how to live when all is lost | for sent_to_try_us

[shieldofrohan]

She had been prepared for the end. She had been ready to die with sword in hand, to watch Edoras burn and bring her down with it, while the Shadow covered the land and all that they clung to was swept away. She had done all that she could, and even doing it, she had known it would not be enough. She had been ready.

She had not been ready to survive it. Every day since, she has wished with all her heart that she did not.

He had tried to woo her, at first. If it had not been so terrible to see, it would almost have been funny: the sheer clumsy stupidity of it, to think that power was enough, that a grief-stricken captive would flee to the architect of her misery. He had brought her flowers, and tried to make himself a confidant. She had spat in his face, and bidden him to kill her too, or else she would kill him.

Even Gríma's foolishness had its limits, but his covetousness did not. He would have her, he told her, and she would be his wife and kneel for him, and she would know her place. At the time, she had laughed openly, certain that nothing he could do would break her will, knowing that she had resigned herself to pain and death, believing that there was nothing left for him to turn against her. Éomer was dead. Théodred was dead. The only leverage he had over her was Théoden, who lingered half-conscious and no longer himself; and he needed the King more than he needed his desires met.

She had been so innocent, back then. Even in what had seemed to her the darkest possible hour, with everything lost and all that she loved ripped from her, she had still been so naïve.

The first time he had tried to bed her, she had clawed her nails across his face, snarling and spitting like a wildcat; and Gríma would not have overcome her alone, being both smaller and weaker than his unwilling bride, but he was not alone. She had been held down by his new guard, muscular men of Dunlending stock, and her maidenhead was lost to her most loathed enemy beneath the eyes and hands of three uncaring strangers, and she had wept as bitterly as ever a woman wept - not for her lost virginity, nor even for its circumstances, but because that was the moment at which she understood fully how utterly helpless she had become.

She tried to rally. She tried to find some strength, some pride to carry her forward. At every turn, it was ripped from her.

She had not given way easily. She had made him fight for every inch: made him drag her by her hair sooner than go where she was told; met his demands with stony, proud silence; watched for any weakness. She had left her mark on him more than once, biting and scratching and kicking and punching, and in time, it seemed, he had changed his aim. If he had once seemed to hope that she would love him, he soon sought only to see her broken, like a horse to the bridle; if he had once intended to make her his wife, now he was content to make her his whore. Anything, it seemed, to make her crawl.

She tried to escape, more than once. She knew the King's hall better than anyone still living, and they could not guard her all the time. Her second attempt, in hindsight, had come close to success - would have been successful, in all likelihood, if she had simply fled. But she could not bear to flee and leave him living, and she had managed to come so close, had had the knife almost to his throat, when the men he hired had heard his screams and dragged her off. That she had been soundly beaten did nothing to dissuade her; that thereafter she was locked away for over a week without light or food only hardened her resolve. But then there had been the prisoners.

Gríma needed the King alive. He needed Éowyn alive. The other Men of Rohan, those who had survived his takeover... he needed them far less. He had brought her out of her captivity, weak with hunger and grief, to see the ends of the men who had tried to help her. Háma, Ceolfrith, Harbeorn, and the rest, all men she had known since her childhood, bloodied and beaten and trying to remain strong; he had made her stand there as they were hanged, and their bodies thrown onto the dungheap, and all she could do for them was to give them the honour of not looking away.

And then he had turned to her, and said in a tone low enough for her, Their wives, their children. And when the guards released her arms, and Gríma told her to kneel, she had knelt.

That was a year ago. She has rebelled since, in smaller ways; twice more she attempted escape, alone in her planning, but that made no difference to the deaths that came from it. The second time she came close to killing him, wrapping her hands around his throat so that he could not call for help, was the last time he was alone with her. He was still alive, and she was still a slave, and all that she had accomplished was that her humiliations were more public.

Little by little, he broke her down. She rarely spoke, rarely moved without being ordered to. For a time, she tried to kill herself: refused food and water, until they forced it down her throat anyway; sought any weapon to end things, without success; tried to break her skull against the walls of her room, until they bound her helpless to a bed. In the end, with even that escape blocked to her, she surrendered. She hated herself for surrendering. She hated Théoden, in his sickness and his weakness, for surrendering them. She hated everything, with a ferocity that was the only thing she could still feel, and she had no recourse.

When he told her to kneel, now, she knelt. When he told her to stand, she stood. When he told her to open her legs, or her mouth, or any other part of her, she did. She stood behind his seat, beside the empty throne, and she was a shell: she said not one word, nor shed one tear, nor moved a muscle unless she was told. She had spoken against him perhaps a dozen times since the winter, never for her own sake: to denounce some political cruelty, to refuse him some right that was not his to claim, to say aloud You are not King. Each time, she had been made to pay. Each time, her people had been made to pay. She would never allow herself to close her eyes, as the bodies were brought before her. She would never give their lives lightly, and so she surrendered, over and over again, and hated herself more every moment.

And then, the King died.

She did not weep, finding Théoden cold and stiff in his bed when she came to bring his breakfast. She felt no sorrow, only a dull ache where her feelings had once been. She thought, without the horror she should feel: I would that you had died two years sooner, and spared us all this end. She closed his eyes, and settled his withered hands upon his counterpane, and, despite it all, she kissed his brow.

If he was dead, then Gríma was King. He was King by her hand, by her claim. He was King because he had married the Queen, and so long as she surrendered to him, who was to dispute it? And in time, she knew, his attempts would bear fruit, and she would fall pregnant with his son, and then the line of Eorl would be reduced to a whore's get, and what remained of Rohan would mean less than the dirt.

They had ceased to watch her so closely, now. It had been months since she had made any attempt at escape or rebellion. She had no contact with her own people, those who were loyal to the line of Eorl; she had no weapon and no horse. She had only one thing to aid her: the last scraps of Éowyn, Éomund's daughter, who had once sworn that she would never bend.

She would die, she swore, there in the dead man's room. She would die, before she lived a day as King Wormtongue's queen.

And she hurled herself at the guardsman, and as he stumbled back, taken by surprise, she scrabbled the eating-knife from his belt, and drove it into his eye, and then his throat, and she ran. There were few windows in the living-quarters of the hall, and fewer still large enough to climb through; she ran for the nearest door, a headlong and desperate dash which had no chance of success, no hope of escape...

And out into the summer sunlight, so dazzlingly bright after months almost entirely spend inside. She staggered at the heat of it like a hammer-blow, and tried to catch herself, looking back into the shadows of the hall and out into a city that was no longer hers, and wondered why they were not yet upon her; but there was no virtue in wondering, or in pause. She held the knife white-knuckled, turning toward the stables. It would do nothing to defend her, if armoured men came to reclaim her. It would not save her from capture - but it could save her from once again surviving it.

They did not come.

She did not discover why until she was outside the city. She had taken, of all among them, the King's own horse: Snowmane knew her well, and he had almost smashed down the door of his stall when she called to him. He charged through the street and down the Barrow-Road, and she clung bareback to his mane, almost flat against his back, the bloody knife still in her hand; and as the gates were closed to bar her leaving, the guards at last moving to prevent her, she dug her heels into the stallion's flanks and urged him on, with all the swiftness that only Rohan's horses could claim, and the guards were Men of Rohan, and they hesitated a split second to recognise the King's horse, and then he was upon them, and bursting out onto the open hillside, and he did not stop until the strength left him, and then he settled from a gallop to a trot, his white flanks heaving and dark with sweat.

