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Chapter Three: Pursuit

“They were lying on the mantel in Lady Arwen’s room, your highness. I didn’t know what else to do with them.” Thus spoke the maid in charge of doing the beds in the palace each morning. She handed the papers over to her mistress, holding them out in front of her, as if they might explode at any moment. A slow-witted, illiterate girl, she did think Lady Edith seemed just a trifle upset as she took them.

The wife of the heir of Rohan, Lady Edith was a fair-haired, dark-eyed woman, with a strong look of her father, Lord Faramir of Ithilien. Like her father, too, she was normally able to keep her own counsel and maintain her composure under stress. The open note she held in her hands, and the letter which she had yet to read, disturbed her, and her lips compressed tightly. Her face paled slightly, although her voice was perfectly calm. “You did rightly to bring them to me, Hilda. I’ll take care of them. You may go back to your duties.”

The door of the office where Lady Edith was to be found before breakfast every morning no sooner shut behind the retreating girl than Edith, with fingers that shook slightly, broke open the seal on the letter. Both the superscription and the letter itself were the work of her youngest son: she recognized at a glance the precise, even writing which was a source of pride to Horst. She also noted that the letter’s seal was intact: from which, she deduced that Horst had told his sister what was in the letter, and Arwen had therefore not needed to open it. (Had she not known the contents of the letter, Lady Edith thought Arwen would have had no hesitation or scruple in opening it, and trying to disguise the fact. Her mother was right.)

When she had mastered the letter’s contents, Lady Edith reflected that it was as well she had been sitting down when she read it. Did Horst really expect her to believe that fabrication? Obviously, he did; or he wouldn’t have bothered creating it. She was torn between intense amusement at her son’s apparent assumption that his parents were credulous fools who would swallow his nonsense whole, and acute anxiety as to his real purpose. Like her daughter, she didn’t believe a word of it.

She leaned back in her chair, a bit flabbergasted at this most unusual interruption of her daily routine. Upon giving the matter further thought, she was not inclined to take the letter too seriously. Horst’s little outing was a relatively minor concern. His mother, with years of experience behind her dealing with young men (among them, her elder son) had little doubt that Horst was up to something disreputable, dangerous, and only to be expected of a restive young man bored with daily life in the palace.

The indications of Horst’s boredom had been growing more pronounced of late, and had not escaped the sharp eyes of his mother, at least. To say truth, she had been half-expecting an outbreak of mischief from Horst for awhile now. He had probably gotten himself into some sort of difficulty; but Lady Edith had little doubt that he would be able to cope with whatever it was, without betraying either his breeding or his ethics. She would have to have a little talk with Horst, the next time she saw him, on the unwisdom of imposing on his parents, even in a letter. Beyond that, there was nothing she felt called upon to do about it. Lady Edith could, and did, relegate Horst’s excursion to the back of her mind.

Arwen’s note was another matter entirely, and it formed the basis of the real worry that possessed Edith’s mind. Horst was a well-trained young man, and accustomed to traveling alone. Arwen was not. For a young woman royally bred, sheltered and protected from the day of her birth, to be on her own without escort or company, even within her own realm, made her mother feel quite faint.

“ ‘Don’t fuss‘, indeed! Just what does she think she‘s doing?” Edith wondered aloud. “Her father is going to have a fit!”

Which thought reminded her that she had better tell him at once what his youngest offspring were doing, before he found out they were both missing and set the palace, and the King, into a state of total anarchy! To that end, she closed the accounts of the household’s monthly expenditures -- it was past time for breakfast, anyway -- and immediately sought out her spouse.

She found him, after an abortive search of their bedchamber and his dressing room, in the family’s private dining room, together with King Eomer and Queen Lothiriel. The ensuing chaos, when Elfwine heard what she had to say, was even more tumultuous than Edith had expected.

“Arwen did what!?!”

“You heard me, Dear: she went after Horst.”

“Is she totally out of her senses? Why would she do something so... so... so dam’ silly as to go haring after Horst?”

The king’s question was more reasoned, and to the point. “How long has she been gone, Edith?”

Lady Edith turned, with some relief, from her irate spouse to her father-in-law. “I’m not sure, your Majesty. I think she must have left sometime yesterday.”

“She couldn’t have left much before the early afternoon,” said Queen Lothiriel. “I saw her at the mid-day meal yesterday, conversing with some of my ladies. Perhaps one of the stable servants would know when she left. After all, she must be riding. I don‘t imagine she would have set out to follow Horst on foot.” Her voice was calm and even; only the sudden blanching of her cheeks betrayed her dismay.

