A/N: Many thanks to my lovely betas: Cairistiona, Linda Hoyland, and Levade.

All recognizable elements belong to J.R.R. Tolkien.

II

I Would Make No Promises

I could taste death, smell fear. Elidir writhed on the ground before me and I fell to my knees and packed my hands into his body to hold back his fountaining blood. Around me were shouts of challenge and the ringing of swords, but I could not wrench my eyes away, for Elidir's face had changed and it was suddenly my father I knelt beside and fought to keep alive, my father's blood that pounded from between my fingers with every pulse of his hammering heart…

I woke gasping and did not dare go back to sleep. It was not yet light out and I eased from around my sleeping sisters and backed down the ladder in my nightdress. My father was sitting and smoking by the snapping fire. He lowered his pipe with one hand and put the other to his lips.

"Shh," he whispered. "Your mother still sleeps."

It was unusual for me to be up before the rest of the household. I crossed the room and sank to the wooden floor beside his chair. The night's cold had crept into the corners of the house and I shuddered hard and pulled my knees up to my chest inside my nightgown. I hugged them and settled my chin on top.

"How did he die?" I asked after a long silence.

It was if he had been expecting the question, or pondering it himself. He stared into the flames but his hand stretched out and settled heavy on the back of my neck, his thumb rubbing behind my ear. I felt a rivulet of tightness trickle out of me at his touch and became immediately warmer.

"Quickly," he said. "He took a mortal wound and did not linger long after."

"Were there many of them?"

"Not by the time we had finished."

I saw my mother had rewrapped his arm in a clean bandage. It was his sword-arm, his pulling arm. I was warming but my dream was still an oily smoke in the cellar of my mind and I did not want to imagine what kind of foul weapon had scored him.

He caught me looking and his mouth tugged wryly. "It is no battle wound," he said, and sounded—embarrassed? Grimacing he stretched his arm, rolled his fist on the end of it.

"How…"

"I tackled your cousin and in the scuffle rolled over my knife."

I lifted my chin from my knees and stared at him. "The Chieftain?"

His eyebrow rose. "You think I could not whip him if I wanted?"

"Well, surely, but you tackled him?" I was trying to imagine this and to my surprise it was easier than I might have thought, at least when it was Ada doing the tackling.

"He was being impertinent."

"But he's…" I trailed off. It occurred to me that perhaps a degree of reserve was customary of Aragorn when he was home among us—the elders and families looking to him to lead them. It would not do for him to be tussling in the dirt with another grown man like a pair of hound puppies. Rangering though was another matter, and it suddenly made sense that levity would be a welcome thing, however undignified the source.

"So did you?" I asked.

"Did I what."

"Whip him?"

He chuckled around his pipe-stem. "It was a near thing."

At that moment there came a pounding, so loud and urgent it made me jump, and I leapt up before Ada could and yanked open the door.

And was nearly mowed over. A figure burst over the threshold, the sword at his side ringing on the doorframe, and in the long moment it took me to recognize a black-haired son of Elrond and overcome my astonishment that he had just staggered unceremoniously into my house, my father rose so suddenly his chair was cast back and commanded me to fetch the Chieftain. "And make haste," he snapped. I did not bother with cloak or shoes but whirled and raced away.

Aragorn answered my pounding and looked startled to see me, standing there as I was too labored to breathe, feet bare and nightdress mud-splattered, but he grasped my heaving shoulder and waited until I gasped out, "Peredhel… at our house… he said to come quickly."

He turned back into his dark cottage and yanked on his boots. "Wounded?" he asked, even as he snatched a satchel off a hook on the wall.

"I don't know. Yes… I think perhaps."

He beat me to the house, although I was not far behind, and when I came into the main room I saw the newcomer had sank into a chair and was leaning heavily against the back of it, one white-knuckled hand gripping the seat. Blood had sheeted down his flank and thigh and was dripping from the edge. He had shed cloak and leather jerkin and Aragorn knelt beside him and was tugging the peredhel's shirt from his breeches to bare an angry gouge above his hipbone. When Aragorn pressed near the wound his patient growled, "Gently, Dúnadan."

Aragorn glanced at me, and up towards the loft, and then he spoke what sounded like a question in a tongue I did not understand, one that pealed with perfect tenor like a tower full of heavy bells, and I was nearly too entranced by the golden sound to be annoyed that the Chieftain was obviously starting a conversation he did not wish for me to hear. The newcomer—for I did not know which twin it was who sat dripping blood onto the floorboards—answered in the same lustrous language, though his words were bitten out between gritted teeth.

