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.

[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]

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.

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.