths of brilliant green. The heat increased and the soil petered out until it was only sand that sank underfoot: the great desert was nearly upon them.
This was an alien world, free and fierce, that would test a man to the limit. For Faramir, time had nearly run out.
Another day dawned and the sun rose high and glaring. Faramir stumbled against one of the others, but no-one laughed or cursed him. A hand caught him up at the elbow and he was handed a skin of water. He knew, without being told, that he should be sparing with the offering. He wet his mouth, and took one swallow. Then he took another mouthful, and held it in his mouth, bathing dry, dusty tissues with relief for the brief time before the water dissipated in his throat.
“Keep it,” rumbled Hajiri. “Tonight there will be plenty of water. We will stop now, for a little while.” He signalled the others and they settled on the plain to rest.
“A jihabi,” said Hajiri, “We wear these in the desert. It will help you.” He gestured with a few words and one of his men unpacked a slim fold of cloth that opened in Hajiri’s hands into a much longer length smelling of cloves and something like lemon, but sweeter, and of something else unknown to Faramir, a woody, heady undertone.
“Here,” he said, “You shall walk the land as we do, my Iraehel.”
The word made no sense to Faramir though he did not ask its meaning.
“We wrap it around like this.” Deftly, he swathed Faramir in the cloth, starting with a fold over his head and then around again, leaving the loose ends to hang completely over his shirt, over his legs. He could see, thanks to the gap between his forehead and his cheekbones. The fabric felt soft and light, and all he could smell was spices and Hajiri, who slipped a band around his head and a pin at his shoulder, Hajiri, whose touch and voice wound him about more surely than any garment.
“Utalik,” said Hajiri, seeing him inhale, and added, “Itariq.” He asked a question in his own tongue and his man shrugged in answer. “I don’t know the name in your language. We wash them in scented soap, and store them with spices. Even when we travel long and hard, there is still something more than dust and sweat to aid the way.”
The spell was almost complete — the hand reaching for him drew him in, the hard body against his felt right. Hajiri was taller than Faramir and leaner, hard of bone and muscle. The hawk mouth smiled fiercely, in satisfaction. “Iraehel,” said Hajiri, again. “Shall you play the sweet dove for me?” The strange spell shattered.
With all his strength, Faramir pushed him away.
“I will not,” he said, and then more calmly, “no, I cannot.”
“No?” said Hajiri, with his head cocked. “Perhaps in time you will choose differently. We will see.”
They stopped, at last, and he found himself steered into the cool depths of stone. Dimly he realized that these were caves, but they sat him down and, almost immediately, he slept. When he stirred again, he wondered if he had passed out rather than fallen asleep, but though he had a pounding headache he did not feel the same exhaustion.
“Here. Drink it slowly, but there is plenty more, a welling from the ground, small but ever-faithful.” Hajiri put the water skin into his hands again and Faramir drank eagerly, finding it so cold that it hurt his throat to swallow — or was it the day’s toll of dry heat that left him so pained? He refused to think it might be fear. His stomach coiled in protest but thirst over-rode all.
Hajiri tapped him sternly with his foot, standing upright once more. “Slowly, I said. Or you will be ill. You have the heat exhaustion.”
Reluctantly Faramir restrained himself, tipping dampness into his hand and washing the back of his neck and then his face, and hands. He could not remember when water had ever felt so good.
He drank some more, as Hajiri had said, slowly, and when his headache lifted somewhat he slept again. When he awoke, he felt better, a comfortable, rested lethargy. Night had fallen. He lay in the darkness of a stony overhang, with stone at his back and dry dust underneath, facing the open ground where the others were gathered. He could see Hajiri and could hear his rumbling accents. He was almost certain they used more than one language as they talked. There was laughter — one man touched another on the shoulder, a natural gesture. He found himself watching Hajiri again, and drifted in lassitude, enjoying the sound of his voice.
Somewhere within him he was shocked at his body’s easy capitulation. Somewhere within him there was guilt and there was shame, but his body knew what it desired. Had it not always done so, faithful to Faramir’s nature? His body knew nothing of denials…
He forced himself to think. What of Denethor, his father? What of the treason of fraternising with the enemy, carrying the penalty of death? What of the illegality of consorting with another man — any man? A soldier so doing, if anyone cared to press charges, could find himself exiled or imprisoned, old-fashioned though such charges were. Disgrace and dismissal were the more likely outcomes, but out here there were no city rules to hold sway. There was more laughter, and the same two men who had touched earlier rose and left the circle.
