Disclaimer: I own nothing that Tolkien owns. Whee. Such fun it is.
A/N: Thanks muchly to all the nice people who reviewed…
Spootasia Tomoe: Heh, I'm not depressed anymore – exams are over! Thanks for reviewing… I love reviews.
Dust in the Wind and Silverknight 7: See, I did update!
Werecat 99: Heh. I already responded… but who cares. This has all been edited now… so hopefully an improvement! LOL.
Many thanks to dreamingfifi and Esperanza Fuega for betaing this chapter!
2. Mad, Bad and Dangerous To Know . . .
Erethien looked to the sky. It was just after midday, and her horse was tired. She slowed Cerveth to a walk, singing very softly and very off-key an extremely morbid song, rather suited to the dismal November weather.
"Come, Cerveth. I can take the pack for a while," she murmured as she slid the pack off the mare's sweating back. Better for her to be tired than the horse - Cerveth could carry her, but she could not carry Cerveth. Also, Cerveth could go further if she had no load to bear - if Erethien carried the pack, she could average around eight or nine hours a day, at the most.
Erethien studied the map from her shoulder bag intently. She really needed a new one - it was weather-stained and travel-worn. In fact, it was falling apart. Erethien cursed herself for not getting the map copied while she had been in Imladris. She shook it out, back to the howling wind. Erethien knew that Rohan was notorious for being windy - but she had never yet appreciated just how irritating this could be. She tried to shake her hair out of her eyes and scanned what she could read of the map.
"Elbereth," she swore as she attempted to make out some writing. "Next town I get to, I am going to have a new one made."
Cerveth snorted at her and Erethien shook her head at the mare. "I am not that penniless, Cerveth! Poor I may be, but I think I can stretch to a decent map." 'Perhaps I am mad too, as well as poor,' she thought with a slight grin. 'I do not even know whether I speak to the horse, or myself. Perhaps I have been alone for too long.' Erethien dismissed this fleeting thought immediately. She liked being alone - she always had. Her parents had not named her on an idle whim or fancy.
Eventually, she gave up the attempt. She had come through the High Pass in the mountains near Imladris after delivering Aragorn's message, and had ridden over three hundred miles along the East of the Misty Mountains, crossing the Celebrant and the Nimrodel just west of Lothlórien. Erethien had not entered the Golden Wood. She had no business there. It was a long way round, but probably easier on horseback than most other routes.
Erethien now had the woods of Fangorn to her west, that much she already knew - but as to her exact whereabouts, she had no idea. As well as decrepit, the map was not sufficiently detailed for her purposes; ideally she would have wanted one showing all the villages and hamlets, no matter how small. Erethien had a method for scouring an area; first she would travel to every settlement and ask for any news of what she sought - if anyone knew anything of it, she followed the lead immediately. The upside to this was that once in a while, she managed to see other lands. She had made a few trips into Gondor in her time - most of them fruitless, but it did provide a change of scenery.
However, it very rarely worked that way, and she would then systematically ride throughout the country in search. The scouring of one land was always the work of centuries, and required endless patience. Erethien had many strengths and many assets. Unfortunately, patience was not one of them. Millennia of learning the hard way had not taught Erethien moderation or restraint, and certainly not serenity.
"Edoras," she muttered, studying the map once more. "Damn it, where is Edoras?"
Edoras, it transpired, was approximately south southeast from the Wold, where she now stood cursing the useless scrap of parchment that she liked to call a map. Or at least, what she assumed to be Edoras. Erethien sighed. It would waste time going there, but without a legible and detailed map there was little point in continuing - she stood a good chance of being hopelessly lost and retracing her footsteps endlessly. Better to waste a few days in the short term.
Erethien squinted up at the weak rays of the midday sun, turning Cerveth in the right direction as she walked on into what she assumed was the East Emnet. The land felt restless, somehow. Erethien would have been apprehensive, if she had known how to be. She knew there was something coming. Cerveth threw her head up into the air, snorting.
"Cerveth, you are even more paranoid than I am," Erethien chided her horse. "It is not unusual to smell horses in Rohan." 'Clearly I have had a bad effect on this horse,' she observed. 'I crossed the line between caution and paranoia a very long time ago.' Cerveth, as a rule, was not incautious by nature, which was more than could be said for her mistress; possibly because unlike Cerveth, Erethien did not tend to learn from her mistakes.
