In Silence Remembered
Nov. 11th, 2006 08:32 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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hobbit_holidaysAuthor: ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fantasy_fan
Rating: PG
Pairing/Characters: OMC, mention of the four Travellers
Warnings: Description of battle
Summary: The memories of one old soldier, in honor of Remembrance Day
Every November 2, the Master of Buckland blows his silver horn, and all who were there remember the first time it was blown in the Shire, in the great year of 1419. And there are bonfires, and feasting, and those who have been there say that there are always tears in the eyes of the Thain when he hears the call of the silver horn. But those of us in Bywater, we don’t need a horn-call to remind us what happened after that, and we all keep the day in our own way. The mayor reads the roll of those who fell, but I stay at home for that part. I’d rather go up to the garden after all the other folks have gone back home, with maybe just one of the grands for company, and I sit and look at the blooms, tended with care, and the great stone. The quiet of the garden, empty of all living souls, seems fit to my memories, for I have grown used to stillness all around me now...
I crouch on the ground in the crisp November air, the smell of the bonfire in my nose and the grumbling of my friend in my ears. Today he is complaining about how having a bonfire makes no sense in the morning sun, and I don’t bother to answer that it has been burning all night, since the first batch of ruffians were captured around it. Matty is always grumbling, about somesuch or another, and over the years I have learned how not to listen to much of it. Besides, I’m really too afeart to hear it all today. My blood runs cold, and then hot, and we wait, and wait some more. I can see Mr. Merry Brandybuck, over there by the fire, and I keep my eyes on him. He’s changed, and it’s more than he’s taller than he used to be. He shines brighter, too, or something, and I can’t quite wrap my head around it. For all he’s only 36, just a year older than me, he seems to know what he’s talking about, and all got-up in mail and a sword and a shield, I see lots of other eyes on him as well. Him and that young giant Mr. Peregrin Took, and Mr. Frodo Baggins, who don’t look any taller at least, standing by the fire with old Tom Cotton. If anything, Mr. Frodo has shrunk some, and what’s more a shock, he looks old, for the first time I ever seen it. But he’s got that brightness around him too, that I don’t think just comes from standing next to a burning pile of wood. It eases my mind a bit to watch them, but the waiting is still hard, and I grip my axe tight and squint at the edge, looking for nicks, to give me something to do.
My mam cried, the day they turned us out of our hole just so they could dig a big pit of it, and I was mad enough to spit nails, but I couldn’t do nothing about it, with worrying about mam and my sisters, for those Big Men didn’t stop at nothing when the mood took them. We learned to be quiet, quiet and afraid after Old Noakes just up and disappeared one day after he’d said his piece a little too loud at the marketplace, and there’s been worse since, and I’ve been just tied up in knots inside, waiting, waiting for my chance to do something. And now it seems the chance is almost here, for Mr. Merry and Mr. Frodo and even Sam Gamgee has laid plans, and Matty and I are to push waggons out into the road beyond the hedge, when the ruffians march by, and finally we’ll have our land and our goods and our peace back.
And Matty is still grumbling, but I don’t pay him no mind, for the Bankstones are just like that, and anyway we’ve been friends for such a long time, ever since we was both faunts, that I think I’ve heard all the grumbles there are at least once, and most of them twice. But I give him an elbow, for I hear heavy feet coming up the lane, and it’s time for quiet. I coil myself up like a hedgehog, and hide behind the bank where we used to play I-hide-and-you-seek-me, and the first ruffians pass by, but behind them are more, many strong legs marching all together with hard boots beating on the ground like drums. And when they are all passed and looking at the captains by the fire, Matty and I do our job, and push out the waggons, while the Tunnelly brothers do the same from the field on the other side of the road.
I can’t quite hear what is said by the captains, for Matty has begun his grumbling again, but I can tell when things start to go wrong by the roar from the hobbits above the hedges, and what must be battle cries from the ruffians, sharp and shrill what makes me want to put my hands over my head and shut my eyes and hide away.
