The Rescue of Celebrian

Where were the claws of these hands that held her? How did the scent of spruce and mud and breeze penetrate the caves? Decay had never smelled so clean, or had it once, long ago?

She had dreamed- oh how she had dreamed!- of being warmed by the sun and ushered to sleep with the bright songs of birds. In the dark cold days beneath the mountains, she had wept herself dry longing for the sight of just one star, or the touch of a friendly hand, or a blanket. She’d had none of these; was offered only rock and cold and damp as her playmates, only reeking, rotting spirits yet breathing as her companions... the slavering jaws running with drool while they carried her from chamber to chamber, diversion to diversion, and cruel obsidian claws digging into her flesh... She would never be free of the bruises, the weals, the scars, she knew. She would never be free of anything. Her world, now, was blackness that ended somewhere between the tip of her nose and the void in which all things would end.
#

While he gave no order, an armed host followed Elrond Half-elven from the confines of Rivendell into the northward forest. Far from the quiet, stately processions his people were used to, the troops had made all haste into the morning, mounting on the run with weapons in hand, many but newly woke with hair streaming unrestrained behind them. As he watched the last ones leave the stable yard, Erestor saw his own nephew on the back of a blond mare, black hair snarling with the horse’s as he lay flat to her neck. His sister would have been proud at the site of her son following in her footsteps, had she lived through the pass.

The impromptu escort pelted over the bridge onto the trail Elrond had picked seemingly at random, marring the freshness of a rose and salmon dawn with clouds of airborne dust, the thunder of their horses’ hooves silencing the birdsong as dew pattered down from trembling leaves overhead. Those with better knowledge of their lord, however, knew he’d found the inexplicable link between parent and child in times of trouble, and rode now to seek them. Only his sons remained within reach of the Lord of Imladris, and bereaved though he might be, he was no fool to ride to the Golden Wood and his daughter alone. The thought that perhaps their lady had been found, living or dead, came to few, but none foolish enough to mention it.

Erestor, of course, knew all there was to know and once the rumble of distant hooves died away, he stood for a moment more enjoying the sun’s emergence over the valley wall and rubbing the last exhaustion from his eyes. While most of those who rode— some three dozen, if he had a guess— had not seen their liege lord’s eyes as he charged from the yard, Erestor had. Whatever else could be wrong, and he had his own silent worries in that regard, the librarian knew healers would be needed before the sun finished her route this day. With lips pressed into a bloodless line, the librarian turned back into the Last Homely House to dress and have the healing rooms prepared. If they were lucky, no graves would be necessary, but he added stone gathering to his already lengthy mental list. Cairns, if needed, could wait. Now was the time for hope.
#

The farther south they rode, the friendlier the woods became, and Elladan took the slight feeling of ease as a blessing. They would know if a goblin party had followed. There would be no birdsong, the fresh air greeting his sweating face would be tainted with the stink of corruption and death and things unclean. Their horses too would know, and would tell them, each in her own way. For now, the blue roan raced on ahead of him, her precious burden no more than a silver-white blur over the bend of his brother’s arm. The bay between his knees blew hard, but was not tired enough to stop. She had the rest of the ride in her, barring accident or surprise attack, but only just. Anger, he knew, drove his brother on, and sending Glorfindel away had been a difficult task. The fear of rear attack was addressed, however, and with that worry gone, Elladan had little to chew on but his mother’s state, his brother’s seeming slip on his senses and the plan they must formulate to shield their father from the worst. He would insist, Elladan knew, as Elrohir insisted on bearing the burden of their mother’s unconscious form now. So alike, they were, his twin and their sire, and right now, all they had were the other two to keep their family connected, rooted in both sanity and in Rivendell.

