Agarwaen

Part Eighteen
~A Momentary Respite…Or Not~

Haldir mounted the last two stairs with increasing difficulty, pain spiking through his side as he half-lurched up the final step. As he paused for breath against the banister, he glanced down the silent hall towards the crack of light coming from a door at the end. Saeryn’s back appeared as she nudged it open with her shoulder, her arms full of Aragorn’s damp, tattered clothes. She stopped when she saw him.

She gave him a soft, weary smile and answered his unspoken question. “I’ve got him all tucked up and a fire going. He needs to stay warm.”

“How is he?” He wasn’t talking about Estel’s physical injuries. Not entirely at least.

She adjusted her grip awkwardly as the ragged tunic slipped out of her grasp and flopped onto the floor. “He dropped right off to sleep as soon as he stopped shivering. I think he’ll be all right. I don’t want you to wake him though,” she added as she scooped the garment up. “He needs the rest and I’ve got to get things to the laundry.”

Haldir nodded dutifully as she bypassed him, heading downstairs. He had no intention of waking the ranger. Pushing off the banister, he paused again just outside Aragorn’s room. The partition just allowed him to catch a glimpse of dark hair tumbled over a mound of white pillows. But the man’s face was turned to the wall away from the door. Haldir couldn’t tell if he was still sleeping or not. Though he had gotten this far, he didn’t think he would actually be capable of setting foot in the room. Just the thought of sitting there beside Aragorn’s injured, unconscious body made his insides curl and burn with guilt.

If he was sleeping though, he reasoned, surely it wouldn’t hurt. Aragorn need never know he was there. He could just slip in, make sure he still breathed, and out again. Steeling himself with a deep exhale, he thrust aside his misgivings and pushed the door inward.

As Saeryn had said, a fire burned bright in the small hearth with plenty of wood stacked beside it. The bed lay against the wall opposite. Haldir approached slowly, feeling increasingly uncomfortable. He glanced back almost longingly towards the door then, cursing himself for a coward, took the last two steps to Aragorn’s side.

The ranger was fast asleep. His skin was warm and flushed, a far better shade than the ghastly pallor he’d come in with. His now properly bandaged fingers rested lightly on his chest but the rest of his injuries were obscured under the grey coverlet. Though he had only been missing for a day and a half, his face held a lean look and dark bags worse than Haldir’s hung under his eyes. Auburn locks tumbled around his still youthful face, one or two stirred by his soft, even breaths, the only sound breaking the stillness save an intermittent crackle from a piece of log breaking off in the grate.

Haldir stifled a little sigh of relief. This was tolerable.

“The trouble is when you wake,” he murmured softly to the sleeping ranger. “What do I tell you? Oh, by the way, Estel, you are friends with a murderer. Perhaps you would have been better served traveling home unaccompanied,” he laughed bitterly at himself and stared out the window though the imprint of the ranger’s pale face stayed before him. “I would not blame you for turning me away. You should. It’s safer for both of us.”

He leaned his forehead against the glass as he had the night he had first discovered Estel was missing, when the cold, unrelenting reach of the past had caught up with him. Who had paid the worse price? He closed his eyes, his fingers gripping the windowsill so hard, his knuckles whitened. Tension knotted across his shoulders as Haldir looked up at his image in the glass.

Reflected glints of smoky color shone from underneath the ranger’s eyelids in the mirrored surface. Haldir wondered how long he’d been awake.

“What’s that look for?” Aragorn smiled tiredly though it pulled at his battered face and split lip. “Am I that much of a mess?”

“Yes.”

Aragorn watched him blearily out of the corner of his eye as Haldir picked up the poker from beside the grate and poked the embers unnecessarily. His gaze couldn’t help being drawn to the elf’s open collar and the finger-thick bruise circling his throat. Though Branock and his men had attacked him several days ago, it still seemed unhealed. It looked even deeper and nastier in the dim light, a more purplish black than blotted yellow. The pressure the noose must have exerted to make such a mark made Aragorn’s stomach turn over. It seemed ages ago since he’d wished his friend luck in the defile before they’d rescued Brenn.

“Arenath told me what happened.” The firelight seemed to dip as though it knew the one who belonged to that name could no longer answer to it.

Haldir knew what the ranger was looking at but didn’t look up. “How did he know?”

“He shot one of the men.” Aragorn closed his eyes.

“I don’t remember that.”

“Are you all right?” the man’s eyes reopened concernedly.

“You ask me that and you are the one lying here?”

Aragorn didn’t reply. They were cruel. Arenath’s voice had shaken. But thinking of Arenath was painful and he tried to put him out of his mind. Clearly Haldir was up and about. In a better condition than he himself was. But the strangulation mark, the rigid way in which he held his shoulders— Aragorn’s fuzzy consciousness was alert enough to pick up that something wasn’t well.

“What’s wrong?” He didn’t expect an honest answer and predictably received none. Though he’s hoped for a little leeway after all. But when the elf didn’t answer him at all as though he hadn’t even heard, he pushed himself up onto his forearms. Haldir looked up quickly at the movement.

“Nothing. I’m…tired.” He replaced the poker on its hook and made for the door. “I am going to get scolded again—Saeryn said I wasn’t to wake you.”

“Haldir?”

The elf captain froze with his hand on the door handle. He squeezed his eyes shut and waited, praying Aragorn would not ask him for answers he didn’t want to give. He turned slowly on the spot to see the man leaning up on one elbow with a furrow forming between his brows.

“Are you sure you’re all right?”

Haldir nodded once and escaped the room.

---------

“You’ve been avoiding me.”

“Huh,” Haldir, frowning, didn’t look up from the small knife he was sharpening. “I thought we were playing hide-and-seek.”

“Very funny.”

Inviting himself, Aragorn with only a hint of stiffness pulled a seat up to the corner table at the back of the Goat’s nearly empty common room. His injuries were mending nicely though his fingers were slower to heal than the bruises. After Saeryn finally deemed him well enough to be up and about, he had been trying with increasing persistence through the last few days to talk to Haldir who had become conspicuously absent whenever the man happened to be looking for him. He found excuses to go for long walks where Saeryn would not allow the ranger to follow and skipped meals in an effort to avoid company other than Aragorn’s. Carlóme and the rest were still celebrating their long-awaited triumph and made private conversation almost impossible.

Finally after three and a half days of this, Aragorn had enough and successfully cornered his friend, determined to find out what was wrong. He had felt the crevices opening up between them again and resolved to not let it happen because of his shame or Haldir’s pride. But the right words were still hard to find and Haldir certainly wasn’t going to open up the conversation. He fidgeted with Barahir now back in its rightful place on his forefinger.

Aragorn glanced again at the little knife that had so much of his friend’s attention. “Didn’t you give that to Brenn?”

“I did.”

Silence again. This was much harder than Aragorn had anticipated. Glancing out the window and finding no inspiration there, he decided to dive right in. “I’m sorry, Haldir.”

That got his attention. Haldir frowned at the wood grain but Aragorn, now that he had started, didn’t want to stop in case his courage failed him.

“I’ve been going through it in my head over and over and over and I know there was something…I could have held on longer. But I swear I didn’t let him fall.”

Haldir blinked, shocked. Aragorn thought he was still mourning Arenath. While in a sense it was true, he would always grieve for his friend, Arenath had made his choice. And, in the end, it had been the right one. He didn’t have to sit here dealing with the aftermath.

“I don’t blame you for his death, Estel. There was nothing you could have done,” he said quietly, trying to keep his voice low as possible for a man at the bar had looked over at them curiously.

“But then…” Aragorn stopped fiddling with his ring long enough to dart a confused glance up at his friend. “Why are you angry with me? What did I do?”

Haldir rolled his eyes and set the knife down with a clatter. Of course, Aragorn would blame himself. He should have known. “You idiot. I am not angry with you. How can I be? Arenath knew what he was doing. You didn’t do anything wrong. In fact you did more than most probably would have. You certainly didn’t put the knife in him.”

“If you’re not angry with me, then why do you—?” He didn’t get a chance to finish for Brenn came noisily in lugging one of the smaller firkins from the cellar.

