The Strange Alliance

They buried Arwen where she had fallen asleep, inside the ring of trees.

Word went out, no one knew how, that she was dead: perhaps the mallorns themselves whispered it from branch to branch. The Elves who remained in Lorien found their way to Cerin Amroth to say farewell, including some few who had not shown themselves until now, but even so there were no more than a score of them all told. And the men of the Company who had been in Caras Galadhan set out at once when the messenger reached them, marching through the night so they were there at dawn, trampling grass and flowers underfoot while the cooks and their helpers scavenged for firewood under the trees.

Elladan emerged from Arwen's pavilion, his face drawn with grief and lack of sleep. "Where is the Commander?" he demanded, and one of the soldiers pointed. Canohando sat off to one side with his head sunk to his chest. On the ground beside him Malawen lay sleeping with his cloak tucked around her like a blanket.

Elladan paused for a moment, incredulous; in his anxiety for Arwen he had not observed how Malawen shadowed the Orc; indeed, the little Elf was so withdrawn and furtive that he had almost forgotten her existence. He stepped around her to lay a hand on Canohando's shoulder, and the Orc started and leaped to his feet.

"Queen's Brother –"

The Orc had not slept either, apparently, unless he had been asleep as he sat there bolt upright, and Elladan was moved to pity at the misery in his eyes. "Your Company is here, Commander," he said gently. Will you take charge of them? I want a guard of honor for the Queen, and some men to dig the grave."

Canohando took a deep breath and nodded without speaking. He bent over Malawen. "Get up, Elfling, before someone steps on you."

She woke and instantly scrambled away from him, her eyes wide with terror. Canohando straightened and stepped back, but she had already recovered. "Is it morning? It's all right; I was startled, that's all, seeing you so close just as I woke up."

He led her over to one of the breakfast fires before he turned to his own duties. "Give her something to eat," he told the cook. "She is too thin."

He called out soldiers for the guard of honor and set a subaltern to drilling them, but he went himself, alone, to dig the grave. Some of the men saw him at the top of the mound and came to help, unasked. He did not turn them away, but he worked like one possessed, squaring the corners and jumping down into the hole to smooth the sides and the bottom.

The day wore on. Canohando moved among the men with set face, ordering the Company, making them shine weapons and armor to mirror brightness, seeing that the tents they set up were far back against the trees, as nearly out of sight as they could manage. At last he called for water and ducked into a tent to wash away his dirt, but the soldier who brought him clean garments stood hesitating at the entrance, reluctant to come in: the Orc sat on a blanket braiding his wet hair, weeping in harsh, strangled sobs.

As the sun fell behind the trees, they took their places outside the Queen's pavilion. The Company formed up before and behind, but the Elves went in and brought her out in a box of mallorn wood, polished and inset with designs of flowers and leaves, crystal and silver, and as they carried her up the hill to the waiting grave they sang laments in the ancient Elven tongue. And Canohando walked side by side with Elladan her brother, but those who watched could not have said whose sorrow was the greater. They were warriors, both of them, grim and parlous in appearance, yet tears ran unchecked down their faces.

They opened the coffin so everyone who wished might look once more on Arwen Evenstar, and Elladan and Canohando stood at her head and her feet as Elves and Men came one by one to pay their homage. But when all was done, Elladan bent to kiss her cheek for the last time, and the Orc knelt beside the coffin and lifted her hand to his lips. Then they drew her mantle over her face and fastened the lid, and lowered the box into the ground.

Afterward, when the grave was filled and all the songs were sung, as the light died they filed down the mound once more, silent but for the sound of shuffling footsteps. But in the meadow the cook fires were burning; food was ready and blankets had been spread on the ground where they could sit. The mourners gathered to the funeral meal.

Elladan sat with the Elves, picking at his meat without appetite, but willing to talk. "Are all the others gone over the Sea?" he asked.

