Northern Skies by Idrils Scribe

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Chapter 23

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In the misted gold of early morning Borndis knelt in a bed of fallen oak leaves, her brow furrowed in concentration. Her calloused palm skimmed the top layer, gentle as a caress.

“Elrohir rambles back and forth across the eastern slopes in search of the path. And here, in this remote forest far from any place he could possibly wish to go, he has a sudden epiphany and makes a beeline for the trailhead?”

Borndis’ voice tapered off in confusion. She stood and wiped off the humid leaves clinging to her breeches.  

“The only possible explanation is he met someone here, one who knew the trail and guided him to it.”

Celebrían interrupted her Nandorin tracker. “A person who left no tracks?” Fierce anger burned in her eyes. “Have someone find Serdir and bring him to Elrond. I care not where he is hiding, or what today’s objections are. Either he appears before his lord to account for his whereabouts last night, or he admits his guilt.”

Borndis hesitated.

“If Serdir has no wish to be found few in this valley can do so. Our time is perhaps more wisely spent searching for your son.”

Celebrían had grown pale with rage. Glorfindel almost interrupted her for fear she might let slip word of Vilya, but when she spoke her voice was frighteningly calm. 

“We keep tracking. Elrond is capable of shaking Serdir from whatever treetop he is hiding in like a rotten pear. Have the heralds call out across the valley that he should present himself at the house or face the consequences. If my suspicions prove true, Serdir should pray Araw that we find Elrohir before he comes to harm.“

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The cave mouth menaced the pass like a malicious, all-seeing eye. Elrohir felt its leaden gaze from his hiding place in a stand of tenacious hazel bushes. The sound of his own heart hammering against his ribs seemed so loud that for an instant of panic he believed that they might hear.    

“Yrch.”

Orcs caused the unnatural silence blanketing the valley, the absence of animals of any kind. Even with the high midday sun spilling warmth across his shoulders Elrohir was in danger. Should the hidden watchers in that dark, gaping maw catch wind of him, nightfall would bring down all of the horrors he had imagined whenever an Elvish conversation partner cleverly deflected his questions on the subject of Orcs. 

Elladan claimed that somewhere in Imladris existed secret maps depicting the vast cave systems that gnawed through the very roots of these mountains like veins of hidden rot, but his frantic search of Elrond’s study had come up empty. Elrohir’s own cavalier shrug that he would simply have to be careful and stealthy enough to elude the Orcs now proved the height of foolishness. Elves and Orcs had him caught between hammer and anvil. 

The Imladris he once believed he inhabited had proven an illusion, a thin veil of kindness drawn across violence every bit as malicious as that of the cruelest of Men. Worse, even, for these deathless White-fiends neither forgot nor forgave slights older than Mankind itself. They proved eager enough to shed fresh blood to avenge a dead king whose eyes had never seen the sun, as if those ancient wrongs had been committed only yesterday. Mortals’ capacity to forget, to let their dead grandfathers’ grudges dissolve into the ebb and flow of everyday life seemed a high blessing indeed. The earthy wisdom of simple folk had proven true once more: Elves were as treacherous as they were fair, and few hapless souls escaped their clutches. 

Elrohir shuddered to imagine what would have awaited him, had he stumbled back to that bewitched valley with his mind wrapped up in Elvish wiles like an ox stunned with a hammer blow before the butcher’s knife. 

For a moment the sheer horror -- his body moving by an alien will while in some small corner of his mind his own consciousness shuddered in revulsion -- nearly made him falter. He struggled against the mad desire to put more distance between himself and the pursuing Elves as fast as he could, and disregard the Orcs because they could not be as bad as that.  

Elrohir had lived through days far more desperate than this by keeping his head. The Orcs did not know or expect him, and the Elves knew not where to look. He had hope, still, and once he left these accursed mountains behind the advantage would be his.

The length of the vale was a long, slow, painful creep from boulder to bush with all the art and skill of silence Elrohir could bring to bear with the sharp midday sun torturing his sore eyes and his throbbing, battered head. 

He did not stand up until the cave mouth had finally disappeared behind a pine-covered outcrop jutting from the jagged peak that loomed over the valley. The yellowing sun still stood a hand’s breadth above the western ridges. Pain, tiredness and the myriad demands of his exhausted body became afterthoughts while he stuffed a piece of waybread into his mouth as fast as he could chew. If he wanted to live, he had to run. 

