Chapter 3: A Shadow on Lórien
The Beorning's tolls at the Old Ford deprived them of their last coin and Elrohir of his last hope, however faint, that Elladan might alter their course.
As they picked their way along the half-ruined causeway south of the ford, Laer spent itself in a blaze of scorching days. All too soon, they woke to frost bending the blowsy irises into the marsh, which stretched for leagues on either side. Bloom and water had covered the old bones and scars of battle though its echoes remained: a certain melancholy in the song of rush and pool, an attitude of grief in the bittern who thrust her beak toward the sky and swayed among the reeds.
Few, save the Elves, now remembered those who had met their end here. Isildur and his sons. The first Elves who, daunted by the mountains, huddled by the river for safety and did not dare far in the dark.
Perhaps that was the true gift of Men, Elrohir reflected when long hours in the saddle chafed. They, like the land, could forget.
A fortnight into their journey, a golden haze emerged on their horizon, and the knot in Elrohir's stomach tightened another notch. To make matters worse, a wrack of black cloud blew out of the east. Before mid-morning, the storm overtook them, unleashing a downpour that had them scrambling to bundle together their gear and do up the straps on their steeds with chilled fingers.
This side of the mountains saw little rain at any time of year, and this squall seemed an omen on their errand. But Elladan forged ahead, his determination at a feverish pitch Elrohir was quite unable to quell.
By the time they reached the outliers of the Golden Wood at dusk, hardly marked save in the grey light deepening its hues, even Elrohir wanted nothing more than a roof overhead in the rugged telain where the marchwardens had their lodgings, so long as it was out of the miserable wet.
The drum of rain on their hoods softened under the canopy, but a silence almost as thick and troubling enveloped them in its wake. Elrohir kept his eyes cast upward, searching amidst the branches for a movement that was not a gust of leaves and straining his ears for a bird trill that would give away the sentinels, but the pattering rain and the twilight thwarted his senses.
A mile past the woodland fringe, Elladan dismounted and stretched his limbs with a groan. "Surely we should have been met by now?"
After the openness of the plains, his voice rang in the vernal quiet.
Somewhere in the depths of the woods, not very far off, a nightingale trilled.
Elrohir remained in the saddle. He, too, was taken aback by the lack of watch. Lórien's defenders guarded the realm they served as jealously as Dwarves their jewels, doubly so for the watch of the north fences whose provenance stretched back to the days of Lenwë's honor guard, triply so when captained by a man whose service record sprang from the killing-fields of the Dagorlad and whose shortcomings, while various, had only once extended to dereliction.
"Perhaps the sentries sleep at their posts," Elrohir said.
"No," replied a voice, close to his ear, the Sindarin words laden with the brogue of the riverlands. "We do not."
Shadows of leaves parted and swirled without wind. From all sides emerged Lórien's warriors, the creak of bowstrings under tension louder than their stalking tread. That call had been no nightingale, but a signal.
With an effort, Elrohir uncurled his hands from his sword hilt and spread them wide, palms out. "Greetings, Galadhil."
"We have long been aware of you—since you struck the Dwarf-road."
Almost to a man, they were hooded and clad in leather and grey wool, the same color as the tree stems, invisible unless they moved suddenly or spoke. But Elrohir made out their bows and the glints of their arrows well enough.
"Then it is your hospitality and not your vigilance which is lacking." Elrohir addressed himself to the one who had spoken. Unlike his fellows, he was garbed in a hauberk beneath a cloak of pale cream: only the Silgyl of the city garrison breathed such polish and frivolous panoply. "Is this the manner in which the fabled realm of Lórien greets its guests, now? Things have changed since last I walked in this wood."
"Things have changed, indeed," the white-cloak agreed, clasping the hilt of his sword. "You trespass, strangers. Name yourselves and your purpose."
Never before had their identities been challenged. Certainly not by the men of the north marches, many of whom they had come up with in their youth. They had hardly expected such an unfriendly welcome despite their years away.
"You can see for yourselves we are no Orcs." Elrohir's patience for diplomacy, already dangerously stretched, was at its limit. "Lower your bows. I will not explain myself at the points of arrows as if I were a common brigand."
"A brigand would speak with more wisdom and less pride." The rainlight dappled across the senior marchwarden's dark hair and eyes, sharpened the edge of his jaw. "You have not answered my question."
