Dwimmerlaik

Author’s Notes: This chapter has been the most difficult to write so far.Thankfully, a bad spot of inclement weather proved illuminating (in more ways than one) and enticingly inspirational. So delight in the rainy references if you’re snug and dry at home. (If any of you are actually reading this in the rain...)


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Part Seven

Storms and Insurrections

“As if we didn’t have enough trouble, now the weather conspires against us too.”

Aragorn looked up at the angry sky that had grown twice as dark in the last two minutes. Nightfall in the middle of the afternoon. A tumultuous mass of purple-grey clouds swamped the watery sun and stretched out towards the north without a break. A cool front had moved in ahead of the first sprinklings of rain. In the distance, a low mutter vibrated over the still air. As the first few drops tinted the rangers’ coats a darker green he pulled his hood up over his head. The foul weather was unfortunate but expected—they weren’t called the “Weather Hills” for nothing.

The downpour increased in malignant force as they hiked on. Within a half hour their tunic clung to their skins and soaked their knees. Water crept out of the grass and squished under their boots, making for perilous footholds on the rockier slopes. The wet got into everything: under their clothes, into their mouths and ears. It even seeped into the food packs so their lunch when they finally halted for it was soggy and flavorless.

Aragorn gingerly swallowed a mushy mouthful of cram as Halbarad blinked rainwater from his eyes and mopped his brow with a sleeve which made little improvement on his vision. “It’s no use slogging through this mess much longer, Estel. We’re not even following a trail anymore. We need to look for shelter and sleep this out.”

The ranger made a magnanimous gesture around their miserable rest-spot, scarcely more than a hollow at the bottom of one of the larger hills. “I am open to suggestions.”

Silence fell for a brief moment.

“What about just staying here?” Eldacar suggested. “There’s an outcrop over there. Might give us some shelter.”

“Too dangerous—that outcrop’s held up by little more than mud and twigs. This wet’s enough to bring it down on our heads,” Halbarad discouraged, eyeing the sight the ranger indicated.

The men glanced desperately around hoping a magical solution would present itself. All they could see was hills and low valley rapidly filling with water. It was a dismal thought that if they could find no better they would have to curl up under their cloaks and sleep where they were.

“I have a bad idea,” Galen ventured at last, his words barely audible over the groping thunder on the heels of a flash of pure white. “It’s hardly better than staying here though we may have a roof. Still…it’s not—”

“Just tell us, Galen.” Aragorn sighed. “What is it?”

“The barrows,” the elf explained simply. “Up on the hills. There are a few that are deep and wide. There’ll be shelter and room enough for two hundred of us if necessary. And if we find any dry wood, we could even have a fire.”

The mention of fire seemed to cheer the men up immensely despite the thought of it being lit in a burial chamber. One, however, did protest.

“No decent folk lived in those hills,” Veil scowled, ignoring Angrad’s remonstrating look. “Who knows what restless oathbreakers lurk there?”

“These hills b-belonged to a v-valiant p-people loyal to their l-lord.”

“Fine, then you can drown out here,” Halbarad groused, cutting off Veil’s tart reply. His fondness for the man had not grown any since the night before, his mood soured even more by the icy beads trickling down the back of his neck. None dared argue with him.

Wordlessly, they made for the barrows. With the wind hurling rain stinging as glass into their faces, afternoon darkened gradually towards evening with no sign of the storm abating. The nearest hill known as Amon-en-Achas towered high over them like a dark bastion holding vigil over the lower-lying plain and woodlands.

Hill of Dread indeed, Aragorn mused to keep his mind off his numb cheeks and stiff, clumsy fingers that searched in the dark for a handhold. The very look of it made his scalp prickle. It was almost as if the high, tumbled rocks hid some shadowy menace or the groves of trees flanking them were full of hidden, vengeful eyes.

Galen bounded up the slick stones with enviable ease and glanced back at his struggling companions. “Well, you will not get dry lingering there. Make haste! The entrance is up here…somewhere.”

“Oh, great. ‘Somewhere.’ That’s comforting. We’re all going to die of plague in this damp,” Veil muttered, a tiny waterfall streaming off the front of his hood.

Halbarad smacked his shoulder lightly, sending up a slight spray. “What? A staunch corpse-robber like you swooning over a little dark and wet?”

