Chapter 1
What is peace? Is it something that is used to encourage men to fight a war? Something that gives the men hope and dreams for what will happen after the war? No, peace is never achieved because someone will always try and destroy another and a lone warrior must stand up to lead them. That warrior is I. I am one of the sole surviving bloodlines of the kings of Numenor. Thanks to Sauron, there are very few of us left. It was sometime during the second age, I do not know the date. My name is Aranthorin, leader of the small band of rangers, just north of the black gate. Our band had started out with many, most of which were women and children, but now there are few. There was an ambush on the wagons carrying the families and they killed everybody in sight. The rangers, which were scouting the trail ahead, didn't get back in time and so they came back to find the carnage. There was only one survivor. The boy was barely 15, but his swordsmanship held true. Leaning against the hilt of his sword the boy was standing in the middle of a large group of dead orcs, the rest having scattered. The rangers buried the bodies and asked the boy his name, which he replied, "My name is Aranthorin." This is my tale.
Five years after the incident in what we now called, "The Pass" I assumed command. We were on the trail of a band of orcs that were terrorizing the lands around which we hunted when we were ambushed.
"This doesn't feel right," I said to my second in command and I felt the woosh of an arrow go by me, striking him in the face. "Its an ambush!" I cried as I whipped out my sword and the fellow rangers formed some sort of circle.
The orcs streamed out of the woods coming straight down at us. Falling by the dozens as the rangers took to their slow and gruesome task of fighting a way out from their current position. The losses oblivious to them, they continued to push in. One by one, the sides started to crumble, the men falling under a hail of axes and other weapons used by the orcs.
When the last of the rangers gathered round me, I smiled at them. "Let us die like men!" I cried dashing forward into the advancing mob. The rangers followed, knowing that it was better to die that way, then to stand and slowly get hacked to pieces. I saw and opening, and dashed through it, the last five survivors of the bloody fight falling in behind me. I dove into a clump of trees and disappeared from sight. The five remaining dove through also, their swords slamming into the ground next to me.
"Hell of a fight there," one of the rangers said to me as I started to clean the dark blood from my sword.
"Another one of those and there will be no more of us left," I replied and spat on the ground next to the ranger. "We got lucky, and they now get to feast on our friends bodies,"
"Yes but at least we have gotten out alive," the ranger, nearly twice my age replied.
"You are right, old friend, but something tells me that we should have died back there," I said with a sigh as I sheathed my sword, which had belonged to my father, and his before him.
We settled down where we lay that night, being too battle weary and hungry to go anywhere. We ate a quick meal and one by one, we fell asleep.