All Shall Fade

Again, this is my first attempt at writing a serious story so bear with me!!!

Aeda ran down the steps of the thatched cottage she shared with her mother, joining the excited throng of villagers. Her father, brother, and secret lover had gone with the Rohirrim four moons earlier. The Rohirrim had returned.

She was anxious to see her lover, Etheron, as he was not as good a fighter as her brother. Not that she wasn’t anxious to see Aedomar, but she had different reason. Aedomar was the one teaching her to be an amateur shieldmaiden. She had learned to use daggers, a spear, and two kinds of swords because of him. He was teaching her how to use a longsword and how to wield daggers like an elf he’d met, when the call went out for all able-bodied men with horses to come along with the Rohirrim. There was a huge band of orcs just a few hundred leagues from Edoras, and Lord Eómer wasn’t taking any chances. Unfortunately for Aeda, no women could come, and so that meant the end of her lessons until her brother came back. Each day without her lover OR her brother lasted an eternity.

On the bright side, her father was gone, and Aeda hoped he was rotting with the orc carcasses. Aeda burned with silent anger as she remembered how her father had beaten her mother until she could barely stand. All because Malevolain had not liked the dinner nor the grimace on Aedwynn’s face when he had spat his meat back onto the platter. Aeda subconsciously fingered the huge, faded bruise on her face. Malevolain had hit her across the face so hard that she had knocked over the table as she stumbled backwards. She had gotten up and had made a second, futile attempt to help her mother. This time, she had been knocked across the room, hit the wall, and fainted.

If Aedomar had been there, she thought angrily, Father would have died then and there. But Malevolain had contrived to send him out on a double shift with the hunting party; Aedomar always had to take his father’s shift as well as his own. That would change when he was sixteen and a man, but at fifteen he could do nothing but grit his teeth and obey. It was the Law.

Ah, the Law! The Law, written by that snake, Gríma, made it even easier for devils like Father to abuse his family. The Law stated that until children were sixteen, they had to live with their parents and obey them, no matter what outrageous thing the poor offspring were ordered to do. The Law also stated that husbands had the only say in family matters-who their daughters could court, who their wife visited, what chores their sons did. Each family was now a country, with the fathers the sole dictators. If a husband beat his wife, no one who cared could do anything. If a father ordered his daughter to stop seeing someone, she had to comply. The only way to get around that was to have the two fathers talk and agree on a marriage. Aeda was not getting married to that upstart Etheron, her father had declared almost half a year earlier. In fact, none of Malevolain’s family was to have ANYTHING to do with Etheron’s. Etheron’s family was not only poorer than Aeda’s, but his father was Malevolain’s childhood rival. Aeda was furious, but all her arguments got her were bruises and a broken arm and rib.

A child jostled Aeda, bringing her out of her angry reverie.

“Look, Aye-dah! Look! Ethewon’s coming home!” the child, Etheron’s six-year-old brother, beamed up at her, but soon replaced his smile for a puzzled frown. “Aye-dah, why do you have vat fing on youw face? Wew you sick ow somefing?”

“Yes, Ethenain…I was…sick,” Aeda said with some hesitation.

“Oh, wew, I hope you feel bettew!” said the child earnestly. “Ven you can come see us again!”

Aeda smiled sadly. “Yes, that would be nice. I hope I can come see you again.”

A hush had come over the crowd. The Riders were back, but at the head of the column rode Eómer, with Theodred in his lap. Theodred flopped limply from side to side like a rag doll, his face an ashen grey. The villagers gasped. Their prince had fallen! Surely he was dead! But no, he lived yet! Aeda could see the labored rise and fall of his chest, and when the column rode by her she could hear his harsh breathing. She could smell the sweat of the horses as she hung her head in respect and sympathy for the prince of Rohan. She could hear the heavy step of man and horse as she scanned the crowd for her relatives and Etheron. She spotted Etheron, and sighed with relief,. Her relief was short-lived, though, because riding just two rows behind him was her father. She frantically weaved through the rows with the other women and children, but she could not find her brother anywhere. She grew more and more frenzied as she searched in vain for Aedomar. Finally, in the third-to-last row, she spotted one of Aedomar’s friends, Halyth. Halyth was one of the several Riders who held the reins of the deceased’s horses. He was holding only two; a beautiful chestnut mare and an older, grey-and-white spotted stallion. The mare’s saddle was embroidered with a pair of green horses, which Aeda knew was the crest of a family on the other side of the city. The second saddle was embroidered with red, in the form of a triangle of horse’s heads with a horseshoe in the middle.

Her family’s crest.