Author's Notes: Dear Gandal007, I hope this chapter (and the next) reward your patience. :)

Chapter 9: The Eyrie

"There. At last."

Elrohir lifted his head, squinting the length of Angren's arm. The wind whipped large flakes against his cheeks and into his hood. The wind had picked up since they crested the Stair.

Before them stretched a phalanx of dark fir, their trunks a seawall pushing against the white swells of a snowfield beyond them. The timberline sheered off without any trace of scrub to soften the blow. Its wind-scoured exposure filled Elrohir with a low dread, and he kept his eyes on the trees to anchor him. Nothing moved in the fast-ailing light save their straggling line. Not far behind them the Stair falls roared on in glassy tumult.

"I see nothing but pine."

"What we seek lies not on the edge but within."

At the sight the company gave a desultory cheer and quickened their pace.

Angren had bowed in the end to Peredhel obstinacy—scruples over leaving Elrohir to fend for himself or misgiving over returning without him overmastered reluctance. Though he sent back the greater part of the complement to Lórien with Rocheryn's body, a handful of doughty fellows, including Calen, had dared the Stair at nightfall. Between the mountain's unpredictable shiftings and diminishing visibility, twice, they nearly blundered off a precipice, and Elrohir was not the only one heartened by the bulwark against the wind.

As they passed into resiny dimness, a tingle rippled from Elrohir's scalp to the tail of his spine. No path ran through the thicket. No bootprints dunned the snowline or stirred the thick carpet of needles under the trees, but his people were here. His grandmother's hand lay in the trees; only her power could cull such height and strength from the mountain's parched soil. As they advanced though, a winding track appeared before them, the trees angling this way and that to allow their passage.

The longer they walked, unanswered and unmet, the heavier the weight settled on Elrohir's shoulders like snow drift, and the silence dragged at his nerves, already overstrung after the dale. Was that a branch dipping in the wind, or a figure slinking between footholds? That fall of snow, there—drifted from its perch or dislodged? He wished someone would call out. Haldir's men might prove quicker off the mark than their fellows on the borders, and only the bloody aftermath would reveal the err.

Deeper, though, than the concern of finding himself on the ends of allies' arrows (again) ran another, unspoken fear: the keener for remaining unacknowledged.

He and Haldir had not parted friends.

Though time and absence had given him a more even perspective of their last encounter, and Elrohir was not so obstinate he could not acknowledge he'd behaved badly—no matter the validity of his reasons or how in thrall to his emotions he'd been then—the gulf remained unbridged between them. Even Aragorn's paper in his surcoat, that offering with its unbroken seal, might not be enough to smooth a fraught course of four hundred years.

And if Haldir turned him away…

Calen touched his arm. "Hsst. What's that?"

First on one side, then the other, hithlain ropes knotted the boughs. Their lengths shimmered faintly, drawn taut by weights, at first only distinguishable by the hobnailed boots hanging limp against the trunks. One after another, after another…all Orcs. All dead. Gibbeted like the catch on a butcher bird's thorns. Some of them freshly so. Others so husked by the dry, thin air, they seemed more akin to bark and branch than any formerly living thing. As the stray current rocked them, they clattered and tinkled like grisly chimes.

Those deemed wise among the Eldar were wont to say that in foregoing the Great Journey, their rustic cousins had foregone, too, the wisdom they might have learned at the Valar's feet. But here, too, was wisdom of a sort. Even the wise of Imladris adorned their lintels with rushlights and evergreen during the long night of midwinter.

"Those are charms. To keep out the dark," he answered.

The tall warden beside him, deep in his hood, gave a grim chuckle.

Beyond this eerie honor guard a glade opened. A mallorn of great breadth crowned its center, incongruous among all the conifers. Unlike its rough and tumble brethren on the marches, the talan cradled high in its branches had walls and a thatched roof from which a thread of smoke curled.

As they approached, a lamp shutter flew up with a clang. "Halt and be recognized!"

