Faramir Fiction Archive

The Moon Has Waned (PG-13)

Written by Erfan Starled

22 August 2010 | 17300 words

Chapter Three

Late in the night after a long march south, rather than north-east, Faramir was no less tense though he was far more tired and puzzled. He was worried about his injured men. As soon as they stopped, he would have sought the Southron healer’s aid for them, but the man came without any request necessary, as if the prisoners were of his own kind – except for the careful watch of the guards.

Faramir eyed his ministrations, that part of his mind not obsessed with how they might escape preoccupied with the curious question of their direction, as well as Hajiri’s choices in dealing with them. He wondered what else the night would bring. For the rangers, fresh water from a brook and some dried food rationed out from the enemies’ packs proved to be the answer. For Faramir himself, another confrontation was ordained.

The latter did not surprise him: the midnight hour made an effective time for questioning tired and hungry prisoners. Now distanced by many miles from the site of their capture, the enemy could afford to take a little time to find out information, at least enough to impress their dark master’s commanders before handing over their catch…

Faramir, his thoughts all of Gondor, vowed they would have a hard time getting anything from him.

Hajiri was alone and hard to recognize. His head-gear and armour lay discarded, and he seemed half-dressed with his long, black hair stuck in curls to his crown, confined in sweaty rigour under a tightly drawn cloth band. Faramir guessed the curls were increased by the dampness of sweat and he could smell from where he stood faint traces of incense or oil, perhaps used on skin or hair, perhaps to treat the metal and leather of his armaments.

Neither of them spoke as they looked one another over: Faramir, still shirtless under his borrowed cloak; Hajiri, in a thick, rough linen shirt-tunic, also sweaty, and wearing protectively heavy baggy trousers.

Dark-skinned, high-boned features with an arched nose and eyebrows to match, fine lips and the thick, curly hair were very strange to see after dealing with him unseen for so many hours. Divested of armour, face bared, he lost nothing of his air of confident capability.

Faramir hardly understood his own intense awareness of his enemy. The sight of him enabled Faramir to size the man up, that was all. Nothing mattered save escaping him, capturing him or killing him. To wonder at his odd restraint and spare courtesies, to notice his economy of movement and see his composure, were to take the measure of him, to estimate their plight and plan its remedy. Philosophy had no place here but still, Hajiri did not look like an enemy. He looked like a man the same as any other…

Faintly enquiring, Hajiri endured his prisoner’s inspection without offence. “You frown, but you do not seem afraid?”

Faramir shrugged. After a lifetime of living in Gondor, of living with men feting him as his father’s son and of living with his father’s disapprobation, he knew how to keep his feelings to himself when need be. He was afraid. Of course he was: for his men, for his city, even for himself. Bravado aside, he feared the betrayal torture would reduce them to should they fail to make their escape.

“Dharwad.” The word brought another man over with drink and food. Hajiri gestured. “Sit. Eat with me.”

Faramir hesitated, the spectre of his father rising in his mind. Taking food from the enemy as if in amity? Disgraceful. Bad enough to have been captured.

Hajiri shrugged and tore off a piece of black bread.

Faramir smiled dourly. His father was a man of large ideas of honour but no pragmatist. He folded himself to the rocky ground, and accepted the proffered hard loaf with a nod that could be seen as thanks. He would fight all the better for it when the time came and think better in the meantime. He told himself his stomach’s unease was only a reaction to the strangely spiced bread, not apprehension.

The question remained, why this restrained good treatment? At any moment, they could be hauled north for questioning in the awful confines of the sorcerous city opposite sad, ruined Osgiliath, which now looked out on gathering darkness. Long gone were the days when the stars were celebrated there.

Faramir observed Hajiri narrowly, fully expecting their direction to change once he was done with trickery.

Yet there was nothing ominous in Hajiri’s occasional glance as they ate of the small loaf and passed it back and forth with strange civility between captor and captive. Despite himself, Faramir’s tension gradually eased in the silence between them, which began to feel oddly familiar. Sounds drifted in the air, running water, a night-jar’s call, the breeze rustling the leaves of a bay-tree just outside their rocky shelter. Goats bleated from the hill-sides above. Faramir was aware of each one, all his senses wide open. They could have been two soldiers sharing a meal, tired in the evening’s peace after a long day on the alert, trusting others to watch for a while.

When the bread was finished and at last he spoke, Hajiri’s voice did not so much interrupt as compliment the gentle noises of the night, weaving its richly-accented path among them. “Listen to me, man of Gondor. War comes and our Master has only that on his mind. He fears and hates you mightily, or what you represent.” His slight shrug echoed Faramir’s awareness of Gondor’s weakness. “I want to know what you do here.”

