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Before Théoden was king, he was a small boy with flaxen hair who dashed over the green hills of the Riddermark. He struggled to keep up with the galloping hooves of the horses he chased. They danced around him, tails knotting in the wind, and in their own language they called him the horse-child. When Théoden was a prince of twelve, the horses let him catch them. “Théoden,” they told him and he listened, “Théoden, this is your land. See where the sloping hills meet the planes? Where the homes of Rohan rise from the earth?” Théoden nodded at the horses, smiled the genuine and unknowing smile of a small boy and told them he saw. “Yes,” he said, “I see.” And so the horses called to each other, in their whistling and roaring language: “Come, see the horse-child. He is to be king of the Riddermark. When dark days fall, we will look to him and his own kin.” And Théoden stood watching them— the gathering steeds and mares who sniffed at his skin and at his golden hair, who flicked their lengthy manes at him and let him stroke their shimmering coats. “Hello, hello friends,” he said to the horses, for young Théoden did not know that the horses came to baptize him and see him with their own eyes. “Théoden,” one of the horses said, large, white, and glowing in the sunlight, “Théoden, watch for the dark boy, with the dark purpose. He does not care, though you will suppose he does.” But Théoden did not understand. He took the horse’s words for only for a pretty warning, sung as a poem on a supple warming day. End. |