DVD Commentary: LotR, "Mother of Horses"
This has been in progress for nearly a year. It's long. And I have tests this week. I might log on to look at comments, but plesae don't be disapointed if it takes a while for me to respond.
Click on Mother of Horses to go to the story. I strongly advise you to read it first.
Warnings for the story (and for commentary): Story includes elements of incest, rape, animal violence, and a distinct left turn in AU land. Commentary addresses all of those, and also touches on historical habits of incest, the author's personal feelings on incest, other things that bug the hell out of the author (some of which a reader might approve, disapprove of, or just not care about. The discussion will be short on theme, as the author has yet to decide if the story has one, and probably too long on 'what I meant for the reader to understand was....*shrug* People wanted to know what I was thinking when I wrote the story.
Go ahead, be brave. Read the thing without reading the warning.
Commentary on the idea:
This story had three starting places - one, the One Ring challenge. For those who don't want to click the link (and you should - there are some good stories there) the premise of the challenge was a LoTR universe where one of the characters decided to claim the One Ring, and what happened After. Sort of like the X-Files post-col stories. As you might guess, overwhelming joy and happy bunnies do not abound in that land. (But you'd be surprised.) Go read. Look for Webs, World as Clear as Water, Can You Hear Me Singing? and Beauty.
(This challenge was inspired by Theluna's No Windows. Had I read that one first, I might have never read any of the others, as it deals with a teacher/student sort of sexual relationship that trembles very close to the same line (for me) that Buffy/Giles treads. And there were other things. But the first one I read was Webs.)
The other starting place was Vic's (musesfool) story Blood Remembers, about Eowyn, waiting for Eomer's return. I volunteered to beta that, saying, "If you make the incest sweet or romantic, I'm going to puke." Or encouraging words to that effect. But she did not, and I made a couple minor suggestions, and the story came out well.
The third place was an image in my head of Eowyn standing on the hillside, looking over a river, and this overwhelming feeling of despair. The kind of despair that's a mortal sin - the giving up, never want to live again thought.
And so I had a universe, I had a character, and I had a plot element. And then I had two two-hour lectures in Dairy Management that were just boring me to tears.
But it's really all Vic's fault.
Line Commentary
Title: Mother of Horses
Fandom: LoTR
Notes: A response to the One Ring Challenge.
The title is taken from the Judith Tarr book, "Lady of Horses", which features a proto-Mongol society and a woman who becomes a hero-goddess of horses. I mis-remembered the title. To further complicate things, the LotR archive that I use (heh - my one LotR story (this one) is posted there) - the extraordinary Henneth Annun, already had a WIP there - a prehistory of Rohan called "Mother of Horsemen". I didn't bother to check that archive for the title. The author ended up emailing me with a comment to the effect of 'wish you hadn't done that.' As was her right, I think. *sigh* Had I known that fic was there, I'd have chosen another title.
Evidently, the One Ring Challenge was not as famous as I thought it was. (I tend to think that everyone has already heard of things by the time they get to me.) Many people did not get that it was an AU. Perhaps I should have warned for that.
Finally, the story is a weird mix of movie and book verse. I've read LoTR twice - once when I was sixteen, and once since. For me, for a book I loved, this is next to never having read it at all. I had seen TTT about twice when I wrote this. I leaned heavily on the index for words, proper spelling, and map distances. I won't bore you with the math.
Eighty leagues north of the Emyn Muil the Limlight joins the Great River under the reach of rolling bluffs. There, where the river from Fangorn Wood meets the current running south, the Eorlingas - the Rohirrim of the Mark - set in ages past a cairn of loose river stone. They raised another stand of rock and gravel on the slopes of the Misty Mountains close on Fangorn Wood, and a third west of Helm's Deep in the White Mountains. In the reign of Aldor, the Riders of the Mark erected a stone hill near Druanan Wood, south of Cair Andros. In Helm's War those stones had been scattered, and a new cairn built south of the Entwash, above the West Road.
Awful lot of names there. I pulled nearly all of them off the map - these were not organic to the story, they were my effort to ground the AU into something tangible. This section got rewritten several times until I had the names ordered as well as I could, and had cut out as many strange and unfamiliar names as I could. I'm still not happy with it for two reasons - firstly, because they were something I had to add, near blindly, and didn't 'know', and secondly because I associate name-thickness in geography with 'tame lands' - places long associated with people. (See Robert Holdstock's Lavondyss: Journey to an Unknown Region.) That was not how I thought of Rohan.
So the Rohan set the corners of their holding - strange monuments in silent stone for a people whose history was song and who claimed the wind as their dwelling.
If I had to pick a favorite line out of this, it would be this one.
It is the custom of the Eorlingas that when a king rises to replace one felled in battle or by age, the new Lord makes a ride of the borders of the Mark to add a stone at each of the monuments. If the king happens to wed after he takes the crown, then he makes the journey again with his chosen wife. This is the Claiming Ride, and it binds again the Lord to the land, the man to his wife, and the Riders of the Mark to the swift steeds that carry them through the ages.
The Rohan call the bride of their king the Mother of Horses.
I intended all this to establish a sense of the story as AU - I thought that if the readers were Tolkien geeks, they would go, 'oh, right, that never happened', and take the rest as a turn off the road, and if they *weren't* Tolkien geeks, they would be lost enough to take the story as it came. Didn't happen. Had more than one annoyed fb requesting clarification.
The last line I would have taken out if the title had changed. That's all it was there for.
***
The eored draws rein high above the dun-sand shores of the Great River, where the wind blows thin and chill, hissing across the ridge crest. The Brown Lands smudge the horizon eastward, while the Wold to the west falls away to rolling hills. The Limlight cairn rises above the rim road, its peak a man-height above the gravel trace. A weathered shaft leans aslant over the unmortared stones, a tattered rag clinging against the breeze.
The verb tense changes here, from the narrative portion. I wrote it out long hand as all past tense, with the flashbacks as past perfect (I think?). When I typed it in, I did so in present tense. And then changed it, and on the advice of betas (and my ear agreed) changed it back again. I missed at least three verbs.
The point was to have the reader experience the events as they happened, and to make it difficult for the reader to predict what would happen next. Making my betas tear their hair out over wacked verb tense non-agreement was just a pleasant side-effect.
These Cairns are an old thing all over our planet - people making rock piles just to make rock piles. Travelers add rocks because the pile is there. There are examples on every continent, so it's not just a Saxon thing.
Éowyn checks her horse so that Arod halts apart from the stragglers still scrambling up the grade.
If I did it right, the accent marks came through the lj text. If not - gah. To my mind, there is no difference between E and E with a funny slash over it. Except that one is good honest American talk and the other is funny foreign stuff. I don't read E (funny slash) as 'a with a swallowed e at the end'. (Phonics are not my friend.) So I don't expect to see the E. Vic - who normally posts to Silverlake, where they support enriched text, said I should use it. So I found the key on the keyboard that did that and I changed them all. Then I tried to up load the text to Glass Onion, which uses plain text. I knew better, honest I did. It was all my fault. Especially as I checked the email first, saw that the E with the funky text just went away, *and posted the thing like that anyway.* Honestly, in real life I'm much brighter. One hysterical email to the GO mod later, I got the archive version deleted so I could upload a plain text that had no funky foreign E marks. The E less version still went to the GO list, though. I can smile weakly about it now, but god I felt the proper fool then.
Automatic archive software does that to me.
The rising gusts off the river tug her hair into elflocks and sting her face to tears.
'Elflocks' is the one word I wish I had not used in this story. It means 'dreds', it's used perfectly well here, but it does not fit in Tolkien's universe. It belongs in a universe of bahn shees and House Things and wicked, cruel fairies. (When you comb out your horse's mane in the evening, and come back the next morning to find it tangled again, that's elflocks.)
She blinks them away and shifts in the stirrups, easing her aching legs. Every child of the Rohan sits a horse err a month past birthing. None not so raised could have kept the pace set the last seven days; even she, who grew to womanhood in the saddle, has found the forced march wearying.
Among the 'Cracker' families of my home county, a newborn received a hat and a ride on a horse - held in front of someone, and riding astride - as soon as the child can hold their head erect. Sometimes sooner.
The men of the king's household are also worn, and their mounts as well. Her eyes still on the wold, Éowyn hears the ragged murmur of tired voices discussing the best place to set the tents, where to tie the horses, whether to dig a fire pit or simply scrape a patch bare. None comes to consult with her as she sits her horse and listens to the wind moan over the cairn stones. Éowyn is content to remain still and silent. It will be time for her soon enough.
