"Here," said Idhron. The tall Ranger crouched down, leaning on his spear, and gently brushed his fingers along the soil. "Large wolf or dog. One, maybe two days past."
His two companions strode up. The older of the two, Daerod, pushed the hood back from his grizzled face to get a better look. The light was dying, pale sun sinking beneath treeless hills, and finding clear sign was hard. But they were Rangers, proud Dunedain of fallen Arnor, peerless hunters of the northern wilds.
The third, young Randirion, lingered back, his green cloak wrapped tight around him to stave off the chill. "How large?" he asked, a note of skepticism in his voice.
"Large enough," grunted Daerod.
"On a scale from one to Carcharoth, how big is it?"
Idhron laughed and began walking. Daerod seemed offended. "See for yourself, little ohtar," he said, and followed Idhron down the hillside, looking for more tracks, leaving Randirion behind.
The young Ranger made a sound of exasperation. He wished he wasn't saddled with these two, especially his stern new master. He missed Master Faelon's gentle guidance, his patient instruction. But his mentor had slept in his quiet grave all this long year.
Grudgingly he approached the tracks and crouched down. The pawprints were certainly large, larger than Randirion's spread fingers, though certainly not so large as the fabled werewolves of bygone ages. A warg, perhaps.
He stood up. Daerod and Idhron were already far ahead, their garb of green and rusty brown blending into the dead yellow-green grass and purple heather and stunted, windtorn bushes. The low hills rolled and staggered across the horizon in every direction like ocean waves. This was the ragged edge of the North Downs. Randirion did not like these open, windswept hills; he felt exposed out here.
With a sigh, he hitched his blanket roll and quiver higher on his back, and hurried after his companions.
A little over a year before, rumor had spread of great white wolves, far too close to the Shire for comfort. Rangers had hunted for them, but had not found so much as a track. Now the rumor had woken again, this time with a witness—Daerod claimed to have seen one with his own eyes. ("More likely a fox, seen in uncertain light," Randirion had complained, but none had listened.)
And thus Lord Argonui had sent the tracker Idhron to accompany Daerod through the North Downs, to find if the wolves had truly come this far south. Randirion, whose apprenticeship was judged to be not yet complete, was sent along as Idhron's ohtar. A long week's journeying had taken them to Bree; another week took them up the overgrown Greenway to Deadman's Dike, the grass-covered ruins where no man or hobbit now dwelt. They had spent the better part of a third week ranging up through the hillland, examining every empty hollow, searching every barren valley, peering from every lonely ridgeline, hunting these elusive white wolves.
Randirion stepped quicker. The sky in the west was still pale, but the east had deepened to purple. The hills had nearly faded to black silhouettes against the sky. He could no longer see either of his kin: he peered ahead, but the shadows were thickening like an overcooked stew.
A rustle, a whisper, a flicker of movement to his left. Randirion froze in mid-step, his hand automatically straying to the hilt of his sword. Was there something hidden in the grass beside him? Or had it only been a gust of wind ruffling the heather? "Master Idhron?" he said softly. There was no reply. He wondered if this was a test, if this was how his new master trained his apprentices. "Master Idhron?" he ventured, a little louder.
A low bird call came from somewhere ahead: his master's signal, nowhere near the patch of grass he was staring at. He looked and saw movement ahead in the twilight. When he approached, he found them standing in a sheltered hollow near the base of the hill, Idhron leaning on his long boar-spear, while Daerod shook out his blankets. "We're making camp, boy," said Idhron. "What kept you?"
Randirion did not know how he should answer, and so did not answer at all. Instead he asked, "Will we have a fire tonight?"
Daerod laughed sharply, and Idhron simply said, "No."
"But if we're having trouble finding these wolves, perhaps a fire will lure them to us?"
"Wonderful," said Daerod, sneering. "We can smear you with gravy and leave you out as bait."
"Enough," said Idhron.
They ate their dinner cold. It was scanty fare. Had there been a fire, they would have made dough from the last of their flour, and baked cakes in the ashes: without a fire, all they could do was mix flour with water to make a sort of porridge. The dried meat had long since run out.
