The Price of Delay by StarSpray

Chapter 1

"One can argue that in the context of history a few years do not matter. But we live in an age in which every moment counts heavily and the price of delay is human lives." - Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit

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As soon as it was clear that the Necromancer had fled and the battle was over, Mithrandir disappeared, rushing away toward the Long Lake. Galadriel watched him disappear into the dark wood, before turning her attention back to Dol Guldur. Its iron gates were broken, and in many places the walls had come down—or would before long. It was a victory, though the celebrations were subdued as the work began in opening up the dungeons and the pits where Sauron was keeping his prisoners—and there were many.

Sauron's retreat had not been flight. He had not been cowed, as when Huan and Lúthien had cast him out of Tol-en-Gaurhoth or when Minastir had chased him from Eriador. Sauron had touched his mind to Galadriel's when he departed in a black mist, leaving behind an echo of cold laughter and an image of her brother, lying torn and broken in a pool of his own blood in the darkness beneath the tower he himself had built. It was a reminder of what Sauron had once done and was again capable of, and a promise—a glimpse of what her own fate would be if she dared to stand against him.

If he had intended to frighten her he had failed. Galadriel was left unshaken but cold with fury. It was the same rage that, left unchecked, had driven her uncles to their deaths. But she had lived in Middle-earth far longer than they and she had learned how to master that anger, rather than be mastered. She would not be goaded.

Galadriel left Celeborn and Elrond to take council with Curunír and Glorfindel and the rest, instead going to the tents and pavilions hastily erected for the number of their wounded and the prisoners brought up out of the dungeons. Most were Men, woodmen whose only mistake had been to see the lush vales of the Anduin and think it was a good place to live. Woodelves there were also, few of whom would return to sing merrily in their woods again. There were no dwarves; Thráin had died long ago, and all that was left were bones.

There were so many bones. Bones and bodies—some dried out husks with their faces a mask of horror—others bloated and stinking with decay, and still more so freshly dead they were almost still warm. Galadriel stood and looked at every single one as they were laid out beneath the sky, because not to do so was to put herself in danger of forgetting what was at stake—again. They had known the true identity of the Necromancer and yet they had hesitated, and though eighty-eight years was scarcely a moment in the lives of the Eldar (and the Ainur), it was a full lifetime of Men.

They had bought more time, on this day. But they might have bought more had they acted on Mithrandir's advice rather than Curunír's, sound as it had seemed at the time.

She knelt among the bodies of the dead and sang, calling not upon Elbereth but upon Nienna, to guide and comfort the spirits of the slain, as their bodies were laid, one by one, to rest beneath the tangled trees of Mirkwood. A soft wind swept down through the wood out of the west, carrying the cool scent of the mountains, and a rain shower that fell like tears on all their faces.