Aragorn frowns in thought at the words.  "Liches... The language magic might not quite be working here?  What is the difference between liches and wraiths?  Here, in this world - well, on this continent; I've never heard of a teleporting wizard so we're even more isolated - we talk about 'wraiths' and 'wights' and 'houseless' but the differences aren't precise.  The wraiths who're fighting us were humans made undead by Sauron through the magic of his rings; some of the wights in the Barrows" (he points to the Barrow-Downs on his map) "were spirits who took up residence there; others were humans made undead... perhaps through Sauron's rings; I know not how... but there's little sharp distinction we can point to in the end."

"And I would say we travel in the day.  The wraiths are more powerful in the night, and we can try to camp in hidden spots.  But either way, with whatever tactics... I don't know if you have anything else to do here, or if the spell travels with us, but I'd rather not leave the hobbits by themselves for too long even during the day?"

If Gord wants to stay, he'll talk about what might be stopping the wraiths, but it might be better to start moving?

"Liches put their soul in a phylactery and hide it to make themselves immortal. If you destroy their bodies they make a new one, unless you find and destroy the phylactery. The body is a normal corporeal one, though, not like a wraith or ghost."

"If I managed to destroy one of the wraiths it'd be gone for good... I assume. At home, destroying an undead that's not a lich frees its soul to go to the afterlife, which is generally considered a good deed. And liches are wizards who made themselves that way; most other undead were turned by other undead of the same kind, wraiths and shades and vampires all do that, or by a necromancer wizard like your Sauron. So it's much more important to destroy them, because they never wanted to be that way and it frees their souls. If a lich says it's happy to be a lich and hasn't attacked anyone for the past thousand years I'd leave it alone, there's bigger problems around."

"There are differences of - abilities, between wraiths and shades and ghosts and ghouls and other kinds of intelligent undead. It's important to know how to fight them, how to stop them from multiplying, how dangerous they are. I've never faced Golarion wraiths personally but I've studied what I could about them and these didn't seem categorically different. I thought they wouldn't be able to attack in daylight, but they used special magic daggers - we call them ghost touch weapons - Golarion wraiths could probably do that too, they just don't normally have ghost touch daggers. Destroying my magic sword was a nasty surprise, I tried to fix it with a spell this morning but it didn't take."

"But if these were Golarion wraiths, they'd be able to turn anyone they killed into lesser wraith under their control. They could go to the nearest undefended village, because there are no clerics here, and come back with a small army. So they're clearly not the same. You said their daggers can make more wraiths but the daggers seem to be single-use, and they must be expensive."

"And yes, we should get moving. The spell doesn't move but it's about to run out anyway." Gord picks up the few belongings he had out and stuffs them in his bag; he can keep casting mending on his sword on the way, if there's a stretch of road where he doesn't have to carefully watch where he's stepping.

This is not the first time Strider hasn't answered when Gord questioned what's stopping the wraiths from just taking the ring. It's becoming a worrying pattern, possibly related to the ring's enchantment.

"Ah... No, here, thank goodness, they can't do that.  Undead can't generally turn other undead, except by using the same sort of magic that other necromancers like Sauron can use - like the dagger they pierced you and Frodo with."  He pauses for a moment.  "A Morgul-knife, which perhaps could be translated as a 'ghost-touch knife'?  Though I'd guess the name is a coincidence?"

The path isn't well-trodden at all, but after a minute, Aragorn continues.

"I could tell you more about the different types of undead here, but it wouldn't so much be differences of abilities as differences of... habits.  And the wraiths chasing us are acting well outside their habits already, at Sauron's orders."  He shakes his head.  "I still know fear is a strong weapon of theirs, and that fire or flowing water will help hold them back.  But how much it helps now, I cannot say..."  He shakes his head.  "As I said, perhaps your spell failing surprised them?  Perhaps Frodo calling on Elbereth - it surprised me, even, that he invoked Her.

"But we can't wait to be sure; we must try to flee or fight as best we can."

"Ghosts, like wraiths, are incorporeal - you're the one who told me the wraiths are incorporeal, I took you at your word - it means ordinary objects pass right through them. A magic weapon enchanted to be able to hit them is called ghost-touch, and for the same reason it can be used by a ghost against the living. I don't understand how your wraiths can ride horses and wear nonmagical cloaks but still let nonmagical objects pass through them, can they choose what to interact with? Could they use normal weapons or wear armor?"