But I don’t, for here come a bunch of them, ugly snarls on their faces and flashing knives in their hands and shrieks in my ears as they come running, right at us four, and one aims a club at one of the Tunnellys, and one drops screaming with a hobbit-arrow in his back, and two more fall smashing into my waggon, the ruffians at their backs pushing and yelling, and chased by hobbits with bows and hobbits with axes and one hobbit with a bright sword. But I stand stuck to the ground, and fear to raise my hand for the noise and the smell and the commotion, until one great beast with sallow skin and snaggly teeth and squinty eyes stabs his long knife, right at Matty next to me. And Matty, he’s got a scythe that he gets in front of him, and takes the first blow on the handle, but the ruffian is fast, and aims another right for his chest before Matty can swing the blade around. Then I move, but it’s too late, for Matty is on the ground, and his blood running into the rutted road looks like bright lines of fire in the light coming from down the lane. And I bring my axe around, right into the back of the ruffian’s head, and he goes down too, but there are more all around me.
And so I fight, and I mark a few more of them, and now the blood looks black and slippery in the road. But the archers behind the hedge are hobbits, and don’t miss their shots whether aiming for a coney or these bigger targets, and more of the ruffians collapse. One of them hits my arm with a club, and pain blooms bright, for it breaks with a loud snap, but it’s not the arm that holds the axe, and I manage to strike back a blow that chops the hand with the club clear off his arm. And he’s the last I have to deal with, for those who aren’t lying in the bloody mud have gotten past us, though I doubt they’ll get far.
I sink down into the mud myself, and the battle is winding down at the end of the lane, for I can hear my own sobs now, over the stillness that settles around me. I am glad to drop my axe, sticky with gore, and I don’t think I’ll ever pick it up again. Matty is silent, and the flickering firelight down the lane plays tricks with my eyes, for it makes it look as if he is watching me. I know it isn’t so, for I seen my old gammer when she was dead and I know what it looks like, and no trick of the light through tears hides the great gaping wound in his chest, a chest that don’t rise and fall with breath. Then there’s somebody there, who closes his eyes, and somebody else gets me up and brings me to where healers set my arm, and there’s others dragging off the dead ruffians, and somewhere else somebody’s making a speech.
Later I sit in one of the Bywater farmhouses, and my mam and sisters fuss all around me, but I can’t speak, feeling like I’m still waiting, still tied up in knots. I’m pretty sure I killed some of those Big Men, and I don’t know what to think about that. I suppose now we’ll get our land back, and maybe our goods, and isn’t that what we wanted? But I think it’ll take a long time before it’s all put back to rights, and I don’t know if we’ll ever get back our peace. Sam Gamgee comes around to speak to us that were hurt in the battle, and he tells us they had been fighting bad evil even in the foreign lands, and that if Big Folk in the southlands could do it hobbits will have no trouble. And when he looks at me, I see truth in his eyes, and a little bit of that brightness that I noticed in Mr. Merry and Mr. Frodo, and that makes me feel better for a while. Hearing Sam’s plain slow speech full of good hobbitsense, I can see my way to doing what yet needs to be done, but I miss Matty beside me, and for all my sisters’ chatter, my ears are empty without his grumbling.
fantasy_fanRating: PG
Pairing/Characters: OMC, mention of the four Travellers
Warnings: Description of battle
Summary: The memories of one old soldier, in honor of Remembrance Day
Every November 2, the Master of Buckland blows his silver horn, and all who were there remember the first time it was blown in the Shire, in the great year of 1419. And there are bonfires, and feasting, and those who have been there say that there are always tears in the eyes of the Thain when he hears the call of the silver horn. But those of us in Bywater, we don’t need a horn-call to remind us what happened after that, and we all keep the day in our own way. The mayor reads the roll of those who fell, but I stay at home for that part. I’d rather go up to the garden after all the other folks have gone back home, with maybe just one of the grands for company, and I sit and look at the blooms, tended with care, and the great stone. The quiet of the garden, empty of all living souls, seems fit to my memories, for I have grown used to stillness all around me now...
