The Seven Gates by Laerthel

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A Dead End Awaits

Tyelcano's dreams come true.

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XXII. A Dead End Awaits

He was wearing his formal robes, and he was wounded. Upon his hauberk yawned three gaping holes: two on the right, one on the left, exposing the cloth above his rapidly beating heart.

Such a fault could bring death.

Vaguely, he remembered being shot, and dragged along the remnants of a river-bank, long dried. He offered no more protestations than a sack of corns, or a deer carcass would have; and that was making him angry – as much as he could tell, at least. This was a dream, after all, and emotions, impressions or convictions in dreams were unstable, ephemeral. They came and went, they materialised with the speed of thought, only to disappear a heartbeat later.

One boot was missing from his feet, he realised with a sudden pang of anger. This new emotion was sharp, and it cleared his mind like a breeze of fresh air. Here and there, his bare foot grazed along big, rounded stones among the messy undergrowth, as if his captors were following some long-forsaken path.

Blood was drippling down his chin, scarcely but steadily: red tears of helplessness. It was probably coming from his nose, but he felt no pain. All he felt was numbness, and the disturbing weight of air on his heaving chest.

His head was pounding.

He was losing too much blood.

He screamed a name, any and every name that came to his mind, pleading for help and salvation; yet no answer came. He grabbed the hilt of a weapon in his belt; its length was unfamiliar. He could not remember owning a dagger like that.

…yes… yes, he could, after all, now that he thought of it. It was the dagger Curufinwë gave him; bright and sharp and defiantly beautiful. Deadly.

Crows were gathering around him, watching him with hungry eyes, waiting for his last breath so they could have their feast. Their screams were raspy, and they chilled him to the bone.

Steps were coming, closing in, and he knew it would soon be over. All over.

And the Voice would call…

Yet this time, it did not; and he woke with a low cry, drenched in sweat.

~ § ~ § ~ § ~

Dimbar, North-West of the Brithiach, FA 467, the last day of Lótessë

“Not much vegetation,” Counsellor Tyelcano muttered, and made a few notes on shattered parchment. “Dim, foggy even with the Gates of Summer approaching, and even greyer than it used to be. Nothing to eat, save perhaps the frogs.”

He made a new mark with his thin carbon-stick, and shifted the parchment a little, looking for possible mistakes. The northern half of Beleriand was traced out splendidly before his eyes, all even and precise, all measured out in a one to five miles-scale: mountain-lines, hills, plains, rivers, routes fortresses... still, something was amiss. Tyelcano had carefully counted every single mile between the Himring and Tol Sirion, where he was supposed to meet the High King, but either there was an error in his calculations – and the Counsellor, despite his general humble manners, excluded that possibility –, or there was a large uncharted area between the dreadful Nan Dungortheb and the northern riverlands.

“Senge!” Tyelcano called, and when the target of his attention turned around, bowed, and asked how could he be of assistance, he made a brief inviting gesture towards the rock he was leaning on while he worked.

“Come, my friend,” he said, “and tell me everything you know of those mountains over there.”

Senge, who had spent years as a messenger of Lord Maedhros before he joined the scouts, sat down beside the Counsellor, and stared at the half-ready map for a few moments before answering.

“Those are the peaks of the Crissaegrim, m’lord. It is said that King Thorondor’s folk live among the mountains, and their vigilance guards or restrains those who travel along the Sirion. But the Orcs are becoming numerous in these lands, and the Eagles show themselves less and less. I have never journeyed through those mountains, and nor had anyone else I know; the roads are narrow and dangerous, and the passes are covered in snow even at Midsummer.”

Tyelcano stared at the massive walls of icy rock in the distance, miles above the whole world, graceful, invincible.

“Yes, well, and what is past those mountains?”

“More mountains, m’lord,” Senge said readily. “Walls of ice, snow and impenetrable rock. Lands of eternal winter, as I have heard. No Elf had ever set foot there; no one but the Eagles know a way across the Fangs, for so they are called in the kingdom of Hithlum. Past the mountains, there are the once safe and fertile lands of Dorthonion. And north of that – you need not draw anything on the map you’re making for our Lord Warden.”

“It shall not be necessary, either way,” said Tyelcano elegantly. “I have made a mile-count around Angamando in our days of peace; it is a pity, though, that we do not know what is past its gates. Or if those mountains end anywhere. Or if there are any passes, valleys, hills and rivers past that.”

