The younger man hesitated. "I believe in orcs, and in the treachery of Haradrim. I believe in walls and spear-points."
"I have seen it," Boromir replied. His hand tightened on the hilt of his sword. The blade, forged in Gondor’s brighter years, still held an edge that could part silk and orc-flesh alike. But edges mattered little against what he felt pressing against the veil of the world.
For three nights, the eastern shore had whispered. Not in words, but in the way the reeds bent against no wind. In the way the frogs fell silent all at once, as though a great mouth had opened somewhere beneath the mud.
"Let them come," he said. "There are still brave men in this broken land." The younger man hesitated
From the east, a single long note echoed across the water. Not a horn. Something older. Something that remembered the light before the first sunrise.
The sound ripped through the fog, bold and bright and utterly, magnificently defiant. Behind him, a hundred tired men lifted their spears. Before him, the hooded shape on the far shore turned its head slowly, as though noticing a fly that had chosen to sting a giant.
"Madril," Boromir said quietly, "do you believe in a darkness that thinks?" His hand tightened on the hilt of his sword
He had stood here for three days without sleeping. Not from courage alone, but from a growing dread that tasted like copper on his tongue.
Then the shape laughed. Softly. Once.
"And yet," Boromir turned from the river, and his face was the face of a man who has glimpsed a crack in the world, "something hunts us that does not hunger for meat or gold. It hungers for the sound of a horn that does not answer. For the name of a king that no one sings anymore." For three nights, the eastern shore had whispered
Above them, the stars winked out one by one, as if snuffed by a cold and patient finger.
The night answered with a thousand pairs of eyes.
"For Gondor!"
And the last watch began.
Boromir smiled — a terrible, beautiful smile — and settled his shield upon his arm.