"Tomorrow," said Daerod, "we should shoot a rabbit or two."
"There are none," said Idhron. "Haven't you noticed? All during the walk today, I didn't see a single rabbit, nor a gopher, nor a hawk. Not so much as a field mouse or sparrow. This land is quiet."
Daerod and Randirion both stared at him in the growing darkness. Now that Randirion thought about it, he was right—the whole day's march had been through lifeless lands. "What does it mean?" Randirion asked.
"I don’t know," said his master. And then, "I'll take the first watch tonight. Ohtar, you take second. Daerod, you take third."
###
Randirion was tired, bone-tired, yet he could not sleep. His legs ached from the day's labor, even now after years of such travel. The earth against his back was cold, despite the bundled grass he had piled beneath his blankets. The wind had picked up, and each downdraft tore through the warm wool of his cloak and sent shivers crawling up his flesh.
His eyelids had finally begun to grow heavy when he felt a firm hand on his shoulder, and saw Idhron stooping over him. Then he stood and took his turn at watch while the tracker slept. He fished his shortbow from his quiver, strung it, fitted arrow to string, and set himself to wait.
The downs were a black horizon beneath an upturned bowl of infinite stars. Randirion, shivering in the wind, tried to keep his mind off the cold by counting them. Glowing red in the west like a banked ember he found Borgil, and the Netted Stars, hanging over where the Evendim hills were too distant to be seen. And northward, the Sickle of the Valar swung brightly over the frozen wastes. The stars of Anarrima shone over the east, where Randirion knew lay the ruins of Carn Dum and the dark land of Angmar. But it was to the south that he turned most often, where shone the glittering swordsman, Menelvagor, with his belt of three stars, standing tall above Bree and the Shire. A hundred miles that way lay warm fires, and warm beds, and ale and meat and comfort. It was with a sigh that Randirion turned away from the south to face the cold winds again.
So passed his watch, with no-one but the stars and the wind for company, until it was time to wake Daerod to take his place.
"Anything?"
"Nothing," said Randirion, as he crawled beneath his now-cold blankets. He slept, then, and dreamed strange dreams of long-ago battles.
He awoke hours later with something cold and wet in his face. It had begun to snow. Clouds had gathered over the sky, blotting out the stars, and dimming even the approach of dawn: there was just enough light to make out the shape of the land, grey and faint. A few feet away lay the bundle of blankets that was Idhron, eyes blinking out of the hood at one end—the snow must have woken him as well. Between them lay Daerod's blankets, empty.
"Daerod?" called Idhron suddenly, sitting up. "Daerod?"
The old Ranger was nowhere in sight.
Randirion started to scramble to his feet, but his master said, "Wait! Don't move until I've seen the ground." Idhron carefully climbed out of his blankets and began to examine the grass to either side. He stepped carefully, cast about, stepped again. The snow had just begun to gather, spoiling all but the freshest sign, but he could still see where the grass had been matted down by passage.
"Was he attacked?" Randirion hissed.
"No," said Idhron. "At least, not here. There are no signs of struggle. And no sound, or we would have heard." His eyes narrowed as he peered around him, and he pointed. "Someone or something was dragged this way, about three or four hours ago. But I can no pawprints. Whatever it was, it was no wolf. Up, boy, and gather your things."
They tracked cautiously now, weapons in hand. Idhron went ahead, bent low to the ground, searching for whatever indications of passage he could find. Randirion followed behind, head up, eyes scanning the horizon. The snow tapered off, and did not gather thicker than the dusting they had already received. The wind, however, kicked the snow up from where it had fallen, flinging it in the Rangers' eyes, scattering it across the trail.
The Rangers crawled their way up slope and down hill, using their free hands as much as their feet, nearly slipping in the loose snow. Randirion gritted his teeth and leaned into the wind as he walked. All his wistful thoughts of civilization's warmth and comfort were gone. Daerod had somehow been taken, from right beside him in the night. That frightened and angered him—frightened, because he had heard and sensed nothing; angered, because he himself had been left unscathed. The old man was no friend of his, but Randirion now snarled into the wind with determination to bring him back.
