Northern Skies by Idrils Scribe

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Chapter 24

Celebrían enfolded Elladan in her arms as a burst of agony brought him to his knees. For a heartstopping moment he screamed like a man being tortured. The sound echoed in strange and garbled ways between the forbidding mountain ridges looming over their camp. For an instant of devastation Celebrían believed that all was lost, Elrohir dead and Elladan soon to follow. Her shock was too great for tears, and she could offer her son no comfort but to hold and gently rock him there amidst what hardy tufts of grass and stonecrops managed to cling to the bare rocks in these unforgiving heights. Sharp, wet gravel bit her knees unheeded. 

With a brusque lurch Elladan pushed her off and turned away to dry heave a few steps beyond their circle of firelight. When he righted himself his complexion was a sickly, sweat-sheened grey Celebrían had hoped never to see on anyone she loved. Elladan gave another hoarse grunt and closed his eyes against a cresting wave of inexplicable pain. It brought Celebrían a cruel relief. Houseless spirits did not hurt. If Elrohir suffered, he still lived. Elladan turned back towards her, wholly ignoring the growing throng of anxious faces around them. 

“I need to find him.”

As if that was all the explanation he owed anyone, Elladan made for the horses grazing nearby. Elrohir had managed to convince Elladan that they were capable of existing separately. He had believed it himself. Now that things had come down to blood spilled in the dark, all masks dropped and pretenses fallen by the wayside, Elladan would blindly ride to his own destruction only to seek his brother. He would have mounted Rochiril’s bare back to melt away into the heavy dark of night cloaking the deserted slopes, had her hand not come down heavily on his shoulder.

“Wait. Tell me.”

Elladan’s voice was hoarse with panic, his eyes wide in the ashen oval of his face. 

“Elrohir needs me. He fought them off and now he is alone again, but he is badly hurt. I will go to him now.”

Celebrían could tell how frighteningly thin the walls between her sons’ minds had worn. Elladan’s hand moved towards his left hip in a gesture she knew well from Elrohir, who instinctively reached for a weapon whenever he startled. Terror snapped at her throat like a snarling wolf, but with the grace of her long years she kept it at bay.

“You and I together, with an escort. Lead us to him.”

Elladan grew frantic. 

“Only me. He is frightened enough to bolt even from you, and he should not be running at all. It might kill him.”         

Celeborn was less patient. He took Elladan’s mail-clad shoulder and spun his grandson around to face him. Her father’s self-control was legendary, but now his voice held the faintest trace of panic. 

“Where, Elladan?! Name the place and we will rush you there!”

“I know the direction. I cannot put a name to it, but I can find him if you let me.”

By the smallest gesture of Glorfindel’s hand the camp dissolved itself like mists of dawn at sunrise. In moments none but the most skilled of scouts would notice the subtle traces of their passing. Fires were put out, bedrolls wrapped and horses packed in a silence so profound Celebrían heard only the night wind’s forlorn whistling across the barren slopes. 

----

At the foot of mount Alagras lay a quiet little dell.  Jewel-red berries grew thick on a stand of wild cherry trees and a small mountain stream murmured between sunlit boulders. A charm of finches interrupted their bath, flittering up with a volley of warning tweets at the Elves’ arrival. 

Black blood tainted the water, soaking into the pebbled streambed among sprawled corpses. Celebrían sprang forward with a howl, frantically searching a slender, dark-haired shape among them. Glorfindel could not offer her any comfort for his own terror. He could not say which he feared most - finding Elrohir’s dead body, or tracks indicating that he had been dragged into an orc-cave. 

 Elladan was eerily calm as he took his mother by the arm. “Elrohir is not here," he declared with visible certainty. 

 Celebrían drew a shuddering breath as her eyes flitted between the Orc carcasses. Trackers fanned in all directions, and soon enough Borndis approached her captain to report. What he heard made Glorfindel’s face harden with grim determination. 

 Elrohir had raided a party of Orc scouts in the fashion of the Haradrim guerrilla, from ambush amidst a jumble of boulders higher on the slope. The Orcs had been executed with ruthless efficiency, each cadaver fatally wounded by crossbow bolts to either face or chest. Only the last one to fall -- a burly, pale-skinned brute from Gundabad, doubtlessly the patrol’s leader -- had come close enough to require a blade. Elrohir had taken out its throat. The result perhaps lacked Elvish finesse, but was thorough all the same.

 Borndis’ face and mind were closed and impassive as only a Wood-elf’s could be, but her hands shook as she held a bloodied Orcish scimitar up for Glorfindel’s inspection. She had the good sense to grasp the vile thing through a piece of sturdy leather to protect her own palms. 