Veil mumbled something that was thankfully lost in a fresh, much closer-sounding growl. The sky overhead was nearly black and if possible the rain fell even heavier. Aragorn didn’t think it was possible for him to get any wetter than he was but he was proven wrong a few seconds later. He could feel the water sloshing in his boots and his grip on the steep rocks became worse than precarious. The men were running out of patience and energy. Already a few of them were mumbling mutinously, Veil foremost among them.

“Not much further…” the elf ushered them on hopefully but his fair face wore an uncertain expression. “I think,” he muttered so quietly only Aragorn who was right next to him heard.

The Dúnedain chieftain looked at him askance. “Do you know where you’re going?” he asked in a low tone so Halbarad looking for an easier foothold on the slick rock behind him couldn’t hear.

“I know there are barrows around here… It’s just,” the elf grimaced guiltily. “When last I was this way, I approached more from the south where it’s not so rocky. I’m not quite as… familiar…with this area.”

Aragorn stifled the groan that threatened to rise out of his throat. That was all they needed, to get lost in the hills in the middle of a storm but then…

“Wait! There!” Galen grabbed his sleeve and pointed ahead. “I see it!”

The rain fell so thick and dark at first Aragorn couldn’t make out anything at all except for impenetrable blackness. He stretched his eyes open wide to take in the least bit of light and gradually something shimmered into his vision.

A large black wall rose sheer up out of the shelves as if cloven by a giant knife. But it looked all solid with no door or niche in sight. Galen led them towards it as straight as he could, zigzagging to avoid clumped bunches of brambles which were the only growing things in sight.

Though they were no drier, the men sighed with relief when they reached a rock ledge. Angrad threw his pack down and slumped against it wearily. Aragorn kept watching Galen who was pacing back and forth along some twenty feet of rock, staring at it as if he could penetrate the solid wall with his eyes.

“I know it was here,” the elf muttered. “It would be better if there was light…” He turned to meet Aragorn’s eyes when the ranger touched his shoulder. “I know, I know, I’m looking! It’s here…or a little further on.”

“Take your time, just think.”

“Sir?” Angrad beckoned to him as he turned away from the elf. “M-may I speak with you? Privately?”

“Now?”

“It’s important, sir.”

“Certainly, Angrad.”

Aragorn noticed Veil’s pale eyes watching them as they moved away from the others. He didn’t look away when the Dúnedain chief raised an eyebrow. The gaze was almost challenging.

Angrad twisted his fingers together nervously without looking up at his chieftain. “Sir, p-perhaps it isn’t my p-place to say this but I feel I should w-warn you about that m-man we found.”

“Who? You mean Veil?”

The younger ranger nodded, his eyes still fastened on his jerky fingers. “I recognize him…He was in the orc c-camp with m-me. He was there when they…when they…”

Pity squeezed Aragorn’s heart and he touched the man’s arm comfortingly. “It’s all right, son. Take a breath.”

Angrad did so and passed a hand over his white face. “He was their th-thrall. They m-must have r-released him. That’s p-probably why he was wandering in the wild.” He heaved another breath and said in a surprisingly steady, hard voice. “Don’t trust him.”

Aragorn, a little astonished by the normally mild ranger’s vehemence, stared at him. He opened his mouth without knowing what he was going to say when someone calling his name distracted him.

Galen had found it.

A square doorway the height of two men and as wide as four loomed up set deep into the hillside. Briars crawling up along the walls concealed most of it from view and from a distance it only appeared as a smooth patch in the stone.

“It’s sealed up,” one ranger pointed out, his shoulders sagging.

“Not quite,” Galen said. “there’s a sliver here that’s been cleared away. We can slip through if we’re careful.”

“What if someone beat us here first? Like orcs?” Veil’s eyes were wide and Aragorn’s brow furrowed.

“We have to squeeze through that?” Halbarad’s upper lip wrinkled with dismay at the narrow crack. He was rather broad-shouldered.

“Just suck your gut towards your spine, Halbarad. Like you do for your wife.”

The ginger ranger cuffed the speaker.

“You’ll be fine,” Aragorn assured him but he glanced uncertainly at Galen.

The elf swallowed hard and offered the chieftain a smile. “Best let me go first…lest we meet anything…unfriendly.”

