Unwelcome aid

[Eclecticon]

Wrapped tight in her cloak, listening to the sounds of the moonlit river, Esgalwen slips between memory and dream as the night-time river blurs into the sunlit waters of Ithilien and back.  In her mind, the high hall of Wuduseld and the white bluff of Minas Tirith become the same place: a single stronghold of Men who dwell at the edge of the Shadow and by doing so, fix it in place and hold fast against it.  She dreams that the High Steward Denethor holds court by the hearth-fires of Woodland Hall, giving his wise rule to this wild place. 

To the Ranger, the dream-Steward extends his hand and she sees that it is mail-clad... no, made of mail, the interlaced rings flowing and flexing as naturally as the skin on any other man.  She hears him speak but cannot understand his words, for his tongue, the speech of Gondor itself, has become foreign to her ears. 

In a sudden fright, she wakes to feel, more than see, the slump of a light and lithe body beside hers at the edge of the pier.  The reek of spilled ale and pig fat is suddenly clear in the cool air and the tones of an Elven voice, its words made muzzy with too much drink, reach her ears as Luindîs (for this is surely not Gwaithlim!) passes from the waking world.  Smiling to herself, Esgalwen shifts her weight, finding this spot, open as it is to the water and sky, as good as any other to pass a late-summer night. 

When next she wakes, it is once again with a start though at first she does not know why.  Then she hears a sound as familiar to her as breathing: that of a weapon hitting flesh, and a muffled cry of pain.  She goes to leap to her feet, hands already drawing Nimronyn, but the long night on the hard pier has left them heavy and sluggish and she can rise barely to her knees before the foe is upon her.  Mightily she struggles, as befits a Ranger of Gondor!  But against as many as now set upon her it is to little avail, and all that her thrashing achieves is to knock the Elf-maid from her pier-end perch into the still-dark water with barely a sodden murmur of protest before the loud splash.  Then dark lights explode in her skull, burying all thought beneath them. 

Hathcyn and Gwaithlim, making their way past the outer wall of the sleeping town in the pre-dawn half-light, hear the sound of a body hitting water and, without either needing to speak his mind, break into a run.  By the time they reach the pier, however, all that is there to meet them is the rhythmic splashing of oars on the river as a boat, unseen in the morning mist, makes its way downstream, and the bump and high-pitched 'ow!' beneath their feet that herald Luindîs' waking under the pier.