b2mem | War Stories, by Rhymer (Reply)

B2MeM Challenge: Middle-Earth marketplace 2015: Gondor stall prompt for something playing with Aragorn's multiple identities.
Format: Short story
Genre: Gen, character study, friendship
Rating: PG (references to war, but nothing graphic)
Warnings: None
Characters: Original character, Aragorn
Pairings: None

Summary: An old soldier waits for his captain to return. Surely he will return to fight for Gondor in her time of greatest need! But that time comes and passes, and Thorongil does not come. But then there is a knock at the door…

The old men were holding court again, hoarding glory as dwarves hoarded rubies. Battles were enacted with imaginary swords, forcing tankards to be snatched out of harm's way. Old campaigns were traced in beer; painted in white froth that faded before the words could fade. Sleeves were rolled up, displaying small scars that their bearers claimed came from enemy swords.

"And then I killed it, a quick slash like this. My captain said he had never seen the like."

"Bigger than a bear, he was, and thrice as fierce, but I stood before him undaunted."

Lies, of course. They were all lies. The air was so thick with lies that Hithon could barely breathe.

He said nothing, though. He seldom did. He had positioned himself carefully, a habit so ingrained that he no longer thought about it. Eyes on the room, eyes on the door, back to the wall. Clear path to the way out. Space at his right side to draw his sword.

But he no longer wore his sword. Great lords, old in years and rich in gold, hung their pristine swords on the wall and displayed them as trophies. Old men who had never fought in earnest turned swords into stories and wielded them to make younger men gasp. Old soldiers not worthy of the name were proud of the dents that marred their weapons, displaying them as glorious battle scars.

Hithon's sword was safe at home, carefully wrapped and cleaned often. Any battle scars it had gathered had been smoothed away. There was no place on his wall for trophies. The scars on his skin – and there were many – were hidden beneath his clothes. He did not deliberately hide them, but neither did he flaunt them like a badge.

The lies came faster, deepening as the evening drew on. Not just rubies now, but sapphires and emeralds.

"We went in like this, and I was at the front, of course. I killed eight of them, and afterwards, the Lord Steward said…"

"Ah, if only we were twenty years younger, me and the lads, we'd send these monsters packing."

Lies. The hollow lies of men who thought that glory was something worth seeking for its own sake. Hithon might have thought that once, briefly, when he was a young man, burning with the arrogance of youth.

He had learnt better.

No, he had been taught better.

They seldom noticed him. The younger men despised him a little, he thought: the only greybeard not to regale the company with tales of his feats. Not that it mattered. Not that any of it mattered. Hithon knew how to move silently and how to pass unseen; he had learnt from the best. In the tavern, the young men gasped at the old men's stories, but when, arm in arm, they went swaying home, they were jaunty and mocking, sure that their skills were far greater than those of the puny old men. "When father says I'm old enough… " "The enemies I'll kill!" "And then Lord Boromir will clap me on the shoulder and say…"

They seldom noticed Hithon in the tavern, neither the old men nor the young. Only occasionally did he draw their notice, although he had lived amongst them in the Harlond for nigh on thirty years.

"What about you, Hithon? No daring feats to tell us about? No stories? "

He shook his head. "No stories."

Oh so many stories! But none that he would tell.

Their laughter was mocking. "You must be… what? Three score years, or thereabouts?" He was more than that by a dozen years, but he did not tell them. "Gondor has been at war for as long as any of us can remember. Surely you fought." A narrowing of the eyes. "Or did you…?"

"I served," he said; just that.

In whose company, then, they asked him. Where did he fight? What great deeds did he perform?

"I served," he said, pressing his hand on the table, palm downwards and soft.

It happened every few months, the speculation. He was a liar. He was a coward. If he had truly fought, where were the war stories? People can become anything they like in their own stories, but he had never told tales to make himself anything at all. So that was what he was: just nothing.