And it was then, and only then, that she found she was not alone.

That was two weeks ago. Now, she and her strange rescuers are far from Edoras, outside the borders of the Mark, farther than she has ever been. She has spoken to them, by now: enough to know that they were sent to retrieve her, that their rulers seek an alliance, and that they will see her returned to the throne. It should be a hopeful thing, but it fills her with a terrible dread to think of it. Will she be Queen, who has already betrayed her people a thousand times, and surrendered them and herself to the man who would destroy them? Will she take up their cause, only to fail them anew?

She should have died, she thinks. She should have died in the escape. She should have died in the imprisonment. She should have died a year and a half ago, when she saw her people fall. But she is alive, and she cannot pretend that she has no duty to them, and even in the direst moments of her imprisonment, she has never been so afraid.

They brought clothing and supplies, and at last she is permitted some of the things she has been denied: she is given a knife to eat with, and a belt, and riding-gear. She looks, as they ride into the courtyard, almost the woman she was before the war: she is tall and fair and she sits upright in the saddle of a milk-white warhorse, her chin raised and her long golden hair fluttering in the August breeze. But there is an emptiness behind the grey eyes that fix themselves on some imagined point, and her hand clutches tightly to the horn of her saddle, the mark of a shackle half-visible on her wrist, and, inside, she is nothing the same.

She does not dismount when they draw to a halt. She barely seems to have realised that they have stopped at all. It is with the slowness of one moving through a dream that at last she turns her head, looking uncomprehendingly at the small party who have left the palace to meet them.

"They will follow me here, as like as not." Her voice feels rusty, alien on her tongue. It is the voice of the old Éowyn, who had never knelt with her head bowed and called herself whore and slave. It is the voice of a woman who expects to be taken seriously, coming from the mouth of one who has grown to expect mocking laughter. It is the voice of a Queen, and she is not Queen; she is not sure she is even human any more.

She wants to scream. She wants to say: Kill me or leave me to the wolves, but do not ask me to be Éomund's daughter now. She is dead, the Lady Éowyn is dead, and all is lost. Do not look at me as though I carry hope; I have none even for myself. She wants to say: I cannot offer you alliance, I cannot offer you help, I can offer you nothing at all. But there is no other Lady Éowyn, and she is needed, all the same.

"They will follow me," she repeats, and her hand winds tighter in the reins, her nails digging into her palm. They are longer nails than she would choose. It has been a long time since she has been trusted with either work to keep them short for, or with scissors. "Are you ready, if they come?"

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[sent_to_try_us]

Galinda has known for a while that this day would come - not so long as her brother, who is told everything, but for long enough to help her mother prepare for what a princess might want, what a queen will need. They had to guess at her proportions for richly embroidered garments, and send those on ahead, but Galinda had been the one who chose the smaller gifts: the brooches, the ribbons, the pretty rainbow-hilted knife. Things that a young woman might like, although perhaps not rich enough for a young woman who is also a queen. This is the sort of thing Galinda worries about: will her gifts offend the Queen of Rohan, who is to be an honoured guest and then her own mistress? Has she chosen well enough, with the coin made available for these small things? Most of it has gone to pay the men, to build the machinery of war, and Galinda has never been especially good at making ends meet.

She has been told that Éowyn has been cruelly treated, but no more than that. Galinda is not sure there is much more than that; everyone knows that the Queen of Rohan barely speaks when she is present, and is present only from time to time. She has heard her mother's ladies commenting quietly that were she not seen to be alive and hale, the people would revolt against their lord. This does not, to Galinda, sound very promising. One cannot simply keep a queen chained - or worse, execute her as a common traitor - but the tone of voice suggests that the ladies anticipate something like that. And they had silenced themselves when Galinda came into view, curtseying with their heads down rather than looking up into her eyes as they usually do.

There is something dreadfully wrong in Rohan.

Her father has sent an army - an army! - to put the queen back on her throne instead of, as he says, beside it. This is a matter of honour, he says, and of bloodline, and his mouth curves up in a way Galinda does not like. And she will owe you her crown, she thinks but doesn't say out loud, because she might be pretty but she is not as stupid as people sometimes think. Her father never does things just because they would be nice, or because they would benefit someone. Her father is always thinking of himself, and his kingdom, and even if you can't quite see how you must always know the thought is there.

She is part of the plan, this time; unneeded at home, sent behind the army with her tent and her gowns and her jewels and her ladies, told to remain behind the army until they enter Edoras in triumph - but at that moment, if she can achieve it, she is to ride directly behind Éowyn. And in the meantime, she is to befriend her, and write often to her loving parents.

Galinda is not sure friendship is quite so malleable; but she promised, as she always promises, to do what she is told.

They have settled in one of the border castles for a week, then a fortnight, before thundering hooves foretell the arrival of the young queen with the men sent to bring her back or die in the attempt. Galinda is bustled down the steps and outside to wait for her, two women behind her and more of the army starting to gather around to see the woman their king has sent them to defend. She has heard that Éowyn is fair, of course - who has not? - but then her mother is said to be surpassingly fair too, and Galinda is a little dubious about the claim.

But it is true: Éowyn is indeed fair, and sits her horse like a queen, her fair hair streaming behind her like a banner, her eyes the grey of river stones. Galinda finds herself curtseying without even realizing it, such is the power and majesty of the woman before her. And she would speak, would answer, but a lord has stepped in front of her and risen first to help the young queen of Rohan off her horse and answer her concerns.

"We are ready, your grace," he says, rough voice gentled for her. "We will have you inside the gates with her grace my lady Galinda, and the men will ride out. No harm will befall you, I swear it on my life." Which is a very pretty speech, and all Galinda can do is curtsey again and gesture to the castle behind them, solid stone, from which even now men are spilling out to defend the queen they have been sent for.

"If you will come with me?" she offers, holding out an arm, hoping that it can be this easy to escort Éowyn away from danger, as she is supposed to do - that she will not try to insist on being at the front of the battle as a man might, as Galinda has been warned she might.

[shieldofrohan]

She does not take the man's hand at once, but looks at it with something like panic behind her veiled expression. Touch has not, of late, been a gentle or pleasing thing. She is not sure which she fears more: that his grip will turn and twist into something cruel, or that there is some curse in her, that her wretched fate is somehow contagious. The men who have taken her hand without casting her down, these past months, have not fared well from it.

But he is waiting, and a feeling she had not known she could still feel rises up inside her: embarrassment. She takes his hand, and lets herself be helped down. Her boots do not fit her - she fled barefoot, and is wearing a pair borrowed from one of the soldiers - and they batter against her feet as she lands on the stone, a dully solid pain. Her stomach feels leaden with the resigned dread that has become so familiar, that says this will not end happily, if it ends at all.

"I do not fear harm befalling me." There is no more they can do to me sits between the words, to be picked up by anyone in the mind to hear it. She sighs, and there is merit in Galinda's fears, because there is a part of Éowyn that even now thinks: put the sword in my hand. Give me spear and shield. Let me be myself again. But that part of her is dulled by time, even as the fury behind it has hardened into a diamond edge, and for now, the only thing she can offer her people is to deny Gríma her recapture.

