The Boundaries of Time

The fens and mires narrowed. Knee-deep bogs turned into mossy mounds, firm footing at last. The rotting stench of Gollum and of the Marshes was so fierce that it scorched Aragorn’s breathing passages and hurt his head, like fires blazing behind his eyes. But a great relief it was to have the Marshes behind him and the Ephel Dúath no more than a remote, hazy shadow at his back. Up a gully he marched. The sides of it rose on either side of them. Then an impregnable cliff, a looming imposition of rock of gray and rusted hue blocked their path, and Aragorn had to tread along its base for some time searching for a climbable incline.

“We know a way up, yes, we do,” said Gollum. “We found the way, my precious, down the cliffs, we did. Down the cliffs... We finds it again if he asks us, if he lets us go and keeps us away from the nassty elveses. Then we finds the way, my precious.”

Aragorn eyed Gollum askance. “You would just as soon lead us into a trap.”

“Yess,” hissed Gollum. “Trapped.”

He walked along the gully for a long time – at least it seemed that way to his tired feet – until the slant eased into a more favorable slope, and then he turned his back to the vast fens of the Marshes. The solemn and disturbed images of the dead in his mind faded as he climbed up the stony slope, a reprieve from ghosts of the past haunting him through the Marshes. Wind moaned through the crags and dells of the toothed ridges, a breeze from the north that did not smell so foul as the east wind.

Rock climbing tore at the wounds in his left arm. But up he clambered during the day, the pain a mist clouding his thought from which he only awoke to snap the rope at Gollum when the devious creature trailed too far behind. At night he rested without sleep, for Gollum muttered sinister riddles in the dark, and Aragorn distrusted him more than he distrusted Sauron himself. Sauron at least he trusted to be evil, but Gollum, enslaved by the Ring, was far from good but not entirely villainous. While he waited out long nights, Aragorn applied his ever-dwindling athelas to the wounds, but it seemed all the leaves did was stave off a threatening fever.

Under a cavernous shadow beneath a rugged fin, he took respite from a protracted and steep ascent up a hogback, his breath labored and left arm hanging useless in its sling. His prisoner sang a nonsensical song, which he paid no mind to and had not even the energy to snap the rope and demand Gollum keep his tongue behind his teeth. It was day, but the smoke from Mordor continued to veil this land from the sun, and the gray light lingered even though many leagues lay between Aragorn and Mordor’s walls. Then raucous noises from Gollum alerted him to something amiss. He half opened his eyes.

“Kill him,” Gollum was hissing. “Yes, kill him my precious, and cut nassty ropes from our neck. Wrap our hands around his neck and wring the life out of him, yes, yess. Deserves it, yes, so well deserved, for he hurts us, precious, he burns us with his cruel rope.”

“No,” Gollum continued after a pause. “No. Too dangerous, my precious. He’s quick, he is. Too quick, too cruel, will hurt us if we try.”

“He’s hurt now. The climbing, it hurts him, he can’t do it. We can sneak up and do it and he won’t know, he won’t stop uss, then, then we can use his nassty knives to cuts the ropes, yes, cuts the nassty ropes.”

Even as Gollum debated whether or not to throttle Aragorn, the creature crept towards him. “What if he sees us, precious, what if he knows? He’ll cut us with nasty rope and cold sword, bleed us, take us to the elveses. Too risky. Too risky.”

“But we’re going to the nasty elveses anyway. Doesn’t matter, that’s what he says we’re doing, that’s where we’re going, precious. Only one way to save usss, one way. Kill him. Kill him.”

Aragorn gripped the hilt of his sword with his good hand and through his eyelashes watched Gollum slink towards him on all fours. The northern borders of Mirkwood, Thranduil’s kingdom, lay more than eight hundred miles to the north, and not even he had the strength to travel eight hundred miles without rest. Yet he must always sleep with one eye open, ever watchful of his treacherous prisoner, an insurmountable task for eight hundred miles. He must whip the fight and treachery out of Gollum’s perfidious spirit until he had naught left in him but obedience. Aragorn detested cruelty, but he had to bow to necessity and do whatever he must.

Aragorn pulled himself up on his left elbow, even as pain lanced through his shoulder, and he unsheathed the sword in Gollum’s astonished face. Howling in despair, Gollum backtracked with such haste that he tripped and fell hard against the rocks. There he cowered, trembling. The edge of the sword Aragorn pressed to the wretch's throat.