He let them say it. Words could not hurt him. He took a sip of his drink, merely letting the beer touch his lips. It tasted of memories. They had drunk here the night before…

No, he thought. He said nothing.

Once, only once, did he say more, and that was when a stranger frowned at him, and said, "I think I remember you. You stood at the right hand of Captain Thorongil…"

An air of unreality fell over him. Everything faded. Voices jabbered, but they were as distant as a dream. He clutched his tankard, clinging to it like a drowning man to a rope.

"Thorongil!" cried a young man, a foolish man, his voice cutting through the clouds. "Wasn't he a traitor to Lord Denethor, a coward who abandoned--"

Hithon toppled the table and was upon on the boy an instant, gripping his throat, spitting words at his face, quiet, but hard and cold as pebbles.

******

East Osgiliath had fallen, and Lord Boromir had left them, chasing a dream into the perilous north. The Harlond was emptying. It was outside the protection of the Rammas Echor, and enemies prowled unchecked on the far side of the river. The women and children were leaving, seeking places that promised more safety, but with them went the old men, the old men who had filled the taverns with their proud boasts.

"Yet you remain."

Hithon did not look up. He had sensed the man's approach, of course; it was decades since anybody had been able to surprise him. Raevon, landlord of The Crown and Anchor, crumbling tavern of the waterfront. "Of course I do," Hithon merely said.

He was sitting by the river, on an empty quay that had once been thronged with people. Now grass grew through cracks in the stonework, and the mooring posts were covered with rust. He had come here for years to sit and think, gazing endlessly out at the lands beyond the Anduin.

"And so do I, of course." Raevon gave a wry smile. "As the old men and the families leave, guardsmen come to take their place. The Harlond mustn't fall. The quays must be protected for the supplies to come in, although few now come by boat." He shrugged. "And guardsmen drink more than women and children."

Hithon chuckled. "They do that."

They sat together in silence for a long while, as the river drifted slowly past them towards the distant sea. After the fall of Osgiliath, horribly, there had been bodies, but now there was only grass and leaves.

"I remember him, you know," Raevon said suddenly. "Thorongil." When Hithon looked at him sharply, he flapped a hand. "I didn't know him, of course. I was just a boy. But I remember how much we all loved him. Were you really his right hand man?"

Hithon stayed very still. He let out a slow breath. "I suppose I was," he said, "for a little while."

Reaching out, Raevon plucked a blade of grass and played with it, twisting it between his fingers. "I can believe that, I think." He snapped the grass suddenly, and cast both halves into the river. "The others don't. Why would a man who was once the right hand of a great captain spend the last thirty years living as a nobody in the Harlond? Some think you're lying."

"I made no claims," Hithon pointed out. "They were made for me." He could have said more – sharp words about who the true liars were – but he did not.

"But others," Raevon said, "jump on the tale as a juicy morsel of scandal. You were disgraced, they say. You committed some dreadful crime and were stripped of your sword and sent here to eke out the rest of your life on the waterfront."

Hithon said nothing. What did it matter?"

Eventually Raevon sighed, giving up his attempt to goad Hithon into revealing more. "But Thorongil… It was a strange thing, that. For a few years, we all loved him. For a few years more, we mourned him, and then… then we all stopped talking about him, and now the young men have never heard of him. But for a few years, he was going to save Gondor."

"He did save Gondor," Hithon corrected him, remembering the quays of Umbar, the bloodshed, the burning ships.

Raevon raised both hands placatingly, and Hithon realised how fiercely he had spoken; how ferocious he still looked. He took a deep breath, in and out again, and then another.

"He did save Gondor," he said quietly, and then walked away, and left us with this.

******

Once upon a time, Hithon thought that he had seen the fall of Númenor in a dream. He had awakened awed and desolate, and for months he had carried around the image of a vast wave crashing down on towers and houses.

