The characters in Minas Tirith

or many generations, my family worked a small holding in the Morthond Vale. Our ancestors were mostly stubborn, clannish hill-men who lived in the White Mountains during the Black Years. In the time of the Kin-Slaying, however, some Gondorians of Numenorean descent rebelled against Castamir and fled to the southern provinces.
Some formed the house of Deruvin and Derufin, our valiant lords, and others married into families such as mine. I grew up a girl-child of the hills and dales - raising crops, herding our flock, learning juggling and tumbling from the minstrels and acrobats who entertained the crowd at our summer fairs, and, at my mother’s insistence, plying my needle. Whenever I could, though, I escaped my chores to wander alone, curious about the creatures of the forests and hills. I befriended the village healer and she taught me much about the uses of plants, both to help and to harm.

ur valley was not always peaceful. The Wakeful Dead, cursed by Isildur, would ride through the Vale on moonless nights, restless and angry. Woe came to any living thing that crossed their path. Several youngsters of our village were found dead after one such night, having become lost in the fog while herding their flocks home. Also, the Corsairs would sometimes slip by the castle at Dol Amroth and come sailing up the Blackroot and the other rivers of the southern White Mountains, seeking plunder and revenge on Gondor. Deruvin and Derufin defended our villages, but their forces were often too small to keep all their lands safe. My father, a practical man, recognized these dangers and insisted I learn to handle a sword, staff, bow and sling alongside my brothers.

t was a grim day when our lords marched to the defense of Minas Tirith at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. With them they took nearly all able-bodied men of the Morthond Vale. My father, who had lost a foot to the Corsairs the year before I was born, stayed behind, as did my youngest brother Arthedain. My three older brothers marched to the Battle of the Pelennor, where the twins, Corithin and Nerifin, were lost. Peredin, the oldest, was not found among the slain but also has never returned home. A few days after the battle, guided by houseless outlaws looking for plunder, Corsairs raided our valley. Enraged by the loss of many of their fellows before the gates of Minas Tirith and by the taking of their fleet by the Wakeful Dead, they slaughtered all the Vale folk they could find. When it happened, I was in the hills bringing our flock to their spring pasture. I returned to find my father’s butchered body before the gates of our home and Arthedain, dying, pinned to a tree by a spear. He begged me to end his suffering. My beloved brother’s was the first life I ever took. My mother, her mind unhinged by grief and her suffering at the hands of the Corsairs, leaped from a cliff in the hills behind our farm. I buried their bodies, took up my brother’s sword and my father’s staff, and began the long journey to Minas Tirith. I wanted to see if the defense of that city had been worth the lives of my family and the other Vale-folk.

he journey was long and grim, as I found the Corsairs’ handiwork everywhere. When at last I stood before the gates of Minas Tirith, I was very changed from the country child I had been. My heart was darkened by the suffering I had seen and I had killed three more times, outlaws who saw me as an easy target. I entered the White City’s gates late in the day and my first night was spent in an alley behind a run-down boarding house in the First Circle. The next day, spending my last coin on some bread and thin ale, a man about my father’s age joined me at my table. His garb was of good quality, his face noble, but there was a hardened look about him. He seemed someone who’d seen much he’d rather forget. From my accent, he guessed I was from the Morthond and he asked for news. After hearing my tale, he said, “The suffering of Middle-Earth is not only that of the people of your valley. Your folk have lost much but had Minas Tirith been lost, much darker days would now be upon us. A mighty champion of the Enemy has fallen at the hand of Eowyn of Rohan and Meriadoc, a valiant Perian, but it took all our might to turn back an assault that was only a tithe of the dark lord’s strength. Even now, the lords of Gondor, Rohan, Dol Amroth and many other lands are riding to challenge the Black Land at its very gates. If they fail, all the grief that has yet passed will be but as a handful of water is to the mighty Anduin, to the darkness that will then come. And it will be the part of those who remain to withstand the Enemy, to endure beyond hope, so that his victory will not be complete.”