She takes the arm she is offered, and only Galinda will be able to feel how she trembles with the effort of it. Her other hand remains on Snowmane's reins, and a part of her wonders if she will ever be able to release them. The old warhorse is, it seems to her, all that gives her even this much strength: he is a kingly mount, a mirror of the white horse on Rohan's banner, and more importantly, he is something from before. He knows her of old, when she might have believed in the tone of her own voice and the safety these strangers offer, when she would have known what to do. She is afraid, when they take him to be stabled and rested, she will break again, and weep.

"My uncle is dead," she says, to Galinda and to anyone else who might be listening. The men who rode with her must know, of course. The others will know soon enough, if they do not already, without her telling them. But it feels important to say, all the same. "The King. Is dead."

She grips more tightly to the arm of the woman beside her, and only now does she look at her fully. There cannot be much difference in age between them, but the Lady Galinda looks so young, and Éowyn cannot help wondering how she seems in turn. She feels as though she must look ancient, winnowed and gaunt; but she has seen herself in a looking-glass not so long ago, and she knows that for all that has happened, she looks much as she always did, if perhaps a little thinner and paler.

But Galinda... Galinda seems to her almost to shine with earnestness, and with a clarity in her blue eyes that has not been dulled by grief. She seems to Éowyn an impossibility, a creature of a bygone world - a world that was lost even before Éomer fell, before the gates of Edoras opened to its new masters.

If you will come with me? she said, and it has been some moments since she said it; and Éowyn lets out a long, unsteady breath, and at last answers with a nod. "Please, Lady Galinda." It sits odd on her tongue, that name, comes out nearer to Glinda. "Lead the way."

[sent_to_try_us]

Éowyn's words are not unexpected - even Galinda had known that the king must be dead, when Gríma Wormtongue ascended the throne with Éowyn by his side. Even so, she bows her head briefly, the moment of sorrow rippling across the courtyard as the words are whispered from one to another.

And in the silence afterwards, Éowyn says her name with a lilting accent that sparks something inside Galinda - something different to what her ladies feel, for one of them giggles behind her and repeats Éowyn's pronunciation mockingly.

Galinda's cheeks are burning even as she whips around to glare at the foolish noblewoman, who blanches but defiantly keeps her head up. There is little to do but ignore her, and pray Éowyn has somehow not noticed; how can she possibly chasten the woman here in front of nobility and soldiers alike? It cannot be done, at least not by her - her mother would know how, Galinda is miserably sure, but then her mother has more than a score of years ruling to stand behind. She swallows hard, darts a glance at Éowyn, and continues on as though nothing were amiss.

"We shall watch, if you like," she says calmly, pleased that her voice doesn't quaver. Éowyn is trembling, and though she is not much smaller Galinda is very unsure that she will be able to catch the other woman should she fall. "From the battlements, or inside - and if you do not like, may I offer you a bath and some refreshment?" Once she's started, the familiar offers come easily - every guest may claim a bath and food in the king's halls, and especially a fellow queen. An honoured guest may probably even claim the king's daughter to minister to her - and at least either way she can manufacture some pretence to keep the Lady Shen away.

[shieldofrohan]

Éowyn has noticed, and once, she might have taken umbrage at it. Once, she could not have borne to be mocked.

Now, she has grown used to the sound of laughter and the bitterness it brings. She does not turn to look at the giggling woman, either in affront or in hurt; it washes over her without stirring her. She has noticed, but it is hard to tell by looking at her. Her face is still stone, her jaw clenched tight under the skin.

What she wants - what she really wants - is to be alone. To be unperceived and unbothered by duty, so that the tight-coiled spring of her grief can finally burst and the past year's horrors can spill out into desperate tears. At the same time, and for the same reason, she fears that solitude more than anything.

What she knows that she does not want is to watch men die for her once again. She has been a passive onlooker for too many deaths already, and it does not feel as needful in pitched battle as it did when they were executed. She shakes her head, clearing her throat.

"It has been a long road." There is a shake in her voice, too, now. It is an effort, holding herself together like this. "A bath would be... would be good." At last, she lets Snowmane be taken from her, and her fingers flex at the absence of his rein, and she feels some nameless darkness sweep up to try and claim her. She would sooner go with him, she thinks, than with Lady Galinda, who is a fair stranger and who may be kind, but is not hers - and who can speak, to question or accuse her. But he is a horse, and she is, at least to appearances, a woman; and she cannot hide in the stables with no concerns greater than oats and water.

[sent_to_try_us]

"Whatever you wish, your grace," Galinda says, diverting them smoothly away from the stairs, heading towards the king's quarters; in his absence, with the woman he is determined shall be queen of Rohan in truth as well as in name, it would not do for Galinda to occupy them. She is gratified to see servants scurrying ahead of them, one lad darting towards the kitchens to alert cook that hot water will be needed, and fast. Without either of her parents here, the keep is still running, and man and maid both mind Galinda's orders. A little spark of pride is permissible, surely.

And in truth she is glad that Éowyn has chosen to bathe, rather than watch the battle. Galinda has never been much for the games of war, much less the real thing; it is no sport to watch men flung bloodied and reeling from their horses, even if she has learned to smile and applaud along with the other ladies. It is important, her mother says, to do what pleases a husband and king, and Galinda will one day have her own husband and king to please.

All things considered, she thinks the queen of Rohan a much more amiable prospect. Tall and fair, with such a regal countenance, and yet so young to have the weight of a country on her shoulders without a king to rule beside her. Older than Galinda, though - not by much, she thinks, only a few years at best, but still hardly old enough to rule as well as reign. Still, she will have Galinda's father to lend his might, at least for a while, and perhaps that will be enough time.

There is a lad to open the door for them, bowing low, and Galinda hopes Éowyn doesn't catch the way the boy tries to sneak a glance up at the young queen's face from his bow. The room is in order, clean and airy and white with sweet herbs scattered through the rushes on the floor, the king's second-best bed set up with its cosy woolen curtains drawn invitingly ajar. Another dress is hanging from a clothes-pole, and Galinda is comfortably certain that undergarments and new boots will be tucked into a chest, waiting for Éowyn to feel clean and soothed enough to want them.

"I hope it will do," she says, and cannot quite keep a note of pride out of her voice, stepping aside as two panting maids carry the bath in, followed by a pair of stout men lugging steaming barrels of water. "And I shall attend you, if you will have me." This, at least, she knows how to do; there is nothing much to it, once one has learned how to gently soap another person's hair and trickle the water over them without getting any in their eyes. She gestures to the men, nods to the maids, and watches with satisfaction as they retreat and close the door. It is not exactly peace, not when she still has to put on the best possible face in front of this new queen, but - it is easier, not having to be the mistress and the servant at the same time.

[shieldofrohan]

She cannot help it: she sags as soon as the door is closed, and the mask cracks from her face, the fullness of her weariness shining through. She should hold up the façade, should maintain a queen's composure - as she has somehow managed to do in countless audiences and feasts, when so much rides upon her performance, her ability to stand behind a man she loathes and hold her tongue and pour the wine, and not throw it in his face. She should call upon that desperate determination now, and be still and steady and silent, and not let Galinda see her falter.

But it is more difficult, somehow, to be looked upon with kindness, to be waited upon by someone who genuinely seems to want to please her. She leans back against the doorframe, covering her face with her hands, trying to hold back the tears and master herself again.

