Tainted Meadows
by Napra

It was red. The once so green coomb, deeper in shade through the over- shadowing Mount Thrihyrne, had succumbed to a wave of blood—Orc's and Man's alike. Thus Aragorn, the heir of Isildur Elendil's son, pondered as he padded about on the moist ground, between black and fair carcasses. The weary warrior did not care anymore if the latter had once been servants of the Enemy—corrupted wild men of Dunland—or Théoden King's followers. They were dead men.

A sunbeam kissed his stubbled cheek and lured his vision into the East, up the long slope of the hills where Gandalf had lead down Erkenbrand's host like a bronze waterfall. He would never ever forget that moment of deliverance.

"You are, too, wading through long-desired waters, Aragorn son of Arathorn."

The faint shadow of a smile clung still to his lips as he turned towards the voice he knew.

"Long-desired? How can a leader of men desire such blood-shed, Éomer son of Éomund?" he countered, the address not without sarcasm.

Fierceness was in Éomer's trail as approached Aragorn, stepping into the strip of sunlight between the shadows of the eastern hills and the Deep.

"Because my men, proud Riders of the Mark, have lost many brothers-in- arms through the Dunlanders' treachery. Not to speak of orcs..." He nearly reared out that word like bad medicine. But he composed himself and stared onto the sunlit ridge. "But perhaps you sympathise with all Arda's creatures," he added.

"My charity has boundaries, Éomer. Believe it or not." The knight found Aragorn gripping the gauntlet on his left wrist. "I, too, have recently lost a companion in battle with the Forces of Evil—and by my sword Andúril I would have died to defend his honour."

His gaze was intense, searching for understanding in darker eyes. A little pensiveness was drawn from Éomer's features.

"We have fought side-by-side, horsemaster," said Aragorn, "we even rejoiced in victory. Let us not bicker about the enemy's worth for now, but let us be united as survivors."

Éomer took a sharp breath and slipped his hand along Aragorn's arm gripping tightly.

"As survivors," he retorted.

They looked sternly into each other's eyes for a while till Aragorn broke contact and the silence.

"Gandalf will be riding to Isengard by nightfall and I have agreed to accompany him."

"So will I!" confirmed the other man eagerly.

"Fine." Aragorn looked around them. "I will not miss piling and burying bodies. Shall we return to the Hornburg for some rest before we take off?"

The two warriors started walking towards the Burg with a much steadier pace albeit weaving nearly unconsciously between shapes on the ground.

"Although I cannot imagine getting any sleep with all that commotion" Éomer said fondly. "We'd better grab a bite before the evening. We'll be missing the great victory celebration."

"I doubt it. Théoden is riding with us. No king, no feast."

Éomer stopped in his step. "So the feast may be given now!"

And there sounded the Horn of the Helm and echoed in it's now comforting depth across the Deeping-coomb.

Two smiles met.

As the two future kings—one of the Riddermark and the other of Gondor —reached Helm's Gate there were men, women and children pouring in and out, happily munching meat or slurping from goblets cheering and singing.

"I am glad to leave the outside world behind us for a while," said Éomer, and Aragorn affirmatively flung and arm around his shoulder as they'd passed the Gate at last.

They dashed up the wound steps to the first platform where a banquet greeted their hungry eyes.

Théoden opened both his arms, greeted them like two lost sons— surrogate, but none the less loved.

"Raise your glasses to my heir and the heir of late Elendil!"

"Hail, Théoden King!" Aragorn countered with a smile and the dozens of other voices resounded. He observed his companion's silence who bowed his head in grave allegiance crossing his cuirass with his right palm.

"Sister-son, come sit at my right," Théoden said warmly. "And you, son of Arathorn, at my left."

"I must decline the invitation, my lord, for should that place not be reserved for the Shield-Maiden?" Aragorn asked with a charming glint in his eyes.

Éomer turned around, searching for his sister. They had only briefly, but desperately embraced shortly after the battle. He saw her standing by another lady on the steps that lead into the Deep, yet her attention was torn between her brother and Aragorn.

"I shall dine by Éomer's side." Aragorn had truly not intended irritation, and he was glad the general social noise had swollen to a level that allowed some privacy even among Kings. Besides, Théoden, being convinced of Aragorn's ultimate loyalty, seemed more touched by his courtliness than having conceived any kind of affront.