Arod's ears flick side to side as her horse listens to the things the breeze tells him.
I used Arod because I need a horse that was a person (or nearly so). Eowyn's horse failed on account of not being familiar to the reader, and not being familiar to me.
A sharp whinny and the scattered stamp of hooves on the gravel road interrupts the men's muttering. Éowyn twists in the saddle to watch Éomer curb his stallion, the black beast half-rearing to fight the heavy bar. The riders leading the spare horses back away, pulling the quartet of Ride mares away with them. One, a light grey mare in her second year, hangs back, pulling at the lead and arching her neck.
What the layman (and some horse people) commonly call 'white' is most often actually a faded grey. Horses are born dark and gradually lighten as they reach the age of five or six. Lippazzans are a well-known example of this. There are true white horses, but they are much rarer. I tried to use white and grey interchangeably, and confused the hell out of my betas.
The other Ride mares jerk and startle as she squeals and bounces, tail whipping restlessly. Two horsemen draw the ash-colored mare a little ways apart, so that her agitation will not infect the other horses. As the mare moves off, Éomer's stallion finally quiets. Foam still drips from his jaws and breaststrap as the horse reluctantly settles under his rider's insistent hand. The stud tosses his head and whinnies once, deep and ugly, and then returns to grinding at his bit.
Mares that are in heat (estrus) are barely domesticated. Especially the young ones that haven't figured out what their body is trying to get them to do. They fight and bicker and cause trouble amongst themselves. Among geldings (castrated males) and stallions, they are even worse. And the studs, of course, tend to carry most of their brains in their balls, and loose all common sense in the presence of the cycling female. In a way, it's funny as all hell. In another way, completely not. Human females really have it good - our guys (especially the ones raised in Western cultures) are very well mannered. Starting in early spring, non-pregnant (open) mares come into heat every 21 days (or 25, or fourteen, depending on the mare) and stay in heat for about six to seven days (or ten, or three, depending on the mare.) In the European knighthood tradition, all warhorses were stallions. The armies of Islam rode mares (there is a tradition of six mares being chosen by the Prophet himself to found the lines of Arabia) and US and West European cavalry (and cowboys) rode geldings.
A word on horse colors There are some 'story telling' sorts of conventions, regarding the right color for certain types of characters. White (true white, or an older grey that has lost all color) is a hero's horse, a magic horse - a shining, unstained Knight. Red (chestnut if all red, bay if red with a black mane and tail) is flashier - a fire horse, for a king or a prince. Boromir would (and does ?) ride a red horse. Dun (yellow or brown with a black mane and a stripe down the back) is a 'primitive' color, and is for nomads or peasants. Sorrel or cream is for fine ladies. Brown is for unnamed spear-carriers. Black is complicated - at once a match for red for flash, with more mystery, but often the Evil Knight rides a black horse. Grey - dependable, loyal, stanch - is a traditional color for women warriors and for sidekicks. (I'm not making this up.) (Also - this is for the fantasy genre. Westerns is odd and convoluted and depends heavily on the style (fiction vs tall tales) and age group of the intended audience. (Stories for youngsters and greenhorns use a larger fraction of 'colored' (spotted/paint) horses.)
Éowyn realized she is staring at the stallion and turns back to the Wold. The men dismount and begin undoing packs. The scrape of iron on stone warns her of Éomer's approach.
In the movie - especially FoTR - the Nazgul wore iron boots.
A firm hand takes her ankle and turns the stirrup so she may dismount.
I *think* only people riding sidesaddle need to have their stirrups held. Which Eowyn definitely was *not*. ::handwave::
Looking down at her brother - at Rohan's king - Éowyn forces herself to acknowledge this: the Lord of the Mark, holding her stirrup for her. She swings down, aided more than she cares to admit by Éomer's steady grip. It has been seventeen days since the battle at the Crossing, eight since her marriage, and seven since the beginning of the Ride.
I didn't *understand* the Rohan/Rohirrim difference at this point, and I don't know if Rohan is the right choice, here. 'The Crossing' should have been 'Pelennor Fields'. The exact numbers of the journey were not important, but the relationship between them was. This was a headache - it all came down to distance, the rate of travel on horseback, and the cycle of the moon. More on this later.
When her feet touch earth she clings to Arod's saddle, supported more by her brother's hands on her waist than either her mount or her own shaking legs.
The men's voices grow louder, broken by a heavy thump as a pack falls to the ground. Éowyn shuts her eyes, wishing for rest, for sleep. But the thought of the red Marriage Tent is no comfort. She has no wish to tarry here, at the edge of the Mark, so near to Mordor.
The replacement of the traditional Western (English?) white with red to symbolize marriage in fantasy works is so widespread as to be a cliché in and of its own self. Was I doing this again, I would use green, or gold. Probably gold.
Eowyn still sees Mordor as a foreboding place, in this universe. I know this, I know that she didn't like being *right there*, but the emotion does not make sense, entirely, in this AU. I think the Enemy is still in Mordor, but has not yet given up on the Ring.
Her brother stands at her back, silent.
"May we -" She breaks off, ashamed of the tremor in her voice. She may as well beg, for all the pride she puts forth. Her lips are dry and split and sting as she swallows. When she continues, her voice is quiet but steady. "Could it be done here? Now? There - there is no need for the tent."
This was the first thing I wrote, when I started writing this in my Dairy Management lecture class. When I was considering rating this NC-17, there was a lot that went into it - the rape, the incest, the tone, the hints of bestiality. Most especially, though, for this last line - Eowyn is, literally, asking for it. And that request, that acquiescence, that submission was not something I was comfortable presenting to someone who didn't have the background to understand. Me, I understand that Eowyn does not want to submit, that she knows what it would cost her to resist, and that she chooses - now - to shorten the anticipation and the stay in this place rather than either actively fight (and pay the price for that) or passively endure.
What I don't know if she knows is that submission is a learned behavior that she is teaching herself, and that she may not break the habit if she continues.
None at all in truth - the Claiming Ride had been observed in but a token manner for the last three generations. None of the second line of Kings had seen fit to follow the custom. But Éomer has declared the Mark renewed with his crowning and means to bring the Eorlingas to their old glory.
More exposition. Really, this is the one thing I hate about making up universes. If I was writing it again, I would put in a line about 'a Rohan free of Gondor's rule.'
She thinks her speech low, but her words fall into a break in the voices. The silence that follows thunders in her ears. Even the Ride mare remains dumb. One of the pack horses stamps. A wild hawk cries so distant the horizon nearly swallows the sound.
Éomer's fingers relax on her hips. Her pulse throbs in the marks left by his hands. "Háma. Move down the road to the river. Water the horses."
I'm rather fond of this section. Implication and imagery instead of bald statement. Except that there would be no flies on the wind-swept hilltop, and nothing for the horse to stamp at.
The men take some moments to reload the pack. The fire scrape is left unlaid, the provisions repacked unwrapped. Éowyn keeps her eyes on the toolwork of Arod's saddle. With her fingertips she follows the lines of the Moonknot as the design loops over and under itself. The other hand holds Arod's reins to the pommel and Éowyn noted how the skin over her bones is pale and taut, even as she keeps the rein slack.
Now I would call it 'the Mountain knot' (like the first draft did)
Éomer's hands do not press so hard now on her waist. The broad fingers softly trace the arc of her hipbones, a motion no greater than the shift of her breathing.
Remounted, the company files downhill. Over the curve of Arod's saddle Éowyn watches the helms and high crests nod back and forth as they pass, rocking with each mount's stride. None of them turn eyes to her. The White Horse on Green stands stiff on the wind and snaps as they depart. Arod's head turns to watch the other horses retreat, but he makes no move to follow, only flicks his ears.
The men do not look at her. Arod stands still and behaves himself. They all know what's going to happen - including Eowyn - but none of them wants to think about it. And none of them - including Eowyn - is going to try to stop it.
Éowyn stands listening to the hoofbeats clomp steadily away.
One hand leaves her side. The retreating creak of saddle leather melds into the muted rattle of mail and the click of buckles as Éomer peels away the outer layer of his jerkin and breeches guard.
When the hoof beats faded out of hearing, he lifts her skirt hem up over her waist. His palms brush over the skin of her back and thighs. His fingers dig into her hips again as he pulls her to him.
One of my betas skipped over the warnings and pinged onto what was going on at about this point. *smug, evil grin* Which was, despite the fact that I had painted a pretty heavy header warning onto the draft, pretty much the effect I was going for. Except that I hadn't intended to freak my beta like that.