Though the basement was cool, his brow was slick from exertion as he shoved his burden up onto the counter. Wiping his streaked temples on his sleeve, his wandering gaze fell on the pair in the corner. Aragorn smiled kindly at him but the lad’s eyes weren’t on him but on the one sitting across from him. Almost faster than the eye could follow, Brenn tore his gaze away and whisked out the door without a word.

Aragorn frowned slightly, wondering what that had been all about.

But Haldir sighed. The boy hadn’t spoken to him once since he had given Haldir his knife back yesterday. Though Carlóme said she had explained to him that Haldir had done the most to rescue him, Brenn was having a hard time bouncing back from the trauma Fedorian had inflicted on him. He couldn’t stand to be in the same room as one who even remotely resembled his former captor.

Thankfully the double doors burst open again before he had to explain any of that and a palm-sized burlap sack clinked heavily on the table announcing Carlóme’s victorious return from the town hall where she had retrieved her bounty at last.

“Well, they finally did it,” Zaren announced as Carlóme and the others pulled up chairs. “They sentenced him.”

Carlóme perched herself on the bar. “We told the elders what he did to Brenn to Zaren and you, Strider.” The ranger had declined going with them to the trial. “Couple o’ hunters found Yyrin’s body up in the woods. They didn’t need anymore evidence than that.”

“What’s this for?” Aragorn tugged open the slip knot sack and dumped a pile of gold coins onto the wooden surface.

Carlóme helped herself to the contents of the firkin Brenn had brought up and exchanged a pointed glance with Zaren who was looking meaningfully at her. But it was the rakish thief who ended up answering.

“We figured you two might as well have your cut now—you’ve more than earned it,” he said with another glance at Carlóme who remained silent but nodded grudgingly.

Clearly they thought this was quite a magnanimous gesture. Aragorn carefully schooled his face blank as he looked over at his companion.

Haldir stared at the coins.

“What are they going to do with him?” Aragorn asked slowly with a cautious, sidelong glance at the marchwarden whose attention was still fixed on the table but the tension in his shoulders showed he was listening.

“Hang him,” the dark woman said succinctly with a distinct amount of relish. “Execution’s set for tomorrow in the middle of the square. They’ve got the scaffold built already. You two going to stay for it? It ought to be good.”

“No,” Aragorn said quickly.

Haldir still didn’t stir. Everyone was treating this as though it were some sort of festival, a cause for celebration or merriment. Death was never something to be celebrated, regardless of who the recipient was. Tomorrow, he could see it, the roaring, jeering crowd, merchants hawking their wares under the gallows, children laughing and pointing as the pale prisoner was led out of the cells and paraded from the gaol to the midst of the town where everyone would crane their necks over their neighbor’s shoulders for a glimpse.

Fedorian would be silent to the end, proud, erect as any soldier had been taught to die. The guards wouldn’t even remove the chains, more weight that way when they maneuvered him over the trap door and slipped the thirteen-looped, greased rope around his neck. Maybe, if Haldir could bring himself to stand there at the back of the crowd, he would see his former commander’s eyes flicker towards him, one last, long look before the drop.

“Keep your blood money.” One harsh shove sent the sack flying, its contents spilling across the room rolling and spinning under tables and chairs. Carlóme scrambled for the coins as he stalked out.

----------

Aragorn searched him out after he had thought a suitable time had passed for the elf to cool off. He found him in the weedy, ill-kept garden whose only ornament was a stately slightly cramped maple tree in the center of the weeds. The bark rubbed rough against his palm as he craned his neck up towards the thick fork in the branches where he could just see his friend’s dim shape.

“How did you get up there?”

“I climbed.”

Aragorn rolled his eyes exasperatedly. “Well, obviously. I meant, you probably shouldn’t be climbing at all. Saeryn said she would tan your hide for disobeying her very strict orders,” the human’s bright, teasing smile told his friend exactly how he felt about something as trivial as Saeryn’s “orders.”

“Ha.”

The younger man slowly sobered as the elf didn’t say anything further. “They thought they were being generous, Haldir. No one’s—”

“I am not in the mood to talk about it, Estel.”

“All right then,” the ranger said, circling the trunk. “We don’t need to talk.”

Haldir peered over the edge of the branch he was reclining on when he heard the rustle of leaves and Aragorn’s steady breaths as the ranger pulled himself up almost one-handed.

