Summary: On a trip to Boromir's estates, Arin and Rullo corner a wild cat.

Rated: PG-13

Categories: LOTR FPS Pairing: Aragorn/Boromir

Warnings: None

Challenges:

Series: None

Chapters: 9 Completed: Yes

Word count: 34819 Read: 10043

Published: 29 Jul 2009 Updated: 29 Jul 2009

Story Notes:
DISCLAIMER: "These characters originate with their copyright holders. I borrow them for entertainment, not profit."
Boromir straightened up from tying the last piece of twine and blew his cheeks out. Around the great orchard, folk were gathering together tools and exchanging tired comment. They had finished none too soon either. He could see just the suggestion of his breath frosting in the air, but now each of the young fruit trees was encased in its own covering of roughly-tied sacking.

In an established orchard they might only have a few young trees to nurture and protect through their first Winters each year, but he was trying to grow on almost a whole new orchard at once and protecting them had meant drafting in men and women from his neighbouring estates to help with the task. A few children had worked alongside the adults, fetching and carrying, and along one of the alleys of trees he could see Arin gathering discarded pieces of twine, with Rullo running lolloping rings around him.

Boromir had brought a couple of barrels of good ale with him from Minas Tirith, and the talk later around the fire in the great hall of the manor was merry. For the first time in many years the household and the farm families on the estate could be sure of enough food to see all through the lean times. It would be months before the Spring brought the first milk and eggs, but they had fed well and the strong ale raised voices in song.

Boromir was slumped in his chair, legs outstretched, his feet resting on a stool before the fire and Arin asleep in his arms. In a little while he would take the boy up to the solar and put him to bed, for now he relished the chance to cradle him. Arin would soon be too heavy for this and perhaps, Boromir thought, his new schoolfriends in the city would teach him to think his father’s embraces better fit for babes, or girls, but for the moment, the boy’s head rested on his chest.

A latecomer was welcomed into the warmth with a brimming mug and a loaded plate. The man raised his ale in toast to his companions, glad to be inside, but from the far end of the hall Boromir could feel a momentary chill in the air. It would be a killing frost tonight and a blessing that they’d finished with the trees.

Boromir stood up slowly, careful not the wake the boy and carried him from the hall, followed by the dog. Once he’d climbed to the wood-panelled chamber above the hall that they shared and had laid the sleeping child to rest, Boromir went to the little window and opened the shutter. The night was still and the night-sky very clear. He looked up to the canopy of stars overhead and thought about Aragorn, imagined him swathed in a soft woollen blanket, arms wrapped about his knees, sitting on the wide window-seat of his chamber, looking at those same stars. His eyes sought and found Morwinyon, glowing brightly, and he called to his King, whispered words of love to the crisp air in misty breath and then closed the little shutter tight, before putting some more fuel onto the brazier and turning in.

It was when they were seated the next morning at table that Boromir saw a nurseryman enter and speak urgently in the steward’s ear, who first looked at him angrily, then threw down his knife in apparent disgust and motioned him to speak to his lord. When the man approached, Boromir was schooled to expect trouble.

“Lord Boromir,” the gardener’s voice was almost shaking, “we have lost the young almond trees – in the night, some villain has stripped them of their coverings and the frost has burnt them.”

“No!” from his right, Arin’s voice was sharp with distress, as Boromir set his face grimly, rising from his seat and following the man out of the hall. A knot of gardeners waited beside the brazier in the porch and Boromir, as he shrugged on a heavy cloak and leather gauntlets, listened to their tale of woe. No-one had been aware of any disturbance, but it had not been thought necessary to set a guard on orchards out of harvest time. Boromir could not fault their care, he was simply angry at the wanton destruction of the young trees, so carefully prepared the day before.

In the orchard Boromir stroked the brittle, blackened twigs on one poor sapling as though he would have tried to revive them, but there was no help for it, some score or more of trees would need to be replaced. He had the men fan out amongst the other rows to see if any more of the sacking covers had been tampered with, swearing steadily under his breath as he paced through the lines.

Arin and Rullo had been wandering after him, and he’d half seen Rullo’s nose sink to the grass with busy concentration, but when the mastiff’s belling bark sounded out, he was some way away and turned, scanning the slopes to find Arin. There was an interested note in the dog’s baying and as Boromir began to stride downhill towards the sound, he saw Arin clinging to Rullo, holding him back from something at the base of the stone wall.

Others in the orchard, alerted by the dog, began to run towards them, but Boromir reached him first. Arin was breathlessly tugging at Rullo’s collar. “There’s a sort of a den and there’s something in it, maybe it’s a wildcat,” he gasped.

Boromir, thinking more of the possibility of a lion, driven down from the hills by the cold to find easier farm meat, was very aware that he had no weapon and the boy with him and he picked up a wooden tree stake, lying in the grass. He hushed Rullo with a firm hand laid on the dog’s head that reduced the noise to a rumbling growl and signalled Arin to come around behind him.

Closer, the ‘den’ appeared set against the low, stone, wall edging the orchard. Some gardener had propped a mass of unused stakes against it at an angle. The bark on them was still covered with frost, but Boromir could see that the earth at the dark entrance of the lean-to was dry. There must have been some shelter from the night chill for the beast.

