Gathering Dusk by Idrils Scribe

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Chapter 6

Please heed the warnings in chapter 5

Under a sky of chasing cloud grey as pewter a vast encampment stretched across the heathlands of eastern Rhudaur, rows upon rows of drab brown tents and fuming peat-fires spreading like an oil slick. Hemmed between this army and the legions of Orcs pressing from the Misty Mountains, the Hidden Valley had become an island, a precarious sandcastle amidst the rising tide of besiegers. 

The banner flying over the lavish central tent was Angmar’s: a ghastly skull-face upon sable. Beside it the telltale marks of allegiance to Sauron stood on gruesome display: the bodies of captured defenders. The grisly spectacle had been going for several days, and the Elf-warriors turned to banners had finally fallen silent and ceased their writhing. A cold, poisonous knot of rage settled in Elrohir’s stomach at the sight of his luckless brothers and sisters in arms. All were stark naked, impaled upon long iron-tipped spears with their arms tied to crossbars lengthened for the purpose. He wondered what kind of songs a smith would sing over the molten metal while crafting tools of torture, or if such horrors were created in silence.

Orcs were predictable creatures. Despite their innate, obstinate cleverness they were governed by their basest instincts: once their bellies were full the beasts invariably turned their efforts to violent domination of anything weaker than they. No commander worth their salt would leave them in charge of strategic decisions, even in their own battalions. 

The commander of Angmar’s assault on Imladris’ western flank called himself by a Black Númenórean name, but it was but recently acquired. By the look of him Azulzîr did not have a drop of Númenórean blood. He was a tall Easterling with teeth filed to Orc-like points and an eerie pattern of geometric ink-marks obscuring most of his face. 

It made him difficult to read – likely the design’s intended purpose, Elrohir thought as he observed the man from the narrow sharpshooters’ den Borndis had just vacated to allow her captain a good look at the enemy. Her lookout’s position amidst low shrubbery on a rocky outcrop of the foothills was a daring one, and highly precarious. Keeping cover required all the art of stealth the Nandorin warriors of Imladris could bring to bear. Despite the Wood-elves’ unrivalled skill, the pale oval of an Elvish face moving amidst the sparse foliage would be spotted soon enough. The green and brown patterned linen of Elrohir’s mask was soft against his skin, but inside the light cloth his own exhaled air was oppressive, and the narrow eye-slits obliterated his peripheral vision. He was lying flat on his front. The small pain of Arwen’s ruby pressing into his chest beneath his gambeson was grounding. He could feel the power within the stone, aiding his desire for concealment. 

Elrohir watched a pair of Orc-scouts approach their Mannish commander to report. One seemed a Snága, one of the stunted slave-castes kept in thralldom and abject poverty, circumstances that would make them envy Elvish cattle. It shuffled along in silence behind its master, shoulders hunched and eyes firmly on the trampled mud at its feet. The one who spoke was a great warrior-Orc with distinctive, fang-like canines protruding from its mouth. The beast was brutish and almost Troll-like in its heavy, well-fed build. 

Whatever news on the Elves’ defences these scouts had carried in seemed to greatly displease Azulzîr. The small slave crouched in fear of both its superiors. The reason for its cowering became clear when the report was finished and the scouts had saluted and turned around. Azulzîr swore, judging by his foul expression, and kicked the Snàga in the shins so the beast fell to the sludge-covered ground. It lay there writhing under a hail of kicks, trying to shield its unarmoured belly while its owner, the large Orc, stood by with a carefully neutral expression. 

Azulzîr did have the sense to keep from bludgeoning the pitiable thing to death. When he finally allowed it to rise it staggered so badly from its injuries that Azulzîr opened the leather purse on his belt and thrust a handful of small copper coins at its owner to compensate the damage to his property. The tall Orc appeared satisfied, or else wary of rebuking its superior. The pair strode off without retaliation, the small slave limping bloody behind its owner.

The habitual cruelty alighted an idea in Elrohir’s mind. Neither Orcs nor Easterlings could resist an opportunity to prey on the weak, a consistent and predictable pattern. He smiled without mirth beneath his mask. In war, to be predictable was to die.