Hours passed. Then, in the bottom of a long valley, Idhron stopped, his head scanning from side to side. He signaled Randirion to stay where he was, and he began to cast about in an outward spiral, searching for fresh sign. His circles grew wider, and wider still, until he had covered an acre of ground. At the last his shoulders slumped and he stood upright. "The enemies of the tracker are the elements and time," he said, "and too much of both have passed over this trail." He stared helplessly at the grasses waving all around them, peeking up through little snowdrifts.
"There is a stream over there," said Randirion, pointing down the valley. "Perhaps the soft mud caught his tracks?"
Idhron nodded.
At the stream, the tracker suddenly said, "Ah!" The trail was there—a clear dragging mark, with no footprints to be discerned in it. It crossed the half-frozen stream, and went straight up toward the far side of the valley, toward a wide flat hilltop. At the hill's peak, in the direction of the track, a mound of grassy earth rose, a hill in miniature. Two great standing stones stood to one side of it, like a roofless gate.
"Oh no," said Idhron.
"It looks familiar somehow…" Randirion faltered.
"Of course it does! Have you never walked the Downs between Bree and Buckland?"
"A… barrow? Here?"
Idhron shrugged. "It seems like one. Come, let us see."
They crested the hilltop. They could see into the long valley the had just ascended from, and across it. The downs, now powdered white, rolled away in every direction to the bleak sky. Before them, the low mound hunched behind its stone pillars.
"It is a barrow," said Randirion, frowning. "But the Barrow-Downs are a hundred miles from here."
Idhron looked thoughtful. "The barrows were the burial mounds of our ancestors," he said slowly. "And our ancestors lived here, near where Forochel once was, as much as they lived near Bree. Perhaps not all of them were buried in the South."
"But I've never heard of a barrow this far north."
"Nor I. Our patrols rarely press this far." The two Rangers stared at the low mound, and glanced at each other. Neither of them said it aloud, but both were wondering if this tomb were cursed in the same manner as the barrows they knew. It was Idhron who moved first, pressing forward through the snow-crusted grasses. "The tracks here are strange," he said, puzzling. "I don't know how to read them."
Randirion kept looking over his shoulder. He felt as though something were creeping up behind him, but whenever he turned, nothing was there but the wind, and the snow, and the hills stretching away. He looked back at the barrow, and frowned. On its eastern side there seemed to be a dark doorway, with lintel and jamb of stone, leading into the mound. "Is that an entrance?"
Idhron, who was closer, looked up. "Yes. Well, no. It's just an alcove. Doesn't go back very far, after that it's filled in."
"Oh."
The wind gusted, and he shivered; he glanced over his shoulder once more. Then he heard Idhron cry out, with something in the tracker's voice Randirion had never heard there before—a note of panic. "Come here! Quickly!"
Idhron had thrown himself to his knees and was digging, clawing, at the foot of the doorway. Randirion came running over. For a long moment he didn't understand, but then he saw: a triangle of green cloth, jutting out through the earth and stones at the back of the alcove. The corner of a Ranger's cloak. Idhron clawed away another handful of packed soil and pebbles, revealing another inch of wool. "Help me dig!"
"Manwe's beard!" Randirion swore, and tossed his bow aside. He dug in with his hands and started to pull at the alcove's back wall, but the soil was dry and packed with years: he only succeeding in scraping off some of the surface. Idhron wasn't faring much better.
"Did someone bury him here? Or was it a cave-in?"
Idhron didn't answer. He had taken out his hatchet and was using the corner of the edge to dig between two large stones.
A thought burst through Randirion's mind. He unslung both quiver and bedroll from his back. A moment's unrolling and he pulled out a small sharp-edged trowel, which he had carried to dig latrines. Daerod had laughed at him for carrying it, calling it needless weight, and calling him a comfort-loving hobbit. But now he plunged it into the packed earth just above the buried cloak and pulled away a large clump.
"Good man," murmured Idhron, backing away. His fingers were scraped and bleeding. "Good man."
Randirion dug again, and again, then stooped to pull out one of the larger stones. Both men cried aloud as he turned it over. Its underside was dark with clotted blood.
"It's not just his cloak, then." Idhron let out a long sigh and sat back. "I was clinging to hope."
"Could he still be alive?"
Idhron did not answer. He reached for his boar-spear and used it to pull himself to his feet. "Keep digging," he said. "I will keep watch." He stepped away and turned his back.
Randirion dug for over an hour, shoveling away clods of earth and fist-sized rocks to make a pile behind him. His arms ached, and his knees were caked with soil: this was work better suited to a long spade, not a little latrine shovel. By the time Idhron took over, he had only cleared away little more than a foot of the cloak. Idhron dug for a time, but then the ceiling of their growing tunnel began to break off, and the soil crumbled down the walls to fill the hole they'd dug.
"The sky is growing dim," Randirion said. "We should find shelter. I would not wish to linger here after dark."
Idhron looked as though he might argue, but his eyes flicked to the barrow, and he conceded the wisdom of this plan.
Down the hill they strode, back into the long valley. At its foot, a small stand of bushes and shrubs huddled along the banks of the stream. They used these as a windbreak, crouching down to leeward. Idhron looked them over critically. "They're twisted and short, but we might be able to use these branches for shoring tomorrow."
"Will we keep digging tomorrow?" Randirion asked tentatively.
Idhron's face was a closed book, a locked gate. "I want to see the body," he said shortly. "We will not leave until I know what happened to him, and whether we can avenge him."
Randirion sighed quietly.
Idhron turned his head to look at his apprentice. "There was something strange about the earth we were digging in. Nobody buried Daerod there. Nor was he trapped in a collapse of the tunnel. That earth was packed solid, not loose or gravelly. It hadn't been disturbed in years. Centuries."
"But—" Randirion spluttered. "But the cloak!"
"I know. I don't understand it either. But I know soil."
"Could… could it be a different cloak? Maybe it wasn't his?"
Idhron arched an eyebrow. "Would not the wool have rotted away? And what of the blood? Clotted: that means it wasn't fresh, but it was still wet. Use your mind, ohtar."
Randirion bit his lip, and looked as though he wanted to say more, but all he said was, "I'm going to build a fire tonight." He waited for objections, but heard none, and busied himself gathering dead branches from the bushes.
The fire was soon burning merrily, pushing back the gathering shadows. The clouded sky darkened from lead to slate, slate to coal, and before long their little ring of firelight was the only thing visible. Even the barrow, up on the hilltop, was hidden in the gloom. The two Rangers said nothing, only stared at the fire and listened to the wind whistle through the hills. There was no sound save that whistle, and the fire's crackle, and the creak of the bushes behind them. Then a voice said softly, "Here."
Idhron and Randirion leapt to their feet, drawing their swords. A tall figure stood at the bare edge of the firelight. Neither of them had heard it approach. It could barely been seen, nearly indistinguishable from the surrounding darkness, but they could just make out its grizzled beard and its dusty, dusty cloak.
"Daerod?" Randirion ventured.
"Daerod!"" Idhron cried. He sheathed his sword and started walking forward. "We have nearly given up on you, old man! What happened to you?"
"Much," said Daerod. His voice was quiet, and cold, and seemed to come from far away.
"Well come here, brother, come by the fire! Are you hurt? Is everything okay?"
Randirion sheathed his own sword and began to follow, smiling in relief, but at that moment the wind buffeted him, bringing with it a foul smell: like the smell of a festering wound or of an open latrine. He hesitated, stiffening. "Wait—"
Daerod lunged suddenly, hands extended.
