The Good Soldier

Summary: As Eomer mourns Eowyn on the field of battle, eyes of the Haradrim are watching.


It was a lie.

My father, my commander, my chieftain may-his-soul-find-swift-rest: All of them, lied.

Since I was a boy, with the mother’s milk from which I was taken, with the gruel they dished to us after my father gave me into service, and the meat I earned at my first posting, I have been nourished with this lie. Joyfully did I drink it down with officer’s wine and felt myself intoxicated.

Proud we were raised and proud we became in our heritage, our purity, our service to the Dark Lord which earned us this promise: At his call we would rise up like the sirocco to blot out the sun and sweep away our enemies – the now-degenerate decaying Pale-Skinned whose blood runs clear as water, and the Pale-Haired who live in huts, know no writing and fornicate with their horses.

All this we were told, and more, and with pure heart I believed and came to this fight gladdened and lifted, prepared to do slaughter upon these Unworthies.

But when our enemy moved across the earth to engage us, and set it to shaking with the strength of their fearsomeness and joy – joy, yes! – truth looked full in my face, and I knew it.

Truth came to me on the wind of a thousand bright horn calls. Truth came to me on the backs of a thousand proud horses. Truth came to me and entered my heart on the point of a spear, spilling the lie and the blood of my fathers – my blood – upon the fields of Gondor to be trampled into the mud irreclaimable.

The arm that threw the spear which unhorsed me and cast my organs upon the ground came not from one in whom weakened blood flows. Even now, he is near, and though the battle at last be nearly done there is no stain or wound of war upon him. And he grieves. He grieves with as much strength as he fought, giving himself over to anguish completely and without shame though the body he clasps to his own is that of a woman – O wonder! A sister, a lover, his wife I know not, but a comrade it is certain. So strong are these people that even the females among them seek glory in war – and are perhaps superior, for it is she, not he, who has slain the Witch King in his glory and spelled our ruin upon this field in Southern blood.

As my blood deepens the scarlet of our standard I will be glad in his sorrow. I could not give my life for any less worthy.

Now my vision leaves me, flowing from my eyes even as my soul slips from my failed body, though I know I will carry this truth like a scar with me forever, should my spirit gain the paradise where rewards and rest await the faithful.

Unless this, too, was a lie.







Thanks to Viv for the beta read.