“Why the insatiable hunger for knowledge, lord?” Asked the scout with a little smile. It was the same sort of smile Tyelcano oft received when he finished a particularly long and dry report, or went through the provision counts within two hours.

“Knowledge is the whetstone of wit,” he said. “Provided that one’s mind has any edge that could be sharpened.”

“As you say, m’lord.” Senge nodded his accord, and not a muscle moved in his face as he went about his business.

~ § ~

Days came and went without any notable incident, and Tyelcano barely counted them. He kept his pragmatic mind on the indispensable: eating, drinking, riding, taking first watch, trying to sleep. Occasionally, he forced himself to have short rests up in the saddle, for peaceful slumber eluded him ever since he’d left the Himring. He saw the same dream every night now: a dream of wounds, capture, crows, cold and empty wastelands; always fresh, always vivid, always painful, grim, and shockingly believable. The vision seemed to lurk endlessly in the back of his mind, assaulting him as soon as his eyes gazed over, then vanishing when he opened them again, like the warning of a ghastly hand that dissolves in the morning sun.

My dreams are trying to tell me something, Tyelcano decided, again and again, and every time his iron will pressed against that unuttered truth. He could have sooner broken his own knees than turn back. He was a servant on a mission, the bearer of weighty news, the keeper of unpleasant secrets that had to be passed from one lordly ear to another with the swiftness of an arrow.

A poisoned arrow, Tyelcano kept telling himself, but that thought was to be shaken off as well. The orders of Lord Maedhros had been precise and explicit; and several millenia of service have taught him to give counsel whenever asked, and follow orders whenever denied.

Relentlessly, he pressed on, taking the lead, giving first watch, riding out to hunt, sending out scouts from their humble company of ten, working on his maps and notes and entries on his insufferable visions.

Time seemed to crawl along with the speed of a snail; and the road went ever on.

~ § ~

On the fifth day of Nárië, the wind turned, and brought the promise of rain. The mist-laden air hung heavily in the deep valleys where their road ribboned, and there was a soft bristle in the endless sea of grass that reached up their horses’ knees. The Sun hid its golden face behind veils of wreathing mist; nothing moved within eyesight, and the only thing that changed since yestereve was the pattern of clouds.

Cold fingers of morning breeze crept under Tyelcano’s collar as he gently nudged his stallion to the edge of a small cliff to have a look.

“Anything new, Lord Counsellor?” Called young Antalossë.

“The grass-blades have moved some twenty degrees North,” said Tyelcano. “And the skies are three shades darker.”

“You’d think that he was joking…” Came the demure voice of Senge from behind.

“I might as well have.” Tyelcano raised an eyebrow. “I’m a funny old Elf, especially when sparring. Would you care to try?”

“I’ve grown somewhat too fond of my four limbs, m’lord…” Senge said with a grin, “but I always like a challenge!”

“Then grab that toothpick of yours, and charge!”

It was all a façade, Tyelcano knew; the playful mockery they entertained each other with. He and Senge were frequent companions ever since the Flames, when the scout had killed forty Orcs in a single, heated assault to open the gates before Lord Maglor’s fleeing soldiers. Then, he even found in himself the audacious heroism to tousle the lord out of the raging battle and into the Himring’s welcoming cool – a deed just as remarkable.

Senge had always preferred a lance over all weapons. That made him a dangerous, and more than a little unpredictable sparring partner.

The two Elves retreated a few steps from the scalloped edge of the cliff, to more solid settling. Dust whirled under Tyelcano’s feet as he prowled around, searching for higher ground, and found none.

“Are you certain you want to run into my toothpick with a single dagger, m’lord?” Senge asked jokingly.

“Oh, I am.” Tyelcano took three short steps, span around, flexed and unflexed the muscles in his legs, then slowly turned back, regaining balance. “This is just what I needed.”

Focus. Curufinwë’s gift slid out of its scabbard and into his welcoming palm, smoothly, flawlessly. Steel merged with flesh as he moved, and the dagger was part of him now, a graceful extension of his own arm. Movements came neatly, naturally, as if he was merely waving his hand around.

Wait. The lance answered the call with a fluid swoosh, and Tyelcano half-saw half-felt Antalossë turning away from the empty view of the wastelands to watch them, beaming with excitement. Capable for certain; but he was still half a child…

Charge!

