Dwimmerlaik

Author's Notes: Despite this being the shortest of my chapters, it took me more than twenty-three days to write! It is shorter mostly because the next chapter is so long. I like to keep my stories balanced as much as possible.

This is hot-off-the-press, so to speak. I was scrambling to rewrite the last scene this morning but I thought I’d go ahead anyway and let you read. It’s ready. However, Part Fourteen is not written yet and it’s going to be a long, involved chapter. I’m going to tentatively say I won’t be able to post next week and hope you’ll bear with me while I iron out the kinks.

Once more, I have to profusely thank Noelnoel for going over this chapter with a fine-toothed and razor-edged comb. His help proved invaluable, irreplaceable and wonderfully insightful. Thank you, Noel! Couldn’t have done it without you!

The Lady of Light

Part Thirteen

Western Glooms are Gathering

Bodies littered the chamber. Orcs and Dúnedain alike lay in the attitude where the fatal stroke had found them with looks of fear, surprise or defiance permanently fixed across their pale visages. The illusion of peaceful rest does not include the fallen of battlefields. Unlike those of Rhudaur that environed them, the rangers were not covered over in feature-blurring shrouds, their grisly horror un-softened by time and dust.

The surviving orcs picked through the gore, stripping their foes of weapons and going about the grisly business of sifting through the dead. Critz kept eyes on his men, impatiently tapping the hilt of a long knife against the stone.

Sweeping through the gore, careless of the scarlet blood seeping into his black garment, the Witch-king paused almost thoughtfully beside the large stone vault of the Rhudaur lord. Piled beside the tomb were the bodies of his minions brought up from the caverns where his quarry had at last eluded him. Somewhere under the mound was an elf still clutching a broken rapier. A single elf, torn and wounded to death, had accounted for almost a third of his slain force alone!

The longsword was still clenched in his hand. It rose almost of its own accord, hatred the only emotion he could still feel with any strength. He stabbed savagely downward until he reached the golden body. The surviving orcs huddling against the back wall watched their enraged lord wide-eyed until the fires of his rage were spent. Only one among their number moved.

Coming up behind the wraith, Haldir stared at the mutilated soldier. For a brief, almost undistinguishable moment there shone in his rigid face a stab of recognition and remorse. But as the wraith’s hood turned towards him, his face became smoothly blank and attentive.

The Witch-king sheathed his lame and Critz deemed it safe enough to approach. “What now, Sire? Our losses were great but not overly so. We could still go after them once the brush fire in that tunnel dies down. They’ll be burdened with wounded.”

The icy voice sneered from under the hood. “Our losses would have been less severe if you had properly surrounded and eliminated the quarry. I made one, simple request: find the Dúnedain and kill them. We had them trammeled within our very grasp, weakened, surprised and yet somehow they escaped our noose. Clearly I made the oversight of thinking you competent enough to subdue a few weakling rebels.”

He did not notice Critz’s fangs bare in a petulant scowl as a vision flashed before his mind of their leader, that young, grey-eyed man. There was an elvish cast to him. It at once intrigued him and filled his dark heart with an inexplicable emotion he did not yet recognize as fear.

“Too many years of cracking whips over the inferior have made you lax and soft, Critz. You have wasted enough of my resources and my time. No. We will wait. Knowing we have one of their own, their professed nobility will not allow them to let him remain in our hands. They will come to us. And we will be ready when they do.”

He indicated the Dúnedain corpses with a sweep of his iron-clad hand. “Collect those. We return home.”

----------

“I need to speak with you. Privately.”

“Not now,” Aragorn didn’t look up from his work as he sorted through his dwindling herb stock, trying to find a little more yarrow ointment for a shoulder wound. It was close to the neck and inflamed.

Frustration began to wear through Halbarad’s earnestness. “You need to replenish your stocks anyway. They’ll be all right for a few minutes.”

Aragorn sighed as he finished binding the wound a little more snugly than he intended and his patient winced. Loosening the linen, he addressed him, “Are you going to be all right if I leave him with you for a little?” he nodded at the soldier’s friend who hovered close though his own arm was wrapped in a bloody bandage.

The injured man quirked a wry smile and shifted his newly bound shoulder. “I’ll live.”

Aragorn’s smile at the soldier’s bravery quickly faded as Halbarad led him downstream away from their cold, uncomfortable bivouac. Burdened by the injured, they had been forced to stop still within sight of Amon-en-Achas beside a shallow, green burn hidden within a birch grove. Aragorn had ordered no fires lit though he had hardly needed to. They were all too exhausted to do more than slump where they fell.