 It was all Glorfindel could do to keep his expression neutral, and spare Celebrían at least the sight of his distress. Beside him Celeborn and Ardil attempted the same, with marginal success. Their small mercy went unnoticed. Eregion and the Siege of Imladris taught Celebrían harsh lessons in the destruction wreaked by such blades. Glorfindel had last seen that shaken, death-pale expression on her during the worst days of their desperate stand. 

 He leant in to study the runes on the blade. Even in broad daylight the black steel oiled with poison was a horror to look upon. Glorfindel’s seething anger at Elrohir’s recklessness evaporated, leaving only compassion for the waking nightmare that befell the boy. Where Elrohir’s blood had caked into the engravings the foul runes stood picked out in russet against the black steel. Glorfindel barely maintained his impassive facade as he read. The inscriptions removed his last shred of doubt that one of Sauron’s Maiar ruled the pits beneath these mountains. Here was a blade wrought by hands more powerful than any Orc-smith’s, the very matter of it befouled with curses and pervaded with bitter hatred for the Elves. The sword was made to rend and tear past mending, let life itself bleed from the body and mire the unhoused spirit in darkness and despair. Glorfindel’s eyes met Celebrían’s over the weapon.

 “He was well enough to gather up his bolts afterwards. It cannot be so bad.” 

 Cold comfort, and Celebrían knew it. Her eyes went to the goat’s path leading up the slope towards the Alagras’ peak towering over them. Several Silvan scouts crouched there, examining a trail made by hobnailed Orc boots. Fear strangled her voice. 

 “He did not take them all out. At least one Snága escaped to tell the tale. When it brings word to their warlords they will be baying for Elrohir’s blood. Tonight the Orcs will hunt.”

 All eyes turned towards the sun, already on its inexorable descent towards the western ridges. Elrohir’s time was now measured in fleeting hours. 

 “Half my people will pursue that Orc. The rest will track down your son before its den-mates can.” Glorfindel could only hope he sounded more confident than he felt.

 “Elrohir’s trail runs south from here,” Borndis hastily pointed out.  

 Glorfindel straightened to gauge Elladan, who had weathered the confrontation with both the horrific weapon and the casualties of his brother’s raid surprisingly well. With a jolt Glorfindel realised that none of it was news to him. 

 Elladan shook his head and pointed eastwards. “Elrohir exchanged his boots with an Orc’s to deceive our trackers. He went up, himself. He means to climb the Alagras and hide as high as possible to evade the Orcs.”

 All conversation in their vicinity ceased instantly, and Elladan found himself at the centre of a circle of dismayed faces.

 “An Elf, in league with an Orc?” Haldir asked, his voice rough with shock. 

 Was it bafflement or overt mistrust Glorfindel read in the marchwarden’s eyes? He shared a look of deep concern with Celebrían. They needed to cut this off at the root or Elrohir would find the Hidden Valley fermenting with rumour and suspicion upon his return. 

 Elladan shrugged with shocking equanimity. “He had it at arrowpoint.” 

 Haldir’s fine-boned face was a study in disbelief. Glorfindel caught Ardil’s eye in wordless understanding. It felt strange to find himself united with his longtime rival. He had never seen eye to eye with the ancient Sindarin warrior, but that dissension ended where Elrond and Celebrían’s children were concerned. Ardil firmly rebuked his scowling son. 

 “You have played far more elaborate tricks on Orcs yourself, Haldir! The poor child is as scared of us as he was of those Orcs. Can you blame him for trying to throw us off his trail? Thank Araw he kept his head, or we would now be searching for him down in the tunnels!”    

 Elladan shuddered at Ardil’s grim words, and grasped the sleeve of Celebrían’s surcoat as if to drag her along.  

 “Come, Naneth, make haste! Elrohir needs help and he would run from anyone but us.”  

 Celebrían righted herself with all the authority of the Lady of Imladris. She ordered gear packed for Elladan and herself, then turned to Ardil and Glorfindel.

“Secure all paths up that mountain. The Orcs will return to hunt Elrohir and I will not have them finish their work. Dispose of the cadavers, and set up tents and supplies. Elrohir will need much care when we bring him.” 

 

----

Even in his painful predicament the view gave Elrohir pause. Far below, spread out under the westering sun like a tapestry of gold and green and silver, lay Eriador. The Misty Mountains gave way to craggy green hill-lands woven with deep valleys, each one with its own brook or river sparkling like a web of silver threads. Out of the hills, towards the smoother lands of Eregion flowed the Bruinen, clearly seen even from this dizzying lookout. In the far, blue-tinged distance to the west Elrohir could discern a dark line on the edge of the world that had to be the Weather Hills in Arnor. 

