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.
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sforzinda
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Date: 2025-07-25 08:12 pm (UTC)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.