Full of Wisdom and Perfect in Beauty by Gadira

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Betrayal

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The sun had moved almost a quarter of its path across the sky, and it was now halfway through its downward journey. Amandil calculated the distance for the hundredth time, his forehead curved in a frown, as if he could delay the inexorable passing of the hours by browbeating Heaven. Behind him, in the small copse that served as their temporary refuge, his surviving men sat or lay on the ground in disorder, rank and formation long forgotten in the agonizing need to rest, take care of wounds, and wolf down the scarce remaining supplies. After the first flurry of activity had died down a while ago, they had become silent, an eerie silence that felt more haunting than any complaints or cries of pain ever could.

A full quarter now. Amandil noted to himself. And then, unbidden but inevitable, the thought crept in his mind. We will have to move on.

That was a decision he did not wish to make, but so were most of those he could contemplate in his current situation. Crossing enemy territory with a handful of men -a handful that had grown smaller and smaller after two subsequent encounters with Orc raiding parties once they left the forest area-, on horses that were almost exhausted from having to carry more than one man at a time, and trying to stay a step ahead of the Arnian army, part of which was probably marching from the North even as they lay there, did not allow for very good chances of survival. He also had to take into account that the Arnians had soldiers near the capital, and that, as soon as they received the news from their prince, they could cross to the Western bank and catch them like rats in a mousetrap. So far, they had moved relatively quickly, avoiding roads and inhabited areas as if they were a band of outlaws, barely sleeping for days and driving their horses to the end of their endurance, but if his military knowledge did not fail him, that little advantage they had was about to run out. They could never cross the South of the realm like this, much less the lands that lay beyond it all the way to the garrison in Pelargir, where at least some of the tribes, if not all of them, could have joined the uprising. If his plan did not work, they were finished. Even if it worked, they might still die as well.

Of course, he had not said this much to the men, but some of them, the veterans, had known all along, and at least a few of the others were beginning to guess as the days passed. He could see it in their eyes, hear it in their grim silences, perceive it in the way in which they would abandon their dead comrades on the battlefield and move on without looking back.

Amandil sighed. He did not like that. If they did not trust him to lead them out of this, they would never survive. He had laid the plan before them with a gleam of determination in his eyes, conviction in his voice, promising them they would be in Pelargir in three days. It would have worked for Pharazôn, and he had even tried to remember how his friend would do it for added emphasis, but it had been useless. They had nodded, gone through the motions, but most of them did not believe him.

At this point, he was not even sure that he believed himself. If Melek did not come back soon, if they had got there before them… if the situation of that village was not as he remembered it…

If, if, if.

“There!” It was barely a whisper. Haunted by the terrifying experience of the Orc ambushes, none of them dared raise their voice too much anymore, even when they thought they were alone. “It’s him.”

Amandil turned his frowning look towards the open space beyond his tree parapet, wondering if Adûnazer could be having visions from exhaustion and lack of food. He had been watching all the time and seen nothing… but then, he realized with a powerful jolt to his chest, a single, grey dot was climbing the hill that stood about a mile away from them. The sun. He had been so obsessed with the sun’s course that he had been about to miss the signal, damn his impatience.

“What is he doing? I can barely see from here.” For the first time since they began their flight, Adûnazer’s voice betrayed a flicker of anxiety. There, that is how easy it was to recover hope, he thought wryly, as the young captain hesitated for a moment, then began imitating the piercing cry of a forest bird. All it took was to have things turn out favourably for once.

Behind his back, the camp seemed to erupt in whispers, and then into the hustle and bustle of preparations: the clang of steel, the sound of footsteps, the neighing of horses. Amandil threw a cursory glance around until he located Melek’s black horse, which he had been using since his own had been killed in battle, trying not to think of how the signs of imminent collapse were becoming visible in its eyes and muzzle. One more effort.

“Captain Melek has given us the all-clear, but we must remember that we are still in enemy territory”, he spoke to the others as they finished climbing upon their horses. “We have to be discreet, and not give away our presence until it is the moment to act. And remember, these people are not soldiers, and they pose no threat, so do not fight them unless it is absolutely necessary. Speed is of the essence.”

Melek was waiting for them on the hill. He seemed excited too; his eyes gleamed as he brought them to the other side and pointed down the slope, at a village of about a hundred white-painted houses and, even farther away, at its harbour on the western bank of the Anduin. Moored there, gently cradled by the motions of the currents, they could see about ten or twelve barges, of those that were routinely used to transport goods up and down the river.