Angrad’s treachery lay like a pall over them. Aragorn still couldn’t absorb the realization fully though grief and fatigue gnawed at the raw hole in his chest.

“Galen was a brave soldier. He died how he wished,” Halbarad said awkwardly, intoning the usual consoling phrase said during this kind of time. His usual ruddy face was pale as his chief’s and another, grimmer emotion Aragorn couldn’t pinpoint in the dark furrowed his brow.

“Yes, he was.”

The older ranger slowed and halted, leaning against the cracked trunk of a birch that bent low to the water. “I didn’t want to say this in front of the men. And you’re not going to like it.”

Aragorn raised his eyes dully, silently inviting the other to continue.

Halbarad’s calloused fingers rubbed the knobby trunk edgily. “Know that I say this in love, because you are not only my chieftain and sword-brother but my friend.”

“Say it, Halbarad.”

A beat. “We need to pull back.”

“Haldir is still a captive among the orcs. We have to get him out of there.”

“After what happened tonight…I do not think it possible.”

There was a dark note in Halbarad’s tone that made Aragorn suddenly wary. “I did not come all this way to leave my friend behind,” he said slowly, the uneasiness growing when Halbarad minutely shook his head. “Our men did not die—Galen did not die—for us to retreat like startled hinds at the sight of the hunter. We’ve had worse numbers against us before and prevailed.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“What then are you saying? Plainly.”

“We have no further purpose here. Nearly half our number are dead; of the rest not one is without hurt. We need to fall back, recoup our numbers and strength—”

“That would condemn him to death.”

“He cannot be saved.”

Aragorn stared at his faithful adjutant then said in a voice soft but laden. “You believe him lost?”

“He fights for the Enemy now. I’m sorry for his loss but perhaps it wasn’t—” Halbarad seemed to think better of whatever he’d been about to say and simply shook his head. “I’m sorry. Truly.”

Aragorn didn’t seem to have heard him. “He does not fight by his own will. I will bring him back to reason.”

“And if you are unable to?” Halbarad challenged, his darkly troubled eyes softening his tone. “Pain—and fear of pain—can challenge even the closest loyalties, Aragorn.”

“So can fear of betrayal.” The grey-green stare of his leader pinned him meaningfully.

It silenced the older man for a minute but only a minute. “I watched that elf nearly kill you, Aragorn— yes, I fear betrayal. We were mistaken in Angrad. I’ve known him since he was old enough to stride a saddle! Is it so improbable to think you too might be mistaken in someone? Someone who, you remember, tried to kill me the first time he met me?”

“You know that was an accident. I was not in any serious danger.”

Halbarad’s lips curved with scornful incredulity. “You mean to tell me, if I had failed to knock away the lame he had pressed to your throat he would have let you walk away unscathed? Why then the need to fight him with drawn steel? Why then is your lip bloody?” He indicated Aragorn’s mouth where a black-red split marked top and bottom, the force of Haldir’s backhand. “Your friend.”

“He’s given me worse sparring.” Aragorn touched the wound, attempting to shrug the lie off lightly and failing.

A shriveled birch leaf tumbled as Halbarad’s fist slammed helplessly into the white trunk. “He would have slain you, Aragorn! And you would not have hindered him!”

When his chieftain did nothing more than continue to regard him, Halbarad sighed and forced his fingers to uncurl. “Even now, we would follow you into that dark keep without hesitation. I ask only that you consider alternatives. What can we truly accomplish now? He who was your friend is no more. Accept it, Aragorn, and let us look to avenge him and all our fallen."

“No, I will not accept it, Halbarad,” Aragorn allowed the first tinges of anger to inflame his normally calm voice; his emotions were too torn and his body too exhausted for him to do anything but succumb to the slow-building rage and fear boiling in his chest. He rubbed his neck reflexively where the blackened sword had left its bite mark. A vision of Haldir’s strangely emotionless eyes flashed across his mind.

“They did something to him,” he endeavored with enforced calm. “But I am going to bring him back.”

Halbarad opened his mouth, undoubtedly to protest again but Aragorn was done listening.

“I have given you your say and have made my decision. I’ll argue no more. The men need more yarrow. Make yourself useful and find some.” his chief whirled on his heel, heading back towards the camp. He didn’t look over his shoulder to see if Halbarad obeyed or not. Guilt threatened to wring his heart but he thrust it away savagely. He’d meant what he’d said to Halbarad: he wasn’t going to turn back. Not now. Maybe he was being indurate but he would not let his men’s, Galen’s sacrifices be for nothing. He wouldn’t believe Haldir was beyond saving.