 

----

     

The gorge was narrow, craggy and deep, all rushing white water and ice-carved grey stone draped in ferns and stunted oaks. A perilous place even in peacetime. Orc-scouts were clever enough to see that it was ideal for a stealthy Elvish ambush, and Angmar’s troops had steered well clear of it. 

Ardil watched in silence, mouth pinched into a thin line of concern as Helwo’s hammer descended once more on Elrohir’s pauldron to make the final dent just a little more convincing. “You look like a flock of shot birds. Please don’t let them pick you off like a one-winged pheasant.”

Elrohir spared a smile for his guard. Ardil had fiercely and vocally disapproved of what they were about to attempt, but he was loyal to a fault. Now that the decision was made and Elrohir’s daring scheme agreed upon, Ardil would see it done. His presence considerably calmed Elrohir’s raging nerves. Things were not so bad as long as Ardil still went wherever Elrohir did. The ancient Sinda had kept a close eye on his ward for half an Age, and would keep protecting him until either of them passed to Mandos. Elrohir prayed it would not be today. 

Elrohir pulled his cloak – bright carmine and with some of the most garish geometrical embroidery the Noldor had produced east of the Sea – a little more askew so the large tear, smeared with sheep's blood, would show the better, and fastened it with a great silver brooch bearing the six-pointed star of Eärendil. The same device shone brightly, picked out in mithril on a field of midnight, upon the torn, stained banner of Imladris that was raised on a crooked standard. Around them Elrohir’s escort were mounting – all volunteers, most of them ancient, doughty Fëanorians, dressed likewise in battered, bloodstained gear. Two lean years of siege had their armour looking large on their slender frames. The Elves desperately needed this scheme to work. A third winter of cold and slow starvation would break Imladris.

Ardil silently took up his great longbow and left the others behind to begin his lonely climb to an archers’ eyrie high up on the cliff-face. He meant to spare his ward the knowledge of his purpose there, but Elrohir understood. Ardil would shoot neither Orcs nor Easterlings today. He would have eyes only for Elrohir. If things went ill, he would deliver mercy. 

The company was deliberately kept small, and Elrohir chose their path to skirt occupied territory. He knew the forested heathlands on Imladris’ western rim like the back of his hand. In more joyful days he had hunted here often, with Elladan and Arwen and Celebrían, chasing hart and boar through dappled light on green leaves and the warm scent of sunlit heather. Not so long ago the Wood-elves would climb these very trees to sing beneath the stars, cradled high in the swaying branches. Now the remaining boles were defiled and disfigured by the Witch-king’s skull emblem crudely carved into the bark, and Elrohir was the quarry as he rode beneath their boughs.  

Their strange little company needed not go far before they acquired a following of Orcish scouts. The creatures stank, and their loud breathing and the undergrowth rustling at their passage were far from subtle. By the time they had circled back to the gorge the pursuers no longer bothered with stealth. 

Behind them came loud baying and that sharp, telltale stench of fouled fur and excrement.  Elrohir looked over his shoulder to stare into the red jaws of death. A company of Warg-riders had joined the chase. He kneed Rochael on to a gallop as his warriors closed ranks around him. All rode fine warhorses, the very best Imladris could breed and train, but this particular enemy kindled any horse’s deepest instinct to flee. They grew skittish, harder to control. 

The Orc-riders drank in the sight of their fear and redoubled their efforts. Black-fletched arrows came whistling, wasp-like. Elrohir was briefly winded when one bounced off his coat of mail in what would have been a lethal hit between the shoulder blades. Another grazed Rochael’s flank past her barding, ripping out a plum-sized lump of flesh. The mare screeched and bucked in blind panic and for a heart-stopping moment Elrohir thought he would be thrown from the saddle before he could master her. To be unhorsed here was to die, torn apart by the slavering maws of the fell wolves drawing ever closer. He only just managed to grab hold of the pommel. The barrage of arrows abated when several Elvish archers turned back in their saddles to pick off the Orcish bowmen. 

