Title: Not From Mountain Nor From Sea

Author: Gil Shalos

Email: gilshandros@hotmail.com

Author’s Website: http:www.gilshalos.0catch.com

Rating: M for violence

Pairing: No pairing. Boromir, Ensemble, OFC

Feedback: Yes, Please

Archiving: Notify the author.

Summary: Set after Boromir’s death, this story explores the events of the last days of the War of the Ring from the perspective of a soldier of Gondor.

Thanks to Qwikshot for betaing and for encouragement, to Panthera for encouragement and to Jat_Jane Sapphire for her comments on story-telling and narrative. All remaining errors and misjudgements are my own.

Disclaimer: This is a work of parody. No infringement or improper claims of ownership are intended.

This story takes place in the bookiverse, not the movieverse. I have taken one or two bits from the movie, but on the whole I have followed Tolkien’s descriptions of places, and more significantly, people. So, for example, despite the relative heights of the actors in the film, in this story, as in Tolkien’s book, Aragorn is taller than Boromir.

I have made one crucial departure from accepted Tolkien Middle-Earthdom: Gondor accepts women in its armed forces. It is not common, but unlike the Riders of Rohan, Gondor does not refuse women wishing to serve their country under arms.

I have quoted from Tolkien both in dialogue and in descriptive passages, because I am attempting to give a different perspective on things that actually happen in LoTR (as well as telling the story of some things that didn’t happen). Where Tolkien’s authorial authority insists that ‘all those near’ saw a certain event in such-and-such a way, or a certain person in such-and-such a light, I have bowed obedient to his command. It’s been my experience that people with strong views express those views frequently, and thus that Boromir’s speech at Elrond’s Council might not have been the first time he expressed those opinions. There are other instances in this story where I have taken a view expressed in direct speech by one of Tolkien’s characters and cast it as a recollection: "Many might say…"

Some remarks are made by characters *other* than those who said them in the books. Other remarks are paraphrased.

I haven’t signposted what’s a direct pinch from Tolkien and what’s a pinch from the Tolkieneverse, but I have placed an incomplete list of passages from the LoTR book I have drawn most heavily upon. I didn’t give page numbers because dollars to donuts your edition will differ from mine.

As a safe rule of thumb, if you think a certain bit is really good, that’s him, and if you think it’s pretty bad, that’s me.

Not all the opinions expressed in this piece are the opinion of the writer. Some are, of course. I’ll let you pick which ones.

* * indicates bold

~ ~ indicates italics, i.e. thoughts.

*******************************************************************

Not From Mountain Nor From Sea.

The eldest son of the Steward of Gondor was dead.

Faramir, son of Denethor, had been vouchsafed a vision of his brother borne in an elven boat towards the sea. Later, the horn of Gondor had been found along the river’s edge, clove in two, by axe or sword.

Gondor mourned. Denethor sat on his steward’s chair and ruled the city with a hand made heavier by grief. Faramir ventured to the borders of Mordor, his duty to his people made all the more welcome by his sorrow and by his father’s rage.

Minas Tirith! What untold torments were endured by that unhappy city in the thirteen days and nights between the sound of the horn of Gondor blowing dim upon the northern marches and Mithrandir’s return? The hobbit Peregrine Took would note the silent houses and the withered gardens when he first laid eyes upon her streets, for Minas Tirith had been a city shadowed by dread for many a year before the Fellowship set out from Rivendell.

Gondor was proud, and did not ask for aid, but long had the Men of Gondor needed it.

They held all the west shores of Anduin, their valour restraining the wild folk of the East, their pride and dignity opposing the terror of Morgul. Few knew of the deeds done by the Men of Gondor, by which alone were peace and freedom maintained in the lands behind them, the bulwark of the West. Those few who did know whose were the swords and shields that sheltered them, of the peril in which they would stand should Gondor fail at last, gave them praise.

~Much praise but little help. Only the Rohirrim still ride to us when we call. ~ Nula of Gondor thought, pacing her way along that part of the wall that was hers to watch tonight. It was a familiar argument that she revisited, words worn thin with many repetitions. She had said them; others of the First Company had said them. Tonight she heard them in the voice of Boromir the Bold, just as she had heard them so many times before in the guardroom of an evening. ~Much praise but little help.~ he would say, lips curling in scorn, one finger raised to emphasise the point.

Gondor bore the brunt of the Enemy’s might and malice and the hands of her children grew callused with the constant use of swords. ~ The Men of Gondor are valiant, and they will never submit; but they may be beaten down.~

Some might say that the love of war and valour in the Men of Gondor of present times was a sign of the decline of Numenor, for though it was still held that a warrior should have more skills and knowledge than only the craft of weapons and slaying, Gondor now esteemed the warrior above the men and women of other crafts.

~Such is the need of our days,~ Nula thought. ~For we are come to desperate times, and must shape ourselves to meet them. It may be said by the soft-handed elves who we keep safe from the Enemy’s armies that the Men of Gondor have suffered in their loss of the softer arts of peace, yet it is in the service of those very fools that we have lost them.~

~And I should dearly like to meet one such as says it, and my sword be ready to my hand.~

Lord Faramir himself said, to such as would hear him, that the blood of Numenor was had grown thin and so Gondor was diminished, but Nula thought that it served him well to say so, he who all men said had inherited the blood of Numenor undimmed as had his father Denethor. For how should the younger brother speak, when all praised Boromir as the best man in Gondor for his prowess in the craft of war? Even Faramir admitted that Boromir was truly valiant, that no heir of Minas Tirith had for long years been so hardy in toil, so onward in battle, or blown a mightier note on the Great Horn.

~But Faramir is the heir of Gondor now, and the Great Horn shall sound no more. I fear we never shall again see Boromir the Bold on the White Tower.~

Nula went, each morning, to the White Tower, with the rest of the First Company - *Boromir’s* company – as they had been used to go with their Captain and their Lord. They stood as they had used to stand about the Tower, save Nula. As Boromir’s Second she had stood at the place of watch by his side for many a year, and now she stood there alone. More than one hundred days she had stood there alone, watching for Boromir the Tall, and never came he home from mountain or from sea. As each day closed Nula returned to the Tower to hear the silver trumpets blow, calling home all the White City’s sons and daughters in the opalescent evening light. Each night fell without Boromir the Fair answering their call.

When the river bore his shattered horn to Minas Tirith, when Faramir spoke of the vision vouchsafed to him, Nula had ceased to look for Boromir the Brave on the road from the mountains, or the sea, or on the road from Rohan. The First Company went still to the White Tower in the morning, but there was no hope in their hearts, and Nula of Gondor looked for no glad tidings in the awakening day.

And now, on the walls in the deepening night, Nula loosened her sword in its sheath yet one more time, and watched the hills with dry eyes.

~I am a soldier of Gondor~, she thought, ~and so I do not weep. Such things are for the weaker races, elves and dwarves and lesser men, who have the leisure that our swords buy them, or for those among our people who cannot bear a sword. I am a soldier of Gondor, and so I do not weep.~

Few enough women in the Guard, though thanks be more than in the hosts of the Rohan! Few enough, still, that no one among them could afford signs of womanly weakness, even now when men wept openly in the streets.

For the son of the Steward of Gondor was dead.

~But I am a soldier of Gondor,~ Nula thought, ~and so I do not weep.~

She did not think on the memory of the horn of Gondor hanging shattered from Faramir’s hand. She did not think on the sound of it, so far away across the fading afternoon. She did not think on the sight that had been vouchsafed Faramir, of his brother seemingly at peace and borne to the sea –

~And I am to have not even one more sight of him?~

She did not think on that.

~For I am a soldier of Gondor.~

~And Boromir is dead.~

How many years since she had first seen him? Eight years now since she had first come to Minas Tirith, but she had known him by sight then, so there must have been times before then when he had crossed her path. No doubt riding out with his soldiers on some patrol of the borders of Gondor, or to intercept a band of orcs reported in the outlying lands. She had been a child, and he had been a young man yet to grow into his frame or his face, and no doubt she had thought he looked very fine in his armour.

She could not remember. It did not seem right that she could not remember whatever those first meetings had been. Only herself, climbing the long zigzag of Minas Tirith’s main road to present herself to the man she already knew was Boromir, son of Denethor.

"I’m here to fight for Gondor." she had said.

"And what does your father think of that?" Boromir had asked her, eyebrows lifting. He was always tall and proud in his armour, but now as the day faded and the light from the west slipped away from the guardroom windows he had let lordliness go a little, was more the captain at ease among his men. "Does he approve of his daughter giving up her needlework and running around with a sword?"

"He is dead." Nula told him.

"I am sorry. Orcs?"

"No. The flux." Boromir had waited, silent, his eyes hooded but his mouth not unkind, until his silence forced her to continue. "My brother will work the holding. His wife will care for our mother. They will have little success at it, however, with orc bands trampling the fields and burning the outbuildings twice yearly. I have seen women among the armies of Gondor when they ride out to protect the lands, and I would be one of them. It seems to me to be a worthwhile thing to do."

"Then you shall do it." Boromir had said, smiling as if she amused him. Well, perhaps she had. At nineteen, she had been very serious and very earnest, certain she was destined for some high purpose, her head filled with romantic notions of adventure. No doubt the heir to the Steward of Gondor had found her laughable. No blame to him if he had.

~I will show him,~ Nula had thought at the time.

"Here do I swear fealty and service to Gondor," she had said, her hand on the hilt of the sword that would henceforth be hers, "and to the Lord and Steward of the realm, to speak and to be silent, to do and to let be, to come and to go, in need or plenty, in peace or war, in living or dying, from this hour henceforth, until my lord release me, or death take me, or the world end."

"And this do I hear," Boromir had replied, "Boromir son of Denethor, who is Lord of Gondor and Steward of the High King, and I will not forget it, nor fail to reward that which is given: fealty with love, valour with honour, oath breaking with vengeance."

Many times he must have spoken those words, many times heard the oath repeated before him, and yet he heard her and replied as if she, Nula of Gondor, was the first ever to pledge her sword in Gondor’s service, and if he had been secretly laughing at her solemnity a moment before, he was most grave now. So, she would learn, he always was at such times. She would see others come to take the oath of service over the years, and it was not in Boromir to treat the pledge of a life and if needs be a death lightly.

