It still made Faramir laugh inwardly when he thought of the first time he met the Rohir. He'd looked at the figure dismount smoothly from the destrier – lithe, a hint of muscular strength beneath the wiry outline, a touch below middle height. Éomer had written to his brother about the parlous state the court in Edoras was in – manipulated by the man he referred to as "Wormtongue", a man of dubious loyalties to say the least. And the need to send some of the men loyal to him into exile, to fight with the Ithilien Rangers until such time as Éomer had consolidated his position and could call them back to the Riddermark. But what in the Valar's name was Éomer doing sending him a mere lad, not yet come to manhood?

Then the lad took off his helm. Long – really long – golden hair cascaded down to a slender waist, and the lad turned to look at him through grey-blue eyes beneath delicately arched brows. And suddenly Faramir's world contracted to a tiny point centred on the slim figure before him. The lad was a lass. And Faramir's heart was no longer his own.

She marched straight up to him, and held out a rolled up piece of vellum. "My Lord, my brother, Éomer, third marshal of the Riddermark, has sent me to serve under you." She stood to attention, straight as a quarter-staff, as Faramir read the letter.

Eomer, Third Marshall, to Faramir, Captain of Ithilien, greetings.

As you know, it is from time to time necessary to send to you some of my loyal soldiers who have attracted, shall we say, too much attention from Wormtongue. Usually this is due to them demonstrating greater loyalty to Théoden Cyning than the worm is prepared to countenance. However, added to this, my sister has attracted a further level of danger: the worm seeks her in ways which speak of the most despicable dishonour.

But, her need for sanctuary notwithstanding, do not doubt for one moment that I have sent you a worthy addition to your Ranger troop. My sister Éowyn is a shield maiden of the Mark, a skilled horsewoman, and probably the best with a sword that I have ever seen.

The letter then moved on to some political observations of the general state of affairs in Rohan and its surroundings, and a request for an update on the situation in Gondor. As he read it, his mind not really taking in the finer details, Faramir's mind whirled like a spinning top. This woman was his friend's sister, she had been ill used by the man who now held the reins of power in Edoras, he, Faramir, was now her commanding officer and comrade in arms. The decision was made in an instant. In fact there was really no decision to be made, only one course of action available. He pushed to the very furthest recesses of his mind his acknowledgement of her beauty, and vowed to treat her as he would any other recruit.

The following two years had passed quickly. Éowyn did indeed prove to better than any he had seen with a sword. She also took to the use of daggers and throwing knives with a natural flair: for archery on the other hand she never gained more than a basic competence. Predictably, just about every young single Ranger (and, to Faramir's annoyance, more than one of the married ones) tried their chances. They were politely but firmly rebuffed. She seemed to have a knack for simultaneously seeming not to notice their advances and carrying on as if nothing had happened, while also indicating that she knew only too well what they were up to, but chose to give them a face-saving easy out.

The only occasion on which a soldier (not one of his Rangers; a messenger from Minas Tirith) tried to make a physical advance towards her, she turned into a wild berserker. It took three grown men to haul her off. The messenger was half dead and had to be strapped over a pack horse to be returned to the Citadel. Later that night, however, Faramir came upon Éowyn sitting alone in one of the caves in Henneth Annun, wineskin in her slender white hand, half-pissed and shaking with fear. He had carefully alerted her to his presence, then sat down as far from her as the narrow space would allow, and waited in patient silence. When she had finally managed to bring herself to talk, she had talked till dawn, and he had simply sat and listened.

On the whole, Faramir found himself valuing her presence enormously, as an able soldier, a shrewd tactician, a comrade in arms, and gradually, since that long night through to the grey dawn, a friend. She was easy to talk to, widely read (which surprised him, having previously had only her brother as indication of what to expect of a noble-born Rohir), and, when not in one of her maudlin moods, was possessed of a lively wit and sense of humour. And if at night, lying alone on his narrow bed, Faramir's thoughts sometimes took a different direction, by dint of will alone, he squashed these meandering imaginings.

The only point at which their friendship took a wobble was about a year after the incident with the messenger. She formed a liaison with a soldier from his brother's troop, a handsome (but to Faramir's mind rather superficial) young man. The embryonic courtship fizzled out after a month or so. Faramir carefully refrained from passing comment, but Éowyn sensed his mood nonetheless, and angrily took him to task for passing judgement. He would not so much as bat an eyelid at the amorous adventures of the men, she pointed out, so why should he judge her? Could he not be glad for her, that she had at last set the events of Meduseld so far behind her as to be able to try to find joy in the arms of a man? Faramir apologised, genuinely embarrassed that she had sensed his mood, even if she had attributed it to the wrong motives. He could at least acquit himself of double standards. But he had a feeling that she would find the real source of his discomfort even more annoying, so he did the best he could to keep her from realising that in fact he was desperately jealous.