Hajiri was leaning forward in a strung tension of his own, careful in his endeavour at clear speech. “I want to take my men away if I can, back to our home, away from this place where you can see nothing but rocks and trees, and where monsters work alongside us as common as the day. You know things that can help me.”

It was hard for Faramir to follow all the guttural vowels and twisted consonants but the sentences were fluent and he listened, astonished and disbelieving but fascinated despite himself, to the experience and view of this Southron soldier who fought for Sauron. He even sounded honest, and he certainly sounded determined, but Faramir could not afford to believe him, even had the unlikely tale been less far-fetched.

“You know I can tell you nothing. And if your story were true, you would never have told me. It would be far too dangerous to you if we were caught.”

Hajiri shrugged, smiling darkly. “Dangerous? Yes, but more so for you. I have your men — perhaps I can persuade you yet to answer me. You think I am tricking you? I tell you, we are leaving this cursed place and I must find out how we can cross this land, escaping both our Lord’s servants and your people’s watch. This, I think, will be hard to do.”

And that, thought Faramir, was an understatement. Supposing for one instant he spoke the truth, what he purposed was nigh impossible. Equally impossible was to enter into the least discussion of Gondor’s activities with him. Familiar with, if not inured to, the dangers his men must face, he replied tight-set, “I would let you kill my men before I gave you the answers you seek.”

Hajiri shrugged away this dramatic heroism with one expressive shoulder and a frown. Faramir felt foolish and off-balance.

“I tell you what I intend so that you understand. It makes your situation different, no? Perhaps it makes it more likely that you will talk to me, if I can convince you.”

Faramir could not afford to believe him. If it were true… “Sauron will never let you go. You will be hunted down mercilessly.”

The shrug was far more pronounced and Hajiri grimaced. “Our people live far away… There is much the Lord in his tower gives his attention to here. Perhaps he will think men of your city took us if we are fast enough and if we are far enough away when our absence is noted.”

His frown deepened. “Even our Master cannot control all the South. He will not find us once we cross the plains, not without using his magicks — perhaps not even then. My men and I accept that risk — our own people need us. His plans for war in the north occupy him, his enemies are here. His soldiery obediently answers his summons, and food flows into his keeps. A few missing men, taken by Gondor — no, we may succeed without attracting his wrath.”

Hope warred with risk in the troubled expression. A fleeing group of Southron deserters must certainly brave Gondor’s rangers in crossing Ithilien, as well as risk detection by Sauron’s incoming forces, or worse, be hunted and apprehended for their crime.

Faramir stared into those dark, almond-shaped eyes and found no evasion, only the realization they were perhaps of an age. Alone and responsible for what — fifty, sixty men or more? Faramir felt far older than his years. How must this man feel, in a foreign land, far from home, with a master so evil that his servants were the stuff of nightmares?

Pity stirred in him, and a treacherous sense of kinship. If Hajiri was trying to go home, he would not try and prevent him decided Faramir, though how he could be sure of his honesty he had no idea. A different matter than giving him aid, which nothing would induce him to offer.

“Take him away,” said Hajiri, after studying Faramir just as intently. “Think about what I have said, yes?” He cast a few words to his men.

To his bemusement, Faramir found one of the guards proffering his rescued shirt, which must have been collected up in the aftermath of the fight when they searched for supplies, or more likely, for information.

Returned to his men, Faramir bore and passed Esgarin’s hard inspection, though neither man spoke more than a few words with every ranger straining to hear. He wanted time to think. He shook out the shirt and struggled into the damp cloth, body and mind chill, thinking of Hajiri’s patience running out, of his men, captive, of Sauron’s commanders hunting for deserters, and of their southern progress. His chief fear was that it was a ruse, that when the trick failed, the enemy would show their true colours, and that he and his men would, after all, be taken north and east and in Minas Morgul find their dread Master’s will made manifest.

That Hajiri’s expressive face kept coming to mind while Faramir parsed his words for truth was perhaps only natural. The look of a man would often betray his lies. When Faramir lay down at last, his hand’s bruised pain spiked the image of an arrow pointing directly at him. The last-moment realignment that saved him from graver injury was another question to add to the rest, but all his pondering reaped only uncertainty. After seeing his enemy’s face, Faramir’s most careful review could not shake the impression of honesty.

End of Chapter Three

NB: Please do not distribute (by any means, including email) or repost this story (including translations) without the author's prior permission. [ more ]

Enjoyed this story? Then be sure to let the author know by posting a comment at https://www.faramirfiction.com/fiction/the-moon-has-waned. Positive feedback is what keeps authors writing more stories!