I Sit and Think of Times There Were Before by Erdariel  

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Of winter in the mountains

Is anyone going to be surprised anymore if I say this spawned yet another chapter? Because this is once again not the last chapter of the fic like i thought it would be when I started writing the chapter.

Not really a matter of length this time (as yet at least; I've not finished writing the fifth chapter in full), this chapter is not actually all that long, it's mostly just a matter of topics and narrative rhythm that I felt worked better if I broke things up into two chapters

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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