Third Age 1300 – The shadow over Middle Earth lengthens… The realm of Angmar is formed under the Witch King. Orcs infest the Misty Mountains. The Nazgul begin to reappear, bearing magical and poisonous morgul blades.
Chapter One
Thranduil opened his eyes to the sight of the muddy ground, treaded up with deep, angular bootprints. Smoke burned his eyes, stuck to his tongue to mingle with the dried blood in his mouth. One leg buckled beneath him and in the second before he caught his footing, the fall woke a sharp pain in his left shoulder.
Dagorlad…
He raised his head and looked out at the grey world. Bodies strewn across the field, bloody, broken, but where there should have been the glint of armour, there were only stained pale robes, wreathes of silver and flowers where there should have been helms. There were no spears or swords left in the mud, but tall lantern posts and pavilions, some intact, many cracked or fallen.
A feast under the stars. A memory farther away than those thousands of years in the past.
"Aradess!" he called out at the white bodies in the mud. He tried to move but found himself rooted where he stood leaning against a tree.
He looked up at the red arm reaching out of his sleeve, pinned above his head with a black knife in his palm, pierced through the tree beneath. He could not feel the hand, could not move the fingers. With his free right hand, he grasped the hilt to rip it out, but at his touch the weapon sent a great and terrible pain through him, lancing through his heart.
A hoarse cry burst through him into the deathly silence. The pain would have brought him to his knees if he could fall.
"Aradess!" he called again.
The sky began to pale with the dawn. The stars began to flicker and fade.
Thranduil braced himself and reached for the knife again, screaming as loud as the pain provoked. He pulled out the knife and threw it to the ground, and he dropped to his knees, fell onto his back in the mud. His heart hammered unevenly in his breast, every throb echoed in his bloody hand. He held it up before him, examining the black wound in the centre of his palm. He tried to flex his fingers, but they only twitched, painfully. He raised his right hand and found a shining red burn where he had held the knife.
From out in the field there was a cough, a cry. The ground trembled with the thunder of approaching horses, a long way off yet. Thranduil turned onto his front and pushed himself out of the mud with his ruined hands, to his knees, to his feet.
"Aradess!"
A few bodies began to move, to writhe, to scream.
Thranduil staggered forward, nothing of his grace in his movements. Every step was a fight against the sucking mud. When he stepped around a prone body, he overbalanced and stumbled. Already his breathing was heavy.
"My lord!" came a frantic voice amid the wordless cries. Thorod, a captain in the royal guard, stood alone some way across the field. His fine clothes were painted with mud and blood, some red, some black. The longknife he held seemed too great a weight for him and he stooped. "Are you all right?"
"Where is she?" Thranduil asked.
Thorod limped along to keep up with Thranduil's own sorry pace.
"The orcs drove through the middle. I think she was on this side," the captain said.
Everywhere he looked, Thranduil saw only blood, nothing of the auburn hair he searched for. Soft red that glowed like fire in the light. She had worn a heavy silver pin in her gathered braids, topped with a star laid with diamonds, a gift for the occasion. She had worn a white gown embroidered with silver thread.
"Aradess!"
She should not be somewhere like this, where there was only death and pain. He hoped that he would look up into the horizon and see her far away, immaculate, whole, and alive.
The first true light of day pierced the sky and the wound in his hand reawakened, scorching through his veins. Fresh blood swelled to the wound, dripped off his fingertips. He felt his life draining out of him, unlike any injury—far greater injuries—he had suffered before.
It was all wrong, all against the experience of his long life, against the wisdom of his people. This could not be death, this field of slaughter in place of the halls of paradise. He could not be dying, not this slowly, not with this agony. And his wife could not be dead.
"Aradess!" he half-screamed against the mortal pain in his breast.
The number of elven bodies great thinner and now there were only the few dead orcs who had been cut down in their retreat.
"We should go back, my lord," Thorod said. He had fallen several steps behind. "She must be there."
Thranduil felt as if he stood alone on the edge of the world, to receive judgement for the death and ruin behind him.
The riders sounded their horns on their approach. There would be nothing for them but to aid the survivors, comfort the dying. Revenge would have to wait.
"My lord?"
Something small glinted in the rising sun, buried in the great misshapen body of a dead orc, the last to fall, yards off and all alone. A hulk of shadow but for the shine of silver. And a cast of white silk trailing at its feet. And a wreath of red that shone like fire around its head.
"ARADESS!"
His elven instincts finally returned and Thranduil ran, coming around the far side of the orc. Aradess lay still in her white and silver gown, her loose red hair fanned around her, a knife buried in her ribs.
He was one his knees. Lifting her into his arms. Laying his forehead to hers. Taking that terrible thing out of her. Waiting for her to breathe, to open her eyes. Waiting for the fate that had long entwined them to claim him too.
"Melui-nín..." The shine of silver caught his attention and he looked up at the small blade stabbed into the orc's throat. It was a hair pin, topped with a star laid with diamonds. Thranduil ripped it free, its glory ruined with the stain of black blood.
This could not be death. He could not be dying. His wife could not be dead.
"Get me a horse!"