High above the heads of the disappearing Dúnedain, a tiny black shape was caught up like a scrap of cloth in the very teeth of the gale. Feathers torn away by the screaming wind and rain, the large bird flapped desperately for the earth battered and jostled mercilessly by the whims of the wind. Awkwardly it skipped and splashed down onto a moss-covered rock. It had been scouting the brown miles for several days now, searching at the command of its lord who fed it on live meat.

The bird was a shrike otherwise known as a Butcher Bird whose favored tactic was to hang its prey on thorn bushes, still kicking.

Movement below caught its quick eye and it leaned out over the precipice, its glossy head cocked interestedly to one side. The shrike’s beady eyes narrowed on the rain-drenched humans. When the last head had passed into the crevice, it shook rumpled feathers violently to rid the pinions of moisture and fluttered down towards the ground.

Someone had dropped his cloak clasp shaped like a six-pointed star: the star of Eärendil from whom the first King of Men was descended. It glistened in the shrike’s orange eye as it plucked the shiny thing up in its beak. With an odd hop-skipping gait, it took off into the crashing sky again, winging like a bolt of thunder towards Fornost and its master.

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Haldir slumped against the back wall of the cell. A weary ache had settled in most of his limbs. The cold, damp caress of the limestone blocks soothed the weal marks inlayed along his shoulders. Sayna dropped beside him, pushing draggled, lank strands off her face and rubbing a rheumatic hand.

“Phew, lucky the rain got us in early. I couldn’t take much more of slogging through that mud.” Critz had kept them out an extra hour after the rain started hammering.

He replied with only one word, “Tonight.”

Her jaded eyes sparked instantly and a slow smile, strangely incongruous with her ill-used appearance, brightened her face. Blooming with sudden energy, she scrambled up to pass the word along to those who would join the escape.

A few feet away across the pen, Torenul looked up, gaunt-faced and brooding. “Sayna, what are you doing this for? You know there’s no chance.”

The woman spun on him, “You’re wrong, Torenul. We do so have a chance and I’m taking it. I’m taking it because I am sick of being out there in the middle of a storm to suit the whims of a tyrant, sick of the stripes on my back. I’m taking it because those creatures are the reason my little girl isn’t here anymore. Because I am old when I should be young. I wasn’t born a slave and I’m not going to stay one anymore.”

Rain slapped the stones harshly for a short silence.

“At least as a slave, you’ll live.”

“You are content with this kind of life?” Haldir answered him. He gestured around the crowded, rank-smelling cell. “Being told when to eat, when to work, when to sleep, when to breathe. They’ve taken everything from you, even your desire to fight back.”

“Hear, hear,” other slaves echoed him though quietly as the guards hovered under the eaves formed by the cell’s sloping, wood roof.

“Fear cripples you. Don’t let it,” Haldir said, crouching next to him. In the past few weeks, he had seen the varying effects slavery had on the life and minds of those under its yoke. Fear being one of the most debilitating. “You do not have to do as they command anymore.”

Torenul glanced up at the elf, suddenly uncomfortably aware of the closeness of those penetrating silver eyes. With difficulty, he wrenched his gaze away, afraid what the elf would see, and shook his head. He turned his face towards the wall.

It was common knowledge that the guards would be skiving off duty that night. Several dozen slaves had already been pulled from the ranks to attend the great hall where a massive feast had been prepared to celebrate the near-completion of the south wall repairs and no one was willing to stand in the drenching rain guarding prisoners who had nowhere to go when their confederates would be plundering vittle-and drink-lined tables.

When the courtyard about was completely empty, Haldir screwed a broken-off chisel into the lock. It was sharp and rubbed to a razor point to which the calluses on his fingers attested. Sayna and the others chosen to go in the first party hovered nervously behind him. Some talked excitedly and one old woman sobbed happily into her hand. The elf felt the lock start to give and applied more pressure. It creaked in protest.

The young girl, Henna, couldn’t resist an excited giggle as she hopped free of her mother’s encircling arms. “Look at the cords in his neck!”

“Hush,” her mother squeezed her, her eyes wide with wonder. “Let him work.”

Haldir took the half-forged dagger Sayna handed him and bent the slender steel at a right angle to the tang then slid it in after the securely lodged pick. A sharp tug on the back of his tunic warned him of trouble and a split-second later he heard voices.

