ERNIL

Chapter 2 ~ Into the East II

The stone beneath his feet was worn by years of use, but still steep enough to be perilous footing.  Thranduil placed each step carefully, keeping a firm hold of both his horses as the whole column of them wound their slow and deliberate way up the western side of Caradhras.  They had ridden a long distance already, but now it had seemed more prudent to get down and walk until the path leveled.

The slopes were rapidly cooling in the higher altitude, and Ost-in-Edhil had dwindled to no more than a distant speck below them.  Thranduil turned his eyes back to the path at his feet.  These were really the first mountains he had ever crossed.  He had never been across the Ered Luin before a harbor was cut into them, and they were not so grand as the Hithaeglir anyway.  In any event, he trusted he had done enough climbing in his day to outlast these peaks.

Up and up and up they went.  Gradually the trails flattened only to rise again later.  Oropher drove them on with hardly a pause, understandably wanting to leave the mountains behind them as quickly as they could, mindful of Celebrimbor’s warning.  They had set out with the dawn, and now that the day was drawing on to evening Thranduil glanced upward to see that they had come an impressive distance.  The sunset was staining the snowy horn of the mountain a brilliant red, the feature that had given the mount its name.

It was only when nightfall veiled the way in darkness that Oropher reluctantly called a halt.  The path had straightened into a wide shelf and a narrow corridor, following the side of the mountain before it turned back up again.  Surveying it in the dark, Thranduil was satisfied that it would accommodate all of them for the night.  He brought his horses up to stand with the others, the rest of their party doing the same behind him.

Supper consisted of dry rations of waybread and fruit, their first real meal since breakfast.  It was not much, but under the circumstances it was greatly appreciated.  Taking his portion, Thranduil wandered to the edge of the precipice and looked back out over the expanse to the west.  Only an occasional star pricked the cloud overhead, and even the moon was gone.  The warmth of the day fled with the light, leaving the surroundings cold and cheerless.  The air tasted different up here, he noticed, and the sounds were different.  The world around him felt so new and so old at once, new to him but every bit as enduring as Beleriand had been.  He was standing far beyond all the maps he had ever known, an unnerving and exhilarating thought. 

He turned from his empty watch and found Lindóriel.  “How is Caradhras treating you, Lin?” he asked pleasantly, sitting down on a rock near her.

“Well enough, I suppose,” she said.  “I shall always prefer trees to stone, but I can appreciate these mountains.”

Thranduil smiled.  “The lords down there would be pleased to hear you say it,” he said, nodding toward the city far beyond them.  “I believe Celebrimbor has as much a love for these peaks as do the Nogothrim of Hadhodrond.”

Lindóriel almost laughed, but it seemed her mirth was dampened.  “Really, Thranduil,” she said, “is that all you can think about?  Or is this banter merely for my sake?”

He declined to answer, his silence lost in the background of other murmuring voices.  He suspected she knew the truth already.

“I am rather worried by all this talk of Orcs,” she confided to him.  “I have never seen them, but I have heard quite a bit.”

Thranduil had seen and slain what he thought to be more than his fair share of Orcs on the borders of Doriath.  “They are hateful little things,” he confirmed vaguely.  “Hideous, but most are lacking in size.”  He deliberately put a slightly flippant air in his voice, hoping to reassure her.  The truth of his concerns he would keep to himself.

Even then, Thranduil could not help but see the tragic irony in her words.  She had never seen an Orc, yet three times she had been assaulted by her own kind.  He trusted they would not have to relive that portion of the old Age as well.

He eventually left her with Argeleb as the night deepened, wandering alone among the standing crowd of horses.  Almost half their party was already attempting to take some rest, the others somehow unable to find that same peace of mind.  Thranduil finally sat down against the hard and uneven cliff wall.  He crossed his arms over his chest, debating whether or not he would even attempt to sleep that night.  The fleeting hours would pass all too quickly before his father would want to resume the march.

Then his eyes caught a fleeting glimpse of movement.  Alert in a moment, he peered intently through a dark thicket of horses’ legs.  But the alarm faded as he recognized Galadhmir’s careful tread.  The other was leaving the ledge and heading into the narrows when he disappeared from sight, and Thranduil found he was unable to resist going along.

Gathering his feet beneath him, he followed where Galadhmir led.  The walls of the pass encroached closer around him, opening again as he passed the tallest and darkest crag.  The entire place was veiled in shadow, dormant but unfriendly.

