Prey for the Hunter by Sulriel

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Prey for the Hunter

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Amrod knelt in the speckling light and shade under the trees in the storm washed morning, careful not to disturb the cover of forest detritus – fallen leaves of ages past mixed in the soft loam with the rot of old trees and bones, all enriching the land from which they came – all covered by the new leaves blown down through the night.

 

They had come too far to fail now, the length of the trail was of no concern, but the tracks they followed were few and far between.  They must have a direction or they only wandered, lost, like Moriquendi.  He reached down, lightly, ever so lightly, and let the leaves tickle his calloused palms and fingertips, then closed his eyes as he slipped his fingers in beneath the dampening, rotting, feeding layers into the moist earth as he opened his heart to the forest, asking it of the dark beast.

 

"Brother."  His brother whispered in his mind, hope licking up over the frustration and fatigue that wore them both down.  Fingertips touched the back of his hand, halting the rooting of his fingers in the soil.

 

Amrod opened his eyes.  Amras knelt beside him.  The fingers that touched his flattened so the palm held his hand still.  With his other hand, Amras plucked away a fresh leaf, then two more, to uncover an even depression in the damp ground  The print of the beast they hunted.

 

Amrod's fingertips brushed the uncrumbled edge of the print.  A pad lightly laid down before it sprang into the next step, a pad larger than his hand with long, deep gouges, sharp edged, extending to the fore.  Amras let out a long slow breath.  Amrod could feel the tension and excitement rising in his brother, mirroring his own as it filled him like the singing of a bowstring drawn too tight and not released.

 

Amras took a long step and carefully cleared the leaves, and then a larger area.  Nothing.  He looked back at his brother in question.  Amrod measured the pad, again, against his hand and motioned his brother forward.  Step by careful step, Amras cleared the leaves until they uncovered the stride of the beast. 

 

A great beast, lithe and strong.  Still close by all counts as it seemed it denned during the day. 

 

"A smaller beast might be near."  Amras said aloud.

 

"It's near."  Amrod answered.  A coil of sick tension tightened in his gut, damping his earlier excitement.

 

Amras swept out a hand to indicate the forest around them.  "From the size and depth of the prints and its length of stride, it's too great to hide in a rotted stump or hollow."  He studied the trail before them.  "Yet it's not headed toward the hills where it would find a cave."

 

"There are woodsman along the river."  A twinge of fear burgeoned in the tension.

 

"Moriquendi."  Amras shrugged.  He considered them, at best, of no account.

 

"The kin of our fathers," Amrod answered.  An old argument, and worthless.

 

#

 

They followed the intermittent trail as it wound down toward the river.  The faint sweet stench of fresh death, cold meat not yet gone bad, touched them long before what had been an encampment came into view.  Yet, even standing at the edge of it, the promise of the stench of rotting was faint.  Scraps of strewn gore puddled and splotched in the mud and splattered to high branches.  Deep scores showed where the beast had held its ground and then clawed the trees.  The Laiquendi had fought well but in the end the beast had triumphed – and feasted.  The soft musk of the thing still hung in the air, uncomfortably comforting in its languid warmth – like burrowing in a heavy rug at the edge of the Helcaraxë.

 

Amrod shushed his brother with a wave of his hand and motioned to circle the clearing.  'Search for tracks', he signed.  Amras nodded.  Either the beast had left or it was still there.

 

They circled the clearing twice, to no avail – could the beast be hidden within or did it sport wings to fly away – when Amras stopped and motioned Amrod to his side.  The taint of fresh blood tickled his nostrils as he came close, Elvish blood, not beast.  Had the beast been satiated and left one alive?  Amrod took one careful step at a time, watching, searching, with his heart and mind as well as his eyes, ears and nose, until he caught a quick gasp of breath, released and taken to be held again.  Amras motioned, down and to the left.

 

Amrod slowly turned.  The delicate curve of a slender calf, blood-streaked, trembled in the hollow of a great tree.  He knelt where he was and spoke in soothing tones, wishing again that he knew more of the tongue of the wild-elves then a few choice words to be flung at fell creatures during battle.