"This is intolerable." Elrohir ignored Elladan's grimace and the renewed strains of bowstrings. "We were fostered here. My brother and I are scions of the House of Elrond of Imladris. Lady Celebrían, our mother, is the daughter of those whom you serve."
A slight pause at the name, as always. Hers, at least, was known to them.
But no familiar face stood forth among the ranks. The archers' hands did not waver on their bowstrings.
Time had a way of retreating in the Golden Wood. A thousand years might pass outside, but within, the land was much as it had ever been. As if the stormy resentments of Elrohir's youth—for what fresh blade, descendant of heroes and Maia, all puffed up with newfound pride, would willingly forego studying blade craft under Glorfindel of Gondolin to dig jakes and tend a country rustic's laundry—lingered under the eaves, and the wardens sensed it.
The white-cloak ran an eye over their dirty leathers and unshaven faces (a badge of their Edain heritage), the barrel-chested horses they had acquired in Bree. "I serve Lothlórien of which the Lord and Lady are but stewards. Neither they nor the titles of distant lords have power over the marches or the wardens' justice. Have you a token of your house? Some emblem to strengthen your claim?"
"We would not give the enemy the advantage of a ransom," Elrohir ground out. "Living or dead."
"You stole across our picket lines, unannounced and unknown. You cannot with satisfaction explain your presence nor prove your identity. I have done much simply in exchanging speech with you for it has been left to our discretion to deal with those who cross the borders without leave. Whatever claims of kinship they feign."
I might have shot you and spared myself further pains.
Elrohir did not trust himself to speak. He was unprepared for the sting of it. It was one thing to hold aloof from a place irreconcilable circumstances had made insupportable—to punish with absence the way one might revenge oneself on a faithless beloved—another to find yourself eclipsed.
Elladan laid a steadying hand on Elrohir's arm. "I apologize for my brother's manner. We have been long on the road, and his temper has not improved with this weather. If one of your men would fetch your captain. Haldir is well-known to us and can vouch for us."
Privately, Elrohir thought Haldir himself might very well have authored this poor jest for his own amusement, not for the first time. But seldom had it gone on so long nor had they ever been stopped by drawn weapons.
"Of old such 'difficulties' may have been thus leniently addressed." The white-cloak squared his shoulders and lifted his chin. "But I am tasked with the discipline of the borders and the execution of its Law now. You will deal with me."
Had the Galadhil's barbs not lingered so close to his person and had he not been so riled, Elrohir might have laughed aloud. The petty professional rivalries between the white-cloaks and the grey were not unfamiliar to him, but he was too wet and tired to entertain them.
"Look, my good warden," Elrohir said with an attempt at equanimity. "Send one of your errand boys to drag his head out of whatever jug or lap it's in and fetch him here at once."
Elladan's brow had furrowed. "Nothing ill has befallen him, I hope? We had news not a month past he had crossed the River in a friend's company."
"He's gone to the Eyrie," The braids of a tyro were woven into the speaker's hair, and though he held his bow drawn, it was angled towards the ground, the expression on his face riding the line between strained indignation and uncertain pity. "He's —"
"Silence, ohtar," barked the white-cloak, "You speak out of turn and of things beyond your understanding."
A chill breathed against Elrohir's heart. Only impending disaster would have called Haldir forth so soon after returning to his borders. A remote outpost, the Eyrie, if he remembered aright: perched on the crest of the Dimrill Stair. The Elves had learned through their own misfortune that delay and crossed signals proved a worse enemy than foul weather high on the mountain.
"Was there trouble?"
But at his officer's rebuke, the scout cast his eyes down.
The white-cloak gestured to the men on either side of him. "You will disarm and dismount. My men will escort you to the guardhouse until I decide what shall be done with you."
The guardhouse. The abode of shirkers and drunks. All the comforts of a slop bucket and a bit of floor to lie on, if they were fortunate. And who knew how soon the white-cloak in his graciousness would concede to dispatch a message to Caras Galadhon and their grandsire? Not before the roads dried and the rivers receded. Or longer.
The scout, his face schooled into a mask of dispassion, reached for the bridle of the dray. Elrohir wrestled against the urge to cuff him aside and bolt for the road.
Back in the trees, a blaze of silver light sprang up and slashed through the rain.