“It reminds you of the old times, does it not?” Thranduil asked quietly, laying a steady hand on his friend’s shoulder.  “I never thought we would be waiting like this again.”

“Nor I.”  Galadhmir sighed, his arms crossed as he gazed away into the darkness.  “We sit here like birds on a roost simply waiting to be ambushed.  I do not like it.”

“I cannot see that we have any great choice in the matter.  We cannot go on, and we cannot go back.  The horses need rest.  We shall not wait here long.”

“Even this is too long.”  Galadhmir was agitated, grinding rock chips to dust beneath the toe of his boot.  “I do not like these mountains, Thranduil.  I do not like our position, and I do not like the shadows, the stillness.”

Thranduil sighed heavily, listening as Galadhmir voiced his own thoughts and fears.  In the end, he said nothing.

“You have heard what I have heard of Orcish raids,” Galadhmir said at last.  “And do not pretend that you are not thinking of it now.”

“Very well,” Thranduil glowered.  “What shall I say?  That we shall be killed, the horses slaughtered and the ladies savaged?  Very well, consider it said.”

His acrimony silenced them both for a time.  The chill wind moaned through the barren crags around them, accentuating the great emptiness of the place.  They had kept their heads down as best they could during the War of Wrath, so Thranduil had not seen an Orc since before the fall of Doriath.  It was eerie to imagine one might come bounding around a rock at any moment.  But how likely was it that they would be discovered during the first night?  He wished he could easily dismiss the possibility, but Galadhmir’s anxiety had already affected him.  He almost imagined he could see dark forms crouched in every shadow, waiting around each bend.  He shook off the thought, not wishing to encourage it.

“Come, Galadh,” he said at last, giving his friend’s shoulder an encouraging jostle before turning away.  “You need your rest as much as any of us.”

“You expect me to sleep on a night like this?” Galadhmir whispered incredulously.  The thin starlight glinted in his eyes, almost begging Thranduil to stay.  “I may not be the bravest among us, but—”

A smattering of gravel skittered down the wall beside them.  In that one moment they both shrank into the shadows against the rock like shadows themselves, every nerve pricked.  No more sounds came, but now they felt certain they were not alone.  Meeting Galadhmir’s gaze, Thranduil read in his eyes the thought that they should return to warn the others.  Instead, he silently commanded him to wait a moment.

Slowly, Thranduil slid a step beyond their cover of shadow.  Whatever it was, beast or foe, it already knew of their presence there.  Dagger in hand, he turned about smoothly on his heel, searching out the dark crevices beside, beyond, and above him.  At one time he had trusted his instincts completely; he had been able to feel the presence of danger.  But here the land did not know him.  The mountain would not speak to him, silent and surly.  At last, he stopped his prowl, placing his feet lightly in a ready position, listening.  There was nothing, nothing at all, merely the lonely moan of the wind.

Galadhmir had not yet dared to move.  Even the slowly drifting cloud was against them, veiling now what stars remained and plunging the mountain into absolute darkness.

Thranduil sighed at last, though his fears did not escape with it.  “I can see nothing,” he said.  “I suppose we imagined too much.”

“But what else could it have been?” Galadhmir whispered uneasily, slowly venturing from his retreat.

“A bird?” Thranduil suggested, his eyes still roving.

“No,” Galadhmir insisted, grasping his wrist.

Then Thranduil smelled it, too.

The black shadow fell upon them with a screech, taking them both to the ground.  Thranduil rolled and was up again in an instant, tearing the Orc away with him and slashing across its throat. 

Kicking the disgusting corpse away, he and Galadhmir ran back through the narrows toward the ledge.  The horses were already screaming wildly amid the crash of steel and iron.

They came from above, descending the rock face like a wave of cockroaches.  Lindóriel stifled a shriek as Oropher cursed and the entire scene dissolved into chaos.  She quickly drew her sword as Gwaelin did the same beside her.

Orcs swarmed over the ledge, their dark scimitars clashing against Elvish blades in a tangle of weapons and limbs and maddened horses.  It was too close to shoot them, even had she the time.

She turned and braced herself as a pair of them leaped toward her.  She deflected the first weapon, turned, and stabbed into the throat beneath the neck-guard.   She stepped over the body just in time to throw aside the attack of another, swinging around with a quick backhand stroke to rake head from shoulders in a black spray of blood.

