Chapter Five: Warnings
The swish and thump of bolts thudding into their straw-stuffed targets suffused the autumn evening. Centuries of boots and bodies and wagon wheels had worn a bare ring beneath the trees, and here many of the newest crop of wardens gathered before day's end to tussle with their comrades or lounge at the lists, honing their gossip more than their aim.
In the few days since their arrival, Elrohir had swiftly sussed out this little spot, the cadence and rhythm of a barracks summoning him like a compass needle to true north. Without his noble arms, dressed in traveler's garb, he might have passed for one of Gildor's wandering knights or a courier—especially with Elladan off renewing his acquaintance with familiars in the city—or so the greenlings addressed him. He saw no need to disabuse them of their assumption.
This evening found him perched on a discarded pile of gambesons, idling away the last of the daylight. But only ever watching. Though invitation and challenge alike had been issued, he, partially out of seemly modesty and mostly out of unseemly fear that someone would recognize him, had always refrained. The manner of his arrival at the borders had made the rounds. Though he preferred notoriety for brass cheek than other things, he kept his head down. Better to observe from afar, untroubled and unremarked.
Despite the best efforts of those who would provoke him.
"Back again, randir? Will you take up a blade this eve? Or loiter on the sidelines as usual?"
Elrohir waited until the archers broke to collect their cluster of grey- or white-fletched arrows before raising his eyes to the tip of the waster wagging before his nose and the miscreant who wielded it. "Oh, let a weary traveler enjoy his rest."
"So you enjoy watching others toil rather than toil yourself, is that it?"
"The better to appreciate the skill of Lórien's finest."
"Flatterer. That beautiful piece hanging off your belt is no woodcutter's dagger."
The young guardian, the selfsame who had so provoked his officer's ire the night of their arrival, flashed Elrohir an appealing grin. Truth be told, it was not the only appealing quality he possessed. Out from under his officer's eye, he'd proved a merry-and most persistent—companion to Elrohir's evenings. Every evening he had offered his challenge, and with each issuance Elrohir demurred with eroding resolve.
"If you craved peace, I would think you more inclined to the lodges where the fire is warm, the ale plentiful, and the bunks, for the most part, free of nits," the young man continued. "Yet afternoon and evening, you are here. Watching."
"Perhaps I find the routine of a barracks soothing."
"Perhaps it is not only the swordplay you admire."
Elrohir, brought up short with his measure so summarily taken, laughed outright. "What's your name, my bold gallant?"
"Calen."
How fitting. Elrohir might have pressed for more than a good tease had the young man not been so obviously callow.
"Well met, Calen." Elrohir offered his hand. "I am called to task for my intrusion."
"It's no intrusion. Truth be told, another face is always welcome. But you have not answered my challenge. Nor told me your name by the way."
Elrohir considered.
Somewhere back in the trees, a horn winded, summoning the hungry and weary to supper. The evening, tempered by the Lady's influence, was as fine as late autumn could be. Those still lingering were shoveling up their gear and making for the well-marked trail towards the mess hall. For the first time in a long while, Elrohir felt the old and eager thrill of competition in his blood.
"If you insist. A bout I will give you. And my name, perhaps that, too."
He pulled on a grass-stained gambeson from the pile, bound his hair back with a leather thong. He gave the waster Calen handed him an experimental swing, letting its balance tip it vertical until it dipped in an easy arc over the back of his hand.
Calen was eyeing him speculatively.
They paced to the center of the ring, bowed, and on a signal only they two heard, lunged together. Elrohir had not tested his mettle in the sparring ring in months, reserving strategy and strength for the battlefield. In Mirkwood they had been all business. The Wood-Elves, moreover, would have balked feigning battle with honored guests in their halls, and though Elladan and he frequently trained together, they knew one another's minds and motions too well.
Calen was no shrinking violet, if not a man tested. He pressed forward with alacrity and confidence, his footwork keener than his precision. They gave ground and took it, pursuing and retreating. Dust, kicked up from the ring, settled on their boots and sleeves. The gloaming crept out from under the trees, and the growing shadows gave the advantage to his fully elven opponent.