“Grishtag in the cellars says there’s enough grog to drown a body in.” Two guards were hurrying in from the gates.

“It’s about time, mind you, we’ve been working our fingers down to the bones,” an orc sentry grumbled. He jerked hard on the chain in his hand, tugging the pale wolf whose glittering eyes were fixed on the pitiful figures just inside the bars. “Get away from there! Come on! Enough morsels for you at the table!”

The elf captain sidled towards one side of the cell as the orc sentries passed. He knew the guards’ suspicious eyes would be drawn to him first instead of the lock if they chanced to look this way. All of the slaves held their collective breath.

But the guards, uncomfortable and soaked in their leathery skins, sped up past the cells with barely a cursory glance. Torenul idly picked up a rock and with an uneasy sideglance began to tap a slow rhythm on the iron bar. The wolf’s ears pricked back.

When the final echo of the orcs’ clunking footsteps faded from even elven hearing, Haldir attacked the lock with renewed vigor. He jiggled and strained for what seemed a strained eternity before with a sudden grinding crack, the lock clicked and a piece dropped out of the keyhole when he extracted his tools. The makeshift pick’s edge had snapped clean off inside the keyhole. He shoved against the door. It creaked reluctantly open then the bolt still partially secured in the jamb caught and held fast. The door was stuck. Haldir wedged his shoulder in the small partition and braced his hands against the wall for added leverage. He jerked his head and the others crowded about him.

“Come on. A few good heaves ought to do it.”

Goaded by his success, they pressed forward, each gaining a firm grip on some part of the door. Even little Henna wrapped her hands around the bars next to the elf’s waist and smiled proudly at him. One of the burlier men who regularly pulled the stone full carts scooped up a handful of grit and rubbed it into his palms to give him a firmer grasp on the wet iron. He nodded at the elf who gave the order.

“Push!”

Muscles strained, beads of sweat mingled with rain and footholds skidded in the mud as they all pushed and pushed and...Crack! The bolt tore out of the stone with the suddenness of a taut line snapping. The barred door buckled outward and sent the slaves staggering into free air. A few of them were so shocked at this sudden, illicit liberty, they froze. Haldir rallied them with a hasty glance towards the illuminated windows of the great hall.

“We have to move as quickly and quietly as possible,” he dropped his voice so the sibilance wouldn’t carry as he fell into the natural rhythm of a commander accustomed to giving orders. “Split up into small groups. Mix the young ones with the strong. All right. The first six of you with me. The rest of you follow one every few minutes, close the door almost all the way until then. Remember, vigilance.”

The burly slave saluted.

“You sure you don’t want to come with us, Torenul?” Sayna asked with something like regret on her twisted face. He glanced at the broken lock then dropped his eyes to the rain-spattered stone.

The first group set out cautiously, keeping close under the protective shadows of the battlemented walls. Palming the straightened dagger, Haldir led the way ushering them along at as swift a pace as their emaciated limbs could muster. They met no guards. There wasn’t even one under the sentry-box.

Haldir paused at the corner. He thought he had discerned movement over by the gate but the dark of storm and deepening evening made it impossible to tell for certain. The rain drumming on the hard-packed ground sounded like so many pounding footsteps. A tug on his arm startled him. Sayna jumped too but pointed towards a small leaning shack resting at the base of the wall.

“There’s the storehouse. We’ll need food.”

“There’s no time.”

“It’ll be a fine thing if we reach freedom only to starve in it,” she argued, her face shining with hope and confidence.

A prickle of growing disquiet shivered up his spine. “Make it swift.”

The delay was by far worse than running. Every second increased their chance of being discovered. But Sayna was faster than Haldir had given her credit for. She nipped inside and was back in minutes with a burlap sack stuffed with bread. By then the second and third groups had joined them. They, too nervous and excited to wait, hadn’t waited five minutes.

“Let’s go,” Haldir motioned the much larger and unwieldy group hurriedly away. He thought it highly unlikely that the Witch-king would be so arrogant as to relieve all his guards but his nervousness lessened as they drew near the west wall steps. Their escape route lay just ahead.