 For a moment, fear and pain and weariness fell away and he was swept with delirious joy at the fierce beauty, the sheer vivid freedom of it all. Elrohir stood high above the world, untrammelled as the eagle coasting the slopes above him, in spite of everything. 

 The elation fizzled out when he turned to take the next limping step of his long and weary climb. Whatever poison had coated the Orc’s scimitar was designed to deal out death in slow, painful increments. The wound was all vicious agony, and even hours after it was inflicted it refused to stop bleeding. A small, lukewarm trickle steadily ran down his side. He has stopped as often as he dared to pack and rebandage the cut. Now that every last piece of cloth he possessed was soaked through he could only resign himself to the telling trail of bright crimson blotches he left behind. 

 A child could have tracked him, and the Orcs were sure to claim their prize once the sun dipped below the western ridges. Elrohir looked up the slope he was climbing. The grey stone of the mountainside was wet with runoff from the high snowfields, covered in the tiny, delicate bud-flowers of green moss. The summer sun set the doughty green fronds of little ferns to gleam as if some Elf-smith had sculpted them from emerald. 

 Sinking to his knees in a sheltered hollow beside the path, he pulled great handfuls of moss from the ground to stuff them into his wound without care for cleanliness, hoping against hope that the pillowy substance might serve to stem the unnatural bleeding. He watched his hands shake and felt the vertigo of crippling blood loss. Elrohir was a realist. He could no longer pretend he had anything left to choose but the manner of his death.  

 A stab of longing doubled him over at the thought of Elladan. Since leaving Imladris Elrohir carried a gaping hollow where his brother should be, a wound more painful than his physical one. Elladan was trying his utmost to reach him, but he was not here now and unlikely to make it before the Orcs. Elrohir could not keep his promise. This folly of his own making that was their parting would not be set right again, perhaps never for all the ages of the world.

 Elrohir turned his face towards the green, living world below, and watched the pale blue shadows of clouds chase beams of golden sunshine across the verdant hillsides and the liquid mithril surface of the Bruinen. Bitter regret rang through his hazy mind, clear as a bell-strike. 

This is the last day of my life, and it is a beautiful one.  

 His heart seemed to swell until it held all Arda. He looked to where the glittering ribbon of the Bruinen became the mighty Gwathló, to dissolve itself in hazy distance to the south, to Tharbad and the Sea. The Misty Mountains stretched alongside, seemingly without end, to where the edge of vision made them bluish and distant as a miniature painting. It was a comfort to know that beyond them, somewhere, Pelargir still existed. Even further south lay Elrohir’s desert, great plains and canyons and endless white flats where only the crack of sighing salt disturbed the eternal silence.

 Tomorrow all the world would still be there, wild and vast and incomprehensibly beautiful. Only he would no longer be. Elrohir realized with astonishing clarity that the very idea was deeply wrong.

Chapter End Notes

As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this chapter. If you liked it, please consider commenting, it'd make my day!

Due to site issues I've been unable to answer some comments. I'll do it here instead ;-)

Glorified: 

Thank you for leaving a comment! 

I'm glad you liked the Orc woman! Half of all Orcs must be female and yet in all of Tolkien's works not a single one gets mentioned. My theory is that they were mostly kept as slaves. Elrohir takes pity on her because he is able to look at her without Elvish prejudices and see an individual rather than a representative of an enemy race. As a former slave he naturally sympathizes with her situation. This said, she's still an Orc. Elrohir doesn't realize it, but she deeply hates all Elves and if their encounter had been the other way around she would have tortured and killed him without a second thought.

Elrohir is deeply divided between his past and present, which is all the more poignant because he really is a hybrid of the two kindreds and one of just two people in all Arda who do have a choice. 

Of course you can't run away from yourself so he'll eventually have to face that the 'elvishness' he's running from is as much part of him as his mortal side.

Eldawisdom: 

That's very high praise, thank you so much! 

Elrohir has now realized the danger he's in. Let's hope the experience won't kill him! And yes, poor Elladan. Elrond and Celebrian meant well when they tried to give him a sheltered childhood, but that has backfired in a horrible way. In a way this is Elladan's coming of age, the point where he realizes that his parents aren't omnipotent and there are problems that even Elrond and Celebrian can't solve. 

As you can imagine Elrond won't be too pleased with Serdir. More about that later ....

Thank you for commenting!

 

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