Like a Blade Forged in Fire

Chapter 7

The influx of guests kept Éomer busy. Erkenbrand rode over from the Westfold and Déormund from Harrowdale, both accompanied by many men. Elfhelm meanwhile brought his whole family with him from Aldburg. Some of the riders were put up at one of Meduseld's guest-houses but most stayed with family or friends in Edoras.

Weynild and her staff managed all the details, but everybody seemed to want to have a word with him. Also, ever since Éowyn had left, Meduseld had no lady to make guests feel welcome, smooth the way and take the myriad small decisions involved, and so all that work fell to him too.

Not that there was a shortage of candidates to fill that role. Thankfully Erkenbrand's granddaughters were far too young, but Elfhelm and Déormund had each brought their daughters, as had every other lord with offspring of marriageable age. Éomer couldn't make up his mind if they had not heard the rumours making the rounds in Edoras, or if they had decided on a last, desperate, all-out assault.

This did not improve his mood in any way. The year before, he had been drunk with their unexpected victory, the sheer surprise of still being alive when he had thought himself the last Lord of the Mark. But by now the realisation of how many men they had lost and the extent of the destruction wrought by Saruman's orcs had sunk in. So many missing faces: Háma, who had stayed true to his ailing king, good-natured Dúnhere, brave Grimbold. He would never again see his uncle's kind smile, never again play fox and hounds with Théodred and hear his booming laugh. They had won, true, but at what a cost.

Yet when at sunset he stepped out onto the platform outside Meduseld's doors and looked down on the courtyard where the people of Edoras were assembling, he also reminded himself that they should celebrate the lives of those they had lost and thank them for their sacrifice. To himself he vowed that he would not squander their gift.

There wasn't a cloud in the sky, just the heavens stretching enormous above them, darkening into night. In the west the sun slipped behind the mountains reaching up towards the Gap of Rohan, their icy peaks afire. Éomer waited until the last ray of light was quenched and shadows started to wrap around them, then he stepped to the edge of the platform and lifted his horn to his lips.

He blew with all his might, and after a moment his men joined in. The sound rang out over town and plain, rising brave and defiant, as it had done on the battlefields of the Mark and Gondor: the great horns of the North, calling home their dead.

Slowly the sound faded, leaving behind a resonating silence. Nobody talked, there was no coughing, not even the whisper of cloth as somebody moved. Éomer turned round and motioned for one of his guards to step forward and hand him the burning torch he carried.

He descended the stairs; silent as ghosts the crowd parted before him. Holding the torch high he took the road leading down to the gates, which was lined with people. All the lights in the houses had been extinguished, the windows thrown open to the night air. As he walked out between the barrows, followed by the silent crowd, the simbelmynë on the mounds glimmered like fallen snow in the twilight.

In the field between Théoden's barrow, the last of the line, and the River Snowbourn logs soaked in oil had been stacked high. When he thrust the torch into the kindling, the fire caught at once. Sparks rose up into the sky like stars to wink out over their heads. The crowd sighed.

Éomer watched the flames for a moment, then stepped back, signalling for those around him to approach. First was an old woman with a younger one beside her, who carried a child in her arms. Both of them cast a piece of wood on the fire, silently mouthing a name. Tears ran down their cheeks.

One by one slowly other people came up. Werhard, the landlord of the Boar and Hounds, whose youngest son had fallen at the Hornburg, Leofrun with a solemn looking Hildwyn by her side. One man, his face carved with deep lines, added no less than four pieces of wood to the flames. The bonfire would be well fed tonight.