Still, that was several months ago, and their friendship had relatively quickly reached the easy comradeship from before Éowyn's brief fling. They ate together, shared a tankard of ale together, talked together, laughed together, fought together. Today, they were out on a routine scouting mission, high on the slopes above Henneth Annun. They slipped through the trees silently and efficiently, signalling their movements with silent hand gestures, but more often than not anticipating the other's plans before any gesture need be made.

Mid morning, the clouds which had been roiling round the high peaks started to descend, blanketing first the passes, then the rocky moraines and finally reaching the tree line. Like a thick cloak, grey mist seeped over the pines and spread its tendrils between the tree trunks until Faramir and Éowyn could barely see more than twenty paces in front of them. The fog muffled sounds – the rattle of a stone dislodged by a boot was dull rather than sharp, the snap of a twig blunted by the thick gloom. As sound was dulled, so in contrast time seemed to stretch out. In the featureless grey, without the movement of the sun, it was hard to tell if minutes or half hours were passing. And even to Faramir, who had tracked through these woods for more than a dozen years now, directions became uncertain, distances stretched or contracted in uncertain ways.

The tendency of the fog to muffle sound was nigh on their undoing. They were almost upon the orc troop before they knew it. Faramir crouched in the undergrowth, signalling on his fingers... twenty, no, twenty-five. No chance of engagement then: they were simply too many. And they lay to the downhill side, so no chance of a quiet retreat back to Henneth Annun for reinforcements. Éowyn crept through the ferns until she could kneel beside him.

The orc troop had stopped for a moment. Their leader was a large, scarred brute. Next to him was a small, longer-limbed creature. Sharp eyed and keen of hearing, a typical tracker. He sniffed the air, face contorted with suspicion. Faramir laid his hand on Éowyn's arm. It seemed, though, that the fog came to their rescue. The heavy, clammy air seemed to conceal their scent. Rising cautiously, Faramir drew Éowyn to her feet and signalled behind him. A huge, gnarled old oak stood a few feet away, bearing the blackened scars of a lightning strike. The strike had cleft the trunk in two, hollowing out the interior, with a narrow gap in the bark half covered in ivy concealing the space behind.

Carefully, placing his feet toe first and gently transferring his weight, Faramir made his way across the handful of steps to the tree. He held the ivy aside, and guided Eowyn into the tiny space, before squeezing through the tight cleft in the bark and wedging himself into the gap, flush up against her. He let the ivy fall back into place, and tried to concentrate on stilling his breathing. They had got there not a moment too soon. There was a clanking of rough iron armour, and the orc troop moved out, following the trail right past their hiding place, wending their way up hill into the mist.

They stood in the narrow space for nigh on an hour after the orc troop had moved past, knowing that their enemies had a keen sense of hearing and excellent trackers. At first, Faramir's whole attention was centred on the ever fainter sounds of the retreating band. He tried to picture in his mind's eye what path they might be taking, but since he had, in truth, slightly lost his bearings in the mist, he could not be entirely sure of their route. Gradually, the scuffing of feet and chink of arms became so distant that he wasn't sure whether he genuinely heard sounds or whether his imagination was filling in the sensations for him. Eventually, imagination or no, he found himself blanketed in the thick eerie silence that the fog brought with it. The only sound he could hear was Eowyn's soft breathing, and even then he wasn't sure how much he heard and how much he imagined based on the way each breath ruffled the hair just below his ear.

As the minutes passed, his senses, preternaturally tuned by the near miss, turned from an intent focus on the noises from outside to an equally intent, if not even more intent, focus on the nearer sensations. It started with the huff of Éowyn's breath on the skin of his neck, but increasingly he became aware of the pressure of her body against his back, the warmth radiating from her and contrasting so sharply with the clammy cold seeping through his damp clothes down his front. Her left hand, thrown willy-nilly into the cleft in the tree when they scrambled into their hiding place, was now pressed between the heart wood and his hip, and he swore that even through his tunic and breeches he could make out every single one of her long, slender fingers. His right hand was held still against his stomach, grasping his bow, and he could feel his elbow pressed against Éowyn's arm. And her legs – her legs were moulded to the back of his, thighs pressed against his hamstrings, her body feeling as though it was cradling his buttocks.

The realisation washed over him slowly, almost gently, but inexorably. After two years of denying what he had felt that first moment he set eyes on her, the tide of feelings, having been chased out far across sand flats, now came flooding back, a surging, irrepressible, irresistible force. He felt the desire start low inside him, spreading until every place where he touched her was aflame, every part of him yearned to make contact with her, to wrap himself round her, to lose himself within her, to be engulfed by warmth and flame and need. And he couldn't move – didn't want to, didn't want to lose what closeness he had, but also couldn't. It was as if he were frozen, as if he had been petrified, or turned to wood to become part of the tree in which they hid.