Steel rang on steel, and Tyelcano was finally at peace. In combat, there was nothing but balance and speed and focus: deep and endless focus in the centre of it all; some hidden power within his very core that slept through his daily ordeals, rising only when he was faced with the immediate danger of an assault. For a few precious minutes, everything was forgotten: his mission, his hopes, his fears, his dreams: some proud, fierce need to disarm his opponent filled his entire being. Gracefully, he danced, closer and closer to Senge, sliding in and out of the spear’s reach, sometimes madly close, sometimes ridiculously far; ever-changing, ever-moving like the clouds, the Moon, and the very shapes in the tapestries of Vairë. And for a fleeting moment, everything was perfect.

Then came the intruder.

At first, it was only a blurred black patch near the edge of his vision, and his eyes followed the soft gleam of the spearhead instead. Later, the black patch continued to grow, and later still, it materialised into a large carrion crow. The bird landed sloppily upon a rock, right above his left ear, and watched him, just watched him with eyes of shiny coal.

It’s just a crow, Tyelcano reminded himself, as he almost missed a blow. The commonest bird you can imagine. It has nothing to do with you. Focus!

Then the crow began to caw, as crows do, although its voice was somewhat shriller than usual.

Caw.

Tyelcano missed a beat, and only his barest instinct saved him as the spearhead rushed past his right shoulder.

Caw.

Now he was outright late, his rash counter-strike a means of flight rather than an attack.

Caw.

Senge was charging at him with a fearsome grin, shouting something like “You’re slow, Counsellor!”, and his own backslash was clumsy and wrath-driven.

Caw.

“Begone!” Tyelcano bellowed. With an agile spin, he was out of spear-range once again, and he charged, with all his wrath, onto the creature. He half-hoped, half-wished that the bird would be fast enough to escape him…

The crow let out a last, irrevocable caw. Its scream was raspy, and it chilled him to the bone…

…and then it charged as well, right at him, aiming for the eye.

It all happened within a heartbeat. Tyelcano gave a cry of dismay and ducked, shielding his face with his arms, momentarily forgetting how his dagger could have pierced through the creature from beak to tail; the crow disappeared in the valley below them with a last, mischievous caw; and Senge slammed into the Counsellor’s crouched figure with his entire weight, still delirious with the verve of fighting.

Before Tyelcano could move, or cry out, or take a breath, he was flying off the cliff.

There was a terrible, sickening crack, and the world went dark.

~ § ~

He heard a faint voice at the frontier of his muffled perception.

“Do you think… I mean, he is alive, is he not?”

“Of course he is, you sack of dragon dung. He’s breathing…”

“When do you think he will wake?”

“I don’t know, Lossë. Would you care to be less of a nuisance and look for the General?”

“And what do I tell him? Good day, Lord Gildor! Oh yes, everything is fine, there is a bad storm coming and Senge just killed our Lord Counsellor…”

“I told you – he’s breathing!”

“I’m not that easy to kill, young one…” Tyelcano forced himself to speak, although his voice rang far weaker than intended.

“Counsellor!” Senge’s troubled face came into his view. “How are you feeling?”

 “Like a sack of dragon dung,” Tyelcano declared after a moment’s consideration. “What happened?”

“I ran into you. I could not stop; and then you fell off the cliff. Sadly, there was a sharp rock underneath, and… Thankfully, the cliff wasn’t very steep, but everything happened so rapidly…” Senge shook his head. “Well, m’lord, the gist of the situation is the following: you broke your right leg. It is… very ugly. Not the sort of injury you’re supposed to journey with.”

The pain itself materialized while Senge uttered these words, and it was unlike everything Tyelcano had ever experienced. He’d been hit by a Balrog’s whip before, he’d been strangled by an unnamed monster near a silent lake back in the Mountains of Mist, he’d been slammed into a wall by Moringotto’s black hands, he’d wrestled with wolves, he’d been burned by fire, cut with all sorts of blades, pierced through with arrows and he’d even broken bones before… but not like this. Never like this. He’d never experienced anything even close to this sheer, horrendous, stomach-turning agony. It felt as if Fëanáro was testing the solidity of a new hammer-set on his shin. And it smelled like blood… it was also wet and warm and so terribly, terribly exposed… a broken bone wasn’t supposed to feel quite like this…

With an enormous effort, Tyelcano propped up his body up on his elbows, and looked at his legs. He barely even felt how the movement pulled his muscles into an agonized knot; at first, he was too preoccupied with trying not to faint upon the sight itself.

