Into the Mountains by StarSpray

Chapter 1

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Darkness deepened swiftly as the evening stretched into night, and all figures seemed like ghosts, trees and stones looming up suddenly like wraiths in the moon-silvered mists. More than once the pair of young soldiers halted, huddling together back to back, swords up, each peering into the gloom and straining to hear any sound that might have been pursuit. To have been followed from the Gladden Fields was their greatest fear—and also their greatest hope, that someone else may have escaped the orcs.

They were not followed. The river led them to the old elven-road that went from the Greenwood in the east to the mountains in the west, where the path wound up before them, into the cloud-wreathed mountains, which held their own dangers. Above the mists and the mountains the sky was clear, star-studded and calm, and the moon hanging like a silver disk high overhead. Terendil kept his gaze on the rising path ahead, taking the lead as he tried to balance both his own sword and the bigger, heavier scabbard that held the Shards of Narsil. It felt heavier than it should have—heavier than it had on previous occasions when he had been tasked with carrying or safeguarding it. Halatir stayed at his heels, his gaze mostly on the path behind them as it shrank back into shadow.

The path wound out of the mists of the lowlands as the trees gave way to short, gnarled bushes and boulders that cast strange sharp-edged shadows in the bright moonlight. The mountains were treacherous even under the light of day, but neither Terendil nor Halatir suggested stopping, not until they were far enough away that even the faintest echo of the orcs snarling and shrieking could be heard. And even then they pressed on, as the moon sank, round and white, before them, so for a time it seemed as though the winding path they were following up the mountainside was leading towards the moon, and soon they might step off of the edge of the world and find themselves in Tilion's vessel among the stars. Only when it became too dark to see at all, and when they could not take another step without stumbling, did they stop, finding dubious shelter between a pair of boulders twice as tall as they were, and huddling together beneath their cloaks, breath misting in the air as frost gathered on the stray bits of grass stubbornly clinging to the cracks between the stones.

"Do you think we will meet orcs in the mountains?" Halatir whispered.

"I think not," Terendil replied. "The company that attacked us by the river was large—they will surely not also have raiding parties waiting in the mountains." What neither of them dared to say aloud was that it would not take a full raiding party to overwhelm a pair of young exhausted, frightened, and hungry soldiers, on their own in the mountains so late in the year. And that was not taking into account the stone giants who might accidentally crush them.

When dawn came neither had slept very much, but they got groaning to their feet, leaning on one another for support. There was nothing else to do. Someone had to bring word of the ambush to Rivendell—and Narsil to little Valandil, who barring some miracle would now be king. As they emerged from their boulders, Terendil glanced back eastward, down into the valley between the mountains and the river, more brown than green now with the turning of the year. Nothing moved except an eagle circling far, far overhead. Then he shifted the weight of Narsil in his arms and turned to the west, putting one aching foot in front of the other. He did not look back again.