for perforo | rohan road trip

[shieldofrohan]

It has been a long voyage, across the sea, along the north of Essos, and at last to the Isenmouth and upstream to the Westfold, and she is restless. She is not made for the sea, she has found, and she has been on this boat now for what seems like a lifetime, and she is beginning to wonder whether this might not have been an indulgence not worth the trouble.

But then they are on the river, and the mountains are in view, and she leans from the rail of the ship, and feels her heart rise in her chest. Two years now, she has been married, and it has been closer to three since she saw her own kingdom, and it may be longer still until she sees it again, but already it seems to her a lifetime. She had not realised, until this moment, just how deep the homesickness ran - how, as the land to the west of the river levels out into the beginnings of grassy plains, as the jagged peaks of the Ered Nimrais rise in the horizon, some part of her sings out in recollection; how even the air seems clearer, and the light more true. They pass through the mountains; alight at the ruined plain of Isengard, which is quickly giving way to forest; and it is hard not to put her heels to the flanks of her horse at once, to ride hard and fast the remaining miles to the place that, no matter how the shadows have lingered there and no matter how many years she spends at Casterley Rock, will always be home.

They must be more sedate, though, for there are goods to be unloaded and attendants to join in the riding, and in any case (as she has told him before, although he will never believe it), Jaime's horse will not keep pace with hers over such a distance. So it is at no more than a trot that they pass through the broad and green-carpeted valley of the Westfold, the miles moving with a slowness that would be tortuous, if being here - even still so far from Edoras - did not lift her spirits so much. As it is, she rides with a smile, her head held high and the cold mountain wind rippling through her hair, and feels the return of a part of herself she had not known was missing.

At last, there is a gleam of gold in the distance, the fabled Golden Hall of Meduseld, perched upon the pinnacle of its hill; and the dim flutter of green and white banners in the breeze; and she can hold herself back no longer; cries out in unbridled delight and sets her heels to her steed, spurring him to a gallop, her golden hair and red cloak streaming in the wind of her passage.

She is, it seems, seen in turn; for she has not made it beyond the first of the kings' barrows when she is greeted, and she leaps from her saddle and rushes to her brother's arms, with an unselfconscious enthusiasm that she did not often show before their parting. A bow would be more proper, an act of lealty to the King of Rohan - but he is, before he is King, her brother, and she has missed him more than she had known she could miss anyone. She pulls him into a tight hug, and kisses both his cheeks, and she is aware that he is weeping before she is aware that she is.

By the time Jaime can catch up, brother and sister have parted in their embrace, but the tears they have shed are still on both of their cheeks, and neither has regained their saddle. The two white horses graze delicately around the flowers that blossom on the grave-mounds; and their riders speak eagerly to one another in their own tongue, still choked with emotion, for the siblings were ever dear to one another, and time and distance have not changed that.

Éomer is, at a glance, recognisable as his sister's relation; he is taller than she is, and broader in the shoulder, but with the same storm-grey eyes, the same straight nose and high cheekbones. His hair is long, worn past his shoulders, and unbound but for the golden circlet that sits (now slightly askew) above his temples; his beard is neatly-trimmed and combed. He is not armoured, but there is a sword at his hip, well-worn by use, and clear kin to the one his sister wears at her own belt (for, as she told Jaime, it seemed churlish not to bear the sword that Éomer had given her for her own wedding - and besides, the Eastfold is not, she has heard, entirely free of foes), and there is a certain readiness in his bearing that says that he is no idle diplomat. In this moment, though, he does not play the warrior; he is smiling and at ease, and Éowyn, too, is smiling as brightly as ever she does.

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[perforo]

Where would this ship deposit them, when at last they were aground again? She has shown him the maps, of course - he has studied them with a curiosity that waned for how far distant her lands were. He would concern himself with the make of her home only when they arrived there, for the seas and leagues they must cross were too many for him to hold in mind a diligent, anticipating tableau. There would be mountains, surely; there would be the same rolling green plains of the west when summer brightened the land to a certain verdant beauty. A land lush and pristine and heroic? Any lady would think in such glowing description of the home which she dearly missed, though he cannot know how dearly she misses it. She has, for the last two years, accepted that fate which was handed to her. Given all the many surly, resistant, caustic, disdaining women he could have wed, she has been dutiful and true in making the Rock her home.