 

"We won't hurt you, child."  He spoke as softly and kindly as he could.  A glance over his shoulder proved that his brother kept a sharp watch.

 

The calf tightened and drew up.  "Come out to us.  If you have wounds, we'll tend them."  He edged closer, scuffing a root with his boot so as not to be sneaking.  "We hunt the beast," he said.  "We mean to avenge what has been done here and elsewhere."

 

"No."  The lilting voice echoed oddly from inside the old tree.  "No.  Please.  Leave me."

 

Odd that she spoke his people's language – odder still, he had trouble placing her halting, formal accent. 

 

The calf drew up again, and shifted, this time revealing a trim ankle.  Amrod lunged forward and snatched the leg.  She screamed – a panicked shriek.  Amras cursed and drew his sword.  If the beast was still near, it knew she lived.

Amrod held tight.  He grabbed her other leg as she kicked, and yanked her from the tree, only to be enveloped in a flurry of dark hair, flesh, teeth and nails as she attacked him, silent now, but fighting frantically for her freedom.

 

A tiny thing, nothing but a common little tree-elf, but she alone had survived the beast - naked.  He tossed her down and threw his leg over her, catching her arms and holding them.  She struggled and he tightened his hold, sickened to know that she'd wear the marks of his hands on her, but unwilling to let her flee.  Her nostrils flared and her wide eyes – oh her eyes – dark and liquid, full of fear and a spark of deep rage.  That spark struck him and wrenched his heart.  Whatever else she was, she had what so many lacked - the unfailing heart of a warrior. 

 

"Shhhhh…." Amrod pulled her close so he could hold both her wrists in one hand.  "You're safe now," he whispered to her.  "You understand me?"

 

Tears brightened her eyes.  She shuddered and collapsed into him.  Her full breasts pressed warm against him and his cock twitched in response.

 

Freeing one arm, he unclipped his cape and wrapped it around her.  He had never been excited by battle as some, but she smelled more of the forest, dark, earthy and passionate, than she did of death and blood.  Fresh blood.  She was wounded and needed tending, but he found it hard to let her away from him instead of holding her closer still.

 

"Safe?"  Her soft, exotic, ancient accent feathered across his ears and tightened in his chest.  Her breathing slowed and she relaxed, a little.  As she did, her hips nudged his.  Safe?  No – she was not safe here in his arms, his blood pounded through him. 

 

"Yes, safe."  He swallowed hard and blushed at Armas' brow raised in question as he set her away from him and settled beside her in the dirt.  "Tell me your name and let me see your injuries."

 

"…he calls me Lómë."  She slipped his cloak from her shoulders and his breath caught in his throat.  Her wounds were old enough they had started healing but even the angry read slashes couldn't distract from her elegant beauty.  Slender and toned, she must be an archer as so many of these woodland folk were.  High full breasts – she was no child – dried his mouth and so he shut it without speaking again.

 

Amras cleared his throat and Amrod's gaze snapped to him.  His face blanched and he touched the hilt of his knife.  He pointed to Lómë and then indicated his ribs and his shoulder – where her healing cuts were.  Amrod looked.  Knife wounds, and an arrow – not slashes from the claws of the beast they tracked.

 

"You … you don't mean to kill me?"  Her elegant hand lightly touched Amrod's shoulder; a faint hope edged her question.

 

Amrod leaned close as he brushed his fingers down the freshly closing slices that scored her ribs.  "No, of course -" 

 

"No!"  The word burst from Amras with the force of a heavy arrow thudding deep in its target.  "Beware your words, brother."

 

Lómë twisted around and stared at Amras long and hard before she turned back to Amrod.  "Can you heal me?"  She whispered.  Her gaze captured his, drawing him in and he fell, gladly lost in the dizzying swirl.  She couldn't be Moriquendi, she held the light in her eyes; she'd known the Valar, spent time in their presence - the odd lilt and rhythm he recognized from the high court at Aman.

 

"Your wounds are already healing nicely."  Amrod pulled the cloak back up around her shoulders and closed it over her, disturbed as much by Amras' glare as he was by his own reaction to her.  He would ask later how she came to have such injuries.  Lómë gently pulled away and they stood.  She looked as if she might speak but only gave a subtle shake of her head. 