Nevertheless Halbarad’s words had raised a sudden doubt like the awareness of a bruise. "He who was your friend is no more."

If they couldn’t bring him back…

The camp was still dark when he returned. The others huddled in their cloaks, damp and chilled as the night slid by. Few were awake, and only two were speaking. A shard of moonlight highlighted Lalaithien’s compassionate expression as he crouched in front of Ivriel who sat up against the bole of an oak, her cloak pulled tautly over her thin shoulders.

“—worried about you,” Lalaithien’s usually merry face was uncharacteristically vulnerable. He touched her fingers where they gripped the edges of her cloak. “He is not willing to place you before his duty. You know that.” He sighed when she pulled gently away.

“I know.”

Ivriel’s eyes caught Aragorn’s and Lalaithien, following her gaze, rocked onto his heels, giving the man a smile that somehow lacked its usual brilliance as he wordlessly withdrew.

The ranger approached softly. "Is Rancir asleep? I hoped to speak with him."

Ivriel adjusted the bandage covering her scalp wound as she glanced at her commander's nearby form, inert and wrapped in his tattered cloak. "His arm was bothering him. I gave him a full dose of poppy syrup. He might sleep until dawn if undisturbed." Ivriel spoke with a meaningful look that Aragorn missed.

"A full dose? Was that wise? That much can—"

"I know what too large a dose can do, Master Healer, thank you," her voice was whisper soft, yet pointedly quelling; Aragorn lowered his voice as he conceded, "Of course, you know him best. Forgive me."

Ivriel's eyes closed briefly in chagrin as Aragorn sat down next to her. "He needed to rest. But he wouldn't give up first watch."

"So you took it for him?" Aragorn guessed, lifting an eyebrow. He had been on the receiving end of such enforced rest before and knew that it was probably for the best. "You must be tired. Let me take the remainder for you."

She shook her head in refusal and touched the bandage wrapped tightly over her hair again. "I feel strangely restless. Battle does it. Even after it is over, I do not feel at ease enough for sleep."

Aragorn nodded his understanding as he wrapped his cloak more snugly around his shoulders. "The nights are getting colder." His abstracted gaze focused far across the river towards the rising woods beyond. They both knew somewhere over the tops of the trees, lay the menacing bastion, concealed only by tree shade and night shadow.

“It’s nearing autumn. With the dying season, his power will wax again,” Ivriel’s penetrating eyes fastened on him. “What do you intend to do now?”

“I’m not sure,” he said, exhaling softly. “Some part of me knows that the wise course would be to flee from this place as fast as we can before we are snared. The other fears that giving in would…”

“Cost your friend his life,” she finished. “It would.”

Aragorn sighed. A soft rustle of movement drew his attention away from the conversation. He glanced up as Halbarad wordlessly handed him a handful of yarrow leaves. The younger ranger took them with a nod of appreciative thanks, tucked them into his belt and, on second thought, rose to follow the older man. A touch on the shoulder made Halbarad turn, his expression cautiously neutral.

“Sir?”

Aragorn shook his head at the formality. “I have no desire to quarrel with you, Halbarad. As you said, you are my friend and sword-brother and I thank you for your counsel however driven it is by personal concern. But, I have made up my mind. I need your support in this, my friend.”

“I am your support. I feel I have to speak my mind regardless,” Halbarad squeezed his chief’s arm gruffly. “I’ll wake the others.”

Overhearing him, Lalaithien knelt beside his own commanding officer and gently touched his shoulder. “Sir?”

“Lalaithien, he needs rest,” Ivriel made a movement as though to stop him but he brushed her aside, his grip tightening when Rancir didn’t stir.

“We need to rouse him.”

“Why?” Ivriel frowned and scooted forward, irritably shoving the bandage up on her forehead again when it slipped over her eye.

The younger elf flashed a quick glance at her face, still shaking his officer. “What did you give him?” He started slightly when a vise-like grip snapped closed around his wrist, effectively dislodging his clasp.

“What is it?”

“Sorry to wake you, sir.” Lalaithien apologized swiftly, reclaiming his wrist and cradling it gingerly. “There’s been a change of plans.”

Rancir pushed his long, dark mane off his face with an aggravated sweep as he sat up. “I shouldn’t have been asleep in the first place.” He cut a shrewd, sideways glance at Ivriel who hastily found somewhere else to look. “What is it, Lalaithien?”

“Strider’s decided not to wait until dawn. We’re leaving soon.”

The dark-haired commander lurched slightly unsteadily to his feet. “I need to walk.”