Slowly, though, the memory had changed. Those exotic towers and houses became the familiar towers of Gondor. The wave that towered above them, growing higher with every year, was not wrought of water, but of the malice of Mordor. Every year it grew stronger. Every year, the towers beneath it seemed more frail.

When the wave came crashing down, it fell swiftly. Osgiliath was overrun, and the Rammas Echor breached. With no-one left to stop them, the forces of Mordor crossed the river, and the Harlond fell. A great battle was fought on the fields of Pelennor, and…

The Harlond fell.

Hithon was there until the end. He served in no company, and thirty years had passed since he had been released from his oaths, but just before the wave broke, he went to the captain of the guardsmen who were defending the Harlond, and offered him his sword. The captain nodded once, briskly, and after that…

After that, just broken images. Men dying around him. The feel of the sword in his hand, as familiar as breathing. Orcs on the boats falling with arrows in their chests, but enough boats following, too many to stop. The look on the captain's face as he fell beneath three foes. Fighting side by side with a young guardsman, saving his life and being saved by him in a return. "Too many," the guardsman gasped, words tearing from his throat like sobs. "Yes," Hithon said, "but we will stop as many as we can, even if we…" But then the tide of battle tore them apart, and the time for talking was gone.

Then, later – a moment? A lifetime? – he joined the desperate retreat to the guard house. He helped bar the door. He joined the few, too few, who protected the barred windows. Bow strings twanged from the upper storeys.

They… endured. Not far away, the greatest battle of their age raged upon the Pelennor, but they did not know it. When the cry went up – "The Corsairs! The Corsairs are coming!" – he was half-dragging a wounded man from the window. His hands trembled as he bound the man's wound. Forty years, he thought. Forty more years we won for them, but it was not enough.

Part of him had always known that it would end like this. Part of him had never come home from the quays of Umbar, and this, at last, was his end.

******

His house was still standing. Hithon pushed the door gently, and chuckled quietly to himself when he found it still locked. When the wave had crashed over the Harlond, the waters had parted, leaving his own meagre lodging intact. From the cries and the weeping, he knew it that some of his neighbours had been less fortunate.

He opened the door; went in, and stood for a while with his head bent.

He could barely remember it, the hour in which the world had changed. When the royal banner of Gondor had unfolded on the leading ship, he had been bloodstained to his elbows, saving a man's life. The new king's armies had surged through the Harlond, cleansing it of enemies, and then had swept onwards, leaving only a few behind to guard the quays.

A wave, Hithon thought, but of a different kind.

It was only afterwards that he had realised that he was wounded. It was only afterwards that he had slumped to the ground, only to be held up by a man he realised later was Raevon. "Hush," Raevon said, "let us leave this to the warriors now," and the next thing Hithon knew, he was in Minas Tirith, waking up on a makeshift pallet on the floor of an inn, and Gondor had a king again, although perhaps only for a little while.

"He is a healer," Raevon said, "or so they say. He walked the streets in that grey cloak of his and tended, oh, a hundred people or more."

"Did he heal…?" Hithon's voice was raw. He cleared his throat, but decided not to try again.

"No." Raevon shook his head. "Not you. I saw him, though. He looked…" He frowned. "…not at all like a king, at first, but then, all of a sudden... he did. "

Hithon said nothing.

Within hours, he was helping the healers tend to the rest of the wounded, using skills he had learnt from Thorongil so many years ago. Later, he walked the empty streets of Minas Tirith. He almost reported to the nearest guardhouse and asked to be set to work, but something stopped him. The new king had ridden to the Black Gate to challenge Sauron himself. If he failed, then all the free peoples of the world would be drowned beneath the wave. If that came to pass, what difference would one sword make, held in an old man's hand?

None, he thought, but still he would wield it. And he would make more of a difference in the Harlond, he thought, because it was a place he knew. The Harlond had no walls to surround it. The Harlond had no Great Gate.

