Title: Dwindling
Prompt #4: Broken
Author: Maranwe
Rating: PG-13-ish
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters, locations, etc., belong to their original creator. I make no money from the creation of this fic. It is intended for entertainment only.
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The wood was silent, truly silent, not just missing the chirp of insects or the singing of birds, but also those sounds which had come in the wake of the first silence – of clashing swords and heavy steps, hasty cries and foul tongue, the thwack of blade on flesh.
In this silence – the one following battle unlooked-for – Aragorn charged into the clearing, heedless of any enemy sword. But he came too late. The glade, as the rest of the wood, was silent.
Black blood mixed with red and ran over freshly turned dirt, soaking it and turning earth to sludge.
Around him, the rest of the company arrived in his wake, and while two remained to sift through the dead, the rest melted back into the woods to ensure any living orcs were gone and would not plague the dead or living that tended them.
Aragorn, though he knew his duty, fell to his knees beside the closest of his kin that lay felled. Bending, he looked into the man's face – Thalion, was his name, though death had stolen the light from his eyes and color from his cheeks, taken the peculiar quirk of his lips that always betrayed his humor when nothing else did.
His mind wandered to the wife and child Thalion left behind even as his eyes wandered, noting first the sword arm cloven from body and the sword still clasped in strong hand, then the orcs hewn around his friend and kinsman, all dead, two similarly bereft.
Aragorn's hand clenched in the folds of Thalion's overcoat. He lifted his head to take in more fully the carnage in the glade. Twenty-five bodies he counted now, five his kinsmen, the rest . . . and how many more left living to plague his kin and the rest of Middle-earth?
Halbarad finished checking the dead as Aragorn watched and, upon an unseen gesture from Mendil, nodded and approached his lord. "All are dead," he relayed. "What orders, my lord?"
Blood trickled down and soaked into his leggings, and he could not tell if it was black or red. "Carry clear our dead. We burn the Orcs ere we depart."
Halbarad did not ask for what purpose they would depart, but bowed his head and whistled a three-tone note, answered shortly. At a gesture, Mendil disappeared into the brush, and Halbarad set about gathering the fallen rangers to a more dignified rest, and after a moment Aragorn moved to aid him.
They worked in silence, their grief and troubles shared. For every year, their numbers fell, and every year the Shadow lengthened and the number of orcs grew. Five Death had here stolen from his service, shattering oaths and bonds as it had shattered flesh and bone. How many more would follow ere the year was out?
How many more must he fail before Death came for him, or the future the Wise foretold came and he could finally see the hope he clung to with his own eyes?
