I Sit and Think of Times There Were Before by Erdariel  

As the years of my life grow few, I find myself looking back more and more often. I seek patterns, try to find some reason in why things befell as they did, and why I was given the part I played in them. Perhaps there is no reason, but I feel there must be and I cannot help but look for it, though others may see my search as nothing but folly or a touch of the madness of old age. Somehow I hope that writing this down might help me see the pattern at last.

I fought at the late king’s side in the war, for even when my father grew bitter and turned against him, my loyalty always belonged to the king, and he allowed me to remain with him even after the betrayal. I saw much during the war and did many things in defence of my king and my people. I cannot say I remember all of them with pride. I ohtar i arano, the esquire of the king, I know men call me now when they speak of the war, for my name matters less than my place in King Isildur’s service. I was named Zôrzagar by my mother who loved the tongue of Númenor, but the kings prefer the elven tongues to be spoken in their courts, and so Ruinamacil is the name I have worn for much of my life. But I doubt these names will outlive me by very long, though the tale of King Isildur’s esquire carrying the broken sword of Elendil out of the defeat at Gladden Fields to the hands of Valandil Isildur’s son may still be remembered for a time.

Isildur only called me Ohtar, too, that last time he spoke to me. That night is seared into my memory. More than any other event, it divides my life in two; there is a before and an after, irreconcilably different from each other.

I remember the look on his face when he told me to flee. I remember his words, and I do not know if I am resentful or grateful that he did not call me by my name. All the pain of that parting was disguised under an order by a lord to a soldier. If he had spoken longer or more gently, I do not know whether I would have had the strength to leave him. If he had spoken so, I do not know if he would have had the resolve to order me to flee. Yet at times I cannot help but feel bitter that those were his final words to me, as if all the years I spent at his side meant nothing. I wish he would have called me by name, that he would have thanked me for my faithfulness or reassured me of my courage.

In that moment I could do nothing but obey. I took Narsil and Gileinas took a bag of supplies from one of the packhorses, and we fled.

I remember wishing that I could look back. That I could see him once more, mighty and kingly and crowned with a star. I think in my heart I knew it was our last parting, though through all the long days that followed I hoped otherwise. I loved him both as his servant and his kinsman. I had devoted most of my adult life to him. I wanted to look back as I fled, to see him that one last time and let the sight reassure me. But I could not; I had to keep my mind on my task.

Part of my heart lies trodden to the grass of that battlefield.

We were not pursued as we fled. I do not know why. Perhaps the orcs trusted the watchers they had left on the west bank of the river to take care of anyone who might flee. Or perhaps some power of evil drew them to the king and those with him so that they cared for little else. Estelmo and I have since spent many hours together guessing at the meaning of what we heard and saw that night, but I am still not certain of much. I think Lord Elrond knows more than he says, but something has always held me back from asking him. There is a dread that raises its head alongside curiosity when the thought crosses my mind, warning me that the truth is something more terrible than I could bear.

Be that as it may, Gileinas and I fled fearing pursuit or arrows shot after us, but none came. The steep ground was treacherous and we stumbled often, but picked ourselves up and kept running. The sun was gone behind the clouds and gloomy twilight thickened around us. Far below us the Anduin cut the landscape in two with a purple-grey line. We made for it as directly as we could, but the direct way was often too steep and we were obliged to head somewhat northward.

Darkness fell before we made it to the bottom of the valley. We stopped there for a while, breathless, and leaned on each other to stay on our feet. I do not know how many miles we had covered, but neither of us felt that we were out of danger.

“We should keep going”, I said. “Let us continue northward until the night is through. Once it is light again, we can climb back out of the vale and make for the forest. If we are lucky, we might meet King Thranduil’s marchwardens and could wait with them for news of the others.”

“And if we are less lucky, orcs will find us long before then. How do you think that would go?” asked Gileinas. “Besides, the orcs came from the forest. If there are any servants of Thranduil in this region, they must have hidden themselves well from the orcs. I doubt we would find them in time.”

“What other option do we have? We cannot stay here all night either.”

“Cross the river. Then we can head north again and make for the road to Cirith Forn en Andrath. Even if the orcs cross the river after us, at least they cannot corner us against it with nowhere to escape as easily as now, and they will have to spend more time chasing us.”

“It will be a much harder trek north; there may not be any road we could use for most of it. We would also put ourselves out of the reach of any help until we reached Imladris. And how would we cross the river?” said I, though in truth the fear of the orcs was in me, and I already wanted to agree to Gileinas’ plan.

“By swimming, if we must. It will not be easy, but we have done harder things, you and I.”

I ran my fingers across the scratched leather of Narsil’s scabbard and stared into the night for a while. I could see very little, only the faintest gleam of water in the river and vague ghost-shapes of the rest of our surroundings. I did not want to linger in one place much longer. I liked the thought of having the river between the orcs and myself. And Gileinas was right; we had done harder things.

“Alright.”

“Stay here”, Gileinas said. “I will find a good place to get into the water.”

I did not want to be left alone there in the dark, but there was no sense in spending more time arguing. “Do not go too far. Come back soon”, I whispered.

His hand squeezed my shoulder. Then he was gone, a shadow among shadows, the grass rustling under his retreating footsteps.

It was impossible to tell how much time passed. I sat huddled half-under some bush. Dying leaves wavering in the wind that blew across the river from the southwest brushed my skin. The air was chill. I shivered. At any moment I expected to hear screams and the sound of a fight, but all was quiet.

At length I heard footsteps approaching. Only one set, treading carefully, not the stomping of orcs. I held my breath nonetheless, unable to relax until I heard the voice of Gileinas softly calling my name.

“Here”, I replied and stood up, reaching my hand out to seek him in the darkness. His groping hand met mine. I pulled him closer until we stood so near that I could feel the warmth of his body.

“I found something”, he whispered, sounding tense but satisfied. “Better than a place to swim across.”

I followed him as he searched for the place again. Some impulse made me lay my hand on his shoulder, to assure myself of his presence. Although I was no longer alone, the weight of the night pressing on me from all sides was almost too heavy to stand. When we had run, there had been no time or room to notice it, but now I had been still for too long and had had time to think, and I was all too aware of how small we were in the midst of the vast darkness. Gileinas went half-crouched, feeling his way with his hand. The reeds and rushes grew taller than us at our side, hissing in the wind. The old grass rustled underfoot.

I sensed more than saw a gap in the rushes when we came to it. Gileinas halted, caught my hand, and brought it down near to the ground. I felt rough wood under my fingers, and slowly my eyes began to make out the shape of a raft drawn up to the riverbank.

“Orc-make”, I whispered.

“Some of them must have crossed the river with this”, Gileinas agreed. “But it can get us across just as well.”

In any other circumstances I would not have trusted a thing made by orcs, but crossing the river by raft was preferable to swimming. And if the raft had carried a dozen orcs across without sinking, it ought to carry two men.

We pushed the raft into the water and got on, crouching low to its surface and trying to keep it from tipping. It was not made to be steered easily. We both were sweating by the time we were halfway across the river. The current was swift and strong and swept us a good way downstream despite our best efforts.

The raft was nearing the western bank when the clouds broke. From between their ragged edges the thin sliver of the waning moon shone down on us. I welcomed even that faint light, but my heart was chilled by what it showed me. On the riverbank, near to where our raft would land, I saw metal glint in the moonlight. Four orcs sat there, swords and bows near to hand.

They must not have been very alert or expecting any trouble. Evidently they had not seen us, or else they had taken our crouched forms upon the raft to be those of their fellow orcs. The wind, thankfully, blew in such a direction that they had not smelled us.

I tapped Gileinas on the hand and pointed the orcs out to him as subtly as I could. He nodded a little. We could not speak to make any plan and did not dare to gesture, either. All we could do was trust that we both thought the same thing.

I could see no way out but through. Even if we tried to turn now, we could not get out of the range of their bows before the orcs noticed that something was wrong. We held our course, paddling steadily toward the bank. I kept my crouched position, but I my body grow tense until it strained like a full-drawn bow waiting for the archer to take his shot.

The raft floated nearer and nearer to the bank. Finally one of the orcs raised his head and called out a lazy greeting. We were as good as caught then; if either Gileinas or I replied, our voices would reveal us for what we were, but our lack of reply was equally suspicious. Besides, the orc’s attention was on us then, and it did not take long for him to see that our armour was no kind of orc-gear.

Gileinas moved first, leaping like deer. He had no time to draw his long sword or even his eket, only his small knife, but he was a vicious fighter and at knife-range few were ever a match for him. He must have come upon one of the orcs before any of them could even cry out.

I drew my eket and moved, only a moment behind him. My leap was a little short and my back leg slid down the bank into the water, but Gileinas’ attack had cleared enough room that I could scramble back up. I swung the eket wildly, hoping more to ward off the orcs than to do much true harm. Once I felt the sword bite into flesh, but I do not know whether it killed or merely wounded.

I dashed forward the instant there was nothing blocking my way, then swerved to one side as soon as I thought I was out of the reach of any grasping hands. I ran into the night, weaving my steps like a drunkard to make myself a harder target for the archers. The cries of the orcs faded into the night behind me.

How long we ran I do not know. At first I was not even certain that Gileinas had survived. Words cannot describe my relief when I heard his running footsteps again. But there was no time to halt, no breath to spare for speech.

I only stopped when I heard Gileinas stumble and fall. I helped him to his feet. He was shaking and his breathing was ragged.

“Are you all right?” asked I.

“Yes”, he said between gasping breaths. “But I do not think I can go much further tonight. Ruinamacil, if you must leave me, do it.”

We both knew I had the endurance to keep going. Gileinas was hardy and clever and could survive much, but in a long race he would always fail before I did. He was not born as one of the Dúnedain, and in some things could never quite match us.

Gileinas was a name he adopted only after we first met, though it was the first name I knew him by. He told me once the name he had first been given, but said he had left it behind and that I should go on calling him Gileinas. In a way I suppose I understand; after my father's betrayal only Queen Varyandë ever called me Zôrzagar again, and since her death I have never wished to be called so. There is too large a confusion of emotions tied up with that name. I buried Gileinas’ old name with him and will not dig it back up, not even to write it down here.

Chapter End Notes

Gileinas is possibly janky (as in I'm not very good with the elvish languages and have a hard time telling if i've fucked something up or not) Eldamo-sourced Neo-Sindarin for "Star of Freedom", from the Sindarin "gil" for star, and "leinas" which Eldamo's Neo-Sindarin list gives for "freedom"

Ruinamacil is Quenya for "fiery sword". Zôrzagar is as near as I can get to the same meaning in Adûnaic, constructed with the help of Kimikocha's Adûnaic name spreadhseet

I hope you liked the fic so far, and hope you'll like the rest of it, whenever I get the rest wrangled into something I can post!

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Gileinas was half-starved when I first saw him, covered in more mud than clothes. It was evening under the murky clouds of Mordor. I was standing watch at the edge of our camp, for Isildur had sent me away. The kings were holding council together and seemed to not want even their closest servants present. It was quiet that night, but the kind of quiet that makes a man feel ill at ease, as though the world was holding its breath in anticipation of something. And I saw the movement of something crawling in a ditch only some thirty yards from my post.

I thought it some spying orc at first, and fitted an arrow to the string of my bow and was about to cry out, but some doubt gnawed at the back of my mind and kept me from shooting. The creature did not move with the purpose and determination I would have expected of an orc. Nor did I see any sign of weapons or armour on the figure. It just crawled and dragged itself forward a few inches at a time, seemingly oblivious to how near I stood.

I put the arrow back in the quiver and roused the other watchman, a fellow named Mornaras who was dozing nearby in a little hollow on the ground sheltered by a large rock. We stood guard in pairs, and often when the hours of the shift grew long, one of the pair would rest while the other kept watch. (In truth people were not supposed to do it, but there never seemed to be quite enough time for rest otherwise, so I never told Isildur or any of the captains about it and did very little to discourage it myself.) I pointed the figure out to Mornaras and told him to sound the alarm if something happened to me. Then I walked nearer until I stood at the edge of the ditch almost directly above the figure.

“Where are you going and what do you think you are doing?” I asked, loudly enough that Mornaras must have heard it back where he stood, and so must anyone else who might be hiding nearby.

The figure looked up at me and scrambled back a little, cringing back from an anticipated attack. This close I could see that it was a man — stick-thin and dirty, dressed in clothes that were in some places quite literally hanging on by a thread, but in any case a man, not an orc. His hair was thick and tightly curled, and as caked with dirt as the rest of him. His eyes were dark, and wide with terror.

I crouched down and went a little closer. He said something in a tight, breathless voice, but I could make no sense of it; many of the words were slurred or mumbled. Some of the words had the cadence of Adûnaic, but the accent, reminiscent of the speech of Black Númenoreans but not quite the same, was very thick and hard to understand. And some other words sounded entirely strange to me.

It was clear to me that he was no threat, but also clear that many of my superiors would not agree without further proof. In any case, if I told him to go away and left him alone, he would not survive very long. Either he would be shot on sight by another watchman like I had nearly done, or he would be found by orcs and killed or worse, or he would simply starve.

“I have to take you to the camp”, I said, “but if you mean us no harm, you should be safer there than you are out here.”

The man seemed to understand me, though he said nothing in response. His shoulders drooped resignedly and he bowed his head. I reached out to take him by the arm and rose to my feet. He did not resist, but it quickly became plain to me that he was very weak and could not walk far without help.

Mornaras looked dubiously at me when I brought the man over to where he stood. He clearly felt less kindly about the stranger than I did, and somewhat resentful for having been woken up because of him.

“What are you going to do with him?” he asked.

I considered my options for a while. If the man had been stronger, I would have brought him to camp right away and returned to finish my watch, trusting that all would be well in the mean time. But with as weak as he was, the walk to the camp would take much longer, and even if all went well at camp and I could hand the man over to someone else quickly, it would take longer than I could in good conscience leave Mornaras alone for.

“Take him back when our watch ends and find someone with the authority to make decisions about him”, I said.

The man had curled up in the same hollow Mornaras had slept in and was watching us warily. Mornaras looked at him for a while. He shrugged.

“It sounds like more trouble than he is worth, but if that really is what you want.”

The rest of our watch went by quietly. I offered the stranger a drink from my canteen twice, but he did not seem to trust it and refused. Mornaras was pointedly silent. I stared at the desolate plains of Mordor and the heavy clouds above. Nothing moved to break the monotony. There was no sign of danger, though I could not quite shake the feeling that something was going to happen soon.

The next pair of watchmen came to relieve us. They looked curiously at the stranger as I turned to help him up.

“Looks like something interesting happened”, one of them remarked.

“Ruinamacil decided to act like a fool is what happened”, said Mornaras. “He had to go and take that man prisoner.”

“He looks harmless enough”, the soldier replied placidly. He had no interrupted sleep to feel resentful about. “I do not think there is anything wrong with leaving him alive. In any case, he will be someone else’s problem soon enough.”

Despite his annoyance, Mornaras helped me bring the man back to our camp. He even agreed to keep an eye on him while I went to fetch one of our captains. I made sure to do him some favours later, as opportunities presented themselves. It tends to be useful to be known as a man who will return the favours others make for him. Being the king’s esquire often left me awkwardly in between groups, still low in the ranks and not equal with the knights and the captains, but also separate and not entirely regarded as one of the common soldiers. Even among the esquires of knights and lords of Gondor, Elendur's esquire Estelmo and Anárion’s esquire Limbifion and I were always held as something a little different. Acting fair with the soldiers and not making much of a fuss about my position alleviated the friction somewhat, though it never removed the difference.

I was lucky enough that when I went to report to Malicontar, the captain in charge of watchmen on the edge of the camp that I had been on, I found him in conversation with Lord Elrond. I paused at the door to the captain’s tent, clearing my throat and hoping I had not disturbed anything important.

“Come in, Ruinamacil. You look as though you have more than the usual to report”, Malicontar said.

I came to stand in front of his desk and nodded. “We have taken a prisoner.”

“A prisoner?”

“Yes. A man, not an orc.” I shifted my weight a little, feeling much less confident about my choices under the captain’s gaze than when I had made them. “In truth, I do not think he is in league with the enemy. He was alone, so far as I can tell, and with no weapons or tools of harm on him. And his condition seemed quite poor. I doubt he could have been very much use as a spy in such state. But he is not one of our own, or of our allies. I could not let him go free.”

“You could have killed him”, said Malicontar.

“I could have”, I admitted. It would have been no use to try to justify my actions. I had spared the man’s life because he had looked harmless, and he had been scared, and I had pitied him and felt that it would be wrong to kill him, not because I had had a practical reason to take him prisoner, but I knew that Malicontar did not care to discuss questions of morality. I think he would have preferred that I had killed the man and spared him the trouble of deciding what to do with a prisoner.

“Well, I had better see your prisoner then. Where is he?” Malicontar asked.

“Mornaras is keeping an eye on him. I will take you there.”

Lord Elrond had moved aside when I entered and had been quiet since then. Now he bent to pick up his bag from where he had set it down near one wall of the tent and stepped closer to us again.

“I shall come with you if you have nothing against it, captain”, he said.

“As you wish.” The captain sounded like he indeed had nothing against it, but also did not understand why Lord Elrond was interested in the matter.

“If he is indeed in poor health, whatever else is true of him, he may be better able to answer questions once he has been tended to by a healer”, Lord Elrond pointed out.

Mornaras was dismissed as soon as he had handed the man over to us. He looked relieved to wash his hands of the matter and go back to his usual routine.

I helped take the man to a small tent in the part of the camp where prisoners were kept. Not that there were many prisoners; the enemy soldiers rarely allowed themselves to be taken alive, and we rarely had a reason to try to capture them.

Captain Malicontar did not dismiss me, so I stood outside the tent while he and Elrond went inside with the prisoner. I heard them speak in low voices, at times in Adûnaic, then changing to some mixture of Sindarin or Quenya which the prisoner was unlikely to understand. I could not catch everything was that said, only a word here and another there. Nor did I try. Whether I knew what was being said or not, the prisoner’s fate was out of my hands. If there was anything I needed to know afterwards, I would be told.

After some time Elrond called for me. I poked my head into the tent and he asked me to fetch him a bucket of water. I did. He thanked me, and I was once again left to wait outside. A long while passed before Lord Elrond and Captain Malicontar stepped out of the tent.

“…needs the care of a healer, not the rough hand of a jailer”, Lord Elrond was saying.

“Even a beaten dog might run back to its master. What proof have we that he will not return as soon as his lords call?” asked Malicontar sharply.

“If you treat him kindly, I doubt he shall”, Lord Elrond replied. “I saw no love for his former masters in him, only fear. So long as he fears us as much as them there is a danger that he will do something foolish, but if he is treated well, it should not take very long before nothing would make him willing to go back.” He looked at Malicontar rather coldly. “You are a fine warrior, captain, and in the matters of strategy and the leading of battle you have my trust. But I have long knowledge of people, men and elves alike, good and evil and every kind in between, and I tell you that you misjudge this man.”

Captain Malicontar snorted doubtfully. “If you care so much, then you may take him and do as you will with him for all I care.” He glanced at me, seeming to only now remember my presence. “Ruinamacil, you are free to go. Get what rest you can before the king needs you again.”

With that he turned and walked away. I stood and watched him for a moment. Then I obeyed his dismissal and began to head for the tent I shared with Isildur. Lord Elrond fell in step beside me.

“It is a good thing you did not kill that poor man”, he said quietly to me. “He is only a frightened mistreated slave who fled his masters, nothing worse, unless the enemy has devised some new way to entirely blind my judgement. I think I shall speak with Isildur and see what can be done; I do not entirely trust that he would be safe or well-treated here.”

I nodded and gave Lord Elrond a small smile, though I said nothing. I was glad for the assurance that I had chosen right. I hoped the man would use his chance at a new life well.

After that I became busy for some time. The following day the news spread that the enemy was readying a major assault in an attempt to break our siege, and we were all in a rush to prepare for it. I was with Isildur day and night, ready for anything he might need of me. Three days later the attack came. Our lines held, but only just. For nearly four months afterwards the fighting never ceased entirely. Men fought, slept, and carried the wounded who might yet be saved out from the field in shifts with no time for leisure in between. I was excused from transporting the wounded, but only because my duty was to stay with the king at all times unless he ordered me otherwise. He could hardly ever be convinced to leave the battlefield or rest until the sword no longer stayed in his hand, and so I also saw very little rest in those days.

I did not entirely forget the escaped slave I had brought to our camp. I wondered often what had become of him. But I had no time or chance to ask after him. I left the thought of the man to the back of my mind and focused on the endless series of tasks to be taken care of in front of me.

At last the battle died down. The enemy forces drew back behind the impenetrable gates of Barad-dûr. The forces of our Alliance settled back into the routine of the siege. Many of our soldiers had died and many more had been wounded, and countless corpses of our enemies lay across the plains where the scavenging beasts of Mordor crept out of their dens to take their share. The front lines had not shifted by much more than fifty yards anywhere.

There was more time for leisure again, then, but I still never looked for the man. Four months had gone by since my paths had briefly crossed with him, and it seemed to me long enough that asking Lord Elrond about him would be a strange thing to do. In hindsight I doubt whether he would have taken it to be so, for he sees the passing time rather more like the elves do than like men, and for an elf four months is not so very long, but at the time I could not bring myself to it. I filled my time with the expected things instead; repairing my (and Isildur’s) armour and gear and doing other little tasks that had been left to pile up during the battle, gossiping with my fellow soldiers, playing games with Estelmo and Limbifion and some others.

It was almost a year later when I found out anything more. Isildur had ordered me to oversee a training session for a group of soldiers recently stationed with us. He did so often towards the end of the war, preparing me for when I would be a knight and maybe a captain in charge of my own troop, but this was one of the first times I was doing it.

The captain who was the soldiers’ actual trainer, a quiet but good-natured man by the name of Gwaedir, pointed groups of them out to me and told where they came from and what kind of background they had. These were not a unified group, nor were they likely to all be placed in the same units with each other. There were farmers and fishermen from Lebennin and Anfalas, shepherds from Calenardhon, craftsmen’s sons from Osgiliath and Minas Anor and Pelargir, even a few young men all the way from the distant Arnor who were looking to follow in the footsteps of their fathers or brothers or cousins who had gone to war before, or who wished to do something that seemed important and return home as heroes with great stories to tell. Sometimes I wonder how many of them never returned to their homes in the North.

“Those four there”, said the captain, pointing to a group who stood near each other, seemingly talking amongst themselves, “have seen something of this war already. They have not been soldiers as such, but they have been travelling with the supply caravans back and forth between here and Minas Ithil, minding the animals and carrying some burdens themselves. And while those caravans have soldiers to protect them, I gather that they have had to join in the fight themselves from time to time as well.”

One of the four was shorter than the rest, with darker complexion than most Dúnedain have and tightly curling black hair that had been cut quite short. He was lean, but I guessed he had some muscles nonetheless; work with the supply caravans took strength. He glanced towards me and the captain, and our eyes met briefly. His were sharp and alert. I do not know what he saw in mine.

He looked familiar, but I did not recognise him at first. I thought he might be a son of one of those families who had settled somewhere on the coasts of Middle-Earth long before the Downfall. Maybe some men of Middle-Earth had married into the family and those features happened to come through in him. I guessed I had perhaps seen him briefly at some time or another when the supply wagons had arrived at the camp and that was why he looked familiar.

The training session went by without incident. The captain told me which of the men he intended for archers, which as spearmen and axe-men, and which few he meant to train as swordsmen. The short dark man, whom the captain told me was called Gileinas, was one of them. He was agile enough to be good with a sword, and also had the strength to carry the heavy shield the front-line fighters used. Captain Gwaedir chuckled when he told me that, and said that if our kings had any sense in their heads, they would all rush to try and snatch Gileinas up for their Guards when he was fully trained. I smiled and resolved to tell Isildur that when I returned to him.

I tried to organise the men into two somewhat evenly matched groups with most of them wielding the weapons the captain had recommended for them. I put the men through some basic exercises in thangail against thangail and then dírnaith against thangail and made notes of their strengths and weaknesses to discuss with Gwaedir. I knew I was only clumsily copying practice drills I had been put through myself and seen others lead, but I hoped the captain would trust that in time I would learn to do it well.

I was walking back to Isildur’s tent after the training session when I heard the footfalls of someone running to catch up with me. I halted and turned around. It was Gileinas, and as he approached I finally recognized him. He looked very different now, washed as clean as any of the soldiers and no longer starving or terrified, but there was enough of the same in the shape of his face that I knew him now for the escaped slave I had brought into the camp over a year before.

“My lord”, said he, pausing a respectful distance in front of me.

“I am not a lord, merely an esquire”, I said.

“But I am told you are of a high family and are well-trusted by King Isildur”, he replied uncertainly.

I supposed that was true enough, if one did not take into account my family’s fall into disgrace — or counted me as a relation of Queen Varyandë rather than the son of my father. Not being in the mood to draw attention to the more shameful details of my family history, I nodded.

“Nonetheless, I am not a lord. I would have you call me by my name rather than by a title that is not mine. But can I do something for you?”

He hesitated for a moment. “You saved my life. I wanted to thank you.”

It was my turn to hesitate. I did not know how to answer that. Telling him he was welcome seemed overly arrogant.

“I only did what seemed right to me. And I am glad to see you are well. I wondered what happened to you, sometimes”, I admitted.

“Lord Elrond and some of his healers took care of me. I was told I was free, that I could go where I wished. I wished to help the people who had saved me”, he told me.

“If you would indulge my curiosity— I take it that Gileinas is not a name you always carried?”

“It is not, no. But the elves taught me some of their speech, and I liked the thought of giving myself a new name in that language.”

I nodded. I had heard a new layer in his accent that was alike to that of the elves. It was in strange contrast with the notes of the Black Númenorean accent that were still there, too, but somehow they came together in his speech to create their own new harmony.

Some years later he told me the tale behind his name. He said that one night, when he had been a slave of men stationed near Lake Núrnen, by fate or carelessness he had been left unchained, and had seen a star shine through a break in the clouds. It had awakened some seed of defiance that had slumbered deep in the mould of his heart. He had resolved then to follow the star as far as it would lead him, and had slipped out past the guards and their watch-fires and travelled through the long night, and many more long nights like it. Why a kind star would have led him northward into the most terrible and desolate parts of Mordor and the thick of the war, I cannot fathom, but in the end it did lead him to me, and I am glad of that. He told me that when the star was shrouded by clouds, he hid himself, and often that was when enemies passed him by. When the star appeared again he continued his journey. The star guided him right, and he was never caught until I found him. And when he was told he was a free man, it had seemed right to him to take on a new name to use in his new life, and so he had named himself after that guiding star.

At the time we did not speak of his name or history at such length, however, but exchanged some more polite words and parted ways, he going to his duties and I returning to mine. When Isildur asked me how things had gone, in addition to an overall account of the practice, I told him what Captain Gwaedir had said of Gileinas having the makings of a member of his or King Elendil’s or King Anárion’s Guard and added some observations of my own from the day. I did not tell him about having met Gileinas before, however. I hope he would have taken it well if I had told him, but I was not quite certain enough to do so.

For a while I kept a polite distance to Gileinas. Although I felt some affection for him, it seemed to me that while I was, even if only rarely and for the sake of my own learning, involved in training the group of new soldiers that included him, it would not be fair for me to be close with one over all the rest.

But eventually all of those men were assigned to their permanent troops. Somewhat to my surprise, Isildur had kept Captain Gwaedir’s comment in mind. After making some inquiries by himself and seeing the men fight with his own eyes, he chose Gileinas and one of the others for his own Guard.

I saw Gileinas more after that, and began making some cautious efforts toward friendship. He seized on them more eagerly than I had expected, and returned my offers with his own.

Not everyone approved of him quite so easily. He made no secret of being a former slave, and even had he wished to do so, it could not have stayed secret very long. No-one would challenge or question Isildur’s choice to his face, but outside of the battle, simply between soldiers, it was nonetheless easy to make it clear to Gileinas that he was not entirely welcome.

“I do not understand why you like him so much”, Estelmo said to me one evening while we were sitting together.

“Because he is good company.” I picked up a pawn from the game board and moved it absentmindedly. “I do not understand why the rest of you are so determined not to.”

“You know he is not the same as the rest of us. You know he belonged to the enemy once”, Estelmo sighed.

“He was a slave who escaped as soon as he found a way to. I should think he has as much reason to hate the enemy as any of us. And certainly less reason to go to the enemy again or believe any tempting lies than some of us have. There were men in Númenor who only cast their lot in with the Faithful late, because the sacrifices in the Temple frightened them, or because they did not dare to go to war against the Lords of the West, not because they loved the elves or the old ways or thought the way the Faithful did. Elendil welcomed them into the fold nonetheless, and Isildur says the choice proved right more often than it proved wrong. Why should we deny Gileinas the same chance?”

“He is not a man of Númenor. Not even partly. No doubt he has reason to side with us, no doubt he has courage to back it up, but his kind are not made as strong or enduring as we are. When the push comes to shove, he will be the first to break.”

“Someone must always be the first to break, even if there were only Dúnedain in the company. But I also do not think he will be the first”, I said.

“Very well”, replied Estelmo. “Be his friend, if you see fit. But when his strength falters at the worst moment, remember that I always told you so.”

“And when you see that he endures where others fail, remember that I always said he would.”

We continued playing our game in silence. It ended in a tie, but only because we ran out of time and had to return to our duties.

If Isildur minded my friendship with Gileinas, he never showed it to me. He seemed to trust him as much as any other soldier. Gileinas paid back for that trust, fighting as fiercely as anyone, doing his duty just as diligently as the rest. (Sometimes more diligently; he never slept on watch the way many others did.) His knowledge of the ways of the enemy helped us more than once. And as battle after battle went by and his resolve and courage remained as strong as anyone else’s, the others began to accept him.

The years of the war dragged on. I grew used to Gileinas’ presence, his friendship and his grounding and practical approach to the dangers and troubles we faced every day. More and more often I found myself going to him for counsel and comfort. I laid out my fears and sorrows in front of him, and he laid out his in front of me, and somehow we both found our burdens lightened. There were others I loved and others I trusted with my life, but none I ever felt I could confide in so easily. Isildur carried the weight of thousands of lives on his shoulders; I did not wish to burden him with my individual troubles as I might have in days of peace. To the others I was too often Isildur’s esquire before I was Ruinamacil; I dared not speak with them for fear that they would think Isildur had confided in me something that made our situation seem more hopeless than anyone had known, and my words would shake their faith and resolve. But to Gileinas I was always his friend and the man who had shown him kindness and trust unprompted before I was anything else, and he welcomed me as I was and did not take my words for more than they meant.

Gileinas became also the one whose eyes I sought to see what he was thinking when we sat around a campfire with other men and someone was singing or telling a tale. His laughter became the one I was most trying to coax out when I told jokes. He was the one I turned to grin to when I won at some game.

Now, when I write these words, Gileinas is long since dead. He was young when we met, even by the reckoning of his own people. I was much older than him, though still young by the lifespan of the Dúnedain. He told me before he died that his life had been longer than many could hope for. Yet it seems too short to me, for I have been obliged to go on through the decades without him, carrying only memory and grief in my heart.

I am loath to speak ill of the Lords of the West or the One that is above them, but at times I cannot help but think that it was ill-done to give us such long lives and build a land for us so separate from all other kindreds of men. It is easy to look down on that which one knows to be briefer than himself, and hard to love it as an equal, knowing that one will have to suffer a long life without it. A hunter or a shepherd may love his dogs, but he will love them as creatures different from himself, whose master he is and who exist to serve him, and he knows they shall die before him and hardens his heart against that loss. But men are not dogs and it is a terrible thing to treat them as such, no matter how short their lifespans may be. 

Yet how could the men of Númenor, coming from their secluded island where folk were so long-lived and illness and early death were rare, look upon the men of this Middle-Earth and meet them as equals, to be loved and trusted and understood the same way as their own folk? They were asked to knowingly welcome grief and pain that they might have to carry half their lives or more. It is only natural for their hearts to have tried to avoid such hurt.

Chapter End Notes

On the names; Mornaras, Malicontar, Limbifion, and Gwaedir are all sourced from Chestnut_pod's Elvish Name List. Mornaras and Gwaedir are Sindarin and mean "Black stag" and "Wind watcher" respectively. Malicontar and Limbifion are Quenya and mean "Amber lord" and "Swift hawk".

The name of Varyandë (who I mentioned in the first chapter as well, but oh well, you get notes on the name now) is Quenya for "protector", from varya, "to protect" (which come to think of it I'm now suspecting may be borrowed from the Finnish word varjella, but that's beside the point and I have no proof that it is), and the -ndë suffix which turns it from a verb into the feminine form of person-who-is-doing-the-verb. I made the name up for my take on Isildur's wife for a fic I've written previously and will keep using it for her in the future too, and I know at least one of my friends has borrowed the name for a fic of theirs once.

As an additional lore note because it probably won't come up in the next chapter either, if anyone's curious about Ohtar's relation to Varyandë: in my head he's the son of her nephew. I have some half-formed ideas regarding Ohtar's father and whatnot, but no details or full stories for now.

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We stood on the hillside, darkness wrapping tightly around us. The moon had vanished behind the clouds again. Gileinas’ words hung in the air.

He had given me leave to abandon him. The broken Narsil felt very heavy in my hand. Isildur had ordered me to save it at all costs; I knew that included abandoning Gileinas just as surely as it had included abandoning Isildur himself. No man would hold it against me if I left Gileinas behind to continue my desperate flight further than he had the strength to run. No man but myself.

I listened for a while. I could hear no sign of orcs. We had already fled far that night, and I chose to believe we were out of immediate danger. If we were, that meant I did not have to abandon Gileinas to keep Narsil safe.

“I will stay with you”, I whispered. “We should find somewhere to rest.”

We slept in a hollow probably left by the roots of a fallen tree in the nearest thicket we could find. I took first watch and sat in the dark huddled in my cloak and jumping at every crack and rustle.

The sun cannot have been very far above the horizon when I woke. The morning was bleak and overcast and I felt cold, tired, and stiff. The edge of my helmet had dug uncomfortably into my cheek while I slept.

Gileinas sat next to me. He was staring out into the thicket. His sword was bared and his hand on the hilt, but the blade rested on his lap and he did not look as if he had seen or heard anything worrying.

“All quiet?” I asked in a low voice.

“All quiet”, he replied.

We ate breakfast in silence. I already missed the noise and laughter of our fellows. I tried not to think about who might have survived and who died.

After breakfast we went through the bag of supplies Gileinas had taken when we fled and split the contents evenly between our packs. Most of it was food rations, but there was also a bundle of firewood. Near the edges of the forest we had not needed it, for there had been plenty of dead wood that could be gathered from the ground where the trees began, but earlier our way had gone along the edges of the barren Brown Lands where the only available firewood was what we had brought with us.

Between the additional supplies, the provisions we already had in our packs, and the waybread in the sealed wallets we carried for last need, we had enough food to last us maybe twenty-seven days. At the time I thought that was enough; it was more than twice how long the rest of our march to Rivendell was supposed to take. We were now alone, on the wrong side of the river from the road we had followed, in lands neither of us knew well, but surely, I thought then, it could not take us longer than twenty-five days to reach Rivendell. After all, the terrain made it hard to lose our direction entirely; if we kept the mountains to our left and the river and the forest beyond it to our right, we would be heading north. And if we just headed north long enough, we would hit the road again and could follow it the rest of the way.

How I wish things really had been so simple!

We made our way out of the little thicket. Gileinas moved stiffly and I could see pain in the set of his mouth, but he assured me that he was not badly hurt, only bruised. The clouds hung low above our heads. The air was damp, but it was not raining.

The thicket stood near the top of a hill. On one side, the ground sloped down into a shallow bowl before climbing back up to a larger hill. On the other, it dove further down at a steeper angle. That valley was half-filled with fog, but I knew somewhere at the bottom of it lay the River Anduin. I adjusted the belt I carried across my shoulder that the sheath of Narsil hung from, glanced at Gileinas, and got to walking.

We followed the crest of the hill northward. The weather turned into something halfway between fog and drizzling rain and we could not see very far in any direction, but so far as I could tell, we were keeping up a good, even speed. We aimed for much the same pace as on a regular march; after all, it was a speed we could sustain for days upon days without exhausting ourselves.

Our intention was also to stop for breaks the same way as on any march. As such we paused when we thought we had covered about a league, and sought a sheltered place further downhill to sit down for a little. Gileinas slumped to the ground with a grimace.

We had not sat there very long when I saw Gileinas tense up. He lifted a hand to silence me before I could ask anything. I listened with him, and after a moment I heard it: the sound of many heavy feet and the harsh voices of orcs, still muffled by the fog but moving inexorably in our direction.

In hindsight, I suppose they must have been some of the orcs chased out from the battlefield the night before who were now on their way to their secret dwellings in the mountains, and it was simply by coincidence that our paths crossed. But at the time it felt like a cruel joke. I felt certain they were pursuing Gileinas and I in particular, though I could not fathom how they had found us or where they had appeared from. I shot to my feet and gave Gileinas my hand to pull himself up, but by the time we were ready to move, the figures of the first orcs had already become visible in the grey mist ahead.

It was hard to tell how many orcs there were, or how battle-ready they were, but plainly they outnumbered us by far. During the war it was often said that one Dúnadan was worth ten orcs, and that might well be true when one stands in a sturdy thangail with fellow soldiers at either shoulder and the wave of enemies breaks upon the linked line of shields. It might even be true after a thangail breaks, in the chaos of a battlefield when the enemy has plenty of targets to choose from and distractions are everywhere. But for two weary men alone and exposed, things look much less bright. And even if each of us truly were a match for ten orcs, what is to be done when the eleventh one comes?

“Run”, I whispered to Gileinas, though he hardly needed me to tell him to do so; he must have known the odds as well as I did.

We turned and ran, scrambling up the hill as fast as we could. The orcs’ voices took on a sharper tone as they gave chase.

I halted at the top of the hill just long enough to glance around. The orcs were clambering up behind us, and more had circled to keep our way northward blocked. To the south there was only the steep descent towards the river and the long, open crest of the hill. Westward the shallow bowl of the vale opened before us. Its further edges disappeared into the fog again, but I recalled seeing a stand of trees somewhere in that direction earlier in the day. If we made it that far, perhaps we could lose the orcs. It was our best chance. On the open ground we could maybe outrun them for a little while, but not for long, and we certainly could not shake them off our track.

Gileinas and I ran side by side, hearts pounding, feet sinking into the soft earth, ears ringing with the cries of orcish voices. Arrows fell around us, but the fog must have made aiming hard and most of them went wide. Some were stopped on our armour. We reached the level ground on the bottom of the valley. It was wider than it had seemed from the hilltop, and I could only hope that the ground was firm enough to hold us and the recent rains had not turned it swampy.

Suddenly I felt a piercing pain in my right shoulder. I had no breath for crying out, but I nearly stumbled. Gileinas grabbed me by the arm and steadied me and we kept running, never fully coming to a halt. At every step I felt the jolt of something in my shoulder, but I forced it out of my mind. There was nothing that could be done unless we escaped from the orcs first.

I knew what must have happened, of course. Some of the metal scales on the back of the shoulder on my coat of armour had come off. It had happened all the way back in Minas Tirith, but I had never gotten around to having it repaired. The missing scales were easily covered by a cloak so I still looked tidy in my armour, and no one had expected any attack on the march north. A few missing armour scales had not seemed urgent. But now an arrow had found its way through that gap.

Lord Elrond told me later that the arrow must have missed a blood vessel that I would have inevitably bled out from by a mere hair’s breadth. It is strange to me how in the midst of all the ill fortune of the day I could still be so lucky. I am glad I did not know it then; even now the thought that the arrow came so close to killing me chills me.

We made it to the stand of trees before the orcs caught us. The fog was nearly as thick there as it had been on open ground. Roots and undergrowth got on our way. We scrambled further and further into the trees, though we had no idea how large an area they covered.

Finally I pulled Gileinas down by the arm and crawled under some bushes. They had lost most of their leaves, but grew thick enough that their centre could not seen from the outside. Gileinas crawled in after me. I felt his hands on my wounded shoulder.

“How bad is it?” I asked quietly, biting back a hiss of pain.

“Hard to say”, he answered. “All your clothes are getting in the way.”

He went still and quiet and I followed his example, nearly holding my breath. I could hear the shouts of orcs from at least two directions, not very close, but still too close for comfort. At length they faded and I allowed myself to breathe again.

“Can you get the arrow out?” I whispered.

“You might scream. We cannot afford alerting the orcs.”

I nodded. Gileinas was silent for a while, one hand still on my shoulder. I found it too awkward to turn my head far enough to see him, so I rested my head on a tree root and stared at the ground an inch away from my eyes. I heard Gileinas shift, felt his hand pulled away from me. The dry leaves rustled and twigs snapped as he crawled away. I listened to him move about somewhere outside of the bushes. But he was not gone for very long.

“What were you doing?” I asked.

“I needed something to staunch the bleeding. I have no healer’s tools with me, and I doubt you do, either. Moss is the best thing I could think of.”

I let him work, sliding pieces of thick moss under my clothes and trying to pack them close to the arrow shaft. He secured them with string tied around my shoulder as best he could, though I was not certain how well it would hold.

Afterwards we lay a while longer under the bushes. The sound of the orcs had disappeared. The fog had not fully lifted, but it was thinning. The sun was hidden behind clouds and the light filtering down to the forest floor was dim, but I thought it must be near midday. I did not know whether the orcs were still hunting us, but if they were, the full light of the day was our best chance, even on such a cloudy and foggy day.

We crawled out of our hiding place. Gileinas helped me to my feet. I felt a little unsteady, but I knew I could walk.

I let Gileinas walk ahead, picking our path through the trees. He led me westward until we could see the trees growing sparse. I waited there while he crept to look ahead.

“There are orcs to the north of us”, he told me when he returned. “I do not think they saw me. If we come out of the trees a little further west, we should be out of their sight.”

It seemed to work. We walked on, careful but trying to keep up a good pace, still trying to head westward. The arrow in my shoulder had gone through my cloak, and as I walked the weight of the cloak kept pulling on the shaft. It was terribly painful, but I said nothing. I did not want to waste more time tending to the wound when I thought the orcs were still close on our trail.

We had only walked for half an hour or so when we heard the voices of orcs somewhere ahead of us. We did not see them; there was another stand of trees ahead, seemingly growing around a little stream running down from the mountains. The orcs must have been in the trees. They sounded as though they were arguing, but had they spotted us, they would likely have abandoned their argument in favour of pursuing us. We turned westward, trying to climb another hill while staying out of sight. The soil was thinner here, but the hillside nonetheless was covered in thickets of bushes and shrubs. Only waist-high, they offered little protection from the searching eyes of enemies, but they were hard to walk through. We circled around them when we could, but sometimes the only place where the hillside was not impossibly steep to climb was where the bushes grew.

I was trembling by the time we made it to the top of the ridge; the pain was taking more out of me than I had expected. Gileinas looked worriedly at me, but I only paused to drink some water and then told him to keep going.

We had not yet reached the mountains themselves, but the terrain was getting rougher and the hills steeper and more frequent. Gileinas tried to lead us northward, but we spent much time circling around hills or clambering over their lower slopes. We no longer paused for rest as we had planned before, but for all that I think we covered scarcely more distance than we would have on a march, and not much of the distance we did cover was in our planned direction. The fog thinned until it was entirely gone, though the clouds remained low and grey.

In the late afternoon we heard the voices of orcs again, this time coming from behind. We tightened our pace, but there was nowhere to hide. On our left the trees grew too sparsely to offer cover. On our right the hill rose steeply in cracked slopes of bare rock. It had begun to rain not long before, and I knew the rocks would be slippery. I might have been able to scale the hill for sport, unwounded and well-rested and carrying no weight; I had climbed such rock walls on the lower slopes of Ephel Dúath as a boy, as had many others who grew up in Minas Ithil. (Once I had competed with Ciryon about which of us could climb one faster, because Aratan had dared us to. We both had come rather close to losing our grip and falling in places where it might have killed us, and Isildur had been furious with all three of us when he had found out.) But now, wounded and weary and carrying a heavy pack, I could not hope to climb the rocky hill fast enough to escape the orcs.

In front of us the ground rose a little and we could not see what there was on the other side of the hill, but certainly on our side of it there was nothing that could help us. The orcs had spotted us now. We raced up the hill, the orcs nearer and nearer at our heels. I felt faint and it was all I could do to keep running.

We passed the crest of the hill and kept on running down the slope, hardly looking at where we were going until the ground dropped abruptly into a narrow, rocky gully at the bottom of it. It was sheer luck that I did not break my ankle when I stumbled down into it. Gileinas leapt down after me.

“We might as well keep going down this”, he said, eyeing the gully. “They cannot cut off our way downstream, the drop becomes too high to make without getting hurt.”

I nodded and began to follow the gully. The stream running down it did not quite come up to my knees, but it was very swift and I had to be careful to not fall. Gileinas walked a few steps behind me.

We had not been walking for long when we heard the sound of the orcs clambering down into the gully behind us. Gileinas’ steps halted.

“Ruinamacil”, he said in a quiet, even voice, “King Isildur gave you an order. Carry it out.”

“Do not let them kill you. Please. I need you”, I whispered. I did not turn to look at him.

Ignoring the protests of my aching heart, I ran. I slipped and stumbled and forced myself back up and ran down the gully. The clash of steel on steel echoed from behind and rang in my ears.

The light was beginning to fail between the steep walls of the gully. So was my strength. I lost my footing and fell into the stream again, scraping my palms bloody on the rocks in a vain attempt to catch myself. I stood back up on shaking legs. My head was spinning. I leaned on the rocky wall and looked back up the gully.

As I stood there trying to catch my breath, Gileinas came walking down to me. The front of his armour was splattered with orc-blood and he looked exhausted, but I could see no sign of injury in his movements.

So great was my relief that I rushed to embrace him. He closed his arms around me and held my trembling body.

“What happened?”

“The orcs are dead. It was only five of them, and in the narrow space they could only come at me one at a time.”

“If we are lucky, no other orcs came this far in pursuit of us. We might have escaped them”, I said.

“If we are lucky. But luck has not been on our side lately.”

“I think we must trust luck now. I can run no further”, I admitted.

Gileinas nodded. “We both need rest, and I should like a better look at your wound and to see if I can do more for it.”

We walked on for a while, searching for a place where we might be able to climb out of the gully. Finally we came across one, a place where a larger part of the left side had collapsed. We struggled over the rubble and dirt to find a man-high piece of nearly straight rocky wall still standing over us. Gileinas climbed it first. I looked at the wall doubtfully. I could hardly move my right arm for the pain that it caused to my shoulder. I knew I could not put enough of my weight on it to climb out.

“I will help you”, Gileinas said, seeing my doubt. “Give me your pack first, so I do not have to pull more weight than I have to at once.”

I wrestled the pack off my back. The right shoulder-strap caught on the arrow. I could not help the cry of pain that escaped my mouth as the weight wrenched the shaft downward until it snapped in two.

I passed my pack hurriedly to Gileinas. I feared my cry might have alerted more orcs, and the only thing we could do about that was to get somewhere else swiftly.

Gileinas hauled me up by my left arm. I helped as best I could, and soon enough we were both on level ground above the gully. I shouldered my pack again and stood up. Darkness was thickening and the rain had gotten heavier.

All the shelter we found for that night was a cliff face that leaned outward at the top, so that at the bottom there was a narrow space of somewhat drier ground. We made a campfire, not caring that it might draw orcs to us. We were drenched through from the rain, and without a fire the cold would have been as lethal as any orc’s sword.

After a dinner eaten in silence, Gileinas made me take off my coat of armour and the clothes underneath. He tugged the pieces of moss away from the wound. I pulled my cloak over my uninjured shoulder and wrapped it around myself as best I could, and tried to keep from shivering in the cold. Then I felt Gileinas’ hand on my shoulder go very still and heard a catch in his breath.

I listened for a moment. There was no sign of orcs or any other danger approaching.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I think the arrow was poisoned”, he said reluctantly, as though by not saying it he might have made it not true.

