#helms deep

Thanks for the tag @hobbitwrangler ! I am still poking around with 12-year old Tácen (short for Erkentácen), whose mom has brought him to the caves for safety at Helm’s Deep even though he DESPERATELY wants to be out fighting with his four (much older) brothers.

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The scene amidst the glittering crystal walls and towering pillars of the main cavern is much as Tácen both anticipated and feared. There are clumps of gangly children playing silly little games, squabbling over whose turn it is to aim a sparkling stone at the mouth of an open barrel, while their wrinkled grandparents sit and rest swollen ankles or a sore hip. Babies cry, and sick men hack out rattling coughs that seem to only get louder as they echo back from the high ceilings. Everywhere Tácen turns there is another young mother with a breast out to nurse, and when his own mother tries to hand him a water flask, he pushes it roughly away. 

She shrugs off his sullen mood, telling him simply that he will feel better in time, but this only makes him more cross. He doesn’t want her pity; indeed, he would shove that away, too, were it offered to him. And yet he can sense that some part of him still needs it anyway, the part that feels wronged and distraught and is still susceptible to a mother’s power to comfort and reassure. He mislikes that part of himself even as he mislikes his mother for not seeing and tending to it, and the churn of conflicted feelings hurts his head and his stomach.

Always where the battle was thickest, speaking words in a language that few spoke, yet all could understand. A promise that the night would pass and that even when things seemed dark the dawn would come.

Some spoke more clearly of those they saw. Eomer, nephew of the king, spoke of a figure of great height clad in sliver and blue. A sword in his hands that he later would have sworn was a twin to Gandalf’s.

Aragorn, king in waiting, would have sworn that the figure that appeared to him had gold running through his dark hair. His companion seemed to switch between bow and sword and harp and at times he felt as if he should have known their name.

Others spoke of a figure with a point on their helm, or hair of gold, or carrying shining standards with sigils they couldn’t quite recall.

As the first fingers of dawn reached across the sky, as the horns of Erkenbrand sounded through the air, the figures faded. They left behind but one cry, one that filled every heart with hope: