A sudden blast of morning air hit the Dwarf as the quilt was thrown back. "Up Master Groggyhead." Legolas stood over Gimli's borrowed cot, dressed and armed, "Our hosts need your able assistance."
"Uhhhh." his head was on fire, his tongue was glued by some fell force to the roof of his mouth.
"I think you had far more ale last night than venison." said the Elf.
"I think I would like to sleep longer." but the quilt was gone, and the cot was skillfully upended, leaving him sitting on the chilly stone floor. Outside he heard raised voices, and something about a goat.
Blearily he stumbled into his clothes, his boots, and took up his axe. "What's all the commotion?" It was barely dawn, these country folk got an early start it seemed, even after a full keg of ale. Or two...or three.
"Something came in the night and took our best milch goat." said Cal.
Gimli peered groggily at the small herd of goats and sheep in the barnyard. Only one other seemed to be bearing milk, and there were four kids clustered around it now.
"Wargs." Lin said.
"Wargs, or orcs, would have killed more than they took." Legolas said.
"We could have tracked him, but I think the rain washed away all the prints." Lin said. He nodded toward his three boys, now combing the ground around the barnyard wall. "They have already searched once, but found nothing."
"Master Legolas could track the wind over a field of rocks." said Gimli eyeing the chaotic scramblings of the farmboys.
"And Master Gimli could rebuild all your stone walls in a day, with only his hands, if you bring him another keg of ale." Legolas raised one eyebrow. He leaped onto the barnyard wall, light as one of the little striped cats prowling the verge, studying the muddy ground below. On the far side of the wall, he found what he was looking for, faint traces among the confused prints of the boys, traces of tracks that had been not entirely washed out by the rain. So the thief had come late in the night, when the rain was nearly gone. He should not be too far ahead.
"Go back to bed, Master Groggy," Legolas said, "It is only one foe, and a small one at that. I think I can find him."
"What? And leave me out of a fight? I think not!" He adjusted his axe in his belt, "Hmph, although, I would run better on a full stomach."
Not a full stomach, perhaps, but at least some leftover venison. Gimli would have preferred a real, Hobbit-sized breakfast; first, second and elevensies, but Legolas had come back from a brief sortie along the trail saying, 'Our quarry is light and fleet of foot. If you have your usual breakfast, like a bear going into hibernation, you will move with all the speed of one.'
So now they were scrambling over rocks and fallen logs, through fern and fen and tangly underbrush, following the faint footprints of one goat thief, and the much clearer tracks of a goat moving at a less-than-reluctant speed. That could be accounted for by the two sets of large wolf-like tracks following the goat's.
Gimli, at least, was scrambling. Open ground, or underground was more to his liking than this tangled old forest edge. Good solid rock underfoot, or a clear, hard road. His short legs were deceptive; he had kept pace with a Ranger and this Elf on the orc hunt which led them for forty leagues and five from Anduin to Rohan in less than four days. Ahead of him now, the Elf ran like a hunting wolf, as if the trees themselves parted to let him pass.
A flow of great grey boulders, moss-frosted, tumbled long ago from the hill above, rose before them. Here and there a few trees had found a foothold, slowly prying the rock apart. Legolas sprang to the top of one great root, Gimli trudging up behind him, "Ah, this is more to my liking." he thumped a hand onto the stone, good hard stone, stone that could be shaped into...
"Our quarry has some skill." Legolas had an odd look on his face, one Gimli was not used to seeing; he looked perplexed. "I would almost think I was tracking..." he looked back down the trail and then out over the rock field, "...one of my own folk."
"Have you lost it then?" the trail he meant. So much for tracking the wind over a field of rocks.
The Elf jumped to another boulder, then another, looking down in the spaces between. He frowned. "I have not lost the trail..."
"Gimli stood, arms folded over his axe head.
"Only..."
Gimli thumped down onto a low rock.
"...mislaid it."
Gimli sat, watching Legolas meander over the rock flow. He yawned, took a swig of cold well water from his flask. Fished in his belt pouch for a bit of leftover venison. He unwrapped the waxed cloth, and started to lift the rather large chunk to his mouth. He paused. "Legolas,"
He sliced the chunk in half and held out the slightly larger half.
The Elf came and sat beside him, staring at the ground. They were silent for some time, chewing thoughtfully.
"Only a Ranger, or an Elf, could lay a trail like that." Legolas said at last.
"Hmmm. Ranger then. You're the only Elf in these parts."
"But that would be a very small Ranger, and what would a Ranger want with a goat?"
"A milk goat. A small one. There were larger goats in the barnyard, if he wanted a feast. And one with that kind of skill could find all the deer he wanted on the forest verge"
"The goat left on its own feet."
"Hmmph."
Silence. Birdsong, tree-rustle. The faint creaking of tree roots splitting rock, that only Elf or Dwarf could hear.
Legolas looked up, was on his feet with the speed of a leaping fox. Then he was gone over the nearest rock.
"What?" Gimli scrambled up after him. Dodged between two great boulders, squeezed through the leaf-littered passage under another. Came crashing to a halt nearly on top of Legolas's kneeling form. The Elf gestured toward the rock at his feet.
"Blood." Gimli said. He frowned at the brownish splotches on the rock; he had learned a few things of late, in the company of the Elf. "Old blood." He gave a satisfied nod.
"How old?"
The Dwarf squinted. Frowned. Frowned harder.
Somewhere behind and above them, not nearly far enough for his liking, Gimli heard a low noise, not quite like tree roots in rock. He spun like a cornered badger, axe in hand. "Not nearly old enough!"