"It will do." Her voice is muffled, thick and unclear: this, it seems to her, is her true voice now, not the steady command of a proud queen. "It will more than do. It is a surfeit." It is a trap. It is a dream, or it is a snare, or it is some more evil thing. How long has it been, since she bathed without hurry or fear? How long since there was someone to attend her with a soft hand, not a mail-fist? She lowers her hands at last, and looks at the bath for a long moment with an expression trembling between fear and hate and hope. How long since she took a bath to wash the dirt of travel away, and not to prepare herself for some further humiliation?

She will not weep, she tells herself. If she did not weep when those things were done to her, why should she weep now? Things are not over. They never end. There is no place to collapse and weep and scream, only to put one foot in front of the other and stagger on, towards the next trial. She steadies her expression, although it is not altogether as convincing, and straightens her back, pressing her lips together against the lump in her throat. It is easier to manage if she thinks of the task immediately before her, and does not look up at Galinda or let herself dwell on anything but kneeling to unfasten the laces of her borrowed boots.

Her feet are bare, inside them, and red with blisters from ill-fitting boots on a long ride. She looks down at them as though the pain belongs to someone else, and stands again. Her hands are steadier now, as she lifts them to the fastenings of her dress; this is more routine than anything.

[sent_to_try_us]

Of course she had known that the journey had not been an easy one - she had heard the men muttering to each other before setting out, seen the way they checked and double-checked their equipment. And, too, she had seen their grim faces when they returned, the little group riding tight around the young queen, two men fewer than when they had set out. Somehow Éowyn's exhaustion is still something of a surprise to Galinda, and she stands uncertain and useless as the other woman masters her emotion.

It seems wrong to be admiring Éowyn's beauty when she is distraught, but the difficulty is that she is beautiful, a very different kind to Galinda's own but far more entrancing. The arch of her brow and the line of her cheeks seems almost Elven, her willowy figure closer to a boy's, and her slender fingers seem fit for both embroidery and a sword. And she is lucky, for Éowyn doesn't look back up and see her staring, so Galinda can move forward as the young queen straightens, her hands automatically moving towards Éowyn's shoulders.

"If I may?" she asks, but it isn't really a question; the forms of courtesy are so drilled into her that she knows her task well. Playing the maid, as is only right for a royal lady, she can have Éowyn out of her dress easily - and that's when things become considerably less easy, for there are marks on the other woman's arms and legs that make Galinda's throat constrict. No one has taught her how to manage this when not on a man of war; men, after all, do seem to enjoy their bruises and scars, with a story for every one. Women - women do not boast of scars. And if there are bruises peeping over the top of Éowyn's shift, how much worse might be under it?

"Will you bathe in your shift?" At least the words come out readily enough, even if Galinda's voice has gone up a notch as she says it - and they can both pretend it's only a preference, a custom of a different land, because certainly there are some who hold that being completely naked is unseemly. Whether or not Rohan is one of them Galinda has no idea, but that is entirely irrelevant. There is nothing else she can say without upsetting her guest, or going back over unfamiliar and probably painful ground, or foreshadowing a question that Éowyn will perhaps be asked a hundred times. "I am here at your will, your grace," she adds, softer, hoping Éowyn will understand what she's trying to do.

[sent_to_try_us]

It is still true night when the maid creeps into Éowyn's room to wake Galinda, before the sun has even become a line of light across the horizon - and waking her is easy enough, for she has barely slept. In truth, she is sick with worry, for today is the day she has been dreading, the day when everything must change again. Today Éowyn rides out at the head of her army to reclaim her crown, and to take her revenge on the man who calls himself her husband. And Galinda is afraid - terribly afraid - that she will not come back.

They have scarcely been out of each other's sight, these past few days. They have walked together in the gardens, chatting about everything and nothing; Éowyn has sat patiently while Galinda tends her bruises with poultices that, in truth, she is not the best at making; they have brushed out each other's hair, like sisters would, and each admired the other's beauty. And Galinda, for her part, has started caring so much for Éowyn that she can no longer imagine a world without her in it.

It is ridiculous to think like this, she knows; they both of them have responsibilities, futures planned out that do not and cannot involve the other. She will marry, and be sent to her husband's country, never to see Éowyn again. And Éowyn must reign in Rohan, be the queen she was born to be, and likewise marry and have heirs to keep the succession stable. Knowing this does not, however, stop her from dreaming otherwise.

Reluctantly, Galinda pushes the covers aside and goes to stoke up the fire, waiting until it crackles into life before returning to the bed and Éowyn. She leans over to kiss the other woman's forehead, smoothing loose strands of golden hair away from Éowyn's face, taking one last long look at the beauty of the young queen's face as she sleeps.

"Éowyn, my dear," she says softly, wishing she did not have to. "Come, my sweet, it is time."

[shieldofrohan]

Rohan will rise. She knows it, with every fibre of herself; when they see that she is alive, and that the usurper has no right to command them, the last of the Rohirrim's chains will be broken, and they will rise with her, and together they will free the land, or die in the attempt.

(They will die. Many of them will die. Perhaps she will die; and she is not unhappy with the thought.)

She needs only to be seen, to speak bravely and cry out for justice and they will come to her aid; and if she can lead them by the correct paths, then she would not wonder if the army that comes to Edoras is twice the size of the one that leaves here today. It will be enough. It must be enough. They will all have justice, for Théoden and Éomer and Théodred, for Háma and Ceolfrith and Harbeorn, for all of them. For herself, in time, when she can see the light fade from Gríma's eyes. It will be enough, and they will, one way or the other, be freed - in victory, or in death.

But despite all that, she is afraid. She has said a little - a very little - of this to Galinda, over the past days, as they grow closer and as she begins to trust that Galinda will not inform the others of her weakness. She is not afraid of death, but she is afraid of her own failings, her weakness; she is afraid that she is not worthy to be followed, that the men who die will die for less than they deserve. And most of all, what if they do win? What if she is Queen - a woman who could not even defend herself, much less her people, and whose honour was so easily perjured for fear of who might suffer? A woman who far too many people have seen stripped and violated and forced to her knees, who will never reclaim her dignity? And who will marry her, and give her heirs, when she has been so thoroughly misused? What comes next, if they should happen to win? It is a yawing, pitching uncertainty, too vast to imagine.

All of which to say: she has not slept easy, this final night, and she is not asleep when Galinda returns, although she lies still with closed eyes as though she were. There are signs that she is awake, if one should look: the harder set of her mouth, the sternness of her features, which tend to relax a little in sleep. But she does not move until Galinda speaks, and then only to open her eyes, slowly, to look up at her handmaiden.

Galinda has been the comfort she needed, in the past days. She is kind and careful, and she asks few questions, and she has never once seemed scornful of Éowyn's weakened state - has not accepted Éowyn's own scorn of it, either. And, perhaps most importantly, she has been present, a friendly hand and a warm companion, ever since that first meeting. Éowyn, who never had a sister and has had only very few friends in her life, cannot help but latch onto that closeness, and it fills a space inside her that has been achingly hollow for far longer than Gríma's reign. It grieves her to go, to leave the first such friend she has made. Now she looks up at Galinda, rolling onto her back so that she can see her more clearly.

"How long?" Another clue that she was not asleep: her voice sounds altogether unfogged by waking. "We leave at dawn; how long until then?"

[sent_to_try_us]

There are times when Éowyn is unfairly, unbearably beautiful; this is such a one, as she rolls over and looks up at Galinda with those clear grey eyes, still a little dishevelled from sleep, and Galinda has to swallow hard so that she can answer. If only she could say there are hours yet, if only she could say she was mistaken, it is not today - but she cannot, and will not.

"An hour, perhaps," she says softly, and bites at her own lip, almost hard enough to make it bleed. "Time to eat and dress, and then I will take you down to see your men."

They were Galinda's men, until those few days ago, at least in theory - she could never command them in practice, not the way Éowyn can (not the way Éowyn will), and she does not feel the loss of them in any very real way. Unlike Éowyn, she is only a figurehead, not a queen in her own right, not someone they will listen to. Galinda has made a point of attending at meals with the men as often as she can, descending from the high table to walk amongst them, smiling and bowing her head in answer to their greetings and - above all else - listening.

They will follow Éowyn. They speak of her with admiration, with awe; like Galinda, they have fallen under her spell, they understand the rightness of her cause. To them she is the undoubted Queen of Rohan, and the Wormtongue nothing but an usurper who sits upon a stolen throne. And if these men, who owe her nothing, will follow so easily, then Rohan will surely rise as she rides to reclaim her crown. Galinda would, if she were a Rohirrim boy. In truth she would follow as she is, and the only thing that holds her back is the knowledge that she can do nothing but get in the way and distract the men and their commanders. The only choice for her is to stay here, and wait, and hope.

A tap on the door is swiftly followed by it opening to admit a maid, a tray of bread and cheese and honey and wine in her hands. Galinda rises to take it, dismissing the girl with a smile she does not really mean. Breakfast means that time is drawing on, and soon Éowyn will leave.

"Come, dearest," she says, doing her best to put cheer into her voice. "They have prepared a feast for you, and you must eat, you will need your strength."

[shieldofrohan]

She has little appetite, and less when she looks at Galinda - when she sees the way Galinda bites at her lip, the falsity of her smile, the grief behind it. There is no joy in the thought of leaving, even if it is for the fulfilment of vengeance. Even if it is to reclaim what has been lost.

I may never see her again, she thinks, and it is a stab to the heart. She still longs, in so many ways, for this to end in her death - end in blood and glory, end in justice, end with her locked in mortal combat with her foe, but most of all, to end. But looking at Galinda, she feels for the first time that her death would come at a cost, that it would truly grieve someone who has not already been long-submerged in grief. Galinda, she thinks, would weep at the news, would be harrowed by it as bitterly as any: and it is not right that it should be so, for they have known each other so short a time, but she knows it is so, all the same. I may never see her again, and a part of her cries out against the injustice of it, to have found someone new whose loss would be a grief, and to lose her again at once.

She sits up slowly, swinging her feet off the bed. The marks of the blisters remain, but they are no longer tender, and she has properly-fitted boots now: just as well, for it will be a long time before she can rest like this again. The bruises are gone, or else faded to an unpleasant but less-lurid yellow against her pale skin. She is not herself again, but she can dress up as herself, and try to pretend.

She does not want to. She can hardly bear to stand, to go and collect her breeches and tunic (for she may be a queen, but she must be a warrior first; there is no place for gowns on this journey) and return to settle on the edge of the bed.

"What will you do, when I am gone?" she asks quietly, beginning to pull on her breeches. "Will you return home, where it is safer? I would not like to think of you lingering here, waiting for news."

[sent_to_try_us]

A woman wearing breeches is so completely out of Galinda's experience that for a few moments she stares, more than a little startled, and only belatedly recalls herself and looks away. The difficulty of it is that Éowyn in breeches is quite as handsome as Éowyn in a dress, or in a nightgown, and there is something about the line of her calf that keeps drawing Galinda's eye. Or at least it does until Éowyn asks the questions she has determinedly been trying not to think of, and thus thinking of all the more.

"Oh, well, of course I shall be here," she says lightly - she is trying for lightly, at any rate, even if her voice has developed a sudden tendency to wobble when she tries to talk - "and I shall probably be so bored as to start work on embroidering the sky." The tapestry she has been working on is large, and the sky a particularly unexciting stretch of monotonous blue, and Éowyn knows that Galinda has been procrastinating on it as long as she is able. Up until now, she has been wonderfully successful at it.

Up until now, she has had Éowyn by her side.

Galinda swallows hard, and reaches for Éowyn's tunic - just for something to do, not because it really needs holding. "So I will thank you to send word as soon as you can, if you please," she adds, trying for at least a more steady voice. "For I will be waiting." Waiting, and wishing, and hoping, and fearing - she can imagine it all too easily, scanning the horizon for a messenger who does not come, hating the dusk as night settles and the road becomes part of the endless black, waiting all night without knowing Éowyn's fate.

[shieldofrohan]

Éowyn pauses with her hands on the strings of her nightgown, and there is a terrible look upon her face for a moment, unnoticed and so unhidden. She has been struck all at once by memory: by what for so long she had thought the worst of a woman's fate. By standing at the walls, when the end had not yet come, watching first her cousin and then her brother ride away, knowing that she could not spend all her life watching the horizon, knowing that her mind's eye would always be turned there. How long the nights, how dark the days, how restless the hours, when those you care for are in their hour of peril, and you cannot move to aid them; how endless the waiting, and how terrible the fear.

More immediate horrors have consumed her in the past years, but it turns out that she can still remember the duller, no less crushing horror of waiting.

She stands abruptly, seizing Galinda's hand, and her eyes blaze with sudden intensity, her expression one of pity and grief more than anything. "Do not wait," she says, and her own voice is not altogether steady, either. "Do not. It is the last thing I would condemn you to, Glinda, to that dark unknowing. Come with me, if you will; or else turn for home, and I will send word as often as I can; but do not wait here in the darkness for what evil or triumph may come. I cannot bear to think of it. I know it too well." And then, as it strikes her what she has said, and how deeply it is meant, she lowers her voice a little, and says it less passionately and more seriously: "Come with me, if you will - and only if you will, for it will not be safe nor comfortable. But I have found strength in you, where I thought it was lost, and I cannot bear to keep you prisoner to my uncertainties. You need bear no sword, nor come in sight of battle; you need not linger if you are afraid; but come with me, if you do not want to stay, and I will do all that I can to protect you."

And saying it, she is aware of the horror of what she suggests, and the guilt. She has always known what becomes of women in war, and now it is all the reality she has left of herself, and will she condemn her friend to it, too?

But it should be Galinda's choice. It is not a much lesser doom to wait than to suffer; it is not less fearful to be helpless one way than the other. It should be her choice, and it cannot be her choice unless it is offered.

She looses her grip on Galinda's hand, and leans in to kiss the other woman on the cheek, softer than she would have thought herself capable of. "Only if you will. I will be as grateful to you either way, for you have been all my comfort since I fled."