"It does not matter," he said to her long after, "how many times I hear those words. For each and every soldier of Gondor they are spoken only once, and mark the place where a life turns utterly from the path it might have taken to a road of duty and danger, pain and fear. How could I fail to honour such a moment when it comes?"

~And we all loved him for it, from the moment we touched the hilt and took the oath. And how could any mortal heart not? No High King could be more noble than Boromir the Brave, in those moments when he took our oaths of life and death. ~

There had been few women in the Guard, but enough that Nula had not felt completely out of place, completely alone. And then she had been assigned to a company, and seen her first battles, and ideas of high purpose and adventure had evaporated, and fierce loyalty to her companions had taken their place, and felt more and more as if she had found where she belonged. Proving herself to be a mighty warrior became less important than defending whatever bridge or hillock she found herself upon, and keeping herself and her comrades alive.

In doing so she had proved herself perchance, and the time came when she was assigned to Boromir’s own company to fill a vacant saddle, and Nula had known that she was now in the place she was truly shaped for, where for all of time she would belong, and that she would never again be alone.

~Nothing is for all of time. We are the children of Men, born to die,~ she thought. There was a Nazgûl somewhere above the city, and around her men looked skyward, grey-faced and trembling. To Nula it seemed merely one more part of the foul dream she had dwelt in for ten days past. ~Nothing is for all of time. And Boromir the Bold is dead, and I am alone.~

~Whatever time is now vouchsafed me, for all of it I shall be out of place, for all of it I shall walk solitary.~

~For Boromir is dead.~

The stench of the Nazgûl passed.

Below her, she heard voices at the gate.

"Yea truly, we know you, Mithrandir," Nula heard the guard say, and a storm of shaking took her. The Grey Pilgrim! Denethor entertained dark suspicions of him. No matter how often Mithrandir came to Minas Tirith, nor what he asked of Denethor, he never spoke to the Men of Gondor of what he knew, not did he reveal his purposes. Faramir urged trust of the wizard, even when Denethor refused to blindly follow where the Grey Pilgrim led. ~Aye, ‘tis easier to trust the judgement of another than to seek the truth yourself,~ Nula thought, ~and when decisions and responsibility belongs to another it is easy to tell them to lay them down. So children and younger brothers always are.~ Faramir might argue that the fate of Gondor be left to lie in the wizard’s hands, but Denethor had never thought so. The more the younger son sought to change his father’s path, the more Denethor suspected Mithrandir’s theft of his son’s affections, and the closer did he bind Boromir to him in response. And as went Boromir, so went the First Company.

So deep did Nula’s suspicions run that she found herself groping for her sword though her hands trembled and her eyes were blind.

~Whatever his plots may be,~ she thought, ~he comes always on the wings of bad news. If there is news to be had, he will have it.~

~And what news do you think there will be? None now doubt that Boromir - ~

~That Boromir the Bold is dead.~

And yet Nula was in an agony of anticipation. She was trained and drilled in unquestioning obedience, had gone after men twice her size and armed with clubs and nets with only a wooden training sword in her hand on an order from Boromir. At a command from her Captain she would have charged a hundred orcs alone without a thought, and yet she found herself taking a step towards the stairs, away from her post.

~Stand fast,~ she thought. ~Stand fast.~ And then Boromir’s voice in her ear, ~Steady. Steady now. Steady.~

Only memory, and yet she could feel the warm gust of his breath across her cheek.

~Steady. Steady now. Steady.~

"And Boromir of your City was with us," came a piping voice from below, of a timbre Nula had never heard - not quite a child, not quite a man. "And he saved me in the snows of the North, and at the last he was slain defending me from many foes."

"Peace!" said Mithrandir.

~Oh, peace indeed,~ Nula thought. ~Oh, peace indeed. Peace! That I will never know again. Oh, peace, such peace as you now know, my Captain.~

Mithrandir and his strange companion passed beneath the gate and out of earshot.

~ What evil fate persuaded the Lord Steward to let you take this danger on yourself! Boromir, oh, Boromir! Little could the City afford to lose you, Boromir the Brave! So fierce in battle, so tender in judgement, so faithful to your people and your charge! Gondor’s people are our pride, and of them all you were the finest. How shall any man replace you?~

After a moment, Nula braced herself, locked her knees to take her weight, and took her hand from the wall. She stood. She did not fall. A moment later she turned back to her watch on the starless night. She did not fall. Her watch on the night did not falter.

~For I am a soldier of Gondor.~

~For I am a soldier of Gondor, and so I do not weep.~

~Though Boromir is dead.~

Many strange and fell things happened in the City in the days that followed Mithrandir’s return. Darkness fell that did not lift with dawn; a perian took the oath of the Guard to Denethor and assumed the garb of the Tower; Faramir returned and spoke in closed council with his father and Mithrandir and the perian, Peregrin Took. All these things grew wings of rumour and flew about the City, and more besides: the perian was only the first of a thousand such strange beings; the darkness that fell across the City foretold the final victory of the Enemy; Boromir had died not as they had been told but in some shameful manner - or had been slain by Mithrandir - or had not died at all.

Nula paid no heed to the rumours. ~It is often said,~ Boromir murmured in her ear, ~that rumour is halfway around the world before the truth has got its boots on. The spread of rumours within an army is as great an enemy as any horde of orcs. Do not hear them, and do not spread them.~

She did not. It would have been too great an effort, at any rate, to pay close attention to the conversations of others. Speech was even more beyond her. She walked always in a shadow, and when the darkness fell and the City was lit only by torches it seemed to her that the torches dimmed when she came near.

Silent and grim, she carried out her duties - for so she had sworn. At the time it had seemed to her that the greater part of the oath was the promise of a death, but now she saw that she had sworn her death away. ~In need ... in war ... in dying, and if needs must, in living. My death is no more my own than my life.~

~Am I released because he broke his oath to me? For how now shall he reward my fealty with love, fallen alone in the northern marches?~

~You know the answer.~ he chided her - gently, for now he was only her memory and imagination he would speak to her in whatever manner she desired.

"I know the answer." she said, voice rusty with long silence.

"To what?" a voice behind her asked.

Nula turned and saw that Faramir had come up onto the wall unheard. His resemblance to his brother was by all accounted remarkable, though she herself thought they looked little alike except in a bad light. "To a question I was considering, Lord Faramir." she said.

"I ride tomorrow morn to Osgiliath." Faramir said.

"That is a dark name." Nula said. "A dark name, now, and a dark memory."

"It is. You were there when the bridge came down, were you not?"

"Aye." she said. "And would have gone down with it, had not -"

~Jump, fool! Boromir bellowed, a voice that cut through any battlefield din, and seized her by the shoulder harness of her cuirass. The bridge bucked beneath her feet then, and of a sudden there was air beneath her, and she was falling, masonry and wood falling around her. Water, and arrows, and blood in her eyes ...~

"Had not my brother saved us both." Faramir finished. "It is Boromir I would speak, if my words would not be too painful to you."

"If it is within my oath of service, lord, it matters not how it pains me."

"It is not a matter of your oath." Faramir said. "There are many rumours concerning my brother’s fate. I cannot speak as plainly as I would wish, but I would have you know he died bravely, and with honour."

"I could never doubt it." Nula said simply, and turned her face away a moment. When she looked back at him she saw the tears standing in his eyes. "For the White City, lord."

"For Gondor." he said, and then he left her.

~ I am a soldier of Gondor, and so I do not weep.~

Yet Faramir wept for his brother. Others among her company wept for their Captain. Why should not she?

~Because I am a soldier of Gondor, and so I do not weep.~

~You are soldiers of Gondor,~ Boromir had said to them. The day, the very hour, was most clear to her memory. ~You are soldiers of Gondor, and must not weep.~

It had been a battle that was not supposed to happen. Seven years ago, a company full of youngsters, barely done their training, riding a simple patrol to put into practice some of what they had learnt. A company full of youngsters, and an orc raid further over the river than was readily conceivable in those days. If she concentrated, Nula could feel the twinge of muscles unused to much riding, a twinge she had not felt for many years now. Aching legs and the smell of grass in the night air, and then the wind shifts, and she smells -

~Burning. Hay burning, and wood. And flesh.~

Nothing smells quite like a human body on fire, not any beast slaughtered for table. It had unnerved them all, which did them no favours in the fighting. The leader of their little company had ordered them ride, ride hard. Perhaps he had thought it was a chance fire and they would be needed to help with the buckets. Perhaps he had thought it was five orcs, or a dozen. None of them had asked him then, and when it was over the chance was gone.

~You can question the dead, of course. It’s only that their answers are somewhat slow in forthcoming.~

He had been dead some ten minutes after they burst into the clearing, and some twenty others with him, and Nula and the three others left alive had been barricaded in a well house with fifty orcs capering about outside, desecrating the bodies of the dead.

She had been calm then, the calmest of the four survivors. It was only after the sounds of battle outside had announced the arrival of rescue, after a voice with the accents of the City had told them to open the door, after Boromir had led them out and she had seen the bundles of faggots stacked against the well-house walls, ready for firing, ready to burn her alive, and stacked among them the mutilated bodies of men and women she had trained and lived and fought with for twelve months ...

Then she had not been calm.

~Listen,~ Boromir had said to them. ~There are people from the nearest village coming to help us bury the dead. They will be here soon. You must not shake their faith in you. You are soldiers of Gondor, and they must believe you courageous and strong beyond any question, for only in that belief can they continue on with their lives at the very edge of the Shadow. The Enemy does this to strike fear into the hearts of our people, and he will succeed if you allow him. Our people must have faith in their soldiers’ courage. They must have faith in you. Stand up. Put yourselves to rights. You must look like the soldiers they expect to see.~

Nula had wanted to strike him, standing there grim and proud, but her training held. Only had she said ~But it is horrible. It is horrible!~

~I know. I know it is.~ And when she could not make her limbs obey her to get up from the ground where she had fallen, he had taken her by the arm and lifted her to her feet. ~It is an evil sight. And how shall the good people of Gondor bear it if they see their soldiers so undone?~

Not all the good people of Gondor could bear it, even so. Later, Nula had seen a woman fall wailing to the ground as she herself had done, and seen Boromir kneel beside her and speak words of comfort, and raise her with gentle hands, for he had always had a strong man’s tenderness for the weak within his care.