So he stood, motionless.

Her hand on his hip.

Her heat against his buttocks, against the backs of his legs.

Her breath on his neck.

And then she kissed him. The shift in her body was almost imperceptible, would have been so had his senses not been so heightened. The brush of her lips against the back of his neck was barely more than her breath had been. Yet to Faramir it felt as though a ball of lightning had hit him. He let out a low moan. There was a clatter as his bow fell from his grasp, and blindly, his hand reached out and back, seeking hers. He twined his fingers with hers, then, scrabbling in the confined space, try to turn and squirm round. As he turned, her hand, still trapped between the tree and his body, slid from his hip across his arse. She released her other hand to bring it up to his cheek as he managed finally to face her, his chest pressed against hers, his thigh between hers. She slipped her fingers round his head, tangling them in his hair, and pulled his head down towards hers.

He had always imagined (in those imaginings he had not allowed himself, but which had swarmed over him nonetheless, those forbidden, denied imaginings) that their first kiss would be gentle. But this was fire, this was white-hot sparks, this was steel straight from the furnace with no water in which to quench it. Her lips met his, already parted, tongue slipped across tongue, teeth grazed flesh, breath suspended by pure desire.

Her hand dug into the muscles of his arse, and he pressed his leg between her thighs. His hand slid up, and as best he could, he cupped her breast through the leather jerkin. Her fingers slipped from his hair to caress his neck, then run across the bare skin round the collar of his tunic.

"Éowyn." It took almost superhuman effort to form the syllables of her name, and still it came out as more of a groan than any recognisable speech. In answer, she pressed herself hard against him once more, her lips hot on his, demanding, laying claim to him. What need has she to lay claim? The thought fluttered, only just coherent, across his mind. I have been hers since the moment we met.

Somehow that half coherent thought coalesced into a need to speak, to articulate. "Éowyn." Again, his voice was broken, harsh with pure physical need. The words would not come out as sentences, but fell, singly, pleadingly. "What? Why?"

They must have penetrated the haze of want, for she drew back slightly, her hand moving to the small of his back. For a moment she looked up at him, eyes huge and dark, then she rested her head against his chest. "Faramir." And suddenly, hearing her speak his name, his heart felt as though it had swelled too large for his chest to contain it. "Faramir... I want... I need you. Please?" The last word came out as a question, a plea. He slid his hand to cradle her chin, looking down into her eyes. He still wasn't sure what he read there – desire certainly, but the emotions that went with that desire... She too reached up with her long slender fingers, tracing the line of his jaw, then drawing her fingertips across his lips. Silently, he took her hand, and squeezing through the narrow crack in the bark, past the curtain of ivy, drew her out into the grey twilight of the clearing.

"Half a league down the track... there's an old woodcutter's hut." Faramir's voice sounded breathless to his own ears. He seized her hand, and together they set off at a half-run down the hill, eventually arriving at the old tumble-down ruin panting and sweating. Faramir pulled Éowyn through the door, his arms around her.

The heat was no less than it had been within their hiding place, but their motions became slow and deliberate as a master swordsmith tempering the white hot blade upon an anvil. Hands reached out and undid laces, undid ties, slid wool and leather from skin, skin which was left shivering in the cold air, shivering but aflame. Gently at last, Faramir lowered Éowyn onto his cloak, all the time holding her gaze with his. They knelt facing one another. He could almost feel her eyes on his skin, as intense as if she were actually touching him, as she took in first shoulders, then chest, then the muscles of his stomach, the V leading down to his hips, the trail of hair leading the way to his cock, nestled amid dark curls. He reached out his fingers. Her body was lithe, strong, with small breasts, and a stomach which swelled slightly then curved back to the triangle of curls, golden to his black. He let his fingers drift over the pink nipple, standing proud in the cold air, and circled the skin around it. Then he let his hand drift down over silky smooth skin, over her hip, round and up the inside of her thigh till his fingers met the curls, surprisingly coarse beneath his touch. Her eyelids closed, her breathing now a low gasp as he gently touched the soft, hot wetness between her legs. So intent was he on this exploration that it was only as her hand curled round his cock that he realised she had reached out. He gasped.

"So soft. The skin there is so soft," she whispered, and leaned towards him. He caught her in his arms and drew her close, feeling the hot touch of skin on skin, the length of their bodies pressed together. Then they tumbled onto the cloak, her legs parting. For a moment he lay still, cock nudging her entrance, so wet and hot. He was almost afraid to move, afraid lest the mood be broken.