 

"What manner of beast did this damage?"  Amras waved his hand toward what remained of the carnage.  "Where did it go?"

 

Lómë tensed.  She lowered her head as she turned away.  Amrod stepped close and wrapped a comforting arm around her.  She was trembling.  "Leave it," he said to his brother.  "She's distraught."

 

"Lómë?"  Amras' tone brooked no argument.

 

"I was hiding," she finally said.  She leaned her soft warmth into Amrod, letting him hold her, and placed her hand on his chest.  She closed her fingers, grasping a handful of his shirt as if she'd never let go.  Lómë's trembling increased until he feared she might collapse and so he held her tight.  She buried her face in his chest and clung to him.

 

"Will you protect me?"  Her words were muffled in his shirt.

 

He reached down with his free hand and turned her face up to his.  How could she think he would not?

 

"Swear it!"  The frantic demand in her suddenly shrill voice shocked him.

 

Amras was suddenly there; Lómë's tender biceps clenched in his mighty warriors hands as he ripped her from Amrod's grasp and thrust her away.  Amrod spun to stand between Lómë and Amras, facing his brother.  Amras had gone too far this time.

 

"Do not lay hands on her again," Amrod said.  "Calaquendi or no, she will have our protection regardless of the choice of her fathers."  Slender fingers touch his back.  "I swear it," he said.

 

#

 

Amras, always the hunter, the warrior, paced the edge of the flickering shadows.  Amrod sat by the fire with Lómë warm beside him, but his comfort was marred by his worry for her.  He tried again to tempt her appetite, first with a breast of spit-roasted hare and at long last offering a half a lembas from his meager store, and she, again, demurred with a wrinkled nose, saying only that she knew herself and would eat when she needed.

 

As the fire burned low, they let it go to embers and Amras came to crouch before them.  "You know of the beast we hunt," he said to Lómë.  "Speak of it."

 

She tensed and Amrod tightened his arm around her in comfort.  "Tell us what you know," he said kindly.  "Did you see it?"

 

"No" She tugged at the too-large gown they had salvaged from the ruin of the encampment.  "No.  I have not seen its face.  It is said…"  She trembled in his arms and swallowed hard before she continued.  "It is said that it's a fell creature from the Iron Lands, sent out by the Darkness –  I can say no more."

 

She twisted in his arms to face Amrod, her face tight and lined with pain.  "There are great lords among your people."  Her voice dropped to a whisper.  "It is said that some have the power to stand against the Eldest.  Can you take me to them?"

 

"Why?"  Amras' voice rang like steel in the night.

 

"There are few lords greater than the two you share a fire with."  Amrod felt a rush of pride in his family to be able to say so.  "We have brothers and uncles who are older.  Mightier?  Perhaps.  We defer to them in most ways."  

 

That brought a wry smile from Amras.  "There are those among us who can stand against that craven lord."  He sobered again.  "But the cost is great and has been without victory.  You've wrested a vow of protection from my brother.  What else would you have from us?"

 

She moved uneasily in Amrod's arms.  "I fear being taken by the beast," is all she would say, and, quietly, that she wished to be healed.

 

Amras leaned in, an angry glint in his eye and Amrod sat forward to meet him, shifting Lómë to one side.  "Leave her be," Amrod warned his brother.  "She warms me as any of those who crossed the Helcaraxë cannot and I will keep her at my side."

 

"You know nothing of her."  They rose as one and stood facing each other.  The hard anger of their father showed in the set of Amras' shoulders and his jaw.  His lips rose as if in a snarl – as if the very beast they hunted might rise up out of his heart and devour the one his brother had sworn to protect.

 

"I know she touches my heart," Amrod answered, standing firm in the face of his brother's rage.  "There is a strength in her that I haven't felt before.  It draws me and holds me with her.  If she will have me, we will have the lifespan of Arda to learn more of each other."  He turned to Lómë, her eyes were wide.  She tugged her hand as if to pull it away from his, but he held her and her eyes filled again with tears. 

 

"I would stay with you," she said, "But I fear my time here can not be long – "

 

Amrod swept her into his arms, triumphant.  "Then we will not waste the time we have."