Six days ago, the grooms and guards had pitched the Marriage Tent at the White Mountain cairn and spread thick pelts and many-hued rugs on the earth. There, Éomer, heir to Theoden, had borne his bride down on the bedding and took her, in the manner of the old kings, at the boundary of his realm. Éowyn had exhausted herself with tears on her marriage bed in Edoras, and did not struggle overmuch.
One of the things that I noticed in going over this again was that Eowyn never thinks of herself as the King's bride, of herself as married to Eomer, or of herself as the Queen of Rohan. I didn't intend that effect, it just came out that way. I'm pretty pleased by it, even though it was just by accident.
And yes, this is a fade-away to cover any lack of mention of specific body parts. For me, Tolkien's language and tone do not lend themselves well to actual damp details of genitalia. I've seen a few fics that do so quite well, and a broad smattering of lousy ones. IMO, the best LoTR fic is gen/G in rating and language, with a few exceptions. Other fandoms (Buffy and Angel, and Due South, to my mind) the *best* stuff is NC-17. YMMV.
The next morning they had broken camp and ridden hard north, for Fangorn Wood, and the cairn there on the slopes of the Misty Mountains.
Now Éowyn cannot keep from gasping as Éomer's feet push hers apart. His thumbs dig painfully into her back and she bends forward under his grip. She is sore and weary in heart and bone. Some days back she ceased hoping he would be gentle.
In this, as before, he does not disappoint. It is the fourth time in eight days. Her breath stutters again as he begins to thrust in earnest.
She shakes under the pounding blows, her hold on Arod's saddle no stronger than her knees. Leather turns slick under her sweating palms. Even as her grip fails, his hands leave her hips and crush down over hers, clenching her fingers as he grinds them against the travel-stained leather.
This sort of activity, bouncing off the saddle skirts, should be freaking Arod out. ::handwave:: I wanted the image of an Eowyn so beaten down she had to be held up to be raped.
On his right hand Éomer wears a golden ring. The metal is cold and at its touch Éowyn feels the last embers of heat flow away, leaving her empty and numb.
Yes, if he's wearing the ring he should be invisible. My betas caught it, too.::handwave:: I thought about having it on his neck, but Eowyn would not have made note of it if she could not see it, and she was trying too hard to not look at Eomer.
Numb. Unthinking. Unfeeling. She welcomes it. She has thought too much since the last days of the war against Sauron.
For a handful of days, she had thought herself a hero, a warrior full of honor. She had won victory over the Nazgul king, and the Fields had rung with the shouts of soldiers and Elves alike, heady with triumph.
She had felt too much. The heir of Isildur had fought by her side as she brought down the demon, and had called her name for the foes of Mordor to cheer. For an hour, there, she had been a bright, unquenchable flame.
Pretty words. A child's words. She no longer thinks of those things. Not now, with her face pressing against the sweat-dark leather, her brother's body filling hers, and his breath hot on her neck.
The dark forces had not collapsed with the death of the Nazgul king. The battle, barely slackened as the black beast fell, renewed. The army of orcs and goblins pressed closer. No matter the Nazgul's destruction, no help the strength of the men fighting beside her, they would all die under the next wave of attack. Éowyn had gripped her sword and fought on, begging the Valar for deliverance. When Éomer had appeared on the battlefield, brushing away scores of the foe with every blow, it had seemed an answer to her prayers.
When she prays now, it is not for her brother to come to her.
I had a bit of a backstory worked out - most of it afterwards, to justify Eomer with the Ring, with Eowyn, after the battle of Pelennor Fields.
The short version is: Eomer is exiled, but rides west, not north, after encountering Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas. He and his men swim the Great River with their horses (it could happen!) and swing south. It is Eomer, not Faramir, who finds Frodo and the Ring. Eomer is not as strong as Faramir, and ends up killing Frodo. Or abandoning him in the backcountry. Theoden is deeply despondent over his unwitting banishment of Eomer (even though he doesn't realize what sorts of things Eomer has been up to) and elevates Eowyn to her brother's place. The battle at Helm's Deep ends with other elves helping to win the day (and bring the sword that was broken), and they bring word that Arwen has gone oversea. So Aragorn goes with Rohan to Minas Tirith, not up the river with the boats. Being without the Dead, the good guys are on the verge of being creamed, even though Eowyn does defeat the Nazgul king. Then Eomer shows up, sweeping orcs aside like Sauron in the first movie, and everyone goes, *Hurray! We're saved!*
Éomer's breath burns her nape, the line of her jaw. He sets his teeth in her neck. From the sting, she thinks he has drawn blood.
It was not the first blood he has spilt, but she does not hold that in her mind. She does not think of many things. She does not think of the halfing Merry who dogged her shadow and glared at Éomer with suspicious eyes. She does not think of Gandalf Greyhame, or of the rest of the Ring's fellowship, nor of how they disappeared, one after the other, in the days after Éomer brought them victory.
She does not think of the dwarf Gimli and his kind eyes. Not of the elf prince who had entrusted her with his steed. She does not think of them, bright and laughing in the afternoon sun, and she does not think of scarlet shadows on a white stone floor.
If I was Eomer, in that situation, Gandalf would be the first person I would do in. Without his counsel, the company holds tight at Minas Tirith, instead of marching to the Black Gate. With Sauron not quite sure what was going on with the Ring, they might have a breathing spell. It might have even seemed like the final victory, if one didn't look too closely into whatever story Eomer had concocted to cover up his acquisition of the Ring. A strange sense of relief and peace might have fallen over the White City.
Also note that I got in a cute Legolas/Gimli moment, if only by implication.
She does not, would not, think of the heir to Isildur. She particularly does not think of him as Éomer presses her against her horse and grunts, jerking as he spills his seed inside her.
"Spilled his seed" is not a phrase I'm looking to use again anytime soon. I dislike it more every time I read it. *makes face and goes *ewww**
The saddle skirt cuts into the side of her face. Éomer's breath hitches and he thrusts again, a final effort that leaves him panting against her back. His breath stirs the sodden hair matted to her cheek and she struggles for her own air. Under their combined weight, Arod sways and shifts his feet. Éomer leans back from her, slipping away, and releasing his grip on the saddle as he does.
Free of his support, Éowyn collapses slowly, trailing down Arod's foreleg. She kneels there, her skirts fallen down around her, cupping the horse's knee with cramped fingers. Behind her, armor straps creak and mail rattles.
The sound of the keening wind stones is unchanged. Again, it is the sharp air that makes tears stand in her eyes.
Eowyn spent a lot of time *not thinking* about what was going to happen, and hating the wait until it did happen. And now it's over, and she's *not thinking* again. Also, it seems that she (like Arwen) rides aside in a full skirt. But the lack of undies is movie canon.
It seems a very short time before the tattoo of hooves announces the return of the eored. When Háma puts his hand on her elbow and would lift her to her feet, Éowyn waves him away and struggles upright. Nor does she allow him to help her mount.
She adjusts the reins, accepts the proffered canteen and takes a deep swallow of warm river water. Háma gestures for one of the men to bring a leather bucket and he himself holds it for Arod to drink. Éowyn nods thanks and pats Arod's neck. All the while her mind is as empty, as unmarked as the land beyond the river.
Hama's concern for Eowyn has very little to do with her, and a great deal to do with how Hama feels about the situation - he's deeply shamed for not lifting a hand against Eomer. Everything he does actually helps Eomer abuse Eowyn, but it makes Hama feel better to do it. I thought her acceptance of his help is a reflection of her attitude towards Eomer - she is taking the path of least resistance.
Only as the grooms bring forward the young Ride mare does Éowyn allow space for recollection. Rinmer, the grey-bearded stallion handler, takes a grip on the black stud's nose and forces his head down as two others loose the cinch and smoothly strip the tack from the stallion's back. The tall horse throws up his head and squeals, pulling Rinmer up off his feet as he does.
A skinny twelve hundred pound mustang has more strength in his neck alone than Vin Diesel has in his entire body. A good stud handler - a person in charge of a stallion in the breeding pens - needs intelligence, knowledge of horses in general and of that animal in particular, constant vigilance, strong self confidence, extraordinary patience, and a degree of actual physical strength. It's not a task for brutes or fools. Even more so because everyone understands the danger the stallion presents, but often misjudge a normally sweet-tempered mare when in heat and in the presence of a strange stallion. Stud handlers can and have been gravely injured by a poorly managed mare. The nose is a very sensitive place on a horse. There is a degree of pinch (varying from animal to animal) that will completely (if temporarily) focus the animal's attention on what you're doing with their nose. The trick is to get the animal's attention without being painful enough to throw them into a frenzy.