Why did the others return? As Hithon had made his way across the devastated fields, he had done so alongside families with carts: women, children… yes, and old men. The old men were returning, but now they were silent, wondering what ruin had been made of their homes while they were away.

"Why have they come back?" Hithon wondered aloud to the empty room.

He caught a quick glimpse of himself, a fractured reflection in a tarnished mirror. "Because if the world is coming to an end, they want their last days to be spent at home."

Turning, he went outside again. "I have space," he shouted in a voice that had once carried across battlefields. "If you need a roof for the night, you can stay with me, and tomorrow… Tomorrow we will start rebuilding."

******

Hithon had stayed away from the new king's crowning. He talked more now, and when asked, he said it was because he was too busy with the rebuilding. But it seemed that by surviving the great wave, he had attained a degree of clarity. He was honest with himself, perhaps more than he had been for years.

It would hurt to see the dawning of a new age that has come too late for me.

No, more than that. Worse than that.

It would hurt to see this stranger crowned, when once I hoped…

No, not as bad as that; not quite. Not outright treason, but…

Hithon had called his captain 'my lord' on the journey home from Umbar, a title which he deserved but had no right to. He would have followed Thorongil anywhere. All of them would; would have carved out their hearts and given them to him on a platter had he but asked. None of them said it out loud, either then or afterwards, but they all wondered if Thorongil, not Denethor, would be a better heir to Gondor. When battles went against them, when lands were lost, every time they wondered, would this have happened if Thorongil ruled in place of Denethor?

And so he stayed in the Harlond, and he spent those hours sitting in his usual place on the quay, looking out at the ships and the distant lands beyond them.

He knew why he had spent so many long hours of his life sitting here, gazing out at the eastern shore. He knew why he had chosen to settle in Harlond, instead of all the many other places he could have lived.

Useless, he thought. I have lost so many years. Thorongil won us forty more years, and what have I done with them?

He sighed. There was no time for this! Standing up, he rubbed his hands together briskly, and set to work.

******

It happened so gradually that Hithon did not notice it. It started, he thought, with a few short exchanges in the street. Then a few questions came his way, just little things. He spent most his time outside, his sleeves rolled up, his hands often dirty. He was seldom alone, and he spoke more than he had spoken in years. For years, people had barely noticed him as he walked amongst them, but now they sought him out.

"Hithon, what shall we do about…?"

"Ask Hithon. He'll know."

It was dusk when he reached home one day shortly before midsummer. Closing the door, he leant back against it, letting out a slow breath. Then he pushed himself away, and went towards the mantelpiece to light a lantern.

The knock came before he had done so. Another question, he thought, but although he had changed in the last few months, some things could never change. He was an old soldier, taught by the best, and so before opening the door, he pressed his eye to the knothole in the wood and looked to see who had come for him.

Hithon stopped breathing. Dead, then. He closed his eyes. Of course.

Never had a son looked more like his father! And why would Thorongil's son seek out Hithon if Thorongil still lived and could have come himself? Thorongil had remembered him; had, perhaps, sent a message for him on his death bed.

Or perhaps not on his deathbed after all. If a father could not travel himself, for whatever reason, he might send his son to deliver a message. He could be…

No. He let out a breath. Dead. He had known it for months, really. For years, he had lived with the belief that Thorongil would return before the wave came crashing down. For years, he had lived with the hope that Thorongil would save them. But the wave had fallen, and Thorongil had not come. The war was won, but it was a stranger who had won it. It had been a fool's hope all along, and for months he had known it. That was why…

No. He opened his eyes; pressed his hand against the grain of the door. One last look, one last breath, before he raised the latch to let in this stranger who wore a face from the past. But as he did so, Thorongil's son looked directly at him through the knot-hole, and smiled.

The smile pierced him like an arrow in the heart. His hand fumbled, slipping on the latch. It cannot be… It can't…

The door opened. "Hithon," said his captain, and it was, it was.