“Arin, let Rullo go,” Boromir told his son, nodding to him reassuringly as Arin hesitated. Just then three of the orchard’s men came up, carrying staves and bill-hooks, so Arin set his pet loose and Rullo bounded forward and thrust his huge head and shoulders into the space. There was a moment’s ferocious growling and then the dog was backing out, tugging at something.

As soon as Boromir recognised the material in his jaws as the sacking from around the trees, he called Rullo off and let Arin wrap his arms around him. He beckoned forward a man to help move the logs and they began to pull the shelter apart, peeling the stakes away from their resting place. Revealed, laid at the base of the wall, was a long sacking-wrapped bundle, from out of which a naked and dirty foot just appeared.

Boromir took a glove off and warily bent down to grasp the toes. The icy skin that met his grasp persuaded him that they’d come too late for some poor soul who’d perished in the bitter night air and he determined to send Arin back before going further. Just then, a little shudder under his fingers offered hope and Boromir began to peel away the sacking layers with more urgency, calling over his shoulder for someone to get a hurdle.

He was ordering that someone alert the steward’s wife, a competent healer, when a sudden convulsion beside him saw shouts and Rullo lunged forward again. From out the sacking a gaunt, wild-eyed man had made a grab for his wrist. As Boromir went to wrench his arm away, the creature’s teeth bared and a blade flashed across his vision. Boromir leapt back and swept the blade aside with his gloved hand before Rullo’s jaws closed tight around the wrist that held it. In truth there had not been any great power behind the slashing sweep, but Boromir was annoyed at having been caught off-guard and pulled more forcefully at the man’s dark, matted hair, wrenching his head back to see his attacker, than he might have done.

It was then that a first, clear look revealed behind the curtain of locks a younger face than he had expected. This was no more than a youth and even as Boromir’s grasp slackened the lad’s eyes rolled back up into his head and he slumped forward onto the ground, his wrist still held aloft in Rullo’s mouth.

“Leave him Rullo,” said Boromir, kneeling to prise the knife from the clenched fingers. It had once been a good serviceable dagger for a grown man, but the blade was broken to no more than a hand’s length.

Men had arrived carrying a hurdle and the bundle was lifted, still covered in its sacking, onto the makeshift stretcher. Boromir looked down at the thin, dark face and shrugged off his fur-lined cloak, laying it over the still figure. Then he waved them away to start the walk back to the manor house and turned back to Arin. The boy was standing fingering the blade of the broken dagger and Boromir held his breath for a long moment, until Arin looked up at him wide-eyed and handed his father the weapon.

“Will he live Adar?”
“I don’t know lad.”
“I don’t think he wanted to hurt you. I think he feared you.”

Boromir laid his hand on Arin’s shoulder and they began to walk out of the orchard. Boromir could feel the warmth of Arin’s body pressed up against his thigh. On the child’s other side, the great dog paced, his shoulder under Arin’s outstretched arm. Boromir squeezed his boy to him, saying “When we get back to the manor, you go down to the kitchen and ask them for a knuckle bone for Rullo. He did well.”

Returned to the courtyard and having distracted Arin, Boromir took himself off to the room where the Steward’s wife was already busy with a capable maid, stripping the sacking from the figure laid on a low cot. A stone-faced guard stood ready to lend his muscle should the youth turn fractious, but he was still unconscious and Mistress Mariam was taking the opportunity to strip him, look him over for injuries and wipe some of the grime from his skin.

The ragged clothing piled beside the cot seemed little better than the sacking from the trees and the body, clad only in a strip of cloth across his loins, was too lean for the good dame’s liking. She sent her maid to fetch some hot soup and bread from yesterday’s baking, and there were leggings and warm shirts in the chest in the solar.

Boromir’s eye was caught by a twist of thread around the thin wrist closest to him. It was very dirty, but had once been a deep yellow. Alert now, he looked for and found matching cords on the other wrist and both ankles. He thought of the four golden Harad bracelets he had bought for Aragorn to wear when they were alone. They were a warrior’s mark.

The woman recognised his looking. She had held a household together through dark times by will and wit alone and knew much of the armies of men who’d spoiled her land. Gently, she untied the breech-clout and laid the youth’s body bare for them both to see. He was cut, and recently from the look of his sex. She covered his nakedness and carried on wiping his limbs.

So the boy has killed his man, thought Boromir. This would be no tame beggar from the road to feed up and place a hoe in his hand in exchange for a place by the fire. I did find a lion and brought it home, thought Boromir wryly, a lion cub. What he was doing here and in such a case was unknown. The Harad had the reputation of looking after their own. They traded readily enough in human cargo of other races but to cast adrift a youth just made warrior was unheard of.

Through his reverie Boromir heard Mariam’s soft gasp and when he looked she had reached the youth’s head and had been trying to untangle some of the knotted hair. She knelt with his ear lobe caught between strong fingers. It had been pierced to take a sliver of carved bone, but her other hand traced the ear tip that curved up into a definite point.