Éowyn's head is spinning, pain a red-hot wash across her vision. It will seem mad to her later that she is aware of none of this: not of the elf-warrior who dives into her place, nor the elk's bellowing, nor the coming of the Lady. All that she knows is that she is, impossibly, alive, and that a living Éowyn must somehow stand.
Her leg will not obey her. She grits her teeth and pushes through the pain, and must use her sword as a kind of walking-stick to drag herself upright; and she thinks, doing so, of how her cousin would despair to see her abuse her weapon in such a way, and how if she stumbles she will not stand again. There is blood clotting her hair, crimson and black among the gold, and the world reels around her, and all she can see is the smeared shadows around her, but she can feel the cold evil of the wraith before her, and the knowledge of death no longer fearful but merely certain, and she staggers, expecting at any moment to be struck down, but she stands.
The blow she knows must come does not come, and the next thing she knows is the warm and human hands of one of her own men, catching her and drawing her up into the saddle behind him. Only then does the world seem to reassert itself, not swiftly but in dribs and drabs; and the world makes no more sense for that. She sees the wraiths reel and scream, and the great tawny beast striking out at them, and upon its back - or so it seems to her - there rides a star, too bright to look upon, white as the Sun in the darkness.
The Rohirrim have drawn back, afraid of this new wonder almost as much as the evil it faces. They circle at a distance now, slowly reforming their ranks, clearly uncertain. For the most part, they watch, waiting for some sign of what comes next, and wondering - almost visibly so - whether they might not be best to take their injured lady and ride after the caravan, before the wild, unnatural fury of the Elf-lady turns on them.
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sforzinda
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Date: 2025-06-06 02:59 pm (UTC)Her leg will not obey her. She grits her teeth and pushes through the pain, and must use her sword as a kind of walking-stick to drag herself upright; and she thinks, doing so, of how her cousin would despair to see her abuse her weapon in such a way, and how if she stumbles she will not stand again. There is blood clotting her hair, crimson and black among the gold, and the world reels around her, and all she can see is the smeared shadows around her, but she can feel the cold evil of the wraith before her, and the knowledge of death no longer fearful but merely certain, and she staggers, expecting at any moment to be struck down, but she stands.
The blow she knows must come does not come, and the next thing she knows is the warm and human hands of one of her own men, catching her and drawing her up into the saddle behind him. Only then does the world seem to reassert itself, not swiftly but in dribs and drabs; and the world makes no more sense for that. She sees the wraiths reel and scream, and the great tawny beast striking out at them, and upon its back - or so it seems to her - there rides a star, too bright to look upon, white as the Sun in the darkness.
The Rohirrim have drawn back, afraid of this new wonder almost as much as the evil it faces. They circle at a distance now, slowly reforming their ranks, clearly uncertain. For the most part, they watch, waiting for some sign of what comes next, and wondering - almost visibly so - whether they might not be best to take their injured lady and ride after the caravan, before the wild, unnatural fury of the Elf-lady turns on them.