“Manwë…”

It was an open fault – so wide open that almost the entire width of his calf-bone was visible. His trouser leg had been cut away above his knee, exposing the entire fissure. It went as far as five, six, seven inches down on his leg. The pale white bone emerged as an island of solitary pain from the raging bloody mess of the wound below.

Tyelcano shut his eyes, nails digging into the ground as he fought nausea, then vertigo, then the hysteria of pain.

Focus.

“Blast it!” He cursed, swiping the moist from his forehead with a trembling fist. “We don’t have time for this! We’re on a mission!”

“We are delayed.” Senge’s hand was warm upon his back. “We’ll manage, if you sit still and let me tend to your leg.” After a few moments’ hesitation, he added, “It might hurt.”

~ § ~

The three servants of Himring waited side by side for the next few hours, Tyelcano with his back against the cliff, Senge kneeling in silent vigil beside him and Antalossë pacing back and forth around their makeshift camp: three pairs of gleaming eyes scouring about the silent mountain-ranges. And yet there was still no sign of their companions returning.

“They left before sunrise,” muttered Antalossë. Only the wuthering wind answered him, and a couple of strain water-drops upon their doublets. Tyelcano could not tell if they were the first tears of rain or the last ounces of dew from dawn that got picked up.

“It is past noon,” the young scout went on, quite anxiously.

“…and in a few hours, Anor shall go to sleep and give way to the falling night,” Senge snapped. “Here’s your third piece of unnecessary information.”

“Enough!” Tyelcano raised his hand, and winced with pain. “Something is moving in that far valley.” He waved Antalossë to the front. “What do you see, young one?”

“…crows,” said the scout; yet as he uttered the word, Tyelcano could see them clearly, too; and a giant flock of them. They emerged from the valley in a cacophony of ragged screams, only to plunge back down at the next convenient cliff, and settle at its edges, as if following some twisted dance-card.

“They won’t stop screaming,” said Senge uneasily. “They are waiting for some battle to end, so they could have their feast.”

“Not today,” said Tyelcano against his better judgement.

Slowly, he raised his head to the view of Dimbar below his feet: to the graceful line of mountains, with the Crissaegrim to the East and the meandering grey ribbon of Sirion to the West. Silently he stood, as if trying to carve that landscape into his soul.

The wind was rising again, lashing up new waves in the silken sea of mountain grass below – and their companions’ horses emerged from the valley, one by one, in great haste, led by Gildor of Tol Sirion, trusted servant and preferred envoy of the High King.

“Counsellor,” he said. “The results of today’s scouting are somewhat less boring than usual, although more than a little inconvenient. We have come across an Orc band in the wastelands. They have wolves with them, and they must have followed our trail for the last few hours. How in Arda could they pick it up, I cannot fathom…”

When Tyelcano made no answer, Gildor shifted impatiently in the saddle, long fingers drumming on the hilt of his sword.

“Counsellor, with respect, we need to make haste, and find shelter. There are too many of them. I despise the thought of fleeing, but we are envoys. We cannot afford to lose lives.”

“That is very true, my friend,” said Tyelcano blankly. “However, I am afraid I’m not going anywhere in the near future.”

Gildor’s tactical eye shifted to Senge’s kneeling figure, then Tyelcano’s leg, then the restlessly pacing Antalossë.

“What in Moringotto’s seven accursed hells happened here?!” He exclaimed.

“I have made the last mistake of my life, as it seems,” said Tyelcano. “At least I made it spectacular.”

“I think we would all prefer a spectacular solution, m’lord!” Senge snapped. “Work your wondrous mind!”

Tyelcano did just that, arranging and rearranging the pawns on an imaginary chessboard, only to realise that there was nothing he could do. The icy, numbing sensation of helplessness spread across his chest, and he suddenly found it difficult to breathe.

“How many of them?” He heard himself asking.

“Five-and-fifty Orcs and some twenty wolves that we saw. There might be more lurking in the shade.”

Five-and-fifty.

Tyelcano took three calming breaths, battling the searing, mind-boggling pain that radiated from his broken leg.

“Blast it,” Senge cursed. “Counsellor, we should get you on a horse. Right now.”