"Don't you men have better sense than to come out of this weather?" called a woman's voice though hoarser than woman's wont and strangely accented. No riverland drawl, this.
Elrohir squinted against the glare as a silhouette cleared a fallen log and crossed the glade in a dozen strides. Unlike the wardens in their uniform greys she was garbed in hunting leathers worn to a patina the color of aged leaves.
The woman lifted a lamp of Fëanorian craft. In its eerie, flameless glow, she examined Elrohir's face then Elladan's, but her gaze was kind. "What a pair of marauders you have waylaid, Angren."
A thread of steel underlaid the humor in her words, uttered in a clipped speech more familiar to Imladris' vales than Lórien's woods. An oak leaf wrought of silver clasped the cloak at her throat and a sword in a plain black scabbard hung from her hip: an oddity in Lórien where stealth and concealment fostered a reliance on the wood's bounty. A woodsman might carry a dagger, but a sword was a warrior's weapon. A knight's.
Far from clapping her in irons or giving her the sharp edge of his tongue, the white-cloak, Angren, stood even straighter, endangering his spine. His expression strained for courtesy. "With all due respect, this is Lórien's business. We need no assistance from the Wandering Company."
"Yet you need a full complement to apprehend two. And two of our own kindred." She tsked as if reproving a child before making obeisance first to Elrohir then Elladan. "Forgive this lot their lack of social graces, my lords. With nothing better than root and branch to instruct them, a crow is a crow, never mind its raven feathers."
"Though, admittedly, we look more ruffian than raven," Elladan quipped with a laugh of relief.
Elrohir swung off his horse and returned her salute. "I have not been greeted with the ancient courtesies in many a year. I do not believe we have had the honor of your acquaintance, mistress."
"Ah, but I recognize you: i roquen bronwe athan harthad." The High Speech rolled off her tongue with a native's unstudied ease. "The knight of courage beyond hope. Lai—"
"I do not claim such a title." The blood drained out of Elrohir's face at the sound of that name on her lips, but he mustered his graces. "Elrohir is my name. This is my brother, Elladan."
She was rather more formidable up close than her assurances would suggest. She looked them over from crown to boots, unblinking. A cloudy glass of a woman: when caught at the right angle, something else would glimmer through as if leather and wool and woman-shape were no more than a veil she shrugged on as a man might put on a coat.
"There is no enchantment on them, no lie in their eyes," she said as if declaring a doom. "I will vouch for these two in their captain's absence: I recognize such names and arms as they bear. These are Lord Elrond Peredhil's blood. If my word does not satisfy, you may ask the same of Gildor Inglorion, kin to their granddame and well-acquainted with Imladris."
Then she nudged Elrohir's shoulder, and the solemnity left her. "Elrohir then. Come! The Wandering Company and the House of Finarfin shall play your host tonight! We are eager for fresh tales and new faces, so if you will oblige us with a song for your supper, we will feed you until you burst. How does that sound?"
"Lead on, good lady!" Elladan cheered.
Many of the Galadhil had loosened their draws at the woman's pronouncement, but Angren stood rooted on the path like an oak, forcing their rescuer to either step into the mud or go through him.
Instead, she lowered the shade of her lamp, lessening its glare. "I appreciate your attention to duty, sir. But when we treat allies as if they were enemies, little wonder Lórien finds itself alone and outmatched."
Angren's jaw worked in a mulish circle, nostrils flared. "It's a rather ill-favored night for wandering in the rain."
She nodded and stepped around him as if he were no more than a sapling.
Not daring to meet any eyes, Elrohir and Elladan surrendered their reins, fetched up their packs, and hastened in her wake, deeper into the woods.
Footnotes
Laer (Sindarin) - Summer
Source: Parf Edhellen: an elvish dictionary, .com
silgyl (Sindarin, plural, non-canon) - "white-cloaks," my title for the armed guards of the Lord and Lady who wore silver hauberks and white cloaks
Source: Parf Edhellen: an elvish dictionary, .com / Fellowship of the Ring: Lothlorien
ohtar (Sindarin) - soldier, below the rank of roquen, knight.
Source: Unfinished Tales
i roquen bronwe athan harthad (Old Noldorin) - The knight of courage beyond hope
Source: Parf Edhellen: an elvish dictionary, .com