The black mane dips and flys. Éowyn looks down at her hands, clenched on the pommel before her, and remembers dark hair, near black with sweat and ash, tangled in her fingers. The grey mare preens and flags her tail, crouching to release a stream of water before the still-checked stud. He fights the lead, froth flying from his muzzle. Lip curled, he calls to the mare again with a heavy, coarse bugle.
Éowyn turns her eyes aside.
She knows her brother watches the horses with parted lips, his fingers running over and over the band on his forefinger.
Eomer (obviously) identifies with the black stud, and Eowyn is aware of this. I'm not sure if she's aware that she is identifying the stud with Aragorn, in an attempt to displace Eomer.
Éowyn looks west, toward Edoras, and thinks of the sun rising over the White City, and how it had lit on the face of Aragorn, still asleep, his heartbeat slow and steady beneath her ear. She thinks of the tremor of Aragorn's eyes beneath the lids, and how the lines about his mouth had tasted still of smoke, long hours after the battle had ended.
He had been as bruised as she, with a mark on his hip as broad as her palm - a relic of an orc hammer at close quarters. She had touched her lips every hurt, every scar, until his sighs changed and he had caught her face in his hands, intent on returning the favor.
If I have a kink, it is this - two fighters, lying together, battered and worn after a battle. The edge of the passion dulled by aches and exhaustion, so the sex is slow and clumsy and it is the presence of the other that is as vital as the actual intercourse. Also, I wanted Eowyn to have good sex, and I was (back in the day) a big Eowyn/Aragorn shipper.
Seventeen days. Only seventeen. So much she does not think on. She will not dwell on the knife she still wears, nor of the sword Éomer has taken from her, nor yet of how easily the skin of her wrists might part under a blade.
In a way, this entire episode is Eowyn's despair in the Houses of Healing. I think she understands at this point that her death is not going to cost Eomer a damn thing. I don't think she has decided yet that she wants to die, but it is probably due to a failure on her part to decide anything, rather than a decision to live. I should have written 'She does not dwell on the sword Eomer has taken from her, nor the knife she still wears, nor yet...' And here are the days counted again.
The stud stands for an instant and is finally released. The mare wheels and bends her haunches to him, eager for his weight and his sex. Éowyn cannot block her ears to the sound of their coupling and her gaze drifts from the far horizon back to the tableau. She sees Éomer watching as the stud takes the grey mare, iron-shod forehooves raking her sides and flanks. The black horse sets his teeth in the mare's mane and savages her, both their bodies shaking as he drives into her.
This (and the actions of the horses described earlier) represents normal horse-mating behavior, if somewhat on the rough side of the scale. Modern breeding operations use padding and braces and special soft socks to minimize injury. Of all the domestic species, I think only cats do as much damage to each other in the process of reproduction. Cows are an interesting contrast, as the European breeds (the ordinary black and white Holsteins and white-faced Herefords, as opposed to the Indian or Zebu hump-backed cows) are not that physically energetic. Don't get me wrong - cows in heat can be freaky, and dairy bulls in particular are both unpredictable and inclined to challenge humans - but cows are clumsy and they don't kick backwards with both feet at the same time. And they don't bite.
I got fb complementing me on putting the horses last, instead of first - to be honest, I never seriously considered sequencing the scenes the other way. To me, it seems to draw out the 'kick', the sense of wrong and bad.
When the stud has finished and drops away, Éomer turns and steps to Arod. He lays his hand on Éowyn's foot and squeezes, the soft leather bending under his grip. Even through her boot the Ring's touch is ice. Éowyn bends her gaze to his face; half afraid he will pull her down again then and there.
Instead Éomer only holds her eyes, squeezes her foot again and then releases it.
Like others who have been under the sway of the Ring, I wanted Eomer to be conflicted. I'm not sure what part wants to control Eowyn because she replaced him in Theoden's eyes, and what part is just responding to basic lusts.
He turns back to his men, waving the tack away from the black stud. "Saddle another mount. We ride to Fenmarch."
The grooms hurry to pull another horse from the remounts. The rest of the eored arrange themselves into traveling order. Háma reins close to Arod and reclaims his canteen.
The horsemen lead the Ride mare to the rear of the column. Éowyn follows it with her eyes and notes the welling blood and marked hide. She has little pity to spare for the horse. She does not think about how the mare has been hard used, that each of the Ride mares has been driven far and taken repeated punishment from the black stud. Éowyn does not allow herself to think that, at least, the grey mare wanted the stallion and his seed.
In my thinking, no matter how much identification goes on here, Eowyn does understand that the mare is not being raped. Eowyn is struggling against identification with the mare, of accepting (mentally) the submissive pose she has taken. In failing to acknowledge and hence confront her submission to her brother, though, Eowyn has fallen nearly as far as the mare into *non-thought*. There is a beast-mind, an animal way of thought that Wendy and Richard Pini (WaRP Graphics, ElfQuest) described as 'the now of wolf thought'. There is no past, no future. There is today and this moment only. If one is warm, fed, safe, one has always been warm, fed, and safe. If one is not, then one has always been such. By dampening the ability to compare present circumstances with past or anticipated events, one increases one's ability to handle adverse events as they happen - there is no regret, no despair, just surviving the moment. Right now, one is alive and breathing and that is enough. But it also removes the impulse to take sustained, long-term action to improve one's state. One becomes at the mercy of impulse and immediate circumstance. For me, that can be unacceptable in a human.
And she does not think about how her own blood was due four days past, and has yet to come.
And here we come to the reason for counting all the days up to this point. 'Who's the daddy?'
The way it's been worked out, I think it's pretty obvious that *if* Eowyn is pregnant, that it's almost certainly by Aragorn, and not her brother. At this point, though, Eowyn's not even acknowledging to herself that she might be pregnant. What she will do when she does - which may or may not be before the baby is actually born - I actually don't know. The range of actions and possibilities and what-ifs is nearly unlimited.
In a way, I'm not happy with this plot point - if I had not wanted to integrate the possibility of Eowyn being pregnant with the heir to Isildur, then I could have had more room to play with distance and time and the run of events. (Even though the whole story takes place inside of twenty minutes.) Aside from forcing some sequencing of events, the pregnancy also might reduce Eowyn to nothing more than a sack carrying a promised messiah. But. Babies are one of the anticipated results of het sex, offsprings of rape are used as a justification for easy access to abortion, and they are one of the reasons why incest is so strongly discouraged.
And besides, I was going through the situation and wondering, 'Now, how can I make this *worse*?' And making Eowyn pregnant - maybe by her (assumed dead) lover, maybe by her evil rapist brother - in a society where abortifactants were going to be difficult to attain and dangerous, seemed a pretty fair way to 'make things worse.'
I did very briefly toy with the idea of replacing Eomer with Theoden, but decided against. That was, for me, a story I didn't want in my brain.
They bring the Lord of the Mark a new mount, a red bay with a white blaze. Éomer steps into the saddle and leads the party south. By midafternoon the cairn has fallen beyond the curve of the world.
A final note on the horses: the Mongols could attain and sustain (for brief periods) speeds of up to 80 miles a day. (Average was 40 to 50.) The top speed that could be expected of foot soldiers or cavalry with supply wagons - with fast wagons, on good roads - was twenty miles an hour. A trained human runner, though, can, in dry country, out-run a mounted horse, mostly because of superior heat handling ability. The top speed record for a military force was a troop of Mongols in the Russian steppe in the thirteen century (Battle of Legniac, 1241(?)) ( I know which book the ref is in and even which side of the page, but tearing my house apart for two days has yet to produce the book) who covered nearly three hundred miles in less than three days to put a critical two hundred extra men at a battle. I don't think even Rommel in North Africa or the Marines in Iraqi last year beat that.
As for the exact method of covering ground at speed on horseback, the flat out run shown in movies does not work - unless you're the Pony Express and have another remount in four miles. The actual method is more like walk-trot-walk-trot, with the riders dismounting and walking the horses every second or third walk, and hourly stops for water. The Mongols got around this by an extended string of remounts (five to ten at time, running with the mounted rider) and changing horses frequently. (In the above example, though, they were killing horses to get there.)
In more recent endurance races in America, it has been shown that some Arab breeds can sustain a lope (slow run) longer than they can a jarring trot, and that it actually requires less energy per distance traveled. This does not hold true for most breeds, and not for the western style horses, which have been bred for a moderate, easy to ride 'jog' rather than a high action trot.
