The Rescue of Celebrian

He dropped her! How, Elladan did not know, but he was as shocked as Elrohir looked when they realized Celebrian suddenly sat on the ground at the base of a massive oak tree instead of his brother’s saddle. He’d dropped her. But, as he had, her shrieking ceased and she cast about her at the hillock where they stood, then focused on a pine cone near her hand with furrowed brow. That was all he had the time to observe as the thumping of a booted foot sounded from their left in the base of a ravine.

“Goblins,” Elrohir snarled, his roan prancing back two paces, then forward two, then back again. His knives made a cool slithering sound as he drew them from the sheaths at his back, his seat sure. He was familiar with Blue Girl’s war dance.

“Mother, you should climb the tree,” Elladan whispered, his mare shifting ahead of the roan to the side of the path and planting her feet firmly, her head up and nostrils wide. There was a reason her name was Bloodstone, for she held as solid as the walls of Cirdan’s Havens when battle loomed, until given leave to unleash her fury on their opponent. He almost smiled when she snorted and stamped, impatient now for the opportunity to kick in goblin skulls. Blue Girl preferred to bite, but she turned into a swirling grey and black whirlwind when given her head, forcing whatever foe they faced directly into Bloodstone’s range, as the bay did for the roan. They, like their riders, worked well as a team. But would even the four of them be enough to keep Celebrian free?

More boots shuffled through the remains of last year’s leaves while Elladan thought. They were in as defensible a location as they could reach without leaving the horses to flee or be eaten. The chances of getting Celebrian back onto a horse after the trials of her day and the jarring fall she’d taken were slim. Reinforcements were far behind them, or too far ahead to be of any assistance. The best option, depending on the number of attackers they were about to face, seemed to be stand and fight. Slowly Elladan began to look forward to threshing through a pack of the scum that had reduced his mother to the pile of bones that sat behind them, still studying the pine cone. He looked back at her once more, frightened by the way her hip bones jutted out, sharp enough, it seemed, to slice her bluish flesh from within. Celebrian had never been even remotely plump; now she was almost a living skeleton. How had she survived this long?

“How many? Can you see?” Elrohir whispered, the knives in his hands casting reflections onto his face and the tree trunks around them.

“Many, but I cannot count,” his twin replied.

“We should stay here,” Elrohir continued. “We would not know into what we rushed.”

Elladan nodded. “Let them come to us,” he breathed, then slipped his bow over his head while Elrohir sheathed his knives again. They waited. The forest waited. The clouds did not, and slowly the dappled light of the sun was hidden, slapping their faces with a sudden coolness. Behind the twins and their waiting mounts, the wife of Elrond Half-elvin whimpered.
#

Green and grey and brown and black sped past his periphery in a blur. The jingle and creak of the leather gear he wore had joined the grinding of his teeth and the whistling of the wind as faint background noise. He knew his legs burned from the unfamiliar task of sitting a horse at full gallop. The remains of some insect, he knew, were lodged between his teeth. The braid had come undone behind his head. He neither cared nor felt these things. He felt only rage, and deeply down, the glory that came with acting, with finally doing something.

Far in the distance he heard a faint shriek, and his eyes flashed quickly ahead and to the right though thousands of trees and bushes blocked his view of anything but their brethren. Had that been the sound of a wounded animal, a dying goblin, or a damaged woman? He could not tell, and so he rode on, the gelding between his knees just losing his first wind.

“Slow if you must friend, but make all haste,” he said to his mount and the animal dropped to a canter once they crested a rise. Elrond patted the gleaming chestnut neck by his knee. His own fear and fury should not cost the life of an innocent. Enough damage had already been dealt by the blackness beneath the mountains that no more was necessary... unless the casualties be theirs.

The horse tossed his head when they entered a clearing, sniffing the air with wide velvet nostrils. Then he picked up his pace once more, his inky hooves striking sparks on a scattering of flint stones as another cry sounded to the north and the distant rumble of hooves followed from the south.
#

“Go quietly, maggots! They’ve already heard us once!” Gorhk snarled as loudly as she dared. A dozen of them she sent in two files to circle the hill where the elves had stopped. The other eleven spread out through the log and prepared themselves for the run through the sunlight, already glaring off of the dampened leaves in the bottom of the ravine. She was not looking forward to this, and swiped at the side of the log’s interior with long, pointed claws, dyed red at the tips on a whim. They looked like they’d been dipped in blood. The image made her hungry. Perhaps she wouldn’t play with them first, she mused, jabbing Fard in the ribs with the hilt of her cutlass to get him moving. A cloud had just covered the sun. This was their moment.
#

