return

Chapter 5
THE STEWARD AND THE KING
Over the city of Gondor doubt and great dread had hung.
Fair weather and clear sun had seemed but a mockery to men
whose days held little hope, and who looked each morning
for news of doom. Their lord was dead and burned, dead lay
the King of Rohan in their citadel, and the new king that had
come to them in the night was gone again to a war with
powers too dark and terrible for any might or valour to conquer.
And no news came. After the host left Morgul Vale and
took the northward road beneath the shadow of the mountains
no messenger had returned nor any rumour of what
was passing in the brooding East.
When the Captains were but two days gone, the Lady
Éowyn bade the women who tended her to bring her raiment,
and she would not be gainsaid, but rose; and when they had
clothed her and set her arm in a sling of linen, she went to
the Warden of the Houses of Healing.
‘Sir,’ she said, ‘I am in great unrest, and I cannot lie longer
in sloth.’
‘Lady,’ he answered, ‘you are not yet healed, and I was
commanded to tend you with especial care. You should not
have risen from your bed for seven days yet, or so I was
bidden. I beg you to go back.’
‘I am healed,’ she said, ‘healed at least in body, save my
left arm only, and that is at ease. But I shall sicken anew, if
there is naught that I can do. Are there no tidings of war?
The women can tell me nothing.’
‘There are no tidings,’ said the Warden, ‘save that the
Lords have ridden to Morgul Vale; and men say that the new
captain out of the North is their chief. A great lord is that,
and a healer; and it is a thing passing strange to me that the