He spoke no such words of comfort to her. It was no doubt only her wishes that made it seem, in memory, as if that restraint had cost him something. To Nula, he said only ~You are a soldier of Gondor, and must not weep.~

Yet had he said that, exactly, or was it the many repetitions of her thoughts that had pared down his words to such simple orders? ~You are a soldier of Gondor, and must not weep - what? Must not weep now? Must not weep here?~ She had seen Boromir undone by grief and sorrow when he looked back across the Anduin to the soldiers of Gondor fallen at Osgiliath, at the orcs carrying out their foul practices on the bodies of the slain. ~You are a soldier of Gondor, and must not weep before the people?~

It did not matter, when all was said or done. Whatever he had said, what Nula had remembered of that night was that Boromir had words of comfort for long haired women who could not wield swords, and words of duty for her, and that tears and duty were incompatible.

~So as a soldier of Gondor, I do not weep.~

~Not even for you, Captain.~

~ I am a soldier of Gondor, and I do not weep, not even for Boromir the Brave.~

Lord Faramir has gone to Osgiliath, they said in the guard-room. Mithrandir holds council with Lord Denethor. Nula paid no heed. She knew only days of darkness and nights of restless sleep and evil dreams that woke her groping for her sword. There came a morning, if morning it could be called, when she woke but did not rise. The ceiling of her quarters was becoming draped with cobwebs, and for a while she watched the spiders busy about their task. ~What will become of you, little spinners, when we have passed into the Shadow? Will you spin on, happy to be undisturbed by the buy brooms of houseproud matrons, or will the Enemy blight you also?~ Along the hall she heard the noise of the others of the First Company rising, preparing for their duty, but she made no move to throw off her blanket. ~Little spinners, you go on about your business all uncaring because you do not know what lies ahead. How you would cower and scurry if it was given to you to see and understand as the Children of Men do!~

A step sounded in the empty room, and she heard the faint jingle of mail. Beside her the bed gave a little.

Nula looked at the ceiling and did not turn her head.

~It is time to rise.~ he said to her.

"I do not wish to." Nula said to the ceiling.

~Nonetheless,~ and his tone told her he was smiling, ~nonetheless, it is time to rise.~

"And do what?" she asked. "If there is any good at all that can be done, it is by heroes and wizards and kings and lords, not by mere soldiers of the guard. And my heart tells me there is no good that can be done."

~Nonetheless, it is time to rise.~

"It matters not ."

~And was there some special dispensation you received with your oath that you should only be bound to duty when days were fair, and when they were dark and evil you were relieved of it? No, oaths matter most when it is hardest to keep them. It is time to rise.~

"Rise and do what?" she asked. Bitter was her tone and bitter was her heart, but she did not turn her head. In her was the fear of what she might, or might not, see, and whichever it would be she knew it would bring her at last to tears. ~ And I am a soldier of Gondor, and so I do not weep.~

~Rise and go out among my soldiers, and let them see you have shaken off this dark mood, and that you do your duty steadfastly. Let them take heart. They cannot look to me for it. Faramir is gone from the city. My father does not show himself. And you lie here abed while the bugle sounds?~

"Who will look to me? I am not known outside our Company!"

~If even one who would otherwise despair should stand straighter, that will be enough.~

"I cannot –"

~Are you not a soldier of Gondor? Will you say ‘cannot’ to your Captain?~ he said, and all in the tones she had heard him use to a frightened horse, a fretful child.

"No." she said. "Captain –"

But there was no one to hear her.

Nula rose in the empty room, and drew on her armour, and went out to the guardroom, and so about her duty. "Stand tall." she said to the others of the First Company, "Make your Captain proud. Oaths matter most when it is hardest to keep them."

She did not weep.

Dark then lay the Shadow over Gondor, and the army of Mordor brought up their engines of war, and over the wall that had never been breached came fire. Nula and the others of the First Company found themselves fighting an enemy they had not foreseen, as flames took in all the wooden parts of the houses and in the gardens of the lowest circle of the City. With axes, or with their swords (for there were not enough axes for all the fires that burnt) they hacked down the burning wood that it might not spread to other buildings and that its heat might not weaken the mortar that held the stones of the buildings together. There were not enough axes, and there was not enough water, and no matter how they threw down the burning wood and trampled it the fires spread, and there was a constant rain of flame upon them from outside the walls.

"Back!" Nula said at last to the five who were with her. "We can do no more here. It cannot be stopped. We must get back or we will burn with it." Turning, she tried to see how they should retreat from the fire, but the streets looked strange to her now, blackened and smouldering, dark with the smoke in the air and the weight of the shadow, landmarks scorched to ash.

"This way!" said Dorgil, pointing out a road which seemed much the same as the rest, save that the walls on either side were not yet completely afire.

"Your judgement must be better than mine." Nula said, and followed him with the others. But they had not gone far before it became clear that this was not so, for the way doubled back and led them towards the worst of the fire, and the air burned their throats when they breathed and the smoke blinded them. "Back!" Nula ordered, but the way behind them was aflame as well.

They looked wildly around as the flames ran up the wooden lintels of the doors and across the window frames that had been carved with pride in the days of Gondor’s greatness. The heat bore them down, and as Nula knelt couching in the street she heard the whistle of the enemy’s fire missiles overhead. ~I never looked to pay the death I owe to Gondor here in the White City itself.~ she thought, and then the missiles landed all around them and she waited for the flame.

It was not fire that fell from above this time, but a more horrible weapon. In the distance Nula heard a great wail go up, as if all those still living in the lowest circle of the White City had cried out in anguish all at once. Around them in the burning street fell the heads of Gondor’s soldiers who had been already slain at Osgiliath and on the road from the Anduin, on the Rammas or in the fields. They were grim to look on, some crushed and shapeless, some cruelly hewn. Beside her in the street Nula saw battered face of some man of Gondor who had once walked proudly beneath the sky, and on his forehead was branded the foul token of the Lidless Eye.

The heat lay over her like a blanket of molten lead, and her eyes burned with the smoke, and her head reeled. It did not seem strange to her to feel Boromir crouched beside her, hunkered down as was his habit when he stopped to take or give counsel on the field of battle.

~The Enemy does this to strike fear into the hearts of our people, and he will succeed if you allow him.~ he said to her.

Her mouth was full of ash and her sight was dimmed: she could not speak to reply, or make him out as the dark crept over her. It seemed as if he stooped over her, and spoke quietly in her ear.

~What, you will let these five of my soldiers burn? Has Gondor so many men under arms that you will cast five lives away? Did I train so many that these can now be spared?~

Sucking in breath that burned her mouth with heat, Nula raised herself to her knees and crawled to Dorgil.

"Through the houses!" she said, or thought she said. The nearest door was afire, and the blistering wood gave way to her boots, showering her with embers as it collapsed. One by one she pushed them towards the door, these five of Boromir’s own, and then followed them through to a room no better than the street they had left, with the groaning of the ceiling telling them the floor above was soon to fall.

"On!" she told them, and they staggered and limped and sometimes crawled their way through the house to the court beyond, and then into the next house, and so on across the City. Where there was no door their axes and swords made one, until at last the air began to clear and the heat to lessen. They paused then, and leaned their hands upon their knees and gasped for breath, coughing and spitting to clear the soot and ash from their lungs and mouths.

Then came a great booming noise from the gate.

"What –" Dorgil gasped. "What-"

"Run!" Nula told him, and they ran, the six of them, through the streets to the gate. A second time the great hollow sound came as they neared the great Gate of the White City, that had never fallen, and gathered in the court behind it Nula saw a host of Gondor’s soldiers, their weapons ready, their faces pale.

"What is it?" Nula asked, and then looking around, "Where is Lord Denethor? Where is Faramir? Has he not returned?"

"He lies dying." came the reply. "His father will not leave him."

"Who commands us?" Nula asked.

"Mithrandir."

"The Grey Fool?" she cried. "What insanity is this? Denethor has never trusted him!"

"The Lord Steward says that we are all dead already."

"That I should live to see this day grieves me beyond measure." Nula said, her fury rising cold within her. ~*Faramir* was the wizard’s apt pupil,~ she thought, ~and for all the love he bore his brother, the Captain never shared such blind trust in the motives of Mithrandir, he who never explains and never aids. Thus, Denethor sent Boromir to Rivendell and not Lord Faramir.~

~And thus he died.~

~For Denethor’s desire to keep Mithrandir’s counsel out of the affairs of Gondor, Boromir died.~

~And *now* the Lord Steward turns us *over* to him!~

~The affairs of the great may be beyond my ken, but this is rank treachery. Mithrandir, and his elves and dwarfish friends have watched us bleed and die to keep them safe and said only ‘It is not time.’ Time for what? Time for the last drop of Gondor’s blood to stain the battlefield? Well, that time is not far off. And Denethor turns us over to the one who poisoned the heart of one son and brought us news of the death of the other, the architect of all our woes here at the last fulfilment of them.~

~I don’t know which of them to kill first.~

She drew her sword, but as she did a voice breathed her name, and turning in response the mail-clad form of Prince Imrahil caught her eye. He rode beside Mithrandir, leaning from his saddle to speak to the wizard.

The Prince of Dol Amroth was a fierce warrior, a brave man, and no fool. The Captain had always spoken highly of him.

~If Imrahil is content to abide Mithrandir’s command, I shall be also.~

~For the moment.~

She turned to see who had spoken to her, but the space behind her was empty.

"Dorgil, did you see who –" she said, and then the gates came down.

~ "All battles are much the same when you’re in them." Boromir told her, squinting down at his sword hilt to see if he’d cleaned the last bit of blood out of the grip. The firelight cast half his face in shadow. He spun the sword in his hand, over, under, reversed his hold, brought it back to guard. "Blood and fire, mud and sweat, stink and fear and pain."

Nula sat at the guardroom’s long table, her armour laid out before her, methodically testing each ring and link for damage. Her back and her eyes ached with the work, but there was no one of Boromir’s Company who would go to bed after battle without being certain their gear was in good order. "You make it all sound so wonderful." she said dryly.

