Ossiriand, Last Days of the War of Wrath.   

Chapter 1. Flight into the Forest.  

Death rode along, Maentêw knew, spurring their frightened horses almost beyond endurance.  

He barely remembered how it had begun. He had been picking up deadwood in the silent forest while the watch was set. The trees had been unnaturally quiet since they first entered that northern stretch of Ossiriand; to the point that one of his travel companions had joked that the forest seemed dead. And still he could feel the tension brewing all around them, and a feeling of dread and malignity such as none he had ever felt before.  

Suddenly, and as they were about to have dinner, a dull rumour had arisen from unmoving branches. Next thing Maentêw knew a vicious band of Orcs and wargs that were surely fleeing the ruin in the North had fallen upon their small group.  

He did not know what had happened to the rest of their patrol, or the unfortunate guards. The Orcs seemed to be mad with fear, and swarmed everywhere in wild disarray. Sorely outnumbered, the elves could barely defend themselves. He remembered hearing the clear voice of their chieftain not far from where he stood, above the clash of iron and feral grunts. “Flee! To the woods!”  

The arrow had grazed his temple then, as he turned to check the captain’s position, and an iron-gloved fist had hit him on his chest, and sent him staggering against a tree. Unbalanced, and winded by the blow, he had fallen to the ground, awkwardly raising his arm in an instinctive attempt at deflecting the deathly thrust that –thankfully- had never come down. He remembered looking up in confusion to see the attacking orc falling to his knees, his head rolling to the ground.  

“Come, Maentêw, to the forest!” the captain had urged him, stepping over the beheaded corpse and extending a hand to help him to his feet, his bloodied sword lowered for a brief moment. The warg had caught him then, jumping on his chest from behind the tree and bringing him down with its weight. The captain had knocked himself senseless with the fall and the heinous creature was already aiming for his throat by the time Maentêw had managed to kill it.   

“Up here! Carry him along!” As if sent by the Lord of the Forest himself, a couple of tall horses had appeared out of nothing amidst the carnage right in time, led by the lieutenant. Looking around, Maentêw noticed that they were momentarily at the edge of a battle that was rapidly dwindling out –those of his fellow warriors who had not fallen under the wild blows of the apparently maddened host were already making their way into the safety of the woods. He did not lose time asking questions. After helping the lieutenant get hold of their injured captain he jumped on the other horse and hurried after them into the forest, followed by a cloud of black-feathered arrows. 

They had ridden hard that night. 

Every time they tried to stop and take some rest the trees would close in and roar menacingly. They could not change course either. A path would open before their mounts briefly, only to disappear right after their passage. Once or twice they tried to retrace their steps back to the place of the ambush, only to be met by an impenetrable, living, wrathful wall.  

As the first rays of Anar fought to pierce the dense, green vault, Maentêw risked a brief stop.  

“How is he?” he asked in concern, dismounting swiftly and walking to the other horse. The lieutenant held the unconscious, blood-soaked form of their captain before him. As soon as Maentêw grabbed the limp weight the other elf let go and almost fell to the ground, pale as the full moon.  

“I am fine, just a scratch… take care of him,” he gasped. 

Grimacing as he uncovered the ragged, open wounds on the captain’s chest, Maentêw looked around in despair. They had left their packs behind and they only carried the emergency medicine pouches on their belts. He cleansed the cuts and crusts of dried blood as best as he could with abundant water from his waterskin and then cursed when the longest slash started bleeding again. The creature’s claws had cut through boiled leather viciously, and the gashes were deep.  

“At least there will be no poison left in the wounds…” His companion seemed recovered and now hovered around Maentêw worriedly.  

“Give me your medicine pouch and sit down, Gildor, you look dead on your feet…I do not want to have to carry you as well…” 

They staunched the bleeding with what yarrow leave and beard-moss they had available and then stitched the torn, deep, long gash inflicted by the sharp warg-claw that ran from below the ribs up to left shoulder and neck. Fortunately, the wounded elf remained unconscious during the procedures. When they were done, both Maentêw and Gildor were shivering with exhaustion.  

“Do not expect him to compliment you for your needle work, Maentêw…”  

Maentêw did not answer. He was busy chewing their supplies of dried willow bark into a paste that would, hopefully, prevent the wounds from festering. He spread it over the deep cut and dressed it all with a pad of birch bast -then fixed it place with makeshift bandages shredded out of their shirts.  

“You could do with some of my stitches in that nasty wound as well,” he told his companion. “Let me give you a hand…” He took care of the arrow wound in Gildor’s upper arm and then allowed him to have a look at the scratch on his own temple, which suddenly throbbed and burned most uncomfortably. 

“What, now?”  

Maentêw sighed and looked around. The sun was high in the sky. They were lost amidst a dense forest; tired, wounded and with no food or water. He got up tiredly.  

“I think I can hear a stream when the wind blows that way,” he informed cautiously, pointing towards their right. “We can fill our waterskins there.”  

“And I could set up some traps. We could do with some food,” Gildor nodded. As in answer, the forest roared wildly and the closest branches shook menacingly towards them. “I will not touch your trees!” he shouted then angrily towards the tall, imposing trees, his patience snapping at last. Maentêw lifted a hand and listened intently.

“Calm down, Gildor, they are not against us…” 

“You are the Wood Elf,” the Noldo grunted with a shrug, still staring suspiciously at the trees.  

“Sinda,” Maentêw corrected distractedly, wondering at the strange mood of the forest. The air was thick and charged with wrath and violence, but not towards them, as far as he could tell. But some of the most threatening voices he could not understand, nor had ever heard before. “We must continue,” he decided. “They are warning us…”  

“Orcs?” The Noldo had taken three steps back and now stood protectively by their captain, Maentêw noticed with faint amusement. 

“Perhaps, but not too close, I would say. But I feel that we should be moving.”  

“But he needs to rest!”  

Looking at the tired, worried face of his companion, Maentêw bit back a sharp rejoinder. “We have no food, no shelter, no medicine…and no idea of where we are or how far we strayed from our company, Gildor,” he explained mildly, then grimaced slightly remembering the murderous band of orcs they had left behind. “His only hope is that we keep moving…”  

“His only hope is that his doom surely lies well beyond these forsaken woods,” the Noldo retorted gruffly, squatting by the wounded elf and lifting him with some effort. “You hear me, child?” he groaned, shifting as much weight as he could off his wounded arm. “You were not born as a light of hope for your people only to find death before your first yen…don’t you dare!”  

They rode on slowly for the rest of the day, following the path set by the trees, which now, Maentêw noticed, veered steadily eastwards. As the sun touched the dense canopy in her slow descent they reached a clearing bathed by a singing creek. Taking it as a signal, they dismounted and decided to rest for a while. 

“He has been drifting in and out of consciousness,” Gildor commented as he tried to force some water into their wounded companion. “And I fear he is running a fever.”  

They exchanged a worried look and finally Maentêw sighed. “I will try to find something to eat. We will rest and then ride on. The trees seem to know where they are leading us.” 

After some foraging, Maentêw returned with handfuls of pignuts and berries stacked in his folded cloak and some threads of green willow bark coiled around his belt. They ate in silence and drank from the small creek. If they lifted their heads they could distinguish the reddish glow of the fires tingeing the crown of the forest towards the north. They wondered briefly how the war was going, and what might have been of the rest of their small patrol, and tried to convince each other that those of their fellow warriors who had managed to flee the orcs would be safe. Having recovered part of their strength and feeling somewhat restored by their meagre fare, they went to check on their captain.  

The wounded elf was conscious, grey eyes fogged with pain and fever and strands of dark hair plastered to his clammy face. He kept a stoic silence while Maentêw dabbed a paste of green willow bark on his wounds and tried to distract himself from the stinging pain looking up to the branches that stretched above them and whispered soothingly in sympathy and concern. 

“We do not want these cuts to fester and rot,” Maentêw explained, wincing guiltily at the scowls of pain that the captain could not conceal. “I know it hurts,” he added softly, seeing that his patient tried to speak. “It will be over in a moment…”  

“…Food,” the lying elf finally managed in a hoarse voice, breathing heavily and casting urgent looks at his companions.  

“We have a few berries left, but I can gather more,” Gildor offered, peeking from behind Maentêw’s shoulder. “That is surely a good sign, Maentêw?” he asked hopefully.  

The wounded elf rolled his eyes in exasperation.  

“Food!” he insisted in a stronger voice, at the same time trying to lift his left arm in a brusque movement. Almost immediately he let escape a pitiful yelp and closed his eyes tightly, gasping raggedly at the sharp pain that his hasty movement had no doubt caused in his injured chest.  

“Easy, child, or you will rip my stitches open,” Maentêw soothed him. Then, as understanding dawned on him, he lifted his head and followed the younger elf’s gaze, and let escape a loud laugh. “Look, Gildor, the Wood Elves have left a present for us!” 

Above them, dangling temptingly from a tall branch, almost invisible in the gathering shadows, there was a pack of woven bark. It was the custom of the roaming hosts of Laiquendi to hang provisions from the trees as they marched, so that they had supplies left for an eventual return trip.  

“These are not old, most probably from a scout,” Maentêw said excitedly as he opened the contents of the parcel that Gildor had hurried to bring down; three pieces of dried meat and a salmon cake that he split in three parts. Soon they were munching with grateful delight. “The trees are leading us towards a band of Laiquendi,” he told his companion in deep relief. “Let us keep going!”  

They started on again as the shadows spread slowly before them. As the full moon climbed the sky a few hours later, and while they followed the bubbling creek as it pleased the trees, they found two more parcels, one containing a leather bound flask filled with a heart warming cordial that they shared with their wounded captain, and the other a pouch of dried herbs for the fever which they had no way of boiling.  

The second dawn since the attack found them in a sun-dappled glade padded with soft grass and surrounded by birches, alders and willow trees that looked on a pool formed by the creek as it met a wider, deeper stream that came from the Ered Luin.  

“Do you think that we will find a cooking skin dangling from a tree if we go ahead?” Gildor asked worriedly as he descended from a tall birch with another bundle. Their captain now burnt in fever. Despite their careful ministrations, his wounds looked red and swollen and the long one on his chest was festering rapidly.  

“I think we better ask them to lend us one,” Maentêw murmured, standing up slowly and casting a wary look at a thicket of tall alders before them. His sharp ears had caught the faintest creak of a yew bow being nocked. “We need your help!” he shouted then in the language of the Laiquendi. “Show yourselves!”  

TBC

A/N Maentêw is an OC from other tales. He features in “They did not Take Root in That Land” as a former friend of Oropher’s.

Oropher comes up in chapter 4.

I set up a limit of 2500 words per chapter in this story, for no particular reason except that I usually tend to write very long chapters and I wanted to know if I was capable of this.

Chapter 2. Following The Trail.  

“There are tracks all around here. Two horses, three elves…One badly wounded, it seems.”  

The trees nodded their agreement encouragingly, but they were the only ones listening. The young elf shrugged and sat on a flat stone not far from the singing creek, waiting until his two friends finished with their bickering and decided to join him on the ground, or at least acknowledge his findings. It would take them some time, he considered, judging by the angry tone of their squabbling. With a resigned sigh, Brethil uncorked his water skin and drank.  

“I will not listen to you anymore…”  

“You never do, anyway…”  

“Had you not insisted that we took that turn we would not be lost on the first place!”  

“It was you who asked what was going on in the forest!”  

“I just wondered, I did not mean that we got lost!  

“We are not lost, Thranduil! This is the place, and if you cannot see it then you are even dumber than what my naneth thinks!”  

Brethil winced at that last shot, and dared not look up at his friend. The angry elleth had jumped to the ground and now stamped purposefully towards him, her long reddish braid swinging behind her and making her look like a young beech swaying in an early narbeleth’s breeze.  

“Your friend insists that we are lost,” she informed haughtily, as if they had not been heard by all living creatures in half a day’s walking distance. She dropped gracefully beside him and grabbed his water skin. “I wonder how he manages to find his own way home when he goes hunting,” she added with a mischievous smile.  

“You have just ruined a clear set of tracks, Cûiell,” Brethil warned her softly, not taking in the provocation and pointing around her. “Two horses, three elves, a few hours ahead of us…”  

Thranduil’s voice reached them in a worried whisper before she could answer. “You were right, Cûiell…This is the place, but someone stole our food bag… Look! They cut it from the tree!” To work out his annoyance Thranduil had climbed higher up the tree in which they had been arguing. Now he was standing well above them, showing the dangling piece of rope from which their food bag had hung.  

“Come down, Thranduil!” the elleth called, scanning excitedly the tracks all around them. “They are elves, Brethil found their tracks!”  

“Are we sure that they are elves?” Staggering after a daring jump, Thranduil joined them.  

“Orcs do not ride horses and Men’s tracks are deeper…and fouler,” Brethil argued. Thranduil looked as worried as he was. Both had been raised in the Doriathrim’s distrust of strangers.  

“One of them was badly injured,” Cûiell informed casually after inspecting the grass around the tree trunk. “We will only have to worry about the other two…” She straightened up and adjusted her bow on her shoulder. “Shall I go alone?” she joked, casting a provoking glance at her two friends before jumping nimbly on the closest tree and running into the forest, following the clear trail.  

“At times I wish I had never met her,” Thranduil groaned in exasperation, returning the waterskin to his friend. With an incredulous snort, Brethil placed it into his pack and took as well to the trees, starting after their adventurous friend.  

They ran tirelessly for half the moonlit night, the elleth always ahead, keeping an alert eye on the tracks.  

“Did you hear what she said?” Thranduil complained to his friend. They had stopped for a brief moment while Cûiell searched the ground to check their course. Brethil thought it wiser to pretend ignorance. It would not improve Thranduil’s mood to be reminded that his humiliation had been witnessed, even if only by his best friend. “She said that her naneth says that I am dumb…”  

Brethil let escape a brief laugh and then covered his mouth at the wild glare that the elleth cast them from the ground. “The Laiquendi think that we are all dumb and deaf and clumsy, Thranduil, I would not worry if I were you…” he offered in a comforting whisper.  

It was true. It was some fifty sun-rounds now since their group of survivors from Doriath had joined the wandering elves of Ossiriand, once they gave up looking for their lost princes. They had fitted in easily, and for the homeless Sindar it had been like returning to their roots, as they shared the Laiquendi’s carefree and natural way of living in the forest. Yet for their green kin the Doriathrim were like children who had to be patiently taught the ways of the forest, in which to their eyes they were as unlearned when compared to them as were the Noldor when matched against the Sindar. Even Thranduil and Brethil, who barely recalled life in Doriath and had been raised almost as Wood Elves, could not yet equal other young Laiquendi their age in their forest lore and the way they were attuned to the trees’ song.  

“So you think that she defends me before her naneth?” Thranduil asked with a smug smile.  

“Ask her!” Brethil sighed in exasperation. At times his friend’s pride and sense of worth wearied him beyond measure. Thranduil could jump from self-pity into self-assurance -and the other way- without warning and following his own line of reasoning, which at times was unfathomable even for his best friend.  

“I do not understand…” Cûiell’s puzzled voice interrupted their discussion and they both joined her on the ground.  

“What is there to understand? The tracks are clear and fresh, as far as I can see…” Thranduil seemed so overly pleased with himself now that he did not catch her troubled expression. “They cannot be much further ahead and...”  

“Shut up!” Her commanding tone rendered him speechless. “Do you hear?” They listened intently for a short while and then looked at each other and nodded. “Those strange voices, and the brewing tension in the forest are gone…And we are not lost!” she growled warningly before Thranduil could pick up their argument. But the young Sinda looked worried now.  

“It is strange,” he whispered. “It is as if a grey cloud had been lifted from the forest…”  

“Do you think that the trees were leading us to some purpose?” Brethil ventured, glancing furtively over his shoulder. Since they had sneaked off their settlement half a moon ago following Oropher, who had travelled north to gather news about those strange fires in the northern sky, the forest had behaved in an unusual manner. Almost unwillingly they had strayed from their original course and had taken a turn to investigate strange tree voices and mysterious paths that opened before them and then disappeared at their backs. Forced ahead by an unyielding wall of living trees, they had followed the forest’s commands until they got to that clearing…Brethil shook his head and closed his eyes against those dreadful memories.  

“I do not think it was the trees,” Thranduil finally said slowly, meeting his friend’s eyes intently. Brethil shivered. Few had heard the tale of Thranduil’s meeting with one of the Onodrim in the years of their exile, while their group of Doriathrim still wandered the forests not far from the lands where it was said that Beren and Lúthien had dwelled after their return form the Halls of Mandos. That Old One had looked benevolent enough by Thranduil’s account, but still Brethil did not like the thought of an actually walking and talking tree ordering them around from an invisible location. And the feeling in the forest had not been a friendly, peaceful one.  

“Nonsense,” Cûiell’s voice interrupted their musings. “No one has ever seen the Onodrim south of the River Thalos…except for you, Thranduil, and in all these past days you never mentioned that you were reminded of that voice you once heard…” But she sounded uncertain now.  