As they sped back into the gorge the Orcs’ captain, the very same fang-toothed scout Elrohir had observed mere days before, called out in mocking tones. “C’mere, little lordling! I’ll rip out your hair for my bowstring before I set you among my slaves!” 

Cruel laughter echoed between the gorge's towering walls. Crazed with bloodlust, the Orcs saw only what they wished to see: one of Elrond’s sons, injured and dangerously exposed as he limped home beneath his father’s banner with only a small, battered escort. The beasts roared in fierce delight: they would either capture a valuable prisoner, or pursue their fleeing quarry far enough to discover the hidden path into the valley of Imladris. Either way victory seemed assured. 

When Elrohir spun his horse around only their captain seemed to realize that things were about to turn very ill. His yellow eyes met Elrohir’s and for the briefest of instants a mute understanding shone there, of the tipping of the scales between hunter and prey. 

As Elrohir looked upon his would-be captors the leaden roof of cloud broke in the west, towards the sea. For a moment he stood lit in a golden beam of the westering sun as the wind lifted his battered banner. The next he raised his voice in song, calling up a dense mist. 

Wargs howled and Orcs blanched and shrieked in terror as they were swallowed by roiling fog. Through it Elrohir weaved confusion, shifting figures and shadowy, insubstantial shapes that moved like fleeing Elves towards sinkholes and weak riverbanks overlooking perilous rapids. To follow meant death. 

Singing to air and water was one of Melian’s arts. Elrond’s children had the skill running in their blood. Nurtured by Galadriel and Celebrían’s teachings, Elrohir’s battlefield abilities had grown truly formidable. The mist grew denser as he Sang, the phantom Elves moving within ever more substantial. A crowd of strange, garbled reflections of Elrohir’s own face stared back at him from amidst the swirling vapours, his hollow eyes filled with terror as he rambled towards the river, the ravine, towards a multitude of treacherous paths where Nandorin archers awaited, silent as ghosts. Orcs and sniffing Wargs chased what looked like easy prey, never to return from the billowing curls of fog. 

All but one. Elrohir and his warriors did not set this elaborate trap to pick off a few straggling scouts. This ambush was but an opening gambit. If Imladris was to be saved they needed to take on an entire army – Orcs, Easterlings and these foul halfbreed Trolls who moved in the daylight, and they needed them all dead. Such momentous slaughter was more than Elrond’s guard could hope to achieve in open battle, even with some of the finest warriors in Middle-earth among their ranks. The boldest part of this endeavour was yet to begin.

By a secret signal Elrohir had marked the great Orc and his Warg, tallest of its snarling pack. Arrows zoomed past the captain as he bellowed in fury to restore order among his dying underlings, but the Elvish archers took great care to only graze without piercing. Soon a deep, eerie silence returned to the gorge, broken only by the Warg’s panting. 

As a wind from the west dispersed the last whorls of mist, the Orcish captain beheld the seemingly deserted ravine and the wanton slaughter of his men and their mounts. In the distance, where the path was lost in the brook’s winding behind an outcrop of rough grey rock, came the ringing hoofbeats of Elvish horses in frantic retreat. The Orc bared its fangs in a lustful grin, and whipped its Warg around to bring the commander of Angmar’s armies word of his lucky find.  

 

----

 

“My boys had that Golug lordling pinned like a piglet on a spit! He crawled back into his accursed valley, but slowly enough to show me the way! It’s right down that blasted gorge!!”

Captain Burzum’s scarred warrior’s hands seemed to take on a life of their own as he gesticulated wildly in the red light of smouldering grease-lamps. Spittle flecked his fangs and lips, his carefully studied Mannish manners forgotten in the heat of his argument. 

Across the command tent’s trestle table the Commander of Angmar was more restrained. Azulzîr hailed from the East, beyond the Sea of Rhûn, where Mortal warlords had grown well-versed in the snares of Elvish trickery. Exterminating the fell White-fiends and pillaging their nests was no task for the gullible, and the Witch-king had selected his second in command for his cunning as much as his cruelty. 