Idhron was saved only by his own instincts or by Randirion's warning—he threw himself backwards, barely missed by clutching fingers extended like claws. He tried to draw his sword, but lost his footing in the snow and landed on his side; the thing that looked like Daerod was upon him in a heartbeat, its hands at his throat. Idhron lashed out with his belt knife, burying it to the hilt in Daerod's neck. The Daerod-thing only grinned.
It all happened so quickly that Randirion had no time to react. His bow was unstrung; he reached for his hatchet to throw, but it was on the other side of the campfire. Instead he grabbed a large branch from the fire and hurled it, overhand, at Daerod.
His aim was true. The Daerod-thing looked up at the last moment and swatted the branch to the ground in a cloud of sparks and steam—but immediately it hissed and leapt up, releasing Idhron's throat, backing away. Randirion came running up, sword overhead; Idhron sat up, coughing.
"What are you?" Randirion shouted.
The figure only grinned at him. There was a pale light in its eyes, though that may have only been reflected firelight.
Idhron, still coughing and clutching his throat with one hand, seized the fallen branch. It was smoldering more than burning, now, its end all cherry-red embers, but when he waved it in the air it sullenly trailed aflame. In its light they caught a brief glimpse of the thing's face—it was Daerod's face, though its skin was mottled blue-black, and its eyes stared wildly. The knife-handle still jutted from its throat.
"By all the stars of Elbereth!" choked Idhron.
"What are you?" Randirion shouted again.
The Daerod-thing reached up and slowly pulled the knife out. A drop of dark blood oozed from the gash, but no more. It casually tossed the knife aside, grinning, and melted back into the darkness.
"Back," said Idhron, his voice still hoarse. "Back to the fire. It doesn't like the fire." He scrambled to his feet and held the makeshift torch aloft. Its flame was dying again, and by the time they were again by the fireside, it had gone out entirely, a charred stick trailing a thin tendril of smoke.
The two Rangers built up the fire. As they did, a distant voice came drifting on the wind. It sounded like it was chanting, or singing. It was a deep voice, and harsh like gravel stirred in a pit. Randirion could not make out any of the words, except
…In the cold the stars shall die
Yet still entombed here let them lie…
He, who had heard orcs' horns and wargs' howls, wanted to stop his ears like a child. "What is it?" he muttered.
Idhron, massaging his throat, with his back against their little fire, grit his teeth. "It's a Barrow-Wight."
###
They spent a long, sleepless night. At first they tried to sleep in shifts, taking turns standing watch. But Idhron's eyes had barely closed when Randirion saw two figures, one on either side of the campfire, noiselessly creeping toward him. Idhron woke and together they chased away the wights: the tracker slashed one across the chest, and Randirion sent an arrow winging into the other's shoulder. But whenever one of the Rangers lay down again to sleep, the wights returned. "They're circling us," Randirion said, the second time they had chased them away. "Waiting for their moment."
"We dare not sleep this night," said Idhron. And so they sat, back-to-back, watching, and remained there until dawn greyed the eastern clouds. They were not disturbed again.
Idhron rose and searched the ground for tracks. He found none except their own. When they crept back up the hill to the barrow, and searched the doorway, they found that the cloak had disappeared: it no longer stuck out through the filled-in entrance. It was as though it had never been.
"Do they swim through the earth itself?" Randirion cried, throwing up his hands.
"I see now," Idhron said quietly. "The Barrow-wight killed Daerod while we slept, and dragged him here, pulling him through the soil and stone like a fish through water. And then, when he rose up last night…" The tracker's voice trailed off, and his hand tightened on sword-hilt. "This is an evil place. We should leave."
The two Rangers shouldered their bedrolls and began to walk southerly, back towards far-away Bree, the Shire, and Rivendell. They climbed many long, low hills of the Downs, and when they found that many of them were too steep to be climbed, they circled around. They stepped over little streams and forded larger ones. As midday approached, the lingering traces of snow melted all around them: overhead, the cloud cover thinned, so that they could see which of the clouds the sun hid behind. The wind was still as chill as ever, and nipped at Randirion's ears, and thrust its cold fingers down the neck of his tunic.
