First Name Terms

Part Three

Holding Out the Night

The temperature plunged as the night deepened.

But Aragorn didn’t feel it. Caught in the grip of a raging fever, dark locks drenched in sweat, he alternately shivered and choked on the ashes in his mouth. His heart was thrumming so hard and so fast it sounded more like a hum and a heavy weight was pressing on his shoulders and chest, stealing the breath from his already oxygen-deprived body. He tried to throw it off, squandering what little strength remained to him but the thing wouldn’t budge. The wound to his head was not pleased with his movements and rebelled sickeningly. His strength spent, he stopped struggling and lay limp.

A sharp tug at his shoulder made the world jolt crazily again and he almost screamed in pain. He would have but a strap of what tasted like salt and leather strangled the noise. They were going to kill him! He had no idea who his enemies were or why they wanted to hurt him so narrow object glittered above his vacantly staring eyes and without warning dove towards his shoulder.

Aragorn made a last ditch effort to fight but his limbs felt like lead, his head swinging between light and dark, noise one moment and silence the next. It was almost a mercy when the black figure above him tugged the strip from his mouth and pressed something over his nose instead. Before Aragorn could stop he’d breathed in and sweet oblivion poured over his consciousness like a wave of water dousing a bright flame.

As the young man’s eyes glazed over in drugged sleep,Haldir rested on his heels and wiped his face exhaustedly with a sleeve rolled up past the elbows. He was sweating and shaking almost as much as the human. It was not the first time he had removed a festering arrow but the last time a man had cried so under his touch, he had been choking on his own blood.

Not trusting his unsteady hands to continue just yet, he fingered the human’s belt, marked with deep indentations. The young man had almost bitten through the leather. Suddenly conscious of the silent footsteps coming up beside him, Haldir tossed the strap into the grass near the bloody arrowhead.

Ancadal, his face filled with earnest concern, glanced between the almost identically blenched faces of his friend and the sick human. “How is he?”

Haldir did not look up. “He’s dying.”

Ancadal sighed and stared into the sinister, black gaps left by the pine trees. “If we had been anywhere else…in Lórien he might have had a chance…Honestly I didn’t think he would last as long as he did. You’ve done what you could, Haldir, and more than most would have,” the warrior, despairing for the imminent loss of the young man, tried to console him. “Humans are fragile and this one more than most if his age is any-”

”I said ‘he’s dying,’ not ‘he’s dead.’But at this rate, he will be if we can’t bring the pain down. The arrow was poisoned and I don’t know what toxin it is. His heart’s beating far too fast though. If we can slow it down, the poison pouring through his veins will too and it will give me more time,” Haldir thought aloud. Abruptly turning towards Ancadal he nodded to a bag slung among the pine needles. “I have a vial of poppy extract in my satchel-a little glass wrapped in green cloth- get it.”

Ancadal didn’t ask why his captain would be carrying such a potent sedative around with him but fetched it swiftly.

Ripping aside the cloth, Haldir dug out the vial’s stopper and, asking Ancadal to hold the human’s mouth open, carefully tipped the contents between his lips. It was a sharply concentrated measure and even an ounce too much could cause a fatal overdose.

Aragorn’s eyes flickered back and forth under closed eyelids as though he was being hunted in his dreams and he suddenly twitched violently, struggling against some invisible force. It took all the elf captain and Ancadal’s combined strength to restrain him until the poppy kicked in and the man’s movements grew sluggish and finally stopped.

Haldir quickly checked the ranger’s pulse, sighing in quiet relief as a much easier rhythm answered his seeking fingers.

“You know,” Ancadal said with a sideways glance at his friend and decided to tread very carefully. “I thought, at first, that you were going to…going to leave him there,” he opted for the less abhorrent of what he had thought. “What happened after I left that you are now so determined to save the life of a human?”