“Whatever it was, it is no longer with us,” Thranduil said, sensing his friends’ discomfort and unconsciously assuming the leading role that came up naturally to him in difficult moments. “Our prey is not far ahead, and it now occurs to me that they were surely fleeing… what we found in that clearing. Perhaps these elves were being led as well by the trees. Let us catch up with them and keep them under vigilance…until we are sure of who they are and what they want. How far ahead you deem that they are, Cûiell?”  

“Not much,” she guessed. “Their pace has slowed down, and we are not far from where I left the flask with the cordial…If we hurry up we will get to them before they start moving again…”  

They caught up with the fugitives even earlier than they expected, sitting by another tree, smelling and tasting the Wood Elves’ cordial. Brethil and his friends studied them from the branches, silent and unmoving as night predators, wrapped tightly in their moss-and stone coloured cloaks, their starlit eyes narrowed so the glitter of the moonlight on them would not betray their position. Only when the strangers started again the three young elves gathered together in one thick branch to deliberate.  

“I want my flask back,” Cûiell grunted crossly.  

“One of them is from Valinor,” Brethil observed, still impressed by the bright eyes and inner shimmer that seeped from one of the elves.  

“He did not look to me like those who came to our encampment,” the elleth argued, remembering the shiny, lordly elves who had come to warn them that a terrible war was going on and that it was time for the Elves to desert Beleriand.  

“An exile,” Thranduil spat darkly. “A kinslayer.”  A dense silence fell over the three youngsters. Finally, Brethil stirred.  

“The other was a Sinda, by his looks…And not all the Exiles are kinslayers,” he ventured doubtfully. Thranduil shook his head.  

“I know that. Anyway, we are not going to allow them passage into our woods…Not without checking…”  

“But they are armed…”  

“And so are we! And we are three, while one of them is wounded…I say that we ambush them in that clearing where this creek joins the River Legolin…Are you with me?”  

“I am,” Cûiell assented quickly, unslinging her bow and checking it. “And you, Brethil?”  

He sighed. They had got into so much trouble already -since they had started on that adventure- that ambushing a group of Elven warriors did not seem a totally unwise course of action. He shrugged.  

“Of course I am, but let’s be careful…”  

“Let them be careful instead,” Thranduil boasted with a feral grin, and with no more words they flew away across the trees that bent obligingly to ease their passing, the elleth on the lead, choosing the shortest path with sure foot.  

They alighted on the blooming branches of the tallest alder deep in a dense thicket well before the first light. After a brief consultation, they scattered in a semicircle facing the tall birch where Cûiell’s food parcel hung, and made ready to wait, well protected by the thick foliage. Patiently, they sat there as the first birds awoke and the grey dawn broke into a clear blue morning, their bows ready on their laps.  

The soft, rhythmic pace of the horses alerted them.  

Brethil tensed on his branch, his breathing almost catching on his throat. Closing his eyes, he forced himself to relax. Those were elven kin, they meant no harm; he told himself one more time, banishing memories of the kinslayers from his mind. Besides, they had Cûiell, who was unbeatable with a bow, and Thranduil, who was brave and bold. “And I can talk ourselves out of any trouble we might run into,” he reminded himself firmly, fixing his eyes on the glade with renewed decision.  

The night had been hard on the travellers. They looked even more dishevelled and worried than when they had last seen them. Silently, Brethil bent over to catch Thranduil’s eye. They had agreed to wait for his signal before contacting the strangers. The Shimmering One had just come down the birch with another of Cûiell’s parcels when Thranduil made the gesture for them to nock their arrows and train them on the newcomers. Brethil could not hold back a scowl as he heard the faint creak of Thranduil’s bow. He caught his breath briefly, only to release it in a defeated sigh when the stranger he deemed a Sindar looked up straight to where they hid and spoke in the language of the Green Elves, though heavily accented, in a voice that sounded hoarse with urgency.  

“We need your help, show yourselves!”  

TBC

A/N Brethil and Cûiell are OCs from “What’s Left Behind” as well. Brethil will grow up to become Thranduil’s secretary. Cûiell is the maiden name of Gaildineth, Thranduil’s wife in “What’s Left Behind.” At the time of this story Thranduil called her Gaildineth –bright bride- only in his thoughts, because he loved her but dared not approach her except as a friend.  

Thranduil and his friends are somewhat past their majority but still very young. This is taking place around the year 575 of the First Age.

I told about Thranduil’s encounter with an Ent in Droplets, “Advice from a Tree.”

Chapter 3. New Acquaintances and Old Friendships.

“You are a danger to everyone! I cannot believe…”

“It is not my fault!”

“Meaning that the bow that I gave you is flawed?”

“Well, I do oil it...”

“You do not care properly for it, and it complains…”

With an exasperated growl, Brethil shouldered his bow and jumped to the ground, not far from where the newcomers’ horses grazed peacefully. Composing what he hoped would amount to an imposing expression on his youthful face, he walked to the stranger who had called up to them.

“My name is Brethil. What are you doing here?” he asked in Sindarin.

Casting an amused look to the treetops, where the argument progressed heatedly, the Sinda bowed slightly. “Well-met, Master Brethil. My companions and I were attacked by a band of orcs and wargs two days ago, to the west. We need your help, if you have any to spare…”

“A cooking skin, yarrow leaves, some dried birch bark, clean bandages,” the Shimmering One grunted from where he knelt by their wounded companion. “Eru, Maentêw, they are children!” he complained as Brethil got closer. “Do you have anything for us, boy?” he urged then.

Brethil did not pay attention to him. Hanging his bow carefully on a low branch of an obliging tree –to spare himself Cûiell’s harsh rebuke- he knelt down beside the wounded elf and opened his pack.

“A cooking skin,” he mumbled, producing a small one that his naneth always insisted on placing in his pack, much to his embarrassment. “That wound is festering,” he informed the Shimmering One, who had quickly grabbed the cooking skin and set himself to start a fire.

The one who had been addressed as Maentêw knelt down beside him.

“We did what we could, but we did not have much time…”

“You will have to tear it open and clean it up again,” Brethil agreed, pointing at the reddened flesh along the long gash on the elf’s chest, and the greenish tinge around the wound lips. He rummaged again in his pack and then released a relieved sigh. “This will help,” he said, producing a small horn container with a wooden stopper and opening it effortlessly. The customary stench wafted up almost immediately, and Brethil could not hold back a mischievous grin at the elder elf’s involuntary scowl. “This healing powder works wonders,” he informed, pouring a handful of smelly, greyish dust on his palm. “The Laegrim make it out of a number of disgusting things, but it is very effective against rotten blood and the blackening sickness of the flesh…”

“Brethil, step aside…” Thranduil’s tense voice startled him. He looked up to see that his friend had finally come down from the tree, wearing his most menacing expression. Cûiell stood behind him and both had their bows nocked and trained on the strangers.

“Thranduil, it is fine…”

“This is the land where the Wood Elves dwell. No one enters here uninvited. Who are you and what are you doing here?” Thranduil’s voice had his father’s taunting, haughty manner, Brethil thought in exasperation, catching the quick, slightly surprised glances that the two strangers exchanged.

“Look, Thranduil…” he insisted, trying to appease his friend.

“No, he is right,” the elf called Maentêw came to stand beside him. “We were attacked by a band of orcs and wargs and were separated from our company, and got lost in your forest. He is Gildor Inglorion, from… Balar, and I am Maentêw, captain of the southern marches of Doriath,” the Sinda offered in a friendly, pleasant manner.

“Doriath? Like yourselves!” Cûiell chirped, lowering her bow in plain relief. By the brief shadow that clouded Thranduil’s features Brethil knew that he, too, was fighting back terrible memories.

“Doriath no longer stands,” his friend managed in an almost steady voice.

“I was there when it fell,” the Sinda acknowledged softly. “But that is no reason for the Doriathrim to raise their weapons against each other, no matter where they meet,” he added, taking two careful steps towards Thranduil, his palms up in a gesture of peace. Brethil tensed, awaiting Thranduil’s unpredictable reaction.

“Are you a kinslayer?” The question stunned the three of them, and then Brethil released another groan. Sensing that there was no more need for caution, and leaving the males to smooth down their ruffled feathers, Cûiell had taken to explore the makeshift camp. She was poking now with her bow at the Shimmering One, who squatted by the newly awoken fire, and was questioning him with her usual bluntness.

“I am not,” the Exile grunted in a low, menacing voice, swatting away her bow with a warning glare that meant that no, he was not a kinslayer but yes, with proper encouragement he might as well become one. Momentarily shocked by the harsh growl, Cûiell took one involuntary step back.

“You are Oropher’s son, if I am not mistaken,” the one called Maentêw chimed in hurriedly, surely reading Thranduil’s scowl correctly and hoping to distract him from teaching the Shimmering One the basics of elven courtesy. “And you…I am sure that I knew your adar as well?” he added, casting Brethil an appraising glance.

“Fêrtond,” Brethil offered in a quiet yet firm voice. His adar had been among the first to fall before the sudden onslaught of the sons of Fëanor, and it still hurt, after all those sun-rounds. He looked away, not wanting to see the knowing, compassionate look on the Sinda’s eyes.

“Of course,” Maentêw nodded softly. “You take after your naneth’s family…I hope that she is doing fine?”

“Well enough, thank you,” Brethil answered curtly. “Now, Thranduil, I think that you can lower your bow; their companion is wounded and they need our help,” he continued in a businesslike tone, taking charge of the situation with an authority that at times managed to restrain even Thranduil’s unruly temper. “Is that water boiling or not?”

                                                                                      ~*~*~*~

The sun was high in the sky when Gildor finished cleaning and re stitching the ragged gash in their captain’s chest, with Brethil and the elleth’s –Cûiell, as she had introduced herself in her cheeky manner- help. With an ostentatious gesture of contempt, Thranduil had set in search of some obliging prey willing to serve as their meal. Confident that the young Sinda would have inherited his father’s talent, Maentêw had turned to reawakening the fire, looking forward to their first hot meal since the night of the attack. While busy with that mechanical task, he tried to put order in the mixed feelings and turbulent memories aroused by that unexpected meeting.

Thranduil –and Brethil- had been no more than young children when the few scattered survivors had taken separate courses after Doriath fell that fateful winter. Maentêw still remembered the heated arguments with Oropher, who had been one of his closest friends back then. They had parted in anger, each certain that his course was the best, too wounded by recent events to be able to see reason in the other’s position. They had exchanged harsh words and accusations and had followed different paths then –Oropher into the forests of Ossiriand in the hopes that he might find the missing princes and Maentêw south towards the Sea, leading Elwing and the few survivors of the royal household to the safety of Cirdan’s stronghold in Balar. Running into his friend’s now grown-up son in the middle of those Tauron’s forsaken woods had revived painful memories that Maentêw felt he was not ready to face.

“Eru, child, you cannot die, you would never be allowed into Mandos’ Halls, not with that stench!” Gildor’s complaint forced Maentêw out of his gloomy thoughts. He looked back to see that his friend had just finished spreading a stinking paste down the long wound and was dressing it with clean bandages and long strips of birch bark. “How shall I get rid of this…odour?” the Noldo groaned, fixing the last bandage and lifting his hands to his face, only to put them away with a scowl of disgust.

“There.” The elleth stood before Gildor with a wide smile, handing him a handful of herbs Maentêw did not recognize. Despite his friend’s harsh, dry outer shell, children and young ones were always attracted to Gildor, Maentêw chuckled inwardly. “Is he your son?” she asked while the Noldo rubbed his hands with a sceptical frown. “Has he a name?”

“No and yes,” Gildor answered cautiously, casting a quick look at Maentêw, who shrugged and turned his attention back to the fire, leaving his friend to cope with the elleth’s apparently unquenchable curiosity.

“This seems to work,” the golden-haired elf observed in mild surprise, lifting his hands to his nose. “He is a… a friend’s son,” he explained then, pointing at the wounded elf who rested in a deep, feverless slumber for now. “And he is our captain as well. His name is Gil-galad.”

“Captain?” Brethil had been busy picking up deadwood for their fire, but he had been keeping an eye -and an ear- on their camp, it seemed. “In whose army?” he asked in curiosity, dropping an armful of sticks beside the fire and watching Maentêw with undisguised interest.

“In Balar’s!” Maentêw snapped. “A mixed army of survivors ready to continue fighting the evil creatures of Angband, instead of hiding in the forest…”

“Peace, Maentêw,” Gildor chimed in, seeing the chagrined expression in the boy’s face. “They are children…”

“So is he,” Maentêw snapped, nodding curtly towards their wounded captain, feeling a surge of anger that had nothing to do with the children. With brusque movements and avoiding his friend’s worried glance, he stood up and walked to their horses, who had reached the easternmost limit of the glade in their unmolested grazing.

“They wanted to travel west to join an elven army, but Oropher and the others would not allow it,” he heard the elleth’s conspiratorial voice, and Gildor’s noncommittal grunt as answer. Taking a deep breath, he busied himself with checking their horses’ legs and cleaning their hoofs, allowing his anger to ebb away. Had Oropher led his group to Sirion as I insisted that it was his duty, these children would be as dead as all the rest, he reminded himself, forcing his mind to concentrate on the task at hand. Busy fighting bitter recollections, he was not aware of Thranduil’s return until a tempting smell reached him. Patting his horse comfortingly, he walked back to where his companions where gathered around the cooking skin.

“Not a plentiful hunt?” he taunted the young Sinda, taking seat by the fire beside Gildor and counting the pieces of willow grouse floating in the tasty-looking stew.

“Enough for the three of us,” Thranduil retorted with a twisted smile that was entirely Oropher’s, Maentêw noticed. “After all, you have been eating up our supplies…”

Overcoming his gloomy mood, Maentêw allowed himself to be dragged into playful bantering while Brethil passed around pieces of stewed willow grouse accompanied by fleshy wood-mushrooms on makeshift bark plates. “According to the forest law, and since you found us helpless in your territory, you are forced to grant us hospitality for at least two days…”

“Helpless?” The youngster cast a meaningful look at the long swords leaning against the tree closest to where the wounded elf rested.

“They are warriors in an elven army, Thranduil,” Brethil informed his friend eagerly, “and that is their captain…”

“And where were the mighty warriors going in their hurried flight?

“They were attacked by the same band of orcs that we met; he said that before,” Cûiell burst in helpfully. Maentêw almost let fall his meal and Gildor choked on a piece of meat.

“You ran into a band of orcs?” Maentêw asked in dismay. “Where? When? How…”

“We make the questions here,” Thranduil cut him, raising his hand to stem his friends’ willingness to exchange information with their uninvited guests. “As you pointed out, you are in our territory. So tell me, how is it that a former captain of Doriath is now a plain warrior in a stranger’s army, and what are the three of you doing in the woods of Ossiriand?”

Casting a restraining glance at Gildor, who clearly seethed at the boy’s insolence, Maentêw began his tale.

“…And we know not what happened to the rest of our patrol or to the orcs that attacked us. The trees pressed us on relentlessly, and we had ridden for two nights and a whole day when you found us,” he ended tiredly. “We thought that we were being led to a settlement of wood elves, and that was our mission anyway…How far is your home?” he asked in a whisper then, all the weariness and tension of the past days suddenly catching up with him.

“And what were you three doing in the middle of the forest?” Gildor asked in turn, unable to restrain his own curiosity. Their three hosts exchanged wary glances. “Not now.” Thranduil said. “You are tired and you cannot go anywhere in that state. We will keep watch while you take some rest,” he added with a twisted smile. “We need to take counsel among ourselves.”

“We shall look after him,” the elleth put in, pointing at the wounded elf. “And when you are rested I will have a look at your wounds,” she added, frowning at the ragged bandages on Gildor’s arm and Maentêw’s forehead. “Now, go and do as you are bidden,” she ended in a commanding tone that made Gildor laugh as he nodded obligingly.

“See, Maentêw, we are being bossed around by children!” he chuckled, standing up tiredly and following their suggestion gladly.

“Well, you must be used to it, anyway,” Brethil retorted in a friendly manner, nodding towards their young captain. Amused by the children’s good humour, Maentêw conceded defeat. Following Gildor’s example, he wrapped himself in his cloak and lay down under a willow tree, intending to remain alert.

The ominous roar jolted him from a deep slumber. He sat up with a start and groped around wildly for his sword, amazed to find out that the night was well in.

“What…?”

TCB

Chapter 4.  Friends or Foes?  

“I do not think that we are progressing in any significant manner….”  

Oropher swallowed an annoyed growl. “I am glad you think we are progressing at all,” he grunted gruffly, sharpening his knife with more energy than necessary while casting dark glances at the group of green elves who sang merrily around a fire.  

It had been a difficult day, to say the least, in a difficult moon, in a quite difficult sun-round.  

That the new star heralded changes and omens no one had doubted, but for years after its first sighting Oropher and his host of nomadic Laiquendi had continued with their free roaming of the densely forested lands in southern Ossiriand -where hunt was plentiful and war but a distant rumour- eluding all contact with other elves; and they were not about to change this state of things for a minor cosmic event. After all, whatever changes and omens the new star portended, they seemed not to concern them.  