"Faramir." Again, her voice in his ear. "Faramir. I want you. Please." And the please almost undid him completely. With a thrust of his hips, he slid his full length within her. She pressed up against him, heat wrapping itself round him, caressing him, drawing him in. He felt the inside of her thighs caressing his hips, his balls brushing the skin behind her entrance. She stretched slender, strong arms around his back and held him against her. Then he drew back slowly, almost the full length of his cock, only to slide within her. Her hips moved with him, to draw him in as he thrust, and ease back each time he withdrew. Her breath and his seemed to come in time with their movements. As he drew back each time, he felt the hot moisture of her spread across him, and each time he moved within her, he was engulfed in heat. Their movements came gradually faster, breath coming in gasps, a sheen of hot sweat spreading across their skin, mingling with the cold dew of the mist.

He could feel the need for release building within him, and slowed for a moment to slide his hand between their bodies. His thumb found the soft folds, and within them the little nub he was seeking. With a steady motion, he began to run his thumb there and back, his skin gliding across hers, coated in the liquid heat.

"Faramir. Oh gods..." Her voice trailed off, her hips moved against him wildly trying to pick up the pace once more, her hands clutched at his back. Faramir buried himself inside her, and this time she could say nothing coherent, only a long, wordless cry as she clung to him, waves of heat clutching at him, utterly undone beneath him. Faramir looked in wonder at her face, then lost himself too, feeling as if his very soul were falling into fragments and being remade.

He slumped on top of her, completely spent, then, as his breathing steadied, realised he must be too heavy. He rolled to one side, pulling her onto his chest. She felt limp and boneless in his arms, like a contented cat, and when she looked up at him, her face was lit by a gentle smile.

He stroked her long golden hair and kissed her brow. His words were whispered, filled with wonder. "Oh, but I am blessed by the Valar, that they have given me you."

~o~O~o~

"That's three florins you owe me."

"You what? They're not even touching." Anborn sounded sceptical. His brows drew together, a wrinkle forming on his smooth brow.

"They don't have to, you twerp. It's bleedin' obvious to anyone with half a brain." Mablung held his hand out, fingers beckoning.

"What've you bet on now, my young lad?" Damrod interrupted them. He pushed a lock of light brown hair, peppered with grey, back from his forehead.

"Mablung reckons the captain and the lady have finally got it on," said Anborn, a slightly petulant undertone to his voice.

Damrod cast his eyes speculatively across the large cave to where Éowyn and Faramir stood, deep in conversation. For a moment, he fancied he could see glimmering cords of light stretching between them, so great was the tension in their stances, the yearning that was evident. "I'd say he's right. Like they say, a fool and his money are easily parted. What the hell did you want to go betting against a dead cert for?"

"She were seeing that bloke from the Citadel when I made the bet," Anborn answered defensively.

"Oh, what it is to be young and naïve," said Damrod, shaking his head. "Anyone could see she was only chasing that bloke 'cos she thought she couldn't have the captain. Which I suppose tells you that you're not the only one round here as is young and naïve – for if she'd had half a brain, she'd have seen the captain's been mad for her since the day he set eyes on her."

"So," said Mablung, pocketing the coins, "Who wants to bet on whether he'll make an honest woman of her."

Daeron chipped in, "Two florins says no. Why buy the cow when you're getting the milk for free?"

"And that's the difference between you and the captain," said Mablung. "You're an arsehole who only ever thinks with his cock, the captain's a noble gentleman, and he's thinking with his heart." The group assessed their targets, just in time to catch the captain casting a surreptitious glance at his lady's arse as she turned to reach for more stew. "Or at least, partly with his heart; there's no denying his cock's doing some of the thinking too."

"Hmm, the captain's father is a right uptight bastard, very keen on the sacred lineage of the Stewards and the glory that was Numenor." Damrod seemed half lost in his line of speculation. "He'll not want his son marrying a lass from horse country, though he might just about come round seeing as the captain's the younger son, and he's never favoured him much anyway. Three florins says morganatic marriage."

"Morgy-what?" Daeron interjected.

"Means the marriage is all legal and proper, but any bairns aren't in the line of inheritance," Damrod explained.

"Well now, I agree the Steward's an uptight bastard, that's for sure," said Anborn. "But the captain's not just noble, he's a stubborn bastard, as stubborn as they come. Five florins says a proper marriage, not one of those morgy-whatsit jobs."

"Five? Are you mad?" Mablung looked baffled.

Damrod looked back once more at the couple at the far side of the room. Suddenly, they caught one another's eyes and smiled. Damrod had this uncanny sense of the whole world, all its upheavals and pain, falling away. He was looking at the first mortals to walk the earth beneath the gaze of Illuvatar, untroubled, untouched by anything but their love for one another. He gave his head a little shake to clear it, then spoke again.

"Young and naïve... But sometimes naivety and idealism are the same thing, and maybe you're thinking the same way as the captain on this one, Anborn. I have this horrible feeling I may just have kissed my florins goodbye."