“This from the elf who champions the rights of all cute things: puppies, kitties and stray humans? I thought you wanted me to try and help him,” Haldir bit off the smarter end of that comment. He knew Ancadal was concerned about him. “I can manage from here. He’s breathing better now.”

Ancadal thought rightly that it would be better to drop his curiosity for now. “All right. If you’re sure. I’ll still be nearby-if you need a reprieve.”

Haldir nodded shortly. “Fine.” Absently readjusting the cloaks over the injured ranger’s shoulders, he regarded the pale, strained face beneath him. “You had better be worth all this trouble, young man.”

----------

Dawn’s fiery light had already touched the glades and valleys of the Misty Mountains long before the first tentative fingers slipped under the ravine’s rim. Beneath the trees, the pine needles were just beginning to grey when Aragorn opened his eyes. He squinted and turned his face away from the strong light. But a reddish glow still shone behind his eyelids.

His head felt like cotton, light and billowy, his thoughts flitting from nothing to nothing. At first he tried to move his arms and legs if only to see if they were still attached to his body, but the drowsy numbness felt too good a replacement from the pain to want to try very hard. Squinting quizzically at the stiff branches creaking overhead, he tried to piece his thoughts together. He remembered the pain, oh yes, he could never easily forget that but the cause of it was all a mass of grey and black. The left side of his neck and shoulder were the only parts that felt particularly painful and Aragorn could feel the thick tug of bandages as he twitched the limb experimentally.

“So, you’ve returned at last.”

The young man started a little at the unprompted voice, too surprised to note that the words were elvish. Turning towards where he had heard the sound, he strained his eyes at the shadows still thick under the pine trees. Blurry, half-seen images swirled briefly to the forefront of the ranger’s consciousness before retreating again into the recesses. He remembered a hand grasping his, only just pulling him back from the abyss. Your Adar’s not here. But someone is. Someone is.

“How did I get here?”

A golden glint sparked as the owner of the voice shifted position and drew closer to the ranger.

Aragorn found himself looking into a pair of the brightest green eyes he had ever seen; the unmistakable depth of them proclaimed the elf for what he was but he had a kind, unhardened smile.

Ancadal, grateful Haldir had had the staunch determination to teach him a little Westron, answered but he had to wrestle for the words. “My commander brought you here with an arrow in your shoulder and a very nasty crack on the skull.”

“I can feel that.” Aragorn tried to push off the covers and sit up but his muscles refused to cooperate fully and he only managed to half-slide, half-roll the coverings off him. His breathing quickened. “Why can’t I move?”

“You were delirious so we had to give you a…remedy. It is the pain the poison on the arrow causes that kills. So you must drink this for a while until it flushes out of your system.”

Ancadal produced a small cup filled mostly with water and a few drops of the precious extract
which he had been preparing while waiting for the human to wake. Haldir had said it might be sometime today.

Aragorn took the cup with slightly trembling fingers and experimentally dipped a fingertip into it to test it. “Poppy?” he guessed. The bitterness, unsweetened by honey, was unmistakable-his foster father often brewed a special tea from its seeds for the few injured who passed the healing doors of Rivendell.

“And water. Worry not. Your movement will return.”

“You are alone out here?” Aragorn sipped at the draught, slightly surprised that an elf would be traveling alone in such dismal, dangerous country- though of course he could have said the same about himself.

“There are others here though you may not see them.” Ancadal glanced over his shoulder towards the dark copse where Haldir had stationed himself an hour or so ago to catch up on the sleep he’d lost the night before. For a moment, he considered waking him then thought better to wait.

Aragorn blinked tiredly; the medicine was already making him drowsy. “I walked here nigh on two days and found no game.”

“It is not game that we seek.” The elf smiled and retrieved the wooden cup from the human’s slackening grasp. “My name is Ancadal of the Galadhrim of Lothlórien by the way.”