"Over Sea, or into the East to join Thranduil's people in Eryn Lasgalen."

"But you did not go. Why do you remain, when Lorien fades around you day by day? How can you endure it?"

The Elf he addressed was one of those who had come to serve Arwen, until she sent them all away. "We would not leave the Golden Wood utterly deserted, in case Undomiel returned to us at last. But I will seek the Havens, now she is laid to rest. There is no more to hope for in Lothlorien."

And as Elladan questioned the others, he heard the same answer again and again. "Now we will depart, before the mallorns stand dead around us, before they begin to totter and fall..." A few would journey to Thranduil's kingdom, but most were following the Straight Road to Valinor.

"And you also, son of Elrond," they said. "Come with us to the Blessed Realm." But he made no answer to them.

When he came to Malawen, however, she glared at him defiantly. "I will remain in Lothlorien! It is my home." And though he sought to reason with her, reminding her that she would be altogether alone in an empty land, she shut her mouth tight and would say no more. Finally he gave up and turned to Canohando, still bemused at finding them together.

"You are going on to the Shire? That was the Queen's wish."

The Orc nodded. "To my brother's land, but first to Rivendell, as the Lady commanded," he said, and Elladan looked at him sharply.

"Rivendell? Now why, I wonder –" but the Orc shrugged.

"She bade me go there, Queen's Brother."

But after Elladan had moved on to speak to someone else, Canohando reached out and took Malawen's hand in both of his. "Why do you not go to Valinor with your people? You will be all alone here, and you are free to travel that Road..." He was puzzled and concerned, but she turned her head away.

"I am Orc-marked. I am not fit for Valinor."

He frowned. "You are scarred, little one –" he began, but she jerked her hand away from him.

"I am outcast! Do you see any Elf seeking my company? And I am not a child; I am only stunted, deformed–"

He shook his head. "You are small for an Elf, if this is your full growth, but you are not deformed. I am scarred far worse than you."

She lifted one thin shoulder dismissively. "You are an Orc, you mean. But you are no worse looking than others of your kind, and anyway I have never heard that Orcs cared for beauty."

For answer he stood up and skinned his tunic over his head, facing her bare from the waist up. Even in the firelight she could see that his chest was criss-crossed with dozens of pale lines incised on the grey skin, some thin, some thick: marks of the whip.

"My captains gave me something to remember them," he said dryly, "and so did the fire also." He turned around then, and she gasped, clapping her hand to her mouth: his back from waist to shoulders was a mass of puckered scars, not red like her cheek but black, as if the skin had been charred.

"You are right in one thing, Elfling: Orcs had rather look fierce than handsome! But no one bears scars like these without pain."

He pulled his tunic back on and came to sit by her again. "Go with your people to the Bright Country," he urged. "It is your birth-right; why will you throw it away?" But he could not persuade her, and at length she jumped up and slipped away among the trees.

Canohando sighed and got to his feet. People were still sitting around the meadow, soldiers of the Company in little groups and the Elves off by themselves, talking quietly. He avoided them all, climbing the mound alone and sitting down next to the new grave. It was marked with a great boulder, uncarved, of some white stone that glowed faintly in the dark.

"Your brother will have your name set on it in letters of gold," he said as if the Queen could hear him. He unhooked his drum from his belt. "I will make a song for you, Lady." He bent over the drum, his hands almost caressing it, his voice soft on the guttural stops and hisses of his native tongue.

They did not linger in that place. Theday after the funeral the Elves stood with Elladan taking their leave, still exhorting him to go with them to the Havens.

"I cannot abandon my men all leaderless in the wild," he said at last, touched by their importunity even as he was torn by doubt at what his decision should be. "Besides that my brother awaits me in Minas Tirith. But he himself is eager to take the Straight Road, so it may be that I shall see you again." But when the Elves had left, Elladan sought out Canohando.