“I have been more merciful than you deserve,” he said. “If I had my will, I would end your life here, but I must get us both to Mirkwood alive. I am beyond caring how.” He kicked Gollum in the side, and the miserable creature cried out, doubling up and writhing in pain. Anguish at beating on a creature unable or unwilling to defend himself impaled Aragorn’s heart, and he involuntarily averted his eyes from Gollum’s misery. Gollum put him at a loss. There was no doubt in his mind that Gollum was a villain, a murderer, and deserved more punishment than Aragorn would inflict. He had little compunction about killing Aragorn in his sleep, yet he quailed before Aragorn’s rage and had no hope of overcoming his sword. The manipulative little wretch curled up and cried. The more punishment he received, the harder he would weep, accepting the blows until nightfall when stealthily he took his revenge. But there were other ways to coerce cooperation.

Aragorn dug his knee into Gollum’s back, restraining him though he writhed, shrieking curses in both the Common Tongue and the coarse language of Orcs, and tried again to bite. Tightly he bound Gollum’s hands and then gagged him with a shredded piece of his old cloak, the one he had used to bandage wounds in the Morgul Vale. Once he had Gollum bound so he could do little more than walk and climb, Aragorn roughly shoved him against the rock shelf, pinning him there. Brimming with malice, Gollum glowered at him, murderous snarls bubbling up from his shriveled throat.

“Yes or no,” Aragorn said, “Did you take the Stairs of Cirith Ungol out of Mordor?”

Gollum muttered muffled insults and flailed his legs.

“Answer me,” Aragorn growled. “The Stairs of Cirith Ungol. Was that your path?”

Gollum made no attempt to answer him and did nothing more than cry into the gag and thrash like a snake caught under an eagle’s talon. Thoroughly perturbed, Aragorn let him go and wearily turned towards the path he must tread through the maze of cliffs, fins, and tors. A few hours of daylight remained. He hoisted his pack and jerked tiredly upon the rope.

Henceforth the next few days’ travel was sluggish, scrambling across treacherous climbs through drop-offs and crevasses, exploring the slopes of the Emyn Muil for passable routes. When the flat gray clouds overhead fissured and slivers of sunlight dappled the pale gray and rust-colored bands of the fins and cliffs, Gollum screamed and cried, earsplitting wails resounding through the cliffs. Aragorn did not know what fell things inhabited the desolate cliffs and what eyes and ears watched them. He pointed the Westernesse sword at Gollum. “For the love of the Valar, stop wailing like a rabbit in hawk’s talon,” he said.

Gollum whimpered, “Don’t hurt us, don’t hurt us.”

“Alas, I would not only hurt you but kill you if it were my choice,” said Aragorn, gesturing up the slope with the sword. Head down, Gollum scurried past and scuttled up the shorn rock face ahead of Aragorn. They made far better time, though Aragorn’s wounds and the labyrinthine contours of the land often leading him astray for several miles hindered their passage. Always he worked westward, though he often diverted from his course when sheer cliffs obstructed him and he had to work back west again, a zig-zag line through the barren and stony slopes. At his back he kept the black Ephel Dúath and the reddened sky of Mordor. Frequently he made use of the rope – the part not haltering Gollum – to negotiate treacherous precipices, and felt greatly in debt to the Ithilien Rangers for the gift.

Come twilight, a sudden storm sprang forth from the gray sky. Clouds burst overhead, lightning danced across the pinnacles and across the murky black lowlands stretching towards the mountains, thunder roared like a great army, rain poured down in sheets. Rivulets of water flowed down cliff faces and the rock became slick. Small streams rushed through gullies and eddied around the feet of Aragorn and Gollum. Driving Gollum ahead of him with the threat of his ever-drawn sword, Aragorn sloshed through the streams and puddles and clambered cautiously up the slippery rocks. In spite of the hard going, the lashing gale and the thunder roaring like the rage of the Valar against Ar-Pharazôn sent a surge of excitement through him. “What a glorious storm this is!” he said aloud, turning his face to the howling wind. “In such gales Númenor could have been swallowed by the sea!” Bolts of lightning ripped open the sky, setting ablaze the deep clefts and ridges of the Emyn Muil in white light, so brilliant that it lit even the distant crags of the high Ephel Dúath and Ered Lithui.

Waiting out the storm underneath an overhang seemed a wise choice, had Aragorn more time. Crows, hawks, and other beasts whose eyes not even a Ranger could slip past spied for Sauron, and Aragorn thought it inevitable that the Enemy would learn of Gollum’s recapture. As Sauron indisputably had some pernicious design in releasing Gollum, he would be incensed to hear of his plans foiled. The last thing Aragorn desired were Orcs, or Ilúvatar forbid something worse like a Nazgûl, on his heels for the long days of travel to come. His best defenses against the eyes and ears of Sauron were speed and stealth. He had not a moment tarry. So long as he had the strength in him to press forward, forward he must go.