“What are you doing, you mad fool! Your fingers—” Alarmed, the elf grabbed the man’s shoulder and almost bodily dragged him into the safe cradle of the boughs.

Aragorn glared challengingly at him through a curtain of his dark hair. He blew the tendrils out of his face but his eyes didn’t lose their sparkle. “Oh? Don’t tell me you didn’t strain your ribs—which might I remind you, Saeryn will kill you if she finds out—when you climbed up here?”

“That is different. At least I have full use of my hands.”

“Hands shmands,” the ranger waved said limb airily wincing slightly as the newly throbbing fingers remonstrated him for taking such liberties. He fingered his wrist lightly where red loops circled it like a bracelet—the remnants of rope burns. Haldir followed his gaze and his expression saddened almost imperceptibly but Aragorn didn’t notice. He looked as though he were steeling himself to say something and Haldir waited anxiously for it. But again the ranger surprised him.

“I am sorry for what they’re doing. It’s not right.”

The man raised his eyes and looked his friend full in the face. There was no hidden guile behind his eyes. He spoke the simple truth. When he saw Haldir’s confusion, he said, “Arenath told me…well, he told me a lot. Death shouldn’t be such a spectacle.”

That Aragorn could say that about the elf who had tortured him remorselessly made Haldir look at him as he had never looked at him before. It was a penetrating but softened look.

“Thank you.”

Aragorn just shrugged. Frowning a little, he leaned forward and pressed lightly against the elf’s bruised throat. “Does it still hurt?” he asked with a quick glance at his friend’s complexion to make sure he didn’t feel uncomfortable.

“No,” Haldir said, wincing. He didn’t look at the ranger but he didn’t retreat either. The cool, gentle fingertips soothed the ache a little. The hands of a king…He felt no revulsion in Aragorn’s touch. If anything, it calmed his nerves and temper which had been so near the surface these past few weeks. That Aragorn was still willing to chase him up a tree and attempt to reason with him despite everything he had been through was a comforting thought in and of itself. They stayed like that for quiet minutes in the blue dusk.

Aragorn squeezed his eyes shut in an embarrassed grimace when his stomach gave a particularly loud gurgle.

A smirk quirked the corners of Haldir’s lips as he leaned regretfully away from the man’s healing touch. He frowned with false concentration. “You know, I can’t be quite sure, but I think that is the signal for dinner.”

“That loud, huh?” the ranger ruefully rubbed his lean stomach.

“‘That loud,’” the elf echoed teasingly. “Your stomach would wake a stone troll.”

The man’s wide grin flashed in the dim light as he maneuvered himself slowly towards the next lowest branch. He paused when he realized the elf wasn’t following him. “Are you coming?”

“You go ahead.”

Aragorn didn’t move. “You do need to eat something,” he implored.

“Must you I?” The elf’s look of long-suffering was not wholly feigned.

“You don’t have to sit and talk to anybody. Just eat something.”

“Are going to be this insistent at every mealtime?”

“Yes.”

“And give me no peace until I agree?”

“To no end.”

Given the choice between enduring more concern-filled nagging, and already quite hungry himself, Haldir began to climb down after him. He jumped a mere six feet from the ground but landed awkwardly, clutching his side.

“Don’t say it,” he bristled, pulling back from Aragorn’s steadying hands.

“I wasn’t going to say anything!” the ranger protested with a deliberately unmerciful and altogether too mischievous look in his eye. “Certainly not “I told you so.””

“That,” the elf said, a little too breathlessly to be casual, “was not a result of climbing up…but my getting down.”

“Exactly why I told you you shouldn’t be climbing in the first place.”

Eager to change the subject, Haldir straightened. “So, dinner then?”

The common room was a boisterous and loud event. Patrons that night could talk of nothing else but the coming execution. The air was thick with yellow-green clouds of pipe smoke as men cramming the tables swapped stories and mulled over everything they ever knew, heard or invented about the exploits and capture of the so-called “ghost” that had been haunting Merdon for years. Carlóme’s group was the center of attention and called on repeatedly to tell again their tale. But the Haradrim women demurred with a glance at the ranger and elf who had taken their usual small corner in the back of the room.

