False Dawn by Idrils Scribe

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Chapter 8

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“The Nazgûl came again, and as their Dark Lord now grew and put forth his strength, so their voices, which uttered only his will and his malice, were filled with evil and horror. …  At length even the stout-hearted would fling themselves to the ground as the hidden menace passed over them, or they would stand, letting their weapons fall from nerveless hands while into their minds a blackness came, and they thought no more of war; but only of hiding and of crawling, and of death.”

The Return of the King, LoTR Book 5, Ch 4, The Siege of Gondor

 

The north wind scythed howling across the barren heathlands of Eriador, cold enough that even Orcs sought the shelter of a small valley between the Northern Downs. 

Elladan felt a shadow loom over him, and he struggled against his bindings once more.  He was lightheaded from inhaling his own stale breath within the black hood. The coarse wool was crusted with Eru knew what fluids from previous prisoners. The stench was breathtaking. 

He shook with cold and rage and terror all at once in his thin undertunic. Ungentle hands had stripped him of his armor. The Orcs had wanted none of it, shrieking in disgust at the Elvish metal’s mere touch, but Hillmen had no such qualms. Elladan had listened with mounting horror as a rabble of ill-equipped soldiers first played dice, then came to blows over Elrohir’s precious hauberk. The gorget, vambraces and gambeson were long gone. 

Elladan willed himself not to remember Arwen’s ruby, its red glimmer of living flame clutched in Borndis’ fist. Not lest he read it in his mind.  

Fuinur towered over Elladan when the hood was at last lifted from his eyes. This was not the Witch-king himself but merely a lieutenant. Still the Ringwraith’s proximity was a terror beyond any Elladan had ever known. Bitter hatred for the murderer of his people made him tense like a coiled spring, fists balled and teeth bared in a vicious snarl, but he could not hold on to his courage. Soon the miasma of dread from the black-cloaked shade looming over him slackened his hands and forced him to lower his eyes and turn his face away, though he hated his own weakness. Hot, shameful tears ran down his cheeks as he shook at the Morgul-wraith’s feet.

Some unnatural thing that was once a human hand, encased in black leather, touched Elladan’s face to lift a single drop, and disappeared into the emptiness beneath the shadowy hood. Fuinur drew a rattling breath and with a slithering jolt of disgust Elladan understood that the creature was smelling him.

Somewhere behind Elladan rose a chorus of howls and groans and the sound of fists striking flesh. Canissë shrieked with rage as she fought to reach her ward. Her chained hands bludgeoned a Hillman’s face, loosening a spatter of blood and teeth, but there were too many others and in the end she was wrestled to the ground by a writhing mass of bodies. 

Fuinur wholly ignored the disturbance. “Elrond’s son,” he snarled, his voice a cold, alien hiss of scorn. “You are the other one, that craven weakling hiding behind your father’s cloak!”

Another deep breath, and the strange sniffing. “A tender piece of meat you are. And we shall have all the time in the world to make something out of you!” Fuinur’s voice now held something akin to lust, twisted with ages of hungry denial. 

Horror infected Elladan’s mind and heart like creeping rot. He could not strike or even struggle, and he knew he would never again be free of that foul, taunting voice echoing in the recesses of his mind. 

Fuinur savored his terror, drawing out the moment as he lay still and mute in the monstrous embrace. When the wraith rose, dropping him to the frozen ground with a teeth-rattling thunk, Elladan could do nothing but turn his face into the rimed grass, vanquished by the knowledge that this was but a taste of the horrors to come.

He could only be childishly, shamefully grateful when the unbearable weight of Fuinur’s gaze shifted to another.

“Brannor of Arthedain!” hissed the Ringwraith, his voice chill with hate. “A traitor you made yourself, cursed among Men and Elves. All in vain! You were to bring me Elrohir son of Elrond, the Butcher of Rivendell, but you dragged in his soft-handed brother instead. Now tell me, wretch, why I should uphold my half of our bargain?”

Brannor was death-pale. “My Lord, I beg you!” he cried. His eyes rolled in their sockets like those of a spooked horse as he went to his knees before the terror towering over him. “Surely either son of Elrond is a valuable prisoner?” Still kneeling, he half-turned to point at Canissë. “And his lieutenant has opposed you for an age! Surely you desire vengeance? Please, lord, release my wife and son, and those of my men, so all the North may know that the King stands by his word!”

