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He turned to his brother and, in an agitation of feeling that he could never
quite explain, quickly pulled him into his embrace. “Yes, yes we will.”
Boromir would never forget that moment. It would later spur him to ever
bolder strategies. He had always favored these, but it seemed senseless after that
moment to act in any other way, or not to strike back at the Enemy with all the
force and fierceness that men could muster. It became his dream to make the
Dark One pay so dearly for his forays that no Orc would dare cross into Gondor,
at least while Boromir, Captain of Gondor, lived. But of that another time.
It was some while after dark that the storm clouds let loose their fury. The
wind howled and beat at the little shelter, and thick wet snowflakes drove down,
illuminated eerily by the lightning. Thunder rumbled and crashed in wrath.
Faramir wondered at all this during his watch—he had never before heard
thunder during a snowstorm. None of the three seemed to sleep for more than a
few minutes at a time for the whole of the night.
When day came, the storm still showed no signs of stopping, though the
thunder had quit. The embers of their fire had sputtered away under the snow,
and their wood was gone. Most unsettling, though, was that Daeron had
worsened in the night. He would open his eyes and seem to take heed when
Boromir or Faramir spoke, but would then slip back into a listless languor.
Faramir, who had been satisfied that Daeron would recover quickly, was
now thrown into doubt. “What should we do? I fear if we wait out the storm, he
will not last. But it is warmer here than it would be, out in the winds…”
“I do not know,” Boromir answered. He had stood outside just a few
minutes before, and had stared upward, trying to get a sense of the sky through
the haze of falling snow, but with little success. He had thought the clouds
seemed less dense, but it might have been a trick of the early light. “But the
longer we wait to decide, the deeper the snow will be if we do go.”
For minutes, neither spoke. The snow fell steadily outside, and all was
quiet. Faramir furrowed his brow and stared downward at nothing, weighing
their options in his thought. Boromir stared out. To him it seemed more and more
that there was but one choice. When at last their eyes met again, it seemed they
had both reached their decision. With a slight nod, they began gathering their
things up and preparing to leave,
When all was made ready and Daeron was again bundled up tight on the
litter, they headed off. In the driving snow, nothing could be seen more than a
few paces in front of them. All they knew of the path was the general direction,
remembered from the night before, and the feel of the ground sloping downward
as they trudged along. Their fingers, clutching the ends of the litter, soon
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