“Then she can’t have gone too far. She’s a good horsewoman, but she’s not accustomed to hard, fast riding, or long hours in the saddle. She will have had to stop for the night, if only to rest her horse.” Eomer rose from his place at the head of the table and strode to the closed door. Opening it, he sent the guard outside in search of his captain. Returning to the table, he said, “I don’t think it will take Elfwine and I more than a day or so to find her.”

“You can’t, either of you, go after her,” objected the Queen. “The embassy from Gondor arrived last night, and you have the conference with them about the Dunlanders’ repeated crossings of our borders to the north this afternoon. Not only that,” she continued in her most soothing voice, “We simply can’t let news of Arwen’s little adventure become public knowledge. If the Dunlanders learn she’s alone and on the loose anywhere near their borders, they might try to capture her, and that would seriously undermine King Ellessar‘s position, as well as ours.”

“Your mother is right, Elfwine,” reluctantly agreed Lady Edith. “If both you and the King suddenly leave, word is bound to get out that both Horst and Arwen are missing, and that could put them in unknowing danger. I‘ll have my hands full as it is, just to keep the servants from chattering about the business. Thank goodness, the embassy is here for the conference! The servants will be much too busy to pay close attention to the absence of Horst and Arwen, at least for awhile.”

“Well, what would you suggest? We can’t not do something! Of all the foolish starts in Middle Earth, this has to rank at the top of the list! How I came to have two such hare-brained children...”

He was interrupted by a knock on the door, and the entrance of the captain of the guard. “You sent for me, your Majesty?”

“Come in, Captain,” Eomer said. “And close the door.” He gathered the gaze of his family with a swift look around the table. Receiving their unspoken assent, he said, “I have a commission for you.”

When Captain Hammason left the dining room, he carefully schooled his expression to his usual imperturbable mask, so as to give nothing away to the two guards standing outside the door. An easy-going officer, he knew his men would be avid with curiosity about Eomer King’s unusual summoning of him this early in the day. No more than the royal family did he want any word of this to be the subject of garrison or household speculation. His commission was going to be difficult enough, as it was!

“Is anything wrong, Captain?”

“No, Karl. Just some last-minute security instructions for the embassy from Gondor. You know how it goes whenever we have high-ranking emissaries from King Ellessar.”

The guards smiled at that: King Eomer was noted for his insistence on safety precautions for highly ranked visitors. Captain Hammason smiled back at them, and chatted with them for a few minutes before heading to the guardroom. Reaching it took a little time. His routine called for him to check his guards on duty each morning, and he was careful to keep up the appearance of normality.

Once inside his office, and with the door closed, he let down his guard over his expression, and began to make rapid plans. His first thought was to search the quarters of both Lord Horst and Lady Arwen, and then to talk to the stable lads. This course of action could be explained as part of the security checks ordered by the King, and should excite no unusual comment. His leaving the city before the morning was much older would, however. An honest, straight-forward man, it went against his grain to lie, but he thought ruefully that he had no choice. The truth would only cause the gossip he was anxious to avoid.

Briefly, he thought about enlisting the help of a couple of his men, but discarded the idea in favor of going alone. After all, he had no reason to believe Lady Arwen was in any real danger, so the presence of guardsmen should not be necessary. The fewer people who knew about this, the better, he thought.

Nearly two hours later, when he had mounted his horse and was leaving the stable (after telling so many fibs he thought he might never have an easy conscience again!), he received his first check. Where did he start? In which direction did the bewitchingly pretty young princess go? There was nothing definite to tell him, the search of her room having yielded no clue except the obvious one of the absence of the clothing she had worn.

The letter Lady Edith had shown him said Lord Horst was heading for the Shire, and Lady Arwen had said in her note that she was following her brother. So, after a few minutes cogitation, Captain Erik Hammason set out on the King’s road heading north, toward Isengard, where he could connect with the Great North Road that went through Breeland. He devoutly hoped he would find the young lady long before he reached Isengard, and could have her on the way back to Edoras without the necessity of chasing after her all the way to the Shire! His mind boggled at the thought of trying to take her home from there, should she decide she didn’t want to leave. He envisioned a host of possible scenarios in that eventuality, none of which appealed to him. That, however, was the future’s concern. For now, he simply wanted to find her, and be sure she was alive and well, and in no danger.

The thought of Lady Arwen in danger caused his heart to beat a little faster and his jaws to tighten. If anyone had harmed her in any way, Captain Hammason thought he would find great pleasure in calling that person to account, and in administering a suitable reproof. Unconsciously, he reached his gauntleted hand for his sword, digging his spurs into the sides of his mount, and the animal answered with a speeding gait that drummed away the miles of the road beneath them.