She stood back-to-back with Illuiniel, Orcs screaming and shrieking all around them.  Again, she brought up her sword, bringing it down hard on the next neck.  There it lodged, caught in the jagged metal armor.  Clawed hands immediately swarmed over the blade, wresting it from her grasp.  Lindóriel tripped on the corpses behind her, falling against the wall with a cry.  They were already upon her, but she had drawn her knife and furiously drove them back.

She was prepared to do more, but then Thranduil crashed into the fray.  They leapt at him in a concentrated attack, clawing onto his back, but he was everywhere at once, slaughtering them in a bestial fury, throwing them away from him with sweeping strokes of his blade.

Lindóriel saw the mass of Orcs was dwindling, but one of them grabbed at her as it passed.  Before she could stab it, Thranduil ripped the devil off her with one hand, hurling it from the cliff.  Its companion recognized a bad business and retreated up the vertical rock face as Thranduil gave chase, pursuing the terrified creature up the wall.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the attack ended.  The Orcs were gone, and their intended victims were slowly gathering themselves.  Lindóriel stood and saw Thranduil still braced against the rock face above her, the clouds parting to admit the moonlight at last.  The Orc had outrun him and disappeared, presumably into the same hole that had brought them.  She blinked as a warm splash fell across her cheek.

Thranduil let himself down, falling into a soft crouch on the ledge beside her.  He looked terrible in the truest sense of the word, spattered and stained with Orc blood and viscera, the same way a ill-tempered bear on a kill was terrible.  The stench was almost overpowering.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, seeing the blood on her face.

She simply looked at him there, standing amid a wreck of dead Orcs.  He was his familiar gentle self again, but she could not yet forget the ease with which he had made the disturbing transformation from the living terror she had seen only moments before.  “No, I am all right,” she assured him at last, steadying her voice and bringing his hand down from the stain on her cheek.  “This blood is yours.  Come, let me see it.”

Thranduil obligingly sat on as clean a rock as he could find, allowing her to remove his leather vambrace and have a look at his arm.  Lindóriel winced in sympathetic pain as she revealed his sleeve already dark and thoroughly saturated.  Gently she pulled it up, uncovering a stab wound on his forearm, bleeding more heavily now that the pressure had been lifted.  “Oh, Thranduil,” she breathed.  “And none of us are clean enough to be tending wounds!”

“It is all right,” Thranduil dismissed it.  “I shall not die, anyway.”

He sounded flippant, but she could see by the fine lines about his brow and the determined set of his jaw that he was in considerable pain.

“Is everyone still with us?” Oropher called over the ruin, a disgusted note in his voice meant to conceal what must have been a private dread.

“Lin and I are here!” Thranduil answered for himself.

“I have Illuiniel!” Luinlas confirmed.  “The other two ladies are there.”

“Anárion is faint, but he shall be himself again before long,” came Galadhmir’s voice, hopeful but cheerless.

“Gwaelas and Erelas?” Oropher concluded.  “Baranor and Noruvion?  Linhir!”

They all confirmed their presence to the relief of everyone.  Noruvion and his father were busiest of all, their skills as healers in great demand at that moment.  Lindóriel accepted a bandage from them, but assured them Thranduil was already in capable hands. 

There was silence for a time as everyone dressed their wounds and tried their mobility.  Lindóriel bound Thranduil’s arm as tightly as she dared, gratified to see the bleeding slow considerably.

“Do we still have the horses?”

“Most of them.  Galadhmir, Luinlas and the wolf have gone to find the others.”

Oropher was wandering among them, disgustedly kicking dead and dismembered Orcs off the cliff side, pushing at them with his blade.  He sported three raking cuts across his eye, but no other obvious injury.  It was a superficial wound and would not trouble him long.  Gwaelin had suffered a grazing blow to her neck, miraculously spared what could have been a killing stroke.

Finishing her task as well as she could, Lindóriel moved to stand, but Thranduil gently took her wrist, bidding her stay.  She did not resist him, and indeed was reluctant to go.

“Were they as terrible as you imagined they would be?” he asked with the barest hint of a smile.

Lindóriel could not help breaking into a nervous laugh that could have easily become a sob, the belated effect of the terror she had suppressed before.  “They were dreadful!” she said.  “And indeed, you look horrible yourself!”