The south wall was nearly finished but there was a section where it joined with the western wall low to the ground that had been shoddily filled in with simple board planks nailed together until real repairwork could start. It took them seconds to dismantle it. A flash of brilliant lightning revealed a three or four foot wide gap, two feet high, just wide enough for a body to crawl through with care.

Haldir summoned the youngest and smallest up front with him. He could almost taste the free air on his face. Almost there.

“I’ll go first and you come right after me, all right?” he told her.

She nodded and watched as he maneuvered his broad shoulders through the narrow hole, his tunic snagging on uneven cuttings. Pressed almost flat, he managed to pull himself through with little trouble though water seeped onto his head and his knees and elbows congealed with mud. He helped Henna up as she followed after him, blowing her stringy off her face.

A rain-soaked breeze whipped Haldir’s hair out of his face and he laughed. “Next!”

Henna tugged on his wrist hard, her sharp little nails digging into his skin. He glanced down at her quizzically but she was not looking at him, her eyes wide as saucers. He turned over his shoulder.

The glaring red stare of Critz blazed into his. “Oh, dear,” the orc drawled, a wide leer stretching his lips. “We are in trouble.”

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Silence reverberated in their ears after the loudness of the thunder. Total blackness pervaded the inside of the barrow like a wet cloth thrown over nose, eyes and ears. It muffled sounds but heightened their senses. Aragorn, groping his way forward like a blind man, recoiled when his hand touched something hard and unyielding. The tunnel wall. He could hear the breath sounds of the others around him.

“Everyone stay close,” he warned, his voice an automatic whisper, choked by the dark. “Go forward slowly.”

They stepped cautiously, unable to see where they were placing their feet. With hands braced against the smooth walls, they twisted through the tunnel, ears straining for any sound, nostrils opened wide to the rank stench of mildew and centuries-old stone. The whole place had a cloying, claustrophobic feel to it. It was dry but cold. Presently Aragorn felt a wind on his damp forehead and knew the tunnel must soon open up into a larger cavern.

He paused just before the opening, uncertain of what might be lurking in the far, invisible corners. Nothing moved that he could hear but that did not mean the chamber was empty. He thought he glimpsed almost beyond his sight a glint of red. As he set foot over the threshold, a flare right next to him seared across his eyes.

He flung up his forearm in shock but the brilliance was gone almost immediately, snuffed like a candle. His men cried out in shock and a few drew their weapons but they didn’t know what had attacked and feared hitting their fellows. Dazzled, Aragorn fought to blink the sparkling streaks of purple and yellow from his eyesight.

Something grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and slammed him bodily up against the wall. Before he could recover from the surprise or think to reach for the sword still strapped at his hip, something icy and sharp Aragorn recognized as a knife scraped beneath his jaw and pricked his left earlobe.

A voice chill as the steel rasped in his ear. “You may go no further.”

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Lightning forked and illumined the terrible scene in lurid blue-white. Critz chuckled as his score of warriors fanned out, encircling the elf and girl-child and pinning them against the wall. Haldir moved protectively in front of his charge, shielding her with his body. The only weapon he had against the rending orc blades was the hilt-less dagger.

Prepared to sell his life dearly, he flung it straight at Critz.

Only the orc leader’s speedy reflexes saved his life. As the knife left the elf’s hand, he caught the nearest soldier’s scruff and jerked him in front of himself. The hapless soldier took the elf’s dagger through the eye. At once Haldir lunged and dragged the falling javelin from its owner’s lifeless claws as Critz let the body fall.

The orcs closed in. There were fully a score of them, more than enough to keep the elf busy. He lashed out with his borrowed weapon, outstripping the reach of the short, curved swords many of them carried. The razor-tipped javelin soon ran with black blood as he wreaked devastation on the orc heads; the weapon flashed and spun like a living thing in his hands, goring open bellies, piercing throats and sword arms with the speed of a gale. Though already eight had fallen the odds were sorely against him. Yet the orcs didn’t seem to want to kill him only capture him even as he cut them down.

“I want him alive!” Critz roared when a frustrated soldier slipped under the elf’s guard and gouged a wound across his forearm.

Haldir switched the javelin to his other hand and smashed the heavy wood into the fighter’s snarling face. They were little by little herding him away from the wall, out into the open so they could swarm him.