"I can't make fire or flowing water - well, I can a little bit, not enough to matter. I could summon a fire elemental, now that I know it will help, but all such spells only last for a few rounds or minutes at most. They can bait me out and wear me down until I'm out of spells, and they're faster than anything I have when they're not mounted. They'll know not to let me get near their horses again, and they can track us as long as they have even one left."

"I chose most of my spells this morning before I knew I'd be joining you, and I'll probably need all the ones I didn't choose yet to heal Frodo, so we'll be at our most vulnerable tonight. I can only remove fear from one person for eighty minutes. There's things I could prepare tomorrow, maybe... I really wish some of us had bows or slings or something, I could make magic arrows or bullets and then it wouldn't matter if they got destroyed when they hit them." Selling his last looted crossbow with the rest of that junk was really stupid in hindsight.

"Yes, they're incorporeal.  I don't know... I always thought their cloaks were enchanted; is there some way your spell would not detect it?  But clearly there's some way they can ride, just like they can walk without sinking into the Earth...  Elrond or Glorfindel might know?   

"I don't know if flowing water you create would help..."  He scratches his chin.  "I don't think it would.  I'm sure someone's tried pouring water out from a jug, and if that helped I think I would've heard of it...  The old songs say that the Dark Lord's forces used to fear the rivers because the god Ulmo had put his power in them, and perhaps this is similar?"

His eye brightens when Gord mentions magical bullets.  "Ah!  Yes, I can make a sling!  I have leather; perhaps the halflings might have more -"

"I thought they can sink into the earth! Ours can, they're - not walking on it, really, just moving where they want. That's the scariest way they can sneak up on you, from under the ground."

"If you know how to use slings - I never learned how, I used to have a regular hunting bow but I gave it up at some point -" Gord tries to remember. "I have a spell that makes a weapon magic, it works on bows and slings. I can instead cast it on the arrows so several people can use them, fifty arrows per casting, but I don't know if it'll work on sling bullets because they're just... well, stones, if you don't have metal ones. The stronger version of the spell lasts all night but it's fourth circle and I need my free fourth circle slot to heal Frodo -" Gord pauses to explain circles and slots and channels and spell preparation. "Anyway. There's also a spell that make a weapon or arrows harm evil creatures, and one specifically for arrows against undead, but again I don't know if they'll work on bullets. If they don't, it's a waste of the spell."

"Other than that, I can hide us from their sight - it might not work every time but it worked once. I can ward a place against undead when we make camp, it won't help that much but it should make them a little weaker when they enter it. All the rest is me attacking them directly but if they attack me six on one I expect they'll kill me before I can take any of them down."

"Your spell works on arrows but not on stones?  What's the difference - say, if we carve something into a stone, would that work?"

He spreads his hands.  "But your magic is strangely different from the magic I know.  Our spells can use more or less power, but more like a smooth hill than different terraced circles, and more like striking again and again with your sword till you tire than having a definite number of arrow-casts.  And you can put more or less power into a single spell - a minstrel could sing up an image of all Menegroth, or just of one carved tree, with the same song.  So, an Elf could sing the same power into a stone that it could put in an arrow... but can you?" 

He scratches his chin again.  "I've heard of Barrow-wights passing through the walls of their barrows... and the houseless passing through walls... so perhaps they can?  And they just usually don't?"

"The spell works on weapons and ammunition. I don't know how it defines that but arrows and crossbow bolts definitely count, lead or iron sling bullets probably count, random stones might not. It might work if you gather the stones and put them in a pouch and throw a few of them... We can try tomorrow with the first circle spell first and if that works go for the one against undead, that's third circle."

"The elves here are song-sorcerers? We have those at home, not as many as clerics or wizards but I've met a few. They can be very - well, the thing about music is that it has power even if it's not magic, right, if it's really good music?" Gord hopes that makes sense, it does to him but half his squad got it right away and the others never did, no matter how he tried to explain. "Inspiring, enchanting, moving... But a stone has no mind to be moved by music."

"...anyway. I can't - control the spells, I only use them. The spell either works on bullets or it doesn't, I'll find out when I try, and if it doesn't work it's not something I can practice and get better at. - I suppose I could pray to Gorum for a better spell, I don't think the gods make up new spells on the spot but you can get something you didn't know existed or didn't realize would help."

"Passing through walls and through the earth, flying through the sky, letting swords and arrows pass through them, ignoring armor to clutch at a man's heart... These are the things that make incorporeal undead so dangerous. If people have fought these wraiths before and lived to tell the story, I expect you'd know by now if they can do these things; they would if they could."