Hajiri, too, rose, but he did not depart. No, he was coming toward Faramir, stooping under the overhang, and he laughed as Faramir scrambled up into a sitting position.
“I did not think you were asleep,” he said.
Faramir tried to glare at him, effort wasted in the rocky shadows, and sat stiffly upright. Hajiri seated himself in the fluid way he had, courteously distant, and settled his weapons though they barely needed adjustment. His hands he rested on his knees and his gaze he bent on Faramir.
“So, my enemy. What shall we do with you now?” He gestured. “This is the point of no return, once we go into the heart of the desert. From here, I can release you. With enough water and the jihabi you would make it home, I am sure.” Solemnly, he looked at Faramir.
“But I wonder why I should? It is not to my advantage. If I take you home, my status there would be very great, my authority assured with so rich a prize.”
A silence fell then. Faramir would not beg, and confused by what he felt, he doubted that he could speak without betraying himself with brash defiance.
Hajiri said no more but nor did he leave. He stared before him, abstracted as if gazing into a fire though only sand-dusted stone lay between them. As if the desert’s inexorable patience had invaded the cave along with all the drifted golden grains of wind-ground rock, each one the work of ages, Faramir felt his bearing loosen. Thought gradually fell away, replaced by the same odd spell of distance from home and the draw Hajiri exerted on his feelings.
Faramir had learned the voice of these desert fringes, so different than his beloved woods, or his city’s constant man-made noise. They filtered muted into the cave, despite the sense of vast quiet. The burble of a desert bird was answered by another close-by, perhaps a pair of Hajiri’s doves. They called again, and then were still. The wind was barely audible so softly did it rise and fall. Another sound had puzzled him, until he realized the sand itself rustled as it sifted with the wind.
Hajiri sat silent, and Faramir with him.
“How do I know you would let me go?” He barely more than breathed the words into the dust-dry air of the cave around them, into a dark as old as the desire that beckoned him.
A flash of white teeth told him Hajiri heard him very well. The fine head tilted. Faramir sat out the scrutiny. “Trust,” breathed Hajiri, “is a sacred word in our tongue. Ischem. An ancient word. You would call it ‘honour’ — in our language, it means both. We lie rarely; it is not our way.”
He unfolded to his feet. “Come outside with me where the stars are bright. The moon has waned. It disappears to nothing, like time before a parting.”
Faramir stood, awkwardly, under the shelving stone above him.
“So. Tomorrow, I set you on the way home, with water enough for one of your ilk. You shall wear my jihabi, and you will know which way to go — tonight I will teach you the stars and the mountains of the north to guide you home.”
Outside, beside a small fire, they ate and drank while Hajiri drew his maps. A cloak held taut and covered with sand made a good tablet for pictures with his finger-tip scoring through the grains.
“These peaks, here — they will be the first you see if you hold true by the stars. You should go by night at first to avoid the heat, but when the moon is grown half-full it will be time to start looking for these three peaks by day’s light until they rise into view. Then keep them to your right, but ahead like so, and you will come to the borders of the lands you know, where we departed them. But first use the stars, there — see?”
Hajiri came behind him, and moved Faramir gently, showing him the stars he meant by pointing over Faramir’s shoulder before going back to his sand drawings.
Faramir shivered, misliking the voice echoing from within. ‘Never trust him. He’s the enemy, and treachery is all he knows.’ But when had his father trusted any man? What councillor, what captain, had Denethor placed confidence in? Did he not look down on them all, lacking his own proud blood? Did he trust even Faramir to do his best, or that his best was good enough?
He loved his father, though he found him impossible to please. Boromir, whom he loved joyously, rewarded him ten-fold with his warm affection. Denethor would cry horror upon Faramir’s temptation, but would Boromir? ‘Come home safely, brother.’ Boromir’s smile had split his face as he said farewell when last they parted. ‘Come home soon, and safe.’
“Ischem,” said Faramir, tracing in the sand anew a copy of the constellations and then the mountain horizon that were to serve as his beacons home. He took a deep draught of the strong liquor the Southrons had somehow made or saved during their service in the black lands, welcoming its fire.
