The Eastern Woman

Rings

Goneril was immersed in the warm water of the wooden tank.  Some candles enlightened the small bathroom, and a pleasant smell of lavender had permeated the air.

In that silence broken only by the dripping of water, the woman was thinking back to the events of the last hours.

That tremendous battle.

How did Saruman put together such a huge army in such a short time?  How had he succeeded?  He must have made a tremendous deal with Sauron, as Éomer suspected.  It was incredible: Saruman was the leader of the Istari, the Order of the Wizards who, like the Elves, had the task of protecting Middle-earth.  His betrayal was something inexplicable and sensational.

He and his master had been miserably humiliated at Helm's Deep. That fact had rebalanced the situation, which however remained serious: it was clear that that defeat would have pushed Sauron and his followers to try again, and only Morgoth knew the power of those black armies.  Saruman had sent ten thousand Orcs against the small kingdom of Rohan, Goneril wondered what he would have done if he had decided to attack Gondor.

She thought of Aragorn.
He had been brave at Helm's Deep: in truth, he had led the defense to the siege, although Théoden had initially given the task to Goneril.
That ranger was born to be King. So the rumors said.  He had hidden in the wild for years, he had chosen exile, but he could not betray his blood.

The woman, however, had the impression that he was upset by something: he seemed doubtful, as if part of him still rejected that role.

She understood that. She was also prey of doubts.
Until that moment, she had always had clear ideas about her life, she had spent a decade in a mercenary legion with the well-defined project of accumulating enough wealth to build her own little realm somewhere on that vast continent.  A new reign that would have had her rules.

Those last events had changed and partially reduced that vision.  Meanwhile, she had realized she could not trust her soldiers, first of all that greedy brigand, Degarre.  And that was a problem, since the legion was her armed arm, the instrument with which to build that distant dream.  She had learned that those mercenaries would have quickly turned their backs on her in a moment of inattention.
They wanted those golden chests.  They didn't care about her project of a new society.  They wanted golden coins and how could it be otherwise?  Before Mainard turned them into a disciplined army, they had been nothing but marauders, murderers, thieves.  That dishonest instinct was still strong in each of them.

So why don't they kill me?  She wondered.  Why don't they kill me already and go to Rivendell and get that gold?

Goneril imagined that Hammon was the reason.  Of all those villains in uniform, he was the only honest one.  His grandfather had been captain of Gondor, and a loyal servant of Ecthelion, the Superintendent.  He had been a soldier of honor, and had passed that rectitude to his grandson.  Hammon's positive influence on the soldiers had avoided the revolts against her, had prevented her from being killed.  Hammon had always told those men that the General had to be respected and they had always listened to him.

She also thought of Théoden.
That elderly King was ravaged by the recent mourning for the death of his son: he was a tired and discouraged sovereign who was about to surrender and who had suddenly recovered his pride a few moments before the capitulation.

Was he really her father?  Maybe.  However, the eventual confirmation of that kinship would have made no difference in her life.  She grew up in violence and was raised to fight for a living.  To discover at the age of thirty  that she was the daughter of a king would not have changed a thing in her existence.  The years had passed and they had been hard: they wouldn't have come back.