The mare whickered and laid her ears back.
"Hush! Why do you worry so?" The elf could now hear the thunder of mounted horses, but surely that was nothing unusual in Rohan? Nonetheless, she led the prancing Cerveth closer to the shelter of a large boulder - it was entirely possible that Cerveth was merely making a fuss about the wind. She had always had an extreme dislike of the wind - rain, snow and heat the mare had never minded and had endured stoically, but she became bad-tempered in the wind. Upon reaching the relative shelter of the boulder, Cerveth promptly shied violently at nothing.
"Elbereth, Cerveth! Why so nervous?" Erethien mounted again in order to have more control should the mare panic. The Eldar had a way with animals, but this was developed in Erethien to no extraordinary degree - she preferred to trust to more conventional methods than the calming powers of her kind.
The bay mare was getting more nervous by the second, snorting and sidling backwards, away from the faint sound of hooves. Erethien sighed and decided to trust her horse's instinct rather than her own, if for nothing but Cerveth's peace of mind - a mistake in retrospect. 'A neurotic horse is not a prerequisite for a successful journey,' she reasoned. "Very well, Cerveth - you win. Where do you want to go?" she asked her mount in fluid Sindarin. Cerveth snorted, bucked, and galloped off in the opposite direction to the horsemen.
"Valar! Calm yourself, Cerveth! Noro ún lagor, or you shall fall! Break your own legs if you so wish, but I myself do not plan to die just yet!"
To Erethien's relief, Cerveth slowed a little. The elf glanced over her shoulder to see what exactly the mare was so startled by, just in time to hear an order to halt carried on the wind.
"Elbereth! What now?" she muttered as she brought her mount to an uneasy halt and dismounted. After several hundred years, she had had quite enough of being accosted by various inhabitants of various realms.
Twelve riders formed a circle around her, lances lowered. Cerveth fidgeted skittishly.
"Lasto beth nín, Cerveth," Erethien murmured. "Cerveth, thál!"
The mare quietened a little, but her ears remained firmly back. Erethien sighed.
'Of all the inconvenient times to learn that I have no aptitude for something, this situation would go fairly high on my list,' she thought in irritation. If Cerveth panicked, Erethien had no idea of what exactly she could do about it.
Erethien scowled. "Is this really necessary?" she demanded of the captain, who chose to ignore her. A few drops of rain fell, intensifying quickly into a heavy shower. Erethien scowled even more. Just what she needed.
The leader dismounted and walked forward. "What business have you in Rohan?"
Cerveth snorted and Erethien inhaled slowly. 'Courtesy, woman, courtesy. Keep calm,' she reminded herself silently. "I travel to Edoras."
"With what purpose?"
'Valar, since when is it any of your business?' Erethien thought in irritation. "I wish to buy a map," she replied shortly.
"And what would an Elf be doing in Rohan? Your folk dwell far from here, in places from which few return. Nets of sorcery have ever been wound around the Eldar Folk. What business have you here?"
'Be careful, horsemaster. Or I shall get angry.' "My business is none of your concern," she returned sharply. "And guard your tongue, horsemaster; the Elves are not to be slandered. Kindly cease prying into my affairs, for I have as much right to be here as you do."
"I highly doubt that - and you are in no position to make requests, Elf. What is your business here? And why did you flee from us, if you had any right to be here?"
"I did not flee," Erethien snapped, pushing wet hair out of her face"My horse wished to go, and I listened and let her run. I thought that a horse lord would know to trust his horse in the wilderness, whose senses are keener than his own."
Cerveth whickered quietly, as if to warn Erethien that she was walking on thin ice. Erethien was quite aware of this - she had simply ceased to care. Erethien was deeply tempted to say more, but knew to guard her tongue with these folk. Like herself, she knew that the Rohirrim were proud - and easily incensed.
"Hold your tongue, elf! I will ask you but once more - why are you here?"
Erethien smirked. "How then shall I answer, when I was bidden hold my tongue?" she shot back, feeling the fierce, childish glee of having won a point in an argument, though she knew she was being foolish. 'I am damned if the person I reveal myself to will be an arrogant mortal.'