Then, the trees began to spread strange news, confirmed by hunters who strayed north and west, but still they paid them little heed.  

Only when the fires broke out in the north, followed by almost constant tremors in the land and an unexplained unrest that spread across Beleriand even into their easternmost forests did Oropher decide that it was time to renounce their self-imposed isolation and seek counsel abroad.  

But, of course, he would not look for Círdan’s on the first place. Having convinced himself that he was now one of the Silvan –once he reluctantly gave up on the search for the missing princes- Oropher firmly believed that they should take council with the Hîrdawar, the mythical, elusive leader of all the wandering clans of the Avari, rather than seeking out their Sindarin and Telerin kin in Balar and in the mighty city of Sirion, of which only a small group had heard, and even few had ever glimpsed.    

That had been the cause of some contention in his by then not so small group. His once bedraggled band of survivors and the group of nomadic Laiquendi that had welcomed them more than fifty sun-rounds ago had become a quite numerous host by now, mostly by addition of other scattered, roaming hordes of Laiquendi that had also fled south in the past years. Unruly and free as they were, the Wood Elves bowed to no one’s permanent authority nor followed an established rule, and their councils were boisterous and uncontrollable until an agreement was reached either by consent or boredom.  

After long discussions, and much to Oropher’s vexation, two courses had been agreed upon. A couple of hunters would go to the fabled city in the mouths of Sirion and would meet with its leaders and with Círdan, if possible, to gather news. Another patrol would travel north with the same assignment, to the yearly assembly of the Laiquendi of northern Ossiriand; an event, it was said, even the Hîrdawar attended on occasion.  

And so Oropher and Bronadir had departed their summer camp between the rivers Duilwen and Adurant half a moon ago and had marched north in mounting anxiety. For the last three days they had walked with little rest, pushed forth by the growing distress around them and the tremors that troubled the land. Twice they had been hindered by an impenetrable mass of trees that had stood stubbornly before them, and twice they had been forced to change course and take a long detour towards the mountains before being able to steer their path northwest again.  

Then early that morning they had run into a small patrol of young Wood Elves fighting a large band of orcs and wargs that seemed more intent on fleeing than on killing. Their arrival had put a swift end to the carnage, but in return for their help they were swiftly despoiled of bows and quivers and made to wait, while the survivors took care of their wounded and disposed conveniently of the orcs and wargs’ carcases. After that, Oropher and Bronadir had been sharply invited to join the patrol, and they had all marched north at a hurried pace. All their attempts at conversation had been met by courteous, almost amused shakes of head, and it was in sullen, dull silence that Oropher and Bronadir had been escorted into their captors’ camp –a large clearing with a number of temporary refuges, around which a pack of youngsters and children busied themselves in different tasks.  

Still in annoying silence they had been led to a shelter made out of hazel saplings bent inwards and bound together, then covered in leaf mould held down by moss and deadwood, before which a fire roared merrily, caged in a circle of stones. A dark-haired, serious-looking youth had met them there, and had listened attentively to Oropher’s haughty words and incensed remarks. Impassive, the youth had questioned them carefully, but had offered no information in return.  

“We will wait until Lalf returns,” he had finally decided. “Please make yourselves comfortable until then,” he had added with an open smile, standing up lightly and bowing before them, and that had been all. A girl had come at midday with two bowls of stew and a wooden pitcher of mead, for which they had been grateful, but had refused to answer their questions. After their meal, they had stood up casually and had tried to make a tour of the camp. They had been stopped by an angry-looking young warrior before a more solid-looking shelter around which some amount of bustle was taking place, and forced at spear point to return to their shelter, where they sat sulking for the rest of the day, closely watched by one warrior or another.  

“I mean, why not talking to us? And did you see the wounded inside that shelter?” Bronadir continued in a lowered voice, dismissing his friend’s sarcastic retort. “I counted at least four…”  

“These are mostly youths,” Oropher mused, sliding the whetting stone along the blade to keep his hands busy. “And we are too close to the Mountains for this to be the place of their yearly gathering…”  

“Surely this is their rearguard, then?” Bronadir suggested. “The adults must have travelled west to check the safety of the area… and some must have been injured. The trees seemed deeply disturbed northwest, after all.”  

Oropher nodded, remembering the strange behaviour of the forest the days before. He looked up and watched the reddened northern sky thoughtfully, then wondered aloud what they had been discussing in secrecy for some time now. “Do you think this is the final attack? That the Morgoth has set forth at last?”  

A sudden roar that spread across the encampment with the speed of a canopy fire muffled Bronadir’s glum answer.  

“Lalf, Lalf, Lalf!” the youthful voices shouted as one, and even their guard abandoned his position and ran to the other side of the stirred camp, where a crowd had gathered around, they supposed, a party of newcomers.  

Their curiosity aroused, Oropher and Bronadir stood up and watched as the throng pressed around an elf who towered above the others and had to bow to listen to reports and issue commands. From time to time a few elves would break from the group and run away full of purpose, and soon the camp looked like a disciplined anthill getting ready for migration. The tall elf entered the shelter where the wounded were being recovered and, guessing that he would surely come to them after that, Oropher and Bronadir sat down again and ostensibly turned their attention to their knives.  

“Welcome to our camp. I am Taenben, Captain of the Laeg Faradrim.” The tall elf dropped down nimbly by their fire some time later, greeting them with a courteous smile.  

“Green enough, I can see that,” Oropher snorted before he could stop himself, nodding towards a group of very young warriors that were busy untying shelters and freeing saplings.  

“We are honoured to meet you, Captain,” Bronadir chimed in hurriedly, casting a dark glance to Oropher and warning him to keep silent. “We are…”  

“Let not their appearance deceive you. Several of those children could beat even Thingol’s chief hunter with their bows, Captain Oropher,” the tall elf informed pleasantly. Oropher bristled at this oblique allusion to his past, but before he could question him the tall elf continued speaking. “But you are right. Our seasoned warriors are west, deep into the forest, keeping the enemy at bay. I have come back with only a handful, to hasten evacuation. You can choose to help us escort our young ones East beyond the mountains, to the Elmoi and the safety of their stronghold by the lake, or join our patrol and help us scour this side of our forests; or you can return on your way, it is up to you…”  

“But… wait… what…I mean…” Oropher and Bronadir felt swept off their feet at the elf’s decisiveness and businesslike approach. “I came north to meet the Hîrdawar and seek his counsel,” Oropher finally blurted out haughtily. “Not to be bossed around by a green captain...”  

A slow smile softened the tall elf’s features as he scrambled to his feet. Only then did Oropher notice the long gash that ran along his right calf. “I have conveyed my father’s advice, Oropher. You must decide what course to follow…while, by your leave, I find some refreshment…” he winced as he placed his weight on his wounded leg. “And a couple of stitches, it seems…Glîrdan will make sure that you are supplied for the way,” he added, waving a branch-like arm towards the dark-haired youth who had questioned them upon arrival. “We will speak again before we depart …”                                           

Speechless, Oropher watched the tall elf walk away in his swaggering gait, clasping shoulders as he passed or shouting commands in his strong, confident voice.  

“Please, come this way, your supplies are being readied. I apologize for the manner of your welcome, but we are wary of strangers, as you may well know…” The young elf had reached them unheard and now waited unobtrusively by their side. They followed him in silence, exchanging worried glances. The camp was full of ordered activity, and Oropher was amazed that no sign of panic or grief was shown among those who were soon to be parted. Their green kin were braver even than what he had thought, and that certainty was comforting. Distracted by his thoughts, he was surprised when they stopped close to the shelter where they had glimpsed the wounded elves. A group of boys and girls were busy preparing stretchers while others fletched arrows with deft fingers, but they all greeted Glîrdan merrily. The young elf picked up the yew bows and empty quivers hanging from a branch and handed them back to their owners. 

“They are intact,” he protested as Oropher and Bronadir examined them quickly and thoroughly.  

“So it seems,” Oropher grunted at last, though his severity was wasted on the self-assured youngster. “Where are our arrows?”  

“Lalf said that you might choose to join us in battle, so I asked that new arrows were fletched for you as well…Will you give us a hand?” the boy asked with a winsome smile.   

“Join you?” Oropher wondered if the other could hear the outraged ring in Bronadir’s tone. “How old are you, Glîrdan?”  

“One hundred and twenty-three, Master Bronadir...”  

Oropher sighed. Bronadir’s son had been little older than that when he was killed beside Mablung during the sack of Menegroth. He knew what would come next, so he sighed and stepped aside cautiously.  

“And you are going to battle?” Bronadir ranted at the clueless youth. “You should be travelling to safety with the young ones instead! You are barely…”  

“Oh, they will be out of harm's way once they cross the river; I have driven several groups myself… But this time I am more needed here, to help stop the enemy while our people get away… there are too few of us here presently,” Glîrdan explained thoughtfully.

A couple of unnaturally bright eyes on a pale face that could only belong to a Noldo caught Oropher’s attention as he scanned their surroundings in a vain attempt at ignoring the deep grief that echoed in Bronadir’s voice as he argued with Glîrdan. The Exile had just exited the shelter and was checking the stretchers. He looked up quickly as if he had sensed Oropher’s glance, and met it steadily for a while. He said something to the children and then walked towards them.  

“Oropher Tharn-uil-dol, if I am not mistaken…” he said in a soft voice, sketching a swift bow when he reached their side. Oropher scowled. He was getting tired of strangers knowing his name –and even a nickname only close friends had ever dared use in his presence and that he had long ago passed down –shortened- to his son.  

“Who are you, Noldo?”  

“I am Gelmir, of Angrod’s… of Gil-galad’s people in Balar. Our patrol was attacked a couple of days from here by a large band of orcs and wargs, and our captain and some of our fellow warriors are still missing… Are you survivors from Sirion?”  

“From Doriath…”  

“Of course, but most survivors from Doriath settled in… oh, I see,” he added, a sudden understanding kindling his bright eyes. But his tone caught Bronadir’s attention.  

“Why do you say “survivors from Sirion?” he asked harshly. “What know you of that city and its fate?”  

There was no mistaking the wave of sadness that darkened the Noldo’s pale features. “Alas!” he sighed in a sorrowful voice. “The Havens at Sirion were razed not fifty sun-rounds ago…Few survived that atrocious attack…”  

Oropher barely heard the Noldo’s next words, overwhelmed by images of the bedraggled host as they parted in sour words; little Elwing held in her nanny’s arms, surrounded by the few survivors of the royal household and guard, all grimly determined to protect her to the bitter end. He could still hear Maentêw’s accusing words. “It is your duty as well, Oropher!” A cold decision filled him as he forced guilt and painful recollections to the back of his mind. He turned a stern, set face to the Wood Elf. “Tell me, Glîrdan, what are those lights in the northern skies?”  

“Why, Captain Oropher, war!” the boy answered, a nasty gleam on his youthful face.   

Oropher met his friend’s equally pained eyes and nodded sadly. It was as they had feared, after all; the strength of Angband had been released in a definite attack and all Beleriand was succumbing under its fires. He wondered briefly if their people would get to cross the Ered Luin in time, and whether they would be safe, even there.  

“If there is war, then we fight to the bitter end,” he said determinedly, and saw Bronadir’s resolute nod. “Tell us how we can be of assistance.” 

TBC

A/N:

I'm back to work now, so updates will take longer.  

Taenben: tall and thin one

Lalf: elm tree

Laeg Faradrim: Green Hunters

Tharn-uil dol: head of withered seaweed… referring to the fair hair in Oropher’s line. So I make Tharn-uil dol become a nickname that passed from father (Oropher) to son, (Thranduil) shortened and compressed by use.

Chapter 5.  A Last Stand? 

“Easy, Maentêw. The land complains; that is all…” 

“No wonder…The weight of Morgoth’s malice must be unbearable,” Maentêw grunted, accepting Gildor’s hand and pulling himself up with a wince. Now that he was rested, his cuts and bruises were making themselves known with a vengeance.  

“Come, do you want some food? The girl caught some trout and Gil-galad made friends with her irritable companions while we slept…” 

Maentêw cast a quick look around. Their fire roared merrily, and he could see the fish speared in a long stick, roasting slowly. The two young wood elves seemed deep in animated conversation with an apparently much recovered Gil-galad. He raised a puzzled brow. 

“Had you slept a couple of hours longer, you would have found that he had sworn them into his service,” Gildor shrugged dryly.  

“Children do get on easily, just remember how quickly he won over Elwing’s wilful children, after Círdan failed miserably,” Maentêw retorted amusedly stretching his aching muscles. “Where is the girl?” he asked bluntly as he approached the younger elves. 

“Keeping watch; since you slept all along your turn…” Oropher’s son snapped back, though not unkindly.  

“Maentêw! I think I have a good idea of where we are…” 

“Lost somewhere in north-eastern Ossiriand, I suspect,” he quipped, squatting by his wounded captain and feeling his clammy brow.  “Is that a map?” he asked, pointing at a number of sticks, pebbles and leaves arranged in a certain pattern beside Gil-galad. 

“This is the river Legolin, quite south from where I expected to be…” Gil-galad began in a voice that sounded weak and hoarse. “Thranduil and his friends were also deviated from their course by the trees… while they headed towards…Taenben’s camp. Some of my…of Finarfin’s warriors got to their settlement, told them to leave, and then they saw…”  

“Surely you can defer to someone else for the details?” Maentêw interrupted the captain’s laboured account. “Preferably someone who did not have his chest cut open by a warg nor bled himself out across the forest?”  

Gil-galad smiled tiredly. “Master Thranduil, would you please brief my warriors?” he asked politely. Much to Maentêw’s surprise, and no doubt encouraged by the respectful treatment, Oropher’s son obeyed willingly.  

“…The trees led us to a clearing where a… massacre had taken place,” the boy ended in a voice that did no tremble, despite the horror that showed clearly on his youthful face. “There were orc bodies, hacked and partly burnt, and limbs scattered everywhere… A large clearing was burnt, and many trees as well. We… we panicked,” he admitted in a low voice, “and ran away, led by the trees… until we met you.”

“Did you get to see the orcs?” Gildor asked.  

“We heard them,” Brethil chimed in. “But the trees drove them from us. They sounded terrified…” 

“Something very strange is going on,” Gildor mused. “It is as if the trees were ordering us around…” 

“And we should not disobey,” Gil-galad sentenced. “We need to find help…Let me speak!” he cut Maentêw’s protest in the most commanding tone he could manage. “Taenben’s camp is not far north… you could get there in a couple of days, Maentêw, and get a searching party to look for the rest of our patrol.” 

“I will go with you,” Thranduil added. “My father needs to know what is going on. He left before those Calaquendi arrived and frightened our people into leaving Beleriand… Other messengers were sent to your city in Sirion…but surely they will hear the same tale there…” 

“It is not a tale, Thranduil,” Maentêw sighed patiently, exchanging a quick glance with his companions. “The Army of the West has come to overthrow Angband. We saw their host marching north. The oldest among us still remember the tales of destruction from the last time the Valar marched against the Enemy…It will be safer beyond the mountains.” 

“And why aren’t you fighting alongside that mighty host?” 

Gil-galad stemmed Maentêw’s retort. “Orcs and wargs are fleeing the battle by thousands…falling upon settlements of elves and edain who… know not what is going on,” the captain explained with a grimace. “We are protecting them, and instructing them to leave… Beleriand…. while there is still time…” 

“Yet you never got to our camp!” 

“Thranduil….” Brethil warned. “You should start as soon as possible, and waste no time in pointless bickering…”  

Maentêw fought to hide an amused smile at that, suddenly reminded of Bronadir, Oropher’s pompous lieutenant, who always managed to curb the captain’s flaring temper. Apparently, Thranduil had found himself a similar restraining influence in Fêrtond’s son.  “Brethil is right, I believe,” he sighed, though he liked not the idea of leaving Gil-galad behind. He looked around with apprehension. “Will you be safe?”

“These children are amazing with a bow,” Gildor explained reassuringly. “And I can still wield my sword…”

“Do not fret, Maentêw, we will take good care of him,” Brethil added. He sounded so solemn that laughter died in Maentêw’s lips. He bowed briefly and nodded instead.  

They packed lightly, the remnant pieces of willow grouse and a few salmon cakes wrapped in large leaves that the young elves had carried with them. “There,” Cûiell said in her endearingly cheeky manner, giving Maentêw a handful of nuts. “See to it that he oils his bow regularly… or the orcs will hear you from a day’s march!”    

“See to it that she does not wander away while she is on watch, Gildor,” Thranduil retorted, though there was something deeper than friendly bickering in his voice, Maentêw noticed shrewdly as he knelt down by Gil-galad and felt his brow again.  

“We will be back soon…and I will learn about the rest of our patrol,” he promised, answering the worried, urgent look in the captain’s fevered eyes and scowling briefly at the stench that wafted from his bandaged chest. 

“Taenben must be leading his people to the… Iant Raph…Keep away from the forest, and find our people,” Gil-galad whispered with effort. Maentêw nodded and pressed the younger elf’s bloodied hand.  