“Ischem,” said Hajiri, and rose, holding out his hand. Faramir, looking up at him, felt as if to stand would be to touch the very stars, so closely bright did their sweeping glory fill the sky.
End of Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
“Tonight we rest here,” said Hajiri, “and tomorrow too, through the day. In the evening, we go on into the desert.”
Faramir could smell it. The cold night air hinted of heated sand and the fragrance of plants he knew no name for.
“And for tonight… Come with me, Iraehel.” The word fell into the quiet of the oasis around them.
Faramir’s choices lay before him, his decision still to make between defiance, unlikely escape, survival in captivity, or the honour of last resort his father would expect of him. Or there was this man and his rich smile and dark voice and eyes that spoke of a soul as fiery and still as the desert. The southerly wind would carry no tales. He could trust the discretion of the wind. Could he trust Hajiri’s honour?
Hajiri spoke to his men, and then to Faramir, “We can use the spring to wash.”
Hajiri walked to a damp rock where water bubbled up among loose-rooted weeds, sweet-smelling and small of leaf, that crept along the ground to either side among miniature crevasses, shelter from the sun’s heat. Hajiri’s face had its own landscape of lines scored beside his nose and around his eyes, and on his forehead between his brows. When he laughed with his men they took on their full depth, and they showed now as he looked up from collecting water and smiled at Faramir, who felt his stomach turn over.
Faramir wondered at himself. What in the world was he doing? He took a step back. Hajiri said nothing to stop him, but shrugged ever so slightly and went on filling his curious little bucket of stiff leather, unfolded from his pack. Lined with some fitted waxed material, it seemed fully water-tight.
Slowly it filled with the cold, sweet water that had hurt Faramir’s throat earlier when they trickled it down him, exhausted with the heat. Hajiri set the bucket deliberately on the stone beside him and stripped to the skin to wash. When he was done, he gestured to Faramir, before donning without haste a light shirt he carried in his small roll of equipment.
Faramir went to the bucket and held it to the little trickle of water and then settled himself more comfortably on his haunches for it to fill. When it was full, Hajiri gestured and led him away as voices approached. Faramir realized the men were waiting to use the spring themselves.
There was a place where palms grew, binding sand into a semblance of earth and harbouring grasses in their roots. A small tree, spiky and of slender leaf, held its own among them. Tiny yellow flowers dotted it, open to the night and smelling of something Faramir thought he recognized as the scent on the jihabi. His moment of final refusal had come.
Faramir set down the bucket but before he could speak, Hajiri said, “Do not refuse me.” It sounded more a question hovering on the wind, at one with the night, than a command. “Say nothing. There is no need. I will show you why, if you only wait…” Standing very close, he unwound the folds of Faramir’s jihabi.
“Quietly, quietly, only wait a little…” He dipped a corner of the clean jihabi in his hand into the cold water and brought it, dripping, to Faramir’s face, drawing it around his hair-line, smoothing away the dampened curls.
Faramir held his wrist to stop him, and Hajiri looked into his eyes from his bent head, so that he was looking up. There was an intensity to him that made Faramir pause, their eyes fixed on each other. Hajiri made no move to pull free, but only waited. He, like the desert, seemed to have all the time in world. Slowly, Faramir let his wrist go.
Hajiri betrayed no hint of triumph, acted as if winning were not on his mind. His small smile was warm as if in fellow feeling. He dipped the cloth again and turned Faramir around to bathe his neck. He opened Faramir’s shirt before moving on to his hands, his chest, his back under the loosened cloth. The water, as cold in the night air as when it bubbled from the ground, chilled Faramir’s skin. The cloth’s slight roughness as Hajiri drew it over him in small, cold strokes raised sensations elsewhere, up his spine, in his belly, in his scalp. Faramir started to shiver as Hajiri urged him to step out of his boots and breeches. He felt exposed, not by nakedness, but the vulnerability of feeling.
In only his open shirt and breech clout, he tried to convince himself he was going to walk away. To what, he did not know: to live another day and then what? Escape? How far would he get, assuming he even managed to break away? He was not afraid to try, though he could die making his way home, lost and parched in the wilderness. And yet standing in this desert oasis, isolate in time and space, it seemed to him that what he walked away from was of far greater moment — he could never walk away from himself.
He kept his place and watched Hajiri’s movements, precise, economical, flowing from a balance of body in harmony with itself and its surroundings. The darkness made deep shadows where firelight and starlight did not fall. Faramir watched the shadows move — Hajiri’s hair swinging across his back, shoulders and face alive with its own wiry resilience.
