Daughter of Rohan [Lord of the Rings | Eomer]

Chapter 6

With a bone-jarring clang Hilde's sword met the blade of the first Uruk she reached. They were big, strong and fast. While Hilde was a tall woman and strong herself, she had nothing on these monsters of Isengard. But she was faster and more agile than they were. Wrenching the Uruk's sword aside with her own, she dodged around him, slashing her father's blade across its armourless legs, drawing an anguished bellow from the Uruk as it lost its balance and toppled from the wall. But Hilde barely noticed; she was already moving on to the next one.

This was what she had been trained for, and she had been trained well; her father had made sure of that. Raised by a shieldmaiden himself, he had been the one to place Hilde's first sword and shield in her hands. She gloried in her heritage, and thus intended to make her father and her grandmother proud here on the walls of the Hornburg.

Little by little, everything fell away as her father's sword flashed in her hand, slicing through air and Uruk flesh alike in her skilled hands. She barely noticed it when an Uruk-hai's fist connected with her ribs, and jumped back to her feet when one crashed her into the stone of the battlements. She was not quite untouchable, but she felt and moved like she was, such was the ferocity and exhilaration that drove her. All she knew was the feel of the hilt against her palm and the weight of the shield on her arm. Her feet danced as she moved, a euphoria building within her with each dodged blow and answering strike of her own.

Faintly she heard the King calling for those on the walls to retreat. At first she paid it little mind, she was so caught up in her deadly dance. Then, with a jolt of understanding, she realized those left around her were beginning to flee from the wall. It was a moment of understanding that cost her. Her right foot slipped, sending her crashing to one knee, a dizzying spear of pain lancing through her leg and hip. More than that, as she struggled to regain her footing, another Uruk-hai came toward her and she was barely able to raise her shield in time.

It was an awkward block, and though it kept the blow from landing on her, it wrenched the shield away, nearly taking her arm with it. With a nauseating blaze of pain she felt her shoulder wrenched unnaturally back. But instinct drove her, and with a sharp upward thrust of her sword, she thrust the blade up into the jaw of the Uruk before her, the point jutting up grotesquely through the top of his skull. With a shark yank she pulled her father's sword free, the Uruk's carcass falling limply to lie at her feet. The throbbing pain in her shoulder and her inability to so much as flex her fingers on her shield arm surged to the front of her mind, and she absently realized her shoulder must be dislocated. But she didn't have time to think on it further. Clutching her injured arm close, she too joined the retreat, racing toward the Keep.

She was one of the last to clear the doors before they were slammed shut, men already waiting with benches and lengths of timber to shore up the doors. Hilde's heart sank to her boots when she realized how few were left. The remaining elves were helping to ferry the wounded into the back rooms of the Keep while the men worked to barricade the entrance. What remained of the boys and old men were being directed into the caves, ordered to hold it even as the rest of the King's men were preparing a last defense of the Keep itself.

Pain prickling through her, especially through her shield arm, she couldn't help but sink to the ground against the near wall, gasping through the roiling of her stomach. Her father's sword fell from her hand, clattering to the floor. Somewhere she was bleeding; she could see flashes of her own scarlet blood flowing amid black Uruk blood spattered over her armour and mail.

"You're wounded?" Hilde looked up in bewilderment at the furrowed brow and surprisingly concerned eyes of the dwarf.

"My shield arm...dislocated," she somehow managed to choke out. With a gruff nod the dwarf stepped forward, and before she could react, had taken hold of her arm and her shoulder. Hilde felt more than heard the wet pop of her shoulder settling back into place under Gimli's hands. With a strangled yelp, Hilde's body seized, starbursts of pain flashing before her eyes before clearing. The most intense pain was gone, a lingering—albeit potent—ache in her shoulder all that remained. Still gasping for air, she looked up to the dwarf as he stood over her. A satisfied look peeked out from behind his bushy beard.