"You can’t back out now," Boromir said. "I may as well tell you the truth."

Nula laughed, the weight of the day lifting, as he could always lift it. Looking up, she caught him watching her out of the corner of one hooded eye. Weighing, assessing, testing whether his soldier was in good repair - just as she tested her armour. Some said that Boromir’s angular face was cold and cruel, but in the firelight she saw only a man with great responsibilities, who was living up to them as best he could.

"They’re the same when you’re in them." he said again. "You have to learn to take yourself out of them – even when it seems impossible, even when you’ve got a troll at your throat, so you can see what makes that fight different from the others. So you can see how to win it. Do you understand? Whoever can do that, who can plan even in the heat of battle, they will walk away alive." He paused, and grinned. "Usually."

"How?" Nula asked. "How do I learn to do that?" She waited for him to tell her. The Captain did not give advice gratuitously.

"Partly stamina." he said. "Without it, you’re lost."

"And I thought you ran the Company up Minas Tirith to the Tower for the pleasure of it." Nula said.

"And partly – partly not caring, Nula. Not caring if you win, not caring if you live. There’s a moment there you can *use*, if you can find it."

She shivered suddenly. "You care, though, Captain." she said. "No-one cares more for Gondor and for the White City than you do. Not even your father."

"Oh, I care." he said. "Never doubt that. Just not when I’m fighting. And then I can’t, because we have to win. Life gives us these little jokes, Nula. I care so much I cannot care."~

Blood and fire, mud and sweat, stink and fear and pain. Nula’s world was shrunk to the length of a sword blade, to the ache of straining muscles and the burning of tortured lungs. Blood and fire, mud and sweat, stink and fear and pain.

For the first time she understood what Boromir had been trying to tell her. She smashed an orcish blade to one side with her shield and ran the disgusting creature through, ducked another blow that would have decapitated her and slashed that orc’s throat with her dagger, and did all of that without a flicker of fear, for she truly did not care.

~We are all dead. Rohan might have come, but little good they will do us. And in the end, this in only a first assault. There are more armies and more still behind this one. No, we are all dead.~

Smoke rose from the heights of the City, further up than Mordor’s war engines might have reached, and Nula wondered if it was the funeral pyre for Faramir. She did not care – slash, parry – whether it was Faramir’s funeral pyre or the White City burning to the ground. She felt the battle’s ebb and flow – duck, stab – and drove forward to the weak points that were suddenly clear to her. A figure in the black and white – parry, parry, stab - of the Tower Guard went down in a spray of blood that splattered her face and she did not care.

~This was what you tried to explain,~ she thought. ~This is the place you described, what you had to find each time, what made it possible for you to lead us as you did.~

"Pull back!" she ordered. "Back here, and forward to the left!"

The light was cold and clear around her despite the press of battle. They pushed forward, hacking and stabbing, until suddenly there was a little space about them and Nula saw they had forced the left flank of Mordor’s attack to turn on itself, away from the gate. All this she saw from the great heights of her indifference.

It was a very lonely place.

~Now I understand.~

~Oh, Captain, now I understand.~

And then the Nazgûl came.

The soldiers of Gondor broke in the terror of its presence, and Nula saw the army of Mordor coming fast towards her like a wave of darkness. All at once fear possessed her, and horror dimmed her sight.

She did not flee, but her sword fell from her nerveless hand and she cowered on the ground. ~Stand up,~ she willed herself, ~stand up!~ but even her thoughts were distant and faint, so heavy was the Ringwraith’s presence upon the minds of the Children of Men on the field before Minas Tirith.

~Steady. Steady now. Steady.~ Boromir said, the same words as he always used in the last nerve wracking moments before the fighting started. One hundred, one *thousand* times she had heard them.

Blindly Nula groped for her sword and found it in the muck.

~Steady. Steady now. Steady.~

She got to her feet and faced the orcs rushing towards her. They were only twenty feet distant now, and her sword point wavered uncertainly as they came, as if she were wounded to the death or drunk on the field of battle.

~Steady. Steady now. Steady.~ he said. ~Make every blow count. There are too many of them to let even one stroke miss. Steady. Steady. Are you scared?~

"Petrified!" Nula gasped, as she always answered, and heard him laugh, as he always did.

~Me too.~ he said as always.

The orcs were nearly on her, they were –

"Gondor!" she shouted, taking the first blow on her shield, turning inside it to cleave that orc’s head from its shoulders. "Gondor!" ~Make every blow count.~ They were all around her now. Nula took an arm off her nearest attacker, cut the next across the face and ducked an axe blow that would have shattered her skull. She knew that she could not keep this up for long. ~Are you scared?~

"Gondor!"

She felt the blow land just below her shoulder-blade, felt her cuirass give and the axe bite into her flesh. There was suddenly no air for her to breathe, no light for her to see by, only the astonishment of pain. Ruthlessly she forced the shock aside, parried another blow with her shield, and found she could not raise her sword arm.

The pain was very bad.

They were all around her.

Nula dropped her shield and raised her sword in her left hand.

~And so I die.~

"Gondor!" She hurled herself upon her nearest foe.

~The pain in her back is astonishing. There is no air for her to breathe, no light for her to see by, only the pain. Nula tries to scream, but there is something terribly wrong with her face, and the attempt brings a new agony.

"It’ll have to come through, we can’t get –"

"Leave it, it’s in the lung, you’ll only make –"

"Well, she’ll bleed to death if-"

The voices are all around her but she cannot see who they belong to. Even when she makes her eyes focus there is nothing in front of them but the ground. She is lying on her face in the dirt. Memory returns in fragments. Hammering her sword on the heads and faces of the orcs as her mount wheels and curvets and strikes out with his great steel shod hooves. Lanthel afoot as his horse is slashed by orcish blades and crashes to the ground. Hauling on the reins and driving Blacknose towards him, leaning down to drag Lanthel up behind her before the orcs can strike him down.

A heavy blow sends her lurching forward. Nula reaches stupidly over her shoulder and touches the shaft buried in her back. Incomprehension. Pain beyond imagination.

She has seen soldiers wounded fight out a full battle before they realise they have been hurt, for the madness of war takes some so, that they feel no pain and know no fear. For Nula it is not so. Her mind groping for a way of understanding what has happened, she sways in the saddle in shock. Given a little time, perhaps, she could have mastered herself and fought on, but she does not have that time. Blacknose lurches sideways as an orcish axe hews his shoulder, and Nula tumbles from the saddle. She goes down beneath her horse’s hooves.

Nothing after that, until the dirt and the voices and the pain so great it is surely impossible she can survive it.

"Pull it, then."

"Too far. I still think –"

They are going to argue about it until the end of time. She longs to simply die, to get away from the pain that turns her inside out and upside down and tears through her with every gasp. Someone is moaning. Are there other wounded, or is it her own voice she hears? All the sounds around her are strange, as if she has never heard them before and never will again. Only two months with the First Company, she cannot pick them out by their voices and the sound of their movement, and wonders who it is arguing over whether she should bleed to death or drown in her own blood. Dorgil? Fengith?

"There’s nothing we can do here if it’s in the lung."

"There’s no froth." That voice she recognises. Boromir the Tall stoops down beside her and she sees the edge of face and the ends of his hair as he looks at her. "Likely her jawbone’s come through her tongue. The blood’s from that, there’d be froth if the arrow hit her lung. Get it out."

"It’s a barbed tip, Captain. It’ll need to come through."

"Then it needs to come through."

Hands on her, then, compounding the pain, moving her, the arrowhead grating on something in her back. ~Kill me, just kill me, please kill me,~ Nula begs them in her head, ~I can’t stand this, I can’t, I can’t…~

She is braced face down across someone’s knee. Hands hold her, but when the arrow is grasped and moved they barely suffice.

"You’ll make it worse." Boromir says. "Nula, listen to me. It has to come through. You’re only making it worse. You have to be still."

She *can’t* be still, she’s in too much pain, too much pain to even be ashamed that she’s moaning and snivelling and fighting to get away from the hands that are trying to help her. ~It hurts, it hurts, it hurts...~

Nula had always imagined that being wounded in battle would involve lying back , fetchingly pale, enduring her pain with a stoic determination that brings tears to the eyes of all who behold her.

She’s not doing that now. ~It hurts, it hurts, please help me, please, it hurts, it hurts…~ Choking on blood, she can’t get her breath for a moment, and then gasps and breaths and retches as the arrow is forced another fraction forward.

"Just another moment. Just another moment." It is Boromir holding her down and Boromir’s leg she has just vomited blood and bile over, but the Captain doesn’t seem to have noticed. He has her by the shoulders, head bent close to hers. "Just another moment. Just another moment."

Not all her panicked strength is enough to break his hold on her.

The arrow head comes through her shoulder, is cut off and the shaft withdrawn.

It was the single worst moment of her life

It was the only time he ever embraced her. ~

The pain in her back was astonishing. There was no air for her to breath, no light for her to see by, only the pain. Nula tried to scream, but couldn’t.

"It’ll have to come through, we can’t get –"

"Leave it, it’s in the lung, you’ll only make –"

"Well, she’ll bleed to death if-"

The voices were all around her but she could not see who they belonged to. Even when she made her eyes focus there was nothing in front of them but the ground. She was lying on her face in the dirt.

"There’s no froth." That voice she recognised.

"Captain!"

Her own voice woke her. Her back ached enough to make her groan, but she was face down on a mattress, not the ground, in a room she does not recognise, and alone.

~Merely a dream, for he is dead.~

~He is dead, but I live.~ she thought. ~I live, and the City stands, for this must be the Houses of Healing.~

She has been here before - not in this room, but in one enough like it for her to know it. She had lain wounded in the Houses of Healing many a time, though the first had been the longest.

~They said I had been lucky, then.~ she remembered, groping for her sword. ~The arrows missed my lung, and Blacknose – poor Blacknose, he was never the same after that – Blacknose missed my skull.~

Her sword was by her bed with her armour, and though she could only grasp it with her left hand the mere touch of the familiar tooling of the hilt was reassuring.