Fabor had broken his usual stinginess and provided his paying guess with his coveted silver and glassware from the cellars as well as uncorked several barrels of his finest unaged, blackthorn brandy for the evening.

Aragorn was glad to find his friend’s mood lightened a bit more after a few cups of that most excellent vintage and actually convinced him to eat a little while talk buzzed around them, for the most part indistinguishable until one particular conversation rose above the rest. The table nearest them had their heads together, laughing amongst themselves.

“So what do you think we’ll get for it?” a lanky-haired man asked in a low, guttural voice and with a greedy leer.

One of his companions thunked his mug down. “Well, we’ll have to see if we can even manage to get it down in the first place. I mean, crowd’s going to make maneuvering hard and the executioner’s probably got his claws sunk in already and he ain’t even dead yet.”

Aragorn glanced across the table, hoping desperately that Haldir hadn’t heard. But the elf had frozen with his fork halfway between his lips as though he had forgotten it was even there.

“Wonder if he’ll wet himself when he swings.”

Aragorn seized firm hold of his friend’s sleeve as the elf captain made to stand.

“He’s out of line,” Haldir rebuffed the silent reprimand. “Let me go.”

“I know he is. Sit down,” Aragorn tugged him back into his seat. “You don’t need another injury.”

“Please, Estel, give me a little credit,” a mocking little smile played about the elf soldier’s lips as he gestured to the fellow who had last spoken. “He can barely set one foot in front of the other as it is.”

“Exactly why you should sit down.”

The lanky-haired man was still chuckling, his face very red. But he didn’t seem to have noticed the slight contention his passing remark had caused. With a dissatisfied sigh and a last glare, Haldir dropped discontentedly back into his chair and polished off his drink with a long swallow.

“Where are you going?” Aragorn twisted in his seat as the elf stood up again.

He twitched his empty snifter in passing, his eyes fixed on the bar opposite. “Another.”

Carlóme thumped down into an empty seat next to Aragorn. “At least we’re not pilfering body parts,” she said, jerking her head at the group next to theirs, still in intense discussion about how best to get their hands on the corpse tomorrow. She shook her head and poured herself another ale from the pitcher then offered it to Aragorn who declined with an upheld hand. He was still watching Haldir at the other end of the bar, making sure the elf wasn’t making a nuisance of himself.

“He’ll be all right.”

The ranger faced her with a slight smile. “Then you don’t know him very well.”

“Do you?” Carlóme grinned to show the question was lightly meant. “Can you ever know elves?”

“Enough to encourage them not to push their luck,” the ranger said darkly. “What’s taking him so long?”

“Strider, relax, he’s fine,” Carlóme managed to dismiss his concern and prod a sleepy Narturi sitting nearby with the same movement. “Off to bed with you, Nari. I don’t need you drowning in spilled ale.”

Narturi smiled with sleepy fondness at her leader and obediently picked up her head with a last, longing glance along the bar.

“Go, moon-eyes!” Carlóme lobbed a nutshell playfully at the back of her head to get her moving. “For the last time, he’s not chasing after little girls.”

Narturi stuck her tongue out at the Harad woman which only made her laugh.

‘I probably shouldn’t have let him go up there again,” Aragorn muttered to himself. “He’s been a little overly indulgent already tonight.”

“So what? He’s got little enough reason to be. At least it’s something.”

When the man didn’t respond save with another weak smile, she shrugged and brought her mug to her lips. “There now, he’s coming back. Don’t get your trousers in a twist.”

Haldir set his drink on the table and slid back into his seat, sparing the Haradrim woman a careless glance. “Was I missed?”

“Bitterly,” Aragorn retorted dryly. “Don’t drink that one so fast.”

“Yes, Naneth.”

“I meant I’m not paying for another.”

“S’all right,” Carlóme slapped the elf amiably on the back, almost knocking him into his drink. “Next one’s all mine.”

Haldir set his glass steadily on the table with a reassuring smile at Aragorn. “Take ease, Strider, I want to remain clear-headed… for a little while longer tonight anyway.”

The man frowned slightly, not sure whether to be reassured or worried by that deliberately cryptic statement but before he could question the elf about it, a disturbance erupted over at the bar’s far end.