End
***
Thoughts on Certain Elements of Plot
Click on Mother of Horses to go to the story. I strongly advise you to read it first.
Warnings for the story (and for commentary): Story includes elements of incest, rape, animal violence, and a distinct left turn in AU land. Commentary addresses all of those, and also touches on historical habits of incest, the author's personal feelings on incest, other things that bug the hell out of the author (some of which a reader might approve, disapprove of, or just not care about. The discussion will be short on theme, as the author has yet to decide if the story has one, and probably too long on 'what I meant for the reader to understand was....*shrug* People wanted to know what I was thinking when I wrote the story.
Go ahead, be brave. Read the thing without reading the warning.
Commentary on the idea:
This story had three starting places - one, the One Ring challenge. For those who don't want to click the link (and you should - there are some good stories there) the premise of the challenge was a LoTR universe where one of the characters decided to claim the One Ring, and what happened After. Sort of like the X-Files post-col stories. As you might guess, overwhelming joy and happy bunnies do not abound in that land. (But you'd be surprised.) Go read. Look for Webs, World as Clear as Water, Can You Hear Me Singing? and Beauty.
(This challenge was inspired by Theluna's No Windows. Had I read that one first, I might have never read any of the others, as it deals with a teacher/student sort of sexual relationship that trembles very close to the same line (for me) that Buffy/Giles treads. And there were other things. But the first one I read was Webs.)
The other starting place was Vic's (musesfool) story Blood Remembers, about Eowyn, waiting for Eomer's return. I volunteered to beta that, saying, "If you make the incest sweet or romantic, I'm going to puke." Or encouraging words to that effect. But she did not, and I made a couple minor suggestions, and the story came out well.
The third place was an image in my head of Eowyn standing on the hillside, looking over a river, and this overwhelming feeling of despair. The kind of despair that's a mortal sin - the giving up, never want to live again thought.
And so I had a universe, I had a character, and I had a plot element. And then I had two two-hour lectures in Dairy Management that were just boring me to tears.
But it's really all Vic's fault.
Line Commentary
Title: Mother of Horses
Fandom: LoTR
Notes: A response to the One Ring Challenge.
The title is taken from the Judith Tarr book, "Lady of Horses", which features a proto-Mongol society and a woman who becomes a hero-goddess of horses. I mis-remembered the title. To further complicate things, the LotR archive that I use (heh - my one LotR story (this one) is posted there) - the extraordinary Henneth Annun, already had a WIP there - a prehistory of Rohan called "Mother of Horsemen". I didn't bother to check that archive for the title. The author ended up emailing me with a comment to the effect of 'wish you hadn't done that.' As was her right, I think. *sigh* Had I known that fic was there, I'd have chosen another title.
Evidently, the One Ring Challenge was not as famous as I thought it was. (I tend to think that everyone has already heard of things by the time they get to me.) Many people did not get that it was an AU. Perhaps I should have warned for that.
Finally, the story is a weird mix of movie and book verse. I've read LoTR twice - once when I was sixteen, and once since. For me, for a book I loved, this is next to never having read it at all. I had seen TTT about twice when I wrote this. I leaned heavily on the index for words, proper spelling, and map distances. I won't bore you with the math.
Eighty leagues north of the Emyn Muil the Limlight joins the Great River under the reach of rolling bluffs. There, where the river from Fangorn Wood meets the current running south, the Eorlingas - the Rohirrim of the Mark - set in ages past a cairn of loose river stone. They raised another stand of rock and gravel on the slopes of the Misty Mountains close on Fangorn Wood, and a third west of Helm's Deep in the White Mountains. In the reign of Aldor, the Riders of the Mark erected a stone hill near Druanan Wood, south of Cair Andros. In Helm's War those stones had been scattered, and a new cairn built south of the Entwash, above the West Road.
Awful lot of names there. I pulled nearly all of them off the map - these were not organic to the story, they were my effort to ground the AU into something tangible. This section got rewritten several times until I had the names ordered as well as I could, and had cut out as many strange and unfamiliar names as I could. I'm still not happy with it for two reasons - firstly, because they were something I had to add, near blindly, and didn't 'know', and secondly because I associate name-thickness in geography with 'tame lands' - places long associated with people. (See Robert Holdstock's Lavondyss: Journey to an Unknown Region.) That was not how I thought of Rohan.
So the Rohan set the corners of their holding - strange monuments in silent stone for a people whose history was song and who claimed the wind as their dwelling.
If I had to pick a favorite line out of this, it would be this one.
It is the custom of the Eorlingas that when a king rises to replace one felled in battle or by age, the new Lord makes a ride of the borders of the Mark to add a stone at each of the monuments. If the king happens to wed after he takes the crown, then he makes the journey again with his chosen wife. This is the Claiming Ride, and it binds again the Lord to the land, the man to his wife, and the Riders of the Mark to the swift steeds that carry them through the ages.
The Rohan call the bride of their king the Mother of Horses.
I intended all this to establish a sense of the story as AU - I thought that if the readers were Tolkien geeks, they would go, 'oh, right, that never happened', and take the rest as a turn off the road, and if they *weren't* Tolkien geeks, they would be lost enough to take the story as it came. Didn't happen. Had more than one annoyed fb requesting clarification.
The last line I would have taken out if the title had changed. That's all it was there for.
***
The eored draws rein high above the dun-sand shores of the Great River, where the wind blows thin and chill, hissing across the ridge crest. The Brown Lands smudge the horizon eastward, while the Wold to the west falls away to rolling hills. The Limlight cairn rises above the rim road, its peak a man-height above the gravel trace. A weathered shaft leans aslant over the unmortared stones, a tattered rag clinging against the breeze.
The verb tense changes here, from the narrative portion. I wrote it out long hand as all past tense, with the flashbacks as past perfect (I think?). When I typed it in, I did so in present tense. And then changed it, and on the advice of betas (and my ear agreed) changed it back again. I missed at least three verbs.
The point was to have the reader experience the events as they happened, and to make it difficult for the reader to predict what would happen next. Making my betas tear their hair out over wacked verb tense non-agreement was just a pleasant side-effect.
These Cairns are an old thing all over our planet - people making rock piles just to make rock piles. Travelers add rocks because the pile is there. There are examples on every continent, so it's not just a Saxon thing.
Éowyn checks her horse so that Arod halts apart from the stragglers still scrambling up the grade.
If I did it right, the accent marks came through the lj text. If not - gah. To my mind, there is no difference between E and E with a funny slash over it. Except that one is good honest American talk and the other is funny foreign stuff. I don't read E (funny slash) as 'a with a swallowed e at the end'. (Phonics are not my friend.) So I don't expect to see the E. Vic - who normally posts to Silverlake, where they support enriched text, said I should use it. So I found the key on the keyboard that did that and I changed them all. Then I tried to up load the text to Glass Onion, which uses plain text. I knew better, honest I did. It was all my fault. Especially as I checked the email first, saw that the E with the funky text just went away, *and posted the thing like that anyway.* Honestly, in real life I'm much brighter. One hysterical email to the GO mod later, I got the archive version deleted so I could upload a plain text that had no funky foreign E marks. The E less version still went to the GO list, though. I can smile weakly about it now, but god I felt the proper fool then.
Automatic archive software does that to me.
The rising gusts off the river tug her hair into elflocks and sting her face to tears.
'Elflocks' is the one word I wish I had not used in this story. It means 'dreds', it's used perfectly well here, but it does not fit in Tolkien's universe. It belongs in a universe of bahn shees and House Things and wicked, cruel fairies. (When you comb out your horse's mane in the evening, and come back the next morning to find it tangled again, that's elflocks.)
She blinks them away and shifts in the stirrups, easing her aching legs. Every child of the Rohan sits a horse err a month past birthing. None not so raised could have kept the pace set the last seven days; even she, who grew to womanhood in the saddle, has found the forced march wearying.
Among the 'Cracker' families of my home county, a newborn received a hat and a ride on a horse - held in front of someone, and riding astride - as soon as the child can hold their head erect. Sometimes sooner.
The men of the king's household are also worn, and their mounts as well. Her eyes still on the wold, Éowyn hears the ragged murmur of tired voices discussing the best place to set the tents, where to tie the horses, whether to dig a fire pit or simply scrape a patch bare. None comes to consult with her as she sits her horse and listens to the wind moan over the cairn stones. Éowyn is content to remain still and silent. It will be time for her soon enough.
Arod's ears flick side to side as her horse listens to the things the breeze tells him.
