A/N: Cairistiona7, Linda Hoyland, and Levade helped me tremendously with this chapter.
To Hideypidey, who left a delightfully encouraging guest review, thank you so, so much! The parent in me wants to shake Eluned, too, but the middle child in me feels for her! I'm delighted to hear you think I'm achieving the balance.
Thank you also for pointing out that typo! Pay attention, kids, spell check matters. One misused homophone, and our heroic half-elven knight spends the rest of the story with a giant bald patch burned in his shiny black tresses.
And to my anonymous guest reviewer... what nice things you say! I'm sorry I didn't manage two in a day for you, but here's another, if you're still checking!
All recognizable elements belong to J.R.R. Tolkien.
VII
A Savage Sort of Grace
Elrohir led us through the forest north of the main trail. There the trees were clotted with undergrowth and we could not travel swiftly. Our captain would not risk the more open pathway to the south. When I asked him about this he paused long enough to grin at me.
"Your ada would say it is because it brushes his neck-hairs the wrong way."
I must have looked bewildered, because he chuckled and added, "I am uneasy on the road. I have no reason that I can say, so you will have to trust me." He winked, reminding me startlingly of the Chieftain. "Elvish intuition."
I wrinkled my nose. "You are only half-Elvish."
"Nearer to three-quarters," he said jauntily. "And you are impudent. Get back to your post."
As we marched Elrohir plied us with challenges. He accorded us a penalty for every broken stick or rustling bramble, with the explanation that whoever had the most penalties by the end of the day would have to prepare our supper. Halvard and I were creeping along at a snail's pace trying to move silently when Elrohir chanced to look back and see us a hundred yards behind him. He growled at us to keep up, that the game was not a game if we got picked off for being too slow.
He seemed determined to assure himself that we would act upon his commands without hesitating. Twice without warning he barked the order to get down. The first time I merely crouched, for the path was black with mud and littered with leaves. Halvard on his belly glanced up in alarm, but even as he hissed at me to join him, Elrohir stalked back along our little column and swept my feet from underneath me with his boot. He cast himself down beside me, pressing me to the ground with a hand between my shoulder blades.
"Next time, all the way," he said in my ear, and the next time, I did.
At midmorning we paused briefly beside a stream to slake our thirst and partake of a little of the sweet bread, though he did not allow us much. The day was warmer than others had been lately; there was more of summer in the air than autumn, but occasionally when the trees thinned we could see mustering clouds to the north. Elrohir tied his cloak and Halvard's and mine behind his saddle, for even beneath the shade of the trees we were warm enough walking without them. Before we started out again he gathered us around him.
"Halvard, you will teach Eluned the signals as we go," he said. "I will teach Sive. Softly, though. We should not give away five hundred years of honored Ranger secrets by talking of them too loudly."
The easiest path wound west and a little north alongside the stream, and it was clear enough of undergrowth that Halvard and I could walk shoulder-to-shoulder. Ahead of us I could hear Elrohir's voice pitched low in instruction, his breathy whistles as he demonstrated, and Sive repeating them back hesitantly. Beside me Halvard looked irritated. I felt his mood creep across the space between us and worm under my skin.
"Well, are you going to teach me?" I said crossly.
He swatted at a geranium. "Do you even know how to whistle?"
"Of course I do!"
He made a disgruntled sound in his throat, casting a wary look ahead at our guide. "I don't know, Eluned."
"What don't you know," I growled.
"If I should teach you."
"Elrohir told you to!"
Halvard made a hasty shushing gesture with his hand.
"Well he did," I whispered. "And you have to do as he says. You swore on the Rangers of the West."
"Yes, but…" he trailed off and walked in silence for a few steps. "I'll be one of them someday," he went on at last. "And you won't."
"Your point?" I snarled.
He shrugged. "I just don't know if you should know."
I almost jumped on him then. I was suddenly certain of his intent—or lack of it—Halvard had ever lorded over me his knowledge, his days of training with the Rangers. Dúnedain boys learned early the sword and the bow, the woodcraft they would need if they took the grey cloak. They served as village guards in the men's absence until they came of age and swore fealty to Aragorn. The day Halvard had been assigned his first sentry, he had hunted me up just to gloat.