 

In that instant, Amras was on them.  With his right arm forced between, he snatched Lómë around the shoulders and held her against his chest; with his left he pressed a cold blade to her throat.  Before the next beat of their hearts, the tip of Amrod's dagger pressed in the hollow of Amras' throat.

 

"If you agree to union with my brother, your time will be very short," Amras promised. 

 

"Release her," Amrod snarled.  He angled the dagger so that a red droplet welled up along the gleaming edge.

 

Amras leaned his head down so that his lips brushed the tip of Lómë's ear.  "You are Moriquendi and in league with the beast." 

 

Each touch of his' brother's breath on Lómë drove tortured flames through Amrod's heart.  Rage ravaged through him, welling in him until it threatened to take his mind.  As he pressed into his brother's throat with the dagger, the blade tightened and drew along Lómë's neck.  Amras' eyes, only a hand's-breadth   from his own, spoke clearly that even if he were mortally wounded; Lómë would die before he did.

 

"Tell him you are not in league with it."  Amrod said.

 

"In league, no."  Her eyes fixed on his.  "I would not."

 

"Yet, you have some association with it…"  Amras answered.

 

She lowered her lids, hiding her gaze and Amrod's heart stopped.  His breath seized in his chest and bile rose in his throat at the thought of her being forced to face her fear and dread of the dark creature.

 

"You promised to protect me."  Her pleading demand whispered up through him, more in his mind than in his ears.  It clawed in his gut, spiraling up through his chest to wrap tight in his throat.

 

With a scream of rage, Amrod threw himself forward with all his strength and weight, driving his blade as he fell, twisting Lómë in the direction of Amras' blade so the damage might be less.  Amras stumbled back, spinning and breaking the fall, lashing out with his forearm to foil the depth of his brother's strike rather than score the soft throat in his reach. 

 

Lómë scrambled as they landed in a spinning, twisted heap.  A long slice gaped from the center of Amras' throat across his shoulder, blood soaked the flaps of tunic and blouse that hung down.  Lómë fought to her feet, running back, falling and stumbling with one bloody hand pressed below her throat, the other clenching her gown.  As Amrod gained his feet and lunged after her, Lómë dropped her hold on the neckline, snatched up a great fistful of the skirt and darted into the dark.

 

#

 

They followed in angry, heated silence, Amrod intent to stay in the fore, keeping himself between Amras and Lómë, wherever they might find her.  When it seemed they drew close, her tracks disappeared.  Amrod knelt at the last one, deeper than the others.  He looked up at the branches above him.  Had she leapt into the trees?  He knew lithe archers who traveled that way.  He stepped back and reached up, lifting himself into a nearby tree so as not to disturb any sign she might have left.

 

Nothing.  Only the tiny scratches of songbirds marked the boughs.  Here a squirrel's nibble and there the score from a raptor's talon.  He searched in vain for a rub or a smudge where a hand had grasped a branch, where a toe touched or a scrape from light tread of a bare foot.  He should be able to find at least a single dark thread from her tresses or an errant scrape from her gown.  Or a single cold drop of her precious blood.  Anger tightened the small of his back and rose to a burning ache across his shoulders.  Frustration pounded in his temples, each beat of his heart echoing like the resounding thunder of Nerdanel's hammer when there had been discord in the forge.

 

Overshadowing all, fear for Lómë; encompassing that – anger at his brother.

 

Amras wandered down the path, studying the ground, then his motion slowed and stopped.  He dropped to one knee and reached out a hand to trace a pattern on the ground before him.  Amrod's heart leapt.  They'd found her next step.

 

But Amras stood and turned back toward his brother with a whitened face and burning eyes filled with anger and dread.  With one hand, he raised a single finger to his lips in the age-old sign for silence and with the other he slipped the thong from the hilt of his dagger.  Amrod slipped from the tree and dropped lightly to the soft forest floor.  He fought the chill that threatened to envelope him by falling instead to the battle rage he'd learned at Alqualondë, and used too many times since.  His vision tunneled and expanded at the same time; the chattering of the squirrels and the soft brush of the breeze in the leafs seemed at once distant and yet more clear.  His body lightened and filled with strength as the world slowed around him.