* * * * * * * * *


Someone was making a lot of noise, moaning and crying. Arwen wished whoever was doing so would stop, because her head ached quite badly, her stomach hurt, and she wanted nothing so much as to go back to sleep. But the intrusive voice refused to stop its wailing, and she finally summoned up enough strength to rouse and tell that person either to be still, or to go away. It was then that she knew the voice was her own. She opened her eyes, and the light from the fire burning nearby was intense, converting a bad headache into a really stupendous source of pain. She groaned, loudly.

“Back with me, are you?” inquired a male voice. “Here, don’t try to get up. I hit you pretty hard, and you’ll need some time to recover.”

Arwen turned her head toward the voice, and immediately wished she hadn’t: the movement caused a wave of pain that prompted her stomach to roil alarmingly. She drew a couple of shuddering, deep breaths, and looked at the speaker. “Who are you?” she asked, somewhat thickly. “And why did you hit me in the first place?”

“We can go into that later,” the man replied. “For now, drink this, and try not to move around too much.” He lifted her head with one hand and held a cup to her mouth with the other. She obediently drank its contents. “I’ve been making some stew,” he continued, lowering her head carefully, “and I’ll feed you some in a while. Right now, you’d probably just throw it up.”

Whatever he had given her tasted bitter and worked well: her stomach ceased its roiling, and her eyes closed in spite of her effort to keep them opened. She was warm, and apparently safe, at least for the time being. She relaxed, and drowsed off.

When next she woke, the pain in her head had diminished to a small, dull ache, and her hunger had reached a truly gargantuan size. She saw a fire burning within a ring of stones, and felt the cold chill of the late night air on her face. She was lying on the ground, wrapped in what seemed to be a heavy woolen traveling cloak, with something that felt thick and fairly soft under her. She heard Tinuviel’s whicker, and the soft sounds of moving horses. Cautiously lifting herself to a sitting position, she felt a momentary giddiness, and her stomach growled, loudly. A hooded figure, its face shadowed in the dim light from the fire and only the lower part of its jaw visible at all, sat across from her, placidly smoking a pipe. It spoke.

“I see you’re awake. There’s some stew in the pan by the fire. Help yourself.”

“Thank you,” replied Arwen. “I believe I will.” She found a spoon lying on the rock next to the pan, picked up both, and settled to eat. She wasn’t sure if either was clean, and she didn’t particularly care, at this point. The food tasted wonderful, and brought a comforting sense of warmth and fullness into her stomach.

“Don’t eat too fast, and don’t eat too much all at once,” her companion advised. “If you do, you might get sick.” He continued to smoke, while Arwen concentrated on the stew.

When she had consumed enough to feel full, she put down the pan and the spoon, and sighed deeply. “Thank you again for the food. I was famished,” she said politely. “Now can you tell me who you are? And why you slugged me?”

“Ladies first,” he replied, with equal politeness and a half-bow. “Who are you? And why were you trying to sneak up on me?”

“My name is Arwen,” she replied, “And I wasn’t trying to sneak up on you! I was trying to find my way to an inn where I could spend the night, and I think I got lost.”

“Considering that the nearest inn is in the village of Isen, some fifteen miles from here on the King’s road, I’d say you were most definitely lost.” His voice sounded as if he were smothering some amusement at her, and it nettled Arwen a bit. “Tell me how one of the ladies of the court at Edoras came to be lost on the Westfold plain, all alone, in the middle of the night,” he invited.

She looked up, startled. “What makes you think I’m a lady of the court?”

He took his pipe out of his mouth. “The trappings of your horse are too rich to come from a farm or one of the holdings,” he answered. “And both your dress and your cloak are too richly made to belong to any ordinary woman. Not to mention, your hands have never done real work: they’re far too white and smooth. And,” he continued, reaching to the ground beside him and picking up a leather purse, “An ordinary young woman from a farm, or even a town, doesn’t carry a purse full of gold on her person. Especially, she doesn‘t carry a purse full of gold that has a white horse on a green background stamped on it.”

He tossed the leather bag across the fire, where it landed at Arwen’s feet. She cast her eyes down at it, and chewed her underlip. Apparently, failing to bring a weapon and food weren’t the only mistakes she had made. She could have cried with frustration: so much for traveling incognito! Was everyone she met going to display this same ability to see through her? She could see that, in the future, she would have to take much more care about details she had never thought mattered! The next time, she’d have to find a way to exchange clothes with one of the palace servants; unless she could manage to buy and conceal suitable clothing of her own...