“We will come at them directly, riding down the slope and into the harbour. Try to avoid the village unless the way is blocked. The docks are emptying now as the workday draws to a close, so it is the perfect time to take the barges easily and fast. Do not fight them” he repeated, wondering if this attempt to avoid civilian casualties would be any less futile in this “civilized” land than it had been in Harad. “The wounded must ride behind those who are hale, and cling to them as we make the descent to avoid a fall. Is that clear?”

This time, the sound of assent carried through loud and clear. Amandil reviewed the faces of those closer to him; they seemed to have just woken from a sleep full of nightmares.

He hoped this attitude would last.

“What about food? Shouldn’t we try to get any?”

“We cannot afford distractions. “Adûnazer said. “There will probably be some sort of edible goods being transported in the harbour, but if we don’t find any, we will have to take our chances with the tribes downriver.”

“Enough talk! On my signal!” Amandil raised his sword. Everybody quickly gathered into a makeshift formation, the one they had improvised after they survived the Orcs, where unimpeded, unwounded riders took the front, and those riding with the wounded in slower horses fell to the rear. Adûnazer aligned his mount right behind Amandil, clenching his teeth as if he was about to plunge into frozen water.

The sword caught a red gleam from the setting sun as it cut the air in front of him.

“Charge!”

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

They had not been expected. The news of their progress had not made their way so far South, so when the villagers saw a horde of Númenóreans charging on horseback, they stared at them with the wide-eyed incredulity with which they might have looked at a dragon that swept from the hills breathing fire in its wake. When they began to regain their bearings, most of them fled, shrieking, towards the village, except for a handful of dockhands who stood before the barges with an expression of paralyzed terror and shock.

“We allies! Allies of Númenóreans!” one of them tried to shout at them. Melek pushed him aside.

“Tell that to your king.” A group of soldiers had set to the task of overturning crates and boxes of merchandise, looking for food. Most of the contents, however, turned to be iron, probably extracted from the mines, and Amandil had to wonder if production had increased after the kingdom decided to shift their alliances. In the end, cursing at the Arnian villagers as if this had been somehow their fault, they had to make do with some crates of fruit, and a few wine barrels.

“Do not take boats! Our boats! We allies of Númenóreans!” the dockhands insisted while they dismounted their horses and settled into the barges with their weapons and the provisions. Amandil was almost sorry for them. In spite of that bastard Noxaris’s patriotic tales, these people did not look anything at all like the Haradrim. They were helpless.

“Cut the ropes!” he ordered. Unfastened from their moorings, the barges floated away from the riverbank, and as they did so, Amandil did not know what looked more pitiful in the growing distance, if the natives or the horses they had been forced to discard. As they would have probably died if they had stayed on them, and the horses surely would, however, he could not find it in himself to regret it.

Now, at least, they had a chance. If they were fast enough…

“Move towards the centre of the river” he instructed, grabbing a steering oar and struggling to his feet to be seen by the men who sailed on the other barges. “We need to set as much distance between the riverbanks and us as possible. And keep watches during the night. We will be passing near Arne in a few hours and we cannot know what could be expecting us there.”

“I will keep watch.” An old veteran, who was sitting with his back propped against the stern of Amandil’s barge, smiled wryly, pointing at a large gash across his lower leg, which had gone from red to greenish in the last days. “This will not let me sleep anyway.”

“Very well”, Amandil smiled back, trying not to think of where he had seen such a wound before, or what had happened afterwards. No time for those thoughts now. “Do not forget to wake me up.”

Adûnazer frowned, his eyes set on the darkening horizon. He seemed to be debating with himself as to whether to say something or not. When he finally spoke, it was in that low whisper again, as if he expected to be ambushed by Orcs even in the middle of the Great River.

“Do you think that we will make it?”

Of course, Pharazôn would have said. There is only half a kingdom of jumped-up barbarians and a few primitive tribes between us and safety.

“I do not know” Amandil replied. The first stars were beginning to appear in the sky above their heads. “But we will have to try.”

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

The first night was surprisingly uneventful, considering that they must have passed the capital as they sailed through the large meander where the river was trapped between a high mountain and the hills of the eastern bank. Dawn, however, caught them approaching the harbour town where the Prince Noxaris had waited for them days ago, and they could not possibly hope to pass it unnoticed, so it became necessary to come up with some sort of plan. In the end, Amandil opted for having his party look as clean as possible, hide the wounded as best as they were able and pretend to be back from their routine mission. Such a plan, however, hinged on the off chance that the harbour town that was closest to the capital of the realm had no idea of the King’s new policies, and that the authorities there stayed as ignorant of the trap set for their former allies as the villagers upriver had been. As they came in view of the settlement, heard the bells ringing the alarm and saw soldiers jumping on boats to give chase, the lord of Andúnië realized that it had been too much to take for granted.

