Eryn stiffened her back, bringing the dun mountain pony to halt. Glorinn stood, haunches tucked under him, ready to move in any direction, ears flicked back, listening for a word from his rider. She peered through dark hair, like a wild pony's forelock, staring at the smudge in the sky. The two great white dogs a few paces down the trail turned questioning eyes to her. Eryn squinted, wishing for the Elf-sight of her father's companions, but they were long-gone, as was he, and despite the blood of her mother's grandfather, her eyes were the eyes of the children of Men.
She watched the drifting smudge awhile longer, then rode toward it. A mile farther on, the trail wound up out of a wide valley onto a wooded hilltop. Behind her was the fastness of Fangorn, ancient and deep as the sea. Far below she could pick out the thin smoke trails of scattered farms, trees giving way to clearings, the green-misted brown of new fields, the crooked scar of a new road. A black scar where brush had been burned to clear the land. A snow-sprinkle of sheep on a nearby hill. A white blizzard of them on a far hill. One farm she wished to avoid, because a much-needed sheepskin, now rolled at her back, had recently contained a sheep there.
Well, it had been an old ewe, they would have butchered it soon anyway, and she'd left them most of the meat.
The smudge resolved itself into circling specks, and the hoarse calls of ravens, carried on the wind. With them, on tilted wings, drifted a few vultures, the first to spot carrion in any land. She nudged Glorinn forward, into a brisk trot, then a cautious lope.
She halted by the forest edge, dropped Glorinn's reins, commanding him to stay. With Finlos and Ancalinte stalking at her side like great white bears of the north, she made her way slowly into the trees, following the commotion of the ravens. They shouted at her from the trees, flapping nervously from limb to limb, some landing on the ground, then fleeing back into the safety of the trees again. She looked up, sang soft words to them, words in the old tongue her mother had taught her; "It's all right little brothers, I'm not hunting ravens. You have no wolves here to protect you, so I guess I'll have to do." Farther north and west, she'd heard the songs of wolves under the moon...not wargs, not the spawn of the dark land; araf, true wolves. But not for many weeks had she heard them now. They were gone from this settled land, she guessed, like the great bears and the giant eagles she'd only heard of in her mother's songs.
She crept forward, bow in hand, cautious as one of the great, wise black birds. As she had guessed, something lay dead among the rocks and ferns. She could see three brown feathered arrows sticking up from it. Orcs? Wargs? She'd encountered only scattered bands of orcs...hardly big enough to be called bands...fleeing the Rohirrim and the hunters of Gondor. The orcs had fled from her dogs, or been taken down by her own arrows. And these were not black-feathered, crooked-shafted orcish arrows.
Eryn stepped silently to the fallen body, no orc, a beast. A deer lost by a bad hunter?
Her gut twisted in her. A dog! Not as tall as her own great drover's dogs, and lean and lithe, more like to the swift hunting dogs of her father. "What idiot would shoot a dog!" she swore things that would have set an orc on its heels, withdrew the arrows from the body. She started to cast them away, then thought better of it, wiping them off on the leaf litter, placing them in her quiver, alongside her own. She marked their design; plain brown goose feathers, clean straight shaft, with one white stripe below the fletching, as a crest. She bent by the dog again, meaning to sing it songs of praise and passing.
She frowned. Men had bred all manner of strange dogs, with legs short or long, skin wrinkled, ears floppy, coats smooth, or hanging in long soft ropes like her own dogs'...but she had never seen a dog like this one. Its tail was long and smooth and nearly bare, and overly broad at the base. Broad stripes danced across its tawny back from shoulder to tail, the great dark eyes stared sightlessly now, and they and the nose and the pricked ears were like every dog she knew. But the mouth was too wide, too long, with too many teeth in the front. The hocks and wrists were too low, more like to a leaping cat than a running dog. And there was no webbing between the toes to hold a running foot together. She cocked her head, some dim memory stirred...a song her mother had taught her, a song out of the dark starlight before the Firstborn awoke.
She stared at the tail again, and knew suddenly why it seemed out of place on a dog. The tail was like the ones on the little grey tree climbers, the ones with the belly pockets for carrying their young. Swiftly she knelt and rolled the beast over. It was a female, and there was the pocket, and inside, chilled and nearly dead were three pups. She scooped them out, disconnecting them with difficulty from their teats. She wrapped them in her only other shirt, tying it into a kind of sling, and tucked them down inside her tunic.