[shieldofrohan]

They ride to Aldburg first, along the borders: her father's old seat, which should have been Éomer's, and which is now with some half-remembered lackey of the Dunlendings. It pains her to see it, with the banners torn down and changed, an old home become an enemy stronghold - but the people there, as she calculated, are still her own. They are amazed to see her, many of them having assumed she was dead, many more having thought themselves abandoned by the Line of Eorl. They ask questions she has no answers to, which leave her shaking at the memories; but they are readily convinced, seeing her, and the look of hard determination in her eyes. And the word begins to spread, at once: the Queen is returned.

A week after leaving Galinda, she writes: We have Aldburg. I have my father's sword. There is a more detailed report, but this part is addressed to Galinda directly, and written in Éowyn's hand. It is short. She does not trust herself to write too much, or too openly. It ends, as all her subsequent missives will end, with I am alive.

They leave a skeleton force at Aldburg, and split their forces, one half riding south to Dunharrow, and Éowyn's command riding north to sweep through the Eastfold. I am alive. They are outnumbered, but as she predicted, the country rises to meet them; there are horses aplenty, the finest that can be given, and men - and not a few women - who will join them. Their advantage, then, is not in combat but in speed and nimbleness. They draw out the Dunlendings and their ilk from the cities and the foothills, and through exhaustion and ambush, the hunt commences.

I am alive.

To Edoras at last, and her heart has always leapt to see the thatch of the Golden Hall rising from the plains, but now it is not joy alone which seizes her. She rides into view with her helm off, her golden hair fluttering like a banner, and sounds the horn; and outside the gates, alone and far ahead of her little army, she rises to stand in her saddle and finds all the strength she has, to call out in a high and carrying voice that echoes out across the plain and bounces off the mountainsides: "Gríma! Gríma Wormtongue, Gríma Wærloga, Gríma of the false claim; come out, if you are even one-tenth a man, come out and hear me!" And she cannot see at this distance whether he does, or which of the figures upon the inner wall he might be; but it does not matter. If he is here, he will hear her. If he is not, he will still hear her, her words passing back to him through whispers and report. So, after a moment, she sounds her horn again, and continues to call out her challenge. "I swore thee no oath, Wormtongue; I made thee no vow; and I am not thy wife, and if ever I were, then a thousand times I divorce thee! Come out and face your people, O unnatural king, or cower craven behind stolen walls; I will find you out, one way or another, and see you dead for all that you have done. Come out, and spare yourself the siege. I will be waiting."

All this, she writes to Galinda, to assure her of how things are going. She does not write of how much she shook as she turned her horse and rode back out of arrow-range; nor of the way that, almost as soon as she dismounted, she had found herself seized by a terrible enervation, as though all her strength had been in that cry and now there was not even enough to keep her standing.

She does not write of what her opening sally leads to, Gríma's reprisal delivered with callous brutality. You are my wife, is not enough: he drags out the truth of things, reminds her as if chiding that she has been on her knees for him, that all present must have seen how for almost two years she was meek and willing, that she did not rise until it was her own power at stake, and not her uncle's. And does she mourn the old King, he asks, all mock-concern, or did she not wish he had died long ago, to leave the crown upon her brow? She opened her arms and her legs to Gríma when he gave her power, and now that he is no longer in her command, she means to see him dead; is that the deed of a Queen, or of a brazen whore?

It is not true, but too much of it is true. She cannot bring herself to speak, trembling with fury and humiliation and remembered horror: she is glad for the helm that covers her face, for no-one should see her so undone.

Nor does it end with public speeches. He sends messages out to her camp, and reading the first one, she is rendered almost insensible: all others after that, she burns unread. In them, he reminds her of their marriage, as he persists in calling it: writes of her wet and grasping cunt, her mouth put to better use than warcries, her breasts and her buttocks yielding to him. Surrender, he writes, quit the battlefield, and I will not show them your nature.

She does not write of this to Galinda, nor of other things: how, walking through the camp, she feels all eyes upon her and hears whispers behind her; how she wonders what they say of her, and does not know whether she fears more that they believe Gríma's lies or her own; how her nights are a terror and her days a hideous, unending wait for action. She does not write of the nightmares. When she is wounded, she writes of that, but in the lightest terms she can manage. And always, at the end of every letter: I am alive.

It is almost four months, and winter is coming on, before the last letter comes. She has written faithfully all this while, weekly or as near as the messenger may manage, often hastily-scrawled notes but always to the same end. I am alive. I am alive. I am alive.

We are victorious. Come, please.

[sent_to_try_us]

It is only four months, but it may as well be years for all Galinda knows or cares of it. There are the letters: faithful, constant letters, each with Éowyn's name in her own hand at the end, that reassuring refrain and terrifying reminder: she is alive.

It takes a few weeks before she realizes that if those notes ever stop, Éowyn will be dead.

A handful of days together, and yet she finds herself waking up on Éowyn's side of the bed, curled around her pillow; she cries herself to sleep if a letter is delayed or if the young queen's message is more ragged than usual, the hand writing it clearly battered and bruised and exhausted. Galinda is well, and idle, and it grates on her more and more every day that she cannot be there, following in Éowyn's footsteps, knowing within hours or days how the battles go. But, too, she knows that she would have been only a burden. Éowyn has enough to do without her, without the retinue that would make her a target and take away valuable resources from the main army.

She keeps every letter, folding them away into the little wooden box of her most precious possessions, and wipes her tears in private, walking out each day to greet her people with nothing but sunny smiles and sweet words. She is endlessly confident, endlessly optimistic, never doubting that Éowyn will triumph and all will be well. It is the finest performance of her life, and it costs her dearly.

And then one day, at last, the message she has been waiting for arrives: Come, please.

---

They progress through the lands Éowyn has taken slowly, so slowly that Galinda could scream. She waits until she can wait no longer, until they are no more than a day's riding for a swift horse, and calls together her officers to give them her commands. They come, quickly obedient more to please her distant father than herself - but they come, and that is the important thing. And when she tells them that Éowyn the queen will call her Glinda, and that it is her decision that all of her own people in Rohan will also call her Glinda as a mark of respect, they glance at each other but they bow and agree.

There is less agreement when Glinda tells them that she is riding out now, with a small escort and no more, and they are to follow at their own pace. There is, in fact, some argument - but no one quite has the courage to grab the bridle of Glinda's horse as she mounts and kicks it into motion. For a few minutes she rides alone, but ten or so men catch up with her swiftly enough, and that is more than she needs. All she needs, really, is herself.

It is the depths of night when they arrive. The court is in some disarray - as expected, so soon after a regime change - and Glinda makes use of it. The main courtiers are asleep, the night watch not expecting anything to happen now that the Queen is in power and the overthrown King - somewhere. Glinda does not know where, and does not care, save that he is not in Éowyn's bed. Perhaps he is dead already. He is, in any case, completely irrelevant.

No one quite knows who is allowed where, or what is happening, and she walks boldly, fearlessly, through the halls. Her escort fall away behind her, stopped by one guard or another, but Glinda does not stop. She does not even bother to glance at anyone who seems interested in finding out her identity or her intentions, simply glides past with the cool self-assurance of the princess she is.

Eventually there are only maids, and these bob curtseys and point when she stops them and asks the direction of Her Majesty, Her Grace, the Queen. She is only one woman, and clearly of high status: who are they to stop her, when she has passed by so many guards? This is not how she should be arriving at Éowyn's court. Glinda no longer cares. If she does not see Éowyn soon, she is quite certain she will die. And perhaps it is the steel in her eyes, the set of her chin, that keeps the maids curtseying and gesturing. She is strong right up until she opens the door, and finds the bedchamber within, and then her hands are shaking and her voice trembles when she asks, at last, "Éowyn?"