I used Arod because I need a horse that was a person (or nearly so). Eowyn's horse failed on account of not being familiar to the reader, and not being familiar to me.
A sharp whinny and the scattered stamp of hooves on the gravel road interrupts the men's muttering. Éowyn twists in the saddle to watch Éomer curb his stallion, the black beast half-rearing to fight the heavy bar. The riders leading the spare horses back away, pulling the quartet of Ride mares away with them. One, a light grey mare in her second year, hangs back, pulling at the lead and arching her neck.
What the layman (and some horse people) commonly call 'white' is most often actually a faded grey. Horses are born dark and gradually lighten as they reach the age of five or six. Lippazzans are a well-known example of this. There are true white horses, but they are much rarer. I tried to use white and grey interchangeably, and confused the hell out of my betas.
The other Ride mares jerk and startle as she squeals and bounces, tail whipping restlessly. Two horsemen draw the ash-colored mare a little ways apart, so that her agitation will not infect the other horses. As the mare moves off, Éomer's stallion finally quiets. Foam still drips from his jaws and breaststrap as the horse reluctantly settles under his rider's insistent hand. The stud tosses his head and whinnies once, deep and ugly, and then returns to grinding at his bit.
Mares that are in heat (estrus) are barely domesticated. Especially the young ones that haven't figured out what their body is trying to get them to do. They fight and bicker and cause trouble amongst themselves. Among geldings (castrated males) and stallions, they are even worse. And the studs, of course, tend to carry most of their brains in their balls, and loose all common sense in the presence of the cycling female. In a way, it's funny as all hell. In another way, completely not. Human females really have it good - our guys (especially the ones raised in Western cultures) are very well mannered. Starting in early spring, non-pregnant (open) mares come into heat every 21 days (or 25, or fourteen, depending on the mare) and stay in heat for about six to seven days (or ten, or three, depending on the mare.) In the European knighthood tradition, all warhorses were stallions. The armies of Islam rode mares (there is a tradition of six mares being chosen by the Prophet himself to found the lines of Arabia) and US and West European cavalry (and cowboys) rode geldings.
A word on horse colors There are some 'story telling' sorts of conventions, regarding the right color for certain types of characters. White (true white, or an older grey that has lost all color) is a hero's horse, a magic horse - a shining, unstained Knight. Red (chestnut if all red, bay if red with a black mane and tail) is flashier - a fire horse, for a king or a prince. Boromir would (and does ?) ride a red horse. Dun (yellow or brown with a black mane and a stripe down the back) is a 'primitive' color, and is for nomads or peasants. Sorrel or cream is for fine ladies. Brown is for unnamed spear-carriers. Black is complicated - at once a match for red for flash, with more mystery, but often the Evil Knight rides a black horse. Grey - dependable, loyal, stanch - is a traditional color for women warriors and for sidekicks. (I'm not making this up.) (Also - this is for the fantasy genre. Westerns is odd and convoluted and depends heavily on the style (fiction vs tall tales) and age group of the intended audience. (Stories for youngsters and greenhorns use a larger fraction of 'colored' (spotted/paint) horses.)
Éowyn realized she is staring at the stallion and turns back to the Wold. The men dismount and begin undoing packs. The scrape of iron on stone warns her of Éomer's approach.
In the movie - especially FoTR - the Nazgul wore iron boots.
A firm hand takes her ankle and turns the stirrup so she may dismount.
I *think* only people riding sidesaddle need to have their stirrups held. Which Eowyn definitely was *not*. ::handwave::
Looking down at her brother - at Rohan's king - Éowyn forces herself to acknowledge this: the Lord of the Mark, holding her stirrup for her. She swings down, aided more than she cares to admit by Éomer's steady grip. It has been seventeen days since the battle at the Crossing, eight since her marriage, and seven since the beginning of the Ride.
I didn't *understand* the Rohan/Rohirrim difference at this point, and I don't know if Rohan is the right choice, here. 'The Crossing' should have been 'Pelennor Fields'. The exact numbers of the journey were not important, but the relationship between them was. This was a headache - it all came down to distance, the rate of travel on horseback, and the cycle of the moon. More on this later.
When her feet touch earth she clings to Arod's saddle, supported more by her brother's hands on her waist than either her mount or her own shaking legs.
The men's voices grow louder, broken by a heavy thump as a pack falls to the ground. Éowyn shuts her eyes, wishing for rest, for sleep. But the thought of the red Marriage Tent is no comfort. She has no wish to tarry here, at the edge of the Mark, so near to Mordor.
The replacement of the traditional Western (English?) white with red to symbolize marriage in fantasy works is so widespread as to be a cliché in and of its own self. Was I doing this again, I would use green, or gold. Probably gold.
Eowyn still sees Mordor as a foreboding place, in this universe. I know this, I know that she didn't like being *right there*, but the emotion does not make sense, entirely, in this AU. I think the Enemy is still in Mordor, but has not yet given up on the Ring.
Her brother stands at her back, silent.
"May we -" She breaks off, ashamed of the tremor in her voice. She may as well beg, for all the pride she puts forth. Her lips are dry and split and sting as she swallows. When she continues, her voice is quiet but steady. "Could it be done here? Now? There - there is no need for the tent."
This was the first thing I wrote, when I started writing this in my Dairy Management lecture class. When I was considering rating this NC-17, there was a lot that went into it - the rape, the incest, the tone, the hints of bestiality. Most especially, though, for this last line - Eowyn is, literally, asking for it. And that request, that acquiescence, that submission was not something I was comfortable presenting to someone who didn't have the background to understand. Me, I understand that Eowyn does not want to submit, that she knows what it would cost her to resist, and that she chooses - now - to shorten the anticipation and the stay in this place rather than either actively fight (and pay the price for that) or passively endure.
What I don't know if she knows is that submission is a learned behavior that she is teaching herself, and that she may not break the habit if she continues.
None at all in truth - the Claiming Ride had been observed in but a token manner for the last three generations. None of the second line of Kings had seen fit to follow the custom. But Éomer has declared the Mark renewed with his crowning and means to bring the Eorlingas to their old glory.
More exposition. Really, this is the one thing I hate about making up universes. If I was writing it again, I would put in a line about 'a Rohan free of Gondor's rule.'
She thinks her speech low, but her words fall into a break in the voices. The silence that follows thunders in her ears. Even the Ride mare remains dumb. One of the pack horses stamps. A wild hawk cries so distant the horizon nearly swallows the sound.
Éomer's fingers relax on her hips. Her pulse throbs in the marks left by his hands. "Háma. Move down the road to the river. Water the horses."
I'm rather fond of this section. Implication and imagery instead of bald statement. Except that there would be no flies on the wind-swept hilltop, and nothing for the horse to stamp at.
The men take some moments to reload the pack. The fire scrape is left unlaid, the provisions repacked unwrapped. Éowyn keeps her eyes on the toolwork of Arod's saddle. With her fingertips she follows the lines of the Moonknot as the design loops over and under itself. The other hand holds Arod's reins to the pommel and Éowyn noted how the skin over her bones is pale and taut, even as she keeps the rein slack.
Now I would call it 'the Mountain knot' (like the first draft did)
Éomer's hands do not press so hard now on her waist. The broad fingers softly trace the arc of her hipbones, a motion no greater than the shift of her breathing.
Remounted, the company files downhill. Over the curve of Arod's saddle Éowyn watches the helms and high crests nod back and forth as they pass, rocking with each mount's stride. None of them turn eyes to her. The White Horse on Green stands stiff on the wind and snaps as they depart. Arod's head turns to watch the other horses retreat, but he makes no move to follow, only flicks his ears.
The men do not look at her. Arod stands still and behaves himself. They all know what's going to happen - including Eowyn - but none of them wants to think about it. And none of them - including Eowyn - is going to try to stop it.
Éowyn stands listening to the hoofbeats clomp steadily away.
One hand leaves her side. The retreating creak of saddle leather melds into the muted rattle of mail and the click of buckles as Éomer peels away the outer layer of his jerkin and breeches guard.
When the hoof beats faded out of hearing, he lifts her skirt hem up over her waist. His palms brush over the skin of her back and thighs. His fingers dig into her hips again as he pulls her to him.
One of my betas skipped over the warnings and pinged onto what was going on at about this point. *smug, evil grin* Which was, despite the fact that I had painted a pretty heavy header warning onto the draft, pretty much the effect I was going for. Except that I hadn't intended to freak my beta like that.