~Ioreth had great pleasure in telling me how thoroughly dead I would have been had Blacknose’s hoof landed one inch higher and stove in my temple instead of merely shattering my jawbone.~ There had not been much she could do to shut the woman up, her head bandaged and splinted, as Ioreth spooned lukewarm broth through Nula’s lips and dwelt in great detail on the extent of her charge’s injuries. Nula had survived both the wounds and Ioreth’s care, and had considered herself as lucky as Ioreth advised her she was. Neither dead nor crippled, the only lasting effect of her injury was the crookedness of the left side of her face, that dragged the corner of her mouth down and made her look as if she were ill-tempered even when she smiled.

~Lucky again,~ Nula thought, essaying to stand. ~Once more alive when better men have died.~

She found she could stand provided she moved with care. ~Well, then, let us see what has become of Minas Tirith. Lying here abed will bring me no news of how the day has gone.~

At the door she paused and leaned against the frame. Ioreth was in the hallway with one of the other women of the Houses of Healing, and both in a state of great excitement.

"King! Did you hear that?" Ioreth said. "What did I say? The hands of a healer, I said."

"What is that you say?" Nula asked, taking a shaky step forward. "Ioreth?"

"It is the King!" Ioreth said. "He’s here, he has returned!"

"Gondor has no King." Nula said, the words coming to her mouth automatically. "Gondor needs no King."

"How can you say such a wicked thing!" Ioreth said in outrage.

"Peace, Ioreth." a quiet voice said from the shadows of the hall. A cloaked man stepped forward. "I am here as Aragorn, Captain of the Dunedain of the north tonight. Now is no time for contention between allies."

All Nula could make out of him was that he was tall – taller even than Boromir the Tall though not so broad - his grey cloak fastened by a green-stoned broach. Perhaps it was only the way the shadows fell, or perhaps it was her wound, but it seemed to her as if all the hallway, and the rooms beyond and the building itself – pivoted on the shadowed figure before her, as if he were the still axis on which all Minas Tirith spun.

Ioreth’s face was now a picture of horror. Nula thought she looked very much like her aunt had, the time Nula and her cousins had been caught playing healer and invalid behind the barn. "Now see what you’ve done!" the woman hissed. "That’s him! And he’s ridden all this way, and raised the armies of the dead, and defeated the black fleet, and mustered the Rohan, and been on his feet all day without a decent hot meal and healed the sick – for the hands of the king are the hands of a healer, it was me as remembered and –"

"Peace, Ioreth!" the cloaked man said more forcefully. "Lord Faramir would like some food, if you would see to it?"

Nula was blackly amused to see Ioreth so torn between her desire to stay and berate Nula further for lack of respect for the King and her knowledge that to do so would be to defy the orders of that very King. She had no choice but to leave, curtseying to the stranger as she went.

"So you are the King come again." Nula said. She could not have kept the derision from her voice if she had tried, and she did not try. "A Ranger of the North, come to rule Gondor? You will find it somewhat more difficult that ruling trees and stones."

"You say that Gondor needs no King." he said.

"No more she does."

"I have heard such words before," he said, "and in the accents of Gondor then. Boromir spoke thus, at the Council of Elrond in Rivendell. Was it from him that you, too, first heard these words?"

"And if it was?" she asked.

"Lord Boromir acknowledged me his King before he died." the stranger said.

"So you say. So you say, and where is he who could deny it? He will come no more to Minas Tirith." Nula said.

"Do you think I lie?" He took a step forward, and another, and came into the light that spilled through a doorway from the candlelit room beyond, and all the yellow light about him glittered on that green stone at his neck. A keen and commanding light shone in his eyes, and his face was stern. Most fell he seemed to Nula in that moment, and yet most high. Like unto Denethor when first she saw him years before, but beyond him far. The light that sometimes showed in Faramir or Prince Imrahil was here constant and bright, the blood of Numenor undimmed.

She knelt before him, and laid her sword upon the ground.

"Truly you are the King returned." she said. Awe possessed her, and joy at the fulfilment of Gondor’s long wait, for like all children of Gondor she had been raised to look for the King to come again. Yet, at the same time, her heart ached with grief.

"Rise, then, soldier of Gondor." Aragorn said. "I am not yet come into my kingdom openly, and there is therefore no need for you to kneel." And when she could not gain her feet easily, being hampered by her wound, he raised her with his own hand, and restored her sword to her. "See," he said, and smiled, "Now you may say you have received your sword from the King’s own hand."

~And I thought Boromir kingly!~ So noble, so grave and wise the countenance she now beheld - her error was apparent. Boromir had been a man, and a noble one, but before her was a King. And grief twisted in her like a sword.

~Oh, my Captain! Such as this you wished to be! How was it for you to see how far you fell short of the mark?~

She longed to know what news there was from the field but could not speak to the King as if he were simply another comrade at arms.

"We have carried the field." Aragorn said, as if he read her mind. ~And perhaps he has,~ Nula thought, ~for many tales are told of the powers of the Kings of old.~ "We have carried the field, though at a high cost. Your Lords – Faramir and Imrahil – will be well. Return now to your sick bed and rest with an easy mind."

"Yes, sire."

Nula returned to her bed, though she did not lay her sword far aside. Later she would hear how Denethor’s reason was overthrown by despair while the soldiers of Gondor fought the army or Mordor at the very gate of the White City, and he had his son carried to the Silent Street though both still lived. Ioreth would tell her in great detail the story of how it was only through the wit of Peregrin Took, and the bravery of Beregond, and the wisdom of Mithrandir, that Faramir was saved, but none could save his father from his madness.

Nula would hear later how the King of the Nazgûl fell, slain by the Lady Éowyn and the perian Meriadoc at great cost to themselves, and the High King came on the wind that raised the Shadow, and the army of Mordor fled. She would hear how Aragorn son of Arathorn had entered the White City, and been known as King, and called Elessar for the green elfstone that he wore. She would hear that he healed the Lady Éowyn and Lord Faramir and Meriadoc Brandybuck, and many others.

On that night, however, she knew only that the White City had not fallen, that the King had come again, that the window of her sickroom showed her a night where stars could once again be seen.

And that Boromir the Brave was dead.

The army of the West marched away to the gates of Mordor, a last and final gamble perhaps but one which every man and woman under arms wished to join. Not all could go, however. Some remained against the distant hope of victory, that if there were any to return they should not return to a ravaged land and a ruined City.

Some remained because they could not march. Lord Faramir, the Lady Éowyn and the perian Meriadoc were such.

Nula of the Guard was another, and though her heart longed to go East and add whatever mite she could to their effort, she knew the Healers spoke truth when they gainsaid her. Dorgil and others would stand for the honour of the Boromir’s Company, and she would be a hindrance and a danger to them. Instead she practiced wielding her sword with her left hand, and when her arm tired so that she could no longer lift it she walked upon the walls and looked to the East.

All the people then in Gondor would go to the walls when their business permitted them. The lifting of the Shadow had brought some hope and a brief joy, but soon the sense that the end had only been delayed settled over the City, a new Shadow that did not obscure the sun but robbed it of warmth.

Those upon the Tower of Ecthalion saw furthest, but it did not occur to Nula to climb the stairs and stand upon its tip. As she walked upon the wall she realised that she did not even look upon it, but kept her shoulder always turned. No more would she stand upon the White Tower and look for Boromir’s return. No more would she look upon the Tower, where Boromir had been used to stand.

~If we should fall, at least he shall not see it.~ Cold comfort on a cold morn. Still she walked the walls and looked to the East. She did not expect glad tidings, but it began to seem as if the worst news would be better than this endless wait. Even the tide of Darkness irresistible sweeping over Gondor’s fields would have been more welcome than another day of stillness and silence.

So Merry saw her as she walked upon the walls, a Guard not quite so tall or broad as the male soldiers, her right arm in a sling, looking always to the East. She passed him once, twice, and the third time she looked down at him and nodded in greeting. He thought she sneered at him, perhaps despising his small stature, and then saw that it was only the way her face was set from some old injury.

"How do you do?" he said politely. "Meriadoc Brandybuck of the Shire, lately of the Riders of Rohan, at your service."

"Nula of Gondor, lately of the First Company, at yours." she replied gravely. "I have heard of the Pheriannath lately come to our city, but I have not yet seen one. They say tales grow in the telling, Meriadoc of the Shire, but on this occasion it do not think it is true, for I find you taller than I had been led to expect."

"I am somewhat tall for my people." Merry said.

"So the *others* are fierce warriors only two foot high apiece?"

"I am not *that* tall for my people." Merry said, laughing, and Nula smiled. Merry thought that the right side of her visage was not unfavoured, but the left gave her a grim and terrible look, her mouth pulled crooked and her cheekbone lower and less even than it should have been. The next moment he blushed, for Nula put her hand to her cheek.

"It is ugly to look on, is it not?" she said easily. "Do not be embarrassed, Meriadoc Brandybuck. I have noticed that it draws the gaze of those who meet me."

"I was thinking," Merry said, mostly in truth, "that it must have hurt a great deal."

"It did, but I had another wound at the time that hurt far more, and so I was distracted."

"Do wounds hurt less when you have more than one?" Merry asked, interested. He might have struck down the King of the Nazgûl, but he still felt a little as if it had been an accident, or at least as much good fortune as his own skill and courage. The soldiers of Gondor, with their well-worn armour, their shining swords, and their terrible scars, were experts in the craft of war. He had seen the Guard at arms practice in their training yard, and the seriousness they brought to it spoke of the deadly necessity of their purpose. They might be all going to die here in some final desperate siege, but it seemed a waste to lose the opportunity to prepare himself as well as he could.

So he asked.

"It is different, each from each." Nula said. "I have seen men fight on with three or four mortal wounds. I have been wounded almost unto death and still defended myself. And I have been wounded and fallen on my face in surprise." She looked down at him, and added gravely: "I was much younger then."

"Boromir was pierced with many arrows." Merry said. "I thought surely he must fall, for when the first struck him it seemed from his face he knew it was a mortal wound. Yet he fought on."

"Such is the hope of the Guard." Nula said. "That we shall not yield until the last breath has left us. And Boromir was foremost of all the warriors of Gondor. None could surpass him."

"I saw the Guard at practice." Merry said. "You work very hard. I could see when I travelled with him that your Lord Boromir was a mighty warrior, but I did not understand how much work was involved."