Angren replied, took a dark lantern from under his cloak, and flashed it twice.

A moment later, a rope ladder tumbled down to the snow.

The tall warden braced a foot against the bottom rung to steady it. Elrohir stood aside for Angren first. As he ascended in his turn, the lamplight shone straight down into the warden's hood, and the thanks on Elrohir's lips faltered.

Rammas offered him a slight nod, but with the others shivering impatiently behind him, there was no time for questions. Elrohir hoisted himself up into the boughs.

The sentry wrenched open a battered door. Elrohir stooped to keep his head out of the thatch as he stepped into the scent of woodsmoke and men close-quartered.

Lórien's finest, lolling on the seasoned planks or rough bunks, lived on the fringes far from the eyes of their superiors. Tunic buttons were unfastened. Hair had been attended to in no particular fashion. Lean rations had carved their cheeks and the hollows of their eyes; yet the musical voices and raucous laughter, concentrated about a circle of benches, warmed the air far more than the dull heat of the brazier at its center. Angren's polish drew a few glances, a scattering of hails.

One of their fellows—an unfamiliar, rawboned man with eagle feathers woven in his hair in the old style—was prowling between the benches, a hawkish glitter in his eye as he surveyed the gathering about him, some with their faces buried in their sleeves, their shoulders quaking with suppressed mirth. He nudged one of them roughly with the toe of his boot.

"What was that, Doronil?" he barked. "Brass cheek! Another word and I'll hang you out there with our guests. How fortunate for you idle, sloppy lot, you have someone merciful and tolerant to command you. "

Elrohir cleared his throat.

A pair of dice vanished, and the quick flicker of all eyes in his direction and hands to weapons betrayed their alertness despite their seeming ease.

The company jester rounded on him. "Well, damn my eyes! Look what the East Wind blew in! Who and what in the name of the nine iron hells are you? What's the matter? Wolf eat your tongue? Speak up, sir!"

"That'll do, Taereth. Captain would have your ears for making mock of him." The macildur still possessed that ability instinctive in adjutants of making herself heard without raising her voice. She waved them in. "Come in out of the wind, lads, and wedge that curséd door shut will you? It's cold enough in here."

Elrohir found himself instinctually interlacing his thumbs in the small of his back and making sure he didn't lock his knees as Linwen approached. Though head and shoulders shorter than he, she never failed to loom large in mind and memory.

"Well, this is a chance meeting. Our brother, home from the wild at last."

Chastened, Taereth slipped in beside his fellows and eyed Elrohir. Now out of his rôle and his comrades' attention, he studied Elrohir from crown to heels with a rather insolent sweep. Around his neck, he wore a thong strung with leaves. Leathery, wind-dried leaves. "Don't suppose you're our relief?"

"I'm afraid not."

The man beside Taereth nudged him and muttered something in the Silvan brogue that made him laugh.

Warmth crept up the back of Elrohir's neck. To them, with his well-stitched, if threadbare, clothing and mithril blade, he was another Noldor swell playing at warrior until the lackluster provender and too many cold, clammy dawns sent him scurrying back to comfort.

Let them think so. He would not burden them with his presence longer than necessary.

Linwen drew him to one side. "It must be no small thing that brings you, of all men, to this lonely corner of the world, roquen."

Elrohir did not answer her unspoken question at once.

Even had Linwen not been deep in her commanding officer's councils, the reason for Elrohir's long absence and lack of news would hardly have escaped her notice. In the aftermath of the Redhorn, without a word spoken, battle lines were quietly drawn, friends and allies divvied. Her face disclosed nothing of what Haldir might have confided behind closed doors nor her thoughts on the matter. But loyalty was purchased with a weighty coin on the marches, and once earned, proved indelible as mallorn roots, particularly in those who had walked the bounds as long as Linwen had. Haldir, with his years of service and his scars and his willingness to go first, had earned his men's allegiance long ago.