"March with us back to Caras Galadhon," he said. "We must get the horses and prepare for the journey home, and it is on your way." But the truth was that he was reluctant to part with the Orc. He wanted his companionship a while longer, and he wondered at the desire even as he yielded to it.

So Canohando went with them, but if the soldiers marched in good order, he did not, walking now beside this man and now by that one, for many of them had become friends of a sort, although he was Commander of all. But after a few days at Caras Galadhon all was in readiness, and the parting could not be postponed longer.

"I should not fear for you, Orc, having seen you in battle, yet I hate to see you set forth without shield-brother into the wilderness," Elladan said. He held out a bronze pin to Canohando, the length of his hand, the metal twisted into an intricate knot at one end. "Stick this through your tunic -- there, at the shoulder. It is the badge of the Rangers, by which they know one another."

Canohando smiled grimly even as he took it. "You will get me killed, Queen's Brother. No one will mistake me for a Ranger, but they will easily believe I slew one of their comrades and took his ornament."

Elladan grimaced. "True. Very well, put it away, and I will give you a safe-conduct you can show, if you can stop them from killing you before you get the chance. The Northern Kingdom is well-guarded and you will need to be cautious. I would I could go with you, but Elrohir awaits my return and I gave him my promise."

There was humor in the Orc's eyes, but liking also. "You are a good man, Queen's Brother. Gladly I would travel with you, if our paths led in the same direction, but do not be anxious about me. A lone warrior may pass unseen where a troop of men draws enemies from every side. Give me your token if you wish, and I have the Lady's map. I will come alive to my brother's land if my fate allows it."

But when he had tucked the safe-conduct into his belt, he took the Elf-lord by both shoulders, his fingers digging painfully into Elladan's flesh, and his gaze was fierce in its intensity.

"Go with your twin to Valinor! Go for my sake, if you will not do it for your own." Elladan nodded slowly, and Canohando let go, striking him an open-handed blow on the upper arm.

"Good! Farewell, Queen's Brother! Say to the Valar, when you see them, that there is one Orc in Middle Earth who honors them."

Elladan stared after him as he strode away, watching him out of sight before he turned to mount his horse. "Move out!" he shouted. "Let us go home, Men of Gondor!"

Left on his own again, Canohando wondered where Malawen was. He had grown accustomed to finding her always close at hand, and at first he did not believe that she was really gone.

He had not seen her on the way back to Caras Galadhon nor in the few days the Company spent there after the Queen's death, but he had not been looking for her. He'd been occupied with Elladan and his men, helping them prepare for the journey back to Gondor and bitterly aware that he was unlikely ever to see them again, these Men who had become his friends. He had assumed the Elf-girl was somewhere in the vicinity, keeping out of sight. He still thought of her as a child, in spite of her insistence that she was full-grown.

But now he had been traveling for days and there was no sign of her. He went circumspectly, reminding himself that he had no host of soldiers at his back any more; he was alone again, as he had been when he left his mountains. But then he had been in a fever to find the Lady of the Jewel; for months he had been on edge, and the hunger for what he could not name had filled him to the exclusion of all else. Now he was empty.

If he had not promised Arwen to find the Shire and Rivendell, he might have remained where he was among the dying mallorns. He might have made his home at Cerin Amroth, throwing up a little hut to shelter him and dwelling evermore in sight of the white stone under which his Lady slept. But he had promised.

After some days he came out onto a broad plain. A jagged shadow against the western sky showed him where the mountains lay, and off to the east there was another belt of trees, not so tall as the mallorns and leafless in the early spring. The Great River must lie there, he thought, remembering that Arwen had told him to follow the river north. He drew back under the mallorns; he would not venture out on the open plain as long as there was woodland to conceal him. He turned toward the river that would be his pathway into the north, staying a stone's throw inside the border of Lorien.

He tried to bring the Queen's image before his mind as he walked, but it was Malawen's pale little face that came instead, her eyes resentful and challenging. She went to Valinor after all, perhaps. I hope she did. He hoped so indeed; he had urged her to go with the other Elves, but he missed her. He had not known how much he would miss her.