"Boromir the Brave was a doughty fighter and most forward in battle." Nula said. "And never did he miss the opportunity to hone his skills at war."

"He taught me what little I know of swords and fighting, as we travelled." Merry said. "He made it seem easy, as if the sword came naturally to my hand, though such a thing is rarely said of hobbit-kind. And he was patient, though our clumsiness must have annoyed him."

"He was always a patient teacher." Nula said. "Teaching others gave him pleasure, and he was always most tender in his concern for those he thought in need of his protection."

"It must have been a great grief, to Gondor, that he fell."

"There was weeping unashamed in all the ways of the City that Boromir the Fair was dead." Nula said. "But I, as a soldier of Gondor –"

For a moment Merry thought she would say more, and then she touched his arm and pointed to the court. "The Healers call you, Meriadoc of the Shire. I suspect they think you have escaped their care for long enough today."

Merry sighed. "They want me to lie abed far more than I’d like." he said. "Well, it was a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Nula of the Guard. I’m only sorry it had to be such a short one."

"If you walk here tomorrow you will find me here as well." Nula said.

"Until then!" Merry said. "For I do not think any of us can keep our eyes from straying East when we have the chance."

Indeed, when he reached the walls the next day he quickly saw her.

"So, Meriadoc of the Shire!" she hailed him. "We are not dead yet, it seems."

"No." Merry said. "My heart is heavy, though. I fear it will not be long, and all those I love have gone with the army to the East. I wish I were there, and could get it over with quickly. Or that Pippin at least was here. We might die together, Pippin and I, and since die we must, why not? The people of Gondor are a fair people, and kind and noble, but I would not die surrounded by strangers in a land that is not my home."

"When death is near, and seems inescapable, the mind turns to small comforts which would not seem sufficient if there were any hope of life." Nula said. "If you must die, it seems less cruel if you could have at least the chance at the last to speak to, to look upon, those dear to you."

"Exactly." Merry said.

"And if *they* must die, how much more bitter that you cannot at that same instant lose your life also? Or if that is not possible, that you might aid them in some way, some touch of comfort as they face the final shore, or at the very least look once more, once more upon them? Oh, it is bitter indeed, Meriadoc of the Shire."

"You sound as if you mean that rather more than generally." Merry said, looking at her curiously.

"There are a great many, and will be more before this war is over, who will mean such things in the very particular." Nula said. "And it may be that we will count those who fell early on in it as the blessed before our own days are past."

"Maybe." Merry shivered. "But I prefer to think that it will come out rather better than that. Gandalf and Strider – Aragorn – have both gone with the army to Mordor. I’ve given up being surprised at anything those two manage to do."

"Perhaps you will be right." She loosened her sword in its sheath again. "Tell me, Meriadoc, you were with my Lord Boromir at the last. You spoke of it a little yesterday. Will you tell me more?"

"He fell defending me, but I was not there at the last." Merry said sadly. "There were many orcs, a hundred at least, and they shot their black feathered arrows at him. He staggered, but he did not fall. I did not think it possible that anyone could take such hurts and still lay about him with his sword as fiercely as Boromir did. The first arrow seemed to pain him most, but the others weakened him each by each."

Nula’s eyes were steady on the east, and her voice was calm and quiet. "The arrows of orcs are made for war, and are heavy to piece armour and do the greatest possible injury when they strike. For what I know of him, if the first arrow dismayed him, it must have been a lethal wound."

"He fought to the end. He did not give up." Merry said. "But from his face I thought he knew he was slain. I have never seen such courage."

"We did not name him Boromir the Brave for no reason." Nula said. "Were you with him when he died, Meriadoc? Do you know – did he say – *could* he speak?"

"I did not see the end. I was taken captive. I am sorry. If I had been a Big person instead of a hobbit I might have been more use."

"And if Boromir had been one of the Pheriannath and not a Man he might have been taken prisoner without fatal harm as you were – but he was not, and you are not, and such things are beyond our power to change. It is only – I would know more. I would know all. I was not there, although I heard the horn. I was his Second in command, Meriadoc. I have for long and long thought that if either of us should fall in battle it should be by the other’s side, that his should be the face I saw as I went down into darkness, that if he fell I should be the one to ease his final moments. And then, at that moment when he knew that death was with him, I was not there. I was always faithful in my service, until the moment when it mattered most. I heard the horn, but I was not there. If I had been, Meriadoc, if I had fulfilled my oath, would the end have been different? Would my Captain live?"

"I cannot answer that." Merry said. "All I can say is that he fought against great odds, and slew many. He was very brave. He tried to save Pippin and me. He was my friend."

"He was my Captain." Nula said. She laughed, and Merry thought that it was not a good sound. "These oaths we take, all unknowing! I swore not only to do but to let be, not only to come, but to go, obedient to my Lord. And in such obedience I stayed here in the White City when he left for Rivendell, as he bade me, and so in obedience failed him! And all such vows as I made, till my Lord release me, or till death take me, or till the world shall end – and never did I think that my service should end at last by that latter cause. But, Meriadoc, whatever grim days we are come to, Boromir was my Captain, and in all things, I am obedient to his command. He was your friend? Then you must be my friend also, Meriadoc of the Shire, and I shall try to do you such service as Boromir would, were he here, in whatever time we have left before the end of the world."

"And I shall do the same," Merry said, "for the love I bore Boromir. And the love you bore him, I think."

Nula glanced at him, and then away, once more searching the south for any sign of news, good or bad. "He was my Captain." she said again.

"You were his Second," Merry said, "but he was your Captain and more, I think."

"He was more than Lord and Captain to me." Nula admitted after a moment. "Why not say it? He has passed beyond the circles of the world, and I fear we are all to follow before long. So yes, Meriadoc of the Riders of Rohan, he was Lord and Captain to me, and more. He was all the meaning of my days and all the longing of my nights. But to him, I was Second in Command of his Company."

"And so you never spoke?" Merry said.

"Look here, I will show you something." Nula said. She beckoned him to follow her a few yards along the wall, and pointed down into the city. "See that yard there? It is the yard of the washhouse. Watch a moment."

Merry looked down where she indicated, and after a moment he saw two young women come out of one of the houses, carrying a heavy basket between them.

"Those are the wash houses for this quarter." Nula said. "It is the young women who do the wash for their households, for it is a heavy task. In happier times, there are many of them."

One of the young women looked up, and seeing the two figures on the wall, nudged her companion. Merry saw how they pretended not to notice, how they stood straighter and tossed their hair - as young hobbit girls would when they knew they were observed by hobbit lads. As Rosie Cotton did when Samwise Gamgee was about.

"They think, at this distance, that I am one of the men of the Guard, and normally they would be right." Nula said. "And were Boromir standing here beside me, they would know him even at this distance, and there would be ten more girls in that courtyard before you could draw breath, no matter how dark the fear of tomorrow falls across us."

"He was the son of the Steward of the City," Merry said, "And not unfavoured."

"Oh, indeed." Nula said. "And when Boromir walked these walls, he would invariably come here, and stand here perhaps longer than was necessary. And what does that tell you about him, Meriadoc?"

"It is hardly a crime," Merry started, feeling a bit lost, and as if the normal straightforward hobbit-sense approach to matters of the heart might be out of place here, "for a man to - "

"No, it is hardly a crime." Nula said. "But look down there, Meriadoc, and then look at me, and think on the difference between us. Between them, the sight which delighted him, and me, who he did not see. And you wonder that I did not speak?"

"I’m sure -"

"Meriadoc." Nula said kindly, "You travelled with Boromir for a goodly while. Had you heard my name before you came to this city?"

"No." Merry said. "No, I’m sorry. He did not speak of you to me."

"So, then." Nula said, and was silent, and watched the east.

"Are there many women in the guard?" Merry asked after a while.

"A few. If a perian can wear the colours of the Guard, why not a woman?" Nula asked, almost smiling.

"We might be a small people," Merry said, "but we can be brave, when need be. Pippin saved Faramir, after all."

"And you struck down the King of the Nazgûl, I know." Nula said. "And we shall all, all people of Gondor, forever be grateful to Peregrin for his actions. I do not mean to mock you, Meriadoc, only to say – we might be smaller than men, we women, but we can be brave, when need be."

"Not all so small." Merry said, looking up at the broad-shouldered guard. "When I saw – the Lady Éowyn on the battlefield looked like a youth. But you – you look like a real soldier."

"I *am* a real soldier." Nula said. "Which has its advantages. And disadvantages." But what they were she did not elaborate. "Here in Gondor, we recognise that not all women are gentle, just as not all men are brave." Nula said. "The Riders of Rohan have learnt that lesson of late, I think." She looked along the wall to where Éowyn stood with Faramir, gazing south as all did in those final days. "The Lady Éowyn is fair as well as brave." she said. "It is no wonder she has moved Faramir to pity and to love. The men of Gondor have always admired a brave heart in a fair body. If Boromir was here – well, Faramir would find the lady’s attention not so easy to gain."

"What man could not love one so brave and so fair?" Merry asked, imagining he heard a slight to the Lady Éowyn in Nula’s voice.

"Oh, indeed." Nula said. "What man, indeed? See, such a form was made wear a fine robe, and be decked with jewels."

"When this is all over," Merry said, "We will all wear fine robes and be decked with jewels."

Nula smiled. "Speak for yourself, Meriadoc of the Shire. If we do see clear an end to this great war, the women of Gondor will wear their jewels, but I, as a soldier of Gondor, will wear my scars. This one here - " she touched her cheek, "I took holding a bridge to the south. And this, at the defence of Osgiliath. And this one – " Her finger indicated a thick scar that began at her neck and disappeared below the collar of the mail. "This I had dragging my Captain off the field of battle after an orc’s axe knocked him senseless. And if Mithrandir’s gambit fails I promise you I will have a few more to add to the toll before Minas Tirith goes down into flame and darkness."

But Minas Tirith did not go down to flame and darkness, and Mithrandir’s gambit did not fail. On the seventh day since the Lords of the West departed a great Eagle came from the West, crying out to the people of Gondor that the Dark Tower had been thrown down, and bidding them to sing and be glad. And the people sang in all the ways of the city, and laughed and wept together in their unlooked for joy. The days that followed were golden, and Spring and Summer joined and made revel together in the fields of Gondor, and the City made ready for the coming of the King.