Elrohir pressed forward, his blows falling more heavily, with greater acuity. The blood surged in his veins. The clang of steel. The rapid respiration and panting breath. His mind distilled down to the flex of his arm and shoulders, his entire body humming at the command of steel, as he forced his opponent back and back and back.
The shadowy figure he fought stumbled under the assault, his strokes growing wild, swatting flies while Elrohir pressed his advantage. Only once did a wide blow slip past Elrohir's guard and catch him high in the flank. He barely noticed. Forcing the tip of his opponent's waster down, he drove it into the dirt. His other hand, of its own accord, slid the arsigil from his belt with a peal.
Calen froze.
His sword arm, bent at an awkward angle, released the leather grip of his sword. It fell to the grass with a thud. His now-empty fingers brushed Elrohir's sleeve in a futile attempt to ward off the edge of cold steel against his throat.
The forceless touch plunged Elrohir back to his senses.
This was no Orc under his knife. This was barely a boy. And Elrohir had drawn on him as if—as if what?
Ice quenched the fire in his veins. He stepped back at once. He was shaking all over. With exertion, he told himself, firmly. His blood was up, that was all. How sorely he'd misjudged this. He opened his mouth to offer an apology, but when Calen dabbed at a mark under his chin the knife had left behind, all words stuck in his throat, choked by the thunder of his pulse, the echo of a cold wind.
"Well, say what you will—you are no slouch. For a wanderer."
Stragglers had halted on the path and were gawking openly. Too late Elrohir recalled his ancient lessons and how those descended from the Teleri might take a Noldorin knight drawing steel on one of their own. More painful still was the admiration in Calen's eyes.
"You should have let me be." Elrohir snapped his blade into its sheath and pulled off the gambeson."I told you to leave me be."
Calen made to reply; instead, he pulled himself up smartly to attention. Elrohir, following his gaze, met the outraged stare of the Silgol striding through the dusk towards them, his cloak a pale banner snapping at his heels.
Elrohir shut his eyes, willing the shadows to swallow him. The last witness he needed to his lack of decorum was—
"Live steel is not permitted in the training ring, my lord. As Calen is well aware," Angren addressed Elrohir, but his disapproving eye fell squarely on his soldier. "You are late for the evening meal, ohtar, and the Laimegil does not need you importuning him. Go—lest your belly be as empty as your head."
Calen decamped like a deer freed from the hound's mouth. Not that Elrohir blamed him. His egregious, if accidental, breach of conduct—to say nothing of his intentional omission—would have been enough to warrant desertion. But such stinging disapproval from an officer cut of Angren's cloth would have buckled him at the knees too had he been as green and eager to please.
As it was, still feeling his knife against Calen's throat, he felt his knees quiver at the look Angren laid on him.
"I think it would be best for you to hold to your own comrades in future, my lord. These boys need to apply themselves to their training. I would not have them unduly influenced by your…reputation."
Elrohir couldn't muster the strength to explain he had no such fellowship. Nor did he ask how Angren had learned of his epessë: the mere sound of it had drained him of protest, of the desire to know. The distance between shame and guilt had whittled down to nothing within him, Angren's dismissal one more mark of his failings, of which there seemed to be no shortage lately. At least Turin Turambar had managed to find a realm where none knew him.
"It was not my intent to infringe, Silgol. I assure you it won't happen again."
Back straight, shoulders squared off, he strode out of the glade with as much dignity as he could muster, the rags of his short-lived peace trailing behind him.
He made for the neglected trails, half-reclaimed by the wood. He was not fit for company. Too long in the Wild.
The light failed early beneath the mellyrn, cloaked in their majesty of silver leaves, and the air held a wintry bite he had not noted til now. He drew the edges of his cloak tighter about him. By dawn tomorrow, word would have got round the barracks: the Greensword, the Redhorn hero, had returned. And with it would come the resurrection of the scandal, the rumors, the laurels. Those too young to recall it—like Calen—would hunger for the war story, reveling in a fantasy of desired glory. While the naysayers would flourish its missteps and failures of leadership as yet more proof against Noldorin intercession in Silvan affairs, more reason to hold themselves aloof from a world they were already leaving behind.
All for a night he remembered nothing of save weariness beyond fear or relief and a thousand unanswered questions.
His idyll was over.
With Elladan away, he could take horse at first light and be well down the south road ere any missed him. While he did not relish that picture of himself—slinking away—what else was there to do?
As if to abet his choice, the trees on either side of him thinned and fell back, and he found himself emerging unexpectedly upon a broad sward, the verge of the high road. The rising moon sat on his right shoulder now when the opposite had been true when he'd set out. How had he gotten turned around? He had walked in these woods since childhood. He was surer of finding his way in their midst than a river downhill.
Unless something, unbeknownst and unseen to him, had chosen his course for him.
A wry and rueful smile twitched a corner of his mouth. The only concession he would give the Lady for her meddling. The ways in and out of the wood were hers, like Melian's Girdle about Doriath. None passed without her knowledge, much less one of her own blood.
The high road ran east to west from Dimrill Dale to the fosse that bounded Caras Galadhon. Straight and level as a Dwarf-road though unpaved. The oaks upon either side of it had been there before its making. No woodcutter's axe had ever touched them, yet they only overshadowed the road. No root buckled its smoothness; no leaf or fallen branch scarred its moonlit skin.
Wind stirred in the oaks' branches though no breath or rumor of it reached their foot. The trees whispered to one another, passing along such news and doings of the forest within their purview. But he had been too long away, and whatever messages they murmured to one another were not meant for his ears. He sensed only a vague unease that might as easily have been his own indecision.
The wind gusted fitfully, rattling the mellyrn leaves like sabres. An unseasonable fog crept out of the hollows and over the Silverlode's banks in the distance. His chest tightened, clotted with warm breath. Pain flared through his head, sparking lightning against the night.
No. Not here. Please, but the more he wished it away, the more his heart climbed up his throat. He stood rooted on the path. Moveless. Voiceless. His benumbed fingers resisted his urging to close about his knife despite the futility of a weapon. He couldn't fight an enemy that wasn't there.
The rider flew out of the dark like an oncoming storm.
Hooves beat against flat plain and then struck the packed earth of the road. They cleaved the mist in full career, the rider's cloak snapping behind him like the colors raised in the vanguard of an army. The bells on his harness shrilled.
A light like marshlight fell about his hair and horse's hooves. A trick of the fog made the oaks' bare outlines glimmer through their forms. He held the reins in one hand, the other pressed against his side. A feathered shaft protruded between his fingers. As they drew nigh, the rider turned his face towards Elrohir, remote and cold as a winter star.
Life returned to Elrohir's limbs. He flung up his hands against the opprobrium in those eyes. His heel caught on a root, and the earth knocked the breath out of him. Lying where he fell, he pressed his face into the loam and shut his eyes tight.
The hoofbeats raced on towards the fosse, the thunder of their passing diminishing until the pulse in Elrohir's ears blotted it out.
Slowly, he eased himself up. His trousers were damp at the knee, the heels of his hands scratched and muddy from breaking his fall.
The road was blessedly empty.
He was still trembling, but that would pass. His body heeded the call to arms even in the peaceful heart of Lórien. Nothing he wasn't accustomed to and couldn't swiftly remedy with a draught at the lodge before he fetched up his things. He'd been startled by a rider, that was all. Some heedless fool bound for Caras Galadhon, too full of his own importance to give warning.
"A skilled woodsman has a care for where he places his step—lest he tumble off the path," said a familiar voice so close Elrohir flinched anew.
"Impudent pup. I taught you all you know of woodcraft." Ignoring the outstretched hand, he picked himself up and plucked the wood detritus from his legs and sleeves.
The creep of time had touched Aragorn little since last they had laid eyes on one another, save for a glint of silver at his temples, a few new lines across his brow. He was clad in grey and wore his hair, after the fashion of the Woodland folk, long and braided back from his face. Passing him in the road, Elrohir might have mistaken him for a lone guardsman back from his post on the marches. His naked cheeks and chin, more than anything else, suggested a change wrought in him—or the influence of another.
Whatever changes Aragorn observed on his part he, too, left unspoken.