“Damn!” He could hear Melek shout from his barge. “What do we do?”

“Row! Row, row!” There were oars in all the barges, used for carrying the merchandise upstream. The pull of the current was not enough anymore; they needed to be faster if they wanted to evade the lighter boats of the enemy. “We need to outrun them!”

“They have arrows!” someone shouted -unnecessarily, as the first of them had already whooshed dangerously close to Amandil’s ear as he heard him cry out. In a great commotion, the men who still had shields threw them over their heads and those of their rowing comrades. One, two men were hit, but there was no time to see to them now. No time for anything, except escape.

“Row, row, row!” he yelled, almost desperately. The enemy’s range wasn’t very good yet, but if they drew closer, they were sitting ducks.

Fortunately, the boats of the Arnian military did not seem to be as well-oared as the larger merchant barges, and soon they began to fall out of step. After a brief but furious pursuit, that seemed to stretch for an eternity of agony as they called upon every ounce of their strength to row for their lives, after two more wounded and one dead man, Amandil saw the threatening prows beginning to recede in the distance.

“They are giving up!” Adûnazer was red from the effort. Hardly daring to believe their luck, Amandil sat next to him and rowed until he could count five hundred strokes without an arrow flying past them. Then, and only then, he gave the order to stop.

“Blessed be the holy Valar for protecting us in our hour of greatest need!” Adûnazer cried. The veteran, who had gritted his teeth and raised his prized shield over their heads while they toiled, took a small wolf figurine from his armour. As he muttered a prayer to the Lord of Battles, he glared at Amandil as if daring him to object.

“Blessed be them all, and whoever else wants to lend a hand”, Amandil replied. He stood up, signalling the men in the other barges to regroup and keep away from the riverbanks. Behind them, he heard the muttering of a litany, and then a loud splash as the dead man was dumped into the river.

What use was there for arguing about gods, when even the dead were reduced to a useless weight, to be discarded with as little ceremony as this?

“We will keep rowing at regular intervals. They might still follow us, or dispatch riders to other outposts. I will not rest until we are outside their territory.”

And then they would be in some tribe’s territory.

The soldier’s leg looked greener than the previous day. Grimly, Amandil saw him kiss the figurine before putting it back inside his armour, wishing that there was a Lord of Battles he could pray to.

Rest was going to be very scarce.

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

The day went by in a strangely slow succession of short rests, long waits, and increasing intervals of rowing. Everybody seemed to be infected with a strange frenzy of speed, and wasted their strength in a desperate attempt to slide downstream faster and faster. Amandil watched the expanse of water behind their backs with such intensity that the lines of his frown seemed to have been carved in his forehead permanently. No Arnian boats or ships came after them, however, and as they passed the Southern frontier, he began to realize that they had outrun them. For a moment, he indulged in a satisfying train of thought, picturing Noxaris’s face as he came South with his army only to hear of the theft of the barges and the later fruitless pursuit near Arne. The arrogant bastard had underestimated them, and overestimated by far the aid that his new ally could give him.

Soon, however, he forced himself to discard those thoughts. There was no reason for rejoicing yet, they were still in potentially unfriendly territory, and something had been nagging him in the back of his head since they climbed on the barges and he had the luxury to put two thoughts together. He remembered his conversation with Noxaris, when they had discussed the hostages and the prince told him that the tribes had also sent hostages to Mordor. They are barbarians, they do not think as we do, he had snorted, contemptuously. But in the end it was them, who had become allies of the Dark Lord, which meant that they were as ready to discard their hostages as he had accused the tribes of being. Or were they? Could they be in league with the Merchant Princes, too? Amandil was less and less happy with the idea of the Pelargir garrison lying so close to Gadir.

The veteran’s leg was exuding a terrible smell by now, like rotten meat. Inside the barge, everybody was doing their best effort to withstand the stench without complaining.

“Only two more days”, he promised, touching his forehead with his hand. It was warm, but not boiling yet; that would still take some time in coming, he calculated. “Two days and they will be able to take a look at this in Pelargir.”

“I hope the healers there are good”, the man snorted.