Nor was Elrohir keen on divulging his purpose within range of a dozen curious soldiers who curated gossip like marauders their ill-gotten gold.

He scanned the platform for another familiar figure who did not materialize. "This soldier desires a word with the captain. If he'll allow it."

"Your words at your last parting seemed plain enough to me."

He winced. "It is a matter of importance. Regarding a…mutual and troublesome comrade of ours."

Understanding lit her face. "I'll tell him. When he returns. Until then, as I said, you are welcome here. Take your ease. Eat. We have little, but we have enough to share."

The others had already gathered about the pot bubbling over the brazier. Their arrival had interrupted the evening meal, apparently. Even Angren managed to summon a guarded smile, out of place on his grim countenance, as he exchanged greetings and news with the patrol.

Once Elrohir would have been first among the Galadhil, elbowing for a joint of meat, exchanging news and ribbings with the rest of the patrol, but the Silvan tongue no longer sat easy in his mouth.

The mug he took outside with him breathed steam across his face. Better to stand in the cold with a semblance of purpose than idle about the fire.

He was not the only one treading the deck.

Rammas had taken up the sentry's post. Outsiders, both of them, it seemed, though the Galadhil of the outpost had treated her with a careful, playful deference.

"Well met again, lady. I thought you loved the look of mallorn trees. Surely, the delight in giving Angren a fit of apoplexy was hardly worth the climb."

Her lips lifted, but her gaze remained outward. "A season of idleness would drive me to distraction. I thought I might make myself more useful here."

Snow hissed and surged across the planks at their feet. The pines already bore a heavy coating on their branches, their carrion burden veiled.

Elrohir joined her beneath the lamp which put out a dull heat that only sharpened the cold. "You are troubled."

"I like not the look of this storm, for one thing."

"Caradhras has no love of Elves or Men."

"Rocheryn was a good man," she said. "I hope the Dúnadan, wherever he is, is faring better."

At her words, the reawakened fear swirled round inside him like a dark sea without shore or beacon. Stay where your feet are.

"So do I." The broth scalded his tongue and the back of his throat, but it warmed him all the way down to his wet, frozen toes.

Rammas straightened and drew the shutter down on the lamp, dimming its glare. She paced to the outer margins of the platform, her boots skating the edge.

"What is it?"

His eyes were not as keen as his elvish forebears, and he did not see what had caught her attention at first.

Though settled in the thick of the mallorn's boughs, the platform still raised them high enough to peer over the heads of the pines to the trough beyond. Distance and snow rendered the land depthless and indistinct. Only a downward slope brought the figure into focus at last, a wraith of grey on white.

Little more than a trick of weather or geography—or stranger things, this high on the mountain. Elrohir recalled firsthand accounts from soldiers not easily given over to fancy: Belegorn had left his tent, summoned, as he thought, by a comrade calling his name only to find the dark waiting beyond the watch lamps. Emlin had heard voices and laughter among the stones, but no merrymakers. Even Celebrían admitted she'd glimpsed a specter wrought of fog and brume with face and form solid enough to count the buttons on their coat. Not for nothing had Caradhras earned its ill-fame.

Yet something in the dogged persistence of this vision gave it flesh-and-blood. The figure lurched through calf-deep snow, favoring his right leg, as if injured or wearied to exhaustion. Without tree cover to quell it, the gale tore across the snowfield, buffeting him mercilessly and flattening his cloak tight as a shroud about him. He'd almost reached the first outliers of the grove when three gangrel shapes dropped from the crags away to their right. Bodies slung low to the chase, moving as often on their hands, they scooped the ground away, closing fast. Even from here, the coal fire glow of their eyes burned.

Rammas hissed. "Yrch."

If the figure was aware of his pursuers, he did not waste time gauging their progress but muscled forward under the treeline and out of sight.

At Rammas' warning call bows of yew and ash sprang into willing hands. Barrels of white-fletched arrows thumped on the floorboards, none packed too tightly. The Galadhil spread out along the deck, finding the gaps among the boughs.