If I learned the signals the Rangers used, he would have one less thing to exult over me.
"You had better teach me," I hissed. "Else I'll tell Elrohir you didn't do as he said."
As if on cue, Elrohir called over his shoulder "Let's hear some whistling back there."
Grudgingly, Halvard began to instruct me. He was impatient—"No, Eluned, three notes before the warble. Have you ever even heard a lark? That sounded like old Bryn calling her chickens." After perhaps half an hour of increasing frustration I finally stopped cold in the path beside the stream.
"I cannot learn if you're going to be so bad-tempered about it," I said, scowling. I was vaguely aware of Elrohir and the horse halting ahead of us.
"You can't seem to learn them anyway," Halvard said. "Elbereth, Eluned, your father should be happy you're not a boy. You'd never make a Ranger."
My sight was glazing with red before he even finished. I hauled back my right hand and punched him in the mouth. It glanced off and sent him reeling and I threw my shoulder at his middle and my momentum carried us sprawling backwards onto the path. He tried to shove my head away, tried to kick me off him, but I was flailing and cursing and doing my level best to break his teeth or his nose. He rolled upright and scrabbled to pin my arms but I was wild with fury and wiry enough to roll us both again, and that is when Lord Elrohir descended.
He scooped me off of Halvard by an elbow and a knee and slung me into the slow-moving stream.
I surfaced in time to catch the splash of Halvard's landing full in the face. The water there was waist-deep and outrageously cold. I scraped it from my eyes, blew it thickly out of my nose, and when at last they cleared I looked up to see Elrohir crouched on the bank.
"Pay attention, children," he said. "There are times to quarrel with your brothers or sisters, but now is not one of those times."
"The whore-begotten bastard isn't my brother!"
Elrohir ducked me again. He did not hold me under long, but it was long enough that when I came up I had thought better of disputing him. Arms wet to the shoulders, he leaned back from the edge of the water and sat on his heels. He waited calmly until I finished sputtering.
"He is your brother as long as we are in this quandary," he said. "And your task is to watch his back, not knock him on it."
He turned to Halvard. "I am not your father, boy, but the name of Elbereth is not one to bandy, and I will not hear you use it vainly. Aside from that, I charged you with teaching Eluned a skill she may need to survive, and I expect you to do it willingly and without complaint. Someday you may have to train young Rangers, and you had better hone your patience."
Back to me. "The next time you must hit him, keep your thumb outside your fingers else you break it." He held out his hand and I took it and let him haul me out of the water. When I was standing beside him he bent and said softly, " And I would not have taken it kindly had you tattled on Halvard like a spoiled little girl. If you must lever him with threats, think of better ones."
"Yes, sir," I said, a little startled that he had heard me at all.
Halvard clambered up on the bank. He was streaming water, his hair dark with it, and from his expression I could tell he had not forgiven me.
"Did she rattle your head again?" Elrohir asked him.
"No," said Halvard. His nose bled. Elrohir ran his thumb and finger down the bridge of it, peered at the trickling split in his eyebrow. Then he took our napes in either hand and steered us to his horse. Sive sat looking a little bored.
"This happens often?" Elrohir asked her as he dug in the pouch behind the cantle.
"Any time they cross paths," she said.
Elrohir laughed and handed Halvard the flat container of salve. "You will tend her knuckles," he said, lifting my hand to show him. He turned to me. "When he is through, you will see to his brow. And if you cannot learn to get along I will fetter you together by your necks until you do."
I suspected this was no idle threat. Halvard looked mutinous, but he spread my bleeding knuckles with Elrohir's yellow unguent and handed me the silver tin. I smeared a fingertip's worth onto the split in his eyebrow. Somewhere in the midst of this I inadvertently caught his eye, and had to quash a bubbling snort of laughter.
"What?" Halvard snapped. I shook my head but a snigger burst out of me. "Stop it!" Halvard ordered. He pinched his lips but the dam was running over and when I gave up and began helplessly to laugh, he could not suppress himself any longer. He clapped a hand across his eyes and joined me.
"They are losing their minds," Sive told Elrohir solemnly.
He nudged her knee. "It is fortunate they have you to look after them."
-o0o-
Halvard relieved me at the rear of the column, and for a while I could travel unconcerned with keeping watch. I found my thoughts drifting towards home, but the feelings this brought were both sweet and unsettling and before long I was desperate for distraction. I edged alongside Elrohir's horse and walked beside the stirrup. Sive bumped me in the shoulder with her linen-wrapped foot.
"I wish I'd have twisted my ankle," I teased her as I reached back to plait my damp hair. The tail of it dripped a spreading wet spot in the small of my back. "Then I could be riding while you walk."
"I would trade you," she said, shifting in the saddle. "I am sore. And hungry. Do you know what I think?"
"Hmm," I said absently. Ahead of us Elrohir had stopped to look across the stream to the south and east.
"I think the Rangers can keep their adventures. I will stay home and tend the sheep."
I grimaced. "That is likely what we'll be doing until we are old and married, after this."
"At least I will be fed," she said. "And warm. And the only wolves will be small ones you can drive away with a sling." She threaded her fingers through the horse's dark mane. "If I had a brave horse like Cabor I would not fear the wolves."
I felt my eyebrows spring up. "Cabor?"
Sive leaned against his neck and hugged it. "That is his name," she said, a little defensively. "Don't tease him about it, it isn't his fault."
"Yes, but…" I stopped to look at him, his straight hard legs and gleaming shoulder, the clean lines of his throat and fine-boned face, his great kind eye and muzzle so round and velvet-coated I wanted to cup it in my palm like a kitten. Behind his ear was a slender braid tied off with silver thread and a tuft of hackle feathers, blue like the ones on his master's boot. We were nearly caught up to Elrohir where he stood poised in the path, and I scrunched my nose and said, "Elrohir, why did you name your horse 'Frog'?"
He peered into the trees as if he could see beyond them into some greater distance, and his body was rigid. His hand fluttered briefly alongside his thigh. After a long moment he relaxed, though the faint lines of his forehead did not disappear completely.
"What is wrong with calling him Cabor?" he said, turning to us.
"He is beautiful!" Sive said. "He should have a good name."
"He is passing handsome, I suppose," said Elrohir. "Though his ears are a trifle long, and his halt is as heavy on the forehand as a mûmak's." He smacked Cabor amiably on the wide space between his forelegs and received a nip below his belt in retaliation. "Cease," Elrohir commanded. "Or I shall change your name to 'Gelded'."
Their peculiar exchange halted when Cabor suddenly threw his head up, fine ears flicking forward, and a trembling whicker rolled out of his nose. Elrohir ran a hand up his neck and settled it on his poll, just over the base of the dangling braid.
"Peace, little brother," he said softly, his jocularity vanished. "I know he is coming."
"Who is coming?" Sive asked. I could hear her nervousness and had to fight to keep my own from rising, in spite of Elrohir's evident ease and his bow slung unstrung between his shoulder blades. His mouth quirked, a wry expression I was coming to recognize. He made a short breathy sound somewhere between a laugh and a sigh.
"Elladan," he said, and then muttered such a vile curse I felt my eyes fly wide in delighted astonishment.
-o0o-
It happened quickly: a muffled thunder of hooves, a flash of dappled hide on the far bank, a breath of silence as the grey horse gathered and sprang across the stream as lightly as a deer might. It landed skidding, carving furrows in the loam as it drove to a halt, and before the iron-shod hooves had stilled completely the Heir of Imladris stepped down with a savage sort of grace and collected a fistful of Elrohir's jerkin in one leather-tabbed hand.
He spoke so rapidly in Sindarin I could scarcely comprehend him, and Elrohir answered in kind, his eyes tipped up in exasperation. I realized it was not only the speed of their conversing that confused me. They spoke a dialect of Elvish I could not understand, but for the occasional word flitting over my ear and vanishing again almost before I could recognize it. Even so, I would have been a fool to misunderstand the essence: Lord Elladan was doling out a tongue-lashing, but it seemed to be rolling fruitlessly off his brother's back. Elrohir pried his twin's fingers from the leather of his jerkin and shoved the hand down between them. He gestured in our direction with his remaining hand as he spoke. Lord Elladan turned to us. His eyes, at once familiar and alarmingly fierce, raked the length of me, flitted up to Sive and past us to Halvard. The steel of them seemed to soften a little and when he turned back to Elrohir his fist had relaxed. He said something in a dry tone of voice and shoved his brother lightly in the chest.