There was much business for the Guard in those days, though it was not of the sort to which lately they had been used. As the tidings went out to all the parts of Gondor, from Min-Rimmon even to Pinnath Gelin and the far coast of the sea, all that could come to Minas Tirith made haste to come. The streets of the White City were resounded again to the sounds of children playing, when for many years more than just the places of the dead had deserved the name ‘The Silent Street.’ The First Company did not wake early and prepare to ride to yet another ugly skirmish on the border or by the river: they rose early and went forth into the City that strangers might see their livery and know that here was one they could ask for directions; and that children separated from their parents could come to them for aid; and that Lord Faramir might have many willing messengers to speed the preparations for the coming of the King.

Clattering down the Street of Green Doors, somewhat delayed by the necessity of restoring a strayed pony to its owner, Nula felt herself to be chill and grey, as if the shadow of fear had lifted from all the White City except for her. She had never looked for victory in Gondor’s long and hopeless struggle. All her adult life had been a long steeling of herself to spill her blood for nothing more than delaying of the end.

~And now the end has come, and it is not the end I had foreseen.~ she thought, hearing singing from the houses that she passed. ~How should I complain? I had far rather be finding lost children than ducking orc arrows. I had far rather that the people of Gondor weep with joy than in despair beneath the yoke of Sauron. And I am sworn to service in plenty and in peace as well as need and war, and if this be my service now, how shall I complain? The people of the City sing in the streets. As Meriadoc foretold, they wear fine robes and are decked with jewels and flowers. ~

And yet she was chill and grey, moving through the happy crowds, observing a joy that did not touch her. They saw her face, and politely looked away – although the children stared – and Nula felt that she appeared to them like a shadow of the war that had passed, as if they looked on her and looked upon the most horrific memories of their past.

~I have lived too long.~ she thought. ~I have outlived my purpose and my time. And now I have no choice but to turn myself to a new purpose, to whatever shall please the King. For the world has not ended, and death has not taken me.~

~Though Boromir the Brave is dead.~

She did not speak such thoughts aloud, even to those of the First Company who had remained behind when the army marched away. She had stood as their commander when Boromir rode away, and she had continued to stand so in the last days of the war. Lord Faramir had as yet made no move to remove her from this role, and so she did not speak of grief or confusion to her soldiers. They looked to her, and so for them she stood tall.

~Though Boromir the Brave is dead.~

~Do you know, can you see, from somewhere, somehow, that the White City sings, that the Tower of Ecthalion is garlanded with flowers at its tip?~

Perhaps he could. Perhaps he could, for no longer did she hear his voice at her ear, no longer did he remind her of her duty. Or perhaps it was only that there had been no words of his that she could summon to her memory to advise her in these new and different times.

So now totally bereft, Nula went here and there about the City and carried out duties that had nothing to do with swords and blood. Still each morning she assembled the First Company in the yard and drove them through their paces as sternly as their Captain ever had, and then led them running up the steep streets of the City. At the foot of the Tower she would stop, and watch as the younger and stronger of the Company ran on, up all the twisting flights of stairs to the Tower’s tips. They would return and tell of what they had seen – the crowds approaching, the fields turning green with that year’s crop, the grass returning to the battlefield. One day, Nula knew, they would return with news of the King’s approach.

She did not climb the Tower herself. She never would again. Going about the streets of the City she turned always so her shoulder was to its pearly heights, until she had almost erased it from her mind, a towering gap and darkness in her idea of the City, the very centre of her loss.

~For what should I see, if I should look? Figures going to and fro upon its tip, that are not he. And what should I see, if I did climb? He never shall come home along the roads to Minas Tirith, though I look to mountain and to sea.~

At last the day came when the army of the West returned to the City. Nula went down with the rest of the First Company and all of the Guards of the Tower and stood in her place, sword drawn, as the Guards formed a barrier across the place where the Gates had been thrown down. All in silver and in black they stood, and though none then doubted that Aragorn son of Arathorn was the King returned and that Lord Faramir would bid him enter the City and take his crown and throne, still the Guards stood as stern and grim as if the matter hung upon the blade of a knife, prepared to do all they could to prevent any pretender from entering Minas Tirith.

They were not called upon to do so. Nula stood in the sun and felt the sweat crawl down her back and listened to the fine words of the Lords on the plain before the City. They all seemed to Nula to be fair beyond the fairness of ordinary Men, and strangely akin to one another in the high nobility of their bearing. Odd to think that the serious business of these lofty beings determined the fate of kingdoms and perforce ordinary people such as herself depended. She heard the new King proclaim Mithrandir as the mover of all that had been accomplished and describe the coronation as the Mithrandir’s victory.

~And so it is.~ The White Crown was being lowered to the King’s head. ~I do most honestly doubt that Denethor or Boromir would have so meekly consented to having their final duty of office performed by the Grey Pilgrim. But they are gone: their time is done. No more will the Stewards of Minas Tirith rule in the place of the King, but beneath him. Denethor ever feared that Mithrandir was plotting to supplant him, and he was right, even if he ascribed to Mithrandir ill-intentions the wizard did not have.~

It was hot in the sun. The ends of her hair were damp with sweat and stuck to her forehead and her cheeks. ~The ceremonial duties of peace give one the leisure to consider such minor irritations.~ Time was she would have lain all day in the sun waiting for the opportunity to spring an ambush and noticed nothing but the crawling tension on her skin. Now she was painfully conscious that there was a blister on her left heel and that her bladder was full. She blinked sweat from her eyes and so missed the moment when the crown first touched the King’s head, but she saw King Elessar arise, tall as the sea-kings of old, taller than all who were near him, seeming both ancient as all the days that had been and yet in the full flower of his manhood. Wise he seemed, and strong, and there was a light about him.

Nula could not but recognise him as her King. It almost seemed presumptuous of her to do so, for what could this figure out of myth and story care for her allegiance, for her duty or her love? He was unassailable – and unapproachable. It was said he had come through the battle at Minas Tirith unscathed because none of the army of Mordor had been able to even look upon him in his deadly wrath, and Nula could well believe it.

~Oh, Boromir, my Captain, such standards you set yourself. I thought you high beyond all our measure, but I see now that our measure was not the mark you aimed for. Was that why you were known to be so easy in converse with your soldiers, because our admiration eased the sting of your dissatisfaction with yourself? Or did you find in our esteem the strength to face your father’s aged spite?~

~Oh, my Captain, now I understand.~

"Behold the King!" cried Faramir, and King Elessar came to the barrier and it was thrust away, and Nula with the other Guards sheathed their swords and stood aside, then formed themselves into the honour guard of their King. And so King Elessar came to the Citadel and entered in.

The Second Company, Faramir’s Company, stayed about him in the Hall of Kings, but with their ceremonial duties discharged the other Guards were free to joint he celebrations of the City, and most did so. Nula passed others of her Company, their livery and armour set aside, revelling with the citizens. Still in black and silver she passed among the crowds, and thinking she was on official business none stopped or hindered her.

So unseeing and unseen she came at last again to the citadel, where the harpers of Dol Amroth played gay tunes and those assembled danced. She leaned upon a pillar and watched them for a while, the skirts of the women swirling in blue and green and deepest rose, the men in fine tunics, passing back and forth beneath the flaring torches on the walls.

There had been a feast day once, not so grand as this but a feast day nonetheless, such a day as when all the people of the city put on their finery. Nula had been three years in the City and eighteen months in Boromir’s Company. There had not been a feast-day since she had come there, ~though no doubt there will be many now~ and she had put on a gown and ribbons such as she had worn to dances in the village of her youth, such as the women of the city wear for festivities. Her hair had still been long in those days, and she had loosed it from the battle-braids about her head and let it fall around her shoulders and very fair she had thought herself, even if her right hand bore the many fine scars that were the family resemblance of those who carried swords and she was broader in the shoulders and thinner in the hips than men were said to like.

Going up and down the rows of the dance she found herself joining hands with Boromir, who nodded politely with her, and then faltered in his steps.

"What by the Seven Gates are you doing dressed like a woman?" he asked her, all amazed.

"I am a woman, Captain." she had said, and smiled in a way she thought was sweet. It was before Blacknose kicked her in the face and took sweetness forever from it.

"No, I know, I mean – " They turned, faced apart, faced together. Just before the pattern of the dance took her away from him, Boromir said:

"You aren’t going to take up embroidery and hunting for a husband, I hope?"

~And thus was the choice presented to me,~ Nula thought. ~And thus I made it.~

"Is there trouble?"

Nula turned and saw that Faramir had come up beside her as she stood in thought.

"No, my Lord, not that I know of."

"I thought, seeing you come still on duty, that there might be some matter requiring the Guard’s attention." Faramir said.

"Forgive me, my Lord. I should not be here."

"Forgive me, Nula, I should not have thought you would hang back, tardy in bringing news. When King Elessar turns his mind to the matters of the Guard, I will recommend to him that you be confirmed as Captain of the First Company."

"Such an honour is beyond me." Nula said after a moment’s pause.

"I disagree. It is the duty you have done, in fact if not in name, since my brother departed."

"I cannot be Captain of Boromir’s Company, my Lord." Nula said.

"Boromir is dead." Faramir said, gently, for he was a gentle man for all his prowess at war. "The Company must have a Captain. I know that soldiers have an especial grief when one who commands them falls, but they cannot go forever leaderless in honour of their fallen Captain. Boromir was your Captain, but Boromir is dead."

"I know it, my Lord." Nula said. "I know that he is dead. You need not remind me of it. And if it please you, do not speak of my especial grief."

"Of all his Company you were the closest." Faramir said. "Second in Command, by his side in battle. Often after we had been in council with my father I would watch him hasten down the steps of the Citadel to where you waited for him, and I would see your heads bent together in deep converse. There is no shame in grieving for him. You do him honour with your tears, as I do with mine."

"You weep for him." Nula said. "You weep for him, I have seen you. And yet, is there not a whispering in your heart that tells you it is better so? Better that he fell before came the time when he must have yielded to the King? For what then would the man who asked as a boy how many hundred of years it took for a Steward to become a King, what then would he have done? Never born to follow, never made to rule?"