Hajiri wrung out the cloth and drew it up one leg, and then his fingers kneaded muscles in the guise of working the damp silk down against the skin, smoothing hair flat again. Faramir shivered unmistakeably and stepped back.
“You don’t really expect me —”
“Hush, no talk,” answered Hajiri. “Words only get in the way. Iraehel was famed for his beauty but never spoke. His lord fell hopelessly in love with him. Iraehel vowed that if he could not love him back at least no words of his would ever entangle his lord’s heart further.”
He sat back on his ankles, cloth resting in his open hand. “From you, I expect nothing, except bravery, but where I have no expectations perhaps I can persuade… Let me try, at least. Or do I read you wrong, man of Gondor?”
“You would enslave me.” Faramir wished his voice did not sound so hoarse.
Hajiri tilted his head. “That is one way of describing it.” He ran a hand down Faramir’s leg. “A good way, perhaps.” He bent his head and kissed Faramir’s calf, his hand light on Faramir’s skin.
“Holding on and letting go, these are the high arts of life. Between one and the other lies the journey of our hearts. Do you not wish to be held — for this night at least? Would you have me let you go so soon?”
“If I refuse you, you promise no such letting go. You say you will take me to your land and do as you please. You ask me a question and give me no choice.” Somehow Faramir did not feel coerced, though he made the words as terse as he could manage.
“If you say me nay?” Hajiri shrugged. “These are hard times. My men watch and listen… but now they are out of sight and out of hearing. We shall perhaps be good actors, yes? And pretend. My men will be satisfied with my mastery and your meekness and they will believe you pleasured me well. I shall let you go back to your white city, and your trees, and they will laugh and call me besotted. I think you and I will be the poorer — if we only pretend this is so.”
Faramir stared at him. “You let me think, all this time —”
Hajiri gave another little shrug, as expressive as any smile or frown. “I have my reputation and my men to think of. We take great pride in our leaders. It is a matter of — I do not know the word. It is important to them and for my authority, you understand. I am not the only one who understands your tongue: some speak a little for barter with the north.” He gestured largely southwards with his arm. “There are many different peoples in our lands and as many languages. Sometimes, near your borders, we find your common tongue useful between our own peoples. For others among us, it is expected, a part of our learning, though none of my men are such students.” He smiled, wryly. “Your accent is far harder than the words, no?”
Hajiri fell quiet, still on his haunches. Faramir gazed down on him, not finding it hard to see in him a scholar. This man, so at ease with himself, contained so much in his quietude. Sworn foe, soldier, scholar — seducer… Hajiri’s eyes held out his question still.
Faramir heard the desert’s shifting vastness around him, the sand, dark-shadowed by bright stars, hushing as it moved in the wind. He smelled the tiny flowers whose scent filled the air, and saw deep-etched the lines of laughter in Hajiri’s face.
The bucket was still half full. Faramir bent with cupped hands and buried his face in the chill water. He dipped up a little more, rinsing away the last grains of sand as if with them he washed away the last of his resistance. Slowly, he shucked his shirt and his underclout and held out his hand for the cloth. He soaked it and passed it over himself, all the parts Hajiri had not ventured yet to cover. His skin relished the damp cold.
When he was done, he handed the cloth back to Hajiri, who laid it gently across the bucket and stood, drawing Faramir to him.
This time, Faramir did not step back. This time he let his hands rest on Hajiri, lightly at first, his arms, his shoulders, his back. This was a new land to explore and he was without a map, he had only this foreign guide in lieu. Full of wonder, he felt no hurry. That would come later, he suspected, with a sense of unreality. How could he be doing this?
How could he not?
What else would it be but to live a lie if he refused, when all he wanted was to assent? And tonight — tonight fell yet a little short of his captor’s homeland. Tonight lay between worlds… a place where only the desert and a pair of eyes held him thrall.
Tomorrow would see him on his way home but for tonight he would hold on to what Hajiri held out to him.
Letting go was for tomorrow. Letting go was for a new day and another life.
Hajiri kissed him.
Faramir let him.
End of Chapter Nine
Epilogue
“Captain, here is a table free.” The proprietor of ‘The Deer and Duck’ hastily swept the table clean with a cloth from his shoulder.