What should she tell him? The truth wouldn’t serve. Who would believe a daughter of the royal house of Rohan would want to escape from the palace? No one in his right mind would believe it! She had made a mess of the whole business! Tears sprang to her eyes and trembled on her lashes. Over and above her sense of humiliating defeat, she was in turmoil. ‘Who is this man?,’ she thought miserably. ’And what will he do with me if he learns who I really am?’

Both the visible part of his face and his voice hardened. “Well? Do you think you can tell me the truth? Or are you going to sit there all night trying to come up with a convincing lie that I most probably won’t believe?”


* * * * * * * * * *


Strider was out in the forest, all alone. There was the sound of birdsong, and the scent of rich flowering plants, and he had nowhere he had to go and nothing he had to do. He saw a towering waterfall in the distance, and light was all around him in flashes of golden, shimmering splendor. The humming of bees came, and he saw a swarm of them flying past him to a tree with a hole in its trunk. He followed them to their honey-laden lair, reached inside, and ate the smooth, sweet stuff with relish, and, for a wonder, the bees didn’t even attempt to sting him. A doe and her fawn raced out of the trees nearby, passing almost within arm’s length of him. He saw mushrooms growing in the bracken near a fallen log, and smelled the scent of blackberries. Truly, life in the wild was vastly preferable to life in a town or city! His snores grew louder, and he sank deeper into sleep.

Horst sat astride a magnificent horse, easily the match of the legendary Shadowfax of bygone days. No bit or bridle was upon his steed, who answered his thoughts as if the two of them were a single being. They rode in the midst of a myriad of other horses, and they felt the wind blowing across an endless plain under a rising sun. The vast plain stretched under the growing light, details of grasses and small animals springing to life as he watched. Odors of grasses growing came and the drone of insects among them. He could hear, with preternatural clarity, the ripping sounds of grazing horses; and then his horse moved under him, and the joy of untrammeled existence flooded through him like a warm tide. He laughed with sheer joy, and marveled at finding himself in a race with the winds upon the bare back of this king of horses. Like Strider, his snores grew louder...

“When do you suppose they’ll awaken?” asked a short, bearded fellow. The lock on the barred door clicked as he turned the key. He had a bandy-legged body with heavily muscled shoulders and arms, and bore the unmistakable look of a mountain-dwarf.

His companion, a slender, dark-haired elf with eyes of a pure violet shade, laughed lightly. “That’s hard to say,” she replied. “The spell takes people differently. Those who have ill intentions tend to have nightmares, and usually wake within a short time. Those who are not bent on causing trouble have more enjoyable dreams, and sleep for a longer time.” She double-checked the lock on the door, and the two walked down a short hall and through another, more solid door, which they also locked behind them.

“Should I search their packs, do you think?” asked the bearded one as they emerged into a room with stone walls that would not have been out of place in a castle dungeon. Both backpacks leaned against the wall on one side of a long wooden bench. An iron brazier and a small pile of stacked wood were the only other furnishings in the room.

“No. We’ll do that together when I return. I’m not sure who they are, but there’s something familiar about the man. He looks like someone I know, or have met sometime, somewhere. I can’t at the moment remember who,” she said thoughtfully, “but I’d rather not take any chances. We wouldn’t want there to be any doubt about the safety of their possessions, just in case either of them turns out to be someone of importance.” She smiled down at her companion. Her smile was moonshine on a placid lake in the mountains, and had made more than one dwarf her willing servant. Her companion returned the smile, but his mustaches and beard all but concealed the fact.

“I have to report their capture to the prince, and then I’ll be back,” she continued. “If they wake before I return, you can order some food for them from the prince’s household. Those taken by the spell are usually ravenous when they do finally wake up, and we want them fit for questioning.”

“Will the prince release them, do you think?”

“It’s hard to say. If they are harmless, and willing to give their word to keep silent about this place, he might. If, however, there’s any possibility of word getting about, he won’t. After all, our first obligation is to the young ones.” She brushed her hair back, and picked a long, hooded cloak up from the bench. “I’ll return as soon as I can, and in the meantime, you can finish your lunch.”

The elf left with a nod to the bearded guard, who fastened the ring of keys to his belt, and sat down on the nearby bench. Upon the bench stood a large flagon and a full plate. He picked up the piece of bread and the roasted leg of a fowl he had been eating when the prisoners were brought, and resumed his mid-day meal.

Chapter Two: Seeking the Prize

Chapter Three: Pursuit

Chapter Four: The Pursuers Pursued
Chapter Five: Goals and Destinations