One of the Elves had come to him before they all left, carrying a bag of soft leather over his shoulder. "You are the one they call the Queen's Shadow?" he had asked, and at Canohando's assent he had handed over the bag. "Lord Elladan bade me give you a supply of lembas for your journey." He had regarded Canohando curiously. "Strange enough when we furnished a Dwarf with our food, during the War, and now an Orc! But you are no ordinary Orc, by all accounts. Arwen Undomiel drew some strange admirers."

He had been guarded but not hostile, and Canohando had smiled at mention of the Queen. "Who could see the Lady and not love her?" he had asked, and the Elf had clapped him on the shoulder. He'd said something in the Elven tongue as he turned away, but all Canohando was able to catch was the name of Elbereth; it was months since Arwen had tutored him in Elvish, and he had forgotten much of what he had learned.

But he was grateful for the food: a campfire might draw enemies to him. He would have had to eat his meat raw and that was too like the old days for his peace of mind, even if the taste had not been repugnant to him. Thanks to the lembas he need neither hunt nor cook, and as darkness fell he climbed one of the mallorns and slung his rope hammock from the branches.

He was wakened by voices and a glow of light under his tree, and he looked down to see a party of Orcs gathered round a fire, roasting hunks of meat on the ends of their knives. There were three of them, and he gave silent thanks that he had not risked sleeping on the ground. Then there was a howl of glee from a little way off and another Orc came in view, carrying something that writhed and screamed, fighting vainly to escape.

"Eh, look what I found hiding behind a tree, mates! Here's a bit of fun to pass the time – looks like some of our lads already had a go at it, but there's plenty of life in it yet." He flung his captive down by the fire and she sprang up to dart away, but another of the Orcs caught her by the ankle and dragged her back, shrieking.

Elfling! Canohando caught the branch over his head and pulled himself erect, forcing his mind to stay cold, calm. He snatched his bow from where it hung and crept out along a sturdy limb that overhung the fire.

The Orc had pinned Malawen to the ground and she was silent now but still struggling, thrashing and kicking in her efforts to free herself. "Not so fast, whey face, not so fast! Had a little taste of the brand, have you?" He dug his fingers into her hair, jerking her head around into the light. "Yes, yes, just a touch. Well, we'll fix that up for you. We'll see you're finished proper tonight, trust us for that!"

He laughed horribly and then he gagged, catching at his throat, trying to pluck out the arrow that suddenly blossomed from it. Malawen was up before he fell, flinging herself away from the fire into the darkness beyond, and the others made no move to stop her, staring up at the tree in astonishment before they dodged back out of the light.

Canohando lay motionless along the branch, waiting. An arrow flew past him and glanced off the mallorn's trunk. Still he waited; he could hear the Orcs crashing about down below, shouting to one another, and two more arrows sailed past, farther off. Get yourself into a tree, Elfling, he commanded silently. He peered down, trying to see where the Orcs had gone.

There was a noise below and he saw something dark climbing up toward him. He let the Orc pass him by and then he lowered himself to the ground, soft as a cat. There were shouts a little way off and then what sounded like a dying shriek; Canohando set off in that direction with his heart pounding. Carefully, Ghul-rakk, he warned himself, reverting to the name of his childhood in his terror for the Elf-girl. If that was her voice she is dead already, but if not you will do no good by running into a trap!

A voice rang out behind him and he flattened himself against a tree. The Orc who had been in the mallorn blundered past, and a shout up ahead answered him.

"Shaffa's done for! There's a gang of 'em, the filth – let's get out of here!"

"Where's the little whiteskin?"

"For all I know she's flew away like a bird! What's it matter – this is no place to play, and it's too much trouble to cart her along, even supposing we could find her. Come on, curse you!"

