On the Starlit Sea by Idrils Scribe

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Chapter 1: Stressed/ Silent Panic Attack

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Pellardur is as ugly as any Umbarian city. The eastern gate is a Númenórean monstrosity of green-veined granite, the friezes sculpted with scenes of conquest: ships the size of hills belch steel-clad soldiers while the lesser men of Middle-earth bring tribute, bowing beneath the Sea-lords’ lash. 

The Umbarians guarding it are keen-eyed and cruel, with grey gazes as sharp as their glaives. Elrohir lowers his eyes, brings a hand to his forehead in a gesture of submission, and somehow keeps it from shaking with fear. Despite all Glorfindel’s assurances that this sorcerous Elvish disguise will hold, every moment here is terror. 

Their journey into the Umbarian empire marks a sudden and profound change from their desert-roaming days. Glorfindel no longer needs Elrohir to tell him where to go and how to get there, and the Elf now considers himself firmly in charge of their strange little expedition. 

Glorfindel has business in Pellardur, and so they must enter the harbour city. Elrohir did not argue, mostly because he has nowhere else to go. Besides, he is an Umbarian now.

Before they emerged from the desert Glorfindel sang an Elvish song, soft and shadowy as nightfall, pulling layer upon layer of shimmering deceit over Elrohir. He has a different face now, an entirely unremarkable lad of perhaps seventeen, with dark brown eyes and an aquiline nose. He runs his hand through the wiry curls of this stranger’s hair, but somehow his own, smoother and shorter, is still there. Glorfindel has likewise disguised himself as a burly merchant from Umbar.

Elrohir is supposed to be Glorfindel’s slave, leading his master’s camel, and he is the one to kneel before the guards, offering the gate-toll in his outstretched hands. He begs entrance in Adûnaic with the accent of Umbar. Glorfindel, whose northern drawl is thick enough to get them arrested, is silent.

The guard barely takes note. He snatches the silver from Elrohir’s hand, and motions them into the open mouth of the gate.

Beyond, the streets teem with misery. 

Beggars cluster about them like blowflies on a corpse, chanting and pleading and pulling back their rags to show their mutilations - the empire looks unkindly upon vagrancy. 

Elrohir ignores the wailing tide of human debris, hurrying past the parade of cut noses, branded cheeks, hands lopped off at the wrist. The worst are those that clutter the wedges of shadow thrown by walls and awnings, the ones that rise no more. 

Mangy dogs roam the refuse, and Elrohir is glad he filled his pockets with stones before they entered the gates, so he can keep the curs from Ot’s legs with a couple of well-aimed hits. 

They emerge from the main thoroughfare into the shimmering heat and clamour of the great market. 

No slaves in the North, Glorfindel said, and by his look of stunned horror the trade is indeed alien to him. Elrohir knows it all too well. These wholesale dealers gather up prisoners with Umbar’s corsair ships and drive them to auction in the ports.

The best slaves - young, strong men and pretty girls with all their teeth, are prodded up onto the stands, around each neck a plaque praising their health and meekness. The emperor’s laws ensure fair dealings: customers must see what they are buying, and so the wares are naked. Under the imperial taxman’s watchful eye the din of haggling rises to the leaden sky. 

Seedier stalls deal with the dross of the trade: spindly little things, flawed, underfed and overworked, or simply ill-behaved. Runaways have the brand of recapture scorched fresh and angry into their foreheads. Even here the sellers are honest: the wares are chained together in lots, their faces stained with soot to show the buyer that these are tainted goods, fit for no other purpose than to suffer. They are for the temple’s altar, sacrifices to appease the Giver. 

The Temple of Mûlkher the Mighty, Giver of Freedom, looms over the square like a dark, devouring beast. They pass three red-robed priests driving a chained slave-train inside. Raided from Gondor, by the looks of them. Glorfindel stares at the weeping women dragged along by their neck-rings.These Northerners will not live long - smoke already rises from the temple’s great louver, and screams ring out across the square. 

