prologue.
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Beneath the winking high noon sun she had found them.
For days, she'd wandered the barren flatlands of Rohan in search of an imagined hostage. Nothing. There had been nothing for those long days she'd wandered, aimless, hopeless, looking for any sign to lift her fallen spirits. At first, she thought she'd imagined them. Conjured up some make-believe adventure out of a desperate need for distraction. She had been close to forfeit when, on the second day, she'd found them – old tracks in the hardening mud.
They were at the very least not two days old and took them as a sign to hasten on her journey. For she did not know if the captive was still alive, was wounded beyond hope of mending – all hopes depended on the tracks themselves. And they were swiftly fading.
It had all been mere chance that brought her on this quest in the first place. A cold morning, the first shadows of dawn creeping gray and weary along the edges of the forest. Somewhere in the foothills of the Misty Mountains, the first chill of winter had come in the night and frozen the ground under her feet. It made perfect conditions for hunting, slowing the animals as their bones ached and their muscles grew stiff and clumsy, but her game had long escaped her. For she had stopped, bow slung over her shoulder, and peered down into the mud. There, carved into the light dusting of frost which had formed over flecks of dew, were the bloodstained remains of cloth.
That had been five days ago. Five long and torturous days of pursuit.
But this day – she found proof. Proof that her aid was desperately needed.
They were long, straight, and the color of cold winter stars. Silver they had looked under the flush of sunlight at first glance. A mere twinkle, like that of a jewel caught in the light, from a distance. But when she put her fingers on them – soft and yielding to her touch, some breaking in their frail state – she found that they were also gold. Two dissimilar colors that meshed so easily together under beams of sun.
No mortal man was born with such hair. Dark and dull was the color of men. Their skin ruddy, swarthy, their eyes dark and dull.
These belonged to the crowning glory of the Firstborn - their renowned beauty fair and bright and cold.
She knelt before her quarry, gloved knuckles pressed hard against the spongy ground for balance, and combed her fingertips through the sparse grasses. There were footprints also. Crushed into the mud under the weight of massive boots. She found neither hoof prints nor the indentations of large paws like those of Wargs or other beasts of burden, but could distinguish one pair of tracks quite different from the others around them. They were light, mere shallow bruises in the flesh of the earth, and were nearly invisible to the untrained eye.
Days of rain and sun and harsh erosive winds had begun to erase them, but she at last found the complete outline of those lighter marks. With a gentle hand she traced them and began to impress a clear picture of them in her head. They were scuffed. Smeared. As though the feet which made them were weak, reluctant, and unmistakably – pushed.
She stood quickly. Her keen eyes scanned the far horizon, searching desperately for any sign of movement. But there was nothing– only the shadows of birds dipping down into the earth in search of food. A light glaze of heat blurred the swells and sharp mounds of hills laid out before her. To her left, the black specter of Fangorn forest loomed.
"But where," she mumbled to herself, running her tongue nervously over chapped lips. "Where are they taking you?"
Her longbow bounced with a hollow twang as she sprung forward and followed what was left of her path -
Hoping, praying, that she would not be too late to find out for herself who it was that had made them.
ALL CHARACTERS BELONG TO TOLKIEN. Except for OC.