Chapter 3: Ai, Dunadan, And Turn Away…
"Imladris is not far, we shall be there before the end of the week," Adair assured her brother as she readjusted her stirrups, "But I suppose I must compensate time for the shorter legs of the pony."
Arden grinned and turned to Lhydell, "Uh oh, mellon, she's making fun of you again!"
Adair swatted the back of Arden's curly head and smiled at her travelling companion, "Shall we?"
Lhydell winked at Arden who jovially returned the gesture, "Lets."
The two rangers started off in what must have been a humorus way for those that witnessed the short girl on a pony and the tall girl on a lofty mare depart remember it with laughter and calls for ale.
Onto the paths of the Dunedain they lead their mounts and dissolved into the green-grey wilderness…
{Two days later, dusk}
Adair coughed as the grey speckled pony reared and a cloud of dust rose about her.
"What are you doing, Lhydell?" The smothering ranger shrieked as the pony again reared, nearly throwing off its small rider.
With a cry, Lhydell was thrown from her mount and crashed into the underbrush with a thud and a moan. Adair, her own horse skittish now too, lept from her saddle and rushed to sooth the terrified pony.
"Shhh, Pathia calm, shhhhhhh."
The horse, eyes wild and mouth frothing, quit rearing but would not stay still; Adair covered the pony's eyes and spoke calming words in elvish into the poo thing's ears.
Slowly it calmed down enough for Adair to tie its reins to a tree limb, then calmed her own startled mare.
"Lhydell, are you all right?"
A moan came up from under a bush and she saw a skratched and bloodied hand emerge from under, followed by a head of tangled hair full of sticks and an assortment of other oddities picked up during her plunge through the bush.
Adair smothered a laugh as Lhydell blew a feather out of her face, "Have a nice trip?"
Lhydell only muttered something that sounded like shut up and pulled herself up out the enemy shrub. Adair laughed at her companion's comical apperance and though to herself, 'I really shouldn't be laughing, she might have been badly hurt!' But before she could say anything out loud she had another, more wary thought, 'what made the pony so wild?'
Though both were visibly calmer, the pony from Rohan still shivvered terribly and it's eyes were rolled back. Adair quickly scanned the surrounding trees, but she could see nor hear anything out of place, but her mare's nostrils were wide and flaring.
Tentatively she sniffed the air; the smells of dust, horse, plant and the faint aroma of pine entered her nose. These were all normal and well, but… there was something else, something cold and metalic, and something not good, something not good at all.
"Lhydell," she hissed in Sindarian, "what do you smell?"
The small curly haired mess paused in her feeble attempts to remove all the dirt and crushed leaves that stuck to her to delicately sniff the north wind breeze.
"There is the smell of the forest, of the spring ahead, the dirt and the horses…" Her dark eyes widened with alarm, "there is something foul nearby, or was here of late."
She inhaled again, deeply, her eyes screwed shut and a hand strayed the the blade sheathed around her waist, "It is not a man sent, nor is it orc."
Adair watched with admiration for the tiny warrior's elf-like sence of smell, yet her own hands found their way to her bow and quivver without her notice, an arrow notched and bow at the ready. Here they stood for only a moment, though it seemed like hours for the two fearfull horses, before Lhydell declared, "Let us leave now, I do not think that we should rest the night, fire may draw unwanted company to our location."
Adair returned her bow to its place and, still watching the surrounding forest keenly, raised an eyebrow to Lhydell's remark.
"Yet it is possible to meet unexpected company upon the road, too. This needs solving, should we wait to be sure they are gone, or will it risk our position too this foul thing?"
Lhydell nodded and told her that the need to put distance between the thing and them is greater than the need for sleep and food. "We have lembas and water, and we have not been riding the beasts hard; we should leave now."
Adair saw her point and, after holding the pony's head while Lhydell climbed aboard, settled into her saddle and spurred her mare on down the path.
Lhydell, ever a lover of animals, patted Pathia gently and sang to her a song that her Nana used to sing her to sleep with…
Sleep my Maia, evergreenSleep into a happy dream
May your road be long
May you fulfill the song
And rest easy in the Halls
That place beyond Arda's walls
Beyond darkness' calls…
They travelled through the night and into the morning's stillness, eyes to the west in reverence for the fallen Numenor and the Valar in the Undying Lands.
Adair smiled through her wearyness at Lhydell as Amon Sul, Weathertop, came into view. Interupting the small Dunadan's soft songs that she had sang all night to ward off sleep, Adair suggested that they rest at the ruins of the ancient lookout.
"I suppose my Pathia-darling could do with a bit of a stop, how about your tall Tabinith," Lhydell teased gently.
Adair smiled saucily back and raised an eyebrow, the eye below glittering with mirth despite the bags under them proclaiming her need for sleep, "race you!"
With that they were off, the small pony suprisingly keeping up and even surpassing the northern-bred mare. The two riders laughed merrily and pulled in their mounts as they quickly cam up to the ancient ruins, dismounting and leading the panting horses to a cave where an underground spring flowed cheerily, reflections filling the cave with light patterns and the air with a sound like the tinkling of small bells.
Here the two girls, though by their years they hardly could be concidered that by regular men in whoes veins do not flow the remenants of the Numenorean blood, rested their horses and refilled their water skins before taking the inner hidden stairs to the top.
As the sun rose in her magnificence the two sleepy Dunedain made their small breakfast of apples picked from a tree along the road by Lhydell and the waybread that Adair had packed at the watch-camp of the Rangers.
Lhydell sighed, leaning back while eating her apple with relish, and looked around the stone surrounding them.
'Oh, what I wouldn't give to go back and see this place before it's fall from glory,' the slightly mellow second-born girl thought, 'That I could even see Numenor, her towers sparkling and bright! Oh, by the Fire of Iluvatar, how I would love to see the great places before the great upsurper defiled it by his cheating pressence and caused the fall of men… Oh, for the western shores and Tol Eressa… for the Silver Land where the golden ones dwell! The west… oh pooh, it is naught but a fantacy for my kind and kin, we lost the grace of the Gods and are now lost too, homeless without a king…'
The light of their eyes burned brightAs the evil Edain landed to fight
With anger ablaze like the moon
Manwe bent the seas and set men's doom
Ai, Dunadan that longs to sail
Dunadan, you will surely fail
For their wrath will still avail
And to deaf ears fall your wail
Ai, Dunadan, turn away!
The crown was lost and broken
And of his ship there was no token
The lands crumbled and water roared
And laughing went Sauron the dark lord
Ai, Dunadan that longs to sail
Dunadan, you will surely fail
For their wrath will still avail
And to deaf ears fall your wail
Ai, Dunadan, turn away!
Yet escape did Elendil and his true kin
But not untouched by Numenor's sin
Though the city towers rose white and high
To the west they would look and sigh
Ai, Dunadan that longs to sail
Dunadan, you will surely fail
For their wrath will still avail
And to deaf ears fall your wail
Ai, Dunadan, turn away!
And now still since the passing of the King
We the lost Numenoreans sadly sing
Of the memory of our desperate plight
And the wrongs not yet made right
Ai, Dunadan, turn away!
Adair, who had been drifting into sleep, heard the song that Lhydell sang.
Her heart nearly broke as the words, so sad they sounded, drifted through the air like tendrils of smoke from a candel extinguished. She had not realized how deeply her distant cousin's ache for the west ran, as the words of the song were so pitifully desperate for that land that it made tears form in her eyes and a lump in her throat.
'Eru, despite that she looks as far from a Numenorean of old she has the heart of ten!'
Adair's last thought before sleep happpily took her was the last line of the song… 'Ai, Dunadan, turn away…'