By then my sisters had clustered at the top of the loft ladder and were staring down like owlets. My mother appeared from around the curtain that concealed the big bed in the back of the house, tying back her hair; she went immediately to the fire and stoked it and pushed heating-stones deep into the coals. She sat on her heels for a moment before rising, her hand splayed hard in the small of her back. My father came in the back door with a dripping bucket in each hand, and Iolanthe followed him carrying more. She set her burden by the fireside and retreated to the washstand by the window to stare at the peredhel with unblinking eyes.

My mother hefted one bucket, poured it into a great shallow pan to heat, started to lift a second and then set it down with a splash. She braced her hands on her knees.

"Thaliel," said Ada, laying a hand on her back. "We have things well in hand. Go lie down."

I became anxious when she obeyed him without protest. My mother was hardly frail, and it troubled me to see her so. By her reckoning she had a month left at least before the babe would come, but already she was larger than I had ever seen her, with Lossiel or Celwen. She was pale as she vanished behind her curtain again. Iolanthe followed her with a pitcher and cup.

My father looked up at the loft. "Lútha, take your sisters back to bed," he said, and I realized it would be expedient to make myself useful or suffer the same fate. I sidled along the wall to the fireplace and set more water on to heat, hastened it with steaming stones. I went to the trunk in the corner and burrowed and emerged with a length of linen, and avoiding Ada's eye, began to tear it into bandages. I circled wide around him and slipped up beside Aragorn and laid them on the table next to his hand.

"Thank you, Lune," he said as I backed away. He spoke again in the unfamiliar tongue and I felt a flare of frustration—our wounded guest was taut with pain and agitation and the Chieftain's face was grave. My father stood beside the table with his arms crossed over his broad chest, a deep crease between his dark brows. I was confused. I could not guess what had occurred but my mind raced with many imaginings. The peredhel answered, and I did not have to understand his words to hear the anger in them. I could see the sudden biting light in his eyes even from where I stood against the further wall. I was startled when the Chieftain countered sharply, his voice ringing with command. He turned a grim face towards my father.

Before he could speak, Ada nodded tightly and disappeared behind the curtain. I edged closer to that end of the house, ears straining to hear what he was saying to my mother and sister. Aragorn ended my eavesdropping with a request of his own.

"Eluned, would you refresh my water, please?"

I hurried to obey and as I poured it steaming Aragorn behind me said crisply in Sindarin, "I'll hear no more of it, brother, not with you near collapsing and all but bled out." I turned back to the table in time to see our guest open his mouth, presumably to protest, but Aragorn drove a seeking thumb along his lowest ribs and the peredhel hissed instead and tightened his grip on the seat of the chair.

"Two broken at least," said Aragorn. "And likely a third in the back. You're slowing in your old age."

The one he had called brother replied with a foreign, elegant phrase, and Aragorn allowed himself a huffing chuckle through his nose.

I set the pan of clean water on the table and suddenly found myself unable to look the newcomer in the face. I considered his boots instead—they were of calfskin the color of ripe wheat, heeled for riding and tall as his knees, and around his calves were winding ivies of runes I could not read. The inner surfaces where the stirrup-leathers rubbed were chalky with dried sweat and glossy red from leather buffing leather. Hanging from the rim of the nearest one was a talisman of pale blue feathers and glistening shell, and I edged a little nearer to study it better.

"It is called abalone," said a voice in Sindarin, though I did not recognize the final word. "It comes from a sea creature."

"Like a fish?" I said, even as I realized that his Elvish carried the same rolling lilt as Aragorn's did, somehow less stilted than what I had grown up learning.

"More like a river-clam, or a snail."

Something about hearing the word snail from such a distinguished individual cured me abruptly of my shyness. I raised my head and found myself being observed by bright grey eyes. There seemed to be more light in them than there should have been in a smoky room lit only by fire and lanterns and slow creeping dawn, though as Aragorn began to ply his threaded needle they clouded briefly with pain. I had only ever seen peredhil from a distance as they rode through the village or away with the Rangers. I was intrigued to study this one so closely.

"She favors you, Halbarad," he said in the common tongue, his accent musical, and I turned to see my father rejoining us in the main room.

Ada snorted. "And her mother in temperament."

I felt a change in subject would be prudent and so I mustered my courage and asked, "Your pardon, my lord, but are you the Lord Elladan or the Lord Elrohir?"

Aragorn ceased his ministrations long enough to reach down and bat the boot-charm with his fingertips. "You can always tell Lord Elrohir by his little vanities," he said, stealing me a wily glance.

