The Boundaries of Time

I want to thank everyone who beta'd this story, namely dragonlady7, Chathol-linn, and of course fliewatuet who has read through it almost as many times as I have. You all = the best!! This would be a mess without you. I also want to thank everyone at HASA for any insight they offered, as well as their great resource section. I also want to acknowledge councilofelrond.com and the Encyclopedia of Arda as tremendously useful resources. Last of all, thanks to my ex-roommate, Tolkien-geek extraordinaire, who put up with all my stupid questions.

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“If a man must walk in sight of the Black Gate, or tread the deadly flowers of the Morgul Vale, then perils he will have. I, too, despaired at last, and I began my homeward journey. And then, by fortune, I came suddenly on what I sought: the marks of soft feet beside a muddy pool.”

-Aragorn (The Fellowship of the Ring)



Aragorn crossed Anórien uneventfully. He met one merchant crossing the plain in his wagon, but other than glowering with suspicion through bristling eyebrows and a dwarf-like beard, the merchant gave no hurt to him and offered Aragorn extra food and a skin of water in exchange for one of the many knives Aragorn carried.

“Alas, it is a foreboding sign of these ill times when Gondorian merchants trade food for weapons in their own lands,” Aragorn said after thanking the merchant for his kindness. His thanks were mere propriety of course since the man could not be said to have acted out of kindness, but even in the darkest times propriety and law must prevail.

The man scowled, dark gray eyes narrowing as though he thought Aragorn a madman, then he cracked the whip at his lumbering draught horse. Aragorn watched as the wagon dwindled to a speck against the splendid mountain range. Ominous clouds hovered above the peaks. Snow fell in the high country, in Minas Tirith, in the foothills of the Ered Nimrais. Was Minas Tirith the merchant’s destination, a perilous journey from here; unless one took the long way around? The straight road led through the broken fort of Osgiliath, the deserted city on the riverbanks. Once a thriving port, the principal city of Gondor, ere civil war and plague in the early Third Age had ravaged and destroyed its great dome, its magnificent bridge and stonework, and its people fled to Minas Tirith and Ithilien. Now its ruins were a haggard bulwark, holding Sauron’s forces to Anduin’s eastern shore.

Another two days found Aragorn standing upon the steep banks of swift-flowing Anduin, pale gray limestone tilted at various cants, burnished by flood and wind, pitching into thin white strips of sandy beach. The river spanned a furlong, running deep and fast, its bluish-gray depths boiling with treacherous white water. Not even he could swim that current. Kneeling upon the top of the limestone cliffs, he frowned upon the river. It was a practice of the Gondorian army to conceal small boats beneath brush and cliff along the bank for ferrying troops and supplies across the river in secret. All bridges were closely watched by the Enemy, but forty years ago when Aragorn served Ecthelion, small dinghies on the Great River had passed unnoticed.

He hoped to find the boats and convince the troop of soldiers guarding them that it was a wise idea to ferry him across the river. While his gray eyes and dark hair looked Gondorian, his accent and raiment marked him as a stranger and he feared they would think him an enemy spy and slay him. Still, better to face a small troop of men than the legions holding the stone bridge at Osgiliath. Should they refuse him, he must either employ all the stealth at his command and slink through Osgiliath or attempt to hijack a boat during the night and row in stealth across the river. The former had nigh impossible odds, and the latter reminded him of the Nodolantë, the tale of Fëanor’s flight from Valinor and the Kinslaying, his battle with the Teleri, for they would not lend him their ships. The curse of Manwë shall be on me if I take the boats of my own kin, Aragorn thought wryly. The Valar willing, it shall not come to that. He rose and walked along the bank, seeking signs of the hidden boats.