Snow was gathering in drifts on the platform. The outermost pines had vanished, the innermost little more than spiked shadows. Despite eyes watering and nose burning with cold, Elrohir waited for movement that was not wind or branch or snow.

"Any sign?"

"Nothing."

Linwen's sharp eyes spotted them first. "There!"

Fifty paces away, the figure broke into the glade, his pursuers harrying his heels. Knives like black thorns bristled in their midst. Was that the wind? Or a howl of challenge? The snow, falling thick as a curtain now, muffled everything.

Ten strings groaned in unison. Snow raked into their eyes, bare fingers taut on strings, tracing the arc of arrow flight from tree to dark breast.

"Steady," Linwen called in her clarion tone. "Don't hit him. He won't be pleased, if you do that."

"We're losing the sightline, macildur."

Linwen held up a hand. "Wait."

Forty paces from safety, all trace of injury and weariness dropped as the pursued turned at bay, a silver arc flashing between his hands. One pursuer darted too close and did not rise again, but the others were drawing the noose tight.

She let her hand fall in a lazy arc. "Leithio!"

Ten shafts hissed through the air.

As if he himself had been transfixed, Elrohir lurched forward and stopped, the tips of his boots level with the edge of the platform. His fingertips, clenched tight about his sword hilt, tingled.

The grey-clad figure lay unmoving. One of the arrows had gone astray or one of the enemy's strokes—He bounded up, dusting snow from his shoulders.

Elrohir's breath left him in a rush.

But one of the orcs, a broad fellow in a black tabard, was getting his feet under him too, his death tugged aside by a capricious flutter of wind. Low, crouching, he unsheathed a jagged knife and rooted himself between his quarry and the Eyrie. The wind, sheer against them, was the only sound: a whirring, roaring, delighted thing that rendered everything else soundless as if they were witnessing the pantomime of a fight instead of one that would end in blood and death.

The Orc sprang, rammed his armored shoulder full tilt into his adversary and bowled both of them over again.

A blade of icy wind seared across the planks, fierce enough that more than a few of the Galadhil staggered and flung up their hands to shield their faces from its bite. The mallorn creaked in protest. When they could raise their heads, the snow had obliterated any view of the glade and shut them in.

Rammas, who had been at Elrohir's shoulder, snatched up lantern and sword.

"Where are you going?" Linwen demanded, her face pale against the collar of her coat. "Captain's orders are to stay here."

"Damn his orders."

"The storm's too strong. You might pass within paces of him and still miss him entirely."

Rammas kicked the ladder over the platform's edge.

"I'll go with you," Elrohir said in a voice he scarcely recognized as his own.

He had no desire whatsoever to go down into the dark and snow and taste of old nightmares. But instinct and training had inured him to fear. Protect your comrades, a refrain too deeply ingrained to silence. He was a knight. He would go.

Rammas set her heel on the first rung of the ladder and nearly collided with a wet and bloody figure coming up fast through the hole in the deck. Elrohir half-drew his sword from its sheath, but the figure was elven-lithe and swaddled in grey, his hands empty save for the rungs of the ladder he gathered up in handfuls behind him.

Budging Rammas in the shins, the newcomer straightened, his chest rising and falling rapidly with exertion, but there was a gleam of teeth within the shadows of his hood. Snow was on his shoulders and speckled his cloak and boots with sparks. A knife with a hilt of black bone hung naked from his belt. It had been used.

A wraith, indeed, tumbled bright through Elrohir's mind.

"Little slow off the mark, you lot," said the old, familiar voice with its old, familiar drawl. "What are you standing about for? It's cold out here."

Language Notes

macildur (Quenya) - "sword-servant"
Source: Parf Edhellen; head canon term for "sergeant."

roquen (Quenya) - "Knight"
Source: Unfinished Tales

Leithio (Sindarin) - "loose; release"
Source: Parf Edhellen