I crouch on the ground in the crisp November air, the smell of the bonfire in my nose and the grumbling of my friend in my ears. Today he is complaining about how having a bonfire makes no sense in the morning sun, and I don’t bother to answer that it has been burning all night, since the first batch of ruffians were captured around it. Matty is always grumbling, about somesuch or another, and over the years I have learned how not to listen to much of it. Besides, I’m really too afeart to hear it all today. My blood runs cold, and then hot, and we wait, and wait some more. I can see Mr. Merry Brandybuck, over there by the fire, and I keep my eyes on him. He’s changed, and it’s more than he’s taller than he used to be. He shines brighter, too, or something, and I can’t quite wrap my head around it. For all he’s only 36, just a year older than me, he seems to know what he’s talking about, and all got-up in mail and a sword and a shield, I see lots of other eyes on him as well. Him and that young giant Mr. Peregrin Took, and Mr. Frodo Baggins, who don’t look any taller at least, standing by the fire with old Tom Cotton. If anything, Mr. Frodo has shrunk some, and what’s more a shock, he looks old, for the first time I ever seen it. But he’s got that brightness around him too, that I don’t think just comes from standing next to a burning pile of wood. It eases my mind a bit to watch them, but the waiting is still hard, and I grip my axe tight and squint at the edge, looking for nicks, to give me something to do.
My mam cried, the day they turned us out of our hole just so they could dig a big pit of it, and I was mad enough to spit nails, but I couldn’t do nothing about it, with worrying about mam and my sisters, for those Big Men didn’t stop at nothing when the mood took them. We learned to be quiet, quiet and afraid after Old Noakes just up and disappeared one day after he’d said his piece a little too loud at the marketplace, and there’s been worse since, and I’ve been just tied up in knots inside, waiting, waiting for my chance to do something. And now it seems the chance is almost here, for Mr. Merry and Mr. Frodo and even Sam Gamgee has laid plans, and Matty and I are to push waggons out into the road beyond the hedge, when the ruffians march by, and finally we’ll have our land and our goods and our peace back.
And Matty is still grumbling, but I don’t pay him no mind, for the Bankstones are just like that, and anyway we’ve been friends for such a long time, ever since we was both faunts, that I think I’ve heard all the grumbles there are at least once, and most of them twice. But I give him an elbow, for I hear heavy feet coming up the lane, and it’s time for quiet. I coil myself up like a hedgehog, and hide behind the bank where we used to play I-hide-and-you-seek-me, and the first ruffians pass by, but behind them are more, many strong legs marching all together with hard boots beating on the ground like drums. And when they are all passed and looking at the captains by the fire, Matty and I do our job, and push out the waggons, while the Tunnelly brothers do the same from the field on the other side of the road.
I can’t quite hear what is said by the captains, for Matty has begun his grumbling again, but I can tell when things start to go wrong by the roar from the hobbits above the hedges, and what must be battle cries from the ruffians, sharp and shrill what makes me want to put my hands over my head and shut my eyes and hide away.
But I don’t, for here come a bunch of them, ugly snarls on their faces and flashing knives in their hands and shrieks in my ears as they come running, right at us four, and one aims a club at one of the Tunnellys, and one drops screaming with a hobbit-arrow in his back, and two more fall smashing into my waggon, the ruffians at their backs pushing and yelling, and chased by hobbits with bows and hobbits with axes and one hobbit with a bright sword. But I stand stuck to the ground, and fear to raise my hand for the noise and the smell and the commotion, until one great beast with sallow skin and snaggly teeth and squinty eyes stabs his long knife, right at Matty next to me. And Matty, he’s got a scythe that he gets in front of him, and takes the first blow on the handle, but the ruffian is fast, and aims another right for his chest before Matty can swing the blade around. Then I move, but it’s too late, for Matty is on the ground, and his blood running into the rutted road looks like bright lines of fire in the light coming from down the lane. And I bring my axe around, right into the back of the ruffian’s head, and he goes down too, but there are more all around me.