He fished a rucksack out of the bracken and slung it over his shoulder, adjusting the unstrung bow across his broad back and the sword of Narsil at his hip. A much-handled leather wallet hung on his belt beside it: a gift Elrohir had given him at his coming of age, in honor of those carried by the Dúnedain. Not all of the teachings and memory of his youth, at least, had been supplanted.
Absurdly heartened by the sight and the company, Elrohir fell in beside him as they ambled in the direction of the lodge.
"My friends told me quite a tale on my way hither," Aragorn said. "Two wild-eyed and unkempt ruffians attempted to breach the borders some nights' past. One fellow, in particular, gave the commander such cheek, he—"
"Back-fence talk! Shame on you, Aragorn. Paying heed to such bird-chatter. 'Wild-eyed and unkempt,' indeed."
Aragorn's chuckle flashed in the gloom. "I thought to meet you and Elladan at the lodges by now. It's a little early to be stumbling home."
"An unfortunate occurrence if one wishes to avoid a trampling. That rider had no care whatsoever for others on the path. Not even a warning."
"'Rider?'"
"You must have seen him."
"I came on ahead of the changing watch. I have seen no other but you." Aragorn shook his head. "A horse can scarcely be had for love or money these days, save by the Lady's couriers."
Cold sank into Elrohir's stomach like an iron stone. Aragorn was watching him curiously. He'd held silent a beat too long. "I asked after you, but Gildor's folk could tell me little. Where have you been keeping yourself?"
"I…had some business to attend that took me north."
His caginess so reflected Elrohir's own hesitation over the unseen rider, Elrohir did not press for more.
They strolled for a while in an air of mutual conspiracy, speaking of small things, their separate doings in the wide world. Elrohir found himself talking more than he had in the last sennight (save of what he had witnessed on the path and the argument with Elladan that had brought them to Lórien in the first place). If Aragorn surmised the silences between his words, he did not pry. Experience and travel had given him his own measure of wisdom. Like Gildor, he knew when to let well enough alone. And of all who dwelt here, he was the only one for whom the Redhorn was a name of ill-omen only, relegated to blurry history rather than the rawness of a personal past.
The light of the lodges flickered between the trees when Aragorn asked him the question he'd been anticipating and dreading. "I am gladder than I can say to find you and Elladan here. I have missed you. How long do you intend to stay?"
Aragorn, ever forthright and all unknowing, had set his finger on a sore spot. After all, without Elrohir's insistence, they might have kept his company the sooner and oftener.
"I was given to understand you had passed your time well enough in other company," Elrohir said, his tone sharper than he'd meant. "Could it be your hero has lost his luster at last?"
"I know you do not approve of him, Elrohir, but jealousy does not become you."
"It is not for me to approve or disapprove of your actions. You are a man grown now and must answer for your own choices. But when your ventures bring you within sight of Dol Guldur, it is not jealousy that moves me to question the company you keep."
"Ah, so you know of that. I should have guessed Legolas would not be able to keep our secret long from you."
"I would rather it had not been secret at all."
You, fool, Elrohir reproached himself. Aragorn had not even set down his bags and already Elrohir was souring their reunion with judgement and rebuke.
A faint jingle of harness forestalled the contrition on his lips.
The changing watch had come up, unheeded, behind. No boisterous talk or singing accompanied the relieved. To a man they made their way up the road as if to battle. One of the wardens led a chestnut horse at a trot. Tied to the light harness of a Silvan courier was a series of small, silver bells, tinkling and chiming. The horse's reins were wrapped around the pommel, and in the pale light of an upheld lamp, its flanks shone bloody.
Aragorn hailed one of the men as they drew up alongside. "Ithildor. What's amiss?"
The rear-guard slowed his pace alongside them. "Ill, I fear, Dúnadan. We have been expecting news from the Stair. Rocheryn was due back before the dark moon. Now his horse has returned without him."
Language Notes
randir (Sindarin) - wanderer
Source: Parf Edhellen: an elvish dictionary, .com
arsigil (Sindarin) - "ar" (noble" + "sigil" (knife, weapon) - a long knife wielded by a knight and often paired with the "megil," the sword
Source: Elvish comes from Parf Edhellen; definition is personal head canon