“You tended to my leg yourself,” said Tyelcano. “You know there is no way on Arda I could hold myself in a saddle right now.”

“You must do it!”

“Senge,” the name, though gently spoken, was a warning. “I can barely move. I would be an illuminated target bouncing before the wolves’ eyes, then I would fall, and lucky as I am today, I’d break my other leg, too. I would only slow you down.”

There. I said it.

He saw the thought materialising in Senge’s eyes; at first, the scout’s face screamed denial, then anger, then pain, then cold, ruthless resolution.

“No,” he said. “No-no-no. Don’t even think about it.”

“The message should be carried to the High King. You cannot afford to tarry.”

“Yes, lordship, and in case you’d forgotten, you are the one carrying that message!”

“I could tell you,” said Tyelcano.

No, Lord Maedhros’s voice emerged from the depths of his memories, you could not. No one else can know.

He hung his head, fighting a new wave of pain. All of this felt utterly, terribly wrong.

The King should hear the message, he thought. He must!

I must go!

He folded his left leg softly under himself, then made the slightest, barest motion with the right – and fell right back against the cliff, all but howling in agony.

Antalossë caught his arm, helped him up. Tyelcano shut his eyes, gritted his teeth, and stood – then fell right back, fresh blood gushing from his wound.

“No,” he whimpered. “I can’t. I can’t. I am so sorry.”

You’re stupid, reckless, and irresponsible, he thought. And it is going to cost your life. You, Counsellor of Kings, are going to die out of foolhardiness.

“All right,” said Gildor, and drew his sword. “If we cannot go, then we shall fight.”

Tyelcano was almost moved to tears as his nine companions began dismounting their horses and herding them together in the shelter of the cliff.

“Broken leg or not, I believe I am still in charge here.” His voice was suddenly clear and full of authority.

“We’re not leaving you, Counsellor,” said Antalossë. “We’re a team.”

“Our mission is not to save my life but to deliver a message! And that message, to quote Lord Maedhros himself, is not worth ten lives!”

Well, that is not exactly what he said, was it, said a mocking voice inside his head.

“And your life, Counsellor, is worth another hundred,” Senge said, very sincerely. “And I am quoting the lord as well.”

“I was unaware he ever said that,” Tyelcano admitted.

Senge knelt beside him again. He was so close that the tip of his nose almost touched his forehead.

“The lord needs you. You know that. He would never pardon us if we came back without you… neither would I ever pardon myself, for that matter.”

“All right.” Tyelcano closed his eyes. “All right,” he repeated, his voice harder than steel, “then we are going to fight, but not without a plan.”

“Your plan being…?” Gildor raised his brows.

“You shall ride ahead with young Antalossë here, and another soldier of your choice, and find shelter for tonight,” said Tyelcano. “Let us face them and be done with it! These Orcs will most likely follow us along our route. We should be prepared to fight them more than once.”

Gildor’s searching gaze met his, and Tyelcano knew that the other heard and understood the unspoken part of the sentence.

“Yes, lord,” the General said, and made a curt bow. “If next time, you’ll allow me to fight by your side.”

“I shall.”

That said, Gildor was already mounting. Young Antalossë took a half-hearted step towards his steed, then turned around when he heard Tyelcano’s call.

“Must I leave you, Counsellor?” he said with visible discomposure.

“Will you defy my order while I have your lord’s seal ring upon my finger?”

“N-no,” the youth stammered, “I did not mean…”

“Good. Then come closer. There is something you need to hear.”

No one can know, the ghost of Maedhros’s voice protested, but Tyelcano steeled himself against it. It was the right thing to do – without revealing too much, of course.

“If anything happens to me,” he breathed into the other’s ear, softer than the lightest breeze, “tell the High King that his warning has been heeded. And… the dreams. Lord Nelyo is seeing them as well. The very same dreams. This is important. They must talk, His Highness and our lord. Soon. Tell him that.”

“I will,” Antalossë whispered, amazed.

“Good. Then take this.” Tyelcano pulled the large ring off his finger and buried it into the warmth of the youth’s palm. “It should be given to the High King when you see him, as a token of the message’s discrete nature. If you have this ring with you, no other than His Highness himself has the authority to ask you about your mission.”

“I understand, Counsellor…” Antalossë looked at him warily. “But you shall be the one delivering the message.”

“Of course.” Tyelcano graced him with a faint smile. “This is only a measure of security.”