Critz slunk carefully out of range as one of his warriors let out an agonized cry, clutching his leg. “We have a real warrior on our hands, boys!”

A high, shrill scream echoed it, pierced the thunder with the force of shattering glass. It was female.

Haldir spun, blood dripping into his eyes from a high cut on his brow.

Critz held Henna tightly against him, his hard, sharp nails pressed into her soft neck. “Keep fighting, elf, and she’ll feed the maggots sooner than you will.”

“You unspeakable coward, you hide behind a child,” Haldir snarled, unable to hide his contempt.

Critz’s red eyes glittered at the insult. “Lower your weapon and come towards me or you can spit curses over her dead body.”

Henna whimpered as the nails dug in hard enough to leave little red marks.

“Give her to me.”

“Lower your weapon. Stand off,” Critz ordered his remaining men.

The orcs uttered soft curses and nursed cracked claws and puncture wounds as the elf passed edgily through them, the javelin gripped tight in his fist. When he was feet away, the orc leader hurled the sobbing girl into his arms. Startled, he caught her and the orcs advanced. One wrenched the javelin out of his hands and snapped it. The others dug their swords warningly into every bit of him they could reach. Chest, arms, stomach, throat, he was hemmed in on all sides by blades.

“Now, get back through that hole,” Critz’s grating voice snarled. “Now.”

He had no choice. The swords were on Henna too and while he was willing to sacrifice his own life, he couldn’t bear to see a child suffer. Guiding her gently back through, he followed. The stone walls closed around once more and bile rose in his throat as he saw freedom slipping further and further out of his reach.

Sayna and the others were standing in the courtyard where he had left them. Judging by their wide eyes and white faces, they had heard the fight and the screaming and thought the worst. Henna scrabbled up and ran into her mother’s arms.

Upon sighting their captors, most of the slaves were too cowed to even think of resisting. They’d been too long under the lash and most of them were farmers or forgers not warriors. They threw down their makeshift weapons in surrender. But Haldir did not. Neither did Sayna.

“You wicked, murderous wretch!” She lashed out at Critz with a broken spearpole as he came through.

Critz caught it with one hand and snapped it off near the haft, forcing splinters deep into her arms. Then he had her by the throat. Scarcely pausing in his stride, he flung her.

Her head cracked against the stone like rotten fruit smacking brick. She slumped, blood running from her forehead, and didn’t move.

“No!” a cry like a wounded wolf rang out. Torenul who Haldir had just noticed standing among the orcs pushed his way through and collapsed beside the woman. “You said you wouldn’t kill her!”

“Should think you’d be used to this by now, my little weasel,” Critz murmured with a smile.

The other slaves stared at Torenul with mingled looks of fury, hatred and hopelessness on their pinched faces. He defended himself hotly. “Any of you would have done the same! You would have taken the chance to live!”

“But we didn’t and you’ve got blood on your hands now,” the burly slave said.

“You blame me?” Torenul spat at him. “Why not blame the one who stirred you to fight in the first place? The blood’s on his hands, not mine,” he glared murderously at Haldir.

Critz giggled. “Now, now, children, play nicely. Don’t fight amongst yourselves.”

“You promised me,” Torenul said, cradling Sayna’s lifeless form in his arms. “What about the rest of it?”

For answer Critz gave him an evil smile and nodded at two of his guards who grabbed the man up by his shoulders. “I always keep my promises,” the orc lieutenant said. “Transfer it is. You’ll have right fun mixing alloys in the armory—if you don’t burn to death that is.”

Torenul, stunned speechless with horror, let his cruel guards drag him away, Sayna’s body rolling limply out of his arms into the mud.

Critz took no further notice. “The rest of you will have no rations until I say otherwise. Apparently, you didn’t learn your lesson the first time if you’re so eager to rally against your betters. But I’ll let you off this once. I’m too soft-hearted for my own good, you see. Can’t abide unhappiness, so you all get to live. Except for you,” he stalked towards the elf who was now being held by four guards all with their blades leveled at his throat and chest. “No one talks to me as you did, elf, and lives.”

He held up his unbloodied sword and licked the edge as if he could already taste the saltiness of blood. He said, almost reflectively, “Rebellious ones always cooperate more fully when their masters execute their leader.”

He beckoned to the soldiers. “Get him on his knees and bend his head.”