Elladan again studied the woods around him, this time taking in the small pleasant signs of life that would bring him joy, a trait learned from his mother. Brown mushrooms grew talan-like from the side of a tree they sped around, dripping dew onto the litter below it. Strips of bark peeled from slim, white-skinned trees where birds had harvested it for nests. Already, some of those nests stood empty, their occupants fledged and probably begging food from harried parents in the canopy. A moment of shock snapped Elladan from his thoughts. The birdsong had fallen still. Lifting his head, he drew a breath though his nose and wrinkled it in disgust. The sickly-sweet odor of decaying flesh came faintly on the breeze from the northeast. Had his brother noticed it too? Elrohir slowed to a canter, silver eyes shifting side to side. The stench came from a long way off, and yet it was ahead of them, and close. Too close.

Elrohir waited until his brother dropped to a trot at his side, then nodded to the south and east.

“Glorfindel is behind us,” Elladan sighed. “By now the archers are too.”

“The goblins are ahead,” Elrohir replied.

On his shoulder, jounced and jostled by the horse’s gait, Celebrian stirred, opened her eyes and shrieked, flailing at the cloaks cocooning her. Elladan felt his gut turn to stone. Stealth and secrecy, their former friends, had just left them.
#

Gorhk snorted and waved a heavy clawed hand at the beam of sunlight creeping into their hiding place. Filthy stuff, sunlight. They’d been lucky to miss it on the way through the wood. Well, most of them had been lucky. Snargelt hadn’t, but then again even for a Westerner he was stupid, and the memory of his squeal when he’d gotten tangled in the brambles and took a blast of sunlight straight to the face made her grin. He sat now as far from the entrance as he could get, attempting to lick his burns and scowled up at her when she laughed, a long string of saliva dangling from his twisted lower jaw. “No better than a warg,” she thought, looking ahead to where the sentry crouched, watching. “Come to think of it,” she mused, “I’d rather have the warg. They smell better.”

Fard didn’t like the way the wind blew and growled about it every time more sickly sweet fresh air went past. There was no helping it. They had to stay under cover or the elves would see them too soon, and the mouldering log was the only place that offered shelter within sight of the trail.

“Much more of that talk and the elf folk will burn the remaining chunks of you where they fall… if they could even find them all. Unless you’d rather be out in that sunlight? That could be arranged too. All you need to do is open your mouth again, dung heap.”

Fard snarled but said no more, keen eyes and ears straining on the road below them, and Gorhk smirked again. He was a coward with a big mouth, but most of them were when faced with her reputation with a blade. Small stature was usually a bad thing among their kind, so she had used it to her best advantage. No one wanted to be left for elf toys with sliced hamstrings, and the maggot pile to first test that treatment had been her own brother. Sometimes, she thought smugly, it was good to be the commander. But it wouldn’t be such a comfortable position if they didn’t get the elf woman back, and getting the two who rescued her would finish the job with the sort of flourish Gorhk liked. Let them watch their pretty female weep for a fortnight, she decided, then see what color their blood ran.

But now was not the time for daydreaming. The maggots weren’t caught yet. Fard was worse than louse vomit, but he was a far better tracker than even Gorhk herself, and she wasn’t stupid enough to move until the little pustule said it was time. So, they waited, all two dozen, crammed cheek by jowl into a half rotted and fallen tree while the sun slowly followed them into their refuge.

“The offal should have been here by now,” someone snapped, and Gorhk grunted in agreement.

“Any sign of them?” she asked, putting the toe of her boot into Fard’s arse in lieu of using his name.

“Faint hooves,” he hissed, queer greenish-white eyes growing wide and excited. “They come.”

“Bout time,” Karzot snorted.

“Whad’ya want me to do, dangle a sweet on a string for ‘em?” Fard rasped over Snargelt’s liquid, slurpy noises. “Now, shut yer’ yaps. They’ll hear.”

“Wait’ll we’re out to draw,” she growled back into the log. “There’ll be no accidental knifing of yer commander, now will there?”

“Won’t be no accidents,” Karzot promised, and Gorhk stopped herself from simply breaking his neck on the spot with the reminder that they needed the big ones for carrying the elf scum back… when they caught them. And it wouldn’t be long. Not long at all.