A slight commotion at the edge of the camp made him pause, rubbing his arm. “What the—?”

“What is going on?” Aragorn questioned as two of the guards they had posted around the perimeter appeared, dragging a familiar scarecrow of a figure between them. He stared, incredulous. “How…?”

Veil flexed his shoulders against the sentinels’ grasp. “Sorry I’m late.”

No one returned his tentative smile. If one of their own could betray them, a stranger would have an even easier job of it.

“We thought you were dead,” Halbarad said when Aragorn didn’t say anything. He laid a hand on his sword hilt. Veil’s eyes followed the movement and darkened. The smile vanished from his bony face.

“He did it then,” he whispered. A heavy sigh shifted his shoulders. “You can take your hand off your sword, Master Halbarad. I didn’t bring an entourage of orcs with me as you can see. Do you mind if I sit? The walk was kind of long.”

“You’re hurt,” Aragorn observed, gently putting Halbarad aside so he could approach the man who sank to the ground.

The rakish grin reappeared even as he stretched his leg out with a soft groan. There was a long gash across his thigh. “Takes more than a swing in the dark to kill me though I imagine that pup of Angmar didn’t think so.”

Aragorn peeled the cut trouser leg back to inspect the gouge. “You were lucky. How did you escape the orcs?”

The former slave grimaced, shutting his eyes tight, as Aragorn applied pressure to his leg. He gritted out through clenched teeth. “They must have missed me in the dark…It was chaos after you all escaped…I crawled as far as I could, hid under a dead log for the night, made my way back in the morning…” His hand suddenly covered Aragorn’s and the chieftain looked up at him.

“I’m sorry,” the man whispered. “I didn’t need to go inside to see what had happened.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll show you.”

The sight of Amon-en-Achas’ lone hill made a lump rise in Aragorn’s throat as he followed Veil who was limping but steadily towards the footpath that wound towards the summit. He led them up the familiar avenue but he turned aside before reaching the entranceway they had used so many times and led them up a short climb of scrub grass and tumbled boulders. Rounding a spur of rock that protruded from the hillside, Aragorn stopped short at the sight before him. He realized now why Veil had been unable to speak.

Startled by their unexpected appearance, a crow took off with an angry croak. The heads of the Dúnedain who had fallen in the dark tombs had been brought out into the sunlight and perched on the boulders. Their mouths had been wedged open with stones bearing the painted sign of the Red Eye or the vulgar graffiti of their killers.

But what had been done to Galen was even worse.

The elf warrior had been dismembered and propped on a pike driven deep into the soil. Ghastly injuries rent his body in so many places he was hard to recognize at first. Sunlight glinted in his hair, made ugly by bloodstains and tangled about his neck which had been pierced right through with the pike’s steel nail to hold him in place. Hung like an old coat. The pitiful, milky stare of the dead elf warrior sent a pang of rage through Aragorn’s breast and his fingers tightened around the saber pommel until the smooth metal ground against the bones in his hands.

“By Nienna’s tears, curse them, curse them,” he heard someone behind him whisper.

Veil didn’t look at the carnage again. “These creatures have no sanctity for life or death. At least the dead cannot feel their cruelty. The living can,” a shuddering breath escaped him and he had to stare at the ground when he admitted. “My daughter is still among them—in that keep…That Angmar mongrel told me my wife’s sister had been caught trying to escape and slain. Who’s taking care of Henna? She’s the only family I have left. I won’t lose her—I can’t lose her.”

Lalaithien came up beside him, his eyes dark with a determined fire Aragorn had never seen before. The young elf addressed himself to Veil, not once taking his eyes from the lean face. “My only family are those with me now.” He glanced over his shoulder at Rancir and Ivriel.

“My parents departed before the first wars with Angmar ended. My brother and sister raised me in Rivendell. When they decided to help Lord Glorfindel avenge the loss of Fornost, they took me with them though I was deemed too young to fight. They—and consequently I—were put under the bullying domination of a then-sergeant who made you do drills all the time even if you were only a go-for.”

Rancir snorted. “Kept you out from underfoot.”

Lalaithien’s answering smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Brethwen and Mallion…became part of his ambuscade company—they were both archers and skilled in concealment. We received word that the Witch-king was moving his forces farther from the palace into open country. They departed to make a surprise sortie. I couldn’t go with.” A grey shadow crept over his face and he fell silent.

Ivriel picked up the tale when it seemed neither of her male companions would explain. “Someone panicked. Let their arrow loose too early. We lost the element of surprise. Half of the company was slaughtered in the first charge—Brethwen and Mallion were taken captive along with...some of the senior officers.”

