Anor and Ithil by Haeron

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Chapter 9

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TA3018

 

They were trying to pull him to the ground like a wild bull but he would not be tethered. There were six of them, assailing him clumsily and pressing with force rather than attempting to best with skill, forming a rough circle around the Golden Lord. But Glorfindel smiled with each parried blow. He fought, for what were six brigands to the slayer of shadow and flame?

 

But Erestor knew he must reach him or else die in vain attempt. The grass was matted with the blood of mortal and immortal and the hue was the same. His knees cried as though shattered and he felt Glorfindel’s every frenzied heartbeat as if his own. Erestor cut a desperate path through the forest with a sword almost slipping from bloodied grasp, he stooped to aid the elves who had flagged behind in the assault but fell too as he reached them. The ground was slick and again Erestor found himself upon his knees.

 

The sunlight did not reach them here. The trees towered too loftily and thick.

 

There was to be no honour in this conflict. Erestor bore his teeth as he fought with unfaithful tactics, clambering to plunge a blade into the back of a wildman engaged with a younger elven lass. She met his eyes momentarily as the corpse fell between them. There was a perfect scratch on her cheek, weeping blood. Her eyes darted this way and that with each sound of clanging steel upon steel, each terrible cry of death or victory.

 

And when she swallowed her shout of alarm, Erestor barely managed to turn in time. The wildman charged with sword bared and struck Erestor with its ugly pommel. He felt not the pain of the blow, numbed to all but survival (not his, never his) but the force sent him sprawling to the damp floor. The leaves were sodden. It would have bliss to lie thus, unseeing the carnage. Unfeeling.

 

Erestor brooked the thought and poised himself to wait until the wildman had come to stand over his body, seeking to plunge cruel blade into the softness of his stomach; claiming his victory. But his victory would be forever denied him.

 

The elves lass smiled as the wildman’s thighs were slashed. He fell as a rag doll let loose from grasp of child and Erestor rolled away from the falling body and propped himself to a seated position. The world swam before his eyes and gentle tug of something forlorn bade him lie again and wait for sundering, wait for oblivion - he was no true bringer of death, only an embracer of it. It was a dismal thought, Erestor blinked it away. The elves lass had realised who he was. She was calling his name, his title.

 

Erestor tasted blood in his mouth. His lip was split but the taste was like home; ashen and fatal; the blood of the Noldor indeed, stirred once again to desperate battle. It was in his eyes, in his hair - and slathered to staining upon his hands.

 

He looked to his kin and their number had dwindled but so too had the wildmen. Did a flicker of hope remain? To say so would be impossible. The elven lass helped Erestor to his feet and pointed out the severity of the wound upon his lip but he would take no concern for himself, and she bowed her head.

 

She said his name, Glorfindel’s name, and Erestor remembered what it was he must do. He would have run if not for the weakness of his body. His was a shambling march towards the besieged Golden Lord.

 

And it was cut short.

 

Erestor was seized by the scruff of his neck and a handful of his tangled hair. The miscreant held power over his fellows, evidently, for at his barked word the assault slowed and the eyes of enemy and friend alike turned all to him and his stricken captive. The six that had been attacking Glorfindel paused now too, but kept their blades pointed at his chest.

 

Their eyes met, Seneschal and Counsellor.

 

‘Look here at our good fortune! A rutting couple, boys!’

 

The vulgarity saw the wildmen troops to raucous cheers. Glorfindel’s smile had slipped and he looked not away from Erestor for even the barest second. His tense expression masked only vaguely the sudden and terrible dread. Erestor saw his grip upon his blade tighten, and wondered if some hazy plan began to take shape.

 

‘Kill the big one. This one’ll die too. Two birds, one stone.’

 

‘NO!’

 

Erestor received a knee in the stomach for his outburst and was flung to the floor.

 

‘Leave him there to watch, don’t you worry. He won’t try and escape.’

 

Truly, will he not? The thought came in anger. Erestor grit his teeth against the agony in his ribs but brought himself to his feet for what seemed the hundredth time within the hour. If I fall again, thought he as time stretched dangerously, neither of us may yet rise to greet another dawn. But what choice did he have? He must get to Glorfindel, he must...

 

Perhaps the wildmen allowed him a moment of hope. A dozen shambling steps towards a soulmate barred behind blade and cruel malice; fate and doom inescapable. A look of despair passed between them both, close enough to spy the flash of something desperate held in the other’s eyes.

 

Erestor was dizzy, there was blood in his mouth again and his steps seemed to take him astray. He felt sick.

 

The wildmen ended their fun as the cheers died and turned to bestial chants. The words were impossible to discern in their ugliness, but the message was clear. Through the shoulder Erestor was skewered. He gasped, fell awkwardly a few dozen paces away from Glorfindel. And Glorfindel screamed his agony.

 

One hand on the floor, bedded in leaves, the other covering the wound in his shoulder; Erestor remembered how Elrond had warned him once, a lifetime ago, of how the men of the forest and surrounding dwellings did not like to be proven wrong. It’d been a jest. One Erestor had answered with a jest (“Then that makes them more alike to us than most would care to admit, does it not?”). He could have smiled but instead he wept. Glorfindel’s voice, calling for him, cut.

 

From so low the trees were strange and cold. Would they have been kinder in the spring when in full bloom, when life was still in this place? Some of the elves gasped. Some fell too to their knees. Had the earth forgotten them? Had the Valar forgotten them? Erestor’s tears came though his remained composed with shock, each tear falling not for himself but for Glorfindel; his brave soul.

 

He wanted him near.

 

But Glorfindel was telling him to go. To flee whilst he held the greater attention of the wildmen away from him.

 

Save yourself!

 

Had he said it? Or had it been a thought, privately shared.

 

‘Wise words,’ said a wildman. Erestor lifted his head but there was no sunlight to warm his face, no warm hands to take his own and promise safety. The wildman made a gesture, a singal, that echoed in Erestor’s gut. He whispered his horror but only the fallen leaves heard it.

 

The six men surrounding Glorfindel nodded their assent and one plunged blade to hilt through gilded armour and stomach. Glorfindel dropped his sword and the sound was louder somehow than the cries of the elves who watched. He fell, slowly, and when he called Erestor’s name his voice was weak and broken to cleave Erestor’s heart equally ruined.

 

The very stars might have cried. Everything had receded to the grit under his nails and the fire under his skin and soul. Glorfindel was coughing, covering his mouth. His eyes grew wide and searched for Erestor’s. The look they shared was regret and death and love. Six men who once stood in a circle around the fading Lord walked in a straight line to rejoin their commander, leaving him to gingerly touch the wound in his stomach, the one upon his neck, the dozens of others he had sustained but perhaps only now felt the bite of. Erestor saw how his hands came away coated thickly in dark blood, once again spilled for the protection of another.

 

Glorfindel. Everything else faded out of concern. Glorfindel looked to him and smiled sweetly despite the flashes of pain. There was a caress somewhere in Erestor’s mind, weak but stronger than words. But he could not smile back.

 

Tears mingled with blood upon his lips.

 

‘Put him out of his misery,’ said a wildman.

 

A boot connected with Erestor skull and in the flash of light before darkness, Erestor saw only blue skies.