Six days ago, the grooms and guards had pitched the Marriage Tent at the White Mountain cairn and spread thick pelts and many-hued rugs on the earth. There, Éomer, heir to Theoden, had borne his bride down on the bedding and took her, in the manner of the old kings, at the boundary of his realm. Éowyn had exhausted herself with tears on her marriage bed in Edoras, and did not struggle overmuch.
One of the things that I noticed in going over this again was that Eowyn never thinks of herself as the King's bride, of herself as married to Eomer, or of herself as the Queen of Rohan. I didn't intend that effect, it just came out that way. I'm pretty pleased by it, even though it was just by accident.
And yes, this is a fade-away to cover any lack of mention of specific body parts. For me, Tolkien's language and tone do not lend themselves well to actual damp details of genitalia. I've seen a few fics that do so quite well, and a broad smattering of lousy ones. IMO, the best LoTR fic is gen/G in rating and language, with a few exceptions. Other fandoms (Buffy and Angel, and Due South, to my mind) the *best* stuff is NC-17. YMMV.
The next morning they had broken camp and ridden hard north, for Fangorn Wood, and the cairn there on the slopes of the Misty Mountains.
Now Éowyn cannot keep from gasping as Éomer's feet push hers apart. His thumbs dig painfully into her back and she bends forward under his grip. She is sore and weary in heart and bone. Some days back she ceased hoping he would be gentle.
In this, as before, he does not disappoint. It is the fourth time in eight days. Her breath stutters again as he begins to thrust in earnest.
She shakes under the pounding blows, her hold on Arod's saddle no stronger than her knees. Leather turns slick under her sweating palms. Even as her grip fails, his hands leave her hips and crush down over hers, clenching her fingers as he grinds them against the travel-stained leather.
This sort of activity, bouncing off the saddle skirts, should be freaking Arod out. ::handwave:: I wanted the image of an Eowyn so beaten down she had to be held up to be raped.
On his right hand Éomer wears a golden ring. The metal is cold and at its touch Éowyn feels the last embers of heat flow away, leaving her empty and numb.
Yes, if he's wearing the ring he should be invisible. My betas caught it, too.::handwave:: I thought about having it on his neck, but Eowyn would not have made note of it if she could not see it, and she was trying too hard to not look at Eomer.
Numb. Unthinking. Unfeeling. She welcomes it. She has thought too much since the last days of the war against Sauron.
For a handful of days, she had thought herself a hero, a warrior full of honor. She had won victory over the Nazgul king, and the Fields had rung with the shouts of soldiers and Elves alike, heady with triumph.
She had felt too much. The heir of Isildur had fought by her side as she brought down the demon, and had called her name for the foes of Mordor to cheer. For an hour, there, she had been a bright, unquenchable flame.
Pretty words. A child's words. She no longer thinks of those things. Not now, with her face pressing against the sweat-dark leather, her brother's body filling hers, and his breath hot on her neck.
The dark forces had not collapsed with the death of the Nazgul king. The battle, barely slackened as the black beast fell, renewed. The army of orcs and goblins pressed closer. No matter the Nazgul's destruction, no help the strength of the men fighting beside her, they would all die under the next wave of attack. Éowyn had gripped her sword and fought on, begging the Valar for deliverance. When Éomer had appeared on the battlefield, brushing away scores of the foe with every blow, it had seemed an answer to her prayers.
When she prays now, it is not for her brother to come to her.
I had a bit of a backstory worked out - most of it afterwards, to justify Eomer with the Ring, with Eowyn, after the battle of Pelennor Fields.
The short version is: Eomer is exiled, but rides west, not north, after encountering Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas. He and his men swim the Great River with their horses (it could happen!) and swing south. It is Eomer, not Faramir, who finds Frodo and the Ring. Eomer is not as strong as Faramir, and ends up killing Frodo. Or abandoning him in the backcountry. Theoden is deeply despondent over his unwitting banishment of Eomer (even though he doesn't realize what sorts of things Eomer has been up to) and elevates Eowyn to her brother's place. The battle at Helm's Deep ends with other elves helping to win the day (and bring the sword that was broken), and they bring word that Arwen has gone oversea. So Aragorn goes with Rohan to Minas Tirith, not up the river with the boats. Being without the Dead, the good guys are on the verge of being creamed, even though Eowyn does defeat the Nazgul king. Then Eomer shows up, sweeping orcs aside like Sauron in the first movie, and everyone goes, *Hurray! We're saved!*
Éomer's breath burns her nape, the line of her jaw. He sets his teeth in her neck. From the sting, she thinks he has drawn blood.
It was not the first blood he has spilt, but she does not hold that in her mind. She does not think of many things. She does not think of the halfing Merry who dogged her shadow and glared at Éomer with suspicious eyes. She does not think of Gandalf Greyhame, or of the rest of the Ring's fellowship, nor of how they disappeared, one after the other, in the days after Éomer brought them victory.
She does not think of the dwarf Gimli and his kind eyes. Not of the elf prince who had entrusted her with his steed. She does not think of them, bright and laughing in the afternoon sun, and she does not think of scarlet shadows on a white stone floor.
If I was Eomer, in that situation, Gandalf would be the first person I would do in. Without his counsel, the company holds tight at Minas Tirith, instead of marching to the Black Gate. With Sauron not quite sure what was going on with the Ring, they might have a breathing spell. It might have even seemed like the final victory, if one didn't look too closely into whatever story Eomer had concocted to cover up his acquisition of the Ring. A strange sense of relief and peace might have fallen over the White City.
Also note that I got in a cute Legolas/Gimli moment, if only by implication.
She does not, would not, think of the heir to Isildur. She particularly does not think of him as Éomer presses her against her horse and grunts, jerking as he spills his seed inside her.
"Spilled his seed" is not a phrase I'm looking to use again anytime soon. I dislike it more every time I read it. *makes face and goes *ewww**
The saddle skirt cuts into the side of her face. Éomer's breath hitches and he thrusts again, a final effort that leaves him panting against her back. His breath stirs the sodden hair matted to her cheek and she struggles for her own air. Under their combined weight, Arod sways and shifts his feet. Éomer leans back from her, slipping away, and releasing his grip on the saddle as he does.
Free of his support, Éowyn collapses slowly, trailing down Arod's foreleg. She kneels there, her skirts fallen down around her, cupping the horse's knee with cramped fingers. Behind her, armor straps creak and mail rattles.
The sound of the keening wind stones is unchanged. Again, it is the sharp air that makes tears stand in her eyes.
Eowyn spent a lot of time *not thinking* about what was going to happen, and hating the wait until it did happen. And now it's over, and she's *not thinking* again. Also, it seems that she (like Arwen) rides aside in a full skirt. But the lack of undies is movie canon.
It seems a very short time before the tattoo of hooves announces the return of the eored. When Háma puts his hand on her elbow and would lift her to her feet, Éowyn waves him away and struggles upright. Nor does she allow him to help her mount.
She adjusts the reins, accepts the proffered canteen and takes a deep swallow of warm river water. Háma gestures for one of the men to bring a leather bucket and he himself holds it for Arod to drink. Éowyn nods thanks and pats Arod's neck. All the while her mind is as empty, as unmarked as the land beyond the river.
Hama's concern for Eowyn has very little to do with her, and a great deal to do with how Hama feels about the situation - he's deeply shamed for not lifting a hand against Eomer. Everything he does actually helps Eomer abuse Eowyn, but it makes Hama feel better to do it. I thought her acceptance of his help is a reflection of her attitude towards Eomer - she is taking the path of least resistance.
Only as the grooms bring forward the young Ride mare does Éowyn allow space for recollection. Rinmer, the grey-bearded stallion handler, takes a grip on the black stud's nose and forces his head down as two others loose the cinch and smoothly strip the tack from the stallion's back. The tall horse throws up his head and squeals, pulling Rinmer up off his feet as he does.
A skinny twelve hundred pound mustang has more strength in his neck alone than Vin Diesel has in his entire body. A good stud handler - a person in charge of a stallion in the breeding pens - needs intelligence, knowledge of horses in general and of that animal in particular, constant vigilance, strong self confidence, extraordinary patience, and a degree of actual physical strength. It's not a task for brutes or fools. Even more so because everyone understands the danger the stallion presents, but often misjudge a normally sweet-tempered mare when in heat and in the presence of a strange stallion. Stud handlers can and have been gravely injured by a poorly managed mare. The nose is a very sensitive place on a horse. There is a degree of pinch (varying from animal to animal) that will completely (if temporarily) focus the animal's attention on what you're doing with their nose. The trick is to get the animal's attention without being painful enough to throw them into a frenzy.
