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By David Westfall With a final parting glimmer, the last passing beams of moonlight shone brightly on Faramir’s face before being obscured by more clouds. The night descended into murky stillness, with a vast carpet of fog laid all about. For the brief moment he lay under the full moon illumined and encouraged, he had seen the myriad beauty—and not the carnage and steel of war—in what was around him. Apart from his dire circumstances, millions of leagues away where neither ashen cloud nor piercing eye of fire could touch it, the moon glistened as brightly as ever before, a solemn protest to the darkness engulfing all that lay below it. Such incredible majesty, thought Faramir, watching the moon and nearby stars at they were blotted out by the clouds once again into darkness. He beheld the image of the light blue disc in his mind’s eye for a moment longer, and then released it. Along with its release came the flood of realities and horrors that lay all around him. The prince glanced about to the sight of men clad in chain mail and silver helms scattered about, most of them hunched over a fire or huddled in groups talking. Sentries stood in the few remaining intact towers and buildings above him, watching the river and the night was dead quiet. He enjoyed this stillness, but at the same time felt a gnawing urge to venture to the river every few minutes, wondering if the picket lines could have been dispatched without his knowing, or if they had not seen enemies slipping right past their stations. He grew worried that an attack on his quarter of the city was inevitable, or an attack through Cair Andros to the north. The continual siege, the deadly trebuchet bombardments, the rain of Orc arrows, and the taunting shrieks from across the river by the enemy had ended the previous evening. Biding his time, and summoning up the forces needed to cross the river are the enemy’s current affairs, thought Faramir. He knows that we force him to give up to us a strong number of Orc heads for every yard he seeks to conquer. Yet he may lose a battalion where we can scarcely afford to give up a single company. And give them up we have, thought Faramir. He recalled the countless faces, each belonging to a whole man with a whole life and a whole family, broken and bleeding, pierced by enemy weapons. So many dead, the exact number escaped Faramir. This way of living had been continued by his ancestors since the days of the Kings of Gondor—an endless age of war, punctuated by the briefest moments of peace while all the while the enemy sat in the forests of Mirkwood, biding his time. Yet in the thousands of years that had come before Faramir, no days had seemed quite as hopeless as those facing him now. Faramir shifted, pressing his other shoulder against the cold stone wall now. Across the small courtyard, a group of soldiers were carrying the dead off to be laid out in a selected building in the outskirts, where they would be eventually buried the next day. If tomorrow comes, thought Faramir. The moonlight broke through the clouds once more and Faramir was bathed in the dim light. He felt his heart rise, and heaved a great sigh of exhaustion. The endless days of fire and war had wearied him nearly beyond the limits of human endurance. Yet something in the moonlight strengthened him and he focused only on the thought of fighting to see that pale companion once again in the future. As he was deep in thought, the prince was interrupted by a shadow standing between him and the fire. Looking up at the figure’s face, he recognized it as one of his fellows, a footman whose name escaped him. “My Lord,” said the man softly. “The northern patrols have sent me to bring you news—the enemy have moved on Cair Andros. A number of their siege engines have been brought up and archers, and trolls.” Faramir stood with a grunt. “Have they made any attempt on the river?” “No, my Lord. They are firing on our bank. Captain Belothir also wishes for me to tell you that he suspected a diversion to come early from the main thrust.” “Does he request reinforcement?” “No. He would inform you that his men are under cover and confident. He suggests that you look to your own banks, however.” Just as this was said, Faramir heard the snap of metal meeting wood followed by a sharp grunt and a solid crash. Looking toward the river-bank, he saw a sentry fall from his post in a tall building with a shout. “Come with me,” he whispered urgently to the soldier, and the pair hastened to the riverbank. A thin, archaic arrow protruded from the sentry’s abdomen. The Prince of Gondor stared at it for a moment, and then scrambled up the nearby stairs into the tower the man had been guarding. He glanced out over the river. The soldier stared at him, waiting. When Faramir turned around, his expression was hardened but somehow relieved. “The enemy is not coming from the north.” He rushed past the soldier. Men glanced up as he returned, and some of them began to stand when they saw the urgency in his eyes. The rest leaped into action when the prince gave a soft shout saying “To the river, quick! Make ready your arms, men of Osgiliath!” Swords were unsheathed, shields buckled, and spears taken up. The rangers in the company of Faramir strung their longbows. Men rushed about, scrambling to the rubble and pillars arrayed along the shores of the Anduin, hiding in the ruins. Faramir grasped his sword tightly in his right hand, and with his left, he pulled a soldier from the crowd and ordered him to head west through the city gathering reinforcements. Turning