The fellow who had been the subject of Haldir’s ire earlier in the evening stood up, clearly inviting a farewell toast. He said something that was drowned in all the chatter but which his compatriots raucously cheered. He took a long draught of his drink and then spluttered and folded over the table, choking and retching. A shocked lull flittered across the room before a couple of his friends chuckled and one swiped his compatriot’s cup, took one sniff and wrinkled his nose with a grin. One of Fabor’s servants began cleaning up the mess while the man’s friends pounded their groggy friend on the back and got him to his feet, laughing a good night to the room who shouted encouragement after them.

Haldir surveyed the scene with mild amusement. “Now, it seems our sophisticated friend can’t put either foot in front of the other. Oops.”

Carlóme snorted into her ale and, wiping foam flecks off her face, looked at the elf incredulously. “What’d you do to his drink?”

Sipping his own, Haldir shrugged far too innocently and braced his chair on two legs against the wall. “It seems to me someone must have just mixed the orders up. He must have gotten a mug of lamp oil instead of the honey brandy he’s been plying all night.”

The dark woman started to laugh while Aragorn glared at his friend disapprovingly but even he couldn’t help the tinniest smile from pulling the muscles of his face. “You’re incorrigible.”

“And now, smug,” the elf toasted the ranger’s clever assessment. The grin faded from his face as he stared into the bottom of his glass. With a short glance towards the double doors, he swallowed down the bitterness the cheap drink left in his throat and pushed back his chair. The room was suddenly stuffy and overly crowded.

Aragorn sensed his change of mood and did not seem surprised when he got up from the table. He knew his friend preferred to be alone rather than in crowds but after their talk he wasn’t sure the marchwarden wouldn’t spend the rest of the night brooding.

“Do you want any company?” was all he managed.

“No.”

----------

As always when he needed to think, he left the bright lights and laughter behind and wandered out to the small, dusky paddock where the inn’s horses huddled close together for warmth or rolled on the hard earth. Lintedal trotted up to him almost immediately, pushing her nose over the wooden slats. He stroked her long cheek.

Blood for blood, Fedorian deserved death. He had committed acts no elf, to his knowledge, had ever done before, regardless of cost to himself and to those he hurt. Arenath had been right. He did not care and he would not stop until he was killed. Why then did he, Haldir, feel so confused? A murderer deserved what he gave his victims. Right?

“I do not bite you know. Though occasionally I do play hard to get,” he seemed to remark almost to thin air but the gangly shape in the stable shadows startled and hesitantly scurried out from cover.

The boy stared wide-eyed at the elf, something clutched in his left hand tight against his thin, grey coat. He stiffened under the amused, silver eyes but straightened his posture and walked purposefully forward though his voice faltered as he stopped within three paces,

“I—I was told to give this to the elf at the Goat. I guess that’s you,” he explained, thrusting a scrappy bit of parchment at Haldir who took it slowly.

Before he could even ask who it was from, the boy bolted away, through the stables and out of sight as though the hounds of Angmar were on his heels.

Lintedal looked at him with inscrutable eyes as he leaned his shoulders on a fence post and unfolded the parchment. He read it through once and then again, his lips growing thinner and whiter with every letter.

Aragorn poked his head out the inn’s back door. “There was a messenger looking for you. I sent him out here.”

“Did he say where he was from?” Haldir asked, the parchment concealed tight in his fist.

Aragorn shook his head. “Did he find you?”

Haldir turned his back as though to pat Lintedal goodnight and surreptitiously slipped the note into his tunic. “I must have just missed him.” Abruptly, he walked up the porch stairs and into the dimly lit entrance hall where a single, smoky lamp hung overhead.

Aragorn followed him in as he retrieved his cloak. “We’ll leave tomorrow morning at dawn if you like. We don’t have to stay…” he trailed off slowly. “I mean, you don’t want to…?”

“Fine.”

The ranger’s eyes narrowed a little and Haldir felt a funny, little jolt in his stomach that made him avoid the man’s eyes as he passed him, swinging his cloak around his shoulders and fastening it with his emerald brooch pin.

“I’m going for a walk.”