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

Amandil was very careful negotiating passage through tribe territory. He only landed with a sizeable party when the territory belonged to a small, unwarlike tribe, and he never went far from the riverbank, and only for the time that he needed to gather supplies and threaten them with the might of Númenor if they joined the rebels. The people who received them seemed to be very shocked at how they had been treated by their powerful Northern neighbours, and claimed to be at his disposition if he wished to retaliate, but Amandil had no doubt that most would attack them if they could.

Other territories they crossed seemed to have become empty. The nomadic tribes had probably smelled the fumes of war and retreated to their forests and mountains, where they would sit it out and wait for an opportunity to profit from the situation. Others, finally, had become openly hostile, and threw spears and arrows at them from the riverbank (killing two more men in a particularly unlucky afternoon), but they did not make a concerted effort of chasing them. Amandil’s worries, instead of abating as they moved closer to Pelargir unopposed, began to augment with every mile, and his vague suspicions took a more concrete form.

Meanwhile, the fever had finally erupted, and the unlucky man’s face was radiating heat. They had tried dabbing at his wounds with a yellow paste provided by the first of the agricultural tribes, but without much conviction, and even Amandil had to agree that the wolf figurine was a much better help at this point.

“We are almost there” he tried to soothe him, wiping his forehead in a quiet moment of the evening. “Tomorrow we will reach Pelargir.”

The eyes who gazed back into his were glazed and vacant, as if they could not understand what he had just said.

“Sor” a cavernous voice mumbled. “Take me to Sor.”

Sorry, wrong world, Amandil thought, with a sigh.

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

The sky still showed touches of the lingering red of dawn when Pelargir appeared in the horizon, a majestic expanse of grey and white ruins which looked more welcoming to their starved eyes than the fairest city of the Island. Soon afterwards, they could distinguish the darker walls of the garrison enclosure next to the sandy beach by the riverbank, and the improvised harbour where their ships had been moored together with the barges they had built to travel upriver.

It was empty.

“Wait”, he hissed, just as Adûnazer turned to the soldier who was holding the steering oar to give him instructions to approach and dock. Both turned towards him, wide-eyed at his sombre expression. He felt anger fill his chest and had to take a sharp breath, to calm himself before he yelled at them. How could they still be so naïve? Didn’t they have eyes on their heads? “The harbour.”

Adûnazer’s look of relief and hope was quenched abruptly, substituted by an expression of dismay. Amandil’s anger vanished as soon as it had come.

“Go to the back and signal to the others. If there is somebody there, they have already spotted us, of that there can be no doubt. Still, we need to proceed with order and caution.”

Adûnazer bowed, and did as he was told, leaving the lord of Andúnië to his disheartened thoughts.

So, it was true. His worst fears had been confirmed, the dark speculations which had been taking form in the long nights of vigil as they trudged along their path tracked by the enemy. The defection of the kingdom of Arne, serious as it was by itself, had not been an isolated event, but a step further in the plans of someone. Someone who had delivered the most crushing blow while they were away.

But how?

As they slowly approached the riverbank, word of what had happened began spreading across the crews of the other barges. Amandil could once again perceive that ominous silence, the one which had haunted him while they wandered across the northern lands without any escape route in sight, expecting to be waylaid by the enemy at any moment.

As well as it should be, he thought, darkly. Now, they could be waylaid by the enemy at any moment, as well, and there was no escape route.

Soon, their horrified eyes could detect a large number of coloured stains on the sand, which gradually started to mutate into bodies, killed in a violent struggle and left to lie where they fell. They must have been defending the ships there, or perhaps manning the beach at the beginning of the invasion, if the enemy had come by sea.

“Are you… sure we should land here, my lord?” the soldier with the steering oar asked. His face was white.

“We have no choice. We cannot stay here for ever, floating in the middle of the river. Many of us are wounded, and we lack provisions.” Amandil tried to sound more confident than he felt. “Besides, if they were waiting to ambush us, they wouldn’t have left these on the shore. They would have hidden them to lure us into a false sense of security. Leave the wounded on the barges and follow me.”

In any case, if his suspicions were right, there would be no real need to ambush them at this point. They were as good as dead already, trapped between the Merchant Princes and the combined might of Mordor and Arne.

Lost in this ominous train of thought, he barely paid attention to the strangled gasps and cries of the men around him. In truth, the spectacle of desolation that greeted their eyes as they set foot on the surf was enough to chill the bravest man’s blood, and if he had not been struggling with even more horrible visions, of his men and him joining the decomposing bodies of their comrades, silenced forever among the buzzing of flies, it would have chilled his, too. As it was, he could only pay attention to one piece of evidence: Orc arrows and spears protruding from many of the soldiers’s bodies.

