Between Two Worlds

12

"Hurry! Get him into the east wing!" I hear frantic voice say. I look up from where I sit on my bed to see them brining in someone in Rohirrim armor, blood on his shoulders and dirt on his face, messy and wet dark hair tangling under him, carried by Éomer and another soldier I had met before.

They bring him to one of the other two beds in the room, some of them bringing in cloths and bowls of water to clean his wounds.

"What happened?" I ask standing to my feet and fixing my white linen dress with a green stretchy corset bound with yellow string.

"Orcs slaughtered them all in the night. He is still alive," Éomer responds with a hand on this man's chest.

"Who?"

"Théodred, my cousin." He looks at his face with worry.

"How bad is it?"

He gestures down. I look at the stab wound in the man's stomach that pierced through his armor, blood so thick that it looks completely back. A maid comes in with a rag and begins putting pressure on it to stop the bleeding.

"Make sure to keep it clean. If it becomes infected he surely won't survive," I say to him.

Just then Éowyn bursts through the door, her white dress flowing behind her as she runs to his bedside and kneels down, stroking the back of Théodred's head with sorrow.

"Will he live?" she asks.

Éomer doesn't answer, as he does not know the answer. But he looks grieved.

I help the maid and another soldier in removing his armor and making sure to clean his wounds properly. I help them then bind them tightly and lie him down on the bed.

I hold Éowyn's shoulders to comfort her in this sudden horror of her cousin's terrible wound.

"How did this happen?" she asks her brother.

Éomer tells her what he told me.

"No others survived..."

She looks so sullen at this fact and he leaves after seeming to decide something.

I look down at Théodred and hope that he survives...

Éowyn looks a little colder now in her eyes. I know that she has been hurt more than once. Orcs killed her father and probably her mother too as she is not here anymore. And now her cousin too has been attacked by Sauron... I know how she feels to have family members slowly ripped away from you so I stand with her until I hear Éomer talking to someone and we walk into the throne room.

I walk into the main hall to see him there reporting to the king who seems a bit more... alive than he was before.

Éowyn approaches the king. "Your son is badly wounded, my lord."

I make a pained expression as I watch Théoden not even acknowledge she spoke.

But she acts as if he knows, trying to speak like normal without breaking into tears. This is awful.

"He was ambushed by orcs," Éomer says. "If we don't defend our country Saruman will take it by force—"

"That is a lie," an unfamiliar, cat-like voice of a man says from the northwest wing. He walks into the room; a hunched over, sickly pale human with red around his eyes and jet black hair with no trace of eyebrows. He wears a black fur coat and walks into the room where we stand. He is close to the king's right hand.

"Saruman the White has ever been our friend and ally," he tells Éomer.

I finally hear the king speak, so quietly, with much struggle. "Grima..."