“I’m sorry,” Aragorn sat up a little straighter, mentally berating himself for not introducing himself; the poison must still have been acting on him more than he thought for he still spoke in Common, a language that he had automatically become accustomed to in his weeks of wandering in unfamiliar territory. The elf must think him a no-account vagabond. “Im Estel.”

He felt a slight twinge of guilt-induced grief. That was the name his foster father had given him years ago. It was no longer his true name but among elves, he had always been named so and had instinctively given the name his elven father had granted him so long ago.

Ancadal nodded with another friendly smile and settled down to keep their impromptu guest company. “I am glad that you are mending, Estel.”

Fingering the bandages trapping his arm against his chest, Aragorn grimaced a little with a tiny half-smile playing about his face. “Me too.”

-----------

Aragorn’s eyelids fluttered open again to be greeted by the sight of a copper tinge just barely visible on the larch tips above his head. Sunset. He had dozed the afternoon away after Ancadal had left to take up his post a little outside the copse and felt much better for the long rest. Other elves had flitted in and out all day, speaking in low tones and waxing bowstrings or putting a final edge to sword blades as though preparing for a battle. Mostly, they just ignored him which Aragorn was grateful for. He could only think what a sight he looked and what his brothers would have said if they ever found out about this mess.

“What on earth did you do to yourself this time, Estel?”

“He looks like a warg dragged him through a troll camp…”

He smiled and unconsciously rolled his eyes. Despite their unending teasing, he wished
Elladan and Elrohir were here with him. Amongst a group of strangers, their presence would have been a welcome comfort. Actually, the “group” had become singular. Only one elf remained in the small glade, rewinding a bow string with such sharp concentration as to be a deliberate attempt to ignore the human.

Aragorn watched him for a few minutes which clearly made the other uncomfortable because abruptly he shoved his bit of wax back into his bag and picked up his bow. The look on his face was distinctly unfriendly and Aragorn, not understanding how he had come to deserve such disdain, looked back in confusion. But the elf turned away from him and disappeared upslope into the darkening trees.

The injured ranger suddenly realized that he was completely alone. Shadows lengthened under the trees as the sun sank early behind the shoulder of the ravine edge. Unseen tree branches rattled together skeletally like bony groping fingers against the backdrop of a twilit sky. A shudder gripped the young man’s body.

He had hated the dark since he was small. It was in the dark that they had first come and taken his parents away. It was in the dark he had run from the sharp claws and hot fetid breath that wanted to swallow him whole. Only in the bright light of an open door had he found solace in the arms of his elven family. Now they were not here with him.

No one is.

Weaponless and weak, Aragorn staggered to his feet, shivering as the cold smacked him in the chest like an iron bar. Cradling his bound up arm he tottered a few unsteady steps across the clearing with no clear idea of where he was going. White plumes accompanied his nervous exhalations as he stared wide-eyed through the night hoping his eyes would adjust a little better with no moon to aid him. He stared hard into the thickness of interlacing branches low to the ground, still retaining their glossy needles.

Golden eyes glinted back at him in recognition, the ghost of a harsh terribly familiar chuckle almost unheard on the chilled air.

“Is-is someone there?” The words were scarcely above a breath.

A hand dropped on his shoulder.

Aragorn nearly choked on his heart as it rocketed into his throat. He spun around and with a violence fueled by terror smacked the arm away from him but the force of the blow also jolted him off balance. He stumbled, striking his injured shoulder against a branch. Pain radiated up and burst in his head. His knees buckled and he fell to the ground, gasping for breath.

“Calm down.”

Still panting and struggling desperately to do as the voice instructed him, Aragorn gulped in several ragged breaths, regarding the thicket now flooded with moonlight.

The eyes had vanished.

Slowly, the young man pulled his eyes back to the apparition that had so badly startled him in the first place even as he grasped a low branch to heave himself back to his feet.

“Whoareyou?” The mangled sentence came out a breathless rush.