“So, it is confirmed”, he said, his voice sounding eerily calm even to himself. “Arnians, Orcs, and…”

“And?”

Ignoring Adunazêr, and looking for a moment as if he had been possessed by a strange bout of insanity, Amandil grabbed his sword and ran. Immediately, he heard heavy footsteps following behind him, past the bloated, foul-smelling corpses, and towards the path leading to the wooden fortress.

In a detached way, he was aware of how carelessly he was behaving, in deep contrast with his wariness and suspicion in every situation they had encountered until then. But before, the situation had not been clear; now, he perceived their position exactly as it was. In a sense, this was a liberating feeling, as he was no longer paralyzed by the fear of making the wrong move, but this liberation also felt hollow: it was the freedom that one might feel a moment before execution, when it became apparent that nothing could change one’s fate anymore.

“Wait, my lord!” Melek was fastest, and Amandil was almost pushed aside as the young captain unsheathed his sword to adopt a protective stance next to him. As they both strode across the silent courtyard, they met many more bodies, similarly left to die where they fell.

Amandil ran past them, heading for the building where the hostages had been living. It was empty, right as he had imagined.

“Do you think… do you think that they were taken somewhere else to be killed?”

“Killed? No.” The lord of Andúnië laughed. “They have been relocated.”

“Relocated where?” Adûnazer and the others had arrived in time to catch the end of the conversation. The Andúnië Guard’s face looked almost as green as the wound of the dying veteran. “To Mordor? To Arne? Was this why those bastards were so eager to attack us, because they knew their hands were not tied anymore?”

“I have my suspicions.” Amandil grimaced. “Follow me.”

This time, he ran towards Magon the Old’s house, whose lower floor seemed as empty as the hostage quarters. As he ran towards the upper floor, two stairs at a time, his nostrils could perceive the sickly scent of Magon’s precious incense mixed with the smell of medicine, but stronger than usual and with a slight tinge of something else. The red curtain was still there, closed for privacy.

He pulled it, so brusquely that it almost fell apart. Beyond it, the old man lay in his comfortable feather bed, his mouth curved in the same smile with which he had reminisced about his family to a bored Amandil for a year.

He was dead. Dead, Amandil observed, but not killed, by Orcs or by anyone else. It could have been the long overdue natural death, or it could have been provoked by the ingestion of poison, but it was apparent from his features that he had not suffered. In the shade of this enclosure, away from birds, beasts and insects as well as from the glare of the sun, his body showed less advanced signs of decomposition than those they had seen until now.

“Damn you”, he hissed, shocking his men with the vehemence of his voice. “Damn you to the deepest abysses of the cursed Void! How did you do it, how?”

“Er… my lord?” How couldn’t they see it yet? Were they all halfwits, or what? “Isn’t he dead, too?”

“The Merchant Princes of Gadir!” He was a hair’s breadth away from losing his temper and scaring his companions even more, but there were barely enough reserves of restraint in his body left to prevent it. “They planned this from the beginning! They had an alliance with the Arnians since long ago, and they brokered the alliance between them and Mordor to prevent the Sceptre from removing their influence from the area! They were waiting for us to leave and deliver ourselves into enemy hands, so they could take the garrison in a surprise attack and steal the hostages from us! Now they have them, and they control the entire territory! And they used him to plan this attack!”

“But…” Melek’s eyes were wider and wider. “He could not send any messages, how could he…. and besides, he’s dead! Why would they kill him if he helped them?”

“They did not kill him, you fool! He killed himself. He was dying anyway, and… and…” Suddenly, it dawned in his mind. “With his dead body here, even if we were to escape and tell of what we saw, it would be difficult to prove his involvement, or incriminate his family. It was a brilliant move!”

“A brilliant move, to kill himself?”

It was beyond infuriating to see that they still looked at him with long, doubtful expressions, as if it could not sink into their minds that anyone could be so devious. After all they had seen in the last days, there was nothing they should find impossible anymore.

Except maybe, a small voice spoke inside his head, that a Númenórean could ever behave like a barbarian.

“In any case…” he began, trying to regain his bearings again. This discussion was pointless. It was meant to be had with Tar Palantir, in the Palace of Armenelos, if he could ever set foot there again, but that was looking more impossible by the moment. “Our priority is to get out of here before the Orcs and the Arnians come downriver to kill us.”

“But… but we have no seaworthy ships!” a soldier in the back said.