~ § ~

General Gildor choose a stern, tacit youth from among the High King’s envoys as his second companion; he was known by the name Lindír, and even if he was not pleased with the prospect of leaving the others behind, he gave no sign of it. Soon, there was no more reminder of the chosen trio’s presence than the traces of their horses’ hooves in the gathering dust.

Somewhere in the valley, a wolf howled.

“So it begins,” Senge sighed, and finished sharpening the head of his spear.

“Let us hope for a swift ending,” an Elf called Vorondo answered him readily from Tyelcano’s other side.

The High King’s three envoys were waiting in one stern line in front of them, with the sole exception of Ohtar of Himring standing in the middle with his arms crossed, longbow hanging from his shoulders.

Soon, they could all hear the clutter of makeshift armour and the fierce cries, the bawdy farrago of approaching Orcs. No one moved; his companions stood vigil around him, and Tyelcano knew they would all sacrifice their lives without a second thought to save his.

Suddenly, he understood Lord Maedhros’s sometimes die-hard efforts to spare his soldiers’ lives.

“I will never forget what you did for me today, my friends,” he said softly.

“It is only our duty,” Vorondo answered him, but his fierce tone suggested that the task was carried out quite willingly. “And we shall do more before this day ends.”

~ § ~

The pounding in Tyelcano’s leg was getting worse, and it soon extended to his whole body.

The first moments of the battle had immediately crystallized in his mind, frozen to boundless eternity; the way the reeking Orc-heads popped up from the cleft of the valley, the way they rattled and howled and chattered in laughter when they saw his injury, and that his companions were ready to protect him. Seven Elves they had seen in the wastelands and seven Elves they had found upon seeking; and they would not ask them any questions, nor did they seem to suspect that there were more hidden in the colourless landscape. Tyelcano hoped with fervency that Gildor had sought shelter high up in the hills.

The Orcs charged at them, then the wolves as well, but the cliff-wall was belled out, and it sheltered them from their assaults for a time. There was a colourful, raging jungle of blood and gore and screams and shouts and swearwords; then Ohtar’s dead body slammed into Tyelcano’s wounded leg with its full weight.

He fainted, battling the pain with utmost effort, but without any result at all.

When he regained consciousness, he was horrified to see no more than Senge and Vorondo defending him from a scarcer company of Orcs. Heaps of dead bodies lay everywhere, and the smell of death and decay was so strong his stomach protested.

I must fight, he willed himself into moving. It is all my fault.

I have a message to deliver!

Fury tripled his strength as he propped himself up on one elbow, then a shaking knee. With one swift push, he liberated his broken leg from Ohtar’s pressing weight, choked out a bunch of Valarin swearwords he did not even know he remembered, and pulled his dagger. He would fight – sitting, if he had to.

An arrow pierced through his right side in a flash of searing pain, and he wavered. The next shot came at once, and he wasn’t swift enough to lean out of range. This time, the pain was almost familiar.

Dim-witted brutes, he thought. You should aim for the heart if you want to kill.

The third arrow did just that; but it missed target as Vorondo yanked the Counsellor back under the cliff’s half-shelter.

“What in Manwë’s holy name are you doing?! Stay down!”

“I wanted to…”

“Stay – down!”

Vorondo’s breath caught in his throat with an audible hiss, and his face contorted for a moment. Tyelcano’s eyes widened as he felt a stream of blood cover his chest.

“Voro… you have been shot.”

Vorondo struggled to his knees, a haze of pain covering his eyes.

“You have always been… very perceptive.”

“Voro…” Tyelcano felt a lump in his throat, but he steeled his voice. “Senge, find that son of a shadow that’s shooting arrows here!”

“No need,” Vorondo growled, and forced himself back to his feet, the black-feathered arrow poking halfway out of his back. “I shall find them myself.”

With that, he was gone again; and Tyelcano had to fight a new wave of nausea as he looked down his chest, and the last image that reached his darkening vision.

Upon his hauberk yawned three gaping holes: two on the right, one on the left, exposing the cloth above his rapidly beating heart.

~ § ~

When he woke again, he was dragged, roughly, along the remnants of a river-bank, long dried. One boot was missing from his feet; here and there, his bare foot grazed along big, rounded stones among the messy undergrowth, as if his captors were following some long-forsaken path.

Or was it a lone captor?

…was it a captor, at all?