"How…?" His mouth was dry. He sagged, held up only by his grip on the door. "You look…" The same, he might have said, but it was not true. Not the same, not quite. There were more lines about Thorongil's eyes, true, but there was a light in them that made him look, if anything, almost younger.

His captain smiled. "I come from a long-lived race. And it seems that you, too, have a drop of Númenorean blood in your veins."

"On the wrong side of the blanket," Hithon said, "and a long time ago. But…" He managed to step away from the door. "Come in, captain. Come in. Do you…?" He turned his face away, and pressed his hand against it, seeking calm. For years, he had been a certain kind of man, and now he felt undone. He had always hoarded words so carefully, and now he struggled for words like a child.

"Would you like a drink?" he asked his captain. "Beer, or..?"

"Beer," said his captain. "It will be quite like old times."

Raevon had given Hithon a dozen corked bottles as thanks for his help in repairing the inn. Hithon grabbed one now. His hands trembled as they worked at the cork. The beer splashed, spilling down the outside of the tankard and onto the table.

"Yes," he said, as he handed the tankard over. "Quite like old times." His eyes pricked. He wondered if he was close to weeping.

Thorongil took the beer, but did not sit, not until Hithon invited him. When he did so, he settled himself comfortably, stretching out his long legs. He looked more like himself than ever: Captain Thorongil sitting down for a well-earned rest after a hard campaign.

Why did you leave us? Hithon wanted to shout. He stoppered the words with a mouthful of beer. Why didn't you come back?

"So," he said, and he managed a smile as he said it, "where did you go?" Another sip. "After you left?" After you left us.

"To the Land of Shadow, at first," Thorongil said, "in search of some answers. Then I went to Lothlórien--"

"To the elves of the Golden Wood?" Hithon sat bolt upright. "To their Lady? But they--" He broke off. People painted the elves as perilous, but elves had fought on the Pelennor, he remembered, including two that this new king counted as kin.

"Yes." Thorongil nodded, doubtless fully aware of what Hithon had almost said. "And then I went to the north, to my own people."

It hurt far more than it ought to have done. Hithon looked down, turning his face away from the dwindling light. Thorongil had always been such a gifted reader of men. "Your own people?" he asked.

"The Dúnedain of the North," Thorongil said.

Of course. He must have come down with the king, then. Hithon had heard that the king's kinsmen wore grey cloaks pinned with badges shaped like stars. He had kept away from the city. He had stayed away from the crowning. He had not wanted to see them. He had not wanted to see proof that these were men like Thorongil; that they had come down to Gondor, and Thorongil had not come with them.

"But what about you, Hithon?" Thorongil asked. "I had thought to find you a captain of great renown, heaped with well-deserved honours."

You happened, Hithon could have said. He might even have shouted it. Instead he gripped his tankard tight enough to hurt. "I had to bring news of your leaving to the Lord Ecthelion," he said carefully. "I had to look him in the face and deliver your parting words. He was… displeased."

"And he punished you for it?" Anger flashed across Thorongil's face, a sudden flash of something dreadful.

Hithon took another sip to cover the sudden hammering of his heart. "No. He demanded to know why I hadn't stopped you. I said… I dared to say that perhaps he didn't know you very well, if he thought that any of us could have stopped you from doing something that you had set your will to. I almost thought that he would strike me. I deserved it, really. But he was a greater man than that. He turned away for a moment, blinked back tears, and then turned back to me. Yes, he said, with a sad smile. He knew the truth of it, and he bore me no ill will."

"I told him from the start," Thorongil said, "that I could stay but for a little while. I never lied."

"No," Hithon agreed. "But Ecthelion died four years after you left, and Denethor… Lord Denethor never liked you."

The anger was back again, and the sight of it stopped Hithon's breathing. The room turned darker, and he felt the back of the chair pressed hard against his spine. "Was he that petty?" Thorongil said. His voice was quiet. Slowly, slowly, Hithon let himself breathe again. "I judged that Gondor came first for him. I believed that he would favour those who could best serve Gondor, without bias or jealousy. Was I wrong?"