The breath turned to ice in my chest. Orcs used many kinds of poisons, but none of them offered a pleasant death. Some there were antidotes for, but I knew that even if the poison on the arrow was one of them, we did not have an antidote with us. Some of the poisons a strong man might survive by luck, but that did not much comfort me. I had seen men with poisoned wounds during the war, lying in terrible agony that the healers had no means to ease in the infirmary tents until either death took them or the poison’s strength waned. I had heard some of them beg for death because the pain was more than they could bear.

“There is nothing we can do about that now”, I said, trying to not let my voice shake. “Just get the arrow out and do what you can for the wound.”

I felt Gileinas pull tentatively at the arrow. It hurt, but not as much as I was expecting. I felt him pull again. He cursed.

“I only got the shaft, the head has broken off. I do not think I can reach it”, he told me.

He got to work with washing the wound as best he could, and then binding it with strips of fabric torn from his spare shirt. It did not take very long. When he was done, I struggled back into my shirt and tunic. The pain in my shoulder and the entire arm was terrible and I could scarcely move it, and getting the arm through the sleeve proved a very frustrating task.

I opened out my bedroll, wrapped myself in my blanket and my cloak, and curled up to sleep. Gileinas sat with his back to the fire, looking out into the darkness. There was no need to discuss it. I was wounded. I would be the one to rest, and he would keep watch.

But the pain made it hard to sleep. I dozed off for short whiles, only to wake up again to the burning in my arm or the sting in my shoulder. Each time falling asleep again took longer than I had spent asleep. Finally after half a night spent so I sat up.

“Go to sleep, Gileinas. I can watch”, I said.

“But…”

“I cannot sleep in any case. Better that you at least are rested tomorrow.”

The fire had burned down to little more than embers, but even in the dim light I saw the doubtful look Gileinas gave me. At length he rose, however. We changed places, he lay down to sleep and I sat keeping watch.

The night passed quietly, save for the constant drumming of rain. The downpour would have made it hard to see far even by day, and in the night I could not see an arm’s length in front of me. I think even the night-eyed orcs could have passed us by fifty yards without ever catching sight or scent or sound of our presence.

The pain of my wound was relentless. As soon as I thought I might grow used to it, I shifted a little and a new wave of agony crashed over me. All I could do was sit still and hope the pain would ease. I tried not to think of the morning or the journey ahead.

I roused Gileinas as soon as there was enough light to see by. It was still raining. He looked at me blearily for a while before crawling out of his blankets. We ate breakfast, staring out into the dim grey world under morning twilight.

“What do we do now?” asked Gileinas.

“We keep going”, I said.

He sighed. “Ruinamacil, you should not…”

“I have an order to carry out. I will attempt to do so. And if I must die, I doubt I shall be more comfortable here than at any other campsite we might find.”

Gileinas looked as though he wanted to argue, but there was nothing he could say. Our campsite was not a very sheltered or comfortable one, and staying there did not give me much better odds than moving on. And we were soldiers, and orders were orders.

We returned to the gully, thinking we might travel further down it toward the Anduin, only to discover that the night’s downpour had turned the swift little stream into a great gushing flood that would have killed any man that went into it in an instant. We followed the route of the gully downstream for a while, but the ground fell in steep, jagged cliffs that were slick from the rain. Even walking was quickly exhausting me and my arm was useless. There was no way that I could have gotten down alive. I am not certain Gileinas could have, either.

We had hoped to make it back east somewhat nearer to the Anduin, where the hills were by and large less steep and the terrain easier to traverse, but plainly we had to find another route there. To the west the mountains rose in ever-higher peaks, and neither of us knew of a safe way to cross them before Cirith Forn en Andrath. Southward tracing our footsteps from the previous way we would not turn for fear of running into orcs again. So we turned northward, hoping to come upon a place somewhere ahead where the way eastward would be easier.

It was a wet and miserable day, and I hardly remember more of it than that. Gileinas chose our route; I followed him blindly, forcing my legs to keep walking. I could hardly think through the pain and knew very little of what was happening around us. The sounds around us turned into one constant noise from which it was impossible to distinguish anything meaningful. I could hardly see more than Gileinas a few steps ahead and the ground lying between us.

At times I felt so faint we were forced to stop and rest until the world stopped spinning and I could stand steadily again. Once a dizzy spell came upon me so suddenly that I was on my knees on the ground before I could say anything. After that Gileinas took my hand and led me like a child for the rest of the day.

I remember faintly that perhaps halfway through the day’s trek, when we had once again stopped to rest, Gileinas told me that the terrain seemed to keep leading us northwest. I do not know if I replied.

When stopped for the night, I could do nothing to help Gileinas set up camp. I slumped down and sat and watched dumbly as he built a shelter of cut branches and made a small, smoky fire to warm us. When he put a bowl of food on my lap and a spoon into my hand, I forced myself to eat, but it was an effort. I did not feel hungry, only exhausted and miserable and sick from the pain.

Gileinas wrapped me in both our blankets and made me lie down, and I wandered the borders of sleep and waking and true unconsciousness. I kept repeating to myself that Isildur had trusted me and I should not fail his trust. I should find a way to endure and complete the task that I had been given. It could not end here, not like this, not so soon. I had to bring Narsil to safety, at all costs. I had promised it to Isildur. I owed it to him. He was my lord and he had given me an order and I had to carry it out.

There is some time after that that I cannot account for. Days must have passed, but in my memory there are only some disjointed moments and hazy dreams. There is rainfall, and there is Gileinas tending to a fire, or his arms holding me, or his voice speaking words I cannot make sense of, and there is a sense that I am wasting time, that I should get up and act.

I dreamt often of Isildur. I only know they must have been dreams because he could not have been there, and because he was never so cruel with me as in some of the dreams, but they felt as real as any of what I think are waking moments. Sometimes he looked as I recalled him during the war, dressed in painted armour, his hair tied back from his face. He would look at me sternly and ask me when I would return Narsil to him, or accuse me of weakness and failing my mission. I could never find the words to explain myself to him. Other times he looked as in the days before the war, dressed in embroidered silks with a jeweled chain draped on his shoulders. He would never speak, but turn away from me, and that was accusation enough. And yet other times I saw him bloodied, bleeding from bone-deep marks of orcish weapons. The star shone red and blinding bright on his brow, and blood ran from his wounds and rose around us higher and higher until it was near to my chin and I thought I would soon drown in it. He would stare at me. I stood there, incapable of moving, my legs rooted into the ground, and could do nothing but watch him bleed.

I woke up to a sweet taste in my mouth and Gileinas shaking me. My body hurt all over and at first I could not make sense of where I was or what was happening. I blinked and stared at Gileinas in confusion. I could not find the words to ask any questions.

“I am sorry”, Gileinas whispered. “You must get up. I heard orcs nearby, it is not safe here anymore. We must go.”

The word orcs penetrated through the haze. I struggled to sit up, looking wildly about. The fire had been trampled out and the remains of it scattered. The shelter had been dismantled. My coat of armour and my pack were nowhere to be seen, but Gileinas’ pack and the sheath of Narsil were laid out on the ground nearby.

Gileinas shouldered his pack and Narsil and pulled me to my feet. My head spun and I clung to him. He wrapped an arm around me and began to lead me through the thicket of spruce trees. Night was quickly falling. The weather was clear, but it was very cold.

Fear gave me enough strength to keep stumbling on, though my legs ached and I knew if Gileinas had let go of me, I would have collapsed at once. The cold night air felt as though I was breathing shards of glass. Every step I took felt like a stab in my wounded shoulder, my arm was aflame with pain. I held onto the thought that there were orcs, that we could not afford to be caught by them, and grit my teeth and forced myself to endure one step more, over and over again. I must have groaned and whined in pain, but I had little breath for it. I suppose it did not make any difference to our safety; if any creature had been close enough to hear it, it would also have been close enough to hear our footsteps.

We climbed up a hill. I do not know where I found the strength for it, for even my fear and desperation were waning in the face of overwhelming pain and exhaustion. Gileinas had taken on as much of my weight as he possibly could, but the remaining burden was still nearly too much for me.

When at last Gileinas lowered me to the ground, I could do nothing but gasp and weep in pain. He held me so that my back was against his chest and my head rested on his shoulder while my mind drowned in the dark deeps of agony.

I do not think I slept that night, but I must not have lost consciousness at times. I stared dully at the stars filling the sky above. Then, with no recollection of moving, I was curled up on my side, my cloak wrapped carefully around me and my head in Gileinas’ lap. Next I saw the sky above me turned into a dull blue-green ahead of the slowly approaching dawn.

Slowly I realized that Gileinas was not with me. I shivered in the absence of his warmth. I was too weak to sit up, but I turned my head and saw his pack leaning against a stone barely more than an arm’s reach away. The shards of Narsil in their sheath were laid by my side.

I fought to remain conscious, though I do not know why. I could not have defended myself from an enemy, and if any had found me, death that caught me unawares might have been the easier option. Nonetheless I held on to the ragged edges of my awareness. The sun climbed into the sky. She still had some warmth left to give, enough that at length I stopped shivering.

The hours crawled by. Pain weighed my body down so that even my breathing was laboured, but my mind was clearer than it had been in days. I understood now consciously that I was very near death. The poison was still burning in my veins, sapping the last scant strength I had. Perhaps if I could endure a few days more, it might run its course, but I knew there was no guarantee that I would last that long.

That Gileinas had left his pack and Narsil with me was a sign that he meant to come back. I could not help but feel guilty of the predicament I had brought him into. Every moment either of us lingered in one place in these wild lands was a moment that yet another danger could find us, and so long as he tried to protect me, I was placing him in danger he might have evaded alone. But I knew also that it would be both cruel and useless to ask him to abandon me.

I had nearly lost the struggle against the darkness creeping in from the edges of my vision when he returned to me. His face softened with relief when he saw me awake. He dropped my pack, which he had been carrying, to the ground by his own, and knelt next to me. He brushed the side of my face with his hand.

“You went back for my things?” I asked.

He nodded. “I had to leave your armour behind. It was too heavy and I cannot risk going back to retrieve it. But we cannot afford to leave the other supplies.”

I said nothing. Simply breathing was hard enough; speech was an effort I did not want to make if I did not have to. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Gileinas busy himself with building a small fire and preparing food for us. I also saw him pausing from time to time to cast worried glances at me. I wished I could have reassured him.

I did not feel hungry, but he made me eat nonetheless. Afterwards I must have slept for some hours, for when I opened my eyes again, the sky was dark. The fire was still burning. Gileinas was holding me in his arms and had wrapped his cloak around both of us. He was singing softly in some tongue of the Haradrim that I could not understand. I lay still for a while, listening to his voice, feeling the beating of his heart in his chest.

“Gileinas”, I said when he ended his song.

I felt the sharper inhale when he heard me. I think he had not noticed I was awake. I tilted my head back until I could see his face, the skin tinted clay-red by the glow of the fire.

“Gileinas, if I die…”

“You are not going to die. You are not”, he insisted. It is strange, the way men instinctively deny such things as though they were in our control.

“But if I do”, said I, “then my orders must be yours to carry out. Will you promise that to me?”

Sleep had dulled my pain for a while, but now I was too awake and felt the full force of it again. I could speak no more. It took all I had to endure the pain. Gileinas must have seen it in my face. His hand strayed into my hair, stroking it quietly for some time.

“If you die, then I will do what is in my power to bring Narsil to its rightful owner. I give my word I will”, he replied at length. “But while you live I will not leave your side.”

I nodded. I let my eyes close and fell into a half-doze. Though I no longer saw it, I was aware of Gileinas’ eyes on me, but I thought nothing of it. I was warm, and would have been comfortable if not for the pain, and while Gileinas held me I could even pretend I was safe.

Gileinas shifted and woke me up. I could hear the rustle as he sought for some item. He propped my head against his shoulder and pressed something cold and metallic to my lips. He told me to drink. I obeyed. My mouth filled with the sweet taste of the cordial we had alongside waybread in the sealed wallets. I realised that I had had the same taste in my mouth when I had woken up the night before.

Warmth filled my body. My pain eased and I could breathe easier. I watched as he slipped the silver phial back into the wallet at his belt.

“I had hoped I could stretch it out longer. But last night was too hard on you”, he said.