 

One step, another, and he knelt beside the print that Amras had found.  The pad of a beast, larger than his hand, that sprouted claws the length of his dagger.

 

It was close, this time it would not get away.  So close. How could it not have her?

 

Amras only turned and started down the trail.

 

#

 

They smelled the beast before they saw it, a soft heavy musk like the warm depth of a hot summer night.  The birds and other guiltless creatures of the forest faded away, leaving them in silence and they heard its deep breaths.  It tracked in the woods behind them, stalking the hunters. 

 

Amrod and Amras, as one, turned to face it.  A sleek, black, wolfish beast, near the size of Huan, stood amidst the trees, lean and powerful.  Amras unslung his bow and strung it as Amrod slipped into the woods to one side.  The creature snarled, a dark and terrible rumbling roar that spoke of pain, anger and endless hunger.  Its fangs, as long and thick as Amrod's forearm, glistened as it showed them to the sky in its cry.

 

The beast crouched low, gleaming teeth shown beneath up-wrinkled lips.  It followed Amrod with blazing red-gold eyes – the color of sunset over the desolate plains that lay before Angband.  It swayed and feinted as he drew close, its lithe movement like the rippling of fine watered silk.  Amrod paused in his hunting, struck by the thing's lethal beauty.  He'd strike carefully, so as not to damage the pelt, and tan it for Lómë's use.  If she lived.  He pictured her long dark hair spread beneath him; it would blend perfectly with the pelt and seem as if they were making love in a great luxurious pool of her hair. 

 

From the corner of his eye, Amrod saw Amras nock an arrow and draw back his great bow. 

 

The beast snarled and leapt away, bolting into the depths of the woods.

 

They followed – but again caught the scent as it circled back and again came up behind them.

 

Again and again, as Arien and Tilion circled, so did the hunters.

 

Glimpses of the beast showed it growing gaunt and there came a day that it traveled away without circling.

 

They followed, leaving aside guile to pursue it with all their relentless speed and strength and yet they were too late.  The cluster of woodland homes held only the sprays of blood and errant scrapes of flesh.

 

Amrod knelt in the clearing, heart-stricken for those he hadn't even known – for those in the bloody clearings behind them and those that he feared he would face.  Even Amras stood silent and white-faced.

 

In that silence they heard a soft cry – a whimper, stifled.

 

Amrod rose and followed Amras.

 

A slender ankle moved, too slow, into the shadows under a thicket.

 

"Lómë."  Stricken, Amrod could only whisper.  How could she be here?  He knelt.  "Lómë," he said again.  "Come to me."  He held out his hand.

 

She hesitated a long while.  He waited; his gaze fixed on her.  Amras touched his shoulder, but in comfort rather than an urging for action.  At long last Lómë wriggled out from the thicket.  The slice of a blade marred her right cheek, already half-healed.  She raised her hand and traced her fingers along the wound.  Tears trickled down her cheeks before she raised her eyes to him.  Red-gold swirled in their dark depths.

 

"Help me," she whispered.  "Don't let the beast take me again." 

 

Amrod reached for her as she lifted up her hands.  In the silence of an archer's long soft breath Lómë's focus shot past Amrod's shoulder; she lifted her lips to show fangs in a gleaming snarl.  A feathered shaft protruded from her chest; her lunge failed and she fell into Amrod's arms.  As her strength faded, she opened her eyes and locked her clear, dark gaze with his. 

 

"I've heard tale of white sands…"  Her last words were as soft as wings on the breeze.  Amrod nodded, and then she was gone.

  

~ the end ~

 

 

 

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Chapter End Notes

Many thanks to Oshun for pestering me into writing this for the Annv contest and posting here.  Thanks also for the reads and critique by the crew at the Garden of Ithilien forum including Adaneth, Oshun, Lia, Lucia, Jael, Darthfingon and Drummerwench. 

While this is not AU in that it doesn't break existing canon, I do realize I've taken some liberties with gaps in canon.  There may come a time in the future that an expanded version of this will show what I see working in those gaps, but that ... um. ... will not be this day. or something like that. Hope you enjoyed it anyway.