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Mithrandir came into the city again today. The grey wizard is constitutionally incapable of not making an entrance and demanding everyone’s attention immediately, so we had to immediately summon a meal for his private audience. Granted, my father the Steward wasn’t up to anything particularly important that morning, just the typical steward business of doing everything a king would do while constantly being told the king would do it better. Really looking forward to that when it’s my turn.
I took a look at the trail of mud tracked in behind Mithrandir and asked if whatever business brought him to us was so urgent he couldn’t stop to use a doormat. He gave me an up-down and asked if I thought trying to fit an entire longsword under my robes was ~aesthetic~ or if I was hoping to compensate for something. He’s so rude.
Ada glared at me and said I’ve just never liked Mithrandir since fireworks scared me when I was six. No Ada, I just think when it comes to wizards, maybe you should pay a bit more attention to Curunír, the one actually entrusted with a portion of Gondor. Has he made a visit or even dropped a line in the last couple of decades? He’s been so quiet for so long, at what point do you admit the guy declared independence and just didn’t tell us?
This visit was special, though, because instead of just the usual fearmongering sprinkled with jabs about how poorly we’re running things Mithrandir also brought Ada a “gift”: some dude around my age who speaks Sindarin with the weirdest accent I’ve ever heard. He’s supposed to be a kickass soldier from Rohan, even though he isn’t even from Rohan. I’m not sure why Ada is already falling over himself to appoint him to lead soldiers when we’re not even clear about where he’s actually from, but apparently I’m just paranoid. Ada won’t stop glowing about how awesome the guy is and how much of the world he’s seen—um, hello, maybe we’d have seen the world too if we weren’t stuck here in Gondor doing all of somebody else’s job for none of the credit—and keeps saying he seems so familiar he must have some blood of Númenor in him. Oh wow, someone tall with dark hair and grey eyes!-- such a scarcity in Arda!
The dude rolls up in a cloak with a star on it and calls himself Thorongil, Eagle of the Star. Yeah, that’s not a fake name he made up on the spot.
***
We are now absolutely drowning in the excellence and insight of Captain Thorongil from Wherever The Fuck.
Captain Thorongil thinks we should improve our military by imitating lost warcraft of the greater civilizations that preceded us. (You can certainly tell he’s Mithrandir’s friend; of course everything’s gone to shit since the stewards have been running things). And of course, he’s incredibly well-studied in these tactics for no reason at all and can drill Gondor’s army in them! Now I get to feel like a redundant second-in-command despite my titles as Captain General and High Warden of the White Tower as this random foreigner shows us how to fight the superior way we used to some two-thousand years ago as if our enemies haven’t changed a damn thing in the meantime.
Captain Thorongil thinks we need a specialized corps of rangers for guerilla warfare. And of course, he’s just the one to train them because of his own extensive ranger experience! Now he’s Captain of the Rangers of Ithilien with a whole command of expert locals recruited from the refugees Ada brought into the city, and every week I get to hear another report about waylaid spies and miles of woodland he’s reclaimed for Gondor.
Captain Thorongil thinks we need a navy! And of course, he’s just the one to train them, too, because it was all his idea because he’s always been so concerned about the corsairs from the south. Now he’s deployed to Pelargir to make his fancy rangers even fancier aboard boats.
None of my ideas get nearly the same attention. Since apparently I’m only one who thinks the sovereign rulers of Gondor should know more about the ancient lore preserved in our vaults than a random roving wizard, I was doing some reading on the old palantíri brought from Númenor. If there really is something that has gone to shit these days it’s our communication system, though that went to shit well before the stewards took over. I mean, why have the capacity for directly viewing the entire continent with instantaneous audio and video exchange when you can wait weeks for a rider with a message crossing hostile terrain instead?
I suggested to Ada that we might investigate the recreation of such a device, and he immediately confessed that we have one of the originals right in the damn tower.
He explained that the lore on their use had been lost; I countered that it was probably just sitting somewhere in our remarkably poorly-catalogued library. Then he waffled about how “only the king and his direct appointees can master it” and I pointed out that both of us qualify.
“We do not have the time to devote to it.” Speak for yourself; with Captain Thorongil dominating the vast majority of interesting duties around here, I have time.
