On the Starlit Sea by Idrils Scribe

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Chapter 7: Night time

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Glorfindel jolts awake in the dark. For a single heartbeat he thinks himself in Umbar still, and dread closes over his heart - where is Elrohir!?

The next, he hears his ward’s quiet breathing and the rush and sigh of the Sea against the ship’s hull. It is the shadowed hour before dawn, and the lamp has burned out, plunging the cabin into darkness. He takes a deep breath, and calms his raging pulse into the steady rhythm of Ulmo’s waves. 

Unease presses against his mind - the

Nemir’s

crew is all astir with restless vigilance. These are dangerous waters. 

Glorfindel can no longer find sleep. The night has not quite shifted to twilight yet when he rises and dresses, his movements smooth and silent in the narrow cabin. He thinks for a moment, then girds on his sword belt. Hadhafang’s familiar weight on his hip is a small comfort.

Elrohir has turned onto his back in the night, his mind sunken into the deep slumber of exhaustion. He lies sprawled, looking young and fragile. His waking gaze holds that world-wary sharpness brought by war and sorrow, but like this, with his eyes closed and his face relaxed into the softness of sleep, he is Elladan’s very image. 

As Glorfindel watches, Elrohir's eyes begin to flick back and forth beneath his eyelids in the restless chaos of dreams. His brow furrows, his breaths quicken, and then he moans, a small, miserable sound. 

Glorfindel is not Elrohir’s father, but Elrond is not here, and so for kindness’ sake he takes a parent’s place and gently touches his own mind to the flickering weave of Elrohir’s. 

Elvish, but not quite. There is something of a Mortal’s elusive, ever-shifting

otherness

, and beneath it all beats an alien rhythm, the inhuman shimmer of Melian’s Maïarin blood. In sleep as in waking, Elrohir is a foreign continent.

Glorfindel can see them, looming on the horizon of Elrohir’s mind: vast, crumbling cities of dark memory, lurking deep in lightless forests. What ghosts of half-remembered horrors dwell there, Glorfindel does not dare imagine. Elrohir avoids them with all his strength. He will have to face them, eventually, and master them lest they devour him. 

Not yet, however, and not alone: Elrond will walk beside him. Elrond, who had dark cities of his own, and razed them to the ground to build Imladris in their place. 

Glorfindel turns away, and plunges into Elrohir’s dream. A faceless shadow haunts the night, ever hunting, closing in. Fire and blood. Screaming. The bile-bitter taste of terror in his mouth. 

With utmost care he unwinds Elrohir from the nightmare’s clutching web, and in its place he sings a song of water falling over stones, the green scent of leaves, that soft grey light of northern skies.  

Sleep. You are safe.

Elrohir sighs, smiles, then turns onto his side and slides deep into dreamless dark. There will be no waking before dawn, and no more shadows. 

In silence, Glorfindel unshutters the window so Elrohir will wake to morning sunlight instead of darkness. Then he slips out the door and closes it behind him. 

He finds Galdor in the great cabin, bent over a gilt-edged chart showing the Bay of Belfalas, its currents drawn in myriad shades of blue. Both Umbar and Gondor are but roughly sketched suggestions, little more than rows of capes, inlets and harbour towns. 

Without a word, Galdor rises and opens one of the cabinets lining the wall. He returns with a crystal flask and two tumblers, into which he pours a finger each of Mithlond’s finest barrel-aged whisky. 

Glorfindel pulls up a chair, and cannot help a sigh of pure delight at the smoky-sweet burn of the first sip. 

“How is Elrohir?” Galdor leans back in his chair. Beneath his eyes sit blue shadows laid down by many nights of vigil. Clearly the

Nemir's

journey here has been no pleasure jaunt.

“As well as he can be, under the circumstances,” Glorfindel replies. He, too, is too tired for embellishment. “Clean, well-fed and sound asleep. My thanks for the food, and the water.”

Galdor nods. “Given gladly, and much needed, it seems. What happened to him?”

Glorfindel hesitates, and takes another fragrant sip to mask it. How much should he reveal? That the Captain of the Ringwraiths survived Sauron’s fall and has joined the war on Umbar’s side is disturbing intelligence indeed, and perhaps Elrond should hear it first.

Galdor drinks slowly, savouring the precious liquor, and gives Glorfindel a canny look over the rim of his glass. “My friend, unless I am very much mistaken, the Black Breath is on that child.” 