The black mane dips and flys. Éowyn looks down at her hands, clenched on the pommel before her, and remembers dark hair, near black with sweat and ash, tangled in her fingers. The grey mare preens and flags her tail, crouching to release a stream of water before the still-checked stud. He fights the lead, froth flying from his muzzle. Lip curled, he calls to the mare again with a heavy, coarse bugle.
Éowyn turns her eyes aside.
She knows her brother watches the horses with parted lips, his fingers running over and over the band on his forefinger.
Eomer (obviously) identifies with the black stud, and Eowyn is aware of this. I'm not sure if she's aware that she is identifying the stud with Aragorn, in an attempt to displace Eomer.
Éowyn looks west, toward Edoras, and thinks of the sun rising over the White City, and how it had lit on the face of Aragorn, still asleep, his heartbeat slow and steady beneath her ear. She thinks of the tremor of Aragorn's eyes beneath the lids, and how the lines about his mouth had tasted still of smoke, long hours after the battle had ended.
He had been as bruised as she, with a mark on his hip as broad as her palm - a relic of an orc hammer at close quarters. She had touched her lips every hurt, every scar, until his sighs changed and he had caught her face in his hands, intent on returning the favor.
If I have a kink, it is this - two fighters, lying together, battered and worn after a battle. The edge of the passion dulled by aches and exhaustion, so the sex is slow and clumsy and it is the presence of the other that is as vital as the actual intercourse. Also, I wanted Eowyn to have good sex, and I was (back in the day) a big Eowyn/Aragorn shipper.
Seventeen days. Only seventeen. So much she does not think on. She will not dwell on the knife she still wears, nor of the sword Éomer has taken from her, nor yet of how easily the skin of her wrists might part under a blade.
In a way, this entire episode is Eowyn's despair in the Houses of Healing. I think she understands at this point that her death is not going to cost Eomer a damn thing. I don't think she has decided yet that she wants to die, but it is probably due to a failure on her part to decide anything, rather than a decision to live. I should have written 'She does not dwell on the sword Eomer has taken from her, nor the knife she still wears, nor yet...' And here are the days counted again.
The stud stands for an instant and is finally released. The mare wheels and bends her haunches to him, eager for his weight and his sex. Éowyn cannot block her ears to the sound of their coupling and her gaze drifts from the far horizon back to the tableau. She sees Éomer watching as the stud takes the grey mare, iron-shod forehooves raking her sides and flanks. The black horse sets his teeth in the mare's mane and savages her, both their bodies shaking as he drives into her.
This (and the actions of the horses described earlier) represents normal horse-mating behavior, if somewhat on the rough side of the scale. Modern breeding operations use padding and braces and special soft socks to minimize injury. Of all the domestic species, I think only cats do as much damage to each other in the process of reproduction. Cows are an interesting contrast, as the European breeds (the ordinary black and white Holsteins and white-faced Herefords, as opposed to the Indian or Zebu hump-backed cows) are not that physically energetic. Don't get me wrong - cows in heat can be freaky, and dairy bulls in particular are both unpredictable and inclined to challenge humans - but cows are clumsy and they don't kick backwards with both feet at the same time. And they don't bite.
I got fb complementing me on putting the horses last, instead of first - to be honest, I never seriously considered sequencing the scenes the other way. To me, it seems to draw out the 'kick', the sense of wrong and bad.
When the stud has finished and drops away, Éomer turns and steps to Arod. He lays his hand on Éowyn's foot and squeezes, the soft leather bending under his grip. Even through her boot the Ring's touch is ice. Éowyn bends her gaze to his face; half afraid he will pull her down again then and there.
Instead Éomer only holds her eyes, squeezes her foot again and then releases it.
Like others who have been under the sway of the Ring, I wanted Eomer to be conflicted. I'm not sure what part wants to control Eowyn because she replaced him in Theoden's eyes, and what part is just responding to basic lusts.
He turns back to his men, waving the tack away from the black stud. "Saddle another mount. We ride to Fenmarch."
The grooms hurry to pull another horse from the remounts. The rest of the eored arrange themselves into traveling order. Háma reins close to Arod and reclaims his canteen.
The horsemen lead the Ride mare to the rear of the column. Éowyn follows it with her eyes and notes the welling blood and marked hide. She has little pity to spare for the horse. She does not think about how the mare has been hard used, that each of the Ride mares has been driven far and taken repeated punishment from the black stud. Éowyn does not allow herself to think that, at least, the grey mare wanted the stallion and his seed.
In my thinking, no matter how much identification goes on here, Eowyn does understand that the mare is not being raped. Eowyn is struggling against identification with the mare, of accepting (mentally) the submissive pose she has taken. In failing to acknowledge and hence confront her submission to her brother, though, Eowyn has fallen nearly as far as the mare into *non-thought*. There is a beast-mind, an animal way of thought that Wendy and Richard Pini (WaRP Graphics, ElfQuest) described as 'the now of wolf thought'. There is no past, no future. There is today and this moment only. If one is warm, fed, safe, one has always been warm, fed, and safe. If one is not, then one has always been such. By dampening the ability to compare present circumstances with past or anticipated events, one increases one's ability to handle adverse events as they happen - there is no regret, no despair, just surviving the moment. Right now, one is alive and breathing and that is enough. But it also removes the impulse to take sustained, long-term action to improve one's state. One becomes at the mercy of impulse and immediate circumstance. For me, that can be unacceptable in a human.
And she does not think about how her own blood was due four days past, and has yet to come.
And here we come to the reason for counting all the days up to this point. 'Who's the daddy?'
The way it's been worked out, I think it's pretty obvious that *if* Eowyn is pregnant, that it's almost certainly by Aragorn, and not her brother. At this point, though, Eowyn's not even acknowledging to herself that she might be pregnant. What she will do when she does - which may or may not be before the baby is actually born - I actually don't know. The range of actions and possibilities and what-ifs is nearly unlimited.
In a way, I'm not happy with this plot point - if I had not wanted to integrate the possibility of Eowyn being pregnant with the heir to Isildur, then I could have had more room to play with distance and time and the run of events. (Even though the whole story takes place inside of twenty minutes.) Aside from forcing some sequencing of events, the pregnancy also might reduce Eowyn to nothing more than a sack carrying a promised messiah. But. Babies are one of the anticipated results of het sex, offsprings of rape are used as a justification for easy access to abortion, and they are one of the reasons why incest is so strongly discouraged.
And besides, I was going through the situation and wondering, 'Now, how can I make this *worse*?' And making Eowyn pregnant - maybe by her (assumed dead) lover, maybe by her evil rapist brother - in a society where abortifactants were going to be difficult to attain and dangerous, seemed a pretty fair way to 'make things worse.'
I did very briefly toy with the idea of replacing Eomer with Theoden, but decided against. That was, for me, a story I didn't want in my brain.
They bring the Lord of the Mark a new mount, a red bay with a white blaze. Éomer steps into the saddle and leads the party south. By midafternoon the cairn has fallen beyond the curve of the world.
A final note on the horses: the Mongols could attain and sustain (for brief periods) speeds of up to 80 miles a day. (Average was 40 to 50.) The top speed that could be expected of foot soldiers or cavalry with supply wagons - with fast wagons, on good roads - was twenty miles an hour. A trained human runner, though, can, in dry country, out-run a mounted horse, mostly because of superior heat handling ability. The top speed record for a military force was a troop of Mongols in the Russian steppe in the thirteen century (Battle of Legniac, 1241(?)) ( I know which book the ref is in and even which side of the page, but tearing my house apart for two days has yet to produce the book) who covered nearly three hundred miles in less than three days to put a critical two hundred extra men at a battle. I don't think even Rommel in North Africa or the Marines in Iraqi last year beat that.
As for the exact method of covering ground at speed on horseback, the flat out run shown in movies does not work - unless you're the Pony Express and have another remount in four miles. The actual method is more like walk-trot-walk-trot, with the riders dismounting and walking the horses every second or third walk, and hourly stops for water. The Mongols got around this by an extended string of remounts (five to ten at time, running with the mounted rider) and changing horses frequently. (In the above example, though, they were killing horses to get there.)
In more recent endurance races in America, it has been shown that some Arab breeds can sustain a lope (slow run) longer than they can a jarring trot, and that it actually requires less energy per distance traveled. This does not hold true for most breeds, and not for the western style horses, which have been bred for a moderate, easy to ride 'jog' rather than a high action trot.
End
***
Thoughts on Certain Elements of Plot