Wrong to leave us. Hithon still fought the urge to say it. But ever since the wave had come crashing down, he had been edging his way towards honesty.
"No," he said, letting out a breath. "He wasn't that petty. He had his favourites, of course, and I would never have been one of them. We gave you our allegiance, and he could never have liked us, but he would have used us. He would have sent us where Gondor needed us to be, and there would have been no jealousy."

Thorongil said nothing. Was it pity that kept him silent?

"People forgot you!" he burst out. "It was known that Denethor didn't like to hear people talking about you or your deeds. They started saying that our raid on Umbar had made no real difference: that there had only been a few small ships there, anyway, and no real fight. You had been pushing us one way, and he took us the other. I… I didn't have the heart to serve under him."

He turned his face away; to see Thorongil's expression now would be unbearable: sympathy, perhaps, or pity, which was worse. Blame would have been easier. Gondor had been ruled by a man who bore Thorongil no love, and so Hithon had cast himself in the role of an exile. The sword that should have fought for Gondor had remained sheathed. He had come to the Harlond so he could watch for Thorongil's return. He had wasted half a lifetime.

"Why?" The word slipped out of his mouth without him willing it. It was harsh and raw. "Why did you leave us?"

Why didn't you come back when we needed you?

Why have you come back now, just as I had come to accept that you never would?

"Other tasks called me," Thorongil said, "but it was more than that. You saw it as well as I did. You called me lord on the way back from Umbar, and you were far from alone. Captain Thorongil had no right to that title. They wanted me to return in triumph, heaped with more honours than any captain should receive. While Ecthelion ruled, it might not have mattered, but with Denethor…" He shook his head. "It was not the time for Gondor to be divided."

It was true. That was the worst of it. It was true. Treason. Hithon himself had thought that word not long ago. He had spent forty years thinking quiet thoughts of treason, wishing that Thorongil would come back and change the course of Gondor's future.

And now…

There was a knock at the door. Hithon froze. He became aware of just how much the light had failed while they had sat there talking. The knocking came again. Thorongil reached behind him for his cloak, and pulled it around his shoulders as if he was cold, pulling the hood over his head.

"I should see who it is," Hithon said; strange that his voice could sound so normal. Checking through the knot-hole, he saw that it was one of his neighbours. He opened the door; engaged for a while in the usual questions and answers. What should they do about…? What did he think about…?

Eventually the man left. Hithon busied himself with the lantern as he tried to remember what they had been talking about. When he turned away from it, he saw that Thorongil had pushed his hood back, but still wore his cloak. It would just be a short visit, then. His captain would be leaving soon.

I… I'm not sure what I feel about that, he thought.

"Hithon," Thorongil said, "I feared I would find you dead. I hoped to find you still serving, a captain I could turn to, or living in a well-earned retirement. If the latter, I would not have disturbed it; would not have asked you to take up your sword again against your will. But…" He shook his head. There was something in his eyes that Hithon could not read. "Too many men have died," he said. "Too many captains. The Great War has been won, but more wars will come. There are young men to train, and too many captains who have not yet learnt the way of command. You were a captain in your own right before ever I came to Gondor; one of the best. You could be one again," he said, "if so you wished."

"If I wished." Hithon looked at his right hand. It was an old man's hand, but it could still wield a sword. In the fight for the Harlond, he had killed and he had shouted commands and he had saved lives. Did he wish for that life again? Could he…?

"I am too old," he said. "Too old to crawl through wet ditches and sleep beneath a hedge."

Thorongil smiled. "But not too old to train men and boys whose bones are young enough to endure those ditches." He paused. "If you wish."

"You were always better at that than I was," Hithon said.

"I will have other things to do, I'm afraid," his captain said with a smile. Then, leaning forward, he said, "Hithon, you are under no obligation. You swore me no oaths. You were a captain of Gondor, as was I, although you chose to obey my commands."