"Hullo," said Idhron, after several hours. "Fresh tracks." The ground ahead was muddy, and he knelt down to study it, but it was only a moment before he straightened in alarm. "These are ours," he said. "Our footprints. And made after the snowmelt. Made today, do you understand?" He looked up at the sky accusingly. "We've gone in a great circle. My head must be 'mazed from lack of sleep."
They began afresh. Randirion jammed a stick into the ground, and they tried to mark its shadow. The clouded sun, however, did not produce anything nearly distinct enough to mark. In the end they made their best guess as to which way was south, based on the mossy growth on nearby hillslopes, and set off, this time with Randirion in the lead. They travelled for what was surely several more hours. Then, as they climbed a particularly tall ridge, Randirion swore. The clouds were breaking up, and in the distance, with the sun westering red behind it, the barrow glowered on its bare hill-top.
"We are Rangers of the North!" Randirion cried. "Not dull Breelanders or fat hobbits to be lost in the Wild!"
"Some dark will is at work here," Idhron said. "It wearies our limbs and weakens our minds. I can feel it."
"Do we try again, now that we can see the sun? They cannot deceive our sight!"
"Yes, we try again." Idhron yawned, and passed a hand over his eyes. "But we will not get far. We have two hours. And we will need much fire-wood tonight."
###
"Do you think it was really Daerod?"
They had camped near a small copse of stunted trees and tangled bushes, and fallen upon them with their hatchets. The copse was now little more than a gathering of stumps. They were now stacking the branches they had gathered into a pile, both green wood and dry, almost man-high. Above, the clouds that remained had caught the sunset, their undersides touched with rose and scarlet.
"It was Daerod's body," Idhron said at length. "But it was not Daerod."
"Are you sure?"
"When Daerod died, he moved on, beyond the circle of the world. What we leave behind… it isn't us, Randirion." He took the branch in his hand and pressed the end of it into the mud, leaving a mark, then lifted the branch. "It's like sign: a track in the earth, a footprint. We leave it behind, and it holds our shape, but it's empty. It isn't us."
Randirion carried over another armful of hewn branches to the pile. "What was it, then, that the Barrow-wight did to him? What was it that was housed in his flesh?"
Idhron began to stack several thin twigs in a tent-shape, with a handful of shavings in the middle. He did not answer until he had set spark to the shavings, and the first tendrils of smoke began to curl up from the pile. Quickly he began to set larger twigs on the flame. "The lore-masters say," he said, reaching for a fresh branch, "that the graves of our ancestors were deserted after the Great Plague hit Cardolan. And then dark spirits came out of Angmar and indwelt the Barrows there. Those are the Barrow-wights. Perhaps this is much the same. Perhaps here, not so far from Angmar, some of those spirits yet linger."
Randirion began to build a second fire on the woodpile's far side. He didn't say anything.
"Whatever it is," said Idhron, "it is not our comrade. Do not hesitate to strike, if you see it again."
"I know. But… what if we should fall? Would our bodies, too, become housed by spirits?"
"We will not fall."
"But if we did?"
Idhron sighed. "I do not know."
Randirion put down striker and flint to look his master in the eye. "If they..." He cleared his throat and began again. "Don't let my body be made one of them. If I die… I don't want that."
Idhron began to object, but stopped himself. "All right," he said. "I won't."
Randirion went back to building the second fire. When it was lit, and crackling softly, he sat back and watched it. The next thing he knew, Idhron was shaking his shoulder, and his eyes were snapping open. He did not remember closing them.
"Do not fall asleep," said Idhron.
"I know, I know."
The rosy hue had fled the clouds, and even their vague grey was fading. The sky between them was the deepest blue. The wind had quieted a little, but it still blew firmly from the west. Suddenly it brought with it the smell of decay.
"They are coming," said Randirion, drawing his sword. He had given up on his bow—it hardly seemed to slow them. He had thought to make a pitch-arrow, and so light one of them afire, but the bushes here did not have the right kind of sap, and it was the wrong time of year for the sap to flow freely. They hardly had enough wood for their fire to last the night.