"One answer, elf, ere we take you to Edoras bound hand and foot as a spy," hissed the rider. "Unless, of course, you have anything to hide."
Erethien considered making something up - but, accomplished liar though she was, she did not know these lands well enough for a story to hold water. The Rider would have seen through her immediately. Erethien was highly skilled in the area of deception - mainly because she genuinely did not care that she was lying. It was the single positive outcome of her rashness so long ago - of the disaster that had set her on this lonely path. 'And even that gift is marked by darkness,' she reflected bitterly as rainwater trickled down her neck. Cerveth shifted her weight from side to side - she could tell that her mistress was not in the best of tempers.
The Rider raised an eyebrow, questioning at her silence. Erethien's thoughts snapped back to the present, and her annoyance flooded back. 'Perhaps the truth might not hurt. Not the whole truth, though. Just a little.'
"My business, such as it is, is personal, and as such I prefer not to pour out my intentions to every mortal that crosses my path. I seek something. Something that was taken from me, long ago," she replied reluctantly. Her gaze darkened. "The Eldar have no need of spies; if I were you, I should not judge others by your own standards."
'That came out the wrong way,' Erethien realised much too late, as the captain looked distinctly unconvinced and a little satisfied. 'Yet again - wrong place, wrong time, wrong words. The Valar must hate me!'
"A liar, then, as well as a spy. Very well - as you wish. Tie her up!"
Almost reflexively, Erethien made a snap decision and drew a knife swiftly, holding the point steadily under the rider's chin before anyone else had time to react. This, she knew very well, was an extremely high-risk strategy. She was glad that Hathel, her weapons tutor, could not see her now - he had frequently reprimanded her for her recklessness. 'Hathel would have had a fit.' But it was too late to turn back now. She had done it again - risked a great deal for her own pride. Erethien was no stranger to gambling when the stakes were high. And she generally played for keeps.
"Walk away! Move backwards, or he dies!" She put a little pressure on the blade to emphasise her point.
"You would not dare," sneered the man, though his gaze remained on the steel point of the small dagger - small, but quite capable of killing him when in this position.
Only six inches from the captain's face, Erethien's dark eyes burned into his, twin flames of grey-blue. "Really? I dare you to try my temper. Are you willing to risk your life on that little wager? Tell me. Look me in the eye, and tell me that I cannot do it."
The man met her gaze briefly, and was shaken by what he saw. In the elf's eyes was a chilly fire - a savage indifference. He read there an unnerving combination of hot anger, cold calculation. The captain opened his mouth, then closed it. He could not say that the stranger would not kill him. She could. He knew she could.
Erethien smirked slightly, knowing it would incense him. Arrogant people were so easy to predict that it was almost unfair to take the advantage, given that she herself was so similar in temperament. "I thought not. I am no spy, but my reasons for being here are my own business, and nobody else's. I gave you the truth - if you choose to disbelieve it, then that is your own affair. Move backwards, all of you!" she addressed the men surrounding her. "Or do you wish to lose your captain?"
The riders backed away a few paces, muttering.
"Further! To that large boulder on your right, all of you, and perhaps I shall let him go. If you are not too slow about it."
"Captain?" queried a younger rider uncertainly.
"Yes, go," replied the unfortunate man. This little interrogation was not going as he had hoped it would. The riders slowly backed off, leaving Cerveth standing loose, ears twitching. Erethien shot a brief glance Cerveth's way, hoping that the mare would stay put. She would need her very soon, if she were to make a swift escape.
Erethien waited until the horses were milling around the boulder several hundred yards away, before removing her knife from the Rider's throat, who immediately drew his own blade and lunged. Erethien promptly dropped her short dagger onto the muddy grass and drew a knife from her belt - if a thirty-inchblade could be called a knife by anyone much smaller than six and a half feet.
Erethien would have laughed if she had not been concentrating on staying alive. This captain was no faint-heart. Arrogant, rude and foolhardy perhaps, but he was no coward. A man after her own heart. She dodged the blow easily and swung her weapon at the leader's feet, bringing it back to his neck as he attempted to block the blow. 'Elvish speed does come in handy at times, it would seem.' She allowed herself a brief moment of smugness before kicking his legs from beneath him. The captain, to his credit, had kept a hold on his sword. 'Just as I would have done.'