"For the most part," Hithon said.

"For the most part," Thorongil agreed, smiling. Then the smile faded. "I wronged you badly, Hithon. I have had a long life and a hard one. It has not been my fate to stay in any place for long. I was right to leave Gondor when I did, and yet by leaving, I did wrong. I failed to understand the effect my departure would have on the people I was leaving behind. I am sorry, Hithon."

"It would have been better for me if I had never met you," Hithon said harshly. "Is that what you're about to say?" Was it true? He thought of those wasted years, years spent waiting and hoping, years chasing might-have-beens. Thorongil had been alive all along; alive, but he had sent no messages. "Did you remember me at all?" he said. "Did you forget us all, every last one of us?"

"I remembered you well," Thorongil said. "I have said many goodbyes, and that was one of the hardest. I missed you. I… failed to understand that you might miss me, too, and that it would be worse for you because you did not understand the need for it."

"And I thought you had the gift of seeing into men's hearts," Hithon said bitterly, and then suddenly, amazingly, he was laughing. Picking up Thorongil's tankard, he half-filled it with beer, then poured the same amount for himself. "You were wrong."

"I was wrong," Thorongil agreed. "It has been known to happen."

Hithon passed him his beer, then raised his own tankard in a silent salute. Thorongil returned the toast, and for a moment, Hithon was young again, sharing a companionable drink with the man he had chosen to call captain. It made everything easier.

"I… I don't know if I would have been happier," Hithon said, at last. "But I have never once regretted those years I spent fighting at your side. As for what came afterwards… I made it happen. I did it to myself. It would be easy to blame you, but I can't. I don't."

"Hithon--" Thorongil said, but Hithon held up his hand to stop him.

"And now you offer me the chance to be a captain again, to undo those wasted years. But they happened. It's too late to undo them." He shook his head. "Everyone I used to know in Minas Tirith is dead or gone. My skills are outdated. It's over thirty years since I trained anyone to fight. I have no connections with the great ones…"

Realisation, when it came, was gentle, like a feather coming softly to rest. The world unmade itself and was reformed. Hithon pressed his hand to his mouth. He felt the muscles moving against his palm, as they struggled to decide whether to laugh or gasp or cry.

"Hithon?" prompted his captain, but he knew. Of course he knew.

Hithon lowered his hand. "Your name was never Thorongil, was it?"

"You always knew that," his captain said. "My name is Aragorn."

"But you have another name now?" Hithon clasped his hands round his tankard. "Tell me that what I'm thinking is true, because I do not wish to say it aloud if it is not."

"I rather suspect that it is."

"But you swore an oath of fealty to Ecthelion," found himself saying, then tried to snatch it back. "Forgive me, my--"

"There is nothing to forgive," his captain said. "I swore an oath, and I kept it, for it was not then the time. But my oath was different from the oath all other captains swore. There were some things that I could not swear, and he did not demand them. I told him from the start that I would leave his service when I deemed the time to be right, and he swore no oath to keep me."

"And Denethor?" Hithon asked. "Would you have sworn to Denethor?"

"Denethor," said his captain, "would not have been content with the oaths I could offer him. He would have asked for more than I could truthfully give."

"Captain…" Hithon began, then stopped. The realisation had been too gentle, as if part of him had already known. "My lord. Sire. I should be kneeling…"

His king smiled. "And I should be in the Citadel surrounded by a host of importunate servitors, but here I am in a travel-worn cloak, drinking beer with an old friend. But time is passing, and duties call me, I'm afraid. Will you accept what I offer you? I am asking you, Hithon. This is no command."

Hithon was silent. He could be a captain again. He could kneel before the man who had always held his loyalty and swear to serve him always. He would receive every honour. He could serve Gondor, and serve it well.

