Anor and Ithil by Haeron

Chapter 14

TA3018

They found the hill that the scouts called the “skewed hill”. Erestor had never wanted to see it though the stories told in the Hall of Fire were beautiful in their melancholy. It was a grim place that seemed desolate somehow, out of the forest but barely. He and Glorfindel had stumbled arm in arm and left a bloodied trail to reach it.

And now that they had, there seemed to be nowhere else to go. In which direction did home lie? In which direction was safety? Where was life to be found?

There was nothing to see below but miles of grassland and the flat horizon of Eregion. Dusk bruised the sky and blanketed with gentle shadows, the precursor to a dreaded night. Glorfindel met Erestor’s eyes before he collapsed at the foremost point of the hill, a warrior broken. He bowed his head. The wind, only little more than ghosted breath, caused his hair to ripple as a veil before his face.

Glorfindel would not rise again.

Erestor knew it. Glorfindel looked up to him and so confirmed the thought without words. Even in the unlight of dusk Erestor saw plainly he was a horror of blood and paleness and many evil wounds marring flesh and spirit, not least of all the cruel cut through stomach. Erestor felt them too, each one. Tears began to fall silently from Erestor’s lashes, but Glorfindel did not weep.

And Erestor reckoned he looked still so full of life even for his injuries, so beautiful, so able to claim joy as his own again if such was his wish. But it was a dream. It was a folly; one to cling to and pray that it becomes truth. Stranger things have happened in the history of Arda than one broken solider surviving his injuries, Erestor thought.

The wind seemed to whisper of fate in his ear, and he turned away.

His back was chilled by the breeze that blew cold against his neck and face and nagged the cuts and bruises there. Yet it was all growing numb and the pain barely felt. It hurt to hold in breath overlong, but Erestor sighed and it was added to the wind.

The skewed hill was a strange companion. He did not want to be here. He had never wanted to come here.

‘Then come, come here to me.’ Glorfindel’s voice rose out into the air of the hill with authority and love more grand and sad than Erestor had ever heard.

And his voice was not one Erestor could feign deafness to, nor disobey.

Erestor came to rest beside him on the crest of the skewed hill and he pressed his brow the side of Glorfindel’s chilled face, slightly turned towards his own. His breaths were laboured though he attempted to hide it. His hands and fingers were weak though he raised them to push back a wayward raven lock from forehead to behind a pointed ear.

He kissed Erestor.

‘One more night. I will see one more night and before the dawn I will know death again.’