Thranduil merely smiled around the gore crusting all over him and fondly stroked her face with his wounded hand, the cleanest of the two.  “So do you, Lin,” he said.  But he pulled her close and kissed her anyway, all the grime forgotten.  She snaked her arm around his shoulder and held him there longer, gratefully accepting the solace he offered.

When at last he released her, Thranduil made no move to draw back, still holding her face in his hand.  “I am so proud of you,” he said at last.

“One finds it easier to kill an Orc,” she explained, “if one has already been subjected to the slaying of Elves.  I will do what I must, but I would prefer not to do it again.”

Thranduil smiled that same weary smile.  “If my prayers carry weight before the Belain,” he promised, “there will never be a need.”

Morning dawned upon a scene that was not much more bearable than it had been during the night.  All the carcasses, whole or otherwise, had been dumped, pushed, or thrown from the ledge in an attempt to keep the stench down.  Thick black blood was caked on everything, including their whole miserable party.  They had been able to change their clothes, but there was nowhere to bathe.  They did not at all regret leaving that place behind them.

Thranduil felt wretched.  The throbbing pain in his arm was punishment enough without having to wear dead Orc through the rest of their passage.  He had tied his matted hair back, dismissing it as a hopeless case.  Everyone was irritable and with good cause.

A brief breakfast was issued for those who could find their appetites, and before they could be off there remained some reorganizing to be done.  Two of the pack horses had been killed in the mayhem, and another was too injured to bear its full allotment.

“Examine your loads,” Oropher commanded them all.  “Choose something you can bear to be parted with.”

Resignedly, Thranduil located his horses and began probing through the contents of his packs as everyone else did the same.  The first choice was easy, and he tossed his soiled clothes from the night before into the pile without a second glance.  There was Serataron’s book, but there was no way he was going to discard that here.  He pulled out another thick roll of clothes, one of the finer outfits from Lindon.  He hesitated a moment, then yanked the gem from the collar and tossed away the rest.  He grabbed his silver flute, ready to part with that as well, but stopped himself.  It had been far too long since he had played it, but it was not useless to him yet.  He put it back, reserving bittersweet memories of Lúthien and Daeron for another time.  But he did pull out his old sketch book and reluctantly consign it to the ever-growing pile.  There was no point in holding onto it, he supposed.

When he turned again, he saw that Lindóriel had taken it up and begun flipping through the pages, past the sun on the ocean, the beech grove, the springtime garden, and the Ered Luin at dawn.  “You would leave this?” she asked, aghast.  “They are wonderful!”

“And useless,” he insisted.  “I do not need them.  My memory serves me well enough.”

“But do you not want them?”

“No,” he said, rearranging the remaining contents.

“I do.  I love to see you paint.”

“Well, if you enjoy it so much, Lin, I promise to paint more for you in Greenwood,” he said, gently plucking the book from her hands.  “But we have to get there first.”

She scowled at him, but seemed to accept that offer as satisfactory under the circumstances.  “At least let me keep this one while I may,” she insisted, snatching it back and carefully tearing out a rendering of the autumn gardens strewn with roses.  “One page will not break my own horse.”

Leaving the others to their packing and unpacking, Thranduil wandered over the bloodstained ledge to the corner where Anárion sat languidly against the rock face.  He still looked weak, but he seemed to be coming around.

“You worried me last night, my friend,” Thranduil said, crouching beside him.

“There is no need to rub it in,” Anárion groused, but with a tepid smile.

“Well, there is no use being embarrassed now,” Thranduil grinned.  “Can you stand?”

A flicker of silent dread crossed Anárion’s stoic face.  “Perhaps, but it will certainly not be pleasant.  Baranor stitched it in the hopes that I could ride.”

“We shall not leave you here, but it will be a great relief to all of us if we are able to be gone within the next hour,” Thranduil said, offering his hand.  “Come.  Let us give it a try.”

Dourly setting his jaw, Anárion took the proffered hand and with Thranduil’s help laboriously hauled himself to his feet, heavily favoring a torn leg.

“There you are.  See?  That is not so—Ai!   Yes, please, mind the arm.  I am not entirely well myself.  Can you walk, or no?”

“I would rather not,” Anárion confessed, his voice thin.

Thranduil frowned.  “I fear even riding will be a trial for you.”

Oropher was redistributing the contents of the extra packs among the thirteen others that had made way to accommodate them.  The great pile of rejected paraphernalia was not tossed over the side as the Orcs had been, but rather shoved away into a crevice in the forlorn hope that someone might discover it and find something useful.