“The learned men of the time intentionally put aside the knowledge after the fall of Minas Ithil, for they deemed it unwise to engage with a device that might bring them face to face with the Enemy himself, and this risk remains.”
Didn’t you just say that only the king and his direct appointees can master it? It seems like if we have something that could grant the immediate exchange of information and omniscient insight into every realm this side of the sea we should probably USE it regardless of whether the Dark Lord might interrupt the party line from time to time, but go ahead and be a pussy about it.
I have a whole list of things I’m going to do differently when I’m in charge and that’s definitely on it, though “Stop kissing Thorongil’s ass” and “Stop giving Mithrandir a free meal and unlimited access to priceless ancient texts every time he visits in exchange for being a salty little bitch” are at the top.
***
Ada has starting implying Thorongil should marry one of my sisters. Can you imagine? Not being related to the guy is insufferable enough.
Thorongil is clearly not into it, either, but Ada got snappy with me when I said Thorongil probably just prefers dick. “Don’t be crass, Denethor; some men just delight chiefly in arms and soldiery, like King Eärnur.” Ada, King Eärnur definitely preferred dick. They’re just not going to put that in the lore.
Everyone should be glad I don’t prefer dick and have done my part in perpetuating the line of the stewards. You would think giving Ada a grandson would finally give me a leg up over Thorongil-- but now I’m overlooked more than ever as the Council seems to think I must be too busy with the family. The Council does realize I’m not the one who personally nurses Boromir, right? And it’s not like Finduilas needs to be having babies every other year. Why should we rush to have another when Boromir is already perfect?
***
Thorongil finally got his wish to mount an offensive attack on the corsairs he’s been on about for a decade. I was graciously invited along to help.
It did not go well. Well, it went well as can be expected as far as defeating the actual corsairs—that went very well, we roundly destroyed them-- but it didn’t go well for me. I ended up with a pretty hefty gash to the belly, causing just enough blood loss to start that panic of oh fuck I’m gonna die.
I was just started to fret out loud that Boromir was going to grow up fatherless when Thorongil pulled me into a cabin to help me clean the wound. He was all you’re going to be fine and started boiling a bit of water, pulling out some dried herbs like he was going to make tea. I started freaking out again and he shushed me. Excuse me for expecting bandages, needle and thread, leeches, or alcohol; you know, actual medical care.
Strangely, though, it worked. Thorongil wafted the anesthetizing scent of his weird tea over me and crumbled some of the leaves into the wound, and as he wrapped it I scarcely felt a thing. I hadn’t known the man so much as knew how to wrap a bandage! Go figure that same wunderkind who could command three branches of the military of the greatest kingdom of Men turns out to be a superlative doctor, too. Just get Captain Thorongil to solve literally every problem you have.
But even as I started to get pretty high on the herb fumes, it dawned on me. When you’ve spent your entire life hearing about your duty to step down at the drop of a hat for someone who’s been shirking his duty for centuries, you don’t easily forget the bio of the guy who’s going to ruin your career.
“The hands of the king are the hands of a healer, and so shall the rightful king be known,” I muttered.
Thorongil dropped his plants and stared at me. I don’t know if the extra weeds gave the fumes a little extra juice or the shock of the wound finally got to me, but I promptly passed out and didn’t get to see what happened next.
By the time I woke up, Thorongil had noped the fuck out. He had given a message to his men to pass on to Ada with no word of where he was headed. He fucked all the way off.
When I got back to Minas Tirith and told him the story, Ada seemed more devastated about Thorongil not saying goodbye than he was about the possibility of my death. I guess since I already have an heir, who needs me anyway. I didn’t mention Thorongil’s fancy plant skills because then perhaps Ada would just stop feeding Boromir, too. What’s the point if the king is back, right? Even if he’s disappeared into the ether to continue avoiding the job he’s allegedly destined to do.
So the King of Gondor, if that’s who he really was, has done the opposite of return, and good riddance. I finally get some respect around here for once. The Council’s already listening to me more now that everybody’s favorite mononymous captain’s not there to dominate their attention. And Boromir’s taken a liking to my horn and has already figured out how to blow on it. Everyone thinks it’s super adorable. I bet he grows up to be even more popular than Thorongil.
Anyway, things are going well, and the only way “Thorongil” is ever coming back to Minas Tirith is over my dead body.