“Worry not and try to regain your strength. The trees will keep you,” he said, sending a mental prayer to the forest. “I am ready!” he called back to Thranduil, who waited by the fire with his friends. He stood up and nodded to Gildor. “Good luck,” he whispered, clasping his friend’s arm as he passed. 

“I will try to move him to a safer place across the river,” Gildor whispered back. “Look for us there…” 

With a last, uneasy look at the vulnerable camp, Maentêw nodded at Thranduil and followed him into the night.                                                                             

                                                                               ~*~*~*~*

On the second dawn of their hurried march they reached the last stretch of a narrow path that bordered a profound gorge. The river Legolin ran deep there, and the only crossing east or west was a slender rope bridge that swayed madly over the chasm before them. 

“The Iant Raph! In time!” 

They had marched as fast as they could, slowed down by the Noldo’s wounded companions and several children of very short age. Oropher and Bronadir had noticed the scouts being sent north, up the hills that loomed to their left, and the worried glances exchanged between Lalf and his warriors.  

“One by one, quick!” A stern-looking wood elf who had lost an ear in some unfortunate encounter hurried the children as they ran nimbly across the unstable bridge. When Oropher and Bronadir reached the other side, Lalf was giving orders to a group of youths, pointing east towards the long slopes of the Ered Luin. 

“…While we stop them here,” the Hîrdawar’s son was saying in a calm voice. “The trees will protect you. Go now, to our camp beyond the mpountains. May Tauron watch over you.”  Obediently, the youngsters took charge of their herd –and the wounded- and continued their way west in ordered lines, while the few warriors left took up positions high and around the bridge and readied themselves for the wait. 

“Will they be safe?” Oropher murmured a couple of hours later, still watching the rows of children thoughtfully and thinking of his own family. Bronadir released a deep, determined sigh.  

“We will see to it. This does not seem a bad place for a last stand, does it?” he said softly. Oropher nodded and clasped his friend’s arm tightly. They had not expected this when they started north in search of news, but none of them would flee before those heinous creatures.  

“Too good for those orcs and wargs,” Gelmir chimed in, smiling grimly as he took position beside them. “What is the battle order, Glîrdan?” 

“Simple,” the youngster chuckled. “We cut the bridge down when they reach it and shoot those who try to escape…” 

“We might cast a few of them into the chasm,” Oropher objected, “but the rest will just turn round and go back or west, or flee north...”  

“The Huyrn will not allow that, they are close behind them…and the Erchamion is north,” Glîrdan retorted with a wide grin, testing his bow and counting his arrows. Oropher frowned. 

“Huirn? That doomed chieftain of Men who brought ruin to Doriath?” he demanded heatedly. “But he is a traitor, a creature of Morgoth bent to his will!” 

“Húrin Thalion?” Gelmir chimed in, his interest caught by Oropher’s words. “Is it true, then?” he asked softly, grief plain in his voice. “Has he been released at last? 

“Released? He was sent to Doriath with a curse!” Oropher spat. “Protected by the dark arts of the enemy he entered the ruins of Nargothrond and brought back a treasure cursed by the Worm and by the doom of the Noldor, that damned necklace of Felagund’s, which caused Thingol’s death…” 

“Thingol was strangled by the Nauglamír? It must have been heavy indeed,” the Noldo mused mockingly. “Although I heard say he had been killed by dwarves to whom he refused to pay the appointed fee…” 

Bronadir stepped in before Oropher lost control. “Our king was treacherously murdered and robbed by those greedy creatures,” he warned sternly. “You’d do well not to speak so boldly about what you ignore, Noldo!” 

“Then be careful not to besmirch a mighty warrior with your ignorant blathering, Sinda!” Gelmir retorted angrily. “I will never believe that Húrin surrendered to Morgoth... His valiant stand in the Fern of Serech allowed Gondolin to survive long enough for a new star of hope to arise from its ashes,” he claimed, raising respectful eyes to the new star, which shone even brighter those days.  

“Hope? What hope has any light in the sky brought to us since our fathers awoke in Cuiviénen under the stars?” 

Gelmir sighed in exasperation and changed position behind the boulder that hid them, flashing a pleading glance at Bronadir. “That is no common light,” he explained patiently, “but a Silmaril, carried by Eärendil the blessed, son of Idril of the House of Finwë… 

“But the Silmaril was Elwing’s!”  

“It was Fëanor’s on the first place…” 

“He was welcome to pick it up from its keeping place! It was brought to Thingol by Lúthien…” 

“By Beren, Oropher; and at the price of Lord Finrod’s life…” 

That gave Oropher pause. Not even he would ignore Felagund’s noble deed. He nodded briefly, but then dug his heels. “Yet it was passed rightfully to Dior, Thingol’s heir, and from him to Elwing his daughter when…” He still choked on the words. 

“The Valar granted it to Eärendil, though, to guide him through the darkest skies and light the hope of Elves and Men even when we would despair…” the Noldo explained softly. 

“The Valar?” 

“The Powers from beyond the Waters, the Lords of… 

“I know, I know! Our queen was one of their kin!” 

“Not that it served you in the end…” Gelmir muttered. Oropher glared, but did not argue openly. He found another source for contention instead.  

“What right did they have over the Silmaril, anyway?”  He complained gruffly.  

“You now sound like the Erchamion,” Glîrdan chuckled from behind them. “Always obsessed about those jewels...”  

Oropher turned on him so quickly that for once the confident youth seemed intimidated. “What know you of Beren?” he grunted. 

“Beren? I fought with him in the Rath Lóriel… and saw the Onodrim and the Huyrn flatten the Naugrim while we nailed them with our arrows! Today will be no different, Captain Oropher, you will see!”  

“But the Erchamion is dead! It is said that he and Lúthien passed beyond the circles of the world! And I have never seen trees marching to war, nor heard about those…Hû yrn? you speak of!” 

Gelmir made the gesture that meant to leave it alone and shrugged. “Then keep your eyes open, Oropher. Look! Erlhewig is giving the signal!” 

Distracted by their argument, they had not noticed the growing roar. Oropher saw them then, and was left speechless. A growling and stomping mass of orcs and wargs had reached the top of the hill at the other side and swarmed down in frenzy, fleeing towards the fragile bridge. Behind them a tall, dark-green wall advanced slowly, inexorably, encircling them and pushing them towards the abyss.   

“The Erchamion, the Erchamion!” someone cried amidst the din. 

Moved by curiosity, Oropher soon discovered long lines of spears and naked swords crowning the hill to the northeastern flank, a few long bows among them. “Noldor,” he muttered to Bronadir, seeing the sun glistening on their mails. “They are like magpies, love shiny things...” But his eyes were drawn back to the magnificent sight of the advancing forest, tall trees flattening orcs and wargs as they marched, and pushing the others to the abyss.  

“Between hammer and anvil,” Bronadir murmured with dark glee. Oropher smiled too, relieved that they were not dying today, after all. Out of habit, he scanned the battlefield quickly: the Erchamion and his warriors to the east and the trees to the north, Erlhewig and Lalf by the rope bridge with their axes ready, and to the west…He shook Bronadir’s arm and pointed at two dots scrambling up the path they had followed earlier. “What is that?” 

“Glîrdan, are there any scouts still missing?” Bronadir called out. The youth followed their gazes and frowned.  

“Not that I know…but perhaps...” 

“No.” Something twisted inside Oropher. He stood up and watched intently, an unexpected dread almost choking him. 

“They will be caught by the avalanche,” Gelmir murmured worriedly, coming to stand beside him. The two lonely travellers advanced cautiously, but the elevation of the terrain hindered their view of what was about to fall upon them when they got closer to the bridge.   

A gust of wind blew back the travellers’ hoods as they started to run and a ray of sun glistened on a golden head. Three voices shouted almost as one. 

“Elves! We must help them!”  

“That’s my son! Don’t cut that bridge down!”   

“You stay put!”   

Freezing Glîrdan in place with an intimidating glare, Bronadir shouldered his bow and started downhill after Oropher and Gelmir.

TBC

A/N

Iant Raph: Rope bridge

Huyrn is the plural of hû orn, “dog tree”. Oropher is mistaking it for Húrin’s name.

Erchamion means one-handed. It was Beren’s nickname after the wolf from Angband bit his hand off. 

Erlhewig means one-eared.

Chapter 6. Up the River Legolin.

“We should cross the forest. The trees might ease our march.”  

“The trees drove us all to the river; there is something dangerous lurking in there.”  

“Are you afraid of the Onodrim?”  

Maentêw cast a sharp glance at the bold youngster and continued walking briskly, as they had been doing for a night and a day. “What do you know about them?”  

“I saw one, long ago,” the boy gloated. “And he talked to me.”  

“And what did he tell you?”  

The boy opened his mouth; closed it firmly. “I will not speak of it.”  

Maentêw laughed. “Fine! I do not want to pry! But there are other things apart from well-intentioned tree shepherds roaming the forests of Ossiriand… or do you forget what you saw in that clearing?”  

Thranduil chewed his lip thoughtfully. “I thought your patrol had done that…or else orcs and wargs had turned against each other.”  

“Think, Thranduil,” Maentêw suggested. “Would elves hack their fallen enemies to pieces? Or start a fire that would burn trees as well as carcasses?  

“I...we did not climb down the trees, did not really see what happened there.”  

“A clever decision, I bet it was Brethil’s idea.”  

Thranduil cast him a sour look. “It was,” he admitted. “But what caused that carnage, then?”  

Maentêw sighed, stopped, cast a quick glance around to check their way. “I do not know,” he sighed. “There was a malign presence in the forest, an evil like none I ever sensed…” He shook his head thoughtfully and resumed the march. “That is why Gil-galad ordered us to keep clear from the forest…”  

“And why are you obeying one who is so much younger than yourself?” the rebellious Sinda challenged him as they scrambled along the muddy track that climbed along the left bank of the River Legolin. Maentêw laughed. Certainly Oropher’s son had inherited his father’s ability for finding cause for fussing everywhere.  

“He is our captain. Surely you have heard your father explain that warriors obey their captains no matter their age… or race,” he explained mildly, wondering whether Thranduil too shared his father’s profound dislike towards the Noldor.  

“Why, of course! But you were a captain in Doriath; you said so when we met!”  

“Doriath no longer stands,” Maentêw reminded him softly. That silenced the youth briefly, but soon he changed course, still prodding for information.  

“How...how did you know I was Oropher’s son?”  

“You resemble your adar too much,” Maentêw chuckled, casting a brief glance over his shoulder. “And then that name… I doubt anyone but Oropher’s son would carry it…”  

“He said it was a special name…”  

“It is. One of our friends coined it after a visit to the Havens short after the new lights were kindled in the sky. Not everyone was allowed to use it… at least within Oropher’s earshot,” Maentêw smiled, remembering Celeborn’s malicious glee as he showed a handful of stiff and withered seaweed that he had brought back from Eglarest. They had all agreed seriously that it indeed looked like their friend’s head after a moon in the forest, and somehow the name stuck among those closest to the short-tempered chief hunter. Those were still the good times, Maentêw sighed, before the Noldor ever crossed the Girdle and brought change on their trail. He could well understand why Oropher had felt the need to shake off that name and pass it, together with all the good memories, down onto his son.  

“Were you friends, then? Why didn’t you come eastwards with us?”  

“I had a royal princess to protect,” he snapped. “Look,” he added gruffly, pointing at a swift current that hurried down towards the River Legolin and across their path not two hundred paces ahead. “We are closer than I thought… Taenben’s camp lies less than half a day north from this stream…”  

“Taenben?”  

“The Hîrdawar’s eldest son…the captain of the Laeg Faradrim…they hunt orcs and wargs wherever they find them. I hope they have found the survivors from our patrol,” he said in a confident voice. “And surely Oropher will be there, too.”  

“He was looking for the Hîrdawar himself…”  

“The Hîrdawar is beyond the mountains, overseeing the new settlements. Now, let’s be careful. Follow my steps. The stones are mossy and the current is strong. Do you want me to carry your bow?”  

“Do you think I am a clumsy edain?”   

“Even a sure-footed elf can slip when unbalanced, Thranduil,” he retorted calmly. “Are you ready?”  

He started crossing, checking carefully for the safer-looking stones among those protruding from the water. The river was not deep, but recent melting had swelled its current and the waters crashed noisily against its stony bed.  

“Be careful!” he warned. Disregarding his advice, the boy jumped lightly from stone to stone, laughing merrily as he went. Just when Maentêw was about to smile condescendingly, the ground roared and trembled under their feet. It was as if the land complained and tried to shake off a disgusting presence. Startled by the sudden motion, the boy lost his footing and crashed into the river with a surprised yelp.  

With an annoyed sigh that might have been a soft curse, Maentêw jumped to the bank and started running after the young elf, guided by the bow that he desperately fought to keep out of the water while the swift current rolled him and bumped him into the rocks. He looked like a soaked, bruised, half-drowned rat by the time Maentêw managed to drag him out of the stream. “Get out of those damp clothes while I get a fire going,” he suggested soberly. “We could do with a rest after all…”  

Soon he had a feisty fire playing merrily in its stone circle, and Thranduil’s clothes spread around it. He rummaged in his pack and produced a couple of salmon cakes. “It will be so shiny that we will be spotted at a distance,” he called to the boy, who had taken seat far from the fire and was still fretting over his bow. They had dried it carefully with handfuls of grass and then with Maentêw’s dry cloak, but still the boy continued oiling it obsessively, for fear it would warp. “Come and get some food, Thranduil. We should start walking again soon…and I think we will have to change course…”  

“Because of that upheaval?”  

“Not exactly. I saw tracks while I was gathering wood. A host of green elves marched east not a day before us. They are fleeing their camp, going towards the mountains.”  

After a brief hesitation Thranduil placed his bow on the grass, tightened Maentêw’s cloak around his lean frame and came to sit by the fire.  

“Why would they flee to the mountains?” he asked, accepting the food with a nod.  

“Word is to depart Beleriand, boy,” Maentêw grunted. “Even the Hîrdawar’s people are heeding the commands of the Valar...”  

“Well, no word reached *us* in the south…”   

“You never sent word anywhere or anyone that you were alive did you?” Maentêw retorted defensively. The boy looked stunned and he grimaced, angry with himself. “Forget it,” he grunted, cursing Oropher’s stubbornness inwardly.  

They ate in silence for a while. Then the boy pressed on.  

“Why didn’t you come with us when Menegroth fell?”  

Maentêw sighed, stopped munching the salmon cake, groaned. He shifted uncomfortably and finally gave in. “We had to get Elwing to the safety of Cirdan’s havens. Nimloth… the Queen had managed to hide the Silmaril in the baby’s swaddling clothes and sent her away with her maid before all was lost…” It was long since he had last called to mind that dark night. He had run into the frightened nursemaid by chance, and only by the grace of the Valar, he was sure, had they managed to avoid Celegorm’s servants as they broke into the royal family quarters. He remembered the eerie silence as they crossed empty corridors and the nursemaid’s horrified gasp when they reached the throne hall, where Celegorm and Dior had killed each other. Quickly, she had folded her cloak over the baby’s face to protect her from that terrible sight. Odd, how one such simple, compassionate gesture still stood out amidst the terrible memories of that time.  

“…But I suppose your adar says that we fled cowardly,” he ended his tale bitterly.  

“My adar does not speak much about those days,” the boy answered softly. “I….I think he blames himself…”  

Typical of Oropher, Maentêw thought, watching the fire. “I suppose he would. We all did, at one moment or another. But it was no one’s fault…except those cursed sons of Fëanor’s,” he sighed, though he knew it was not as simple as that. Fate had its ways, and it had caught all of them in its net, from the moment Thingol set that doomed price on Lúthien’s hand, or, according to Oropher and many others, since the Noldor returned to Middle-earth bringing their curse with them.   

To Maentêw, Thingol had been both victim and accomplice of his own weakness. His greed had set in motion a tide of unforeseeable consequences that had swept away many, Maentêw’s family among them. And yet, after meeting other survivors in Balar, he had found out that, bitter as the doom of Doriath had been, it was but a wave in the sea of despair that washed relentlessly over Beleriand.  

“I still dream of that night,” the boy whispered, almost to himself. “I only remember the cries, and the panic… but I saw the red-haired one, cutting down one of the guards who protected our flight…and they left the young princes to die in the forest, how could they?” he wondered softly. “My adar says they are not elves anymore…”  

Maentêw shook his head. Before his eyes the fuming ruins of the Havens of Sirion and the corpse-paved streets still stood out vividly. It had been madness, of a kind too close to despair, which had turned elves against elves and then assailants against their own ranks in the crest of their confusion. A despair that had bitten deep enough to even force fey Maedhros to relent and send back Elwing’s children without condition. No, he reminded himself, they were elves indeed; doomed, cursed, twisted in their wickedness, but Firstborns still, all of them capable of killing their kin… and that was what frightened him most.  

“So does Elwing now rule in that city in Sirion? Why did you enlist in Cirdan’s army, then?”  

Drawing a sharp intake, he stood up brusquely and cast almost dry clothes to the youth. “Get dressed!” he growled. “It’s time we got moving. I cannot wait to deliver you into your adar’s hands and watch as he asksthe questions!”   