What unusual dream was this then? So small and smooth and perfect, this thing in her hands, smelling of earth and growing things. Each scale stood out from its stem like a pouting lip, and she thought of her children and laughed. A dozen dozens of a nearby pine tree’s petulant children sat there in her hand. Then there, near her foot, was another and with it the round brown ball of an acorn. This she picked up as well, rolling it back and forth in her palm, feeling the cool of the leaf litter seep into her hand as she did. Down the hill, beasts screeched and roared. She was used to their noise. They were probably eating, but what she did not want to know. She was content to sit playing with the children of the trees, leaning against their nearest parent, now and again shifting one out from beneath her legs. But soon she saw something else that caught her eye and, setting the children aside, crawled to it. This was not of the wood, and yet she knew it. It, too, was smooth and pleasantly cool, but it was all long lines and angles without the playful chubbiness of the children of the trees. And yet, for the angles, it was graceful and sharp where she tested the edge with her thumb. Yes, she knew what to do with this. Her jaw set, Celebrian rose, the cloak falling into the leaves behind her.
#

The goblin was quick, but not so terribly strong as some others. It knew the fact, though, and more than once Elrohir had danced Blue Girl away from the dull sheen of its cutlass aimed for the long tendon at the backs of his legs, or hers. Crafty, the scum. As quick as it was to strike, though, it was equally quick to retreat, and the crush of goblins was thick. The small one danced in and out of the throng, attacking when the opportunity arose, and unless he missed his guess, Elrohir would swear he had seen the small one fell one of its brethren considerably larger than itself. There were only a handful left, had only been a dozen or so to begin with. He started to think that perhaps they would be able to reach Rivendell before the noon meal when many startling things happened all at once. The first was the flash of white and silver caught from the corner of his eye, causing him to turn and catch sight of his mother- naked, ravaged by her months beneath the mountain, and carrying one of his brother’s knives in her bony hands- descending on a certain small goblin with surprising speed and stealth. The next came after a parried overhand strike and a feint to his opponent’s leg that opened his opposite ribs for a hard, squelching thrust that punctured a lung audibly. The small goblin stood over his brother, cutlass raised. Neither of them had been felled by a goblin in quite some time, and almost without looking at the attackers to his front and left, Elrohir’s blades gleamed in the light while he examined his brother’s situation: still armed with one knife, but on his back, scrabbling in the leaves. A neat cross of his knives sliced the head from the facing goblin, and a risky but lightening quick cross-body thrust put a blade up into the throat of the left hand monster that squealed like a pig as it slumped. He had to get to Elladan…

But Celebrian got there first, and moments later the smallest goblin’s thick black blood painted Elladan’s lost blade.

“I knew you,” Celebrian said to the head in her hand, held aloft by a queue of coarse black hair. She smiled then, closed her eyes for a moment, and wiped the bloodied knife on the body that lay at her feet.

“Mother?” Elladan yelped, rising quickly to kick away the goblin that had circled around behind her, and finished it with rapid stabs to the abdomen and chest. She seemed to ignore her son’s summons, but turned then toward the last uninjured goblin that stood terrified, drooling on itself through a hideous twist in its jaw.

“I knew you too,” the Lady of Rivendell said, her eyes dark and focused only on the goblin’s slavering face, the pointed tip and graceful sweep of the knife extended before her blending into the sharp angles and softer curves of her arm and shoulder. Lanky silver-blonde hair floated like a sunbeam as she whirled, the power of the stroke unexpected but sure. The beast’s head seemed to fall apart, the twisted lower jaw attached to the neck still dripping saliva onto the forest floor while the skull flew upward, spiraling, spraying blood and glistening strings of drool as it rose, then fell. The thud of the body slumping to the ground brought silence in its wake.

“Where are the rest? Wheezer and Metal Face and the others? She would not have come without them.”

Startled, the twins exchanged glances.

“Who, Mother?” Elladan asked, dusting the leaves from the back of his shirt.

“The one they call Gorhk,” she replied, gesturing to the head she had addressed before. “She always brings her favorite servants.”

Elrohir was unsure what surprised him more, that his mother was having a lucid moment, or that the mystery in his mind of female goblins had, at least in one case, been solved: smaller, faster, sneaky, but as much a part of a raving pack of the beasts as the males.

“These others are not here?” Elladan asked, turning over one dead goblin after another. When Celebrian shook her head, Elrohir’s gut turned icy.

“They’ve circled us,” he hissed, turning Blue Girl to look beyond the great oak at their backs, but even his keen elvin eyes saw nothing through the trees and bushes but more of their brethren, stretching on endlessly between his family and their home.