Note: The Council of Elrond took place October 25th, TA3018, but the Fellowship did not ride out until December 25th. During this time, the Fellowship stayed in Rivendell preparing for their journey.
Frodo awoke a full three hours after dawn one morning in late November. He and the other hobbits had been growing restless in their wait. "You cannot set out until the Blade that was Broken has been reforged, young Frodo," Lord Elrond had said. "You know this. Find solace here in Imladris while you can."
Rivendell was a beautiful place, to be sure, and simply being in the Last Homely House had lifted Frodo's spirits higher than he knew they could ever be. Even so, he knew that the quest on which they were about to set would be long and perilous, and the weight of the trinket he carried seemed to grow heavier every day. "Perhaps Uncle Bilbo might know a story or two to distract me from these worries," he thought. Frodo rose, dressed, and headed through the halls to look for him.
He found Bilbo on a small balcony overlooking the waterfalls of the Bruinen, keeping company with two elves that were unfamiliar to him. Someone had fetched Bilbo a wooden bench of hobbit height, carved with the intricate latticework of the elves. The elves sat across from him upon a seat of stone that seemed to rise up out of the balcony itself, its twists and turns nearly as finely wrought as the patterns on the long robes of green and brown that draped about their shoulders.
Bilbo's eyes widened happily at the sight of his nephew. "Frodo! My dear boy!" he called. "Some old friends of mine have just today returned from their patrols. Come, come, sit, sit!" He patted the empty spot on the bench next to him. "This is Glennodad, of Eregion—that's Hollin on all those old maps of mine—and his brother in arms, Alaion of Edhellond."
They smiled gently at Frodo as Bilbo named them in turn. Glennodad, the elder—or so he seemed to Frodo, who still had terrible trouble with the age of elves—had flowing, silken black hair down to his shoulders, somehow entirely neat despite doubtless hours beneath a heavy helm. His eyes were a deep brown, so dark that at most angles they appeared almost black. It seemed they had a sad sort of kindness behind them, like the eyes of one who has seen more wars than he cares to count; and yet they were warm and smiling now, here among friends in a place of safety. He was more muscled than most elves, though still slender by the standards of Men, and his dark-skinned hands clenched every so often, as though they missed the feeling of grasping sword and shield.
His comrade, Alaion, was as near to a polar opposite as could be. He had a short, tousled mop of dirty blond hair, and his bright green eyes seemed as though they had known more laughter and less hardship than his elder. His strong, aquiline nose ended in a wide smile that made him the more comely of the two, though none would deny that they were both handsome. His right hand had the calloused fingers of an archer, but the rest of him looked unblemished, as though he had rarely seen war. He poured Frodo a cup of red wine from the glass flagon that rested on the table. "What brings you to this corner of Imladris, young Frodo?" he asked.
"Well," he replied, glancing at Bilbo, "I was rather hoping that my uncle would have some tale to tell me, to help pass the time." He thought it prudent to not even mention that he felt restless, lest these elves—and especially Bilbo—know that he would be leaving soon.
"Why, old Glen here has many a tale of battle and glory to share, dear boy!" cried Bilbo. The elder elf gave him a look of bemused annoyance at the nickname. "Tell him the one about the trolls, the year I came here with the dwarves, it's one of my favorites."
Frodo thought he saw a flicker of anger and disdain cross Glennodad's features at the mention of dwarves, but it passed away in an instant and was replaced with a kind of quiet pride. "That is a fine tale, my friend," Alaion put in, "and one in which I play a starring role." He gave Frodo a cheeky smile. "It would be a fine way to while away our time, don't you think? A tale of the Avornamath?"
"Pardon, sirs," said Frodo. "The word 'amath' is shield, I recall, but what does 'avorn' mean?"
"It is 'steadfast,' young hobbit," Alaion replied, "for my friend never falls and never flees until he is certain that all his kin are safe.
Glennodad smiled, as close to a blush as Frodo had ever seen from an elf. "You flatter me, my friend, though that is why they gave me that name," he admitted. He cleared his throat with a sip of wine, and began his tale.
"It was the year your Uncle Bilbo came to our lands for the first time. We were on a patrol in the north of the Trollshaws, not far from the Mitheithel. Alaion and his three young archers, eagle-eyed all, made up our small band, while I rode at the van in heavy armor, ready to put my shield and myself between any foul beast and the company. Lord Elrond sent such patrols through the lands outlying fair Imladris twice a year in those times, that we should know if the darkness in the North were ever to return. It was, at first, like many hundreds of expeditions before it: entirely without consequence.
We rode along old roads through the forest, through many places where the leaves covered the path like a tunnel, keeping it cool and dim even at midday. These are deep places, and forgotten. None have ridden those roads but our patrols—and the Dúnedain—since the days of the men of Rhudaur, and the men of Arnor before them. It is a place of peace.