"Thulesilme," she said softly to the dead mother, "I will be their mother now." She leaped lightly on the mountain pony. Ancalinte would have pups of her own in a few week, but milk was needed now. Eryn turned the pony's head away from Fangorn, there were two farms she hadn't visited yet.
Grey sky, grey rain, grey twilight, grey horse; the two riders in their grey Elven cloaks nearly invisible against the grey stone wall bordering the farmyard. A new wall, Gimli noted, and low and hastily laid. Not Dwarf-work. The young man leveling his bow at them, rain pouring off his broad brimmed hat, looked nervous. He heard a soft voice, silver as the rain itself, come out of the twilight.
"Mae govannen, mellon."
"Elvish may not be the best choice here." Gimli muttered from under his hood. These settlers were a tough breed, almost as hardy as Dwarves, newly come to this land, and quick to defend it.
"Hail, friend, well met." Legolas added. The brown-fletched arrow leveled at them lowered a notch.
"Gimli, Gloin's Son, at your service," the Dwarf dismounted and bowed low, his braided red beard nearly in the water swirling around his heavy boots. "We have a feast here we wish to share," he indicated the deer slung across Arod's withers, "if we can find a dry roof under which to light our fire."
The young man unbent his bow, startled to find one of his mysterious visitors nearly two heads shorter than himself. "Your pardon. We're cautious these days. There are still wandering bands of orcs about, and other stranger things. I am called Cel LinsSon. Come in out of the rain then."
They followed him onto a wide, roofed porch, that wrapped itself comfortably around the log house. Warm light of candles and fire flowed from the windows. Despite the rain, the front shutters were flung open on this cool, late spring night, the broad porch roof keeping all but the windiest weather out of the house. Legolas laid the deer against the log wall of the house, a graceful gesture, as of a gift given.
"My thanks, my brothers will prepare it. Bring your horses to the barnyard."
They followed him across the yard and through a gate just wagon-wide. Gimli noted the same hasty stonework, only higher. His fingers itched for a good stone axe and a string of sunny days. They led the horses in under the broad roof among a motley flock of goats and sheep, and one mule, and through a second gate. "We'll put your horses on this side. Then Gwai and the goats won't steal their supper." Their guide shooed a few goats and the mule to the other side of the small barn, closing the gate behind them. Gimli piled his horse gear in a dry place in the aisle.
Legolas looked up into the darkness of the barn. Well made timbers so new he could almost hear the trees speak. But trees felled hastily, without the proper songs. He could smell the hay piled in the loft, the grain in the big bin by the back wall. Hear the rustlings of barn cats and small rodents. The soft hiss of a barn owl and the flash of pale wings as it delivered another rodent to its young. That at least was good.
Their guide threw a couple of forkfuls of hay over to their horses. "That should hold them. The others have had supper already. Now it is time for ours. Come." He led them back across the soggy yard, opened the door and they stepped out of the grey chill into music and warmth and laughter.
A young girl of fourteen or fifteen sat by the fire, playing a wooden flute, firelight dancing in hair the color of a sparrow's wings. A boy of four, hair the same winter-grass color as Legolas's, and a girl, hair the color of a new fawn (nine or ten, Gimli guessed), were doing something with vegetables in a pot, the boy was more interested in making designs with them on his sheepskin. Two older boys, not quite yet men, sat on wolfskins on the floor, working on some arrows, one carefully painting red and blue lines on the shafts to mark them as his. A man and woman of middle age looked up from their tasks at the table, and an old woman looked up from her loom. Sheep and corn, flowers and herbs danced across the wool weaving in warm, earthy colors. Baskets of wool, loose and spun, hung from the ceiling, along with bundles of dried herbs. The travelers shed their soggy cloaks, and their travel-worn leather outer tunics. These were hung by the woman near the fire.
The two companions laid Gimli's axe and the great grey bow of Galadriel by the woodbox, along with Legolas's knives and quiver, a quiet sign of peaceful intentions. Two knee-high, black and white dogs came and sniffed at Gimli's boots, then at Legolas. They grinned wide doggy grins up at the Elf. Legolas knelt and ran a hand down each back, rubbing in exactly the places he knew dogs loved. A striking sight the two travelers were to this family of settlers on the edge of the wild; the short sturdy Dwarf in his blocky, rough-woven tunic of earthy browns, the tall, pale-haired archer, slender as a young tree, in his undertunic the shifting color of water. Legolas looked up to find Gimli bowing low again, beard brushing the floor, making introductions for both of them.