This had the virtue of immediately subduing the pert boy, much to Maentêw’s shameless relief. Knowing how deeply –and at times forcefully- Oropher cared for those he loved, Maentêw could well understand the thoughtful look that suddenly settled on the cheeky sapling as he got dressed. Chuckling inwardly, he put out their fire, retrieved his cloak and led the march east, following the clear trail that climbed steadily towards the mountains.  

The horned moon was climbing down the summer sky when the boy spoke again, trying to sound flippant.  

“I expect that my adar will be so happy that we found you that he will forget our disobedience…”  

Maentêw grunted his doubts noncommittally and concentrated on the road. Suddenly, he was sharing Thranduil’s preoccupation.  

“What is that?” The boy shook him again from his thoughts some time later. He heard it at the same time, and turned his attention to the slopes on their left, which loomed high enough to hide them from the highlands and the forests beyond. From up there came a strange sound, a muffled roar that he could not identify.  

“Sounds like a strong wind in a dense forest...” Another, familiar sound made them shiver. “Yrch,” he grunted softly. “Let’s be careful.”  

The boy strung his bow quickly, while Maentêw studied their way. The path twisted always upwards, leading them close to the crossing, a steep fall to their right. They started again at a faster pace. Soon a bent on the trail allowed them to see the thin rope line that bridged the abyss, glistening in the grey dawn.  

“We are almost there,” he grunted.  

“So are they,” Thranduil observed. He was right. The uproar sounded very close to their left. “What do we do now?”  

Maentêw considered for a moment, studied the way ahead, spied moving silhouettes in every front, made up his mind.  “We run.”

  ****

Oropher did not hear the voices calling after him. He started shooting as he crossed the unstable rope bridge, his attention focused on the narrow trail to his left, the two elves that ran desperately to the bridge and the horde of panicked creatures rushing down the slope.  

“Run, Thranduil, run!” he shouted encouragingly, though his voice was lost amidst the din of the fleeing creatures and the steady, deep roar of the marching forest.  

He vaguely noticed a group of warriors coming down from the ranks of the Erchamion in the eastern flank, and the twang of bows beside him. Then someone cried. “Unsheathe! Here they come!”  

And the carnage began.  

Hack, chop, lash, thrust. 

Senses overtaken by battle mode, Oropher cut through wave after wave of panicked creatures that seemed more intent on reaching the bridge than on defending themselves. In their frenzy, many tripped and rolled downhill and into the abyss, or fell under elven blades and arrows they did not try to deflect.   

Stab, parry, hew, carve.  

Voices broke out beside him.  

“To the bridge!”  

“Up the hill! Come up the hill!”  

“Glîrdan! Cut the bridge down! Oropher, retreat!  

“No!” he cried. With a vicious lash he half severed the neck of a large orc that came running towards him. Panting, he took a brief moment to search the battlefield. A wedge of frenzied creatures stood between him and his son, cluttering the narrow trail and dashing madly for the bridge in their desperate flight from the merciless trees. The vanguard of the marching forest had already swallowed the bulk of the fleeing host, and their anguished cries and the dense, choking smell of orc-blood filled the battlefield.  

“Thranduil! To me! Here!” he cried. He had a glimpse of Thranduil and his companion, both pressed against the escarpment as the slope crumbled down over them, collapsing under the weight of the trees and dragging trees, along with orcs and wargs into the chasm howling.  

“Hold on! I’m coming!” With deft thrusts he plunged forward desperately. Right then, with a deafening roar that sounded like a mountain yawning, the land shook violently under their feet. The trees creaked and rumbled as if in pain. Unbalanced, Oropher flailed helplessly searching for a handhold, grabbing at rolling bodies and hacked branches that pushed him towards the abyss. Suddenly, a body slammed against him and he fell.  

TBC.

Chapter 7. The Erchamion.  

A clear laugh pierced the clouds of pain. Dead as he deemed himself, Oropher still found the strength to growl. “Laugh not, you Lord of Dead, for I have not yet heeded your call,” he threatened Námo –or tried to, for he suddenly found that his mouth was full of dirt. “What on…”  

“You would not listen, so I jumped us down!” a cheerful voice rang in his ear as a strong arm turned him around and hauled him to a sitting position. “You are not hurt, are you?” Skilled hands made sure of that.  

“What?” He blinked uncomprehendingly into Taenben’s merry face, then up and around. He had fallen, he remembered that, and had hit hard ground sooner than he expected. Something very heavy had fallen on his back, knocking all remaining air off his lungs, and he had passed out cursing his luck. And now he found himself in a narrow shelf that ran about ten feet below the path, with two dead wargs lying beside him. Above them there was no longer a path but rows of tall, thick trunks and large branches –a whole forest standing precariously by the rim of the abyss, gnarled branches and roots dangling in the air here and there, some with orcs hanging desperately from them, some sheltering elves.  

“Lalf, you fool! Will you come up?”  The one-eared elf was sitting on a thick branch well above them, meticulously finishing off surviving enemies. “What a waste of good arrows!” the Laiquende complained as he shot down a climbing orc. The creature fell down with a hideous cry. “Do you need help?”  

“No, he is fine, we are climbing now!” Taenben replied, pulling Oropher to his feet and patting him as if nothing had happened.  

“You...You pushed me down?” he finally blurted, still winded and dazed by the fall.

“I knew this shelf was here,” Taenben explained helpfully. “It was foolish, to charge like that…and brave, too. Thankfully the Erchamion arrived in time!”

But Oropher was no longer listening. “Where is my son? Thranduil!” he shouted, scratching the cliff wall in vain search for a handhold. “Thranduil!”

“Here, Adar! We’ll get you up soon!”

Looking up, he saw the frightened face peering dangerously from the fork of a mighty chestnut and almost fell back in relief. A length of hithlain danced before his eyes and Oropher grabbed it without thinking and started climbing, leaving Taenben behind. “I’m coming, son, hold on!”

“Adar! Adar, I am so sorry!”  The boy slammed against him forcefully as soon as Oropher set foot on the large tree that had apparently saved Thranduil from falling.

“Easy, child, what are you doing here?” he asked softly, as words spilled hysterically from his frightened son. Shaking in relief, Oropher simply held the boy tightly and made sure he was safe. Soon enough harsh voices brought him back.

“Bronadir?” He pushed Thranduil behind him instinctively as he turned around to search their surroundings. All around them dark trees waited in brooding expectation by the edge of the cliff. Around the collapsed bridge there was a small clearing scattered with corpses. A group of elves squabbled angrily there. Oropher could see Erlhewig restraining Bronadir, while Lalf and another elf tried to calm him. As soon as he recognized Maentêw as the elf standing beside Lalf, Oropher forgot everything else.

“You!” he roared, jumping wildly towards them, Thranduil in pursuit.

“Wait, Ada! He helped us!”

Oropher would not listen. He landed amidst the group and faced his former friend threateningly. “What were you doing?” he growled, “dragging my son into danger?”

Unimpressed, the other elf disentangled Oropher’s hands from his collar. “I am glad to see you too, Oropher…”

“Ada, we met…”

“Did I ask for your opinion, Thranduil? Erlhewig, release Bronadir!” he demanded, wondering at the scowl of hatred that marred his friend’s face. Bronadir gestured with his head to another group that stood a dozen paces away and all of a sudden Oropher forgot about Maentêw. “Hold him,” he whispered coldly, shoving Thranduil into Bronadir’s arms and striding purposefully to the other end of the clearing, where Gelmir was deep in conversation with the red-haired, one-handed Noldorin demon that still haunted his dreams. “I will kill you slowly, you Morgoth-raised creature!” he hollered, raising his hands to unsheathe his long knives as he walked. He slowed down a bit in surprise at finding the scabbards empty, and that was enough for a strong arm to get hold of him as he jumped forth with a feral roar.

“Leave me!” he bellowed, struggling against the iron grip that slammed him against a tree trunk. “I will strangle him with my bare hands! You are all blood traitors, consorting with kinslayers!”

“Calm down, Oropher!” Taenben demanded in his ear. “He has just saved your son’s life –and yours!”

“He killed dozens in Doriath,” Oropher retorted with cold hatred as he wriggled in vain. The arm that held him firmly was long, brown and smooth, and incredibly strong. He struggled fruitlessly against its clutch, its strangeness barely registering through his anger. “I will not forget…”

“Two hands against one,” the red-haired Noldo chuckled dismissively. “It might be fun, let go off him,” he suggested, looking up and behind Oropher’s shoulder. Seething, he tried again to break that sure hold.

“Stop that, Erchamion,” Taenben ordered harshly. “I will not have such behaviour among allies. Do you hear, Oropher? Are you in command of yourself?” he asked then in a softer voice. “Do I have your word that you will listen to me?”

Oropher growled in impotence, watching his son’s bewildered face. “He killed our people, the young princes…how can I…” he ranted bitterly. A deep rumble that echoed in his ribcage reduced him to an awed silence.               

“Leave stubborn, dead trees to break down before storm winds, sapling. You’d better care for those who are still alive!” a cavernous voice warned. Oropher stopped writhing and saw the Noldo flinch openly.

“They will behave now, I think,” Taenben chuckled, looking up. “You can release him.”

As the hold slackened Oropher spun to meet his captor, not noticing that he was standing on a large, seven-toed, root-looking foot.

And he gaped.

                                                 ~*~*~*~*

“Maedhros’ troops have been hunting orcs in Ossiriand since the great defeat in the north, and so have we. We cannot allow these fleeing hosts to cross the mountains; Elves, edain, trees and beasts are taking refuge there…We are at war, Oropher, and we must join forces against the enemy.”

Aware that his presence would only serve to incense his friend, Maentêw took Gelmir aside to exchange news of their scattered patrol, while Taenben explained the presence of the kinslayer to a testy Oropher. Uselessly, for Oropher would not forget, even if his usual impatience was tempered by the fascination with which he studied the tall Ent that had so timely restrained him. But old grudges ran deep.

“You are fighting with them, Maentêw!” he spat accusingly. “I marvel that you, of all people, are fighting alongside those who killed your son…”

Maentêw ignored Maedhros’ snort. He bit his lip and pulled the blank face that he had perfected with the years, restraining Gelmir with a brief gesture. “This is war, Oropher. We are all fighting the same foe.”

“We planned this ambush together a few days ago, before you reached our camp, Oropher,” Taenben continued. “And the Erchamion convinced the Ents to give a hand,” he added, bowing low before the tall tree-shepherd. “It was a great battle.  I grieve for your losses, Finglas…”

The Ent looked down with unfathomable pools of eyes and sighed softly, a sound like a night wind stirring fallen leaves in a hidden glade. Some of the trees in his vanguard had been dragged down with the orcs and wargs. “What it is cannot be changed,” he pronounced after a long, considering stare. “We shall now head north to the Rath Lóriel... I must lead my own people into safety. Fladrif will follow after they finish the southern orc-host,” the Ent added, casting a knowing glance at Maedhros.

“What?” Maentêw bristled at that.

“The south, you said?” Thranduil too jumped anxiously. “Ada, listen! Cûiell and Brethil…”

“Peace, boy; I am not yet started with you…” Oropher could not drag his eyes from the tall Ent, mystified to the point of almost forgetting, or at least studiously ignoring, Maedhros’ presence.

"I left Gildor and Gil-galad down there…Gil-galad is wounded!” Maentêw fretted. “Where is that orc-host heading?

"To the Ford of the Legolin” Maedhros chimed in calmly. He had kept a thoughtful silence after the Ent’s words. “My brother and his troops are harassing them, and they intended to set up their ambush at the Ford.” 

Maentêw groaned and cast a desperate look at Taenben. “Gil-galad will be caught in the middle! We must help them!”

The captain cast a quick look around and made up his mind. “There are about thirty of us here. If we start now we can probably reach them in time…”

“I am heading north, Lalf,” Maedhros son of Fëanor interrupted in quite a civil voice. “To the Rath Lóriel and the great war. And my troops would never cross these woods in time…”

“You and your ten warriors is all I ask for,” Taenben bargained, pointing at the dour-looking elves that had broken ranks with Maedhros as he charged into Oropher’s succour. “I have a score beyond the river; enough to protect them while the orcs cross the ford and your brother slaughters them…”

“We are not going anywhere, Taenben,” Oropher chimed in, still too awed by the sight of the Ent to notice that he was siding with the kinslayer. “You already dragged us into your battle, and we have our own people to look after. Come, Bronadir, Thranduil, we are leaving!”

“Oropher, we should heed...”

“No, Ada! I came to tell you, this is the war of...”

“I know this is war!” Oropher shouted in exasperation, scowling at his son and his lieutenant. “We knew it would come one day, this last defeat! I will lead our people East into safety and I will not be pulled into another of those Noldorin-led, desperate, death-seeking battles!”

“You never were, Oropher, do not play victim now!” Maentêw retorted with undisguised contempt. “Will you help us, Finglas?” he asked the Ent pleadingly. “There are children there! They will be trampled by either host!”

The Ent rumbled softly and then uttered a string of loud, unintelligible words. Maedhros looked up at him and barked a short, harsh reply.

“We must help them, Ada! One is wounded...”

“I must care for our own people, Thranduil; we shall not wait here until we are routed! Let the Noldor fight their useless battles until they all perish in their arrogance! Though I had hoped that my own kin would know by now that only death and defeat come from associating with kinslayers,” he spat towards Maentêw and Taenben. That was more than Gelmir could take.

“Do you ever listen to anything other than your own voice, Oropher? It is the Army of the Valar fighting up there north and whipping Morgoth! The orcs are fleeing battle and we are winning this war!”

“Brethil and Cûiell are down there, Ada!” Thranduil shouted, but Oropher did not react, stunned by Gelmir’s words. He shook his head dubiously.

“Winning this war? You Noldor have been saying so since that half-witted king of yours rescued that kinslayer from that mountain and Morgoth sent his dragon to burn all your realms down in revenge…”

“You have your history somewhat compressed, Master Oropher,” Maedhros chuckled coldly, his attention drawn from his argument with the Ent. “But you have a point there. It is the Army of the West winning this war, Gelmir, while all you and your boy king do is scavenging on their rearguard…It is in the north that the fate of Middle-earth will be decided.”

Maentêw dropped his head, defeated. He barely noticed that Thranduil had finally dragged Bronadir and Oropher apart and was arguing heatedly with them. It would be to no avail; Oropher would not listen. Short of begging the kinslayer, he was running out of options. Gelmir seemed to have reached the same conclusion.

“Gil-galad is down there,” the Noldo was arguing. “He is injured, and with only Gildor to protect him...”

Maedhros seemed unimpressed. “There is a price for being a warrior king,” he shrugged indifferently, though Maentêw saw a flicker of worry cross his fair, shimmering features. Then the Ent said something and the Noldo’s head snapped up in reawakened interest.

“We are going with you,” Oropher said darkly in his ear. He looked shaken. Apparently Thranduil’s news had finally sunk in. “I cannot believe that you abandoned two children alone in the forest…What are they saying? Is that Quenya?”

Maentêw cringed. It was Quenya. The feeling of betrayal at hearing the Ent speak the tongue of the kinslayers overcame exasperation at Oropher’s inconsiderate reproach. He paid attention to the solemn conversation though he could not understand a word. Yet something the Ent said made the Noldo change his mind abruptly. He bowed low and turned to Taenben, eyes burning wildly on an almost frightened face.

“We are coming south,” he said curtly. “Finglas says that Fladrif and two dozen ents are down there chasing…” he shivered and shook his head, as if to get rid of a bad dream. “Never mind. I’ll send word to the rest of my troops to continue north and then hurry after you to the Ford. You should not tarry here.”

“I am not going anywhere with a kinslayer!” Oropher exploded, his hatred finally overflowing his thin self-control. The Noldo turned suddenly and cast him a cold look.

“Not even for the chance of killing me and becoming one yourself?” he asked in his scornful, mocking voice. “Oh, but you did not stand aside when I flattened Menegroth and Sirion, did you?” he added in a low, feral whisper, studying Oropher intently. “Of course, you already know how kinslaying tastes,” he chuckled evilly. “I’ll meet you at the Ford,” he called back still chuckling as he walked away, signalling to his warriors to follow him.

Maentêw met Oropher’s pained gaze without flinching.

“Sirion, too?” Oropher whispered in a broken voice. He nodded, knowing how that would hurt.

Oropher shook his head sadly, then shrugged with renewed decision and walked to where the rope bridge had lain. “There are two children stranded south, in the path of an orc-host,” he cried aloud so the elves at the other side could hear him. “Anyone coming?”

Three children and a brave warrior, Maentêw corrected inwardly, half-smiling at the roar that met Oropher’s words. His friend’s indomitable spirit knew not defeat. Taenben and his warriors would follow him to the Ford…and so would he; he observed dryly as they all started following Oropher’s instructions to get the bridge repaired quickly. He just hoped they would not be too late.

TBC.

After the Nirnaeth, Maedhros and his brethren wandered the woods of Ossiriand, and from there they regrouped to attack first Doriath and Sirion later.