Elrohir stepped back all the same, jaw tight around teeth I knew he gritted. His twin's eyes narrowed, dark brows drawing. He bent and jerked up the hem of Elrohir's jerkin, slapping away objecting hands.
Elrohir executed a neat half-turn to the side and smoothed the leather back down his leg. He grinned as his own likeness advanced on him, and in what I deemed a spectacular show of courage, reached out and batted Lord Elladan on the cheek with the back of his hand.
"Stop," he said in Sindarin. "I will mend without your fretting."
"Good," Elladan snapped. "Because as soon as you mend I intend to thrash you back into infirmity."
Elrohir snorted at this, but Elladan turned away from him. He seemed to take in Sive's wrapped ankle, Halvard with Elrohir's knife, and Ada's dagger hanging at my side all in quick succession, his eyes never alighting on any one of us for long.
"What, pray tell, are these infants doing so far from home?" he asked, turning back to his twin.
I may have imagined it, but Elrohir seemed to straighten a fraction.
"Hunting wargs with me," he said coolly.
Elladan looked for a moment as if he did not wish to wait for Elrohir to mend before he thrashed him, but the moment passed. He began again in the unfamiliar dialect.
"You may speak plainly," Elrohir interrupted. "They are old enough to hear it."
Elladan cast us a last appraising look. "Very well," he said in the Common. "We found three farmsteads burned, and Tûg the shepherd's cot was razed and he and his grandsons slain. There were signs of orcs upon the sward beside the river and we caught up at dusk and routed them from a cave in the riverbank where they had gone to ground. I rode south with Aragorn and Halbarad to see if there were more, and near the junction of the rivers we found a place across the Bruinen where many had gathered. It was upon our return that we saw the smoke from the pyre you lit and found your cairn by the roadside." He rounded on Elrohir. "You did not chance to mention that you had in your care both Hald's son and a pair of maidens."
"It would have made for a cumbersome rune-writing," said Elrohir with a flick of his hand. "Where are Aragorn and Halbarad now?"
I had been wondering the same thing, though out of concern for my father or myself when he found me, I could not have said.
"They are riding west," Elladan said. "There are refugees coming behind us."
Elrohir's face had grown grave. "And the orcs from the south?"
"We could not track them further," Elladan answered. "Our mounts were weary and we had need to report back to the others of the things we had found. But we cannot tarry, Elrohir." He gripped his brother's arm. "There is some devising behind these attacks that sits uneasily in my belly. If the orcs crossed the river they will have driven north in the night, and with the Rangers gone Dírhael is left unguarded."
I felt a cold disquiet begin to unfurl in my gut.
Elladan went on, the words coming quickly. "Aragorn and Halbarad feared the same. They were returning to fortify the settlement and I to report to Coru when we found your token. They continued on while I came hunting you. And now I shall escort you back to meet them there."
The last he spoke crisply, as if he expected his twin to dispute him. I know I wished to. It was suddenly very clear to me that I had nothing with which to temper my father's displeasure, no usefulness to offer as distraction from my disobedience. The thought of facing both him and my mother in a few short hours filled me with the desire to march to Lord Elladan and dig in my heels and refuse to follow him anywhere. But even my audacious tongue was not sufficient to the task of confronting this hard-eyed knight, this lord with authority in the very span of his shoulders, the tang-straight set of his spine. Though I knew I had no need to fear him, he intimidated me in a way that left me rigid with the need to stay silent and respectful.
For a heartbeat I thought Elrohir would argue; his jaw was tight and his eyes stubborn. But Elladan hooked an arm around his neck and spoke in his ear, and with a huffed exhalation, Elrohir relaxed. The stiffness sagged out of his shoulders and for a fleeting moment he looked so weary it frightened me. Then he smiled, his forehead creasing ruefully. He turned to me with an expression that was nearly sympathetic.
"Best gird yourself, young one," he said. "We are off to find your ada."
Thanks so much for reading!