He allowed himself to entertain the dream. He would stroll into The Crown and Anchor in the king's livery, and one by one, the old men would fall silent as they turned to gape at him. 'He came back, you see,' he would tell him. 'My old captain, my old friend. You may have heard of him. He's a noble man and a great warrior: the King of Gondor and the Western Lands.'

But then the daydream shifted. Their mouths fell open in astonishment, but his attention was drawn by the beams above them: beams that were only there because he had organised the work party that had erected them. He tasted the beer; beer that had been given in gratitude, in return for a service well done.

If he walked away now, then the past forty years would truly be a wasteland. But they had not been entirely wasted, had they? He had exiled himself to the Harlond to wait for Thorongil's return, but slowly, without realising it, he had come to look upon the Harlond as his home. He had fought for it. He had bled for it. Now he was rebuilding it.

I was beginning to build a life, he thought, out of the ashes of Thorongil's loss. The wave had come crashing down, and Thorongil had not come. Gondor had been saved, but Thorongil had not been the one to save it, or so he had believed. Slowly, falteringly, he had learnt to accept that Thorongil was gone. Slowly, almost without realising it, he had begun to make something of his life.

"I… think I want to stay here, my lord," he said. He began falteringly, but by the end, he was speaking with confidence. "There's work I can do here. Good work. Work that benefits Gondor."

"I see that now," his king said. "I saw that when that young man came to your door. I think I knew then that you would not accept. You have become a leader here."

Hithon nodded. "The Harlond will have to grow if you plan to build up the fleet again. I can help with that."

"More than help," his king said. "You can lead, if you wish. I can send you supplies, and more men to help. I can make it a royal appointment," he said, "if you wish it to be one."

"If I wish," Hithon echoed. He thought he would need more time to consider it, but found himself shaking his head. "No. Not yet. This is new to me, my lord. Until today, I hadn't fully realised what was happening. Let me build it up myself. If they choose to obey me, let it be because they think I deserve it, and not because my old captain has come back and slapped a title on me that I little deserve."

"That you well deserve."

Hithon smiled, acknowledging the compliment, but carried on. "I was a captain in my own right before you came to Gondor. You reminded me of that today. I… think I had almost forgotten. You demanded no oaths from me. You asked me to obey your commands in the heat of battle, but beyond that, you insisted that we were comrades, friends, even. But in my heart, I swore those oaths. I have never stopped swearing them."

"Hithon…" his king began, but Hithon took the risk and held up his hand, stopping him.

"My lord," he said, as he started to kneel. "My king. I will swear any oaths you ask of me. I will serve you until I die. But…"

"But I will ask for no oaths," the king said, "beyond the oaths that all men of Gondor must swear to their realm and their king." He raised Hithon up and embraced him. "I understand," he said. For a moment, Hithon thought he was going to add I'm sorry, and braced himself for it, but the words did not come. "A captain in your own right, then." He smiled. "You will be a great one."

Hithon cleared his throat, uncomfortable with the praise. "Will I see you again, my lord?" he asked.

"Would you like that?" his king asked, and for a brief, strange moment, Hithon thought that he looked uncertain, perhaps even shy.

"Of course," Hithon said warmly. "Not like this. Less… fraught. But with beer and old war stories and gossip about people we used to know, now that the need for secrecy is past."

"It can be hard to slip away," the king said, "but I will do so. I will come like this." He pulled his hood over his face. "Nobody will know me. But one day…" He pushed the hood back again. "One day, I hope, I will come openly, and grant you the title you deserve."

"One day," Hithon said. "Perhaps even soon. Maybe… longer. But one day."

"One day," said his captain. "I will have to be content with that."

"But it is enough," Hithon said.

"Yes," said his captain, smiling. "Yes, it is enough."

******

END

******

Note: Hithon has previously appeared in my story The Reins of Power, in chapter four, which dealt with the raid on Umbar and its immediate aftermath.

I intended to write this story for last year's event, but got distracted by starting an epic instead. Better late than never, I suppose…