Elrohir breathes through his mouth, glad for the thick folds of his face-veil. The city’s stench of piled-up human refuse is bad enough, but that tell-tale temple scent of incense and scorched flesh makes his skin crawl. It sets dreadful memories beating against the doors of his mind, but he pushes them down. 

His own fate will be worse, if Glorfindel betrays him now. Elrohir is a rebel, an enemy of the state. The prize on his head would buy all the goods in this square twice over. War rations left him lean as a whip, but his weight in gold is still a fabulous hoard. To say nothing of the favour of the Emperor of Umbar. 

Letting the Elf bring him here has been an act of either faith or folly. He will soon know which. He breathes through his terror, heaving gulps of hot stuffy air.

The pair of them make a strange sight - a mounted merchant and his slave-boy, frozen amidst the square’s bustle to stare at the sacrifices. A warrior in Umbarian livery turns to watch from beneath his tall helmet, and for a moment panic leaps at Elrohir’s throat. 

Will Glorfindel hail the guard? 

Elrohir can barely breathe, his sight swimming with bright flickers of light. What will he do, if Glorfindel’s mysterious business in Pellardur turns out to be collecting his reward? 

But Glorfindel’s eyes slide off the warrior. “Left!” he barks, in that harsh, half-bored tone of master to slave, and whacks Elrohir out of his stun with the driving stick. 

Elrohir obeys and dives into the fly-ridden shadows of another street, this one lined with brothels. With his eyes on the ground he navigates Ot through the throng of dead-eyed women and the men who hawk them. 

Glorfindel is silent, until the alley’s end. “Right!”

Ever deeper into the city’s bowels they go, past opium dens and sweatshops. The mud-brick hovels grow shabbier, the refuse piles higher, the stink of the tanneries heavy in their noses, until the crumbling walls on either side seem to touch each other overhead and the open sky is a distant dream. 

A fine place for an ambush.

Glorfindel does not relent. With some difficulty Elrohir leads their grumbling camel into the narrow alley. Ot is not used to close quarters, and it takes a sharp hiss and a tap with the driving stick to keep the beast from spooking. 

 A wooden hatch squeaks open overhead, but closes quickly when Elrohir looks up. 

Glorfindel motions for the camel to kneel, and steps down. He is tall and burly, and the grey eyes of his Umbarian disguise burn with a cool, cruel disdain. Elrohir recoils.

Slaves go unarmed. Elrohir’s sword and crossbow are packed away in the saddlebag, out of reach behind Glorfindel’s broad back. He closes his fingers around the hidden knife in his sleeve. 

At once, Glorfindel’s eyes flick over. Elrohir releases the knife, but Glorfindel never fails to notice a hidden weapon.

Even so, he seems fearless. He steps to, and his hand comes to rest warm and solid on Elrohir’s arm. All traces of the stern master are gone. 

“Elrohir, my brave one,” Glorfindel whispers in Haradi, soft as a breeze. His face may be strange, but Elrohir knows that voice. “Bear this place but a moment more, and I will never ask it of you again.”

Glorfindel’s golden voice is calm and kind, but it could strike courage into a dead man’s heart. Elrohir stands up straight, and forgets the knife. 

Someone emerges from the shadows of a doorway. Tall, slender. Dressed like a simple working man, a dockworker, perhaps. Elvish eyes beneath an Umbarian turban and veil.

Glorfindel smiles, speaks a string of merry words in that sweet northern tongue of his, and for a moment the dark alley seems to brighten. The Elf, too, is gladdened, from the way he looks at Elrohir with joy open in his eyes. Even so, his answer sounds hurried, an edge of concern beneath the words. Glorfindel replies in kind.

Then the stranger turns, enters the house once more, and is gone.

Glorfindel turns to Elrohir, who stands astonished. “Come,” he says, “My business is done.”

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Chapter End Notes

I'm finally getting around to cross-posting this story to SWG. We'll call it fashionably late ;-) 

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