We came at length to an old, nameless fortress of Arnor, and Alaion climbed to the top of its tower to make use of its vantage, as he always did. I sat ahorse at the gate, while two walked the crumbling walls and the fifth of us tended the remaining horses. We waited for some time, and I began to wonder at the delay. It was only a small midday stop, where we would water the horses, scan the horizon, and ride on. To linger more than a quarter of an hour in that place was unusual. But at last, Alaion came down from the tower and moved towards me at the gate. I saw in the speed and purpose of his stride that something was amiss.
'To the north,' he reported, 'perhaps a quarter of a mile from the shore, there have been birds scattering from the trees in terror. There seems to be a path to their fleeing, as though something is moving unseen through the forest. Something large.'
'And of this threat, did you see any other sign?' I asked.
'The treetops moved only slightly, little more than the birds caused. Yet something was brushing against the lower branches, I am sure.' That was disconcerting news. The trees there were hundreds of years old, and few had branches any lower than could be bitten off by deer. Only trolls and orcs grow tall enough to disturb those trees...but neither of us would be the first to say so.
'Bring the company, then,' I instructed. 'We must discover whatever is causing this before we return home. We shall ride northwest, to the river, and follow the old track there until we can come up behind the path that the disturbance has taken.' Alaion nodded, and leapt silently from brick to brick as he gathered the others from their places on the wall.
We rode out at a gallop, but when we came within a quarter-mile of the shore we slowed to a quiet trot. It took the better part of an hour for us to reach the point at which Alaion advised me to turn south and ride through the trees, where there was no path. The dappled sunlight there dwindled to almost nothing as we went deeper into the forest, and an unsettling sense of dread began to creep into my heart. I had not seen battle in a thousand years, and was not particularly eager to see it again.
Before long it became clear what we were dealing with. We passed a small cavern beneath an upthrust of rock, and a quick glance inside found a wide tunnel that went back farther than the eye could tell. After that point, the branches of the trees were snapped and twisted, and some trees shoved aside at angles, as if something—or somethings—nine feet high had been lumbering through the wood."
Frodo shrank back at that. The thought of trolls unsettled him. Bilbo, on the seat beside him, could scarce have been more excited.
"I looked back to Alaion, who rode no more than a horse length behind me, and nodded. He took his bow from where it was slung on his saddle, and his men followed suit. I took mine in hand as well, loosened my sword in its scabbard, and ensured that my shield would come loose from my saddle at a moment's notice.
We smelled them, then. It was a dank, old, wet smell, like something that had lived in a cave all its life, and knew only rock, and the dark waters that run deep under the earth. There was no sound but the gentle clump of hoofbeats against layers and layers of leaves atop damp soil. No deer, no foxes, not a single fluttering bird. Nothing was alive within hundreds of yards, save that which we were heading to find.
A bowstring tautened behind me, and then three more. Though we elves may all see farther than you hobbits, Alaion and his men are younger than I, and perceived shapes through the gloom which had not yet become clear to me in the shade of my helm. We halted. There was a soft twang, and a whistle of fletching, and then three more of each, and a wait, a wait that seemed longer than all the thousand years I had lived in peace since last I took up sword and shield.
Then there was a heavy grunt, more than two hundred yards ahead of us and around a bend in the path that had been shattered out of the trees. 'Dismount!' I commanded, barely above a whisper. Four pairs of leather boots landed gently in the wet leaves, and one pair of heavy steel thumped down last. A roar came then, turned in our direction, and then another, and another. Footsteps boomed towards us, arrows flew past me, and I saw them at last.
The massive, hulking grey forms of the cave trolls thundered through the dark forest, fueled by rage and bloodlust. Two of them were already well-feathered; not a single one of my comrades' shots had missed their marks through the gloom and the wood." Alaion gave Frodo a tiny smirk of pride. "Their gaping mouths were twisted in anger, and their tiny black eyes betrayed not a hint of pain. Two carried clubs, while the nearest simply ripped a massive branch from a tree as he ran past it. I loosed an arrow as soon as I saw the nearest, and another, and by then they were closer than I would dare to fire again. I drew my sword from my side, took my shield from my stallion, and whispered urgently to him in the old tongue of the Ñoldor. He turned and galloped the way we had come, the other four with him.
Time slows when you are in a battle, young Frodo. When I looked back to the trolls, it seemed as though they had come no closer, though one, which had held a maul of stone, seemed to have fallen away from the group. 'Aim at the base of the throat!' I heard Alaion call. I ran headlong towards the beasts, and four arrows flew past me, all landing with a thunk directly in the nearest creature's neck. It stumbled for an instant, but charged again. 'AVORNAMATH!' I bellowed, and the battle was met."