The eyes in the room were not on the Dwarf, though, but on Legolas. He could feel their curiosity, their uncertainty. And something more; like the feeling of Boromir, when he had halted at the eaves of the Golden Wood, wishing for a fairer, less perilous way, 'though it led through a hedge of swords.' Or the hard eyes of Eomer of Rohan, when he had first encountered the Three Friends, grey cloaked against the grey grass; 'Have you sprung out of the grass? How did you escape our sight? Are you Elvish folk?' It was long since any of the Eldar had walked these lands, and it seemed they were already forgotten...or feared. And this time they had no Ranger with them to smooth the way.
The music tootled to a halt. The little blond boy looked up with wide curious eyes. The older boys were silent, judging the strengths, and potential danger, of their strange visitors. The man lowered his dark brows, finding he could not look long into the pale-haired stranger's bright eyes. The girl stood, a slow, wondering smile on her lips, "Nip and Flash do not often take to strangers so well."
A quiet voice came from the back of the room, "Elf and Dwarf, traveling together? I am glad to have lived to see such a thing!" it was the old woman, smiling behind her loom, "It is long since any Dwarves traveled this way, and I thought all the Fair Folk had gone long ago, over the Sea."
"Not all," growled the Dwarf, "not yet." he gave his friend a long dark stare.
"Al'hin, mellon." Legolas said softly. Not while Gimli and the King still lived. Not while there were still wonders to be seen in Middle Earth, though Anduin was near, and he knew one day he would finish the journey he began on her waters, in the grey elf-boats of Lorien, but a heartbeat, but an age ago.
"You must have some tales to tell, Travelers." said the old woman.
"Aye, that we do." said Gimli. One of the brothers made a place for him by the fire. The other vanished into a backroom and returned with a keg.
"Perhaps not as fine as the ales of your folk, we have heard their legends, but perhaps good enough on a rainy night." The brown-haired young man popped the cork. The other, darker one, brought the largest tankard on the shelf and filled it. The girl laid down her flute and hastened to find another mug. She filled it and brought it to Legolas.
Gimli took a long draught, "Ahhh, as fine as any from the Lonely Mountain!" Whether it really was or not, he didn't care, it was the best he'd tasted in months of travel. The boys grinned, like two young Hobbits he remembered, and missed sorely.
Legolas accepted the mug from the girl with a quiet smile. It was strange stuff, dark and dwarvish, smelling of deep places in the earth and the roots of trees and dark ponds teeming with life. He glanced up to find the girl's wide dark eyes on him. They were full of wonder and something else, like hunger.
Aniron.
It felt strange, and pulled at his heart in ways he did not wish to think about. He glanced away, taking a good swig. It went down his throat in exactly the way Elvish wine didn't. He tried to compose his face and failed. Beside him Gimli snorted, "Elves know good ale like a horse knows good steak."
The boys laughed.
Legolas finished the mug, face a mask of diplomatic composure.
"That is Eilian, and this is Brethil," the brown-haired boy was pointing to the two girls, "I am Cal...Calad...and this is Cam. Our older brother, Celeg, and young Rhiw." he indicated the Grandmother, "Istil, and his mother, "Lasbelin " and father, "Lin." Eilian hurried to refill Legolas' mug, which he accepted with grace, then slipped quietly to Gimli.
The boys went out to prepare the deer, and the others set the table with the grandest array of food Gimli had seen a since certain Ranger's wedding feast. They sat in the glow of the fire, with the rain soft on the roof, telling their tales of towers and kings, mountains and rivers, wizards and galloping riders and dark places in the earth. Of orcs slain:
"My tale at the end of the battle was forty-one, he bested me by one, but he was the braver. He had to face all of his at arm's length with but an axe."
"Master Legolas would not tell you that half of his were faced with nothing but a knife!"
...and the "unhorsing" of the winged Nazgul:
"It was a mighty shot by Master Legolas, Beleg Cuthalion himself could not have bettered it!"
"The bow of Galadriel was a great gift."
Only of the terror of the deepest places of Moria did they not speak.
The fire burned low, and Brethil went to the woodbox. She halted, one hand reaching for a log, then withdrew it. She reached out, ran a finger gently along the silvery-grey carved vines of Legolas's bow. It shifted, and clattered to the floor. She gasped, turned to look, wide-eyed, at the Elf.