In LOTR Treebeard names Finglas and Fladrif as the only two other ents surviving from the Elder Days.

Chapter 8: Down the River Legolin.  

“…And then there was that place with the row of waterfalls and the tunnel of trees, and the large pool where the stars came to swim with us…do you remember that one, Brethil?”  

He grunted indistinctly and continued poking morosely at the ambers in their dying fire. The captain had asked about their home and Cûiell was now telling him about all the different dwelling places she had lived in along her short but wandering life. Brethil had known most of them, but he was not in the mood for recollections, deeply shaken by the news that had led to that conversation.  

It was the third evening after Thranduil and Maentêw left their camp, and Gil-galad was recovering fast. He was intent on getting up, despite the pain that shone clearly on his face, and in the morning he had taken a couple of short walks around the clearing, supported by Gildor and noisily encouraged by the horses, which seemed delighted to see him up and about. He had collapsed by a tree after that and had refused food, and had lain down there breathing heavily and with his eyes closed. By midday, the Shimmering One had left, claiming that he was going to check their traps. Brethil suspected that he was scouting for enemies instead. He could feel the nervous thrumming of the trees and knew that the elder elves were worried, and argued softly between them when they thought the children would not notice.  

At sunset the captain had accepted some broth and had dragged himself wearily to a sitting position. Soon they were chattering and learning about his home in Balar, and Círdan’s army, and the mighty host that had come from the West… Brethil liked the captain. He spoke softly, thoughtfully, and explained everything as if they were his equals, hiding nothing from them. But when he asked about the Doriathrim’s mighty city in the mouths of Sirion, the honest answer that he got made Brethil wish he had kept his mouth shut…or else that he had been spared the truth.  

How could it be, he now wondered angrily, that they let it happen again? He felt a deep, dark hatred surging inside him and a sharp pain that he thought he had overcome bursting deep in his soul. Oropher was right, he thought, striking the brittle pieces of burnt wood as if they were the Noldor, beating them with his stick and scattering the ashes effortlessly, we are better on our own… Why, not even the renowned Shipwright had been able to prevent another kinslaying, and the rightful queen of Doriath had been bereft of her heritage and her city, and even her children! It is so unfair, he decided, stabbing at the earth furiously.  

“I am sorry, Brethil, I know how you feel…”  

“No, you know nothing, Noldo!” he spat with all the contempt that he could muster, shaking off the comforting hand that had come to rest on his shoulder and turning his attention to the fire, thinking that the Shimmering One had returned and refusing his pity.  A quick gasp made him look up and blush in chagrin. “I am sorry, Gil-galad,” he rushed to apologize, wincing at the deep sorrow that marred the captain’s features.  

“Do not apologize,” he managed with a bashful, sad smile. “You are right, after all…”  

“I thought it was Gildor, I did not mean to insult you…”  

The smile died into a grimace. “No offence taken. I am a Noldo, too. And a Moriquende as well…”  

“And you’d do well to mind your mouth, sapling. You speak as if your people alone had suffered in this war,” a harsher voice warned. Gildor had just come back and watched them warily, a deep frown clouding his suddenly stern face.  

“Peace, Gildor,” Gil-galad sighed, turning to his fellow warrior. “He has every right to feel like that.”  

“But not to throw it at your face, as if you were to blame; as if you had not lost, as if we had all not…”  

“Enough,” the captain said in a surprisingly firm, commanding voice. “If we do not stop looking back we will never heal. Nursing grudges amongst us will lead us nowhere, Gildor. What did you find?”  

That distracted Brethil’s attention from the unexpected revelation of the captain’s origins. Gildor seemed worried, and reluctant to speak before the children, but fortunately Cûiell was there to spare him the trouble.  

“They are coming,” she said in her offhanded manner. She had been listening intently to the argument but had kept her peace until then. “The trees are trying to hold them from us, but not for long…” Brethil almost laughed at Gildor and Gil-galad’s stunned expressions. Both Cûiell and himself had perceived clearly the increasing worry in the trees around them.  

“Well, you could have spared me the trip,” the Shimmering One growled pretending annoyance. There was something else, though; Brethil knew by the urgent glance he cast Gil-galad.  

“Speak, Gildor. They are in this with us. They must know what is coming…”  

“Cûiell is right. There is a large host of orcs swarming the woods behind us, most probably running to the ford...but there is a feeling of dread, of panic…”  

“The Onodrim?” Brethil chimed in, remembering Thranduil’s suspicions.  

Gildor released a suffering sigh. “Now you are full of surprises,” he complained. “No. There is something else in there, Onodrim and angry dark trees for sure, but also something that feels wilder and darker than the Onodrim…and...” he looked briefly at Gil-galad and then gave in. “And dangerous enough to frighten the trees as well as the orcs,” he sighed. “We should be leaving. We cannot go back, so we should make for the Ford and pray that we manage to put enough distance between them and ourselves,” he added softly, as if apologizing.  

Gil-galad nodded. “Do not fret. I am feeling much stronger. And that powder of yours works wonders, Brethil,” he said, giving Brethil and Cûiell a reassuring smile. “It smells so bad that I doubt any orc would even try to get close to me,” he joked. “Come, let us pack and start moving!”  

“Shall we ride?” Cûiell asked excitedly as they put out their fire and packed the remaining food. She had soon made friends with the horses, and had cried in delight when Gildor had allowed her to ride around the clearing for a while the day before. Although he would not admit it, Brethil too was looking forward to riding one of those beautiful creatures he remembered vaguely from his childhood.  

“Of course, my lady,” Gildor chuckled. “Come help me ready them. They are worried, too.” 

Alone by the fire while the rest busied themselves with the preparations, Brethil sighed, shaking off the last threads of sad memories. With sudden decision he picked up the remaining sword; the one Maentêw had left behind, and carried it to where Gil-galad was busy filling his waterskin.  

“Will you carry this?” The captain looked up and smiled briefly, taking the sword and laying it carefully on the grass.  

“I doubt I could… We’ll ask Gildor to carry it together with his own…Are you angry with me, Brethil?” he asked then softly, meeting the boy’s eyes squarely. After a brief pause Brethil shook his head.  

“No, I am not; I have no reason,” he said sincerely, squatting beside the captain and filling his own waterskin. “You are not to blame. But, tell me, how did you end up a captain in a Telerin army?” Gil-galad snorted at that.  

“It is a mixed army, Brethil, of Teleri, Noldor, Sindar, Laiquendi, even Edain warriors all joined together against the same enemy. But, answering your question, I was raised by Círdan as his foster son, so it was only natural that I assumed certain responsibilities…” Brethil nodded approvingly; he had grown up listening to Oropher talk about responsibility and duty rather than privilege, after all. Then he noticed something else.  

“Your atar died, then? And your family?”  

The Noldo nodded gravely.  

“I am sorry,” he offered, placing a comforting hand on the captain’s. He still felt an unbearable weight on his chest every time he remembered his father. And at least he still had his naneth. Then the Noldo surprised him again.  

“He was a kinslayer,” he whispered, lifting sad eyes to him. A tense pause and then, “are you still sorry?”  

Brethil closed his eyes. He would not lie, so he searched inside carefully. Finally he shook his head. “I am still sorry for you,” he whispered in an almost inaudible voice. It was true, and he was stunned that he had found that certainty within.  

“You have a good heart, Brethil; I am grateful for your sympathy,” the captain said, lifting a hand crisscrossed by scabs and half-healed cuts to press thankfully on Brethil’s. “Get that sword. We better get going.”  

                                                   ~*~*~*~

“They are elves, Oropher, they cannot fly. They will not attack you tonight...”

Maentêw winced at the sarcasm in his own voice, but his former friend did not acknowledge his presence. He had stood by the riverside since they stopped for a brief rest after a whole day and half a night of running, watching Maedhros’ camp at the other side almost obsessively.  

Actually, they had not exchanged more than a few words while Oropher directed the works on the Iant Raph. Taenben’s people at the other side had recovered the rope bridge that tangled idly in the chasm and had tied a long, thin thread of hithlain to the loose end. They had tied the other end of the rope to an arrow that Glîrdan then shot across the chasm. There, with the help of the ents, Oropher’s crew had pulled and dragged the rope bridge to them, tensed it and fixed it to the ground, safe enough for them to cross. He had been outwardly boastful and energetic, inspiring as Maentêw remembered him, but otherwise distant. He had consigned Thranduil to Bronadir’s supervision and had trotted alone for the rest of the day, except for the brief pause for meal in which he had conferred with his lieutenant briefly.  

“He must first come to terms with all this,” Bronadir had told him ruefully. “You know how he is…”  

“I do,” Maentêw had grunted bitterly. Pushing everyone else away until he feels at peace with the world, no matter what the others need or feel… At least Thranduil seemed to have recovered nicely from the shock of meeting a kinslayer. He had made good friends with Glîrdan, and soon they were trying each other’s bowmanship in shooting contests every time they stopped for a brief while.  

“I bet I could shoot him down from here,” Oropher suddenly said without moving. Maentêw shrugged.  

“Why don’t you do it?”  

“Because he is expecting it. I would not indulge him in any way…” Maentêw almost laughed at the passion in Oropher’s voice. Maedhros had been really clever in taunting the angry Sinda.  

“Why did he save my life?”  

Maentêw chose his answer carefully. “He did not. He just killed orcs that were attacking an elf… who did not hold a Silmaril. He cares for anything else,” he said as dispassionately as he could manage. That startled Oropher, who looked briefly at him and then skywards, where the Evening Star shone brighter each night, as if heralding the end. Oropher chuckled bitterly.  

“He cannot climb up there, no more than he dared sneaking into Morgoth’s pits to retrieve it….Craven, who lets others do the deed and then tries to steal their prize…” he spat with an immense hatred that oozed deep sadness as well. “I cannot understand it, Maentêw… they are kinslayers! How can you fight with them? How can the Onodrim follow them? How can… the Laiquendi…”  

Maentêw still remembered his own anguish when they had first ran into Maedhros’ host in the woods of Ossiriand, and how he had unleashed his frustration upon Gil-galad. Taenben saved him from answering, popping out of thin air in his silent, elegant pace.  

“The ents do not follow them,” the Laiquende said calmly. “Beleriand is a battlefield, Oropher, with only two sides left. And it is about to collapse under the strain of the confrontation. The Onodrim are leading their trees beyond the mountains, and killing orcs as they march. So is doing the Erchamion, and Balar’s army, and ourselves. And we all join forces when the occasion arises… The Onodrim make no judgements, you heard Finglas this morning…  

“He is dead inside, yes…May the souls of those he killed haunt his death as well as his life!”  

“That is said to be their doom, as set by Mandos himself, so be content,” Maentêw retorted dryly. In spite of himself he was still shaken by the expression on Maedhros’ face after Finglas spoke. “And as Taenben says, it is not our place to judge them…”  

“It will be up to your king to decide what to do with them kinslayers when the war is over, I deem...” Lalf added, missing Maentêw’s warning glance.  

“So you did find yourself a new king, Maentêw?” Oropher jumped for the throat quickly, glaring accusingly at his one-time friend.  “Who is he? One of Elwing’s children, raised by the kinslayer? That is why you are so keen on following him…”  

“Stop that, Oropher! It is not me who abandoned his people and hid away in the forest all these years, so dare not come and judge me for decisions you figure I have made under circumstances you know nothing about!” he exploded, incensed by his friend’s inclination to jump to his own conclusions.  

“Peace, friends,” Taenben stepped quickly between them before the argument escalated. “You are both too hurt to find healing or grant forgiveness at this time, but there is some great danger ahead… Can you leave old grievances behind for a while, Oropher?”  

Maentêw turned his back on Oropher angrily and fixed his glance on the other camp while Oropher and Lalf argued in soft, hurried whispers. He saw a scout coming into Maedhros’ camp, and the sudden agitation that followed his quick report. “They are moving!” he warned, seeing Maedhros walk to the river bank and waving to them urgently.  

“Lalf! Move on! Hurry up!” The Noldo’s mighty voice carried a tinge of urgency and fear that could not be dismissed. “Move on!”  

“Why!” Lalf cried after them. “What’s going on?”  

“Malcaraucë!” Maedhros shouted; the shadow of fear that clouded his pale face visible from that distance. “Move, before it is too late!” he cried once more before following his warriors into the woods. 

Maentêw looked at Lalf in puzzlement. “What is he talking about?”  

“I know not,” Lalf grunted, hurrying back to their camp. “But it must be some dreadful creature of Morgoth’s, if it can shake the Erchamion so deeply. Get ready!” he shouted, moving among his warriors. “The enemy is at hand!”  

TBC

A/N  Malcaraucë is Quenya...

Chapter 9: To the Ford.

They left before the moon was high.  

Gildor opened the march on foot, lighting their way as if a star had come down to guide them. Gil-galad followed on the motherly chestnut mare that had a soft, sure step, and Brethil and Cûiell rode behind him on the grey, spirited stallion. They followed a narrow trail between the River Legolin, which ran deep and fast there, and the edge of the teeming, troubled forest. 

“So what happened to all your cities and realms, Gildor?

Brethil groaned. Cûiell’s forwardness always led them to unwanted trouble, yet she seemed unable to grasp the concept of inappropriate moments or inappropriate questions. Not that she had had much training, with that sheltered and wandering life of theirs in which meetings with strangers were scarce, and thus a source of news, but still somehow her bluntness prickled Brethil and Thranduil’s sense of propriety. At times, though, he suspected she did it on purpose, just to watch them wince.

Busy overcoming his embarrassment on her account, he almost missed the cautious glances the Shimmering One cast to the captain before launching into an account of the tale of the ruin of the Noldorin realms in Beleriand; a tale Brethil had only heard in bits and pieces. In his soft voice the Exile recounted battle after battle, defeat after defeat, deeds of bravery and also division among allies. Brethil blushed when he heard how the Havens had fallen without any help from Nargothrond or Doriath reaching them, or how Doriath had not supported Nargothrond in the battle of Tumhalad, but he kept his peace wisely. Once or twice he saw Gil-galad make a warning gesture towards Gildor, urging him to restrain his bitterness and soften his comments.

“So much for all those brave kings and their mighty armies, then,” Cûiell pondered thoughtfully.

“So much, indeed,” Gil-galad nodded in a faint, pained voice. “Can we rest for a while?” he asked then. “I fear I cannot go any further…”

Distracted by the tale, Brethil had not noticed how the captain sagged as they rode, hunched as if in great pain. In two swift strides Gildor was there to catch him before he hit the ground, and dragged him to rest against a slender alder. “You should have warned us!” the older elf fretted, as Brethil and Cûiell dismounted and took care of the nervous horses. “Here, get some water… let me check those bandages...Easy, we still have time…”

Brethil exchanged a worried glance with Cûiell. The feeling in the forest was getting even more urgent, but none of them said a word.

“They were not just Doriathrim who were killed in Sirion, Brethil...” The captain sounded weak but determined. “There were Noldor and Sindar from Beleriand there; and Teleri, too… all of them people with whom we had an alliance… people whom I failed to succour… good friends…elves killed by elves…”  

“Let go, Ereinion,” Gildor pleaded softly, covering the tired elf with his cloak. “You need to rest…”

The captain fixed Brethil in an intense, searching gaze. “We know how you feel, Brethil, we do know…” he sighed wearily. He then closed his eyes and seemed to fall asleep. 

“What do we do now?” Cûiell asked softly, casting worried glances at the increasingly disturbed trees.

“He rests, and we watch,” Gildor grunted.

“But they are getting closer…”

Gildor cast them a thoughtful glance, then handed them his pack. “There. Food for two days. Take the stallion and climb east till you find a stream that crosses the path. You follow it north then and…”

“We are not leaving,” Brethil stated calmly, snapping out of his thoughts. “We will not have you say again that Doriath abandoned its allies…” He almost laughed at the look of dismay on the Noldo’s face.

“Do not be silly, boy! That was politics and this is about saving your lives!”

“I can go check how far they are,” Cûiell offered, supporting Brethil’s decision without the slightest hesitation. That frightened the Shimmering One even more.

“You are not going anywhere!”

“A moment ago you were sending us away,” she joked. “Calm down, Gildor,” she added with the maddening smile that always heralded trouble. “I can get more information from the trees than you could and I need not get very far.”

“We are staying, Gildor,” Brethil clinched. “So you better get used to it!”

The Shimmering One shook his head. He then stood and placed both hands on Cûiell’s shoulders. “May Manwë protect you, child. Do not stray far, just get the trees to tell you how much time do we have and then fly back, will you?” he pleaded, so deeply moved that Brethil felt the need to comfort him as Cûiell ran away with a brief laugh.

“She is our best scout. She will be fine.”

“So I hope.” With great effort the Shimmering One turned his attention to practical matters. “Let us check our weapons… you have a look at our arrows and I’ll see to knives and swords...”

They waited in tense silence, only broken by the rhythmic scrap of stone against iron. After some time Brethil looked up from the arrows and risked a question.

“Who was his father?” 

Gildor did not meet his eyes and continued working. “A good friend, and a valiant elf,” he said eventually, in a tone that was not forthcoming. But Brethil was unrelenting.