The raven-haired elf had roared as loudly then as he must have in the battle itself, and Frodo was taken aback by the strength of his voice. "Surely all of Rivendell must have heard that," he thought, but the birds in the trees had not scattered, as though they understood that they would come to no harm at the hands of the elves. Only then did Frodo notice that Sam, Merry, and Pippin were sitting in the doorway, listening intently, with five more elves behind them.
"Sword and shield and I danced away from the first, with its branch, slashed at the back of its leg, and turned to face the second. The beast's massive, knobbly wooden club swung down towards me, but I moved to its right and cut into the back of the wrist that held it. Around and around we danced, but their skin was too thick for my stabs to kill with a single thrust, and they were not foolish enough to both fight a single foe when four more were filling them with arrows.
The branch troll bounded towards Alaion and the others, who by then were scattering from the path, climbing trees to safety and a clearer shot. I ran towards the beast, and from behind me the wood club troll roared in agony as an arrow thunked wetly into its eye. A moment more and the first troll reached the spot where we'd dismounted. I heard a moan and a heavy crash from behind me as its companion was finally felled, but did not turn to look.
The troll with the branch had found a tree in which of one my comrades perched, a strong old oak standing fifty feet tall. It roared up at him, pounding its left fist into the trunk in an attempt to bring it down. Arrows were coming at it from only two other trees, I noticed, but there was no time to see who was missing. With all my might, I ran at the beast. I bashed the back of its left thigh with my knee behind the lower half of my shield, while I drove my sword with the full force of my right arm into the back of its ankle. The beast roared and fell to that knee, but turned to face me as best it could. It swiped clumsily and I leapt aside, leaving my sword stuck six inches deep in its tendon. Arrows peppered the top and sides of its head, and it grew confused, not knowing which way to turn. Finally it slumped face-first against the tree, arrows sticking out of its ears and cheeks at funny angles. I braced my foot against the beast's heel, drew out my sword, and clambered up its arm to drive my blade deep into the back of its neck once and for all. I leapt down, breathing heavily, unbloodied and victorious. But then I heard something that raised the hairs on the back of my neck.
The elves of the companies I lead are always taught to use an acorn cap to whistle. It blows loud and shrill, and is a fine substitute for when one should find himself in danger without a horn. I heard that screeching whistle, then, in what I thought for a fleeting moment was victory. It was coming from behind me, south down the path, near where the first troll had been shot. 'Toss down your bow,' I called up into the tree, for my own, which I had wrought of mallorn from Lothlórien, lay in a footprint twenty feet away, crunched like a twig. I slung my shield up over my left arm and caught the tossed bow. 'Go and gather the two of our brothers which helped us with this one,' I commanded, nodding toward the stinking hulk at the tree's roots. 'Ensure they are unharmed. I will look for our fourth.' I turned and ran towards the repeated sound of the whistle, afraid of what I might find.
The third troll, which had slipped away at the start, had already found Alaion. He was pinned against a tree in the beast's left hand, but he saw me. His eyes were full of fear, pleading for release. It was toying with him, its slavering face inches from his as it snorted and laughed its booming laugh. I fired an arrow at the troll, and had tossed the bow towards a nearby tree and unsheathed my sword before the shaft found its mark, two inches deep in the beast's left shoulder. It turned to look at me, snorting angrily.
All creatures that serve the darkness speak the Common Speech, for they are too proud and boastful to learn the languages of their brethren. It was in this tongue that I called to the beast, then. 'Come, foul creature! Would you kill him, already defenseless, only to be cut down by my ancient sword, and my keen-eyed brethren in the trees? Or would you face me, and go home to tell your lord that you defeated an elven swordsman of whom songs are sung?!'
My boast—which was not entirely truthful—had its desired effect, though the troll was not content to leave Alaion without crunching him a little more. He slumped to the base of the tree, and in that moment I did not know if he was only unconscious or dead. The beast turned to face me, snorting, and I saw that Alaion's dagger was jammed deep into the base of its thumb, though it did not seem to notice. It strode toward me almost lazily.
'What great elven swordsman is this, then?' it rumbled, in a booming, guttural growl. 'All I see is a tiny little fing crouched behind a great big shield. Ain't gonna do you much good once I've ripped it off your little arm, now is it? Maybe I'll take the 'ole arm, too, and have myself a little snack before I 'ave the rest o' ya.'
My eyes showed no fear, and I did not tremble. "I am Glennodad of the Avornamath, the Steadfast Shield," I proclaimed, "who slew many and more of your kind at the Battle of Dagorlad. Come, and test your mettle against those who came before you!" I banged the pommel of my sword against my shield in a gesture of defiance, and it rang out through the trees, loud and clear as a bell.
The beast roared. Trolls, you see, are far too simple to know fear as we do. I, however, did not have that luxury. I knew full well that I could not have brought down the first two without the help of my brothers in arms, but they were not at my side any longer. I braced myself, shield forward and sword back, as its strides turned into a run.