“And even if we had them, the Merchant Princes must have blockaded the Bay so we wouldn’t be able to reach Númenor”, he finished grimly. Panic was beginning to show in many faces as they became more and more aware of their predicament. Amandil was a step ahead of them, but that did not mean much in the present circumstances.

“We have to…”

Suddenly, a loud commotion interrupted his announcement. His hands immediately travelled towards the pommel of his sword, certain that their enemies had arrived, and he followed his men downstairs, away from the old merchant’s deathbed.

In the courtyard, three men were struggling. Or rather, one was struggling against two of his soldiers, who were trying to hold him down as he twisted and snarled at them.

“Let me go! Let me go you bastards!” he shouted. Amandil pushed his way past the soldiers to stand in front of them. His jaw almost dropped in recognition: that man, ragged, and with a face made barely recognizable by an unkempt growth of hair, was the lieutenant of the garrison of Pelargir.

“Zakashtart, stop!” he shouted. “Can’t you recognize us? I am Amandil!”

“A-amandil? Lord Amandil?”

“Yes. I am back.” he nodded, forcing himself to smile in reassurance. “We are back.”

Slowly, the soldier’s struggles subsided, and the men let go of him. As they did it, his knees gave way, and he fell to the floor. Though Amandil hadn’t been away for that long, his face seemed much thinner, gaunter than it had been when they said farewell to each other on the day the expedition began. “I… I thought…”

At a sign from him, the other soldiers retreated, and he advanced slowly towards the man. He had seen others in that state before, driven almost crazy by grief and carnage.

“I know, Zakashtart. I know how terrible it must have been. To see all your men die, and be left here, alone, and without hope”, he began, with great care not to raise his voice. The man listened, but he still looked wary, as if ready to bolt as soon as he realized that the people who surrounded him were not who they seemed to be. “But we are here now. We suffered casualties, but we are here, and we need to know what happened.”

“Dead.” It was not clear whether Zakashtart was laughing or crying; maybe not even he knew. “All dead. Killed. Only me.”

“By whom?”

“Orcs from the East. Crossed the river. And ships, many ships”. Of course. “They came in the night.”

“Yes, yes. The Merchant Princes.” His theory was confirmed now, for all it was worth. “But, how did they know? How did they coordinate their attack, and how did they know we were leaving?”

Zakashtart closed his eyes. For a while, it seemed as if he had retreated into a space in his head that Amandil could not touch, his expression as vacant as that of a sleeping man. As some of the soldiers were beginning to mutter in impatience and alarm, however, he opened them again. For the first time, he sought for Amandil’s glance, and he could not help but feel a jolt in his chest at the pain he saw inside.

“Magon. The… the medicines.”

The lord of Andúnie clenched his fists. Before he even noticed what he was doing, he let go of a yell of rage. Of course. All that time, in front of him, in broad daylight. And he hadn’t noticed. He had been too busy feeling sorry for the old bastard.

“The medicines?” Adûnazer inquired. “But there was no message inside…we checked!”

“A code.” That was why the medicines changed every month. “Depending on what he ordered for the month, the message was different.”

Only, this changed everything, he realized, the shock at this revelation turning into the shock of yet another discovery. If they had Zakashtart, this meant that they had an eyewitness, someone who could prove their claims with his statement before the Council of Númenor. This weakened, terrified and crazed man was Tar Palantir’s best weapon at this moment.

It was his obligation to get him to safety, and to Númenor. Even if he and the rest of the party should lay down their lives in the attempt, he had to find a way to do that. Only then, all those deaths would have a meaning, and his mission would be fulfilled, though at a great cost.

“Organize two groups. One will search for weapons and the other for provisions and medicine. We will meet in the beach in an hour’s time” he ordered. “Adûnazer, help Zakashtart and come with me.”

As Adûnazer leaned towards him with his arm extended, Zakashtart growled and retreated like an injured dog, then struggled to his own feet to follow them at a distance. In grim silence, the three of them crossed the corpse-filled courtyard, and headed back to the beach, where more corpses awaited them.

And others who will become corpses soon, the dark voice whispered, once again, in Amandil’s mind.

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

The injured veteran had died at some point after Amandil left the barge; he was found lying in a sitting position, his back propped upon the stern of the boat, and his beloved figurine still clasped on his hand. Amandil leaned over him to close his eyes carefully, wondering if he had been the luckiest of them all.

He counted among the other barges: there were fourteen other wounded in total, with various degrees of severity. Three or four of them could even stand to greet him back and ask for news; others remained sitting, and at least two of them were also in a delirious state.

