Until The King Should Come Again by Grundy

Chapter 1

Read Chapter 1

It felt like defeat, watching the royal party depart. The leave-taking ceremony at the city gates had tasted of bitterness and ashes, but he was Steward, not King, so what was there to do in the face of a royal command?

Mardil could still see Eärnur’s party from where he stood. The highest level of the city – which he had still not accustomed himself to calling by its new name, for he was born in Minas Anor – commanded a view for many miles, and the King and his guard had not yet crossed into Osgiliath.

“At least he left the crown.”

His son Eradan had joined him. They were of one mind on the folly of Eärnur’s course, but the king had been in no mood to listen to either of them, not with the well-chosen taunts of Angmar still ringing in his ears.

The Witch King knew full well the King of Gondor was a fighter, not a tactician. Eärnur Eärnilion’s blood ran hot, not cool, and the gibes from the mouths of the messengers had stung him to the quick. Rising to such a blatant challenge would have been dangerous even for the man Eärnur had been in his youth; at his age, and the blood of Numenor thinning with the generations, it was nigh to madness.

“What good will the crown do us after he gets himself killed?” Mardil snorted. “He leaves behind problems, pressing and many.”

“You’ll manage,” Eradan said confidently. “You always do.”

“This time I did not,” Mardil retorted, waving at the royal standard, now on the bridge.

No doubt the folk of Osgiliath would give their king a royal welcome, and their excitement would only spur him on, boasting all the way.

“He goes to his death, if not worse, should we believe the stories our elven allies tell of Minas Morgul’s true master. And the Lord Glorfindel himself foretold that not by the hand of man would Angmar fall. Yet that is what Eärnur is. A man of Numenor, yes, and of the line of kings, but nothing more.”

Even on such a warm, sunny day, he could not repress the shiver, and Eradan looked as though he was suffering a similar reaction.

“You say often enough that there’s a solution to every problem under the sun, if we but think it through carefully,” Eradan offered, though his voice was not so steady as it had been before.

“Aye, but how am I to solve the problem of my oath – to rule until the King returns – when there is no King?” Mardil asked. “For that’s the rub, lad – that hotheaded fool has ridden to his doom without wife or child, naming no heir. No king will return to allow me to lay down my charge. But half the city at the least heard me swear it.”

“But surely,” Eradan began, “there must be an heir. ‘The line of kings, unbroken’ we say often enough.”

He hesitated, no doubt thinking of the king’s youth, which had not been as exemplary as might have been wished, and the years Eärnur had spent in the North, trying to save their allies.

But if the king had begotten a child out of wedlock, no one in Gondor knew of it – and Mardil had investigated. Nor had the king himself given any sign that he knew of some sprig of the royal tree to be found in the wild North. It would have been a desperate ploy, to take an illegitimate boy and raise him to the throne. But these were desperate times.

“The line may be unbroken, my son, but it is at its end. Show me a man of the blood of Numenor undiluted of that line. You can search all of Gondor and not find a single one – nor woman either. The Disaster of the Morannon carried them all off.”

“Fíriel-”

“Was not acceptable to the lords of this kingdom when her brothers died,” Mardil said ruefully. “And will hardly be more acceptable with the passing of the years since, assuming she yet lives.”

Even if such longevity would be strong proof that the blood of kings ran truer in her than it had in her feckless cousin…

“Her sons, then,” Eradan protested. “We know she has at least two. She may have daughters as well!”

“If the mother’s claim was already refused, how should they be any more acceptable?” Mardil asked, shaking his head. “No, I’m well and truly stuck for it, my lad – I’ll live out my days waiting for a king who will never return. What’s more, I fear I’ll be forced to leave you to take up this hopeless duty after me.”

“It will be a long wait indeed,” Eradan murmured, and the tone of his voice made his father take notice.

“Tell me,” he commanded quietly.

“The king will come again, but not in your lifetime or mine,” Eradan replied. “Not until the so-called King of Minas Morgul has fallen. Eärnur swore an oath, too, recall.”

Mardil groaned aloud.

He hadn’t thought on that – the fool had confidently declared that by the sun and moon, the King of Gondor would return when Angmar was slain. He was unsure whether Eärnur had been thinking of the two towers or the actual sun and moon, but in the end it didn’t much matter. An oath was an oath.

“That may be many lifetimes,” he said sadly. “Train well your heir my son – if the king is to come again, we must not fail to preserve a kingdom for him when he finally arrives.”

“Herion is only a boy,” Eradan protested. “He has only just seen his twelfth name day!”

“Aye, and his younger brother is barely old enough to be called a boy rather than a babe,” Mardil said wryly. “But it comes to me that if Eärnur had been better trained as a boy, we’d not be standing here discussing how to rule a kingdom without a king! From this day forward, every child of our house must be trained with the utmost care. All of them must be prepared for this duty in case it should fall to them, for we have seen it is not always the oldest son who takes up his father’s honors. And though the line of kings failed, ours had best not. We will hold to our word, long and bitter though the watch may be.”

“Oh, I don’t know that it will be all bitter,” Eradan said cheerfully. “There are worse things than to be able to carry out that list of projects I know you have written up without having to persuade the King that they need doing…”

Mardil laughed.

“Yes, lad, that’s the way. Let’s look to what good we can do. Until the King returns!”

With an arm around his son’s shoulders, they turned for home and looked no more to Eärnur.