Just beyond the reach of his axe, deep in the rock shadow, tumbled boulders blocking its escape, or the escape of Elf and Dwarf, crouched a warg. Its vast, toothy mouth yawned at them, it growled, a chilling sound like an avalanche, far above one in the dark. Gimli let out a startled yell and stepped forward with a mighty swing.
"Daro DARO DARO! mellon!"
Gimli was hauled backwards to land with a heavy thud at the feet of the boulder behind him. Legolas stood between him and the warg now, hands empty of knife or bow. Gimli scrambled to his feet, muttering in Khuzdul, balancing his axe in his hands, considering the possibility that the settlers' ale had a dangerous effect on Elves.
The warg stayed where it was, nearly invisible in the rock-shadow. Gimli could just see something behind it, like a stray tree-root or stick. No. The broken shaft of an arrow in its haunch. He came to Legolas's side, lowered his eyebrows, lifted his axe. The Elf's hand came down on his axe head. "No!"
"What? It's a warg!"
"That is no warg." Legolas slowly sank into a crouch. The creature remained where it was, the growls subsiding, great dark eyes watching from the shadows. "You and I fought wargs at the feet of the Misty Mountains. You know their shape."
"They can change their shape if they choose."
"They do not walk in the broad light of day. Only under dark cloud, or night sky."
Gimli studied his friend's face, keen as an elvenblade. He stepped back, folded his hands over his axe, but did not belt it just yet.
The Elf moved forward, singing words soft as sunlight on tawny fur. The creature blinked, and crept forward, into the light.
The Dwarf raised his eyebrows in surprise. "It's a dog! Just a dog, a passing strange one, though Men have bred stranger ones than this." Tawny, like winter grass, with short upright ears like a fox, great dark eyes, and great broad stripes across its back. A handsome beast, now that he looked closely. Lean, short-haired like a hunting hound, with great, huge jaws, and it seemed, far too many teeth. The tail was the oddest part, for it was long and thin and nearly bare of fur, and did not connect straight to the rump, like a spoon in a pudding, but tapered broadly into the rump, the way trees tapered into the ground. He kept his hand on his axe, just in case.
"It is no dog." said Legolas, running his hands gently over the creature, "This is one of Eru's children...from a time before my people awoke, before Aule formed your first kin in the deeps of the earth. Before evil came to Middle Earth."
"You mean, something older than Ents?"
Legolas smiled at the memory, "I think nothing is older than Ents. I have never seen one of these. I thought they were long gone. I know of them only through the songs. Thulesilme, they were called in the old tongue, spirit of the starlight, for they came from that time before the sun, and they love the stars as much as we do."
"This one must have loved sheep as well. Unless I miss my guess, that is the remains of some settler's arrow."
Legolas nodded, smile faded, "They do not understand why someone would build a fence to keep a whole herd of prey just for themselves. Ownership is a word they do not know." he felt along the wound, then along the arrow shaft, bitten neatly through by powerful jaws. The creature stretched out with half-closed eyes, mouth open slightly in pain, but no longer fearful.
"It's a wonder it yet lives."
One of the Elf's lean, strong hands rested on the creature's haunch, the other on its head.
"Probably gone all feverish and pustulent by now." the Dwarf said, fingering the edge of his axe.
Legolas didn't move.
"You mean to do something about it."
Legolas glanced up at his comrade, then back to the creature.
"Even though the sensible course would be to put the thing out of its misery, and leave one less problem for the sheep herders."
Legolas started a low song, barely louder than a heartbeat. Reached for one of the knives on his back. Gently he worked around the wound, loosening the arrow.
"Have you noticed the size of that beast's jaws?"
The song continued, low and steady, like distant surf.
"And what good is it to save one beast? Just one leaf fallen from the tree."
The song faded like a passing nightwind. "Your folk would notice one small jewel taken from a treasure trove. One could ask what good is it to save one Elf, or one Dwarf. Or one Hobbit."
Gimli let out a hard breath, Elves could be more stubborn than Dwarves when they set their sails on a course. "Will athelas work on beasts too?" he asked.
"Yes."
"I'll make a fire then, and hot water."
They sat by the small, smokeless fire, the thulesilme stretched out beside them like a dog by the hearth. Legolas turned the broken arrow over in his hand. No fletch or heraldry remained to mark its owner, but the wood and the make of the head looked familiar. Or perhaps, all the scattered settlers used the same design.
Wargs and goat-thieves and a creature out of the stardark. There was no coincidence. All things were connected. There had been two "wargs" in the tale of Cal and Cam. This one was male. And yet the wound looked somewhat older than one the farmboys could have inflicted. Legolas's eyebrows dropped like a stooping falcon's wings.
The songs did not say everything there was to know about thulesilme, for they, like the creature's name, were mostly in the old tongue, in Quenya, and for long, that tongue had been forbidden in the Sindarin kingdoms. He remembered that they did not live in packs, like wolves, but in pairs.
And there was a thief who wanted a milk goat.
"Perhaps our thief has found pups." Legolas said.
"What?"
"Then where is the mother?" he said half to himself, "The mate to this one."
"What, what?"
"Cal said they escaped into the forest. This one, at least, survived. But where is the other?"
"You think this is one of their 'wargs' ?"
"Perhaps. Or another farmer's." Legolas stood, "I must find her. If our thief has the pups, it seems he will care for them well enough for now. And we have lost his trail."
"What do you mean, we?"
"And if he does not have them, then I must find them quickly." The Elf was already slinging his light pack and bow and quiver.
Gimli stood. "What do you mean I ?"
"Guard the beast, mellon." he did not say he could travel lighter and faster in the woods without the Dwarf.
Gimli eyed the creature with some terror, "Guard it? From what? And who will guard me when it grows hungry!"
"Throw him the rest of our venison. He will not eat you. I told him Dwarves were too tough and stringy." and he was gone into the woods.