Cadenza

Set in the same universe as ‘Adagio’ and ‘Mayflies’. One hundred years into the fourth age.

Drama/Adventure/Angst   A/L/G OC Friendship fic. No slash. R for violence.

Beta by the wonderful Theresa Green – Read all her stories, they are very funny and very good.

Warning OC character death this chapter (sniffle).

Chapter Fifteen.

Minuial ghosted up behind the unwary guard posted on the outer-door of the family wing. Moving with inhuman speed she whipped her blade under his chin and placed her other hand as an unforgiving gag over his mouth.

“You will lead me to the Queen, Traitor-to-your-kin. You will be silent. Understand.” Her menacing whisper was loud in the silence of this remote wing. She almost gagged at the taint of drink on his person; at least some of the ale had found its target.

The man erupted in struggles against the frail-looking female, and remained locked in her iron, elven, grip. The knife pressed harder and a trickle of blood warmed his neck, warning of the flood if he continued to resist. Camthalion appeared from the shadows on the left and removed the man’s sword and two daggers. Minuial could hear the heightened, frightened, breathing of the five men she had left at the bend in the corridor even over the eye-rolling snorts of her captive.

The guard’s fear-widened eyes caught the gleam of the rush light burning on the wall opposite, then seemed to dull in acceptance of his capture. Minuial cautiously allowed one of his arms free, twisting the other well up his back. Camthalion kept the business end of an arrow targeted somewhere around his heart.

The guard nodded meaningfully at the door that he had been protecting.

“Silmarwen, bring the others.”

The five citizens shuffled out of their hiding place, holding their swords awkwardly, looking anxiously in all directions like a herd of rather dim sheep. Silmarwen shadowed them from behind.

At least they had learnt to hold their tongues, and do what they were told, Minuial thought. The two guards that lay behind them may not have had to die if they had not been alerted by the human’s inability to follow orders. Minuial found herself appreciating Throndar’s skills to a keener degree than she had allowed herself during these past days. For a human he really was good.

The mismatched cavalcade moved cautiously down yet another hallway. Camthalion scouting in front, Minuial and the captive next, with the humans and Silmarwen last. Minuial spared a thought for the old soldier. Some of the lack of personnel in this wing of Meduseld may have been due to complacency and the ale, but she suspected that many of Wulfgarn’s guards had been called forward to watch the great hall as Bardor’s captured ‘spy’ was brought in to be judged. Bardor had been persuaded that the diversion was necessary, and survivable. Minuial was not sure Throndar was so sanguine. Minuial sighed and pushed her own captive forward as Camthalion signalled the way ahead was clear. Selfless bravery was admirable, no matter the species that displayed it.

Finally the captive indicated a well-lit hallway. “Them ‘as been kept ‘ere.” He muttered, sullenly.

Camthalion signalled- four guards - then drew his great bow and then waited for Silmarwen to move into position. She paused, as if counting, and then slipped across the lit opening. Minuial watched as Silmarwen raised her bow and picked a target, then felt the captive guard, under her hands, draw breath and tense, preparatory to yelling.

Hardly pausing, Minuial knocked the man sharply on the point of his chin with the hilt of her knife, and then almost absently handed his suddenly limp form off to the nearest human.

“Bind him,” she ordered in a low voice. The startled man nodded, turned to his neighbour and the two of them moved back along the hall carrying the burden, mercifully quietly. Minuial dismissed them from her mind and crept nearer to the intersection. The remaining three men moved up behind her, the steel in their hands catching the reflected firelight in tremors, echoing the nerves of the men holding the weapons.

Minuial signalled sharply with her free hand, and the bows sang, and again in the space of a breath. Silmarwen fired one last time and then there was a deadly silence.

Minuial jumped round the corner in a defensive crouch, and then allowed the men with her to storm noisily up to the doorway. The guards lay in so much disjointed abandon, skewered by the great arrows of the Greenwood like so many rabbits.

Minuial nodded to her compatriots and signed for them to guard the escape route, then went forward to meet the milling humans.

“The keys?” Habit kept her voice soft. Within moments the prostrate bodies had been searched and a rattling bunch of keys produced. Minuial handed them back to the man and gestured to the door. “Get it open, you fool. We do not have all night. We must away with them to safety.”