"You are distressed." Faramir said. "I will leave you."

Reckless in her anger, Nula laid her hand on his arm and stayed him. "Let me tell you a tale, my Lord."

"Nula –"

"Do you bid me to be silent? For if you do so I must obey, bound by my oath. Do you bid me to silence, my Lord?"

"No." he said. "Nor do I bid you to speech."

"Then I shall speak at my own pleasure." Nula said. "I will tell you the tale of two brothers, my Lord, two brothers who had a most terrible father. Perhaps this tale is familiar to you."

"I think it is." Faramir said.

"This father could bend weaker men to his will, and bind them to his purpose, with the fierce glare of his eye and the commanding tone of his voice." Nula said, her calm and measured tone belying the depth of her rage. "His eldest son did not possess such strength as would have enabled him to contend with the old man, but his younger son did. And the old man said ever to the eldest, how unlucky I am, that the son fit to be my heir is my youngest, and how sad the fate of my people that when I am gone they shall be ruled by one such as you. And ever strove the elder son to be worthy of his position as his father’s heir, but never could he approach the strength of his younger brother. Is this not a sad tale, Lord Faramir?"

"It is."

"And it becomes sadder still. For even as the elder brother strove to match his sibling," Nula said, "never did his care for his younger brother weary. And indeed the two brothers swore an oath that they should be loyal to one another, whatever should befall them. And neither brother broke that oath."

"But what befell them," Faramir said, and his eyes shone with unshed tears, "what befell them was hard indeed."

"Oh, yes, my Lord, it was. For the terrible old man began to fail in his reason, and he urged his sons to thoughts and plans that were poisoned by jealousy and despair. The youngest son stood forth against his father, and in rage the father sent him away. The elder, though, could not resist his father’s will. And perhaps he saw in yielding a way to at last surpass his brother in his father’s affection, or perhaps his loyalty to his father was, pure and simple, the cause. But whatever the reason, he followed his father down the twisted paths of despair and suspicion, and the old man bound him ever closer, and the time came when the elder brother could not see his duty save through the prism of his father’s madness. His father, meanwhile, could no longer see his sons clearly, and so bedevilled by his fears was he that he allowed his elder, *loyal* - or so he saw it - *loyal* son to take on a task beyond him. When the elder brother fell, all saw his failure as the sum and total of his character, a good man, they said, but weak. A great grief that he fell, but at least he died with honour before he might have disgraced himself further. And they wept. And who should say which tears were sorrow and which were guilt?"

"I know he was your Captain," Faramir said, "and so you admired him greatly, but these are matters about which you know little. Do not ascribe to those higher than yourself motives you do not understand."

"Oh, but my tale is not yet done. A sad tale, it has been, but sadder still it grows. Unless you bid me *now* be silent? No?" The dancers swirled across the floor and the music spilled sweetly through the air, but to Nula it was all a dream. She alone, she and Faramir, were real and solid. "You say there are matters and motives I do not understand. I am sure that is true, for the doings of the high and great are beyond the ken of a simple soldier like myself. But remember that there is one figure in my story who is not high nor great. If he had been, the tale would be quite different. But he was not, though many thought him so, having little to compare him to. This man, this elder brother, did not carry the blood that gave his father and his brother such fierce wills and such deep minds. He was a good man, but he was a man. Still, it was long and long before he yielded to his father’s madness. Well beyond the day his brother was excluded from his father’s counsel for open disagreement this good man did try, by gentle persuasion, by agreement and demur, to bring his father back to the way of reason. Long he strove. For years he breathed the poison of his father’s despair, when clearer air might have saved him, for so he saw his duty to his people. And thus by love and duty he was undone. What say you, my Lord? Is this not a sad ending to a sorry tale? No great story of high triumph and despair, such as the minstrels sing, it is true. Only a small tale, not fitting for the ears of the great. But still, is it not a story such as to make the very stones weep?"

"It is." Faramir said, and Nula was pleased in her anger to see the tears course openly down his face. "A tale that haunts me on the edge of sleep. A tale, as you say, to draw tears of pity from even the hardest heart."

"So you do him your honour with your tears, my lord." Nula said. "But do not think I do him honour with mine. For I am a soldier of Gondor, my Lord, and so I do not weep, no, not even for Boromir the Brave."

"Many soldiers of Gondor have wept in recent times." Faramir said. "If your Steward may do so, then so may you."

"No, my Lord." Nula said. "For he who gave me that command can never come again to release me from it. Not from mountain will he come, nor from sea, nor on the road from Rohan. I failed his service at the last, my Lord, though it was by his order that I did. I will not now command his Company, as if he could be so easily replaced. And I will not weep, as though his instruction could be so easily forgot."

In the days that followed the King sat on his throne in the Hall of Kings and pronounced his judgements. And Nula of the Guard went to King Elessar, and asked to be relieved of her oath to Gondor, that she might leave the Guard and go elsewhere.

And King Elessar said to her, "Wherefore do you seek to leave your duties before they are fulfilled? For the War may be over, but we still have need for those who can wield swords and defend the weak against harm. You have fought bravely to bring about this peace. Why now do you turn away from defending it?"

And Nula said only, "My King, my heart is sore and my body weary. Give me leave to go, for no reason other than that I desire it."

"I will give you such leave as you request if you require it of me one year and one day from today," the King replied. "Until that time, you will serve in the Guard."

For he saw in her a grief that the ending of the War had not healed, and that the fall of the Enemy had not lightened, and it was his thought that when time had eased the first pangs of her hurt Nula would reconsider.

"I am obedient to your commands, my King," Nula said, and she did so serve in the Guard for that next year, and so the chronicles record. But as to what became of her when that year was over, that is not recorded.

There are some who say that she left the Guard and went forth from the city to some quiet place, and dwelt out her days there in peace. There are some who say that she served out the span of her days in the Guard in Minas Tirith with honour and renown, becoming finally Castellan of that fine city. There are others still who say she went forth from the city and into the strange lands to the south, and had many adventures and saw many things before returning to her country laden with great wealth. And these are but three of the many tales that are told of her fate.

All the stories that are told of Nula in the days beyond the War against the Enemy have some fine and happy end, for is it not the way of us all to seek such an ending to tale that has had more than its fair measure of grief? And some one of these stories may be true, for the world is a wide place and many things happen within it. But for certainty, only two things are known of Nula and what became of her after there was once more a King in Gondor.

The first is that she was of the Children of Men, and born to die. So therefore she did so die, and passed beyond the circles of this world. Some say there is more beyond them than memory, but how Nula of Gondor passed there, and when, and what she found there, none can tell.

The other is that she was a woman of duty and her word. And so we may know for sure and certain that whatever became of her, whatever befell her, whatever beset her - as a soldier of Gondor, she did not weep.

THE END

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Like it? Loathe it? Let me know at gilshandros@hotmail.com

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This is an incomplete list of passages from Tolkien I have adapted, amended, paraphrased or adopted in this work.

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"He was not seen again in Minas Tirith, standing as he used to stand on the White Tower in the morning"

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"They will look for him from the White Tower but he will not return from mountain or from sea."

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"Gondor has no King. Gondor needs no king."

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"He ceased, but at once Boromir stood up, tall an proud, before them. ‘Give me leave, Master Elrond,’ said he, ‘first to say more of Gondor; for verily from the land of Gondor I am come, And it would be well for all to know what passes there. For few, I deem , know of our deeds, and therefore guess little of their peril, if we should fail at last.

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‘Believe not that in the land of Gondor the blood of Numenor is spent, nor all its pride and dignity forgotten. By our valour the wild folk of the East are still restrained, and the terror of Morgul kept at bay; and thus alone are peace and freedom maintained in the lands behind us, bulwark of the West. ... I was in the company that held the bridge, until it was cast down behind us. Four only were saved by swimming: my brother and myself and two others. But still we fight on, holding all the west shores of Anduin; and those who shelter behind us give us praise, if ever they hear our name : much praise but little help. Only from Rohan now will any men ride to us when we call. "

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"The Men of Gondor are valiant, and they will never submit; but they may be beaten down."

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"For though we do not ask for aid, we need it. It would comfort us to know that others fought also with all the means that they have."

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During Faramir’s conversation with Frodo, he cries out: "Boromir, O Boromir! What did she say to you, the Lady that dies not? What did she see? What woke in your heart then? Why went you ever to Laurellindorenan, and came not by your own road, upon the horses of Rohan riding home in the morning?"

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Faramir also says:

"How many hundreds of years needs it to make a steward a king, if the king returns not?" he asked. "Few years, maybe, I other places of less royalty," my father answered. "In Gondor ten thousand years would not suffice." Alas! poor Boromir. Does that not tell you something of him?"

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"Mithrandir never spoke to us of what was to be, not did he reveal his purposes." said Faramir

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Faramir says "For as the Rohirrim do, we now love war and valour as things good in themselves , both a sport and an end; and though we still hold that a warrior should have more skills and knowledge than only the craft o weapons and slaying , we esteem a warrior, nonetheless, above men of other crafts. Such is the need of our days. So even was my brother, Boromir: a man of prowess, and for that he was accounted the best ma in Gondor. And very valiant indeed he was: no heir of Minas Tirith has for long years been so hardy in toil, so onward in battle, or blow a mightier note on the Great Horn."

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"Merry crawled on all fours like a dazed beast, and such a horror was on him that he was blind and sick."

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Ioreth (After Faramir has referred to the King in the houses of healing) "King! Did you hear that? What did I say? The hands of a healer, I said."

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Pippin thinks before the final battle: "We might die together, Merry and I, and since die we must, why not?"

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After the victory : "The days that followed were golden, and Spring and Summer joined and made revel together in the fields of Gondor. ... and the City made ready for the coming of the King."

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"for the tidings had gone out into all the parts of Gondor, from Min-Rimmon even to Pinnath Gelin and the far coasts of the sea; and all that could come to the City made haste to come. And the City was filled again with women and fair children that returned to their homes laden with flowers…"

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"Tall as the sea-kings of old, he stood above all that were near; ancient of days he seemed and yet in the flower of manhood; and wisdom sat upon his brow, and strength and healing were in his hands, and a light was about him."