Fuinur stepped closer to take Brannor’s face in a black-gloved hand in a strange mockery of gentleness.“The King keeps his word. Your kin have left Carn Dûm already.”  

The Mortal collapsed in terror, his waxen face beaded with sweat. 

“We made no such agreement about you,” hissed the Ringwraith as he held Brannor’s slack body upright with an iron grip on the Man’s jaw. “You have vexed me, and neither will the King be pleased.”

Brannor was beyond speech. He only whined, like some cornered animal. Fuinur released his death-grip on the Man’s face, and he collapsed to the frozen ground, slack as a corpse. 

Fuinur reached for his scabbard. His longsword rang as it was unsheathed, glimmering with that grey, oily shine of a Morgul-blade. Brannor turned his face from the sight, tears streaming down his cheeks. 

Instead of striking Fuinur stooped, and thrust the hilt into Brannor’s trembling hands. “You shall test the runt of Elrond’s litter!” 

A hellish din of jibes and cheers rose from the throng of Orcs and Hillmen. They jostled and pushed forward for a view as they whistled and jeered and rapped their pommels against their shields until the noise seemed to render Elladan deaf and blind with terror.

Ai, Elrohir! Where are you?

The Ringwraith waved and a jeering Orc ran to thrust a rusted scimitar into Elladan’s hands.

“You will fight to first blood—the winner gains an easy death!” Fuinur proclaimed as he thrust Brannor forward to face Elladan. “Go on, traitor! Make this worth watching, or you will leave this world without your skin!”

The crowd surged forward to encircle them, roaring. “Gut him!” they cried at Brannor. “Gut that Golug swine!”

Overseers made a barrier with spear-shafts and shouted in coarse voices, “Back, you maggots!” as their whips cracked overhead. The horde shrieked and fell back, then came on again, roaring and chanting as if this were a game. 

An Elvish voice cut through the din like a clarion-call. “No! I will fight in his stead!” Canissë was almost invisible beneath the pile of struggling Men pinning her to the ground.  

Fuinur laughed his terrible laugh. “You will serve a different purpose!” He turned to the Men sat atop her. “Stand her up and take her to the front, so she can watch the pup bleed!”

They swiftly did his bidding.

 

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Brannor stepped into the circle, slipped out of his cloak and tossed it to one of his men. He stood there clad in a gray tunic woven on the looms of Imladris, a Morgul-blade in his hand.

Canissë watched an Orc press a notched scimitar into Elladan’s hand, saw him heft it, testing the weight and balance. Fear struck her, but also the comforting knowledge that Elladan had been trained in the sword from infancy by the likes of Glorfindel and herself, age-old elite warriors. He knew the devious art of the blade inside and out.

But that Mortal wields a Morgul-blade! I must stop this, somehow. I must find a way. 

Many hands kept her limbs and neck in their sweaty grip. Mortal hands and Orcish ones. Their unwashed stink wafted into her nose with every breath.

She let her weight slump against them, thinking. Ai, Manwë and Varda! I have no right to call upon you, but hear me for his sake!”

Elladan stood looking lost and vulnerable in his torn undertunic—such a far cry from his velvet court robes. He raised the scimitar in his right hand, feet planted firm and slightly apart. Canissë noticed it with a fleeting wisp of satisfaction: she had drummed the proper footwork into Elrond’s children time and again, hammered it home to all three of them year after year, hour after hour on the training grounds, until it became instinct.

Elladan crouched, sizing up his opponent, and Brannor began edging along the circle of spear-shafts. His Morgul-blade shone with an unnatural gleam in the muted light. Fear burned in the Mortal’s eyes. Brannor was a trained warrior of Arthedain, a veteran of many battles, but he was also terrified, and uncertain. He would make mistakes. 

Any small thing could change the course of this duel, Canissë realized. An outcry from the throng of spectators. A stray beam of sunlight. A fleeting shadow.

Elladan slowly circled opposite Brannor, feinting, testing his opponent’s speed and agility with an expert eye.