All other eyes in the room were on him too. A quiet tension, like the space between thunder and lightning filled the air.
He stood, crossed the room in three silent catlike strides, knelt by Bre. She looked up at him with huge hazel eyes, like a deer who's seen the hunter too late. He lifted the bow and held it out to her, "It will take much more than a little fall to hurt this bow. This is the one given to me by the Lady Galadriel herself. The one that loosed the arrow that slew the Nazgul steed."
"And many orcs." came the deep voice of the Dwarf behind him.
Bre blinked, let out a breath. She took the bow into her hands as it was offered, running her fingers along the fine carvings, along the slender string. "What's this made of?" she asked.
"Elf-hair," he answered.
"Like yours?" she reached out and pulled gently on the long wisp hanging over his shoulder, then fingered the slender braid mingled with it.
He nodded, smiling. "Here." He placed the bow in her hands, and showed her how to lift it, how to hold the string and push the bow into a draw. "Do not let go, unless there is an arrow in it." he warned. She nodded, and drew the bow with all her might, with Legolas' hand placed lightly over hers. It was far taller than she, and she had to turn it somewhat sideways, but she pulled it nearly as far as her nose. "Tomorrow, if your mother allows, we will try it with an arrow." he glanced at Lasbelin.
Bre bounced up and down, like a puppy, "Oooooh, ooooh, can I can I can I can I?"
The woman nodded, watchful tension easing from her face, "If it does not rain."
"I think the sun will raise her head above the clouds in the morning." Legolas said.
Outside the storm pounded against the roof, and Gimli was glad of that roof. The conversation turned to the clearing of woods, the hunting of orcs and wolves and wargs.
"We've had some trouble with wargs and orcs," Lin said. "They've come in the night before and killed or taken sheep and goats."
Cam nodded, "Our bows have been busy. And those of our neighbors. Only two nights ago I tracked two wargs into the woods."
"We hit them with several arrows, but they escaped." Cal said.
"That's how we knew it was no wolf, but some dark leftover spawn of Mordor." said Cam.
"Hsssst! Don't say that name here!"
"It doesn't matter, it's all dust now anyway...except for the orcs and wargs."
Legolas knelt by the fire, noting the wolfskins the boys were sitting on, and another flung over a chest. He reached out, ran long fingers through grey fur. This was no warg.
"The wolves are just as bad." Cal continued.
"Wolves, wargs, it's all the same. But give us a few years and a few more bowmen."
"Aye. And some Dwarves who can do good stonework." Cal passed another tankard to Gimli.
"Wolves are not wargs." a quiet voice said from near the fire.
"They all eat sheep. And children!" Cal leaned forward making a ferocious face at Bre.
They were here before our fathers awoke. They are part of the galadhremmin ennorath. But Legolas could not find a way to put it into words these folk would understand.
Gimli yawned and took another chunk of venison. He'd seen enough wargs for one lifetime.
Bre made a face at Cal, then went and sat by Legolas. She stared up at him, silent, puppy-eyed. He met her eyes and she didn't look away. He smiled, leaned back and began singing a song about the time before the sun, when the Firstborn awoke and looked up in amazement at the stars, and the wolves sang in the twilight. Rhiw came, and curled up by his feet, then inched his way into Legolas's lap. After awhile, they began trying their small voices in the choruses. Eilian came to sit on the wolfskin chest, eyes never leaving the Elf's fair face. A tankard later, Gimli noticed that Rhiw had fallen asleep in Legolas' arms.
Eryn had seen the boulder field from a distance, a tumbled melee of stone giant toys, like tables and upturned chairs, full of shallow caves and overhanging shelves. A good place to weather a storm.
It seemed Thulesilme's mate had thought so too. Finlos found him tucked far back into a crevice, yawning a great wide threat at them, till Eryn called him and retreated back to where she'd left Ancalinte and the newly aquired (and noisy) milk goat. She huddled around the pack of pups, squirming with new life, thinking how she might help their father. She knew some healing ways, she had stitched up dogs rent by a boar, she had helped birth pups. She could sense the pain and fear of Thulesilme in his den, but she could not speak to him the way her father's Elvish friends could. More than ever she missed them, all of them.
The light through the trees grew, Glorinn twitched his ears, stamping impatiently. There was little to graze here, and no water. They would have to go elsewhere for that.
And perhaps she could at least bring Thulesilme something to eat.