"Shut up then, fool – aieee!" It was a squeal of panic. "That was too close, that was! Come on –"

The voices ceased but Canohando could still hear movement, stealthy now, as the remaining Orcs tried to escape in silence. He pressed himself against the tree trunk, hardly breathing as he listened to the faint noises of their retreat, and he remained motionless for a long time after he could not hear them anymore. At last he relaxed and began to feel his way through the darkness.

"Elfling?" His voice was no more than a breath, but there was an answer from the branches above him.

"Here," she whispered, and he was up the tree in a heartbeat.

It was too dark to see anything, but he found her by touch, his hand meeting her fingers as he reached out to grasp a branch. "Elfling!" he choked, feeling as if something had him by the throat. He climbed onto the limb she was sitting on and drew her with him back against the trunk; then he closed his arms around her as if he would never let go, holding her fast and murmuring in her ear, "Elfling… Elfling…"

She trembled, her body stiff and resistant for a moment, but then she slumped against him, clinging to him and pillowing her head on his chest. He could feel her shuddering in his embrace and he rested his cheek against her hair.

"Elfling, what are you doing here? I thought you had gone with your people."

"I told you, I am not fit for Valinor." Her voice was strained and she cleared her throat. "I thought I would stay alone, but I was afraid…"

"You have been following me? You are more stealthy than fog in the river bottom! But why did you stay hidden?"

"I did not think you would let me come."

His arms tightened around her. "No.I would have told you to go to Valinor." But he was glad she had not gone.

"I cannot," she said. "Take me with you, Canohando."

A door opened somewhere inside him; almost he heard Lash's flute again, and Frodo's voice lilting under its clear notes, warm and merry.

"You should be with your people –" he began, but he didn't mean it, not anymore, and she said again,

"I want to go with you. I will follow after, if you will not let me walk alongside." She made it sound like a threat, and he laughed softly, muffling the sound against her hair.

"I will bring you to Rivendell," he said. "Some Elves are still there, I think."

He felt her nod. "All right. I don't care where we go."

He would not let her climb down from their refuge while the night lasted. "We are safer out of sight here, little one. Go to sleep; I will not drop you." He braced himself firmly against the tree trunk and held her secure in his arms.

She slept at last, a warm, limp bundle against his heart, and he sat wakeful through the night, watching the stars through gaps in the branches and breathing in the fragrance of her hair. Contentment seemed to sink into his very bones; he was more at rest than he had ever been, and yet piercingly aware of every scent and sound of the night.

When morning came he climbed down, cautious and watchful, and followed the Orcs' tracks for a long way, making sure they were gone before he let Malawen leave her hiding place. He found the body of one of the Orcs a few yards from the tree with an arrow in its eye, not one of his arrows. He retrieved his hammock and the bag of lembas on his way back; the Orc he had shot still lay by the burnt-out fire.

"Are you an archer, little one?" he asked when he had called her down from the tree. "It was you who shot the second Orc last night?" She turned slightly to show her quiver strapped to her back, and he laughed in delight.

"They went hunting a dragon, those fellows! Good for you, Elfling – "

"You rescued me," she interrupted.

"I rescued you," he said, "but we drove them off together. Come, we will eat the waybread as we walk – softly, now; there may be more enemies about."

Setting a zigzag course among the mallorns, he was a grey shape hardly to be told from the shadows that moved on the forest floor, as the high branches swayed in the wind. And Malawen behind him seemed at one with the woods, her garment of like color to the new little seedlings that carpeted the ground, her pale hair and skin like sunbeams striking down through the trees. It would have taken a watchful foe indeed to see either of them.

Canohando looked back and their eyes met.She smiled, and the loveliness of her marred face nearly stopped his breath. Always before she had looked sullen or angry, her beauty hidden behind clouds, but today in truth she was Elven fair. He faced forward once more, caught between joy and fierceness: she trusted him, this little one, and he would not fail to protect her!