Though he found no boats in the immediate area – they could be anywhere between Osgiliath and Cair Andros – he came upon a trampled path from the river, ripping up the brush, tearing soil, and flaying open the net of low branches. Aragorn squatted down upon the makeshift path, examining the tracks. A number of two-legged creatures wearing heavy, iron boots had passed this way in a great hurry. Orcs. Inhaling sharply, Aragorn drew his sword and sprang to his feet. The company of approximately a dozen orcs had milled around here for some time – the ground around the riverbank was torn up for a wide swath in concentric circles and droplets of dark red blood flecked the leaves of trees and a clump of ferns. They had scuffled, no uncommon thing for orcs, who would kill each other as joyously as they would kill a Man or Elf. Then they had bolted down the path leaving a trail of destruction through brush and bough, clear enough for a blind man to trace. Their tracks were not more than a day old. Somehow they had crossed Anduin in the wilds undetected, for he doubted they had crossed at Osgiliath or come here from some encampment on the Western bank. Curious, Aragorn followed the path of flattened foliage leading down the bank to the river.

Rising above the roar of white water, the guttural and foul speech of Orcs came to his quick ears. As silently as a wraith, he crept through the cypress and low sage brush towards the river, and there behind a boulder worn smooth by water he crouched, immobile as a stone, barely breathing.

The Gondorians were not the only ones using small watercraft to furtively slip across Anduin’s great span! Before him, three orcs guarded two wooden dinghies pulled upon the shore. The boats had not the elegance of Gondorian craft. They looked as if they sat low and heavy in the water and had rounded, blunt bows and squared sterns, but were serviceable nonetheless. One orc sat upon the gunwales taking swigs of foul-smelling ale while the other two paced along the shore of pale gray and white sand, pausing often to stoop over, collect small rocks, and fling them into the churning river. Three bored guards Aragorn could slay before they knew what struck them. Take the boat and then row to the Eastern shore, thereby avoiding feeling as though he followed Fëanor’s ill path. Commandeering the boats of his enemies did not unsettle him.

At once Aragorn leapt out from behind the bank, crying “Elendil!” His first blow caught the Orc on the gunwales in the neck, and the creature fell dead into the boat with a strangled howl. His second blow slashed open the breast of another orc, and it too contorted its face in agony and died. By then, the last had drawn its notched scimitars and sprang upon him. His blade came down upon its helm, shattering it and cleaving the Orc’s head in two. Cries and the roar of iron-shod feet crashing through dead leaves and over rock arose from the woods. Wasting no time, Aragorn plunged his sword through the hull of the boat with the dead Orc in it. He rued leaving the other Orcs stranded upon the West bank to harry Gondor, but he did not want them tailing him. Then he shoved the other boat into the water, splashing through icy water halfway up his calves before the boat floated. His toes went numb. The swift current flung the heavy boat into his legs, and he vaulted over its gunwales.

Once he righted himself in the boat, he paddled like mad for the eastern shore. The boat bucked upon the white water like an unbroke horse. Waves crashed over the bow and the gunwales. Aragorn had to point his bow downstream and paddle with all his strength as the boat dove down a drop and sprang out of a hole, flinging its bow to the sky. Hitting that broadside would flip him in an instant. He backpaddled hard, spinning the boat round a pair of sharp rocks jutting from the river like the towers of Thangorodrim. He plunged over another series of drops, and then the rode the waves, bouncing and leaping. At length he caught an eddy and paddled into sand bank. Here he leapt out of the boat, pulled it ashore, and then punched holes in the hull with his sword. Even though Orcs already had entered Anórien, he would not leave a boat available for more to invade Gondor’s borders. Thus he too was trapped here between Anduin’s fierce waters and the Ephel Dúath, the Mountains of Shadow. Grimly he shoved the boat back into the river and with a pang of sorrow, watched the river toss it about as if it was naught more than a piece of driftwood, and then it consumed it; the little boat vanished beneath the gray and white water.

The companions of those Orcs he had slain would soon come through the forest. No longer did they have seaworthy boats, but still they could fire arrows across the river. Aragorn drew his hood over his head. He picked up a fast pace and vanished into the woods.

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I am aware that in book canon, Aragorn gave the ring of Barahir to Arwen when he plighted his troth to her in Lórien thirty-seven years before this narrative takes place. Though I am quite neurotic about sticking to canon in every detail (c.f. the long footnote explaining my digression), I decided to bend this one aspect of it, since the ring is a useful object to focus the narrative on now and then and important to some of the broader themes in this story.