“You called him Ereinion. That is no common name.”

Gildor cast him a dirty glance and shook his head. “You are a pest, boy.” 

Brethil waited.

And won.

Gildor put away sword and stone and released a deep sigh. “His father was the High King of the Noldor,” he said challengingly. Brethil knew better than to let his shock show.

“So is he a king, now?”

Gildor chuckled softly. “By right. King of a rock, of a bereft people and a bedraggled army, but our king. And our captain, too. Now you know. You can leave when Cûiell returns.”

“I doubt it,” Brethil answered steadily. Asleep on the ground, pale and blood-stained, Gil-galad looked quite unkingly and less threatening than one might expect from the son of a kinslayer. “We are all in this together.”  

“We are, indeed,” the Shimmering One acknowledged with a brief smile. “And we will all be out of this together too; you have my word,” he added before turning his attention back to the swords.

Cûiell came back silently in the grey hour before dawn, short after Gil-galad awoke amidst winces and scowls of pain.

She looked shaken and took a long draught before speaking. “They are almost upon us, they are thousands!” she gasped, pointing back to the forest. The roar grew closer every hour. “The whole forest is marching around them, even from the east, so the orcs are surrounded…but the trees are fleeing something as well! I have seen fires!”

“How long to the ford, Gildor?” Gil-galad asked, assuming command immediately.

“I am not sure… but… we might get there before noon if the trees can hold them back for a while…”

“Then we should start as soon as possible,” the captain decided, extending a hand and urging Gildor to pull him up to his feet. “If they are fleeing something, they might not stop to kill us…”

“But we might be caught by whatever it is they are fleeing,” Brethil blurted, terrified by that unidentified threat. They had all felt the ground shake and roar in the past days, and had no idea of what was causing the stampede of frightened orcs –and now trees. Gil-galad smiled faintly.

“There is that risk, too. But one problem at a time. Now, I want you two to swear that you are going to obey my commands,” he said seriously, facing the youths. Brethil rebelled immediately.

“We are not warriors in your army, you cannot…”

“That is precisely why you must swear,” Gil-galad insisted coldly. “I cannot protect you if I am not sure that you will do as you are told…”

“I do,” Cûiell interrupted, placing both hands over her heart. “Oropher always says that every patrol must follow a leader, Brethil,” she nudged him, “and Gil-galad is the captain here...”

“If you insist…I give you my word for now,” he conceded grudgingly, reluctant to swear obedience to the king of the kinslayers.

Gil-galad watched him intently for a brief while, as if sensing his discomfort, then shook his head. “Let’s go,” he said simply.

They rode on without pause, as fast as the trail permitted, Gildor now protecting their rearguard. Brethil kept a frantic eye on the captain for fear that he would fall. Gil-galad leaned against the neck of his mare, a hand protectively crossed over his injured chest and the other threaded in the horse’s mane. He seemed to be holding on for the moment, despite the deep scowl of pain on his set face.

“The Ford!”  Cûiell cried, and he laughed in relief. Beyond them, not thousand paces away, the Legolin was a wide, shallow current, almost a pool, before narrowing again its course and jumping wildly into Sirion.

“We are there!” he turned to cry to Gil-galad, who had momentarily fallen behind. The sight froze him. Gil-galad had stopped to wait for Gildor, who ran as fast as he could after them, chased by a group of demented orcs and wargs.  Behind them, the trees trembled and shook and roared as if busy stamping on something. “Look!” he cried in joy urging Cûiell to stop the horse and look back. “The trees are trampling the orcs!”

“Ride! Ride to the ford!” Gil-galad roared at them as he helped Gildor on his mount. And then they saw it. Well behind but gaining fast on them a dark, large shape of black smoke advanced steadily through the forest, flames leaping up at its sides, branches and trunks and orc bodies jumping in the air at its passing, as if jolted by a mighty whirlwind of darkness and fire.  Panic grabbed them and they froze on the trail, watching in trepidation as the invisible threat got closer.

“Ride on!” Gil-galad’s voice broke over the din and startled the stallion. It sprang forward with renewed decision. “Find a place and start shooting!” Holding tightly to Cûiell’s waist, Brethil risked a glance back as they flew madly down a narrow trail and into the wide plain that led to the Ford. Gil-galad’s mare was lagging behind, but the orcs seemed more intent on fleeing than on chasing the elves riding before them.

“Yrch!”  Cuiell’s gasp sounded frightened and made him look ahead. A larger group of orcs ran towards them, pouring out of the forest and rolling down the soft slope that separated the forest from the river bank, dashing in panic towards the river.

“Hold on!” he shouted in her ear, fumbling with his bow. “I’ll shoot them down!”

And suddenly they were into the river, and he heard cries and growls, and arrows felling the orcs that splashed around them, while the land trembled and the roar shook them. A large orc crashed into them, pierced by many arrows, and the stallion reared up in panic. Unbalanced, Brethil slipped and fell into the river. He thought he heard his name before the water closed over him and muted the din. Then he hit his head and all went black.

                                                      ~*~*~*~*~

 Death rode towards them, Oropher knew by the deep silence that blanketed both sides of the river. He could smell the panic in the forest, the smoke that was not yet visible, the fear of fleeing creatures trapped on the other side. Then the roar reached them clearly, the sound of a marching forest this time mixed with a deep bellow that shook the land.

“What is that? It sounds like a thousand deer in the mating season!” one of Lalf’s warriors panted as they climbed a steep hill. Beyond there, Lalf had said, lay the Ford. Oropher shook his head and fell back to where Bronadir closed the march, signalling to Thranduil to come to them.

“A quick charge,” he said briefly. Bronadir nodded in assent. “We get Brethil and Cûiell out of danger and run into safety. As soon as we get down there, you look for a suitable tree and cover our backs, Thranduil...”

“But, ada…”

“You heard me, boy! Someone must cover us! Each warrior must play his part. And you are not even a warrior yet!”

“We are there,” warned Bronadir as they reached the top of the hill. Lalf was shouting commands frantically. With one swift glance down to the Ford, Oropher took in the situation.

“Charge now! They are surrounded!”

“Wait, look!” Maentêw shouted, grabbing his arm. A second horse had reached the Ford. “They are not alone!”

The large stallion was half way into the river when the orcs began to fall by the dozen, pierced by long, black feathered arrows.

“That is Maglor!” cried Gelmir. “And the Erchamion and the Onodrim are with them!”

They were beautiful to behold, a mighty host of shinning elves and angry trees that came up from the eastern flank, wreaking havoc amidst the terrified orcs with bow and sword and root and branch. But still some orcs had reached the river.

“To the Ford!” Oropher bellowed as the large stallion stumbled and reared up and one of the youngsters crashed into the river. “To the children!” He raced downhill, shooting as he ran, his attention fixed on the Ford and the elves in the river. One of the adult elves dismounted quickly and dragged the limp boy out of the waters while Cûiell and the other elf –an exile- kept the orcs at a distance. 

“Hold on!” he shouted, “We are coming!” Distracted by his voice, Cûiell snapped in his direction and missed a couple orcs that had evaded the Exile and got closer to the nervous stallion.

“Cûiell!” Thranduil flew past him and splashed into the river, his long knife in hand, followed at close distance by Glîrdan. Cursing, Oropher sped up after them, with Bronadir and Maentêw on tow.

“To them!” he cried, seeing that Noldor and Onodrim had also entered the river. And suddenly the forest exploded at the other side and a large dark shadow stomped towards the river dragging trees and orcs in flames, roaring in wrath and pain.

“Balrog!” someone shouted, “Stay away!”

The Onodrim were in the river, as were the orcs and the Erchamion’s host, in the path of the flaming creature. Oropher forced his way into the mess, caught a glimpse of Thranduil’s golden head, Brethil’s dark one, an ent in flames, a pale, blood-covered Noldo pushing the children behind him and cutting down a large orc with a curved orcish blade, then charging after the flaming shadow.

“Ereinion, no!” someone cried to Oropher’s right. A black smoke covered the air then, the river hissed and he groped blindly amidst the confusion, desperately looking for his children.

TBC.

A/N Ereinion means “son of kings”

Chapter 10. Tainted By Light.

Brethil whimpered, struggling helplessly against hands that ran over his body. He tried to scream, but only a muffled sound came out of the corner of his mouth. He looked around wildly but he could see nothing, even as he forced his eyelids open furiously. Did I fall again in the river? He remembered being dragged out, almost choking… Tauron, I’m blind! Or did I die? he wondered horrified. Panicking, he writhed and twisted and kicked out, trying to break free from strong arms that kept him pinned down to the ground.

“Ouch! Stop that, Brethil! It is over! Easy now, lad, let me see to that!”

The familiar voice broke through the haze of fear and disorientation, and he held back for a moment. “Oropher?”he mumbled, or thought he had, through a mouth that would not obey his commands. Suddenly he was dragged to sit against wet, creaking leather, and heard a soft voice soothing him.

“Easy child, we got you, you are safe. Now let Bronadir have a look at that cut…”

Sagging in relief, Brethil allowed a deft hand remove a sticky crust from his face with a damp cloth that felt cool against his skin; first his mouth, then his eyes.

“Now that’s better…Look at me, Brethil”  

I cannot; I am blind, he thought in despair, turning his head towards the second voice. As he blinked away unwanted tears he glimpsed a large shadow before him. He blinked again, more rapidly, and the shadow dissolved into Bronadir’s serious, worried face.

“Bronadir!” he cried in relief, surprised at the sound of his own voice.

“Well-met boy…” the warrior smiled comfortingly. “You frightened us with all that blood on your face… but the cut is shallow, thankfully. Oropher, hold his head…” Delighted, Brethil squirmed to look up to Oropher’s stern face.

“Still, boy! Are you deaf?”  Reassured by the gruff rebuke, Brethil sat back contentedly and closed his eyes while Bronadir carefully prodded a stinging gash on his forehead and covered it with crushed yarrow leaves. Almost immediately he jerked and started.

“Easy, boy, I know it hurts…”

Brethil shook his head, now shaking helplessly in Oropher’s embrace. “The fire!” he cried, as memories returned to him. “Cûiell? Where is Cûiell?” He saw it all over again: the orcs charging, the fire creature stomping against them, separating them; the fires, the smoke, the horse, the burning trees…and the blood in the river.

“It is over, Brethil. She is safe; you are all safe…”

“But that…thing?”

“A Balrog. And they let it run away…” Oropher sounded bitter. “Let us hope that it heads straight to the dwarves in the mountains…There you are. Do you hurt anywhere else, child? Everywhere, I suppose,” he answered himself, carefully easing Brethil on the ground and wrapping him in a warm cloak. “How is Maentêw, Bronadir?”

“He will survive…”

Fighting exhaustion, Brethil struggled to sit up and cast a look around, wincing at the pain in his ribs despite’s Oropher’s tender support. They were surrounded by mists and smoke, but not five paces from him he saw Maentêw, pale and with his eyes closed, propped up against a frightened-looking Thranduil. Cûiell knelt by his right side, holding a blood-stained cloth against Maentêw’s chest, while an unknown elf bandaged his left shoulder. Suddenly, Brethil recalled someone throwing himself on the path of an orc that had emerged unexpectedly from the bloodied waters before Gil-galad…A deep, tired voice broke into his recollections.

“Why did you do it, my friend?”

The captain had entered Brethil’s field of vision and knelt down beside the wounded warrior. To Brethil’s relief he looked unscathed, though wearied beyond measure. After a brief moment Maentêw stirred and opened his eyes.

“I…I feared…”

“You thought I was running after the Balrog? Do you still believe me to be as reckless as you, crazy wood elves?”

“For all I know, you could very well be one of us, my lord, yes,” Maentêw whispered tiredly, clasping Gil-galad’s bloodied hand and giving him a twisted smile.

“Reckless enough to put my children in danger, Noldo,” Oropher spat in, holding Brethil possessively. “And were it not for our reckless charge, you would not be alive, so you better show more respect, lad…”

Brethil shivered under Oropher’s cloak, remembering. The horse had been cut down by orcs, and had fallen to its side, trapping Cûiell beneath, while he was coughing up half the river, held up by Gil-galad. He had heard then Thranduil’s anguished cry -“Gaildineth!”-  and had seen his friend rush past them into the river, while Gildor charged form the other side. He had followed without thinking, staggering on unsteady feet just when the fire creature broke from the forest, sending orcs in panic before him. Brethil remembered Gil-galad shouting like mad and pushing them back; he slashed at orcs with a bloodied, curved blade and deathly accuracy. Then the fire creature had come, placing a wedge of fire and terror between them and Cûiell. The captain had plunged forward into the dark cloud of smoke and steam then and someone - Maentêw, he now guessed- had cried: “Ereinion, no!” Blinded by terror, Brethil had followed after them. Something heavy had hit him on his side and he did not remember much else...

“I am very grateful for your help, master Oropher,” Gil-galad admitted evenly, bowing respectfully to Oropher as if he had not in turn saved Oropher’s children. “How are you feeling, Brethil?” he asked then, turning his attention to the youth. “You were very brave…”

Brethil felt an unnamed warmth spread across his chest at the captain’s praise and tears of gratitude stinging in his eyes. He was too young still to recognize awe and loyalty inspired by selfless deeds of valour, but as he watched the tired, blood-drenched, dishevelled captain he felt a kind of devotion kindled within, though he knew not how to name that feeling. “Fine, I…” he managed awkwardly. “I owe you my life…”

“I owed mine to the three of you, so it seems we are even now,” Gil-galad laughed quietly, patting Thranduil’s shoulder and Cûiell’s stiff hair fondly. “We are now brothers in arms.”

“And how is Gildor?” Cûiell asked, casting worried glances around. “I could not thank him…”

“He is a bit singed around the edges,” the elf who was tending Maentêw’s wounds chuckled. As he lifted his head and pointed to another group of elves beyond them Brethil could see that he lacked an ear. “You can go now, lass, he is over there…”

“He saved my life,” she told a suddenly frowning Thranduil, handing him the cloth that she kept against Maentêw’s wound and limping towards the river. Casting a quick glance at Oropher, Bronadir stood up and went after her.

“Only a few burns,” Gil-galad hurried to explain, seeing that Maentêw was trying to rise. “A burning ent crashed on him while he dragged Cûiell from under the horse…Now you better lie down and allow Erlhewig finish patching you up, Maentêw.”

“Only if you swear that you will allow him to mistreat you in turn,” Maentêw retorted gruffly, swatting away the one-eared elf’s hand.

“How are the children?” a deep, beautiful voice interrupted. Brethil could only see the stranger’s long legs, clad in well-worn raw skin boots, but he felt Oropher’s hold tighten on him, and saw Gil-galad’s face change as he looked back and upwards to answer.

“They are no longer children,” the captain said in a voice that strained to be civil. “Not even for elven standards and they have grown fast, after their strain of edain blood…”

The newcomer’s laughter was unpleasant. “Maglor will be glad to know,” he observed dryly. “But I was asking after those young wood elves that you were protecting so foolishly, not after Elwing’s brood...” Brethil gasped and shrunk into Oropher’s embrace when he finally got a clear view of the newcomer: the bright eyes, the blazing mane and the hideous stump at the end of a long arm.

“Easy boy,” Oropher soothed him. “He will not harm you; I will not let him…”

“We were protecting each other,” Gil-galad answered softly, flashing a quick, comforting smile towards a stunned, terrified Brethil. “They are not children either, and they will recover.”

“Not Glîrdan, he will not,” Thranduil observed darkly, challenging the demon with a defiant glare. Emboldened by his friend’s courage, Brethil dared emerge from the protection of Oropher’s chest and steal a glance at the whole scene, just when the kinslayer leaned forth towards Thranduil.

“Be glad that you are alive…and whole, lad,” the creature whispered, studying them briefly and then returning his attention to Gil-galad. “Why don’t you come with us, kingling? We are going north, to meet the host…You aren’t half bad with a sword, but I bet I could still teach you one or two tricks…”

“We are busy here…”

“You are wasted here, shepherding Laiquendi to safety! Come north! You would have the chance to settle things with Morgoth, and I bet there are still balrogs there…”

“You have just let one wander free among the peoples of Ossiriand!” Oropher growled angrily, dragging the demon’s attention to them, to Brethil’s dismay. 

“So you have something to entertain yourselves while we fight the true war, tree elf…”

Thankfully, Gil-galad scrambled to his feet then, extending a hand towards Oropher to prevent an explosion. He stretched tall as he could, tense and defiant as a young tree before a storm.

“They are fighting as well, Lord Maedhros. Even now, a bunch of them have fought alongside your troops, so be mindful of your words…” he rebuked the demon so sternly that Brethil fought the urge to shout his approval. But the kinslayer was not easily intimidated.

“As you say, boy. Leave them then to their shepherding and come with us, what keeps you here? Wait, I know, Uncle Arafinwë forbade you to come around the bright army of the West, lest you soiled their untainted glory with your presence? Well, I am not afraid to disobey them, nor was your father once…what do you say, kingling?”