Horror rippled the length of Aragorn’s spine.

Ivriel continued. “There was a particularly vindictive creature that commanded the Witch-king’s forces at that time. You’ve met him before,” her eyes focused on Aragorn meaningfully. “In the orc camp.”

“Critz.” Aragorn saw a muscle tighten in Rancir’s jaw and remembered the commander’s berserk hatred of the orc lieutenant. A cold lump of ice slid down his throat and settled like a rock in the pit of his stomach. He had a feeling he knew what was coming next. “He tortured them.”

“Oh, he did more than that,” Rancir didn’t take his eyes from Lalaithien’s bowed head. “By the end of the first night, some of them had forgotten their own names, who and where they were. He broke them in hours.”

Lalaithien hadn’t lifted his face. Ivriel rested a consoling hand on his back, her eyes fastened worriedly on her commander.

Rancir’s shoulders were so rigid had his mouth not been moving he would have seemed a graven statue. The Dúnedain remained utterly silent, watching. “If their officer had not been such a damn overconfident idiot, he would have known better, he would have been prepared. He wouldn’t have let them suffer.”

“It wasn’t your fault.” The words escaped Aragorn’s lips before he’d realized he’d spoken them. Compassion and sorrow for all these three had lost beat against his breast so strongly he thought he might shatter with the force of it.

A heavy sigh escaped the lieutenant-commander. He brushed Lalaithien’s shoulder in passing, looking up at Galen’s still form. “At least, our dead did not suffer.”

“And no one else will if we can prevent it,” Halbarad said. When Aragorn’s eyes lifted to his, he nodded shortly.

Turning, Aragorn addressed his men who watched him expectantly. “There is no time to go back for aid. By the time we returned with reinforcements, who knows how great the wraith’s power will have grown? We are the only hope for the north now.”

“There is a way,” Veil leaned back against of the boulders to take the weight of his leg as he explained. “I know how we can get our hands on a proper-sized fighting force. It’s insane but I think it’ll work. Listen.”

“You’re right. That is insane,” Halbarad said when Veil had finished outlining his proposition. “I like it.”

The other man threw him a reckless smile.

With grim determination, they went about the grim duty of laying their companions to rest and got to work. Sharpness replaced blunted sword tips, bows needed restringing, arrows crafted from light birch and oak were hardened over small fires and rubbed to razor points.

Steadier now that their fate was decided, Aragorn perched on a boulder, staring across the plain towards Fornost which loomed like the beginnings of a great mountain out of the earth, its craggy shoulders aflame with the last glimmer of sunset.

Rancir’s eyes caught the reddish glints as he climbed up beside him, the heavy leather bracer strapped on his forearm once more, his weapon honed to a new edge. “You should sleep while you can. We won’t move until it’s fully dark.”

Aragorn acknowledged the elf’s sensible suggestion with a nod but little else. He could not sleep even if he tried. The knowledge of what they were about to do erased all thought of exhaustion from his mind.

Rancir was still watching him, an unusual expression on his stern face. It looked almost like pity. “It is a noble thing to sacrifice your life for a friend,” he said.

“I hope it will not come to sacrifice. Veil’s idea can work.”

“Certainly it can but even with the added numbers, we’re going in blind. We don’t know their exact defenses, where the wraith is…Or your Captain Haldir.”

Aragorn had thought of this already but hadn’t dared say it aloud. “I will find him if I have to search under every flagstone.”

“And we will give you that time if we can. However, it is more than a month now since his capture. A lot of damage can be done in even a short amount of time,” the elf commander did not need to glance at his own ruined limb for evidence. “It is better to be prepared. If we are too late…”

The man stared at the ground as though fascinated by it but not really seeing it. If they were too late, the most they could accomplish would be to get themselves killed. He started when Rancir pressed something into his hand and felt a chill quite unrelated to the cooling wind when the pouch of hemlock leaves nestled in his palm.

“Death is better than eternal servitude to the Shadow. And better at the hand of a friend. He would wish it.”

Aragorn thrust it back at him with a vehement shake of his head. “We will get him back.” But Rancir had already walked away to rejoin Ivriel and Lalaithien.

Oaths were vowed that night: of brotherhood, of loyalty and friendship. Even as they keened the weapons of war, the Dúnedain laughed and teased one another as old comrades do. They sang and some murmured prayers. Come dawn tomorrow, they knew all laughter, songs and prayers could be silenced for all of them.
Notes:

go-for— a semi-feudalistic term for a page boy who ran errands for the knights