Note:
Wargs!
In the film the two scouts get eaten. I wanted to save them (although I guess they could have died later in the altercation). I also just wanted to make Nelwen a bit of a badass on the battlefield – don't know why Annamir should get all the fun!
I really like this section.
Nelwen strolled along a high rocky ridge hugging the base of the Ered Nimrais. She jumped over rocks as she went, remembering the games she played in her youth when she and the children of Rivendell would clamber over the rocks of the Bruinen Ford, seeing who could jump the highest and with the greatest ease. She had long stored away her cloak, her limbs warmed by her gamboling and the late morning sun on her back. Glancing briefly over her shoulder, she saw the people of Edoras as they snaked across the plains of Rohan. Ugh, humans were so slow. Frustrated by their plodding pace, she had offered to act as scout and pushed on ahead.
She sang as she walked, her voice pitched low so as not to carry, a melancholy elven tune about beloved ones lost in war. Bill, whom Nel had decided was the best of all horses, Rohirrim steeds be damned, nodded his head in agreement as he trotted obediently behind her. Suddenly, Bill startled, whinnying plaintively and driving at the ground with his hooves. "Mani naa ta, Bill?" she asked the horse in her soothing elven lilt, trying to stroke his forelock in a comforting gesture. But the creature would not be comforted and Nelwen cast her eyes around them to try and see what had caused her friend such distress.
There, in the distance, she thought she saw something, some frantic movement.
Leaping higher up the ridge with the effortless grace of an elf, she peered from her new vantage point and watched in horror as mounted orcs crested a nearby hill. To the east of the ridge on which she stood, rode two Rohirrim scouts. Without elven eyesight, they remained unaware of the danger into which they were riding. Muttering some of Annamir's favourite expletives, Nel jumped partway down the ridge, mounted her steed, and made her way towards the human scouts with all the speed that the mighty Bill could muster.
The scouts started when she approached which, Nel determined, did not particularly bode well. If they hadn't noticed her hurried approach then what hope had they in noticing the oncoming orc forces. She wondered darkly whether the wargs would have started feasting on their extremities before they had even realised they were under attack.
"Orcs, mounted on wargs, approach from the north! Hurry – warn the others!" she cried, before galloping towards the advancing enemy without even waiting for the humans to respond.
She'd spotted the orcs early, had given the humans ample warning. Now she had the advantage. While the wargs had probably picked up Bill's scent, it was unlikely that their orc riders had spotted her. If she could inflict some early damage, maybe she could win the humans some extra time, help lesson their inevitable casualties.
She steered Bill along the eastern edge of a spur she had observed from her previous position along the rocky ridge. Hidden from view, she circled the pack of wargs before emerging at their rear. Smirking at her own cleverness, she pulled her bow from her back, notched an arrow and sent it flying into the nearest orc's head. He immediately slumped forward, his warg mount continuing in ignorance of his rider's fate. The next shot hit the warg in the base of his skull, and both he and his already deceased master thudded limply to the floor. Nelwen prepared her bow again, once more silently dispatching the rider before shooting the warg. Each shot was clean, each shot immediately felled its target, and the pack rode on without noticing that its numbers lessened as the elf soundlessly picked them off one-by one.
By the time the humans arrived, riding forward in a wall of spears and fluttering green banners, Nelwen had already diminished the orc horde by a third. Nel smirked with satisfaction; what need had she for the riders of Rohan when she had her bow and the mighty Bill.