Blood was drippling down his chin, scarcely but steadily: red tears of helplessness. It was probably coming from his nose, but he felt no pain. All he felt was numbness, and the disturbing weight of air on his heaving chest.

His head was pounding.

He was losing too much blood.

“Voro…” he whispered, weakly.

“Dead,” said Senge’s voice from above. “Much like everyone else. I don’t know about the hiding three… Some Orcs escaped, and wolves as well, I fear. They will probably come back after nightfall. I’m hiding you, m’lord, so the others could go on. Lossë would never agree to leaving us behind in such a state… but as it happens, you are a beacon for our enemies, and so am I.”

“You did well,” Tyelcano forced the air out of his lungs. “Senge… forgive me.”

“Nonsense,” the younger Elf declared. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“Yes, it was. I got carried away. I lost my balance… because of that blasted crow… do you know that I despise crows?”

“So much?” There was a waver of gallows humour in Senge’s voice.

“So much. I’ve had dreams about them… for a while. And I think they are becoming true now. I have dreamed about being here. Every instant…”

“Well…” Senge furrowed his brows and looked around. “In that case, we should probably follow your dreams, m’lord. What happens now?”

“You’re dragging me,” Tyelcano said. “Along and along and along. Very far. And… there would be crows. All around. Watching me.”

“Your dreams have deceived you, Counsellor.” Senge turned to face him, and Tyelcano could have wept at the sight of his rueful smile. “We shall not make it very far.”

Tyelcano heard a wolf’s call in the distance, shrill and demanding. More voices answered the call, from closer, much closer.

“Senge,” he tried, “I’m heavily bleeding.”

“A perceptive lord. But Voro has told you that before.”

“I’m attracting them. You should…”

“No,” came the answer from between gritted teeth. “And if you won’t stop saying that, m’lord, I will punch your bad leg so hard that you won’t wake for days.”

“Then drag me a little faster, will you not? I despise the thought of you dying on me.”

“I’m trying,” the scout growled, steeling himself against the sudden swaying of his steps.

“Senge…? What’s wrong?”

“Blood loss,” came the answer, somewhat too quickly. “It matters not. Watch out for the wolves.”

“If you insist,” said Tyelcano, and they spoke no more for what seemed like a lifetime. The howls sounded closer and closer; it was too easy to imagine a great circle of wolves as it narrowed and narrowed around them, in all directions of the compass.

Then came the crows, as he knew they would, watching him with hungry eyes, waiting for his last breath so they could have their feast.

And then, the very earth began to weep.

“They are upon us,” Tyelcano said what his companion already knew; but Senge picked up some speed with his last strength, dragging him into the looming shade of a close-by cliff. They have been following the banks of the dried river all along, and the shallow ravine had led them to a wall of rock that stood flawless, smooth, and impenetrable.

“All this fatigue, and a dead end awaits,” Senge murmured. “Wonderful.”

“There is a passage,” Tyelcano pointed at a blurred black patch at the edge of his vision. Senge charged at the entrance – if that was indeed an entrance -, and Tyelcano’s bad leg was dragged over a ledge of rock. He could have wept, but he swallowed his cries of pain and let go of his conscience.

He must have immediately slipped back to one of his dreams, for it seemed to him that they arrived in a tight channel of chiselled walls; and he thought he saw a giant gate at the end. It stood under an austere arc boarded by pillars, with a wooden portcullis of bright torches and many squinting windows on top of it.

And before deep, uneasy swoon could claim him entirely, Tyelcano also thought he heard the call of a rigorous voice,

“Stand! Stir not! Or you will die, be you foes or friends.* The Gates are closed.”

---

Chapter End Notes

Author’s Notes

* Elemmakil’s words are quoted from ‘Of Tuor and His Coming to Gondolin’.

Name meanings:

Senge [Quenya]: adj.: keen of sight, observant, sagacious

Vorondo [Quenya]: comes from ‘Voronda’ ~ adjective. steadfast in allegiance, in keeping oath or promise, faithful, steadfast in allegiance/in keeping oath or promise / very similar to Voronwë’s name meaning, ‘faithfulness / steadfastness’ /.

Ohtar [Quenya]: means ‘war’, with a masculine ending; could be translated as simply ‘warrior’.

On Gildor and Lindír: I have my reasons to feature the (almost) entire collection of Rivendell Elves in such an early era:)