His comrade's profound confirmation of Aragorn's place did much to relax the tension.

"I simply cannot get used to this courtly behaviour. Always having to be at your strongest and most subservient at the same time," he murmured before tasting some of the ox fresh from the spit.

At first Éomer wondered how to take that comment and chewed a chunk of meat off a bone himself. But it was obvious Aragorn was much more inclined to dine at his side than his sister's or even the King's. "I suppose you're still used to life as a Ranger? You could chose where to go when, which beasts to sleigh, which maidens to rescue..."

Aragorn laughed at the Rider of Rohan's straight-faced sense of humour. "Yes, and if I wished, I could always return to my home in Rivendell, dwell with the elves and act noble for once in a while."

Éomer's voice dropped. "Like role-playing?"

Aragorn cocked his head. "Why yes. Don't you have playhouses in the Riddermark?"

"Of course not, we're not silly children!"

Both men stared at each other for a moment, equally bewildered of the other's ignorance. Then they burst out laughing. Fear salted Éomer's boisterousness reminding him that this carefree time would be ending soon.

"What?" Aragorn questioned the other man's overcast expression.

"He still hates himself for banishing me. And it wasn't even his fault. He was not himself at the time," the king's nephew sighed into his mead.

"That is still troubling you?"

Éomer gave him a sidelong glance through blood-drenched locks. "I wish it were like in the early years of our youth, when he took my sister and me into Edoras as children after our father was slain at the Emyn Muil."

Their forearms touched upon the wood of the table as Aragorn leant towards him. "Did you not hear your uncle before? Could you have expected a more exuberant welcome?" he asked encouragingly.

"Ah, but it is all deliberate, forced even. It is not what speaks from his own heart. He would have wanted..."

"You are too suspicious of your own kin." Aragorn's voice was calm, as ever.

"Wormtongue's sly utterances corrupted Théoden..."

"Gríma has poisoned you in his own way as well, if that is how you think, son of Éomund."

Doubt shaded Éomer's eyes, but not malevolence.

"Do not let his shadow long-gone steer you further!" Aragorn said intensely.

Éomer shook his head. "He is not so long gone."

"Then let him be!" Aragorn exclaimed seizing his comrade by the wrist and pulling him to his feet, nearly more to his own surprise than the assaulted man's. Swiftly he dragged Éomer away from the banquet, not risking a backward glance towards the king and his niece.

"Go." said Aragorn showing him the way down some steps.

"Where?" the other man growled.

"Down and then up."

"Up where?"

"To the highest peak of the Hornburg."

Éomer did not know why he followed Aragorn's orders. Or could he simply not refuse him anything?

The voices grew fainter. The current was obviously downcast. They were alone.

Up on the pinnacle behind the parapet they breathed the wind in deeply, grateful that it came from the west and did not carry the smell of carcasses. It whipped through their manes, their whole being it seemed, cleansing them from the close clamminess of slaughter.

"Look at this, Marshal of the Mark! All around you!" Aragorn declaimed as his hand swept across the panorama. "This is your home. Has always been. And you are about to reign in it as a unifying king, put in power not by patricide or corruption, but by the trust and goodheartedness of an ageing king."

Was it the wind that filled the Rider's eyes with tears?

And as Éomer looked at Aragorn he also met uncertainty, even sadness. "I for my part do not know my home as well as you do yours. The past cannot be changed and I wished I would have been shown Gondor in all its glory by a man who truly understood its grandeur. But I must govern it eventually without ever having truly bonded with it. And I do not know if I could die only for the land alone, or must there be people in it that represent it in one's heart?"

There was a long silence as a gale whisked off Aragorn's words into the coomb.

Then Éomer turned to him, took Aragorn's right hand into his own and pressed them both to his heart. "I will show you my country when it is all over."

The sun seemed to have risen anew on that day when Éomer's beaming eyes lit up his handsome face.

Aragorn wistfully shook his head. "You know it is never over..."

"We will find time." Éomer nodded searching for his companion's eyes.

Aragorn's fingers splayed out upon the whorls on Éomer's cuirass. It loosened the man's grasp on him, allowing them both space enough to close the space between them. A manly grip on each other's forearm slipped into a haphazard embrace. Narsil's forger was not sure how to bury his head in the crook of Éomer's metal-plated shoulder. Though he longed to inhale his scent, feel his heat in this spring morning's chill.