Randirion and Idhron sat back-to-back between the two campfires. "Just think," said Randirion, fighting back a yawn. "If we had known that we would only get four miles from the barrow today, we could have walked this far in the morning, and then slept all day while we had the chance."
Idhron grunted. "If we had known. But we didn't." He tossed a stick onto one of the fires. "What about those wolf tracks? Were they just to lure us in?"
"Or maybe the Barrow-wight got them, too."
"Heh. That would be nice, wouldn't it? Have our enemies fight among themselves, while we sit back and watch."
"It would be a welcome change," said Randirion.
A sudden downdraft of wind: the smoke eddied down in their faces. Randirion's eyes teared up, and he rubbed at them for a moment. When he looked up, he cried in alarm—a figure in moldering robes had crept into the firelight, had indeed covered half the distance to where the Rangers sat. It froze at his cry, and grinned. It was not the Daerod-wight, but the other—an older corpse, withered flesh puckered around jutting bones, pale eyes gleaming in the firelight, bedecked with jeweled rings and glittering chains. Randirion leapt to his feet and raised his sword, but the wight backed away.
"Get out of here! Get!" Randirion shied a stone at it as one would a dog. It paused at the firelight's edge to watch the stone fall at its feet. Then it melted away out of sight, with a clink of the rings on its fingers.
"Not a moment's peace!" he swore.
"No," said Idhron.
They sat again. Randirion's eyes still stung: they seemed sore, and his eyelids dropped whenever his conscious effort relaxed. He grounded the point of his sword in the grass and wrapped his hands around the hilt.
"Talk to me, ohtar," Idhron said. "Keep me talking."
So Randirion talked about whatever came into his head. He talked about his sister and her Breelander husband. He talked about his former mentor, Faelon, and how he died. He talked about his father, and the mission into the Misty Mountains that took his life. And long into the night Idhron kept up a patter of questions and responses.
Then came a time when he did not know what else to say. His voice fell silent, and they listened to the popping of the twin fires. He did not remember closing his eyes, but suddenly he realized that they were closed, and a moment of panic set in. Open! he willed himself, but his body didn't seem to respond. Open!
He forced them open, and found himself staring into Daerod's face.
"Idhron!" he croaked, and then the wight was upon him, its hands clutching his throat in a grip of iron, yanking him away from the fire, dragging him into the night. He fought and twisted, he kicked and writhed, he pulled at the merciless grip that was choking him, pulling him. He couldn't find his sword. The wight's cold fingers dug into the flesh of his throat. The world seemed tinged with red; he could hear his pulse hammering in his ears. His spine seemed to creak.
Then a spear blossomed in Daerod's chest. "Arnor!" cried Idhron, pulling it out and thrusting again. "Arnor and the North!"
The Daerod-wight dropped Randirion and clutched the spear's haft, trying to pull it free, but the tracker had his feet planted. The boar-spear plunged all the way in until the crossbar caught, and the wight staggered back, pushed back by Idhron's great strength. Randirion, half-throttled, could only lie still and try to breathe, his head pounding.
"Arn—" Idhron's battle cry was cut off as the second Barrow-wight loomed up beside him, wrapped its arms around him, and dragged him from his feet.
"No!" Randirion coughed.
Together the two wights pulled Idhron out into the darkness. The tracker fought, pulling up handfuls of grass, fingers dragging in the mud, but in a heartbeat he was gone.
"Idhron!" Randirion screamed. He forced himself to his feet and staggered after them. He had no weapon now, neither bow nor sword nor torch, but he chased after them nonetheless.
The night was absolute: a few stars peeked through the gaps in the clouds, but the light was not enough to see by. He stumbled blindly through the darkness, reeling like a drunken man, until his foot caught in a hollow and he pitched into the grass. "Idhron!" he screamed again, gasping, sobbing.
From far away came an answering yell, cut short in a crunching of bone.