Elvish bread gave remarkable strength, and Elrohir ran through afternoon and evening into night. Hope had almost made him careless when he heard the voice. It rang strange and hollow, emerging from a small, trough-shaped side valley crowned with wild cherries. The murmur of the little stream at its floor carried far in the cold air of this uncanny night without bird or beast. 

Silent as a ghost, Elrohir sank down on the wet ground behind a mossy boulder on the eastern slope to seek the speaker. The language was the folk-speech of Arnor, and his first naïve thought was that he had chanced upon a group of rough Mannish travellers. When he listened more closely the coarse, ugly voice left no doubt that he would come to regret meeting its owner. 

“You filthy Snága!” 

An unmistakable slap of fist against flesh rang through the night’s strained silence. 

“Shelakh saw some disgusting bright-eyed Elf-wight out here, and you will damn well hunt it, or I will cut out your little flapping tongue and have it for my dinner!” 

A thin, gruesome moan was the only answer.

Another voice inserted itself, this one almost cloying in its heel-licking subservience.

“Oohh yes capt’n! I saw it alright, crawling past the western window like a fat white maggot! One of those tall Golug with the horrible star-eyes!”

Another ringing slap was its reward and the Orc -- Shelakh, presumably -- whined like a dog. 

“Then go grab it!” boomed the first voice. “The Great One called me to the nethermost hall over this Elf-business of yours, and even you worms know what that is like! Gave me this little poker to stick it with! He’ll send for us all in the morning, and then we bring him that Elf or the lot of us crawl home without our skins!”   

Not even Elrohir’s breathing betrayed him. Another man took over, one he had not been since the Desert War. The old Elrohir cleverly crawled a half-circle towards a better vantage point, ignoring the chilled night dew that soaked through his clothes. He counted ugly heads without being revulsed into a panicked flight that would spell certain death. 

Seven. 

He derived, from the slant of the moonlight and the direction of the night wind, the best possible place to sit. Made himself and his weapons as ready as they might be. Knew the world through the iron sight of his crossbow better than he knew himself. 

The firm, wet thud-and-crack of bolt meeting face sounded more glorious than any silver battle horn. Elrohir’s hand was a blur as it shot to his quiver to reload his crossbow faster than mortal eyes could follow.

The Orcs had no time to register the falling corpse before it rang again. 

Thud.

Their curses and wordless cries of panic were music to Elrohir’s ears. He reloaded once more.  

Thud.

Elrohir saw his captain from Harad, the whites of his eyes glimmering between face veil and turban in a face dark as jet.

“The worst thing about sharp-shooting,” the old warrior remarked with deceptive levity, “the really shitty part of it, is that the bolt points to wherever you’re sitting.” 

The Orcs knew this all too well. Four hulking black shapes raced up the slope with disturbing agility. Speed was everything, and reloading a crossbow took precious time. 

Thud.

They had become more than outlines. Elrohir could discern the angry red of their gaping mouths under helmets of blackened steel. A fine target. 

Thud.

And then he could count every rusted link on the forerunner’s mail. The time for shooting had run out.  As Elrohir rose to his feet his sword slid from the sheath with a sound like tearing cloth. 

The big Orc fell upon him first, wild-eyed and bare-fanged.  It laughed, rather than be grieved by losing five of its comrades, fierce with blood-lust. The creature’s deep-lying yellow eyes were neither beastly nor dumb and suddenly, with visceral disgust, Elrohir realized they were almost Elvish, and far older than he. 

The Orc brandished an ugly scimitar of blackened steel. The blade was covered in menacing runes, and it reflected the moonlight with that strange, oily shine of poison. At the sight Elrohir felt true terror for the first time that night. 

Despite its massive bulk the Orc was nimble enough to parry Elrohir’s first thrust with ease, as if he were swatting a fly. The shock of steel meeting steel rang through his body as if he had been struck rather than his weapon. Before he could recover the Orc’s iron-gloved hand had him by the arm like a clawed shackle, pulling him down, seeking not to kill but to take him alive. 

Elrohir’s terror made the Orc bellow in triumph, and with a shock he realised he needed to silence it soon or he would be captured regardless when the noise drew reinforcements. The knowledge drove him closer to his opponent. A terrible risk, but a necessary one. 