Azulzîr was wary. “Bah! Even if this fancy tale proves more than a made-up excuse for your cowardice, it could well be a trap!” 

He shook his head in disdain. The garnets set in his thick golden torc sent flecks of lamplight, red as splattered blood, onto the tent walls and the unreadable, tattooed faces of his personal guard of Easterling warriors. Azulzîr was clever enough to trust neither Hillmen nor Orcs with that job.   

Snagabúrz winced involuntarily as she knelt beside the door to await Burzum’s command. Losing an entire company of fine Gundabad warriors and their Wargs without loot or a single Elf-prisoner to show for it had left her proud master as ill-tempered as a sick goat. All of Burzum’s slaves were in for a highly unpleasant night if he should fail to get his way from the Easterling commander, but Snagabúrz was his favourite. Tormenting her was Burzum’s way to vent frustrations whenever he couldn’t have prisoners for his sport. His hand had been less harsh of late, with his pup growing in her belly, but that accursed tark was provoking him to an incandescent, humiliated rage Snagabúrz had never seen before. There was no telling what Burzum might do in this state.

“It was one of them lordlings alright! Called up mist and everything the way the high ones do! Elves don’t have the balls to bait a trap with their own young!” Burzum spat in fury at his commander’s barely veiled contempt, and a cold flame of terror ran down Snagabúrz’ back. 

Azulzîr was unimpressed. “That accursed half-breed is smart, and he has whelps to spare. He bred his Elf-bitch three times! Even if it was one of Elrond’s mongrels that slipped through your fingers today, that’s no guarantee that that bloody ravine’s their secret entrance! ” 

Burzum appeared to have passed through his blind rage to emerge into a curious state of calm. He sent Azulzîr a shrewd look that seemed out of place on his scarred face. “Of late the Witch-king’s not as friendly as he used to be, is he? Thinks you and your tarks are taking a mighty long time to smoke out the Elf-rats!” 

This had clearly hit a nerve. Azulzîr looked stricken, and Burzum was not one to back down at the smell of blood. 

“It’s not just him alone that’s begun to doubt! You foreign lot were set above a whole bunch of fine Gundabad lads because you said you knew how to take on holed-up Elves. Scraggly eastern ones perhaps …. Seems to me that these big star-eyed Golug we have out West are proving too much for you!”  

Azulzîr’s face showed no sign of annoyance, but underneath the table his fingers curled into fists. The pair of guards tensed almost imperceptibly. They were quick with knives, those Easterlings. Snagabúrz shuddered when Azulzîr’s eyes lit on her, kneeling in her corner. His voice was terrifying in its calm.

“Tell your lads to break camp. Get’em ready to move their lazy asses in an hour.”

Snagabúrz shot to her feet almost before Burzum did, dizzy with relief. Before Burzum could head for the door flap Azulzîr’s hand shot out to grab him by the shoulder.

“For a mere Orc you presume much, Burzum. I have the Witch-king’s ear. A token of your fealty wouldn’t go amiss – unless you want word of your little cock-up today to reach Carn Dûm?” 

Burzum blanched. He had overplayed his hand, and Azulzîr knew it. Hierarchy among the Witch-king’s mingled troops was straightforward and pitiless: Orcs were always at the very bottom. 

Azulzîr spun to roughly grab Snagabúrz’ chin. She had learned long ago not to resist her betters, and kept herself still and pliable. His fingers stank of pipe-weed and old blood as he turned her head this way and that to study Burzum’s clan brand on her forehead before leisurely settling his eyes on her belly. Snagabúrz had done her utmost for months, but there was no more hiding the blasted bulge. Azulzîr’s face looked barely human, grinning like a Warg about to sink in its teeth.

“Leave the slave.”  

Chapter End Notes

And so the commander of Angmar is well and truly tricked. What is Elrohir playing at with his strange magical ambush? What do you think about this Orcish society? And what will become of poor Snagabúrz?

I'd love to hear your thoughts about this chapter. A comment would make my day!

See you soon for the next chapter,
Idrils Scribe

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