“Not quite the gratitude I was looking for,” said a low, amused voice. "But you are human after all. I suppose allowances must be made.”

Now that the fear-fueled adrenaline was draining out of his system, the ranger scowled, stung. He shakily straightened, taking in the stranger’s grey tunic-ed appearance and long golden hair only partially revealed in the twisting moonlight. “You are one of the Galadhrim also?”

“Aptly guessed.” The sarcasm was too thick to be ignored.

“What gratitude do I owe you?”

“That fall should have killed you. You have been fortunate so far but I would not press your luck if I were you standing like that.” The slightly rough voice somehow managed to sound authoritative, mildly concerned and disdainful all at once.

Shame burned up his neck and cheeks as Aragorn realized he had just offended the elf who had saved his life. “You startled me…” he began, half-apologetically.

Silence greeted this.

The young man began to shift nervously as the quiet lengthened and his embarrassment deepened into mortification. “You are the commander of these elves then,” Aragorn said into the hard stillness, his words dropping like stones into a murky pool.

“Keep your voice down, you fool.” The elf captain snapped at him, eyes flaring in a shaft of moonlight dappled revealingly into the clearing.

Aragorn immediately dropped his voice. “Why?”

Haldir drew closer, his eyes darting into the dark as he motioned the man out of the too-brightly-lit clearing and into a thicker growth of pines which provided a little more shelter.

“Orcs are near. Where did you think you were going?”

Momentarily thrown by the idea of orcs lurking nearby, Aragorn shrugged, the by-now-familiar feeling of embarrassment prickling between his shoulder blades. “I-I don’t know.”

“Had you gone any further my sentinels would have shot you without making much of it,” the elf remarked, almost offhandedly as he enveloped himself in his voluminous cloak and pressed his back against the trunk of a stalwart age-cracked tree.

He vanished. Aragorn blinked in stunned surprise. He stared at the tree, then stared harder. Crouching awkwardly with his bad arm, a concentrated frown between his brows, he ventured a question at the bare outline he could just scarcely see, the cloak making him all but invisible against the shadows.

“Shouldn’t we be...somewhere more defensible than this? If orcs are near?” The warnings of his brothers rang all too uncomfortably in the forefront of his mind. His combined weaponlessness and the horror of his own youth stained with caution whatever heroic ideas he had of fighting.

“We are waiting.”

“Ah.” Aragorn gingerly took a seat beside the elf, still cradling his arm which had begun to throb again. “What for?”

“Company.”

Aragorn could see this was going to be a long night if he continued this only slightly better than monosyllabic conversation. So he fell quiet and settled for observation. He had seen a few of the elves when he had been drifting in and out of consciousness that afternoon and overheard a few of their names. But as he tried to match those names to faces, he figured this elf was not one he had seen in those brief moments.

Standing he would have been quite tall and though his raiment in no way differentiated him from any of the other elves Aragorn had met, there was a stern air about him, an air of authority. In his lap beneath his cloak he held a long saber, partially unsheathed. He sensed the human’s eyes on him but did not meet them.

“You still haven’t told me your name,” Aragorn reminded his rescuer when the silence grew too oppressive and the throb in his arm stepped up a notch.

It was a harmless enough question which any stranger would have asked another but Aragorn was surprised when the elf turned his head and sharply joined the ranger’s gaze. Dark silver eyes measured and Aragorn uncertainly caught his breath at the strange intensity in them.
Then, surprisingly, an answer. “Haldir.”

The name rang a familiar bell in Aragorn’s mind. “‘Haldir?’ Not Captain Haldir then of Lothlórien’s northern marches?”

A little disconcerted that the human had heard of him, the elf nodded shortly.

Despite his embarrassment a moment before, a bubble of excitement welled up in the young human as he really saw his rescuer for the first time. “My brothers speak often to me of you. Your name is mentioned around the fires of-” He trailed off abruptly. He had been going to say ‘of Rivendell” but, as he had not told the elf who he was, he knew that answer would lead to awkward questions. Even thinking of his home now made a wistful ache blossom in his chest. But enthusiasm and curiosity won over his homesickness.