Yet it is not a landscape of common supposing that they are turned loose upon. The hills are bountiful and green, that is so, and there are on the horizon the bladed peaks he had suspected might ring this place, and there is a proud valley and the blue of the sky overhead is so mightily encompassing that he thinks there may be some truth behind that old fable that all the known world is kept within the blue eye of a giant. He is glad to be rid of the ship - not because he suffers any sickness at sea and not because he failed to leap to the occasion of making himself a legend among their crew. (They would agree, wouldn't they? He'd volunteered himself without hesitation for the chores of scaling masts, clambering up the rigging, and engaging any sailor who matched him in wits in a good-natured spar.)

Is the splendor of this country a symptom, then, of how long they'd been at sea, for how long the pacing of their steps had been largely limited from one end of the ship to the other? Or does it strike him such vivid colors because he knows this is the honorable land from which his honorable wife hails? These are the hills responsible for breeding her stock; these are the mountains which had stood protective vigil until she'd been sent to a marriage she did not ask for but did not wailingly refuse, either. For how he reveres her, he cannot help but revere the plains she had once called home.

It is good to be astride his steed again, and he has tried to cajole her into giving their horses their heads and charging ahead to the limits of those equine hearts, which he haughtily presumes still to be of equal tenacity. She keeps them at a trot, a caution he does not deem necessary, but she rides with such thoughtless grace here, with such contented and trusting ease, that he does not oppose her for long. There is something to be said of this chastened pace, after all - while she is bathed in the cool winds, smiling as if she has shed the weight of so much smothering plate, he beholds her in turn. He must wonder again that she had ever come to him unwed; how blind must the valiant men of Rohan be to have never looked upon her and felt their hearts harpooned, irretrievably lost? This wonder grows tangled beside his greed, and he swells with pride to look upon her here and know she is his, just as he swelled with pride to spot her in the stands of any tournament and know she was his, just as he ached with pride in night's most hallowed hours, gasping her name against the side of her throat, to know she was his.

What is he to make of it, then, when she flies ahead at the sight of a gilded hall and billowing banners? They are the same green and white which she had worn when they'd stood before one another in the sept; the green against which the white steed of her maiden's cloak had reared. Now they are the colors of these pennants which claim the wind, and she proves in one heedless rush that his aggravated stallion cannot keep pace with her fleeter horse. Beyond the barrows she goes, leaving him with the vanishing glimmer of her hair and her crimson cloak, and that joyous cry which precedes her can only mean she has spotted some waiting kin. He must follow, and not swiftly enough to arrive at her side.

What he does arrive upon is the scene of a recently broken embrace, if he is to judge by the way the horses have been left unmounted, the two human faces resolving themselves into a riot of mirth and tears. Both cheeks gleam, his wife's and this man who has come to receive her. Her brother, Jaime is meant to understand, if the similarity of their looks could have failed to assure him. A man tall, taller than his sister, and of the same golden hair and the same unshaken composure. The gray eyes are ponderous clouds of the same storm. That golden hair is long, and kept only by a golden circlet, and not a scrap of armor is to be had. There is a sword, the length of which Jaime's sharp eyes take the measure of against his own, pleased to know his blade must be longer, heavier. Brighter, without a doubt; like his wife, this man seems to wear plainest steel.

He dismounts from his own horse, lathered upon chest and flank with sweat, and leaves the beast to graze among the others. Like his stallion, he feels that once he is upon his feet, he is similar but not entirely the same, and not arguably more: his own hair is golden, and he is tall and broad, but could it be that this man is even more so? His approach is marked for an audience with, if not royalty, then at least a person of some repute: he notes the crown and dips his head, one hand coming to sit at the pommel of his sword. He will not be slavish in his greeting, even if it is a king he greets.

And he has not mastered his wife's tongue (or, perhaps more truly, he has not mastered her language; he has spent a great deal of time learning the dance of her tongue sliding against his own), and so it is with no polite show of effort made that he first speaks her brother's name.

"Lord Elmer, it is an honor." He will not name it a pleasure, not when his wife is so clearly delighting in company not his own. But this does seem to be a man who has carried himself as a warrior, and for that he cannot be entirely without an assessing sort of curiosity. And even so, are those not tears upon the warrior's cheeks?

"Why do you weep, to have your sister before you well and unharmed?"