With admirable dispatch the double doors swung inwards and Minuial snatched a torch from the wall beside her to light the dark room. It was obviously usually used as the linen store for the wing, but as an interior room it had served well enough as a cramped prison.

A woman holding a baby flinched from the light and shielded the babe’s face. Two other women stood guard, a step in front of the one with the baby and behind them, to the left, Minuial could see two young children clinging on either side of a boy on the verge of manhood.

The man that pressed into the cramped space behind her dropped to one knee.

“My lady, we come to your aid.”

Cyneth, the Queen of Rohan, stepped forward, still shielding the baby’s eyes from the light.  “Master Lėod, you are known to us.” The Queen reached out her free hand and raised the kneeling man. “ Come, young Eomer, bring your sisters. Rise sir, and lead us out of this vile prison. You will always have the love of our house.” The Queen beckoned to the two other women. “Come Hilde, Aenwyn carry the little ones.” As she efficiently shepherded her family into the hall and into the care of the men waiting, Cyneth dropped a bob of a curtsey to the stunned elf. “My eternal gratitude to you, fair one. A tale lays in your timely presence I am sure, to be told at some other time.” The Queen managed a faint smile, and Minuial nodded to the woman, and stayed in the room as the corridor outside swiftly emptied of humans.

She closed her eyes, briefly. Where in Edoras was Arwen?

Minuial stood in silent thought. Noises from outside intruded; horns, and the sound of distant battle, closer she could hear the sound of running feet and shouts. Time, and beyond time, that she and her kin found their way out of this stone trap. Minuial left the room and gathered her two lieutenants.

“ I must find Arwen,” she instructed, tersely. “Go, both of you, with these humans and make sure they get to safety. Then join me, if you can, or help with the assault if that seems more prudent. I will search until I find the Evenstar.”

Both elves nodded, although they looked far from happy with their orders, and then the three set off into the shadows, silent deadly and determined.

**

On all-fours, Throndar spat blood onto the grubby tiles that fronted the throne of Rohan. He sadly examined the tooth that shone in the puddle; he had so few left. He shook his head gently then struggled to get up, and was helped in that endeavour by the forceful pull of his guard on the back of his surcoat. The hill-man made sure that this time the soldier stayed on his knees. Throndar was happy enough to comply, the hall seemed to be spinning, a side effect of the backhanded blow Wulfgarn had dealt him when he had not been forthcoming with Aragorn’s plans. The horse-tapestries of Rohan seemed to plunge past his watering eyes, draped here and there with the more garish banners of the hill-clan. Bardor’s appalled expression, glimpsed between the shoulders of the impassive ring of hill-men, was transparent enough; their ruse would be instantly exposed, landing both of them in direst peril, should Wulfgarn have eyes for it.

The usurping Chief was luckily engaged in urgent whispered conversation with a burly colleague, who from all descriptions had to be the infamous Frecern.

Throndar tried to stay conscious. It felt like hours since Bardor had started their act, dragging his resisting self by his bound hands up to the guard post at the foot of Meduseld’s stair. Those guards had been alert enough, but the door wardens had been sluggish and hard to rouse, sodden with ale. It had taken what seemed a lifetime for the stair guard to convince the door warden that Bardor’s spy might have information that was important enough to rouse the Chief. For a queasy minute or two it looked like Throndar would just be summarily executed, that being the quickest way to solve the problem of his inconvenient arrival. Throndar had felt Bardor behind him, loosening his dagger as if he could defend the bound man from a squad of guards. The Smith’s obvious anger had been the spur to getting them into the great hall. He was a known friend of Wulfgarn and the problem suddenly got too big for the guard-captain to handle alone.

Throndar and Bardor had been escorted to a position in front of the throne. Throndar had been taken in custody by a brutal-looking hill-man and Bardor had been escorted to one of the side tables and told to wait. They would wake the Chief and his Court.

“And may the gods have mercy on you, Smith, if you are wasting Wulfgarn’s time. He looks not kindly on fools and has only lately got to bed. Sooner would I disturb a bear in the spring.”

Bardor affected unconcern and they had awaited Wulfgarn’s arrival.

