b2mem | "The Way to the River" by Aliana (Reply)

B2MeM Challenge: Out of the Dust - Book Titles
Market Day - Economy
The Poisons - Julio Cortazar - Magic and Real
March 2nd - Second Battle of the Fords of Isen - March 3019, TA
Childhood Sweethearts - Relationship
"So here's to drinks in the dark at the end of my road" - Florence and the Machine - Song Lyrics *whew*
Format: Drabble sequence
Genre: Drama
Rating: Teen
Warnings: Some battle violence
Characters: Grimbold, Original Characters
Pairings: None
Summary: Sometimes you have to count a retreat as a victory.

The Way to the River

The way to the river leads past the names of
Ash the sleeves the wreaths of hinges
Through the song of the bandage vendor

I lay your name by my voice
As I go

“The Way to the River,” W.S. Merwin

One.

Grimbold knows a death-wished man when he sees one. The boy’s got the posture of defeat: shoulders hunched, head bent at a mourner’s angle. When he raises his eyes, his expression is a closed door.

And why not? Grimbold thinks. The lad’s a last remnant, pulled half-alive from the wreckage of his Westfold village. More and more, Grimbold must fill out his ranks with these survivors culled from the splinters of other éoreds, ruined smoking towns. The Westmark ebbs strength; he mustn’t pretend otherwise.

The boy stares into the river, wondering if the current is fast enough to take him.

Two.

The way to the river leads past the late
Doors and the games of the children born looking backwards
They play that they are broken glass
The numbers wait in the halls and the clouds
Call
From windows
They play that they are old they are putting the horizon
Into baskets they are escaping they are
Hiding

I step over the sleepers the fires the calendars
My voice turns to you

Once upon a time, he had not been a survivor, a last one. He’d walked with the gait of an ordinary man, neither hesitant nor swift. He stares into the water now, and remembers his girl.

A weaver’s daughter, she’d smelled of sun-warmed wool. He remembers her as a child, standing at her father’s market-stall—skeins of string in her arms, a bolt of cloth over her shoulder. Patient even then. He’d been a child, too; had grinned stupidly at her, then ducked away, blushing.

But she’d called to him, wouldn’t let him go. He went to her, this girl.

Three.

I go past the juggler’s condemned building the hollow
Windows gallery
Of invisible presidents the same motion in them all
In a parked cab by the sealed wall the hats are playing
Sort of poker with somebody’s

Old snapshots game I don’t understand they lose
The rivers one
After the other I begin to know where I am
I am home

The onslaught is sudden, but not unexpected, White Hand banners rearing over the horizon as something from a nightmare.

And where now is Elfhelm? Grimbold wonders. For they are badly outmassed. Screams and groans, spearheads against mail; the Isen is as a frayed rope-end, a loosened braid, and ever must it run red with the blood of the Mark. Of the Westfold. He thinks of Théodred not a fortnight ago, digging in to his last breath.

Grimbold’s boots sink into mud. Not yet, he thinks. And though it tears at his heart, he calls for his men to fall back.

Four.

Be here the flies from the house of the mapmaker
Walk on our letters I can tell
And the days hang medals between us
I have lit our room with a glove of yours be
Here I turn
To your name and the hour remembers
Its one word
Now

The boy stands in the fray—for the moment fear has cracked the shell of his numb grief. The Uruks smell of panic; he remembers this well. His father taught him the bow, but the spear is uneasy in his grip, and yet he goes forward all the same.

It seemed the ashes of his village would never cool. From then on, everything’s been tainted: his home, the Westfold, pasture and wheat-fields, the beating heart of Rohan—now it courses poison, sure as the river carves its way beside the mountains. Bitter as blood in his mouth.

They fall back.

Five.

Be here what can we
Do for the dead the footsteps full of money
I offer you what I have my
Poverty

The White Hand’s reached across the Fords; Grimbold’s men retreat, their backs to their camp, spear-points bristling outward in a desperate ring. His second goes down, screaming—naught to be done for it. Riders on hellish wolf-mounts have broken through, yellow teeth bared, coarse fur dripping cold Isen-water.

Strange, these splinters of memory that come to him in battle: he recalls his second, now, his friend—tankard hoisted in the firelight.

If this is the end, ‘tis meet that their road should end at this river-bank. To you, my brother, Grimbold thinks, and drinks deep the iron-savor of the moment.

Six.

To the city of wires I have brought home a handful
Of water I walk slowly
In front of me they are building the empty
Ages I see them reflected not for long
Be here I am no longer ashamed of time it is too brief its hands
Have no names
I have passed it I know

Around the camp, the Rohirrim’s shield-wall holds. Uruks and Dunlendings rage and froth, blades rattling, breath rasping, but are kept at bay.

They’ll not be kept at bay forever.

And the boy thinks of his girl, tall and strong, walking towards him, a basket over her arm. She was nowhere to be found in the ruins; nothing left that he could see. He wonders at death, again, wonders if he could embrace it as a lover if it came to that.

He thinks of her voice, the way her sentences were music. She could calm restive horses with her words.

Seven.

Oh Necessity you with the face you with
All the faces

A gamble’s their only hope. Grimbold hears stark tallies: perhaps half their men fallen, no sign of Elfhelm.

“You, to horse! Wait for my word.” Grimbold takes reins in his hands, himself. He sees the boy, the death-wished lad.

“Be mounted,” he says, jerking his head towards the mare he leads. A spear’s a spear, death-wished or no; this boy may not be so foolhardy in the saddle as he might on foot.

“I—”

“Now.”

The boy obeys. As he moves to marshal the next group, Grimbold can see him at the edge of his vision, soothing the animal.

Eight.

This is written on the back of everything

But we
Will read it together

“Forth Éorlingas!”

Grimbold’s men break free. Hooves pound, shields glint—the rush of motion is theirs again: one group of riders goes north, the other south. Men on foot escape in their churning wake. For the moment, at least, they have risen from the dust of their defeat.

The boy’s horse is strong beneath him. He thinks of a girl in a market stall, the taste of ashes in his mouth.

Grimbold will fall on the Pelennor, but the boy will survive. And should the man’s name come up after that, he will say: The man who saved my life.

Author's Notes: All of the italicized text comes (in sequence) from W.S. Merwin's "The Way to the River," which can be found in uninterrupted form here.

The young man in this story originally appears in this other story I wrote, in case you'd like to know what happens to him afterwards.