“What are we going to do, my lord? Where will we go?” Adûnazer asked.

Amandil had been pondering this question relentlessly since they had left the others to organize the search parties. They could not stay there for a moment longer than strictly necessary, for the enemy would come in pursuit. There weren’t enough of them left to man the fortress: if a garrison of a thousand had not stopped the enemy before, a handful of weakened soldiers stood no chance. As he had observed before, they could not sail the open seas, or cross the blockade. There was only one small hope, one tiny chance of survival, and while he had been initially reluctant to take that path, the circumstances were forcing him to make the decision.

Umbar.

They had no seaworthy ships, but with those barges they could try sailing at a small distance from the coast, which was full of sandy beaches through the first part of their voyage, until it became gradually more abrupt after passing the mouth of the Poros. The reefs of Umbar might prove a formidable obstacle, but with expert steering and strong rowing some of them could make it. Of course, they could not enter the city under their true identity, as the merchants of Umbar would be only too happy to finish the dirty work of their associates, but as they were now, it would not be difficult to pass as fishermen or sponge divers. Once inside the city, he would go to the Second Wall, find Pharazôn, and ask him for help.

Amandil shivered, though the sun was already high in the sky and the air was warm. That plan was dangerous, and many of them would die. Probably all of the men who were wounded now would be among the casualties, as they did not have the health or the endurance needed to survive such a journey. And yet, of all the perils that his mind could envision, the darkest and most unthinkable lay in the final part.

Pharazôn was his friend. Since they were children, they had always been closer than brothers, always ready to rush to each other’s aid without the slightest hesitation. When Elendil was conceived, Pharazôn convinced his mother, the Princess of the South, to help them, and after the birth he had watched over the baby, and seen to his every need in Amandil’s stead. In the Haradric wars, they had saved each other’s lives many times. Once, he remembered, he had taken an unconscious, wounded Pharazôn over his shoulders after an Orc ambush, and carried him across an arid desert until he recovered. He had charged singlehandedly at two mounted Haradric warriors, only to give him a chance to escape with his life. When Ar Gimilzôr died, Pharazôn had been the one to send people to protect him from the Merchant Princes, and take him back to Númenor to reclaim his birthright. Their friendship had even survived Amandil’s appointment to the Council, as the representative of the family that opposed Pharazôn’s family bitterly in the Island. After that, it was true, their encounters had become briefer and farther apart in time, but not too many years ago they could still set their differences aside while they were together, and share a drink in good companionship. If Amandil should knock at Pharazôn’s door with death on his tracks, he was sure that his friend would do almost anything to help him. Almost anything-  except, possibly, what he would be asked to do now.

“Pharazôn, I need you to provide a ship and safe passage for me and for this eyewitness of your family’s treachery. We need to warn the King that your mother’s city has committed treason against the Sceptre and that her family orchestrated everything.” He imagined himself saying those words, and cringed. There was no other way to put it, and yet, as it was, it felt nothing like a request that a friend could reasonably make to another. Pharazôn would have to choose between his family and him, and though they were close, his closeness to his mother was even greater. Amandil would be asking for betrayal, almost forcing, in fact, his friend to betray him. What kind of friend would ever do such a thing?

A friend who is the legate to the King of Númenor, he answered his own question. A friend who has run out of any other option.

Zakashtart had knelt on the surf, one hand extended towards the moving waters. He was muttering something, perhaps a litany, whose words none of them were able to decipher.

No, he thought, his resolve hardening, there was no other option. He would have to go and throw himself at Pharazôn’s mercy. Maybe he could manage to convince him to do the right thing towards the realm, though it would most certainly mean the end of their friendship.

“We will go to Umbar”, he said, aloud, to himself as much as to Adûnazer and the others.

“Umbar, my lord?”

“Yes, Umbar. We will travel lightly, and…”

“I do not think this is a wise decision.”

For a brief moment of unreality, Amandil thought he had imagined this voice; that it was only a more hauntingly real manifestation of the whispers he had been hearing in the back of his head since the first Orc ambush. Then, cursing to himself for having lowered his guard, he unsheathed his sword with the fastest move he could manage, and pointed it in the direction of the intruder.

It was a strange man, so strange that for a while all he could do was wonder stupidly at his appearance, without even wondering where he had come from or how could he have snuck upon them undetected. His features and his skin were those of a young man, of the same age as captain Melek more or less, but the eyes told a different story. They were grey, deep, and ageless and, for a moment, he was reminded of his father.