“It was not your fault”, I replied, hearing the apology in his voice. “How much do you have left?”

“A third, maybe.”

I nodded. “I hope what you have used will be enough. Who knows if we might need it again before our journey is over.”

I fell to sleep again soon afterwards, and it was the most restful sleep I had had in days. I was alert enough the next day that I could keep watch for some time while Gileinas slept. Toward the evening I fell again into restless dreams, but the respite the cordial had given my body was enough. Some days later I started to recover.

It took a while longer before I could travel again. I was unhappy about it, but at least it gave us time to consider our course. Our last flight from the orcs had taken us up to the lower slopes of the Misty Mountains themselves, and we realised that after the way we had run in directions chosen at random, neither of us knew an easy route back to the Vales of Anduin. We also did not know where in the foothills we would have to cross the orcs might have permanent dwellings, and we thought the orcs in those regions might still be more alert than usual after our passage through. The mountains were never entirely safe and the autumn weather would not make them more so, but we nonetheless decided on trying to cross them instead of turning back eastward.

Chapter End Notes

Hope you guys are still enjoying whatever this fic has decided to be, and hope I'll see you guys again soon-ish with a fourth chapter! (It should be the last chapter. I can't see how it could develop so much more story as I write that I'd have to up the chapter count again, but I mean... I've already thought that twice, so I no longer trust my judgement)

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The first two days of our journey across the Misty Mountains passed uneventfully. We made as good time as could be hoped given my condition, following rocky ridges and slopes splattered with heather and thickets of little bushy willows and birches almost directly due west. On the third day we descended some way into a wide valley in search of a stream we could fill our waterskins from. The lower slopes were thick with pines and spruces with the occasional birch or maple growing among them. The bottom of the valley was mostly bare of trees, instead filled with pools of water and tall reeds. It must have been a lush and beautiful place in summer, though to us it appeared bleak brown and yellow and grey.

A thin drizzle of rain made the air chill and everything damp. In the evening we made camp beneath some old spruce trees. I counted our remaining food rations with a sinking heart.

“This might get us across the mountains”, I said, “if we are lucky and suffer no more delays. But I would not trust that.”

Gileinas stared thoughtfully into the fire. “I know how to make a bow and how to shoot it. And I know of other ways to find what food the land will give, though I learned them in the south and some of them may not be of help here. But hunting or searching for food will certainly slow us down further.”

“It may still be better to spend the time doing it. You know I will be no use in hunting” —my right arm was still very weak and was not recovering as swiftly as the rest of my body— “but if you show me how, I can search for plants we could eat.”

Gileinas spent the next day making himself a bow and arrows and showing me how to dig for reedmace roots. He was not very certain which other plants that grew in that valley might have edible parts, but he said that reedmace, or something very close akin to it, grew also in the shallow waters of Lake Núrnen and the slaves there had often used it for food. Gileinas’ bow was less elegant than the steel warbows made by Dúnedain weapon-smiths, but also far swifter to make. It served us well that autumn and winter.

We spent several days in the valley. Gileinas went hunting and I foraged. I spent many unpleasant hours digging through mud for the roots. I also looked for mushrooms, trying to recall what Mornaras had told me during the war of the kinds of them that grew in Arnor and could be eaten. At the time I had listened to him simply because of the strangeness of it; the lords of Gondor and Arnor, after the manner of the high elves, did not eat mushrooms. I had never even thought of them as something that could be served at a decent dinner table. But Mornaras had grown up as a logger’s son in the Coldfells before going to serve as a man at arms in the garrison of Amon Sûl, and the common folk of Coldfells were obliged to take a more pragmatic approach to food.

When Gileinas returned, we would get to work turning the reedmace root into flour and, if he had caught anything, butchering his catch. We used the blood and organ meat for stew at once, for we had no way to make them keep, but smoked the meat as best we could.

It was hard work and took us time, but the valley was generous with its offerings. I found plenty of roots, and Gileinas returned from hunting with prey more often than he did empty-handed. He caught heather cocks and mountain hares, and once a wild mountain-goat. I began to feel hopeful again.

At last we had more food than we had had on our arrival in the valley. Previously empty bags in our packs were now nearly full again with reedmace flour and smoked meat. We gathered as much firewood as we could carry alongside our other burdens. The wound in my shoulder still troubled me sometimes and my right arm remained weak and painful to use (I began to suspect that the arrow had done some damage we did not have the means to cure), but I had at least recovered from the poison.

My only concern as we set out again was that winter might come upon us at any moment. Away from the mountains it was still some time away, but on the slopes snow often came earlier.

I set as fast a pace as we could keep up for days on end, but after the first day westward out of the valley, the terrain became more difficult. The slopes became steeper and harder to traverse, and we could no longer head as directly across the width of the Misty Mountains as we had at first. By the end of most days my legs and feet hurt from the walking. Gileinas must have been in similar pain, but he never complained. We had no choice but to get used to the pain. Often we covered much more distance north- or southward than west, and at times we had to turn back eastward to find a way around some impassable obstacle. It had not snowed yet, but the freezing rain that fell on some days was nearly as bad, and it was too damp for our clothes to ever fully dry.

Then the rain turned to sleet and finally to snow. The first snow did not stay on the ground for very long, and it was almost pleasant, for it made the brown-grey mountainsides seem white and clean while it lasted, but I knew it was only a warning of worse to come.

Gileinas and I spoke very little. There was rarely much to be said. We hurried on, inching westward, feeling the cold breath from the hungry mouth of winter on our necks. Nonetheless I was glad of his company. It was easier to keep walking when I heard the footsteps of another person walking with me. It was easier to lie down at night when I knew he was watching over me, and also less dreadful to sit and watch for danger myself when he lay near me and I could hear his steady breathing.

When snow first began to fall in earnest, we made camp in the shelter of a tall cliff face. For three days we stayed there, afraid to go on for fear of losing our way or walking unknowing into some dangerous place in the thick snowfall.

At last the weather cleared. We continued on for some time. Gileinas hunted whenever he could find signs of animals, but it seemed that most creatures were hiding wisely in their dens and did not want to venture out into the cold, and he rarely had any luck. We followed a chain of long valleys and passes northward; on the higher slopes of the mountains the snow lay now so thick that we did not dare to attempt crossing them to go westward. The hours of daylight grew ever shorter and the nights longer and colder. Cold stung our faces and made our legs and lungs ache. Even in the valleys and on the slower slopes the snow could be deep; sometimes it came up to our knees and we less walked than waded through it. Gileinas went on with his hands clenched on the edges of his cloak, pulling it tighter around himself. He looked tired and grim, and I could tell that the cold and the endless walking was wearing on him.

The snowfall began again. For the first two days we kept going nonetheless, but it only thickened and the wind grew worse. We scarcely made it to the shelter of a stand of spruce trees that evening. It snowed so thickly even through their sheltering branches that it was hard to see anything. When we made our camp, we had to build a wall of snow around the campfire to keep off the wind before we had any hope of lighting it. We built a shelter out of tree-branches, padding the floor with layers of the thinner branches where the needles grew thick to stave off some of the cold seeping from the ground. We made the shelter nearer to the fire than I would otherwise have thought wise just to get as much warmth out of it as we possibly could.

By the morning our shelter was halfway buried in snow. The storm was still raging. We had managed to keep the fire going through the night, so I made us a warm breakfast. We ate slowly. There was no hurry, for it was plain we could not go anywhere that day.

The storm lasted for days. There was nothing to be done but wait it out; if we had ventured out into it, we would have been lost in no time. Our shelter was soon buried in the snow that piled up around it. We kept the fire going for as long as we could manage, but the firewood we had would only last for so long. Slower than the wood, but just as inevitably, I also watched our food supplies diminish.

Now and then I left the shelter for just long enough to clear the snow away from its entrance, for I did not like the thought of us getting completely buried, but otherwise we stayed inside, huddled together with our cloaks and blankets wrapped around both of us, trying to keep warm. The one good side of the snow piling up around us was that the howling wind could not get through the gaps in the walls anymore.

I think I must have sang every song I knew to pass the time. Gileinas tried to teach me a little of the language he had spoken in his childhood, but I could not wrap my tongue around the strange sounds. We told each other stories. But much of the time we also sat in grim silence, wondering, though neither of us ever voiced the question, whether we truly had any chance of outlasting the storm. I whispered prayers to the Lord of Winds, hoping that the storm would carry even one of them to his ears.

One night I dreamt that I sat in the snow by a river. Dead reeds stuck out of the ice, yellow-brown against the whiteness of the world. I sat in the snow, and I felt comfortable. I watched the white, snow-covered world quietly. The sky above was dark, but I could see things clearly as in the full light of day.

The ice of the river cracked. I looked at it in idle curiosity, but did not stir. The cracks spread wider and wider across the river until the ice broke entirely in the place where they began. It should have made a mighty noise, but I recall none. A hole broke in the ice and shards of it scattered around. I watched as first one hand and then another appeared, clawing for purchase to pull the rest of the body up.

A man emerged from the hole. Water dripped from him, water tinged faintly red. He was wearing a thick jacket of the sort that goes under a coat of armour and he had an eket at his belt, but no other gear of war. He stumbled onward, head hanging low. Then he came through the reeds and lifted his head, and his gaze pierced me. I tried to scramble back, but my hands and feet were frozen fast to the ground beneath me.

It was Isildur. His eyes were dull, the light in them gone, but nonetheless he looked at me intently. Black-fletched arrows stuck out of his throat and his breast, but the river had washed the wounds clean of blood.

“Ruinamacil, ohtar, why dost thou tarry? I gave thee an order.” His voice was clear despite the arrow piercing his throat. His tone was gently chiding, not how he spoke as a king to his servants or as a commander to his soldiers, but rather how he had spoken with children.

“It is too much, it is too hard”, I whined. “I am lost.”

He stepped to me and took my hand and raised me to my feet. I looked up at him, breath caught in my throat. He gazed at me solemnly. He wore a fine gold chain around his neck, the free length of it tucked inside the collar of his jacket. There was a flickering light about his head, as if he were crowned with white flame.

“It is hard”, he said, “but not too hard. Not for thee. Please. I ask thee to do this.”

His hand caressed my cheek. The fingers were so cold they seemed to burn. I wept. I was frightened and I was tired and I wished to tell him he was asking the impossible, but I could not make my mouth speak the words. He lay his other hand on my wounded shoulder. I flinched, but his touch did not stir up the pain as I thought it would.

“Thou must carry on. Thou hast all thou needst with you. Live. Ruinamacil, I ask thee to live.”

He bent his head down and kissed my brow. His lips were cold, even colder than his hands.

I awoke with a start, feeling as unsettled as after any nightmare. I still felt, or thought I felt, the impression of Isildur’s lips on my skin. I glanced around. I was in our shelter, curled on my side with Gileinas’ head pressed against my chest nearly hidden from view under our cloaks, our legs wrapped around each other.

It was silent but for our breathing. The howling of the wind outside was gone. It was also very, very cold. My body felt stiff and heavy as I untangled myself from Gileinas enough to sit up. Narsil lay in its sheath next to my pack. I took it in my hands and pulled the glove off my left hand to run my fingers along its length for a while. The hilt was strangely warm under my touch, as if someone had only moments ago held it in his hand.

I felt a new resolve in my heart. We had to go on.

I roused Gileinas. He looked at me blankly, wrapped an arm around my legs, and tried to go back to sleep. I shook him by the shoulder until he reluctantly poked his head out of our nest of cloaks and blankets, hissing as the cold air touched his face.

“What now?” he asked.

“It is time we packed up the camp and kept going”, I said.

“Why? We shall freeze to death out there.”

“We have only a week’s worth of food left, if that. Our choices are between certain death from either cold or hunger here, or attempting to make our way out now and taking our chances with the cold”, I pointed out. “I have made up my mind. I will go.”

It was perhaps not a kind thing to do, but I knew that if I made the choice to be between following me or being abandoned, Gileinas would follow me. I had seen in the days we had spent huddled in the shelter that the cold was harder on him than on me, and I did not like the thought of forcing him out of our little den to even colder air, but what choice did I have?

All the food we had left was the waybread meant for emergencies. We ate small pieces of it in silence. Gileinas did not seem in the mood for speech.