Glorfindel releases a long breath. Of course Galdor would know Elrohir’s illness for more than grief alone. The old salt was Círdan’s lieutenant at the Siege of Barad-dûr, and he has seen a few things in his time. 

For a moment they hold each other’s gazes, blue eyes meeting sea-grey ones, until Glorfindel leans back, glass in hand, and decides to open up. After months among strangers, it is a damned relief to find himself deftly freed from the cloak of secrecy by someone he can trust.  

Even so, wooden walls are thin, and he has no desire to alarm the crew even further. Still holding Galdor’s eyes in his he nods, once. 

It is enough. Galdor’s eyes flash with alarm. “What is going on in that Valar-forsaken desert?”

“Darkness and war.” Glorfindel says, and fortifies himself with another swig of Lindon single malt. “I found Elrohir among the Haradrim, fighting a losing battle against a dreadful foe.” He needs not speak the word Ringwraith aloud - Galdor knows them well enough, after the Dagorlad - but even so a shadow seems to pass through the lamplit cabin. “The victory was ours, in the end, but the price was high.”

“A bad wound indeed,” Galdor says, his sorrow clear to see. “The lad is halfway to Mandos.”

Glorfindel sighs. He severed Elrohir from his old life as gently as he might, but it was a cruel kindness nonetheless, and he feels stained by it. “I cared for him as best I could,” he says eventually, “but I am not Elrond. He needs a healer, and his own kin.”

“I have taken the liberty to send messages,” Galdor says, “but I fear there is more trouble to come before anyone can reach us.” 

Glorfindel looks up. “What is the matter?”

Galdor empties his glass, sets it down, and rises. “Come. I will show you.”

Up on the quarterdeck, the light has taken that pale blue of early dawn. The stars wink out one by one. In the east, where beyond the horizon Umbar must loom, the edge of the sea glows red as fire before the coming sunrise. 

“Report?” Galdor asks before they have fully emerged from the stairway.

His first mate, a knife-sharp, sinewy Falathrim by the name of Alphalas, gives her captain a crisp salute. “They are advancing, sir. Tacking against the wind, but they are gaining on us.”

She points, and now Glorfindel sees their peril. A low-standing star, it seems, a pinprick of light against the dark waves. Glorfindel squints, and can make out red sails, marked with the Black Eye. 

“What, exactly, is that ship?” he demands.

“An Umbarian dromond,” Alphalas replies with military efficiency, “and a fast one. Three rows of slave-pulled oars as well as four full-rigged masts for sailing. Under the personal command of the Prince of Pellardur, if the pennants are anything to go by.”  

Ai Elbereth! 

Glorfindel does not flinch. Not out here, with the crew’s eyes on him. “Armament?” he asks instead.

“A steel ram at the stern, Umbarian fire grenades, a boarding bridge, and at least three hundred imperial guardsmen ready to run across.” Alphalas likewise shows no fear as she sums up the grisly list, her hand on the cutlass at her hip. “Better for us if they never catch up, sir.”

Glorfindel can only agree.

“Those Corsairs have hounded us for days.” Galdor says. “We play cat and mouse with them, and I fear the only reason they have not intercepted us yet is that they wish to observe what business an Elf-ship might have in these parts.”

Glorfindel recalls that Elrohir is worth his weight in gold from the imperial coffers, and swears under his breath. The lad never divulged what he did to get such an exorbitant bounty on his head. It would take more than some desert skirmishing. Blinded by his care for Elrohir’s well being, Glorfindel has neglected that particular question. The answer is about to become very relevant indeed. 

“Were you seen taking us aboard?” he demands. 

“They followed as we approached the coast.” Galdor says dryly. “What for, they cannot know. Mortals are nearsighted, and they were anchored far away.”

“Can we take them on, if they attack?” Glorfindel asks in a whisper, his face turned to the sea so the crew cannot overhear.

Galdor’s face hardens, his eyes on the red sail on the horizon. “The

Nemir

is swift,” he says under his breath, “and my crew knows how to swing a cutlass, but we shall be outnumbered.” His gaze catches Glorfindel’s, a harsh little smile on his lips. “That, and they have oars while we can only sail. If the wind fails, we are sitting ducks.” 

The captain turns his back on their enemy to face the West, and bows with that superstitious reverence of sailors the world over. At once, Alphalas and every last soul on deck do the same. Glorfindel follows suit. 

When Galdor straightens, his expression is grave in the red sunrise. “All now depends on Ossë’s good will.”