“I suppose I should not complain this time,” Thranduil grumbled, “but just once I would very much like to reach my destination with everything I had intended to bring with me.”  He flexed his arm, frowning at the stiff pain the action brought. 

“Patience,” Lindóriel insisted, gently catching his arm in her hands.  “Do not make it worse.  From what I hear, you have already been fortunate enough that the weapon was not poisoned.”

“Are we not all ready to leave this miserable crag?” Oropher demanded, holding the reins of his techy stallion.

A wordless roar of accord rumbled in answer.

“Very well, then,” he said.  “Take your mounts and fall in line.”

The march continued, steadily but slowly on account of several smarting wounds.  Lindóriel felt that her mare was every bit as glad as she was to be on their way again.  The path had still not evened enough to allow everyone to ride comfortably, but there were those like poor Anárion and Erelas who had no alternative.  The rest of them continued to walk, leading their horses along the ascending trail.  When they had successfully stemmed the tide of the Orcs, she thought, the Nogothrim of Hadhodrond should consider doing something to make the pass more easily traveled.

“Lin,” Thranduil said from above her, making casual conversation as they trudged along.  “I have decided that I do not care for Caradhras.”

“You do not care for it merely because your arm hurts and your hair is full of filth,” she teased him.

“That is reason enough.”

 “Before we reached Eregion you said the mountains were beautiful,” she quipped with a grin, stepping over an ill-placed stone in the path.  “Now you suddenly carry a grudge against them.  I do not blame you,” she added, “but it is hardly just cause to despise the mount itself.”

“I think it just cause,” Thranduil maintained, picking his way over a rise.  “If Caradhras will spew Orcs at me who stab me, kill my horses, destroy my possessions, and render me irremediably filthy, I reserve the right to despise it.”

Lindóriel laughed, amused by his dry humor.  Somehow, no matter how miserable he was determined to be, Thranduil always seemed to make the best of the situation.  She really did not blame him at all.  She lusted after a bath every bit as much as he did, and although they were nearing the peaks now, they would likely have to descend into the eastern valley before they found a suitable stream or pool, another two long, foul, nauseating days.  She tried not to dwell upon it, for she did not know if she could bear the thought.

But, as they climbed, she had noticed Thranduil beginning to eye the snow banks on either side of them.  For the most part they were unreachable, taunting them with their cold, white purity.  But as they neared the very summit of the pass, the walls fell away to reveal a crystalline valley gleaming beside them.  The sight of it stole their breath away for a moment, the column slowing almost to a halt.

It was a lovely view, its frosted surface completely undisturbed.  The sun was indeed almost blinding in the flash and sparkle of new snow, so cold and fresh they could taste it in the air.

“That is beautiful,” Thranduil stated at last, letting his voice carry all along the mountainside.  As they watched, he summarily dropped his reins, vaulted over the rocks, and went walking out over the first great snowbank.  Roughly twenty paces out, he stopped, dropped to his knees, and scooped a great double handful of snow onto his face.

The temptation was irresistible.

“Very well, everyone,” Oropher laughed.  “Do what you must!”

It was as though he had loosed a stampede.  Everyone who was fortunate enough not to be momentarily crippled scrambled for that inviting expanse of white as quickly as wounds or weariness would allow.  It did not stop with merely washing their faces and combing snow through their hair, for soon they were all laughing and rollicking like children again in the giant drifts.  They were tumbling down banks, burrowing through sinkholes.  Someone began throwing snowballs.  It was cold, but absolutely wonderful!  Lindóriel dared to pack a handful of snow herself.

Thranduil smiled at her, but was momentarily stunned as the icy missile exploded against his jaw.  He shook it off in a moment and then surged toward her with a wicked grin.

She turned to run, but his wound had obviously not slowed him.  He caught her in a rowdy flying tackle, the snow giving way to send them rolling down the other side of the bank in a powdery spray, laughing all the way.  Thranduil came out on top when all had settled, kissed her playfully, but then was violently bowled over by Argeleb.

Lindóriel was still laughing as she pushed herself up on her elbow, watching the two of them wallow in the snow a stone’s throw away, Thranduil apparently fighting for his very life against the smothering affection of the massive hound.

This was not how she had imagined the end of a day that had begun so miserably, but perhaps their prayers did carry weight before the Belain after all.