Outside our shelter we found a silent, still world. The air was bright and clear as elven-crystal. The sky was a pale blue, the tips of the mountains to our west shone golden in the sun, though our camp at the bottom of the valley was still left in the shadow of the mountains that rose on the eastern side.

We clambered up to the top of the snow and found that its surface had frozen so hard that it could carry us even with all our burdens. There were broken branches scattered across the crust of the snow, torn down by the storm. But the air was still and unmoving as if the storm had never existed.

We gathered some branches for firewood. Gileinas was still moving sluggishly, and my own limbs felt stiff and heavy with cold and weariness. I looked up at the mountains, trying to guess at a route we could take west from the valley, wondering whether we had the strength for it.

I dug into the wallet at my belt and took out the small silver phial. It took some fumbling to open it without taking off my thick gloves, but I managed it. I handed the phial to Gileinas.

“Ruinamacil…” he began doubtfully.

“Go on”, I said. “You need the strength.”

He drank and returned the phial to me. I took a drink too. Each phial had three doses; now both of us had just one left.

I could see Gileinas’ eyes grow brighter and I felt warmth and strength flow through my own body, and I knew that spending those two doses of the precious cordial had been the right choice. It had given us a better chance to stand the cold and to attempt the climb out of the valley.

The weather remained clear and very cold for some days. We made our way out of the valley before nightfall, and on the next day we headed northwest along a ridge. It was not easy going. The cold stung our lungs, and all the aches that our days sheltering from the storm had given us a respite from returned nearly as soon as we were underway. Sometimes I felt as though I was walking on caltrops. Gileinas had injured his foot and was limping.

I kept our course as directly northwest as I could, and for once the mountains seemed to allow it. And on the fifth day I saw far in the distance, peeking through a gap between the slopes of three mountains to our west, the flat rocky lands beyond the mountains bright in the afternoon sunlight. If I could have seen a route directly west then, I would have taken it, but there was a deep canyon in between us and those mountains that we had no means to cross.

Around noon on the sixth day a westerly wind picked up. It brought clouds with it, and by the evening it had begun to snow. The wind was not as strong as during the storm, and the snowfall was not as thick, but it nonetheless meant we could no longer see as far and had to move more cautiously. My only consolation was that the cold became less biting than it had been in the clear weather. We had begun to head consistently downward in the afternoon, and continued our descent through the seventh day until in the evening we stood in the foothills of the mountains.

The eighth day began cloudy but calm. It was not snowing, and I would have anticipated an easier day of travelling than many we had faced, except that Gileinas’ strength was waning and we had run out of food the evening before.

Nonetheless I pressed on, heading northward. I tried to guess how long it might be to Imladris, but it was impossible; I had spent only a while in the northern lands ten years before and had largely forgotten any landmarks I had known, and Imladris cannot be easily seen from the lands around it until one already stands on the brink of the valley. I only knew it must lie somewhere nearly straight north from where we were. All I could do was head that way until I reached it.

Gileinas kept stumbling and lagged more and more behind, until at last I made him lean on me as we walked. The sky above us darkened slowly and it began to snow once more. When it became so dark I could not go on, I dragged us both into the shelter of a juniper thicket. I was too cold and exhausted and my hands too numb to try to build anything more to shield us from the weather. Gileinas’ eyes were glazed and I could not get him to speak anymore, though he obeyed without resistance when I prompted him to do something. I made him drink the last of the cordial in his phial before I let him sleep. I curled up around him and wept from pain until sleep took me too.

I had feared that even the cordial would not be enough and that he would die that night, but when I woke he was still alive. It was clear I could not make him walk, however.

I drank my last dose of the cordial that morning. Then I belted the sheath of Narsil at my waist so that it hung next to my own sword. I abandoned our packs, empty of food, the rest of their contents now only added weight I wanted to be rid of. I pulled Gileinas up and dragged him to lay across my shoulders. It was nearly more than I had the strength for and it made my bad shoulder hurt terribly, but I gritted my teeth and got to walking. Gileinas had given me leave to abandon him before and I think he would have understood if I had done it that day, but I could not bear to do so, not after all he had done for me and all we had suffered together.

The wind was blowing from the north, stronger now and driving needle-sharp snowflakes at my face. I walked and stumbled and crawled and walked on. The pain was so overwhelming it turned back to meaningless. The body of Gileinas was heavy on my shoulders. After some hours I was no longer certain whether I was carrying a living man or a corpse.

I do not remember much more of that day, nor of the day that followed. I think I must have walked through the night, for I doubt I would have been capable of continuing again once I had stopped, but I cannot be certain. All is lost in the mist of pain and exhaustion, save a brief impression of bright elven voices speaking words I could not make sense of anymore, and a sense of relief before a fall into awaiting darkness.

Chapter End Notes

As usual, comments are very much appreciated! I'm really grateful for all of you who have kept up with this story and told me your thoughts on it <3

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The first thing I remember for certain is slow awareness that I was warm and I lay on something soft. There was a weight across my body, also soft and warm and not painfully heavy, but heavy enough that I was aware of it as a weight. As I sorted through the sensations that had not yet found their usual places in my mind, I found that I could feel pain more or less where I expected to, but it was dulled and distant, less intense than it ought to have been. I saw light through my eyelids.

I blinked my eyes open. I lay on a bed in a room filled with the clear golden sunlight of a late winter-morning. There were wooden beams darkened with age in the ceiling, and a colourful tapestry on a wall at the edge of my vision.

I felt more than saw a presence at my left side. I turned my head that way. Estelmo sat on a chair by my bed. He had a book on his lap and was reading from it, but when I moved he closed the book and set it down on a table next to him. He tried to smile. He looked healthy, but more careworn than when I had last seen him, and there was a curved scar above his right eyebrow, as though a heavy blow had driven the helmet on his head down so hard that its edge broke through the skin.

“Awake again? How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Warm. Alive. I suppose I cannot complain.” I glanced at the ceiling again. The architecture seemed familiar. “Are we in Imladris?”

He nodded.

“What day is it?”

“Day of week or day of month?”

“Month.”

“Twelfth of Narwain. You came here on the ninth, in case you were wondering. Some of Lord Elrond’s people found you wandering south of here.”

“My apologies for not bringing you a yestarë gift”, I said. Estelmo did not laugh. I decided not to take it personally. “I have been here for days?”

Estelmo frowned. “Do you not remember? You have been awake enough to be talking a time or two already.”

“I do not think I remember, no. I was walking in the snow. Everything after that is a blur at best.”

There was a question I needed to ask, though I dreaded the answer. I drew a breath and steeled myself. I had to ask. I had to be certain.

“Isildur?”

I saw in Estelmo’s face that it was not the first time I had asked that, though I could not remember it. I also saw that he had no good news to give. He fidgeted with the tail of his belt for a while before speaking.

“No one knows. He was not on the field when the battle ended, he had gone— Elendur begged him to”, Estelmo explained when I frowned. “King Thranduil’s scouts found his armour and sword and some other items on the riverbank further south. But there was no body, and there were things missing. He is a strong man. And you survived too, even though we thought—” He shook his head. “Isildur might have made it somewhere safe. Maybe come spring we shall get word from him.”

“No”, I said quietly, closing my eyes against the grief. “There were orcs on guard across the river. If they saw him, if they hit him… even he could not swim if he were pierced by their arrows. Gileinas and I were lucky to get past them; I doubt such luck is given twice in one night. No, my heart tells me he is dead.” I recalled the last dream I had had of him, and shivered.

Estelmo did not argue with me.

“What about Elendur?” I asked.

I saw tears in Estelmo’s eyes. “He died defending me.”

“Ciryon? Aratan?”

“They are dead. Everyone is. Only us three left”, he told me. His voice shook.

I could not stave off my tears any longer. I wept. I had no strength to fight the weight of the blanket on me and curl up as I wanted to, so I lay still, blinded by my tears, crying until it seemed I could not breathe anymore. The chair scraped against the floor. I felt the blanket be partly lifted away from me, and the dip of the mattress as Estelmo sat down on the edge of the bed. He gathered me into his arms and held me against his chest.

I only stopped crying when I ran out of tears. My face felt hot. I was out of breath, and out of strength, too. I was barely able to turn my head so that I could see Estelmo better. His face was also flushed and wet from crying.

“What you said last. Us three”, I began when I had regained enough breath to speak. “Gileinas? He is also alive?”

Estelmo nodded. He shifted so that I could see the rest of the room better. There was another bed set somewhat apart from mine. Gileinas lay curled upon it.

“He is asleep now, but he was awake and asking after you not two hours ago. I think he shall be alright”, Estelmo said.

He set me down on the bed again. I saw his gaze flicking between Gileinas and myself. He offered me a slight smile.

“I was wrong”, he said. “He did not break. Not even where the strength of many others would have failed.”

“I told you so”, I replied.

He laughed a little. “I know. You did.”

I lay quietly for some time. I stared at the ceiling and let my mind wander. Estelmo went back to his book, though he kept glancing at me.

“It is not against the law to sleep if you are tired, you know”, he said at length.

“I know. I will, in a while. But tell me… Queen Varyandë? Is she somewhere here?”

“She is. So is Valandil.”

“I should like to speak with her. Not today, I think, but sometime soon.”

Some days later I thought I was as ready as I would be to face Varyandë. I somewhat dreaded it, but I knew it would not become easier if I were to put it off for longer.

I had had a bath the evening before — my first actual bath since I had left Osgiliath four and a half months earlier, which seemed to me as distant as if it had happened in another life. It had been a pleasant experience, aside from the sight of my reflection in a mirror in the bathroom. I had felt like I was looking at a stranger. I do not know why I was not prepared for it; of course I could not look the same as I had before. But something about my image staring at me with lost, mournful eyes, its face half-covered with a patchy beard, the hair grown wild and overly long, the body thin and nearly frail-looking, unsettled me. It seemed less like a king’s young esquire and more like a stray dog given the form of a man.

Nonetheless, the next day I felt the most clean and presentable and in the best strength I had been since my arrival in Imladris. I sat on my bed. I had decided against any particular effort toward either formality or pretensions of being in better health than I was. Varyandë had known me all my life. When I had been a child, she had watched me play with Ciryon as a younger brother plays with an older. Behind closed doors there was no need for formality between her and I, and she would neither believe nor appreciate me acting as though I had come out of my ordeal unscathed.

Varyandë came in and sat in the chair by my bed. She wore a simple gown of wool and no jewellery — evidently she had made the same decision to forgo formality as I had. Her hair was loose and streaked with silver. When I had last seen her, it had still been all dark. She looked inquisitively at Gileinas, who was sitting on his bed leafing through a book.

“Varyandë, this is Gileinas. He is my friend —” Friend hardly seemed to cover what he was to me, even then, but I could never find a better word for it. “— I met him during the war. Gileinas, this is Queen Varyandë.”

Gileinas bowed his head politely. Varyandë returned the greeting. I watched them and hoped they would get along, even if only because of the affection each held for me. I did not think I could bear to stand between two people whom I loved and who both loved me but loathed each other. In time my hope was fulfilled; they came to like each other well enough, and Varyandë accepted Gileinas’ place in my life. But at that moment I could only wait to see how things would go.

“I am glad you had a friend with you”, Varyandë said, turning back to me.

I nodded. “So am I.”

A servant came and brought us cups and a pitcher of mulled wine. She left, and we were alone again. Gileinas turned to his book, politely pretending like he wasn’t paying attention to the two of us.

I was silent for a while. I found I did not know what to say or where to begin.

“Would you tell me what happened?” Varyandë asked quietly, taking the burden of choosing from me.

I did. I told her the broad course of the ambush, my orders, and my journey, Gileinas supplying some notes of his own here and there. I spared her most of the details I have written down in this account, partly because at the time I did not wish to look back on them myself, and partly because I felt it would be unkind to force her to hear the full depths of the suffering and desperation I had endured. I am sure she saw enough of it written on my face as it was.

I finished my tale and stared into the half-empty cup in my hand. Tears burned my eyes. I refused to let them fall. Her husband and three of her sons had all been taken from her in one night, and yet I had survived to sit there in front of her. It did not seem fair.

“I am sorry. I wish I had—” I began in a whisper.