Fear and focus rooted out out any sense of pain. At first Elrohir failed to understand the fierce triumph flashing in the Orcs’s eyes even as he cut out its throat in a gushing arc of warm black blood that soaked his sleeves to the elbows. It fell at Elrohir’s feet, and would never again utter any sound but a moist splutter that would cease soon enough. 

Elrohir could not fathom why it had died with such glee until his own left side erupted in a  strange, tingling cold. His searching hand came away warm and wet. 

There was no time to stop, to feel. The last Orc, the one called Snága -- if that was a name, rather than their word for slave -- stood struck with terror at its captain’s fall, torn between death on Elrohir’s sword or a crossbow bolt in the back upon running.

It abruptly sank to its grubby knees. The bug-eyed face contorted in abject misery as a strange keening sound emerged. It took Elrohir a moment to understand that the Orc was weeping.

Battle often brought an absurdity all its own, and had he been less desperate Elrohir might have appreciated the grim oddity of this conundrum. The creature would either fall quickly by Elrohir’s hand, or be skinned alive by its evil masters when its failure was discovered. He had already loaded and raised his crossbow when a wild idea struck him.

“Do you want to live?”

The grey-faced thing immediately fell silent. Its eyes were coal black between the greasy wisps of unkempt hair in front of its face. There was ... something in the shape of it, the set of the narrow shoulders and the fall of what colourless rags barely covered its nakedness.  

This was no it. This Orc was female. 

Elrohir knew himself capable of many vicious and violent things, but to shoot a sobbing, kneeling woman in the face was not one of them. His plan was insane, but it was all he could think of and it would have to do. 

“Take off your boots.”

Her face betrayed a disturbing amount of blunted resignation when she misunderstood and began hiking up her skirt to offer him something he had no wish to contemplate. 

“No! Not that! Your boots.”

Her hands shook with fear, but she obeyed. 

“Throw them towards me. Hit me and you die.”

Two stinking, ill-made clumps of unidentifiable animal skin landed at his feet. 

Elrohir had lived, slept and breathed with his crossbow for most of his life. He could hold his aim one-handed while taking off his own boots, strong and supple Elvish leather. They made two soft thumps in the gravel before the Orc. 

“Put them on.”

She was too astonished to move, and for a few heartbeats they stood utterly still. In the trees behind him a hunting owl’s hoot broke the thick silence.

“This is your final chance. I will let you run away if you put on my boots. Obey me, and you are free.”

She needed no more prompting. The oddity of her ragged, pitiable figure in a pair of well-made shoes drove home to Elrohir that he was not doing the Orcish woman any favours. Had she known what would soon be tracking her she would almost certainly force his hand into dealing her a quicker death. 

“Head south, into the side valley, and keep the boots on. I will know it if you divert, and I will kill you. Run!”

She stood frozen in wordless terror for an absurdly long time, and when Elrohir at the last approached to shoo her like a recalcitrant sheep she sobbed once more, a thin and reedy wail. 

Nauseated disgust at the whole revolting situation struck Elrohir deeply, but before he could reconsider and raise his bow once more to put her out of her misery, she obeyed. She tore away, crashing through the undergrowth like the Zigûr himself was on her heels.  

Pain struck Elrohir like a mace once the sound of her retreating footsteps had faded beyond his hearing. His entire left side was cold fire from shoulder to hip. Something lukewarm and liquid steadily trickled down his flank. He would have to stand in the stream while bandaging himself with spare clothes to keep from leaving a trail of blood for trackers to follow. 

And then he needed to put on his new shoes. 

The ruse would not deceive Elvish scouts for long and their dogs would not be fooled at all, but Elrohir was desperate for what little time the resulting confusion could buy him.

His first step towards the brook was a stagger, and after the second one he found himself looking at the nearest Orc cadaver from a confusingly low viewpoint. The crossbow bolt sticking from its gaping mouth was inches from Elrohir’s face, and the combined smells of fresh blood and old filth made his stomach twist. He had not eaten since noon, but the small amount of bile he eventually brought up was painful. Even as he felt himself shake and sweat the only possible explanation presented itself. Poison.

Elrohir permitted himself a small rest, his breathing laboured and probably far too loud. The temptation to close his eyes and withdraw into darkness was sweet and heavy, but he knew well enough that only death awaited him there. Eventually a numbing, bone-deep cold spurred him up, and onwards. 

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Chapter End Notes

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