Faramir sat without speaking, feeling strangely ill at ease, but nodded his thanks.
The tavern servant followed him, murmuring, “Your usual, sir?” He set down a flagon of mead and a cup even as he asked the question.
Faramir thanked him and settled back, sword pushed aside, legs stretched out, leaning comfortably against the wall to savour the first mouthful of mead. He was back. But the person he had been before eluded him… His returned sword, Hajiri’s parting gift, felt heavy at his belt. With sharpened eyes, he reviewed the room, glad of its crowded condition. He was the less conspicuous thereby.
His return journey had passed with little further adventure. With regret, he had folded the jihabi under a stone before crossing into South Gondor, grateful for its protection. The last miles culminated in huge mutual relief when he presented himself to the first patrol whose path he crossed. Whether he saw them first, or they him became a matter of joking debate, but the ranger party had taken him up and fed him, overjoyed and not troubling to hide it. A runner to the city returned with a message to complete his tour of duty, over which Faramir had grimaced, expecting no softer greeting from his father, and yet it hurt. Boromir had been away.
Esgarin and his men on the other hand — Faramir folded his hands before him on the table and regarded them. If ever he felt in any doubt that the soldiers he led held him in regard, he need only recall Esgarin’s face and the others’ as they gathered round when he arrived, duly escorted, at their camp.
Now, foreign adventures survived, Gondor’s own peculiar, stony beauty took him once more to her warmer, beating heart in the lower streets for more mundane pursuits.
The inn lad came back with a small keg in the crook of one tautly muscled arm and refilled the flagon on the table. He would gain his full growth later in his twenties as he acquired a little more muscle, judged Faramir, and wondered if he was struggling with his new-found adulthood. His smile and high-held head showed no sign of it.
Too well did Faramir remember his own yearning to earn an adult’s status, the too-slow realization that his father’s approval was barely to be earned at all, no matter what duties he fulfilled with his best efforts. He could hope forever, and still go disappointed. The thought pained him even now, as did the memory of a much younger boy who had craved his father’s love and been rebuffed. He had pinned his dreams after that on achievements that would earn his father’s respect, only for those too to fade with time. And still, he hoped and loved, though for life’s warmth he had learned to turn elsewhere.
Eswin lingered, disconcerted by the sober stare, so far from the Captain’s usual delicacy.
“Sir?”
“What name do you go by, again?” Faramir asked him quietly.
“Eswin, sir.”
Faramir nodded dismissal, and wondered how many of the inn’s frequenters had already pursued the attractions Eswin did not hide. The youth looked back at him as he walked away, a question in his eyes.
Hajiri had night-black eyes and smelled of the oils and soaps of a far-off land. Faramir felt as transparent as elven glass, as if it must be obvious to anyone here who knew him what had happened and what he had done. He turned his cup between his hands, hovering between a frown and a smile. It was so strange to be home, knowing what he knew of his time so far afield, what no-one else would ever know of him. Hajiri was gone across an enemy’s lines, and gone across miles and time, for already he belonged to Faramir’s past.
Faramir wondered if he buried himself in some willing black-haired flirt whether he could perhaps forget the dust-hot smell of southern flowers distilled by sweat and a man’s musk. He doubted it and, nursing the secret gladness of remembrance, felt the little smile persist.
Faramir drank and took his ease, and watched the room while he waited for Esgarin to join him and others of their cronies to arrive. He had little expectation of moving from his place until they had eaten and joked, drunk and gossiped, boasted and sung their way well into the early morning hours, pursuits familiar and acceptable and expected of him.
He tried to imagine what Hajiri was doing now. Certainly not drinking to excess, not that quiet man with his poised walk and still hands, who could stare into the distance with all the patience of long custom and a tranquil mind.
And what of himself? Was he going to starve that part of his heart forever that wanted more than his comrades’ company for a game of cards? Could he be forever satisfied with a brother’s smile? Or a friend’s bear-hug, like Esgarin’s on seeing him? It did him good to remember that long, long look and the slow smile which started in Esgarin’s delighted eyes.
“Well, you took your time,” Esgarin had drawled and clapped him on the back. The others had laughed, easing the tension of relief into something more workaday. Faramir suspected that hug had been designed to hide Esgarin’s feelings.