"Drop your sword," she commanded, keeping the blade at his throat while she picked up the dagger left-handed.
"Are you giving me orders?"
"Yes, I am," she returned calmly. "Well observed. Drop the weapon."
"And if I do not wish to?"
"Then I shall run you through with my own, and shall be no worse off," she replied coolly. "I have murdered before - I can murder again. I said drop it!"
He did so, with much blustering and many empty threats. Erethien shook her head, half amused. "I could beat you in single combat any day of the week, with one arm tied behind my back," she stated with total confidence, slinging the pack onto her back as she switched her knife to her left hand. "If you value your life, wait until I am gone, before even entertaining the thought of pursuing me. We Elves are sharp shots from moving horses, you know." 'Though the term "most Elves" might be more appropriate,' she thought wryly. 'Skilled in deception I may be, but archery always was my weak area. But then, he is not to know that.'
The rider smirked, raising a questioning brow. "Even with a wet bowstring?"
Erethien patted her pocket. She hardly ever used the weapon if she could help it, and so saw little point in keeping it strung. "A few seconds is all it would take for an Elf to restring their weapon - and a shorter time to fire it," she returned, keeping one eye on the riders a hundred yards away. "I would not risk it."
The captain fell silent. She sheathed her knife and mounted Cerveth smoothly. The mare broke into a swift canter, not troubling to look back at the shamed patrol leader. All she had damaged was his ego, which should heal in time.
Three hours and a hard ride later, Erethien dismounted to walk beside her exhausted horse under the stars while she thought. In order to avoid being recaptured, she had doubled back on herself several times, assuming that the heavy rain would sufficiently confuse any tracks that she left. The upshot of this was that the patrol was now considerably closer to Edoras than she was.
Erethien chewed her lip. Could she risk going to Edoras now? 'Threatening a captain of a land you wish to search through. Not your brightest move, Erethien.'
She sighed. If she went to Edoras now, she risked capture - but only if the patrol had returned. If she did not go to Edoras, she risked capture anyway and also being hopelessly lost. Erethien did not know Rohan sufficiently well to get by without the aid of a good map. She knew the general geography of most of Middle Earth, but the positions of Rohan's minor towns and villages were beyond her. The fact that she spent centuries at a time in one land before moving to the next did not help - that was the trouble with a detailed map. It was something of a miracle that she had got this far at all.
Eventually, she decided to risk it. Erethien glanced up at the night sky, turning Cerveth eastward, towards the position of the smudge on her map - which she fervently hoped was Edoras.
Hours later, Erethien sighed with relief as she saw the city on the hill and the moonlight glinting on the roof of Meduseld. She had been going in the right direction after all. Erethien patted Cerveth and weighed her chances. Stopping here on the open plains for the night was rather tempting fate - she did not know when the patrol would return to the city. On the other hand, nobody in Edoras would be willing to sell her a map at this hour - and the quicker she was in and out of the city, the better.
"Where, where, where should I run to?" she sang softly and quite spectacularly out of tune. Most elves were gifted singers, but not Erethien - when she had lived in Imladris, she had been rather notorious for the fact that she even whistled off-key, though she had not always been this way. It was her own fault.
The mare laid her ears back, and Erethien laughed. "I know, I know, I am not a minstrel! We can stop here for the night," she decided as she unbuckled the light pack from Cerveth, who shook her head and began to graze as Erethien tied her to a stake. She would not have put it past the mare to wander off in the night.
Erethien considered making a fire now that the rain had stopped, but decided against it. 'The longer I pass unnoticed, the better.' She wrapped herself in her cloak, for the air was chill and windy in November, and looked at the stars.
"For once," she muttered, "could I please have a little luck in getting myself out of this mess that I have created? Just once - is that too much to ask?" she addressed the stars, which twinkled at her unhelpfully. Erethien sighed and stood next to Cerveth, one arm flung over the mare's wet back. It would be a long, long night.
Cerveth - July
Lasto beth nin, Cerveth - Listen to my words, Cerveth
Noro ún lagor - ride slowly. (literal translation: ride not swiftly.)
Cerveth, thál! - Cerveth, be steady!
Hathel - broadsword