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.”