The creature swung its massive stone club sideways at me, and I leapt back, feeling the monstrous thing brush against my shield. I ran left, aiming a cut at its wrist, but for all its size, it was surprisingly fast. Again and again I circled, trying desperately to find an opening, but the length of its reach was far greater than mine. The weight of my mail, plate, and shield was beginning to get to me. I knew I would be unable to continue the dance much longer...and then it happened.
My glance lingered just an instant too long at the foul beast's ankle, as I was looking for my shot, and the blow caught square on the Avornamath. My sword was flung from my hand, and I was thrown backward twenty feet, landing broken in the wet leaves. They smelled oddly soothing, in a way that seemed out of place amidst all this evil and death. The blow had reverberated so hard through shield, glove, and mail that the bones in my forearm were shattered into countless pieces. I felt them moving uncomfortably under my skin, against the quilt and mail, and thought I would surely be sick. The beast...the monstrous thing just laughed. A terrible, cold, disgustingly hearty laugh."
Frodo felt a chill, then, as the elf did his best imitation of the troll's laughter. "He certainly has a way of telling stories," he thought. His companions all looked the same as Glennodad had felt: like they were going to be sick.
"The beast looked at me, a crooked grin spreading across its ugly, rock-like face. 'Now you're down, I'm gonna go rip off one o' your mate's arms, while you watch. Then I'll come back here, rip off one o' yours—that shield-arm must be nice and meaty—and I'll have 'em both! A nice little taste test, before I eat the rest o' ya.' He walked the fifty yards back towards Alaion with a triumphant plod.
I struggled. I writhed. I cursed. After a moment I could stand, pushing off with my right arm, but I knew I would not find my sword in time. If the troll reached Alaion again, a blow like the one I'd taken, in my mail and with my shield, would crush him, in his leathers, crush him harder than I cared to imagine. My shield arm was useless, the fingers still grasping the grip, but no strength remaining behind them to block. I jammed my broken forearm fully through the grip so it was wedged in place, wincing at the pain. I had only one chance, the foolish idea of one staring death in the face, but I had to take it. With all the force I could muster, I shouted, 'You haven't finished me yet, beast! That was only a glancing blow!'
The troll turned to look and snorted in anger and disbelief. I gripped my left forearm with my right hand and stood with my shield covering most of my body, so it looked as though I could still be holding my sword behind me. It roared once more. 'I put you down, now you stay down!' It threw down its club in furious pride and charged at full speed, arms outstretched to throttle me.
I waited, and waited, and time slowed again. I grabbed the grip of my shield with my right hand. I saw every footfall, every breath in its body, as it came closer and closer. This was the instant. it was now or never. As the beast came near, when I was just out of reach, I fell, rolling onto my back. It lunged for my head, and with all my remaining strength, I jammed the point of my shield directly into its soft throat.
Its roar turned into a hacking cough, and black blood spattered across my face. Life fled the creature's body, and I struggled to free my left arm from the Avornamath, just in time to roll to the side before it crashed to the ground. I paused, taking the shortest moment I dared to breathe, before I shoved myself to my feet once more and shuffled to where Alaion lay, afraid of what I'd find."
Glennodad turned to smile brightly at his friend, then, and he smiled back. "As you can see, he was alive. Bloodied, broken, but alive. I fell to my knees next to him and lay my hand against his cheek. 'Alaion, my friend,' I murmured, 'are you there?' He coughed, and...what was it you said to me then, old friend?"
"I believe I said, 'They shall have to call you Avornamath the Trollslayer now, brother.' And you replied..."
"'They'll have to call us all Trollslayer, my friend. I only killed one. You and your archers, you brought down two.'"
They laughed. "We laughed then, too," Glennodad went on. "I took an acorn cap from the ground nearby and whistled until one of the others came. Our hidden brothers had been struck by rocks that the last beast had thrown, when he was out hiding, but were otherwise unharmed. One did what he could to tend our wounds, while the others gathered the horses. In time we rode back to Imladris, with a tale to tell and shattered bodies for proof."
"And what did Lord Elrond say of this tale, once you were mended?" Pippin asked.
"That no matter what darkness should crawl through the caverns from the North, Imladris would remain ever safe, young hobbits, so long as the presence of the elves graces it." Frodo turned to see that Elrond himself had joined the small crowd.
"Yes, and that we should start sending patrols four times a year instead of two!" Alaion cried, and the small crowd laughed. Even Lord Elrond managed a slight smile.
Frodo spent the rest of the day sitting there with his friends, in the ever-autumn beauty of Rivendell, listening to Alaion and Glennodad's tales of battles past and beauties wed. He never once realized that he'd succeeded in forgetting the small token in his pocket.