[shieldofrohan]

The room is brightly-lit, considering the hour: there are at least a half-dozen candles, and the fire roaring in the grate. She tried to sleep in the dark, the first night, and found it worse than the camp: this is her uncle's room, not the room she used to keep, but it is enough the same to be unsettling. The carved wooden walls which once seemed so warm and homely now leer and laugh at her, the high vaulting of the roof seems crushingly close, and there is a smell - a smell she never noticed, of smoke and ancient wood and thatch - which should be comforting, but now makes her want to gag. So she keeps her room bright, to tide her through the shadows of the lengthening nights, and she is restless in it, all the same.

All of which to say: there is more light in the bedchamber than without, and it does not disguise its occupant. Éowyn is standing with her back to the door, silhouetted against the fire, her hands on the mantel as she stares intently into the flames. She is in her nightgown, her hair braided loosely down her back, a bandage visible around her left arm.

She is thinner than she was, and she had little softness about her to begin with. Now, she is winnowed almost to nothing, and when she turns, wide-eyed, at the sound of her name, the firelight catches the harsh planes of her face: weary, haunted eyes deeply set and shadowed by exhaustion, cheeks carved out into sharp angles, skin so pale that even the firelight cannot lend it warmth. Her smile looks strangely out of place on such a face. She smiles, all the same, and then she is rushing across the grand bedchamber, grabbing Galinda's hands tightly.

"I did not look for you for a day or two yet." Her chest hurts, but it is a pain born of relief, so dizzying she almost sways with it. Up close, it is apparent that she has been crying. "And not at such an hour. Are you not tired?"

[sent_to_try_us]

"No." She is, but Glinda is not about to say anything of the sort, not when Éowyn stands here before her looking like she is only a step away from collapse. Not when she can gather the other woman into her arms, hold her close, and try to fight back her tears as she realizes just how thin Éowyn is now, just how small. This is not the woman who left her four months ago, so brave and proud. This woman could barely stand in mail. This woman should be in bed, an invalid, being fed nourishing broths and tended by physicians.

"Come, sit," she says softly, and does her best to pretend tears are not glittering in her eyes as she draws away again - but her hands do not leave Éowyn's arms; she may be tired, may be sore from hours of riding a fast horse, may want nothing more than drink and rest, but she is still far better off than the young queen is. "Let me call for food and wine, sit with me and tell me - everything. I would know all of it, Éowyn. I have missed you so dearly."

There are chairs by the fire; there is an uncertain maid by the door, flanked now by one of the courtiers Glinda glided past on her path to see Éowyn, but neither of them dare enter or say anything now that they see how Glinda is received by their queen. She glances back at them, daring them with a look to do anything but her bidding, and is rewarded by the maid bobbing another curtsey and disappearing. The man is less easily intimidated, and so she simply ignores him. He is unimportant. Éowyn is here: there is nothing else in the world.

[shieldofrohan]

Éowyn knew, of course, that she had missed Glinda; that she had written all those letters for a reason, that she had wished for Glinda at her side a hundred times over the past four months, and that there was unfinished business between them. But it is only now, when she is embraced in warm, gentle arms and held close against her friend's soft, unwarlike form, that she realises just how much she has missed her. How much she has needed her here, returning to the lion's den; how much she needs someone who needs no more of her than this.

She clears her throat, looking past Glinda at the door, and speaks to the courtier in the Rohirric tongue, telling him in a few short, authoritative words that Glinda is the expected guest, and that she is more than capable of defending herself if needed. He leaves, less because of the words and more because of the force with which she says them. Only when he is gone, pulling the door to behind him, does Éowyn sit, her posture softening noticeably, her hands still gripping Glinda's sleeves as though a part of her is afraid that Glinda may simply vanish.

"Everything," she repeats, and it seems to her a strange word, vast and hollow. What is everything? What can she say, that will not be ruinous or incomprehensible? She could outline every move of the armies she has led, every victory and defeat; the practicalities of siege or the brutalities of war. She does not wish to say any of it to Glinda, who alone among this whole place retains some innocence.

"His men gave him up eight days ago, to break the siege." And almost immediately after, she had written to Glinda, before they even moved into the city. Now she smiles a little, wry and humourless. "If he were less of a fool, they might have held out until January, and a hard winter might have driven us back; but he kept too little stock laid in, and trusted his advisors too little, and I understand that their supplies ran out by mid-October. Now he is in the best cell I can think of, which is the room he kept me in; and I have delayed his sentencing as long as I can." Again, she takes Glinda's hands, her expression pleading for understanding. "Forgive me, Glinda, that I would put this upon you; but I could not face it without you. I cannot. I will break, and they will all see me break, and then it will have been for nothing. I need your strength, when he is brought before my throne."

[sent_to_try_us]

She is not surprised - Glinda is, after all, the daughter of a king, and one who holds his throne in an iron grip. Since her earliest memories she has attended executions for treason, the king and his family watching as traitors paid the price for their crimes. Wormtongue will, of course, have to die. Even if he had not harmed Éowyn, he is an usurper and pretender who seized the crown from the legitimate ruler.

But he has harmed Éowyn, and for Glinda that is what makes the difference.

"I will stand by your side," she tells Éowyn softly, squeezing the young queen's hands gently, shifting forward to sit at the very edge of her chair and be as close as possible. Her knees bump into Éowyn's, and she does not care. They are still not close enough. "You must pass the sentence, dearest; it is your court - but of course I will be there." She cannot seem to stop wanting to touch Éowyn, to hold her close; Glinda reaches up to tuck a loose strand of hair back behind the other woman's ear, her hand lingering against Éowyn's cheek.

"I dreamed of you," she says, very quietly. "Almost every night I dreamed of you, and every day I thought of you; you have not been out of my mind since last I saw you." Some of the dreams were nightmares, especially when a letter was late. Some of them were merely pleasant thoughts, imaginings of them walking together, riding together, simply cuddled together to talk. And there were others - the kind of dream she has never had before, ones that make her blush to think of. "I do not think I could bear to leave you again," Glinda adds, and tries to smile.

in which things get a little grím(a)

[sent_to_try_us]

They have barely slept, between the anxiety of the day ahead, the lateness of Glinda's arrival, and the rush of desire that has left Glinda's body with a kind of blissful ache all through. No one had mentioned this part - that she would discover all sorts of muscles through her back and thighs, that she might feel as if she were tingling for hours - but then no one had mentioned any parts, really, on a subject she ought to know nothing of. A subject that she has to forget entirely for at least this day, because she simply cannot let anything show in her face when she looks at Éowyn. She must be calm, and stern, and unyielding - and whenever she looks at Éowyn, Glinda wants to smile.

"Come, dearest," she says, holding up the dress for Éowyn's approval - deep green and bright white, with embroidery of gold and silver, gems that will highlight the slenderness of the young queen's waist and the elegance of her movements. At least she can smile now, when Éowyn looks over at her; at least she can let her eyes say the affectionate things her lips cannot. "Do you not think this one? And then your hair down, I thought?" Loose, uncovered hair is after all the mark of a virgin or a queen - or both, and this confrontation must be managed to show Éowyn to her subjects as the undisputed, untouchable ruler. Glinda knows the little things that people will notice, even if they are quite unaware of it at the time. Her mother has always been most strict about presenting themselves as they ought to be seen, and Glinda is after all her only daughter.