As a child he had been enamored of the tales spun about the elusive and dangerous Galadhrim and to meet one, especially a hero whose legendary exploits preceded the bounds of his own country, was very exciting for him.

The ranger smiled brightly despite his injuries and the strange situation he found himself in and held out his right hand in offering. “It’s an honor and a privilege to meet you, Captain. I am Estel.”

The elf didn’t take it. “I know.” When Aragorn frowned in puzzlement, he clarified. “You spoke often in your dreams.”

Aragorn retreated into silence again, wondering what else he might have said in his fevered nightmares. So lost in his thoughts, he almost didn’t hear the unexpected question leveled at him.

“What were you doing so far from any human settlement, little one?”

Aragorn bristled a little at this puerile sobriquet. He hated being called ‘little.’ A consequence of growing up among beings millennia older than himself. The elves of Rivendell, well-meaning but condescending, often spoke of him like that. Even his brothers who should know better still treated him like a boy. “I am not a child. By the stretch of human lives, I am already growing old.”

Haldir laughed softly, amused by the human’s chagrin. “Humans are so very sensitive about their age.”

The ranger blinked in bafflement, his irritation slowly draining away, only now realizing the elf had been intentionally teasing him. Then he grinned mischievously. “Oh, yes? And how old are you then?” He leaned back on his one good elbow and pretended to closely scrutinize the elf as though searching for signs of his long, long life behind the smooth, handsome face.

“Hmmm…Nirnaeth Arnoediad?” he guessed naming a great battle during the First Age in which the Dark Lord himself had been but a lieutenant to a far more deadly power.

Haldir snorted, masking his laughter with contempt.

“All right. Not that far back.” Cocking his head, Aragorn considered aloud. “Less than six-thousand…more than three I’d guess.” His friend Legolas, the prince of Mirkwood, was little more than two thousand, somehow he sensed this elf was older, grimmer. “Last Alliance then?”

The elf smiled indulgently but kept his eyes directed on shadows. “Close enough.” 1

Aragorn grinned, satisfied that he had won the game. “You don’t trust very many people do you?” he asked suddenly, displaying that uncanny intuition that his father said would serve him so well and which his brothers found annoying.

There was a deeper shadow in this elf’s grey eyes which intrigued the ranger.

Haldir unfolded his long legs and picked up his saber. “Trust is earned.”

Aragorn mirrored him. “And not many have earned it?”

A gale-like whisper as though of thousands of leaves suddenly hissed through the air, sending branches lashing overhead. But there was no breeze. A voice neither Aragorn’s nor Haldir’s spoke whisperingly from the umbrage above. “They’re close, Captain.”

Black shapes dropped soundlessly to the ground and half-surrounded Aragorn and his companion.

“Your belongings,” one said as it rose from a crouch, tossing a battered satchel at his feet. “What was left of them anyway.”

Aragorn nodded his thanks then noticed Ancadal among the group. The elf gave him an encouraging smile.

Meanwhile the thin, blue-eyed elf Aragorn had received a less-than friendly welcome from earlier that afternoon was giving a rapid report to his superior officer about the movements of the enemy. “They are closing the gap, sir. The stream is hounded and choked with them. There are more in the woods. Linwen and I counted at least a score and a half.”

“Then we need to relocate.”

The elf who had given the report stiffened slightly as his eyes traveled over the human’s face.

“Sir…”

“Annondil?”

“What are we to do with-?” Speaking in Sindarin, Annondil discretely nodded his head at the Dúnedain who, knowing he was being discussed, stiffened and listened carefully.
Haldir followed the younger elf’s gaze and spoke in Common. “He is coming with us.”