No, Faramir was not short of friendship, but sitting on his hard bench in this familiar haunt he was no longer sure it was enough, not when one memory led so easily to another, so very different and so far away. Even limned only by starlight and fire, the crinkling of Hajiri’s eyes and his white smile in their frame of expressive lines had been easy to see. Faramir stirred restlessly and pushed his cup away.
He watched Eswin dodge a customer. Gondor was not the edge of the desert. No man of Gondor could exert the spell the desert had wrought. And he was the Steward’s son, in whom respect for the White City and her laws was ingrained. Abruptly he finished his draught and put down money to cover it. Gondor was unaltered in his absence, but he was no longer in the mood for drinking.
On his way out, he brushed past the youth and they paused, meeting eye to eye. So narrow was the passage, they could not help but touch.
Eswin, waylaid by his quizzically frowning master, received a short message delivered by a nondescriptly dressed man who withdrew immediately.
“You’re wanted.” The inn keeper jerked his head toward the rear door. “There’s an escort awaiting you. Mark me, Eswin, I’ll have no gossips working here, do you understand me?” Worriedly, he searched the lad’s face.
Comprehension filled the youth’s expression with hope and he nodded vigorously.
“You’re only to go if you want to. I suppose it’s too much to think you might want to refuse? No? I thought so. Be careful, then,” ordered his master. “And wash before you go,” he added hastily.
Faramir was waiting. Eswin, still slick with water from his hurried dousing, looked at him doubtfully, so solemn did the Captain seem, nothing like the shy drunk of the discreet smiles he had been used to.
“Iraehel,” murmured Faramir, and laughed at the youth’s face. “Don’t mind me. Come,” he patted the bed. “I take it you are willing?”
Afterwards, Faramir stared at the scudding clouds through the open window, dimly pale in the sickle moon’s small light. Eswin was a gently snoring shadow by his side, drawn close. The wind, gusting freely around the hired room, set their clothes dancing like billowing ghosts on their pegs by the door, bringing with it the tangy smoke of hearth and smithy. Other smells intruded, of food, drink and the ubiquitous waste of a city’s population, no matter how efficiently carted out to waiting fields. Feet on stone, and hooves and wheels, clattered in the night and walls echoed with carters’ complaints and drunkards’ jokes.
The desert was far away. Home where he belonged, Faramir gazed out of the window and watched the moon sail behind the clouds. Gondor’s walls surrounded him but his heart felt larger, spacious; large enough to hold the sound of sifting sands and the scent of flowers, fragrant and foreign in a night when stars felt close enough to touch.
Eswin sighed and smiled in his sleep, and Faramir felt glad of the warmth and earthy weight beside him. The desert was far away but its spell, Hajiri’s gift, had proven stowaway and travelled with him. Faramir sighed and smiled in turn, and knew he would be forever richer for knowing an enemy’s honourable heart and the embrace of a desert spell.
The End
Tramontata È La Luna
Tramontata è la luna
e le Peiadi a mezzo della notte;
giovinezza dilegua,
e io nel mio letto resto sola.Scuote l’anima mia Eros,
come vento sul monte
che irrompe entro le querce;
e scioglie le membra e le agita,
dolce amaro indomabile serpente.Ma a me non ape, non miele;
e soffro e desidero.
The Moon Has Waned
The moon has waned
and the Pleiades have reached the middle of their night;
youth fades,
and I in my bed remain alone.Eros shakes my heart
like wind on the mountain
which bursts among the oak trees;
and he melts my limbs and stirs his fire into them,
sweet bitter untameable serpent.But for me neither bee nor honey;
I suffer and I desire.~ Sappho ~
A.N. ‘The Moon Has Waned’ Synthesized from Fragments 20, 50, 52, 94 & 137 by Sappho (Greek) into the Italian ‘Tramontata È La Luna’ by Lirici Greci (1940).
Italian to English by Anon
j_dav sent me the poem, thank you!
NB: Please do not distribute (by any means, including email) or repost this story (including translations) without the author's prior permission. [ more ]
Enjoyed this story? Then be sure to let the author know by posting a comment at https://www.faramirfiction.com/fiction/the-moon-has-waned. Positive feedback is what keeps authors writing more stories!
Filter
Adult content is shown. [what's this?]
Adult content is hidden.
NB: This site is still for adults only, even with the adult content filter on! [what's this?]
Elegantly done. I enjoyed this story very much.
— Bell Witch Wednesday 25 August 2010, 14:34 #