"It will soon be over," she adds, gently. "You need only look at him twice more - this once, and then - well." When he dies, she means. It is a foregone conclusion that he will die; what he has done is something no monarch can ever treat with anything less than the utmost severity. "So come now, and let us be done with it, and then we never need think of him again." Except she will, because the memory of Éowyn as a refugee, frightened and bruised, still seems seared into her heart - and if she cannot forget, then her lover surely cannot either. Even so, Glinda's chin comes up, proud and determined, and she sets her jaw firmly and inclines her head towards Éowyn, inviting her to join in the act.

[shieldofrohan]

They have barely slept, and yet that brief sleep has been deeper than it has been for a long time. It is not enough for Éowyn to feel ready for what is to come, but it is enough for her to look it.

"I had thought to wear my hair braided, as for battle. To be in some part a King, and not a maid." And not the woman that some of them - one in particular - have seen clothed only in that loose hair, a mockery of maidenhood. Looking at Glinda, though, and at the impeccable choice of gown she has made, Éowyn is not inclined to ignore her advice. Her own thoughts on the matter are clouded, raw-edged wounds where clearer-minded tactics should prevail; and there is value, too, in being a maid again, disavowing what was taken without being freely given.

(But then, she has freely given it, now. It strikes her with an unfamiliar warmth, looking at the solicitous concern in Glinda's earnest face, that she cannot call herself a maid by that measure, either - and that she cannot bring herself to consider it a loss.)

"I am not afraid to look upon him," she says at length, tossing her head like a restless warhorse, and reaches for the gown in Glinda's hands. "He should fear to look upon me, and beg for a clean death by my sword. Will the sword-belt sit well enough on this gown, do you think?" That, at least, she does not intend to be feminine in. She won her throne back by steel and blood, and it is right that she should remind them of it at every turn; and most of all in this audience, when she knows how easily she may look weak in their eyes. She looks weak in her own.

[sent_to_try_us]

It is lucky that Éowyn pauses, after her remark about the braid, for no sooner has Glinda imagined it than her imagination seems to take flight and soar into something entirely different: Éowyn in her dress, with her hair braided back, powerful and beautiful; Glinda herself on her back in Éowyn's bed, and the young queen straddling her thighs; her hand on Glinda's neck, and her smile -

She finds herself swallowing hard, aware that she is pink to the tips of her ears, and tries to save herself by nodding in as nonchalant a manner as she can manage. When Éowyn reaches for the gown she surrenders it easily, waiting for the other woman to step into it before her hands go to the laces of the dress.

"Yes," Glinda says, focusing firmly on safer issues, such as whether a sword belt and gown go well together - something she had not ever thought to have to consider. "Yes, I think it will - without any other belt, of course, but it will draw the gown in as it should. And you are quite right, you ought to wear a braid. It will suit your crown, and they shall all see you can be king and queen at once." By now her voice has become much more confident; this is something Glinda can be certain of.

[shieldofrohan]

It is strange, to look upon Glinda and see that she is flushed and staring. It is strange even though it makes perfect sense, even though on a rational level Éowyn is aware that it is no surprise. Her own mind is far from such pleasant diversions as last night, and yet seeing her lover so flustered brings them back, for just a moment. (She had looked just as flustered in her pleasure, writhing under Éowyn's hands, as though it were a miracle beyond speech. O! to return to the night before, and that pleasure, and that thoughtlessness!)

The gown is heavy and stiff, and it is very much the same feeling as donning armour in the field. She lifts her hair up out of the way of the laces, feeling how unkempt it is after their exertions. A half-hour at least, to braid it properly into the complex patterns favoured by the Riders. A stay of execution, for she can hardly attend her court until she is ready.

"I should not be afraid," she muses quietly, without fully realising she has spoken. Her eyes are fixed ahead, towards the window and the dawn outside. "He is more helpless now than even I was, for he has no friends in this place. This is all that I wished for, all this while. I should not be afraid."

She swallows, clearing her throat, and looks back at Glinda. "If you comb my hair, I will finish it: a warrior should braid his own hair. And you should make yourself splendid, too. You are my seneschal, in this."

[sent_to_try_us]

It still startles Glinda to think that Éowyn customarily braids her own hair: Glinda herself has not so much as brushed it by herself, not even this morning, and the idea of working out how to form one of the complicated braids her lover prefers is enough to make her shudder. Still, she nods agreement and flashes Éowyn a smile before going to the little saddle roll a servant quietly placed on a clothes chest earlier.

"You need have no fear of anything," she tells Éowyn, her voice soft but warm. "Certainly not of him, and not even of me being anything less than positively magnificent." She had thought, after all, of how she must be able to seem her father's daughter and representative - and besides, Glinda loves fine clothing and jewelry. Carefully rolled in three separate layers of linen and a layer of stout oiled leather is one of her dresses, blue and white in the colours of the Uplands and with delicate embroidery of blue flowers and gold crosses along the hems. Her presence declares that Éowyn has allies; her clothing and appearance declares that those allies are powerful and wealthy, able to support fine craftsmen and spend extravagantly on a woman's dress.

Within the dress - and she carefully removes them before shaking the dress out - is a set of jewels: necklace, braided and bejewelled belt, earrings and coronet, each wrought in gold and set with sapphires as blue and bright as Glinda's eyes. She sets the coronet on her head, holds the necklace up against her neck, and turns to show Éowyn.

"You will have to help me with the clasp," she says with a somewhat mischievous smile, "but I hope I shall be quite as splendid as you might wish."

[shieldofrohan]

The sapphires are the very colour of Glinda's eyes, the gold almost lost in the shine of her hair. It is, of course, a good choice. Éowyn would have expected no less.

"You may be more splendid than I." It is said lightly, with the cadence of a joke, but it is not altogether joking. There is a real concern behind it, seeing a crown - almost a crown - settled on Glinda's hair: the nagging reminder that misplaced trust is what brought Rohan to this pass, and that so much of Éowyn's position is dependent upon her lover's family. She can tell herself that she would have reclaimed her place without them, that Rohan would still have risen to her call if she had ridden alone - but the truth is that she did not, and that it was another land's men who have won the day. It is an unease that sits with her daily, and the only unease not salved at all by Glinda's presence.

But it is only an unease, and whatever doubts she may have of her allies' intentions, they do not extend to Glinda herself. It is impossible to think her capable of evil. She is the only thing that still seems pure.

Éowyn crosses the space between them, moving behind Glinda, and allows herself the luxury of fingertips against the warm skin of shoulders. "Hold still, then. Let me help you." And the mad thought seizes her to kiss that skin, to press her lips to the white column of Glinda's neck and draw her in, and fall once more to the bed, and never leave: find that brief carelessness again, and find a way to make it last forever, so that they need never be splendid or brave, so that she need not face duty. Her breath shudders, and she fastens the clasp with trembling fingers, and clears her throat as she steps away. "When you are dressed, will you go and call for Hlutor Halfspear, so we may make sure of the men at hand? And then you may as well make sure of your breakfast; for certainly I have no appetite, and I will be a while yet."