“It cannot be. “Adûnazer looked as if he had seen a ghost. “It… it cannot be.”

Zakashtart was staring at them from the shoreline. He had stopped muttering, but he seemed in no way frightened or anxious by this new appearance.

Amandil swallowed deeply. He needed to keep his composure. He needed to hide how unsettled he was, show himself as the strong leader that he had never felt farther from being.

“Forgive me”, he said, his voice carefully even, though still a little terse. “I had never seen… one of you before. Are you here in friendship, or as an enemy?”

“Alas! It is true that you have become distrustful in recent times. Your forebears would never have asked this of any of us.” His Adûnaic was perfect, but heavily accented. Slowly regaining his bearings, Amandil realized, first, that he should switch to Quenya- but no, he remembered, they preferred to use Sindarin in current speech.

Then, he also realized that his sword was still unsheathed and pointing at the newcomer.

“I need ask. “Damn, his Sindarin was much worse than his Quenya. Curse Tar Palantir, his family, and their penchant for useless ancient ceremony. “All enemies around us. Orcs, barbarians, merchants. What… what way… whence…?”

No, it was no good. When the Elf spoke in Adûnaic, as if he hadn’t even taken notice of his clumsy attempts to speak his language, Amandil could have felt insulted, but all he did manage to feel was relief.

“How did we get here, you wish to say?” We? Of course, there should be more of them. And there they were, he realized, more unsettled than ever upon discovering six other Elves on the riverbank, that he had not seen or heard until that very moment. And their ship. How could a large ship have approached him, Adûnazer, Zakashtart and the men in the barges without any of them seeing anything? “We came by ship, from Lindon in the North. Your father, the lord Númendil of Andúnië, had a vision foretelling your present danger, and he asked for the help of my people. That is why we have come, to deliver you from your enemies and take you back to Númenor.”

Huh, was the most intelligent reply in Amandil’s mind at the moment. He decided not to voice it.

“We are aware that some of your men might feel disinclined to trust us if we were to show ourselves in our true shape. “Now that he paid attention, he noticed that the men in the barges did not look as if they were seeing anything unusual at all. Only Adûnazer was seeing the same thing that he did, if that was possible. “If you allow us the deception, once we show ourselves, we will pretend to be a ship come to rescue you from Númenor.”

“Can you avoid being seen? And your ship, too?” Was that how they had crossed the blockade? But then… Slowly, the pressing plight Amandil was in began sinking back into his brain, banishing some of the eerie strangeness of the situation. In truth, if a winged dragon came flying in at this moment and told him he had been sent by Lord Númendil to rescue him, there was nothing Amandil could do but greet it as a friend at this point. “Can you take us past the ships from Gadir?”

“So many questions, and so little time to answer them. Typical of mortals”, another of the Elves chimed in. The first turned towards him with a slight frown, and he seemed to convey some kind of wordless rebuke, because the other Elf bowed in apology.

“I understand that the Lord Amandil is not asking us for a theorical lesson in Elven concealment, but trying to assess our ability to help him out of his present danger. Those concerns should be easy to allay: yes, we can avoid being seen, and we can prevent the ships from Gadir from seeing you as well. Will you accept our help?”

“Yes.” Suddenly, he wanted to weep, he did not know if from the tension, the relief, or the total unreality of this conversation. When he was a child, his mother had told him tales about them, of the Noldor and the Sindar, of their victories and their defeats. Of their immortality. Even as he stood there, facing them, and knowing that his father had been sent to deal with them, some part of him could not truly accept that they were anything but figments of a storyteller’s imagination.

But if they were not real, then there was no escape, and he could not relinquish that lifeline now.

“What is your name?” he asked, wondering if he should have done so sooner.

“I am Aerandir, and I was sent by the High King of the Noldor, together with my companions. But speed is of the essence now; pleasantries can be exchanged later. If you allow us, we will introduce ourselves to your wounded and we will help them into the ship. If they wish to be seen to, Celebdil here is an accomplished Healer.”

“Yes, I mean… by all means, suit yourselves.” He felt almost tongue tied, as if one of their spells had been cast on him. For a moment, he wondered if it had.

“Eru Almighty, I…I never thought I would see an Elf”, Adûnazer sighed in amazement as they passed by them towards the muddy sands where the barges were. Amandil threw an arm over his shoulder, once again feeling the brief but intense urge to weep.

“Neither did I, Adûnazer. Neither did I.”

Still in his kneeling position by the shore, Zarashtart looked up towards them, and a tear rolled slowly down his cheek.