away from the river, he cupped his hands around his mouth and spoke in a half-whisper: “Archers to the top! Hurry!” Faramir glanced around the corner of the wall he had been hiding behind, and saw that the enemy was near in their wooden rafts. Orc battalions innumerable were being set upon them, making their way swiftly across the river, torches and weapons bared. Faramir leaned back into cover. Across the opening in the arches and all around him the men looked at him awaiting orders, to which he silently held up his hand and motioned for them to wait for his signal. They nodded their understanding. Despite the closeness of the enemy rafts, it seemed like quite a long time before they finally reached the bank. Faramir felt his heart pounding in his bosom, wearying him further. The front doors to the rafts fell forward onto the shore with a heavy thud, and the stomping, clawing sound of orcish boots filled the night air. Raising his hand, Faramir made ready to give the signal. The orcs crept in closer until they were less than twelve feet away. Faramir burst out of cover and with his hand swinging down shouted, “Arise, men of Gondor!” A hailstorm of arrows raked the landing craft still on the river, and the men charged out of cover with a mighty cry. The orcs, unprepared for the ambush, faltered and fell back towards the bank as the men of Gondor met them in a fierce combat. But then with a rallying cry, an enemy took up a tattered banner, and shrieking out his orders in a savage and feral tongue that no human could comprehend he gave strength and will to the dark creatures hard-pressed against the shore. The cry was answered with thousands more and with the clash of metal upon metal as the renewed orcs marshaled their strength up the embankment into the fair pale lines of Gondorians. The shouts of men and the clash of armor and weapon filled the night air. As Faramir son of Denethor met with the creatures in close combat, the moon peered out of the clouds again and graced the embankment with its pearly rays, hearkening to the beleaguered soldiers of the west tidings that no orc captain or servant of the enemy could prevent: the light shone upon them all. The orcs began to cringe in the bright light of a full moon, slowing their assaults, wishing to be back in the dark stonewalls of Mordor. The tide had turned yet again, and now the soldiers of the west stood fast upon the banks, in walled phalanxes of spear behind shining shield. Arrows raked down from the tops of the buildings, finding their marks among the ranks of enemies clattering on the shore. Yet where one of the deadly shafts took down an orc, more filled its space as rafts came across the Anduin in endless processions. The moon faded yet again. The orcs took heart, and charged yet again up the steep embankment. As heavy surf pummels the rocky coasts of the mighty Dol Amroth, so wave upon wave came they came, orc battalions ceaseless, surging to war. Among the lines of men each captain ordered his comrades and the ranks moved on in silence. One would never expect so many to march holding their voices in their chests dead quiet, yet the garrison of Gondor withdrew their taunts and cries. But not the orcs. Like flocks of sheep bleating they screamed up the hillside, not one common cry among them all, no common speech to bind them—their shouts mixed and clashed, meshed and grew into a terrifying cacophony of jarring death as they marshaled their numbers yet again and surged forth into the lines of men, meeting them in a particularly fierce combat at one strategic point in their midst. And there Faramir was. Their shields slammed and crashed upon one another, the orcs and men. Pike scraped pike and gnarled sword and meat cleaver as the uniform, smooth shields of Gondor pounded against the blunted and ragged devices of Mordor smiths. Such was the madness of the orcs that they flung themselves upon the gleaming lines of Gondorians, one cut down after another. Over the wall of shields the rear ranks pressed their counterattack, thrusting spears down into the dark advancing forms to be rewarded with shrieks and the spray of black blood upon their armored girths. But then as the corpses mounted before their mighty ranks, the orcs grew even more fearless, cast into mindless bloodlust by the sights of their fallen comrades. By the dozens they surmounted the vast piles of dead and flung themselves howling up and over the wall of shields that could not protect from above. So infuriated they were that many simply cast their weapons down and gnawed upon the exposed skin of the soldiers there, ripping at their flesh and clawing with their talons. Faramir thrust up his sword to be rewarded with the high-pitched shriek of a tall orc, which he then threw back into the corpses. Yet all around him others were less fortunate, set upon by the howling creatures, who cast them upon the ground dead and dying. Red blood mingled with the black ichors or Mordor uruks, flowing across the cobbled streets of Osgiliath. Their advantage had been spent. And now no man who waded into that work could bear it any longer—this Faramir knew. He called for a retreat, wherefore the survivors might make it back to the second defenses at least sane. Anyone still not speared or stabbed by tearing cleavers, who whirled into the heart of all that slaughter ran now, some casting aside their weapons and shields that burdened them. That night the ranks of Gondorians, ranks of countless orcs sprawled there side-by-side, facedown in the broken blood-soaked rock. Faramir wept at such hopelessness. * * * Coming Soon: Part Two |