The night advanced, and Throndar hoped against hope they had bought Minuial and her charges time enough to get away. More and more of Wulfgarn’s men filed into the hall, bleary-eyed for the most part but still holding a reasonable, if sloppy, discipline. They were all impressively armed, many with crossbows as well as sword or spear. Throndar wondered where they had managed to gain access to such a bounty of new arms; he was looking at the wealth of a small city. Then he almost allowed himself to grin as he remembered the raid on the dwarven convoy that had so energised his King.  He glanced at the surly face of his guard and kept his face impassive

Finally Wulfgarn and his followers had entered the hall and a space of questioning had taken place. Throndar winced at his various agonies that reminded him that neither his guard nor the upstart King had any patience with his short and uninformative answers. At the end of a time that seemed longer than the hour it probably was, Wulfgarn himself had knocked Throndar to the ground, and then stormed off to consult with Frecern.

Throndar felt grimly amused and also wondered if he now measured the rest of his life in pain-laced breaths.

There was a disturbance at the doors and then a flustered-looking stair-guard almost ran up the length of the hall.

Wulfgarn turned his attention to the interruption.

“My lord, the enemy is at the gates, King Elfwine and the Elessar. They storm the walls.”

Horns could clearly be heard now, blowing wildly in the night outside the walls. Wulfgarn spun to pin Throndar with a furious glare.

“How could he have got here so quickly?” The irate Chief stormed to the captive and pulled him to his feet by bunching his fist in the soldier’s shirt. “Tell me, you stupid rat!”

Throndar spat a mouthful of blood in the face of his tormentor, and at the same time brought his knee into the fork of his legs. As the man bent forward he brought his bound hands up swiftly and caught the Chief under his chin, whip-lashing his head back. The satisfying crack of the Chief’s neck breaking was the second to last thing Throndar heard, the last was the glorious blowing of the horns of Gondor and Rohan. Then three crossbow bolts pierced his body and the guard plunged his sword into his back to finish the job.

Bardor watched Throndar’s violent fall with a pang of deep grief; he had been the bravest of warriors. Sternly suppressing his feelings until a more appropriate time, he quietly unsheathed his own sword and dagger, and then moved stealthily to put his back to the wall, all the while watching what the snake, Frecern, was doing. The guards had all rushed forward to look to their fallen Lord, and Bardor and Frecern had been left out of the suddenly contracted circle. Bardor, concealed by his position behind a pillar and in the shadow, could see an expression of rage blacken the traitor’s face, followed almost immediately by a thoughtful expression of calculation. Bardor saw the man glance around the hall, then move off quietly and without fuss towards a door to the left. Before any of the hill clan had eyes to mark his passage, Frecern melted out of the main hall, followed at a moment’s pause by the hulking shadow of the Master-Smith.

“Oh no, laddie, not this time I think,” muttered Bardor as he slipped after his prey. “ A time for some accounting has come.”

**

Aragorn cut his way relentlessly into the streets of Edoras.

Resistance he met with steel, merciless in his rage. Those citizens that submitted got passed to the rear of his force, sent outside the walls to join the growing crowd of refugees, guarded with inhuman efficiency by a circle of Throndar’s vigilant warriors, reinforced by an éored and a squad of Gondorian city guards.

Elfwine was working his way towards the city garrison with the bulk of his own forces, having heard from Thranduil’s very efficient spies that the majority of his home guard were trapped in their barracks and had been for the duration of the occupation.

Aragorn was heading directly to Meduseld, where Thranduil was confident Arwen was being held.

A desperate group of rebels attacked, yelling, from two side streets. Aragorn ducked a wild swing of a mattock and quickly gutted his attacker. He crouched as a flight of crossbow bolts lanced into his troops from an adjacent rooftop. His bodyguards moved up beside him, and two of the great Gondorian bows sang from the rear. A body fell with a meaty thunk into the road in front of the King. Black clad warriors made short work of the rest of the attacking party.

Aragorn’s captain dared a hand on his arm, and was met by a steely glare.

“My liege, please. Let us clear the way.”

Aragorn’s anger was not yet sated. “Clear the way by keeping up with me, Captain.” The King glanced all around then stood. “Meduseld lies at the top of yonder street.” He raised his voice so that the troop could hear. “ To Meduseld, without pause now.” The new dawn painted the tip of his sword and the soldiers could see Meduseld’s roof flush with gold on the top of its hill ahead. “To victory! To Justice!” The King lowered Anduril and strode forward, his beleaguered personal guard keeping pace perforce.

TBC

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Rose Sared