And so I fight, and I mark a few more of them, and now the blood looks black and slippery in the road. But the archers behind the hedge are hobbits, and don’t miss their shots whether aiming for a coney or these bigger targets, and more of the ruffians collapse. One of them hits my arm with a club, and pain blooms bright, for it breaks with a loud snap, but it’s not the arm that holds the axe, and I manage to strike back a blow that chops the hand with the club clear off his arm. And he’s the last I have to deal with, for those who aren’t lying in the bloody mud have gotten past us, though I doubt they’ll get far.
I sink down into the mud myself, and the battle is winding down at the end of the lane, for I can hear my own sobs now, over the stillness that settles around me. I am glad to drop my axe, sticky with gore, and I don’t think I’ll ever pick it up again. Matty is silent, and the flickering firelight down the lane plays tricks with my eyes, for it makes it look as if he is watching me. I know it isn’t so, for I seen my old gammer when she was dead and I know what it looks like, and no trick of the light through tears hides the great gaping wound in his chest, a chest that don’t rise and fall with breath. Then there’s somebody there, who closes his eyes, and somebody else gets me up and brings me to where healers set my arm, and there’s others dragging off the dead ruffians, and somewhere else somebody’s making a speech.
Later I sit in one of the Bywater farmhouses, and my mam and sisters fuss all around me, but I can’t speak, feeling like I’m still waiting, still tied up in knots. I’m pretty sure I killed some of those Big Men, and I don’t know what to think about that. I suppose now we’ll get our land back, and maybe our goods, and isn’t that what we wanted? But I think it’ll take a long time before it’s all put back to rights, and I don’t know if we’ll ever get back our peace. Sam Gamgee comes around to speak to us that were hurt in the battle, and he tells us they had been fighting bad evil even in the foreign lands, and that if Big Folk in the southlands could do it hobbits will have no trouble. And when he looks at me, I see truth in his eyes, and a little bit of that brightness that I noticed in Mr. Merry and Mr. Frodo, and that makes me feel better for a while. Hearing Sam’s plain slow speech full of good hobbitsense, I can see my way to doing what yet needs to be done, but I miss Matty beside me, and for all my sisters’ chatter, my ears are empty without his grumbling.
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Date: 2006-11-12 12:47 am (UTC)Sam Gamgee comes around to speak to us that were hurt in the battle, and he tells us they had been fighting bad evil even in the foreign lands, and that if Big Folk in the southlands could do it hobbits will have no trouble. And when he looks at me, I see truth in his eyes, and a little bit of that brightness that I noticed in Mr. Merry and Mr. Frodo, and that makes me feel better for a while
Beautifully written.
(Can you please put the story under an lj-cut tag? Many thanks.)
no subject
Date: 2006-11-12 12:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-12 01:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-12 02:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-12 12:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-12 02:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-12 01:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-12 02:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-12 02:38 pm (UTC)Very well done!
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Date: 2006-11-22 01:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-12 04:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-22 01:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-12 06:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-22 01:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-12 10:46 pm (UTC)Then there’s somebody there, who closes his eyes, and somebody else gets me up and brings me to where healers set my arm, and there’s others dragging off the dead ruffians, and somewhere else somebody’s making a speech.
I can imagine who it was that was closing the eyes of the dead.
WG
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Date: 2006-11-13 02:31 am (UTC)Thanks for your encouragement about this fic.
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Date: 2006-11-14 12:37 am (UTC)Beautifully painted, and oh so sad. Like an old relation of mine used to say wistfully, "You can hardly win for losing."
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Date: 2006-11-22 02:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-21 11:27 pm (UTC)He shines brighter, too, or something, and I can’t quite wrap my head around it.
Thank you for sharing your writing!
no subject
Date: 2006-11-22 02:04 am (UTC)Sam saw the light in Frodo, the same as Gandalf. I can't help but think that all the travellers shared in that light, as all had grown to be among the great. And an ordinary hobbit might get a glimpse of that glory, maybe without quite understanding what they were seeing.
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Date: 2006-11-22 03:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-22 12:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-22 02:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-01 10:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-02 12:53 pm (UTC)Thanks for commenting. It's nice to know people might still come back and read this.