Varyandë took my chin in her hand and turned my head toward herself. She was smiling in that way people do when they are trying not to cry. I realised that I had not been faithful to my intentions. I had not meant to pretend with her, but there we both were, holding back tears, putting on a brave face as if it could make things any better.

“Cruel as that trade would have been, if Isildur had thought that by keeping you at his side he could have made a difference to whether our sons lived or died, he would have done so. If he had thought that he could order them to flee the battle and be obeyed, he would have given the order. He did not. He did what he could to save you, because you were the one he could save”, she said softly. “Zôrzagar, that you have returned from the jaws of death is a joy to me in the midst of my grief, and more than I thought I could hope for when news of the battle came. Do not mar that joy with needless guilt.”

I bowed my head, half in acknowledgement and half under the weight of pain I still could not be rid of. Varyandë took my hand and held it in silence.

“I dreamt of Isildur”, I confessed. “It was on the night between mettarë and yestarë, if I have my count of days aright. He came out of a river and he was pierced with arrows, but he spoke to me. He told me to live.”

There was a catch in her breath, like a gasp reined in at the last moment. It was the first time I had spoken of my dream to anyone. Since then I have only told of it to Estelmo and to Lord Elrond. I included it in this account because it seemed necessary for the complete picture, but for some reason it has always seemed to me a thing not meant for many witnesses, and thus I have been reluctant to speak of it with others.

She squeezed my hand. “You have done all he asked for, and you have done it well. I think he would be happy to know you are alive and safe.”

I glanced at Narsil, which had been laid on a shelf by one wall of the room. I had been told that when I had first been brought to Imladris, I had become so distressed at anyone else touching the broken sword that Lord Elrond had decided it was better to leave it within my line of sight, so I could at least be more easily reassured that it had not been stolen. Now that I was in my senses again, I only wished to give it to someone else and feel that I was done with my mission.

“I suppose Valandil ought to have that”, I said.

“It is rightfully his”, Varyandë agreed. “You should give it to him.”

“It is not how I had hoped to introduce myself to him.” But very little had gone as I had hoped it would. I could bear this one thing more.

Varyandë was silent for a while. “I had hoped he could grow to manhood without the shadow of the throne upon him.” She smiled sadly. I could hear the strain in her voice. “I wish he and Elendur could have had the easy childhood that Aratan and Ciryon were given. It is an ill thing for a child to grow up in years of such fear and doubt, and then to be told that the weight of his people’s fates shall one day be his to carry and he should ready himself for it.”

I nodded. “Valandil is still a child, too young to be king. What will you do in the meantime?”

“I have dealt with the business of the realm since Queen Emeldir died five years ago. Longer than that, really; I aided her when her health began to fail. I can go on taking care of things a few years more. I am no longer young, but I should have more than enough time left to see Valandil that far.”

The wives of the Faithful had hearts of steel. They were given no other choice. Varyandë was strong even among them, and I believe she had courage enough to rival Isildur, though perhaps courage of a different kind. She endured the lot that fate gave her, and even as I spoke with her that day I never doubted that she would endure it.

We spoke for a while more. Eventually she took her leave, but we agreed that she would visit again with Valandil the next day, and I could give him the shards of Narsil then.

When the door closed behind her, all the tears that I had held back while we spoke flooded out unbidden. I curled up and wept helplessly. I do not know for whom; for myself, or for her, or Isildur and his sons and all my fallen comrades.

A pair of arms closed around me. Gileinas had climbed into my bed. I sank into his embrace. Exhausted by my tears, I must have fallen asleep, because the next time I opened my eyes, we were both lying down on the bed. I was still curled against his chest. He was asleep, one arm wrapped around me. The peace of sleep had smoothed away the tension and pain from his face. I did not want to disturb him, so I settled back against him and listened to his quiet breathing.

Later that evening I talked Estelmo into shaving my beard off and cutting my hair to the proper length just above my shoulders. I had in fact always tended to wear my hair quite a lot longer than was fashionable before then, but at the time I wanted to do whatever it took to look even a little more like a civilised man.

The next day I sat in a chair by the window, wearing a borrowed tunic made for someone more broad-shouldered than I would have been even when I was not half-starved. It was still a more presentable outfit than a plain shirt, or the mud- and sweat-stained clothes I had crossed the mountains in. Narsil lay across my lap. Gileinas sat nearby and Estelmo stood with him, neither of them willing to desert me. The light in the room was warm and came mainly from the lanterns and the fire in the fireplace; outside the clouds were thick and grey, and it was snowing again.

Varyandë entered with Valandil at her side. Lord Elrond followed after them. I was not very surprised at his presence; I knew he cared deeply for Elendil’s family and therefore for Valandil, while I was both his patient and a guest in his house. He had a reason to be interested in what happened between us.

I looked at Valandil with interest, and caught him looking back at me with equal curiosity. He was dressed plainly for the most part, though in fine clothes; the only jewellery he wore was a thin circlet of gold on his head, and the Ring of Barahir hung on a chain around his neck. His fingers were still too slim for it to stay on well in any of them. He held himself proudly as a king’s son ought, and walked with the same grace as his mother. Having been taught by the Eldar and raised in their dwelling, he had a light in his eyes that few Men do. He was still far from his adult height, hardly coming up to Varyandë’s shoulder. But although he was still a boy, his face was solemn and well-controlled.

I stood up for long enough to bow to him. He looked a little bewildered, evidently unused to such gestures.

“My lord”, I said, sitting back down, “my name is Ruinamacil, and I was your father’s esquire. When we were ambushed on our march north, he entrusted me with these, the shards of your grandfather Elendil’s sword Narsil, and commanded me to bring them to safety.” I drew a breath and tried to speak through the grief choking my throat. “I had hoped to return them to him, but as he is dead, they are yours by right. Will you receive them?”

I held the sheath out as far as I could, but I kept my right hand on the armrest of the chair to mask its weakness. Valandil glanced at Varyandë and Lord Elrond. He stepped forward, slowly reaching out his hand until it hovered over the hilt of Narsil.

“I will receive the shards of Narsil. Thank you for serving my father so faithfully.” He spoke slowly, carefully, a little as if he was seeking for the right words as he was saying them. I felt sorry for him. He was only a child, caught in the middle of others’ grief for a man he had never known and faced with the weight of future duty that should never have been his. He has since become a great and honourable king, but as Varyandë had said the day before, it was not fair that his childhood was disturbed by such things.

He took Narsil from me and stepped back. I watch him hold the sheath in his left hand and carefully drew the sword out with his right. He looked quietly at the gleaming blade, broken off a foot below the hilt.

“That was a good sword. Keep it well, Valandil, and do not forget the cost by which the peace in your realm was bought. But it will not be for you to repair it; indeed this blade shall not be reforged until Sauron rises once more and Middle-Earth stands again on the brink of darkness”, said Lord Elrond quietly, moving to stand behind the boy.

I glanced at Varyandë, alarmed. Valandil turned to Lord Elrond and frowned.

“But Sauron was defeated utterly, was he not? Surely such a day shall never come”, he said.

A shadow flickered on Lord Elrond’s face. “We may hope that it shall not, though few things are certain beyond doubt, and in some matters hope alone is a poor shield. But in any case such dark things shall not happen in your lifetime, and for the time being you may safely put it out of your mind.”

We all stayed in Imladris until the end of Gwirith. Partly it was because, although we believed that he was dead, it nonetheless seemed better to wait until it was certain beyond doubt that had he made it to safety, word of it would have had time to reach Imladris. But largely it was because Varyandë wished for me to come with her and Valandil to Annúminas, and wanted to make sure I had enough time to recover in peace and that the spring was far enough for good travelling weather before I had to be on the road again.

I allowed Lord Elrond to cut the arrowhead out of my shoulder, because he feared that it might otherwise move with time and cause worse injury than it already had. He is a skilled healer, but a wound is nonetheless a wound, and waiting for his work to heal added to the time I needed for recovering. He told me also that the arrow had cut partly through a nerve, and though the pain and weakness might somewhat lessen with time, I should not expect to ever regain the full use of my arm.

Estelmo and Gileinas and I spent much time together during those months in Imladris. Estelmo could well have returned to his home in Tharbad as soon as weather permitted travelling again at the beginning of Gwaeron, but he chose to rather see us to Annúminas first before turning homeward. There was a strange, grim connection between the three of us, the only survivors of the slaughter of that night near the Gladden Fields, that we could not deny.

I also spoke often with Valandil. I was hesitant at first, for I did not wish to burden him with my grief, but he came to me again time after time, and asked me to tell him about his father and his brothers. How could I have denied him?

Our journey to Annúminas went quietly. Estelmo’s father came to meet him there and accompany him on the journey to their home in Tharbad. I stayed with Varyandë and Valandil, and Gileinas remained with me.

Varyandë knighted the three of us the following year. When it came to Gileinas and myself, it was a formality, to honour deeds we had already done, and not truly tied to expectation of any future service. We all knew by then that I would never hold a sword again. Gileinas could still have been a warrior otherwise, but he would never leave my side for long.

When Valandil was twenty-one, he took the throne for himself. Five years after that, satisfied that he had things well in hand, Varyandë returned to Imladris. She had grown close with the Lady Celebrían during the years of the war, and wished to see her again and spend the remainder of her life in peace in that fair house, away from the busy and complex life of the court in Annúminas. Gileinas and I accompanied her at her request. She died thirty-three years later, with enough forewarning that Valandil could come stay with her for her last months. I think she was as happy as anyone in her place could have been.

After Varyandë’s death, we returned to Annúminas again for a time. I am sure Lord Elrond would have allowed Gileinas and I to stay in Imladris indefinitely, but I wished to be in the company of my own people again.

Before the year was over, we left Annúminas, however. I had been away from the court for a long time, and I found it hard to settle in and felt myself a stranger there. I know Valandil was sad to see me go, but he granted me a house and the lordship of some lands near Emyn Beraid, in the quiet western borderlands where even lordly houses only maintain a small troop of men at arms for the sake of formality. It is a fair land, and I have been happy in my life here; the happiest while Gileinas lived, though the time he was given seems to me too short. Estelmo visited us when he found the time for it in between his own duties, as a knight, and then as the Lord of Tharbad, and as a husband and father. While Gileinas’ health allowed it, and again after his passing, I made a point of visiting Annúminas for at least one of the great feast-days of the year. Valandil, and now his children also, are the only kin I have left in the Realms of the Faithful, and it would not be polite to turn my back to my family.

As I write these words and look back to the events I have relayed in them, it seems plain to me that it was the hand of some power greater than myself that brought me and Gileinas alive over the mountains. Too many things on that journey depended on luck that settled on our side despite everything. I doubt it was for our own sakes. After all, what did our two lives weigh in the scales of the world to make such an intervention worthwhile? Besides, though I have not been unhappy with my life, I feel as though ever since I woke up in Imladris a part of me has been adrift and seeking a purpose that no longer exists to guide me. If I had been saved for my own sake, should I not have clearly seen the path to follow and felt right in keeping to it?

No, I think whatever aid beyond human might I may have been given, it was because I was meant to save Narsil. My own fate must have become irrelevant as soon as I reached Imladris with it.

I do not understand why Narsil should be so important, but Lord Elrond seemed to think that it is, and I am not one to question his judgement. He sees far, further perhaps than any other living person, and prepares for chances of a a future far beyond the lifespan of any man. I will not ask him what he thinks; I have no wish to burden myself with such knowledge.

Chapter End Notes

I hope you enjoyed this fic!!

I'm sincerely really grateful for all of you who commented on the chapters while I was writing the fic, it really encouraged me to keep telling the story despite the way it kept getting away from me <3

This is actually the longest fic I've ever finished, even though I've spent 11-ish years in fandoms and writing fic; I'm not much of a chapterfic writer. It might even be longest I've ever written at all (I'd have to check that against one fic languishing in one of my google docs folders that I never got to the point of posting to make sure which is longer, but I don't feel like doing that just now...)

Next I'll be off diving into my Thingol cosplay project for Finncon, my art ideas for Scribbles & Drabbles, and preparing for running Finnish Fanworks Week, so we'll see when I find the time to write fic again, but I think I might want to return to Ohtar (and perhaps Gileinas as well, and Estelmo, and certainly Varyandë) again in some future story

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