Canissë watched the realization strike Brannor. Elladan may be Elrond’s bookish son, but he was far from easy prey. Only now did the Mortal grasp that this was no soft-handed princeling, reared in gilded luxury, but a fighter born and trained. 

Canissë could afford no pity for Brannor—he was nothing more to her than a threat to her ward. She watched despair alight in the Man's eyes, making him all the more dangerous.

And then Brannor pounced.

Canissë saw the motion, stifled a cry.

The Morgul-blade struck empty air, and Elladan stood now behind Brannor with a clear opening at the man’s unarmored back.

Now, Elladan! Now! Canissë screamed into his mind.

Elladan’s attack was a thing of beauty, fluid and elegant, but hesitant—a fraction too slow. Brannor twisted, leapt away and out of reach. They circled each other once again.  

He has never killed before, Canissë realized, and cursed her own oversight and Elrond’s overprotectiveness. Brannor would have no such hesitations.

Again Brannor attacked, wild eyes glaring. Elladan slipped away, but his counterblow came a heartbeat late.

The two fighters circled each other; and then Canissë heard it. Brannor’s voice was barely a whisper, even to Elvish ears. “Come. I will kill you cleanly!”

Elladan’s eyes flashed with indignation.

“Let me!” Brannor insisted. ”‘Tis the greater mercy!”

For a single, terrifying instant Canissë believed Elladan would allow it. She knew for certain, as well as she knew her own name, that Brannor would merely wound and claim clean death for himself. 

Almost imperceptibly, Elladan shook his head. 

Canissë straightened her back against the hands restraining her. A vicious twist too swift for mortal eyes snapped her captors’ arms like dry twigs. The Hillmen had searched and stripped her, but they were coarse, foolish creatures, and Canissë was old and clever. They had taken all her blades—save one.  

All the world stilled and shifted until Arda itself seemed to turn upon its axis, and that axis was her right hand.

Manwë guide me, swift and sure. For him.

Little pity had the kinslayers been promised, and little did Canissë expect. She had done many ill deeds, selfish and senseless, but this one would be for good. And it would matter.

This flawless, pivotal moment in time. 

This utterly perfect throw. 

Brannor collapsed with Canissë’s boot knife jutting from his eye socket. He was dead before his body thudded against the frozen ground.

“You foolish woman!” bellowed Fuinur.

He turned to his Orcs, a jeering, slavering mass of claws and fangs. “Have her!” 

Hands. All Canissê’s world had become their hands, clawing, tearing, ripping cloth and skin alike, and she let out a long, wordless scream at the agony of it. Teeth sank into her from all sides. The Orcs shook their heads like wolves tearing flesh from a carcass. 

They are eating me . The thought struck her with stark, numbing reality.  It seemed strangely appropriate, after having witnessed that grisly spectacle acted out on so many battlefields.

Then her legs were pulled apart and she screamed even louder, though the deed itself was but a single drop in a raging flood wave of pain. 

Some things could not be borne, and the spirit must slide free from a body that can no longer house it. That thin, luminous thread binding fëa to hroä was surprisingly easy to snap, like a small animal’s spine pops beneath the hunter’s hand. At once pain and terror were past, instantly grown irrelevant. 

One thing still mattered, now that she was Houseless. 

Elladan did not look at the seething mass of Orcs that writhed over her fallen body in a slick of bloodied snow. His eyes were on her instead.

He sees me. 

Canissë no longer had a body, but something smiled nonetheless as she beheld her young charge one last time. So many memories joined in that beloved face. Fingolfin looked out at her, proud and valiant; Turgon in the days of his youth; Galadriel and Arafinwë the wise. And there, in the depths of Elladan’s sea-grey eyes was Dior, Lúthien’s son, long dead and yet not lost. 

Canissë could no longer protect Elladan. All she had left was estel . Hope that her deed bought him enough time for rescue. She was surprised to find that she could move, and press something like a kiss to his tear-stained cheek. 

Fare you well, son of my heart. May the world not be so marred when next we meet. 

From the West rang a call, stern but not cruel. The summons of Mandos were neither sight nor sound but some other sense, profound and impossible to ignore.  

A deep, joyous longing came over Canissë. She was going home at last. 

 

 

“if by life or death I can save you, I will.”

― The Fellowship of the Ring, book 1 ch 10: “Strider”