###
Somehow he made it back to the fires, which had by now burned low to dull embers. He built them up and extended them, piling on more wood, until he had formed a large semi-circle of flame around the woodpile. The heat singed his cloak and stung his exposed skin, and his woodpile dwindled, but still he built it up. He didn't care.
From far, far away, barely audible over the fire's roar, the deep chanting began again. Randirion snarled wordlessly at the sound, and began to sing back—scream back—a song he had once heard the elves sing in Rivendell. His tongue stumbled over the unfamiliar Quenya words, but he howled them back at the darkness, drowning out the chant, until his voice broke in sorrow.
The first rays of sun found him lying amid the hot ashes, his face streaked with tears and soot.
He set to work immediately. He gathered up what he could—finding his sword lying several fathoms off, and Idhron's spear not far beyond—and left the rest behind. He tracked down bushes and shrugs and tore them up, roots and all; he pulled up the tall dry grass by the handful; he gathered strips of bark and fluffy seeds from whatever he could find.
At midday he returned to the barrow, dragging all his gatherings up the hill behind him. He took out his little shovel and brandished it like a weapon at the barrow. His eyes stared wildly. "No more," he said to the barrow. "No more."
Then he leapt to the barrow's filled-in doorway and started to dig.
Long hours he labored, levering up stones and dirt. Sometimes he sang verses from the Elvish song under his breath. The pile by the doorstep grew larger, but the sun also grew lower, sinking down into the distant west. Randirion cursed the sun's speed and redoubled his efforts: his hands blistered and bled, but still he dug.
His arms burned. He threw down his little trowel and walked out into the sunlight again, shaking them, trying to coax the pain away. The eastern sky was already dimming: the sun sat balanced on the western hills, sinking gently into it like a stone into quicksand.
"Now for it," he said, trying not to despair, and went back to his digging, stabbing his shovel into the soil as though it were a sword into an orc's heart. Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.
Then, all at once, his shovel and his whole arm burst through. He almost sobbed with relief. The barrow's entrance tunnel had been filled, but its innermost chamber was clear, and he had just broken through. Quickly he widened the hole until it was large enough to crawl into and went back to his pile of fuel: armful by armful he brought it to the doorway and tossed it in, into the blackness, to clatter on stone slabs on the other side.
When he judged that he had brought enough, and when only the very top edge of the red sun still showed, he crawled in himself. It was dark in the barrow, much darker than the sunlit world outside, but he could just make out a great stone shelf, and three human bodies lying prone upon it. The nearer two wore the clothing of Rangers. The third seemed little more than a skeleton, or one of the shriveled mummies of Far Harad.
Randirion piled branches over the bodies, and stuffed dry grass between them. He took his little flask of cooking oil and emptied it over them all. Then he tried to set it alight. At first his trembling, blistered hands would not properly hold the flint and striker, but at last his tinder flared up, and he thrust the flaming bundle into the heart of the woodpile.
It caught quickly. Randirion crawled out through the tunnel he had dug, just as smoke began to billow out of it like a chimney. Then, in the twilight outside, he fanned his cloak to chase fresh air into the barrow.
A loud shriek suddenly split the air, dying away into a thin wail. Inside the barrow, the red flames leapt up, casting their flickering light out through the archway as through the door of an oven. There was a crack, a clatter: part of the barrow seemed to collapse in on itself. And still the smoke came pouring out.
"Sleep well, Daerod. And sleep well, my master." Randirion stared into the barrow's burning depths, as though searching for the faces of his fellow Rangers, but nothing could be seen save the spitting flames. "May nothing further disturb your rest."
Night had fallen. The fire died down to a smoldering mass of coals, choked out by its own smoke. And then at last Randirion picked up Idhron's boar-spear and, leaning on it for support, began to pick his way down the hill. Exhaustion settled on his shoulders like a cloak, but he would not rest until he had left this place. South he turned, his face toward the constellation Menelvagor, and slowly he limped away.
The smoke trailed up from the broken barrow towards the stars. Somewhere, quite far away to the north, a wolf howled, and then another.
Happy Hallowe'en, all!