“We know nothing of him! Of his people, where he comes from…”

“I am no spy,” Aragorn, speaking for the first time in the elves’ native language, answered the arrogant elf directly. “Or a danger to you. I am traveling in this country and will not be a burden on you much longer if I can help it…I had thought the Galadhrim were renowned more for their courtesy and fearlessness in battle rather than their inconsideration in speaking of a person while still in their presence.”

Touché. Haldir struggled and failed to hide a slight, approving smile at the man’s pluck. Without doubt, this ranger has fire in him.

A bright flush almost visible in the dark suffused Annondil’s face but he made no reply.

Not surprisingly Ancadal was the one who spoke up in defense of his friend. His voice though quiet instantly silenced any more comments from the dissenter. “I suggest you leave it, Annondil. Your captain knows what he’s doing.” He cast Haldir a sideways look that plainly-though silently-added “I hope.”

“Good,” Haldir nodded shortly, his dark eyes never leaving Annondil’s challenging ones. “Let’s move.”

The younger soldier stared at his captain in aggravated astonishment then abruptly turned his back. “You would think if you were tortured by men you would not let them dangle at your tail.”

The words though very quietly muttered were very audible even to Aragorn’s untrained ears.
A sudden, very uncomfortable silence descended so sharply that even Aragorn who did not quite understand the significance of what had just been said stiffened anxiously.

Déorian’s hand snapped out and snatched Annondil to within a hairsbreadth of his face.
“Annondil, for the sake of your position and your life, shut up.” He gave the younger elf a push away from him.

“Come on, enough! Move!” Haldir didn’t seem to take any notice of the strain. He still stared out at the moon-shimmered rocks, scanning for even a glimpse of an orc head. His eyes fell on Aragorn as the ranger hung near him uncertainly. “You too. Now that you’re conscious, you’ll walk.”

“Thanks.” Despite himself, Aragorn found it hard to suppress a wry grin as the Galadhrim around him swiftly folded up their cloaks, slipped them into packs and tightened the straps around their shoulders. His smile slipped into seriousness. “I want to help.”

Guessing what was going through the ranger’s mind, Haldir felt obligated to point out the human’s fatal flaw. “You have no weapon.”

“I have my knife,” the ranger pulled the long hunting knife from a deep pocket hidden in his pack which, thankfully, Slaquer had not found. “This will be enough.”

Haldir barely glanced at the blade. “I spent all last night tending your fevered, poison-ridden body. You will stay to the back of the group with Thillas. Your only job is to keep up. And that is an order.”

“Your pardon, Captain,” Aragorn said politely but firmly as he pulled the knife one-handed from its sheath. “You are not my commanding officer.”

Their soft but rapidly heating argument was beginning to attract stares but Haldir didn’t seem to notice as he surveyed the ranger through narrowed eyes. “Why are you so ready to slay yourself? The orc didn’t come close enough?”

Aragorn remained stubborn though the pain in his arm was pleading for him to listen to the elf. “He took my sword. It was a present from my father and I want it back.”

A pregnant pause filled the frustrated space of a moment before. For the first time, Aragorn noticed the unabashed stares of the other warriors and his face began to burn. Clearly they would never have questioned their commanding officer as this young cheek had.

“All right.”

The young man blinked and quickly returned his gaze to the elf captain. “‘All right?’”

There was an odd, distant expression on Haldir’s face as he thoughtfully fingered the cool pommel of his own saber. “You can help.”

“Captain, we’re ready.”

Ancadal’s voice jolted Haldir out of his abstraction. Straightening, he nodded for his team to go on ahead with one last, stern glare at the ranger.

“I am placing my trust in you, Estel. Do not make me regret it.”

Aragorn saluted sharply with the hilt of his knife pressed to his forehead. “Yes, sir.”

A/N: 1. According to my own calculations and for the purposes of my stories, Haldir was born sometime in the middle / late part of the Second Age which would make him old enough to participate in the Last Alliance of Elves and Men.