A steep and rocky incline rose before him, a daunting cliff-face. There was no time to rest, but the chances of being struck by lightning upon the exposed ridge were quite good. The chances of Sauron’s spies being out in this weather were considerably lower. “Alas for this storm,” Aragorn said to himself. No more did the storm thrill him now that it hindered his flight. “But climbing that rock now is a good way to get killed.” He leapt out of the small stream roiling around his ankles in the wash he had been following and took cover in a cleft in the cliff wall, a seat gouged into the limestone face protected from the lashing gale. While waiting, he counted the seconds between the lightning flashes and the roar of thunder. Often he barely reached the number one before the thunder rattled the Emyn Muil. Unless this was some storm brewed up by the wrath of Morgoth himself, the heart of the storm ought to move off in an hour or less.

The moment Aragorn counted fifteen seconds – three miles – between the lightning and thunder, he abandoned his shelter and paced along the foot of the cliff, searching for a gully or wash or rockfall, a trail up its torn flanks. None appeared. He squinted through the dark rain towards its summit as a dazzling flash of lightning set it alight and showed no easy path. There he descried deep cracks rent into the limestone, broken with sharp ledges and folds.

He resumed pacing alongside the unyielding and barren rock face. On its northern and southern edges, the cant increased to a sheer escarpment, high and insurmountable. He exhaled a dismayed breath. The wall above the cleft wherein he had waited out the lightning was the only path up the cliff for leagues. Pointing the sword towards the high summit, Aragorn compelled Gollum to climb the stony face ahead of him, and then sheathed the weapon and began his slow and toilsome crawl.

Gollum scrambled over the rocks as far ahead of Aragorn as the rope round his neck permitted, ascending effortlessly despite the wet rock and the ropes about his wrists. Behind him Aragorn labored up the cliff, aggrieving his wounded shoulder as he clung to the broken stone and hauled his body up the wall. In better circumstances he could keep apace with Gollum, but the rocks were slippery, the pain scalding, the sheets of rain obfuscating his sight. For a little while he rested on a ledge, his limbs quivering and his chest heaving. He gazed upon the spectacular vista; the sullen red sky above the dusky Ephel Dúath; the plain, formless and murky, at the foot of the mountains; the gnarled mass of serrated pinnacles, ridges, and deep clefts and gullies of the Emyn Muil. Wild lightning in the distance continuously set the sky aflame with lances of white fire thrusting from the tumultuous dark clouds.

Steeling himself against pain, Aragorn continued upwards. Fingers slipped and the toes of his boots shakily held the rock. One step at a time, he dragged himself along, up and up, pressing his body into the slickened limestone, and at every step questioning the wisdom of his decision. Would it not have been better to wait out the storm underneath an overhang or boulder? The adversity of this climb seemed hardly worth the few hours he had gained. Had the desire to flee the confines of Mordor addled his common sense? Aragorn raised his eyes, squinting ahead through the rain, and there saw Gollum’s dim shape perched above him on a lip overhanging the cliff face. The summit of the escarpment at last. He scaled the last few feet of broken rubble and then lay flat on his stomach on the ledge beside Gollum for a while, in more pain than he thought he could bear. “It would have been wiser to have ascended this on the morrow,” he said to Gollum, who crouched on the ledge well away from Aragorn.

In the very rock itself, he felt the thunderous roar of an immense cataract, a deep thrum pulsing through the stone and earth. Not even the blackened night, the wild storm, the sheets of rain in his eyes concealed the solid plumes of spray rising from the Falls of Rauros. To the west, the escarpment fell away in a sheer precipice, a deep gorge in which a silver and gray cloud churned and roiled as the Anduin plummeted down the falls in roaring tongues of rushing white water. One stage of his journey was over. From here, his path took him northwards until he could ford the Great River somewhere between Sarn Gebir and the South Undeep, a dangerous road for Orcs watched the eastern banks of Anduin, but he had no boat, and no Man nor Elf could swim Anduin’s swift currents south of Sarn Gebir or the wide lake of Nen-Hithoel.

Aragorn drew himself up to his hands and knees and crawled to the lee side of a boulder, clutching his throbbing arm to his chest. So long as the storm raged, no Orcs would come and in the lashing wind, the roaring thunder, and driving rain, he would be safe to rest for the night and replenish his strength for tomorrow’s race to Sarn Gebir.