With amazement Éomer noticed how the other man's eyes skated across his own features examining, assessing. Aragorn approached his face with fingers steeled in combat and softened by tenderness of heart. Alerted through the caresses of a callused thumb Éomer realised his own mouth was open, dried by the breeze. He had to swallow. Aragorn's hand curled around his red locks.

"The only thing that allows me do this," Aragorn said, "to a man, whom's sheer composure resembles that of a mountain gorge—is the desire to see the beauty in his face without hindrance. This has overpowered all reason..." Aragorn averted his eyes to the ground as if in shame. Then a look of pure intention was hewing embrasures through the battlements of the Marshal's mind.

"And hope."

"Hope?" Éomer mouthed tilting his chin up questioningly.

"Hope that I could pass the rock and find caverns of silver and crystal waters."

"Your language undoes me, heir of Isildur," Éomer said as he let his hands ripple up and down the chain mail on Aragorn's arms till he was pulled towards the warrior's own weakest spot—his neck.

Aragorn felt the heat of Éomer's breath, then an electrifying brush of lips against skin till he was crushed against the proud Rider of Rohan. Rubbing of leather and clanking of metal preceded the first kiss they shared. They were pressed against the parapet and their mouths against each other's. Éomer had a firm grip in Aragorn's hair and his own was blazing behind him like a horse's mane in the wind.

The kiss was passionate, needy, all pent-up energy of the night and day's events clinging to their lips and charging into each other's bodies like a lightening bolt. A gale coiled around them, swept them up into the air.

And Aragorn tasted Éomer.

They dove down slopes and soared across sap green plains of the Deeping-coomb into the gold of straw, and Aragorn instantly knew that it was the consciousness of home that he himself missed. It bound him to Éomer like an unspoken promise. The warriors moaned as they rolled back and forth along the battlements. Blistered hands clung to one another as though they were in danger of falling off Helm's Tower. Yet neither of them would have cared much if they had cascaded down into the precipice—together.

Éomer's vision snapped back to reality—the reality that bore male flesh and lust as well as the gory odour of death and rust—as Aragorn's tongue swirled around his own sending sparks down his spine straight to his oh, so neglected groin. He grinned a scoundrel smile, a Ranger's, as he bit Éomer's tongue to the brink of pain and then licked his mouth out ever so languidly.

The Rider of Rohan braced the gasping man firmly against the wall with his thighs, but there was hardly any friction.

Hastily Éomer started fumbling at his own straps and buckles before strong swordsman's hands tightened around his wrists.

He closed his eyes as if in defeat and leant in to kiss Aragorn's ear. "What, my lord?" he breathed, the aspirated 'r' more exciting than ever.

"Not here-" Aragorn's lips were on Éomer's as their speech hushed into a series of kisses.

"Don't stop," Éomer forced out wantonly. "We don't have the time for what interrupting now would need—should need..."

Amusement and fondness played in Aragorn's eyes as he beheld the serious warrior in his grasp.

"Then we must retain ourselves."

Éomer's eyes flew open. "We wouldn't survive it!"

"We would fight with more vigour if we knew we had something to look forward to..."

Passion and darkest thoughts were taking over as fingers spread tentatively on Aragorn's face till it was cradled in hot palms.

"For when? Later? Afterwards? There might not be an afterwards, Wielder of the Sword Reforged." Éomer's hands slipped onto the other man's shoulders and tightened.

There was a sound of clanking armour up the stone steps and Éomer turned around immediately.

"Marshal!"

He recognised Grimbald's voice and soon saw his red face as he halted at the top steps.

"The King wishes to speak with you and Lord Aragorn. All riders to Isengard are to assemble."

"Are we leaving? Already?" Éomer asked.

"No, not yet." Grimbald mumbled something about strategic issues and disappeared again.

A grave breath escaped Éomer. The look on Aragorn's face had something knowing about it, he decided. And something indescribably beautiful.

"Be glad that we..."

"I know," Éomer cut off and they kissed one last time, long and earthly. As their mouths parted Éomer let his lower lip trail up to Aragorn's forehead.

"I do not know if relief or regret is what I feel," the future king of Gondor said as they separated.

"We will be travelling together," Éomer said bravely.

And they took the spiralling staircase down the tower together—as warriors, as survivors.

Tainted Meadows II: Redeemer

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