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[ ELM ] sender lends receiver aid in a time of urgent need.
Reeds creaked in the wind, brittle and brown with the dying of summer. Anri’s skirts clung sodden to her legs as she waded the shallows of the Anduin’s edge, the basket on her arm growing heavier with herbs slick with dew and river mist. A scent of loam and decay clung to everything – the peat of the bank, the wilted blooms of water-hemlock, the velvet heads of calendula she prized for poultices. Each footstep sank slightly, ankle-deep, leaving a dark hollow that slowly filled behind her.
The sun was a dim coin behind cloud, the light of it silver and ghastly on the river. Somewhere, a heron cried, long and thin and mournful. The smell of water grew stronger, saltless but ancient, as if a hundred bones were steeping just below the mud.
She bent low to the roots of a twisted marsh-willow, bare fingers working loose the violet-threaded bulbs of spiderwort, when she felt it – that instinctive tightening in her spine, a prey animal’s alert. She froze. Her breath turned shallow.
A boot scraped the silt.
Slowly, tremulously, Anri raised her head. Between the reeds, a man stood – not Gondorian, no soldier of the White City, but veiled in dyed silks and scale armour, the patterned red and black of the Southlands – his face sun-dark beneath the veil, his eyes sharp as broken glass.
A Haradrim.
Her throat closed. Her hand, still buried in the roots, clenched to a fist around the spiderwort. Her basket slipped sideways, trailing leaves like entrails. A sound escaped her, faint and animal, no louder than a gasp.
The scout tilted his head. He moved with balletic precision, stepping from the reeds as if from a tapestry, each motion careful, elegant, awful. He said nothing, but from his hip he drew a knife with a curve like a lion’s fang. Slowly.
Deliberately.
Anri ran.
She fled blindly, feet slapping through water and reeds, the hem of her dress snagging on roots, tearing on thorns. The rhythm of pursuit followed her, fast and certain, with none of the panic that filled her lungs. Her breath came ragged. Her vision blurred. The memory of the village returned – stone huts black with soot, meat sizzling on iron, the shrieks of the dying – memories sharp as a blade held to the throat.
She thought: No, not again.
He was faster and the sound of his steps drew near. Her boot slipped on wet rock, her basket fell. She would have fallen too, had not a great shape interposed itself – a thunder of hooves, a flash of rust, a blow struck hard enough to rattle the air.
There was no warning. Only the sudden, brutal end of the chase.
Anri collapsed to her knees, face wet with tears. She dared not look back. The river murmured behind her while her heart pounded like war-drums. Her hands were still clenched, though the herbs had turned to pulp between her fingers.
The silence stretched, broken only by the sound of laboured breath. Hers and another’s. She turned.
The Haradrim lay broken in the reeds, his lifeblood seeping into the wet earth, staining it crimson. Towering above him stood a man in a long cloak of Gondor, his broad shoulders marked with the sigil of the White Tree. He held a great sword, dark with blood. His chest rose and fell with the exertion of the blow. Pale rain streaked his brow. His eyes were fixed not on the corpse, but on her.
For a moment she could not understand him, could not place him in the dreamscape of violence and memory. He was like something out of the legends the old women told at night, their voices low – of warriors noble and ruin-bound.
There was blood on the rushes, but none of it hers.
“Thank you,” she whispered. Her voice had no strength in it, but it was steady. Even so, she clutched her arms around herself, breath still shivering, and looked past him at the body. The Haradrim’s face had slackened in death, his veil torn. A young man. His knife lay half-buried in river silt. Anri stared for a long moment.
“I’m sorry,” she said at last, uncertain if she meant it for the dead man, or the living one.
Her tears belied the steadiness in her voice. The crushed plants in her hands told a silent tale of her terror. Boromir drew near with slow, measured steps, as if approaching a shy horse. With practiced ease, his calloused fingers undid the clasp, and the cloak settled gently around her shoulders. He crouched to be at her level, heedless of the sun-warmed water that soaked into the knees of his breeches.