"We are well met, my lord," I said in Elvish, attending carefully to my enunciation.

"Well met indeed, Halbaradiell," he answered, lowering his dark head, and when it raised he was smiling.

Without thinking, I asked what seemed to me the next obvious question. "Where is your brother, my lord? I have never seen you apart from him."

His smile tightened, and though it did not disappear I realized his eyes had become very grave. I also realized that he was hesitating to answer, and I was feeling the first twinge of discomfiture at my blunder of etiquette when my father answered for him.

"Lord Elladan is north on the Bruinen, Eluned," he said. "Our people there have been attacked and he is helping them defend themselves. Lord Elrohir came to warn us and to have his wounds tended."

"Attacked by who?" I asked as my father pulled on his coat and buckled his sword-belt over it. I felt fear surge like bile in my throat. "What do you mean, attacked? Adar, where are you going?"

His face was grimly drawn. "I'll have them start preparing," he said, his eyes on Aragorn. "They won't be pleased, but we shall be ready by midmorning."

"No!"

Three heads snapped around and I realized it had been me who had shouted. My face burned but I shoved away from the table and crossed to my father, drew myself up as tall as I could. I faced him squarely. "You cannot leave. You've only been home one night!"

"Eluned…"

"What has happened? I am not a babe like Lossiel—you must tell me or I will follow you and find out on my own!"

I was aware of eyes on my back and the sound of my own voice which had risen above what I would customarily have considered a safe tone, at least when directed at my father. But the stone in my throat was a warning that I would have to stay angry or break down and cry. I hauled my sleeve hard across my eyes. "There are orcs, aren't there. And they are coming nearer."

Ada sighed. He glanced again at the loft, and when he answered his voice was low. "Yes. Lord Elrohir came from above the falls and there were orcs crossing. He and Lord Elladan slew the ones they found but we fear there may be more, and there are farmsteads there along the river." He put his hand on my hair. "It will not be a long chore."

"But it will be dangerous. You cannot go!"

Ada looked over my head, sighing long again. His hand slid to my back and drew me with him as he opened the door and went out into the yard. The wind was blisteringly cold in the pale dawn and my nightdress was thin but the chill in my bones was from something else entirely. He turned me to him when the door had shut.

"We must do this, Lune," he said. "It is our duty to safeguard our people and defend our borders."

"We are Dúnedain," I said, and bitterness crept into my voice. "We have no borders."

"Our borders are wherever our brothers dwell within," he said. "And now our folk on the river are under attack, and we will go to their aid."

I pinched my eyes shut and in that sudden dark my dream leapt at me again, those slavering faces, the fountaining blood. I remembered Brenia crumpling like a dress dropped to the floor. Who would bear my own mother up, if my father were slain, and the Chieftain with him? In my heart I knew that they had hunted orcs all of my life and long before, and defeated more than could be remembered, and had always come home to us. But there in the cold morning I thought of Elidir in some distant lonely cairn with nothing but the ruins of our long-fathers guarding his bones, and the heart of his beloved encased in stone forever with him. His children would never know the caress of his hard callused hands on their hair.

"I'm coming too," I heard myself say. "I can help our folk carry their belongings. I can cook and look after children." I can keep you in my sight.

When I dared to look up at him his face had become hard. "Coming from any of my other daughters, I would simply tell you no and be done with it."

"So you will tell me yes?"

"No." The word was a growl.

"Ada, I—"

"You listen to me, child. Ever you have skirted my commands and got away with it, and I have little heart to reprimand you, not when I am so often away. But you must obey me in this." He softened then, laying his hand on my shoulder and gripping. "You must stay where you are safe."

"But you will not be safe," I said.

He grinned at me, a perilous grin. "No goblin rabble will lay iron to this old hide," he said. "But it is your hide that should worry you, if you do not heed me and stay where you are put." His thumb on my collarbone pressed lightly, warningly, into my skin. "Promise me."

I almost faltered then. I do not think I had ever in my twelve years defied him to his face. My tactics were more roundabout, and ever dependent on my charm and his good nature. But this was different. I sucked my cheek between my teeth, bit down until I bled.

"I will not unless you can," I said. "Unless you can promise me that you will come home alive."

My father was an honorable man. He would not make a promise he might not be able to keep, and I favored him. Halbaradiell, I had been called, and I would make no promises either.

Peredhel—half-Elven (singular)

Halbaradiell—daughter of Halbarad

Thank you so much for reading!