The one-eared elf hissed and Brethil saw that Maentêw struggled to get up. Gil-galad flinched, but regained his composure almost immediately. Just when he was about to reply, a soft, silvery voice chimed in.

“What manner of addressing our king is that, brother? Greetings, son of Fingon, are you unhurt?” The newcomer stepped in from behind Oropher. He was clad in black leather that matched his raven dark hair, and carried a long sword on a black sheath. He shimmered as the exiles did, yet his face was so immeasurably sad that Brethil felt a sudden surge of pity, until he heard Oropher’s snarl.

“Another kinslayer, this seems a family meeting…” The newcomer gave Oropher a nasty smirk.

“Be glad that this is all that is left of it, Wood Elf…”

“Are you threatening me, kinslayer?”

“Keep your peace, Master Oropher,” Gil-galad interrupted them. “Greetings, Lord Maglor, I thank you for your timely help and for rescuing my patrol…”

“What do you say, kingling?” the red-haired one insisted, a contemptuous look on his face. Gil-galad turned a cold glare to him.

“Why don’t you come with us, Lord Maedhros? It is time you did something for your people, other than leading them to war and destruction!”

That enraged the red-haired demon. “Do not patronize me, young one!” he roared, towering menacingly over the young captain. “Your people are fighting in the north while you play forest king with this toy army of Moriquendi… Wouldn’t you avenge your people and your father? I thought there was more of Fingon in you, but if you reject ties of kinship and duty then I am done with you, runt!”

Brethil fervently hoped that Gil-galad would cut down the kinslayer for his insolence, but when he spoke, the captain managed to stun and disappoint him at the same time.

“Come with us, and start redeeming yourself!” he insisted in a controlled voice. “For the love that you bore my father and the pity that you took on Elwing’s children I would take you under my protection and in my service…”

“You cannot!” Brethil gasped horrified, shrugging out of Oropher’s hold and scrambling to his feet, looking at Gil-galad in angry disbelief. “He is a kinslayer!” he shouted, pointing at the demon of his nightmares. The Noldo laughed hoarsely and shook his head, piercing him with his burning gaze.

“You hear him,” he turned then to Gil-galad. “You are a greater fool than your father was, child! You would take me under your… protection? So that I could betray you as I betrayed him?

“You did not… but you did betray yourself. It is upon you, son of Fëanor, to deliver yourself from your own fetters, and thus repay your debt to my father -if you ever felt that you had one- or to sink deeper into darkness and drag others with you as it is your wont,” Gil-galad spat bitterly.

“There must be darkness so the light can shine, your star-lightness…”

“I am a Moriquende, Lord Nelyafinwë…Come with me; your skills would be very helpful…”

“I am an oath-taker, youngling, and darkness inescapable is my doom.”

“Do not fool yourself, Maedhros! You are tainted by light; you will do what is right in the end, why not start now?”

That gave the tall Noldo pause. He studied Gil-galad through narrowed eyes then let escape another of his mad, mocking laughs.

“A good try, youngling, but you are not king enough for that!” Yet it seemed to Brethil that a fond smile crossed briefly the Noldo’s stern, fair, fey features. “Take this,” he said suddenly, fumbling at his belt and handing a sheathed knife to Gil- galad. “It delivered me from my fetters up on that mountain…and perhaps it can still perform another noble deed in your hands…May Varda shine upon you, boy,” he added brusquely, and after casting a long, considering glance at the young king he turned his back on them and walked away to where his warriors waited.

“Not even Manwë could release us, Ereinion,” Maglor sighed softly, embracing Gil-galad briefly. “Do not blame yourself, there is nothing that you could do…not even Fingon could…May Varda light your path, my king.” And with a quick bow he followed his brother and disappeared into the fog, silent as a wood elf and bright as an evening star.

“I must check on the rest of the wounded…and the fallen,” Gil-galad sighed tiredly after a while, turning a composed face to them. “You better lie down for a while Brethil,” he added softly, a sad, resigned expression on his face.

Brethil could not meet his grey, expectant eyes. Looking away, he allowed Oropher to ease him down. He felt angry, ashamed, betrayed and unbearably sad, so he pressed his face against Oropher’s chest and cried himself to sleep as he used to do when he was a child.

TBC

A/N

Gaildineth means bright bride. It is the secret, affectionate name that Thranduil had bestowed on Cûiell.

Nelyafinwë is Maedhros’ father name in Quenya.

Chapter 11.  Till We Meet Again.                       

“One of them restrained Oropher?” Brethil asked with interest, watching Gil-galad and the lanky elf they called Lalf deep in conversation with a tall, treeish creature Thranduil had told him was one of the Onodrim.

“I would have loved to see that,” Cûiell chuckled softly.

“Else he would have strangled the Kinslayer with his bare hands,” Thranduil assured them, biting his salmon cake distractedly.

They were sitting at the edge of the makeshift camp eating breakfast, out of the way while the warriors finished disposing of the dead orcs and made arrangements for upcoming departures. A day and a night had passed since the battle of the Ford, and the remaining elves had been busy tiding out the area and patching up the wounded. They had also managed to find hollow trunks for their fallen. Brethil had stood by his friends at one side of the river while two of Maglor’s warriors, one from Gil-galad’s lost patrol and a young elf Thranduil had named Glîrdan were delivered into the river’s care nestled in the embrace of a hollow trunk, after the manner of the wood elves. The kinslayers and their dour warriors had left short after that, and the mood of the encampment had become lighter with their departure.

But still the battlefield had a dismal look, with scattered burnt trees and the scorched scar the Balrog had left on it wake. That morning, Brethil and his friends had followed the blackened trail for a while, until they made sure that it headed straight to the mountains and well away from their people’s roaming lands. The marching forest had retreated to the other side of the river Legolin, leaving behind a large mound where, Brethil guessed, the orcs that had been killed inside the forest lay. At times it all felt to him as a bad dream, except for the bumps and cuts and bruises and the sharp pain on his ribs; and the dull despondency that had settled on him.

“The trees were chasing the orcs and protecting us all from the Balrog,” Cûiell said thoughtfully. “Gelmir told me that they had been led to the kinslayers by the trees as well…” Brethil fought back a grin. Cûiell had made quick friends with all of Gildor’s fellow warriors, much to Thranduil’s annoyance. “They also say that the Valar must be winning the war, since even the balrogs are fleeing the battlefield…”

“And the mighty army leaves those dangerous creatures wreak havoc freely across Beleriand,” Thranduil complained. “Who ever asked for their help, after all?” 

“Eärendil, Elwing’s husband did,” Brethil offered, remembering the tales that Gil-galad had told them. “He sailed to the blessed realm with the Silmaril and begged forgiveness for the Noldor and pity for the peoples of Middle-earth.”

“Is that their pity?” Thranduil retorted. “Destroying our land and disregarding what happens at their backs?”

“At least Gil-galad is taking care of the rearguard,” Cûiell pointed out, furiously scratching her already healing thigh.

“You heard the Kinslayer,” Thranduil snapped. “The army of the west did not want him around, so he had to do something…stop that, Cûiell, you will scratch that cut open and Erlhewig is not going to be happy.”

“It itches,” she complained, standing up and jumping on one leg so as to distract herself from the prickle.

“So do mine,” Thranduil rebuked her gently, pointing at the knife slashes on his forearm. “You shouldn’t have let those orcs get that close to you…”

“Brethil was drowning!”

“That Noldo was around, you should have been more careful…”

“And how did you manage to get those cuts, Thranduil? You mistook your arm for an orc’s?” Although her taunting was mild, and sweetened with a soft smile, Brethil saw the brief cloud that darkened his friend’s face.

“I still don’t know what hit me,” he hurried to chime in, feeling his tender side.

“An orc’s mace,” Thranduil said succinctly. “The same that killed Glîrdan.”

“Cûiell! They are ready!” An eager, cheerful voice broke into the laden silence that had settled over them.

"What does the Stinking One want now?” Thranduil grunted as Gildor walked towards them, waving his bandaged arm in greeting.

“Do not call him that!” Cûiell scolded him with an amused chuckle. Gildor’s left arm –and part of his golden mane- was heavily burned, and despite his protests Erlhewig had covered it with the reeking but effective powder the Wood Elves used. And Thranduil had lost no time in changing his name. “I challenged Gelmir to a shooting contest… Come, it will be fun!”

“We know your talents,” Brethil chimed in, seeing the frown deepening on Thranduil’s forehead. “Those poor Noldor have no chance…”

“They can always learn something,” Gildor offered with a wide smile. “How are you today, Brethil?” he asked gently. Brethil nodded and murmured his thanks, shying from the Noldo’s piercing gaze. “Let’s show them how to shoot, lass!”

Cûiell cast them a worried glance and then shrugged and followed Gildor, her limp almost imperceptible now. Thranduil watched her gloomily until they were out of sight and then sighed deeply.

“You called her Gaildineth down there in the river, I heard you…” Brethil suddenly remembered, aware of the source of his friend’s moodiness.

“I’ll beat your ribs to healing powder if you tell anyone,” Thranduil growled threateningly, the effect somewhat weakened by the furious blush that covered his face. Brethil chuckled and said nothing. “She heard it, too,” Thranduil admitted after a while. “And she said she liked it!” he added with a hopeful, awed smile.

“Now that is news! I would have expected her to break her bow on your head, just in warning!”

“She loves it too much,” Thranduil admitted modestly. “But I did not expect her to like it…And now she seems so taken with that Stinking One!”

“Do not be silly! She made good friends with Gildor while we were in the forest. And he protected us…”

“And saved her life…”

“Only because he was closer. But you came to the rescue and she knows that.”

“And I got Glîrdan killed,” Thranduil sighed. “I shouldn’t have charged like that,” he blurted after a tense silence, tears streaming down his face unbidden as guilt finally overwhelmed him. “I should have remembered that he was behind, Lalf sent him to protect me! I charged like a fool… He pushed me aside, Brethil, and he was unbalanced and the orc caught him straight on his head…and then I thought it had killed you as well!”

Lacking the words, Brethil just passed a comforting arm over his friend’s shoulders and pressed him against his unhurt side, while Thranduil cried quietly. If that was war, Brethil thought, then he had seen enough to last him a lifetime. All of a sudden he felt terribly weary and out of place. “Let’s go look for your Adar,” he suggested, dragging both of them to their feet. “I want to go home…”

                                                               ***

“I must be tainted by darkness, Maentêw. I cannot forget or forgive what the Exiles did to our people…I want nothing to do with the lot of them.”

“There are many who feel like that among them as well –who would not let go of their grudges,” his former friend shrugged coldly. They were sitting on an outcrop at the edge of the ruined battlefield, watching Cûiell beat Gil-galad’s warriors at shooting. “So do not feel bad about that, Oropher, it takes time until you are ready to move beyond pride and pain.”

Oropher bristled at his condescending tone. “Why should I feel bad?” he ranted angrily. “In case you forgot, it was them -their kin- who massacred our people twice!”

“Thrice,” Maentêw retorted calmly. He sighed, pointing at the Noldorin warriors. “Gildor’s wife and daughter were killed in the sack of Nargothrond, while you and I were safely ensconced behind the Girdle. Gelmir –and many others- barely survived the fall of the Havens, while we did nothing to succour them…”

“There was nothing we could do!”

“You tell them that. Gil-galad’s father and most of his people perished in the Fifth Battle… and only Mablung and Beleg fought there on behalf of Doriath…We all have plenty of reasons for grieving and hating each other…”

“And yet you choose to side with them!” Oropher could not understand his friend’s decision. “Come with me, Maentêw! Why would you choose to serve those who would forgive the ones who killed your family and your people?”

“You now sound like the Kinslayer,” Maentêw chuckled softly. That irked Oropher to no end.

“And I suppose that you will try to play the kingling’s trick on me,” he spat in annoyance. “But I will never join forces with kinslayers or kinslayers’ children or…” he cut himself short, seeing Brethil and Thranduil approaching them. “I will never consort with traitors and murderers, Maentêw,” he whispered heatedly, “And you’d do well to think which side you choose. Morning children!” he greeted the boys cheerfully, pained by their subdued countenances. “I thought you would be down there, supporting Cûiell…”

“She needs no encouragement,” Thranduil observed glumly, taking seat beside Maentêw. “When are we leaving, Ada?” he asked. “We want to go home…”

Oropher cast a questioning glance at Maentêw, who shrugged openly.

“You are free to depart, Oropher. I will follow my king.”

“Of course I am free,” Oropher retorted angrily. “And so are you!”

“You should hear the news before choosing your course, though,” Maentêw suggested calmly, nodding to Oropher’s back. Turning, he saw the Noldorin king climbing the small knoll slowly towards them.

“The Onodrim are leaving for the Rath Loriel now,” the Noldo informed in an even voice after nodding briefly to them. “And Taenben says he will wait till sundown before heading east. What are your plans, Master Oropher?”

“I do not have to inform you, youngling,” he said haughtily. “We will proceed as it suits us…”

“Of course you will,” the young king answered patiently. “I just asked in case we were following the same route and you wanted an escort…”

“Yours?” His condescending disbelief managed to shake the Noldo’s studied composure.

“Well, yes, mine! Ten of my warriors are unscathed, we can very well…”

“You could very well use them to chase that murderous creature that you have so carelessly set free upon the woods of Ossiriand!”

A shadow of chagrin clouded the Noldo’s pale face. “The Onodrim say that it was most probably heading for the deep caves in the mountains…” he said softly, “yet I would appreciate that you warned the roaming hosts of the danger, on your way south.”

“I thought that was your self-appointed task.”

“I will not reject others’ help, no matter how annoying,” the young king snapped, his patience cracking.

“I should take on the task of evacuating the Laiquendi myself,” Oropher mused provokingly. “It is evident that you cannot get to all the wandering companies…”

“All help is welcome,” the Noldo insisted in a strained voice, toying with the knife that the Kinslayer had given him the day before.

“And no doubt Celeborn will be glad to greet you when you escort your wandering companies to his dominions in Nenuial, Oropher,” Maentêw chimed in, chuckling perversely at Oropher’s stunned gaze. “You surely remember that he and his lady crossed the Mountains short after Lord Finrod’s death…”

“You would be welcome there, I have no doubt,” the Noldo sighed with a grimace.

For a brief moment Oropher sympathized with him, since he looked as eager to join Elu’s kinsman –and his meddlesome wife- as himself. “I suppose the lands beyond the Mountains are wide enough for all of us,” he proclaimed as regally as he could manage. “I will take care of my people as I see fit; see that you do the same.”

“So be it,” the Noldo acknowledged mildly. “We will be heading west in the morning, do you have enough provisions for your trip?”

Oropher bit back another contemptuous retort, restrained by the intent looks on his children’s faces. After all, the Noldo had protected them as best as he could in the river, and despite his heated defence of the kinslayer, he could well see that Brethil and Thranduil were still awed by the young king’s valour. He shrugged. “We Wood Elves know how to find our fare in the forest, but I thank you anyway. We will depart by noon. What will you do, Maentêw?” he asked then as indifferently as he could. Still his questioning angered and disturbed his friend greatly.

“I told you before, Oropher, you have no right…I would not…” he mumbled irately, glancing briefly at the Noldo.

“They are your people and your friends, Maentêw,” the king began in a low voice, not wholly managing to conceal how much that pained him. “I can understand if you want to rejoin them…I could… I would understand,” he admitted in a soft whisper. Triumphantly, Oropher turned to his friend.

“Your people and your war became mine when I had nothing left, Gil-galad; neither family, nor friends nor realm,” Maentêw stated dourly, glaring accusingly at Oropher and then bowing defiantly before his chosen king. “I will not forsake that now.”

Oropher barely noticed the awkward leave-taking exchanged between Gil-galad and the children, stunned by the bitterness and animosity that oozed from Maentêw’s stance. Only when he saw that they walked away he found his voice.

“Noldo!” he called out hoarsely. They stopped and turned to him. He took a deep breath and nodded towards Maentêw. “He used to be my best friend, and one of our bravest captains,” he began. “Beware that you do not squander such loyalty, or I will find you and make you pay for it,” he growled warningly. Gil-galad smiled briefly and nodded.

“I am well aware of the great gift that I have been granted, Oropher,” he said evenly. “May Tauron protect you and your people till we meet again beyond the mountains. Many wounds may find healing there…”

“May Tauron protect you as well,” Oropher conceded grudgingly, and turned his back on them brusquely, wondering how he had managed to hurt and lose his friend yet again when all he wanted was to bring him back to where he belonged. Faced with the sad, weary faces of his children, he forced a cheerful front. “We will start for home as soon as Cûiell is done with beating those Noldorin upstarts,” he joked, passing reassuring arms over their shoulders and dragging them to the improvised shooting range, where the warriors celebrated Cûiell’s skills good-naturedly.

“Shall we cross the mountains?”

“Where shall we live?”

He sighed and pressed them comfortingly against him. The fumes and fires were visible in the north, and his heart bled at the thought of abandoning Beleriand. “The trees will lead us, children,” he said full of confidence, “to never ending forests full of new voices, where prey is abundant and war only a bad dream. You will love it there, you will see!”

The End.