is words were stern but not unmixed with sorrow and pity for my people’s sufferings. They opened to me a view of the world beyond my home, far lands, strange folk and the battles we all fought, which were but parts of a larger war. Though my grief at the deaths of my kin was not lessened, nor my thirst for revenge on the Corsairs and their allies slaked, something new grew alongside them in my heart. So, when we had finished our meager meal, I asked him, “If I wanted to join those fighting the dark lord, where would I go?” He looked long at me, weighing things in his mind. I saw myself then as he must have seen me - a build too slim to wear heavy armour or even bear a weapon heavier than a sword, worn with grief and bitterness, now numbed to the evil of the world. I saw a shadow cross his face then as he said, reluctantly, “If the Enemy defeats our forces and advances again on Minas Tirith, armed and mailed might will avail us little. We will have need, then, of soldiers who can lurk in the shadows, strike mercilessly and without warning, who can move among the enemy’s camp and sow dissension. The dark lord’s folk hate and fear him even as they serve him; our strongest hope lies in that even when leagued, evil folk often cheat each other. We will need to turn their internal strife to our use. If you will, then, go to the Ranger Headquarters here in the First Circle of the city, and ask for Erchamion. Tell him I have sent him another assassin.”

smiled slowly, for his counsel seemed good to me. I knew I could never hope to fare well in open battle but I had some skill in woodcraft and in moving silently which, as an assassin, I could use to advantage against the Enemy. The darkness in my heart, which had grown ever since I had seen my brothers march away to their deaths on the Pelennor, rejoiced at the prospect and I accepted. “But to this Erchamion, who shall I tell sent me?” I asked. The man smiled a little as he held out his hand to me. “They call me Mormegil,” he said. We clasped hands and I left for the Ranger Headquarters. I looked back over my shoulder at him as I walked away. I thought he looked sorrowful, even as he raised his hand in farewell. There were many long days between my first in the city and that on which we received the glorious news that the Enemy was defeated by the valour of the Periannath, Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee. During that time, I began my training at the Ranger Headquarters and training ground, and at the Assassins’ Academy. That grim building, dedicated to the arts of stealth, secrecy, interrogation, intimidation, disguise and myriad forms of assassination, is housed within Minas Tirith. None who know its exact whereabouts may ever reveal its location. I learned eagerly - perhaps too much so - of all that my instructors could teach me. The darkness in my heart was leavened somewhat by the knowledge that the bloody skills I learned would be used in despite of Gondor’s enemies. During my leave, I occasionally met Mormegil and other experienced Rangers who gladly shared their wisdom, and their company brightened my spirits.

ne day I was in the Third Circle market and overheard the voices of two women bargaining for herbs. One spoke with the accents of my homeland, so after their business was concluded, I walked over to them. Thus it was I met Ioreth, she who first identified the true King by his healing hands, and her kinswoman Iorwen from the Morthond. They were preparing herbs for Nienna in the Houses of Healing and gladly accepted my offer of help, being short of hands. So it was that I met the Lady Eowyn and Lord Faramir, last of the Stewards of Gondor. Hearing their speech with each other and with the Perian, Meriadoc, I truly realized how vast was the evil that we were all fighting. Then came the wonderful news of our victory over the dark lord, and the coronation of King Elessar, and it seemed at last that my family’s sacrifice was justified and revenged. But the fall of Sauron did not end all evil and Minas Tirith remains the Tower of Guard, ever vigilant.

or my part, I have helped defeat a mixed army of renegade Istari, Easterlings, Haradrim and the raised spirit of the evil Queen Beruthiel. The things I did to undermine that army’s morale made my Academy instructors proud. In my work as an assassin, I have discovered a hitherto unsuspected strain of creativity, which I use to the considerable discomfiture of Gondor’s enemies. Also, I was part of a ranger squad that discovered the caverns honeycombing the slopes behind the White City and that rooted out the evil lurking there. Now the assassins have taken a part of those caverns and made them our own, complete with pub, apothecary, weapons workshop, shooting range and sleeping quarters. I recently moved from the small shack I inhabited behind the Oliphaunt Stables near Pub Row to a room over a bookbinder’s near the City Library. I find the smell of ink and parchment much more soothing than that of Oliphaunt excrement, and I have traded some needlework for a volume on the history of Gondor. When I find my spirit more darkened than usual, I walk through the Wishing Well Courtyard, admiring the scion of Telperion that is planted there, or I travel to fair Ithilien, now cleansed of the evil that looked down on it from the Morgul Vale.

serve my King and Middle-Earth in ways that fit the woman I have become. These ways are often bloody and sometimes seem cruel. But the White City must not fall, for without that shield, all the realms of Middle-Earth would be open to the forces that would destroy them. In us now are mingled the bulwark of Minas Tirith and the roaming guardianship of the Rangers of the North. In my service, my heart has found such peace as it can.

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