"Song-sorcerers?  Yes, you could call them that... but with magic in your world so different, I'm sure your song-sorcerers are also different."

He stares into the distance for a minute, remembering his own song amid which he first saw Arwen, and Sam's song of Gil-Galad yesterday, and other songs he had sung with his fellow Rangers...  and nods.  "Yes.  All music.  Even if Lindir would say it isn't well-sung, even so, if it's the right song for the moment and for you... to enchant you, yes."  He's glad 'enchant' has the same double meaning in Hallit as in Westron, where it's vague whether or not you're actually under a spell.

"Ah, even the gods in your world use the same spell circles?  Without making up new spells?  I could almost say our gods are making up new magic each time - though I can hardly know for sure.  And perhaps what they do themselves is different from what powers they give people like you?

"And no - our wraiths don't normally do anything like that.  Except for swords and arrows - but you've seen that."

"I'm not sure what you mean about the gods using the same spell circles? The spells they give clerics fit into circles, like all spells used by mortals. They give the same spells and not different ones every day, or ones tailored for what you ask, and different gods mostly give out the same spells. But I don't think they use spells themselves."

"When a god intervenes directly, not through a cleric, we call it a miracle, and a miracle can do - anything, probably, if the god spends enough power. The most powerful clerics, the ones at ninth circle, can cast a spell called Miracle, but it doesn't let the cleric do whatever they want, it asks their god to do something and the god can refuse. Miracles can definitely do things no known spell does, whether or not a cleric is involved. But they're very rare and I've only heard stories about them, really."

Aragorn ponders that for a bit.

"Ah... yes, miracles sound more like what our gods do.  When they do anything... they do fewer clear miracles now than they used to.  I've heard" (from Gandalf, who was there) "that they think it was a mistake to do as much as they did in the past.  It hurt the world - once it sank a continent - and it also hurt us people even when they weren't trying to. 

"Might that be why your gods give you such neatly-fitting magic too?"

"We have a legend about a continent that sunk... In some versions the gods sank it. Most people think the gods don't do much directly because then other gods would act directly to stop them, and they would escalate until they destroyed the world between them. All mages use circled spells though, not just clerics, I think that may just be a - convenient way for magic to work, for mortals."

"Ah, we do have stories of ancient wars between the gods which almost destroyed the world..."

Aragorn falls silent, remembering how Elrond had once said he knew little of those wars himself and he doubted anyone did save the Valar and Maiar themselves.

(And by the time he knew who Gandalf was, he had far too much tact to ask him.  And he doubts Gandalf would answer if anyone did ask.)

Meanwhile, the hobbits are all growing very impatient and worried as Frodo is still cold and injured, and Strider continues to not reappear.

"Maybe Gord convinced him to leave us behind too?" Sam expostulates finally as they're nibbling on some food that's at least warm.

"Or Gord taught him how to fight the Black Riders like he can, and they're ambushing them together!"

"Or they're fighting each other..."  Sam shakes his head and turns back to Frodo, who's napping.  His arm is still just as cold to the touch, even near the fire.  "I wish we knew more of who they are!"

And that's when Pippin, who's been peering over the side of the hollow, gives a whoop of glee.  "Here they come!  Both of them!"

Gord can't talk to them, so he'll let Strider explain while he looks at Frodo. ...tries to look at Frodo, with Sam interposing himself.

"He's our friend now," Aragorn says quickly (in Westron) before Sam can do anything unfortunate.  "He saw we survived after all, and I told him how important the Ring is."

Sam backs down a little, but still looks dubious.  "And what's he planning to do now?"

"Try to heal Frodo, like he healed himself yesterday.  And then come with us to Rivendell."

Sam's eyes pop open wide and he jumps aside.  "Yes, please - what can you do -"

Gord smiles at Sam. Being protective is a good trait, and distrusting strangers isn't necessarily bad.

What does Frodo's wound look like? He healed his own right away, does it look like a normal stab wound might after a day? Does Detect Magic show up anything?

The wound is maybe a little more open than you might expect?  But not really unusually so.  His arm also hangs limply, but maybe the dagger severed something in the shoulder?  What's unusual is that his shoulder and arm are cold.  And, there's a residue of magic somewhere around the wound.

Frodo blinks his eyes awake as Gord's examining him, and whispers (in Westron) "Sorry... was a fool..." 

"You were brave," Aragorn says.

Then he murmurs a translation to Gord, adding in Hallit, "I think he means how he put the Ring on, before he called on Elbereth."