Equinoxium: Chapter 32
by Lisette
Legalese: See Chapter 1 for disclaimers and ratings.
"I wish we could hear what was being said."
"Shhhh!"
"Hrumph! I merely-"
"Shhhh!"
"You can hear what they are saying!"
"Not if you do not cease in your prattling!"
"I will cease in my prattling when you-"
"If you guys both don't shut up, none of us will be able to hear what they're saying!" Buffy hissed from her mounted position behind Legolas as she turned to glare at Elladan and Gimli, the elf and dwarf flushing at her rebuke as a tense silence fell.
The sun had disappeared behind Mount Mindolluin minutes ago and the world was now bathed in shadows, the darkness broken only by the brightly lit torches the men carried as well as the full moon that gleamed amongst a star-dappled sky. Before them the Pelennor Fields stretched forward in a winter-brushed sea of deadened grasses, with naught but an occasional prickled scrub to break the flat plane.
"I merely wish to know what is being said," Gimli grumbled again, his gruff voice breaking the muted hush as he shifted indignantly on the back of Elladan's grand stallion.
Sighing in irritation, Buffy flicked her eyes towards the impatient dwarf before turning back to where Faramir met alone with Vashnak between the two opposing armies, leaning to the side to look around Legolas' tall shoulder. "Faramir just finished telling him that there isn't gonna be a trade," she whispered as she strained her sensitive hearing to the conversation being spoken hundreds of yards away. "Vashnak is calling us all fools, and Faramir is trying to negotiate another deal.... Now Vashnak is saying something about Faramir's mother and... oh," Buffy broke off with a startled pause. "Faramir basically told Vashnak to screw himself," she explained, her lips quirking into a crooked grin as the steward yanked on his horse's reins, directing the steed back towards the relative safety of the waiting army. Yet the steward's horse hadn't moved more than a few paces before Vashnak called out one final retort - a retort that caused Buffy to turn to the others in confusion.
"Did Vashnak just say something about presents?" she asked, faint lines of worry creasing her brow. "Because presents from mortal enemies generally suck beyond the telling," she murmured as a new horse nosed his way past the line of soldiers that stood behind her, causing the slayer to groan as her eyes took note of the new arrival.
"Short of their immediate departure, there is little else that we would want from these creatures."
Rolling her eyes heavenward, Buffy blew out a silent breath of air as she reluctantly acknowledged the tall, dark-haired elf that moved Andrann between Drlum and Elladan's steed. "Thoron," she greeted dully as she nodded to the advisor. "I was beginning to think that you weren't going to make it," she added, not bothering to mask her disappointment. Everything had happened so fast that Buffy hadn't even noticed the elf's absence until now; though his tardy appearance and the way that Legolas avoided his advisor's pointed gaze was more than enough for Buffy to have a fair idea what kept the older elf from his ward's side. "Did you have a hair crisis that needed seeing to?" she asked with mock sympathy as she eyed the perfectly braided cords that held his long brown hair free of his pale features.
"Not likely," Thoron returned as he arched one elegantly shaped eyebrow in a manner that was steeped in condescension. "I was merely delayed by my search for Andrann," the elf continued as his eyes darted towards his prince.
"So... you lost your horse?" Buffy asked in her sweetest voice as, grinning cheekily, she looked back and forth between prince and advisor.
"Of course not," Thoron returned as he lashed her with a dark glare. "One cannot lose one's horse when one's horse has been purposely led astray."
"So... someone else lost your horse?" Buffy questioned innocently, much to her growing amusement. "So where did you find your-"
"No!"
Startled by Legolas' pained whisper, Buffy felt his lithe body tense before her as she followed his gaze towards the dark army that was spread before them. "What?" she demanded as she leaned to the side, desperately straining her slayer-sharp vision - and suddenly wishing that she hadn't. In that moment, everything slowed down as she watched Vashnak wave some of his orc-brethren forward, a single limp figure held roughly in-between - a limp figure that even she recognized at first glance, no matter how impossible it seemed.
"Mirdan," Legolas gasped in the same moment that the pitiful creature lifted his dark head, a wave of knotted brown hair parting to reveal the bloodied, swollen and dirt-smeared face of the gentle elf that had accompanied them south so many months before.
He looked horrible, his skin so torn and bruised that he seemed drenched in filth and blood. Yet worse, perhaps, were the tattered rags that clothed him, allowing the slayer no doubts as to what the elf had been forced to endure these past days. But had it really only been days since news of Mirdan's death had reached them? Frozen upon the back of Legolas' horse, Buffy felt as if her entire world was shifting with this one moment. How could mere days have passed since Vashnak had taunted her and Legolas with Mirdan's fate in the gardens of the Houses of Healing? Had it truly been only a few days since she had been so beaten and when the world had spun out of control? Had so little time really passed since she had seemingly betrayed Legolas by forcing her blood upon him and as she had watched his friends tend to his bloody wounds upon the winter-swept grounds? They had thought Mirdan dead, had grieved for the dark-haired elf, and yet he had been alive all this time - a captive of the orcs and the dark-elves that had attacked his small party.
Mirdan was alive.
"No, my lord," Thoron hissed as he angled Andrann before Drlum, one of the elf's strong hands reaching forward to grip the prince's quivering arm and force the younger elf to lower the arrow that he had pulled and nocked against the taut string in one swift breath. "We are too distant - even for you," he explained as Buffy struggled with that same realization. Even if she leapt from Drlum's back and ran with all of the swiftness of the slayer legacy with which she had been endowed, she would still be too late to prevent the murder that they had foolishly believed to already have taken place.
Fingers digging into Legolas' arm, Buffy leaned against his taut back as she watched Vashnak force Mirdan's battered body to his knees before him, a leering orc to either side. "No," she whispered, the word a soft denial as the dark-elf lifted his curved sword, Mirdan's shadowed gaze lifting at the same moment to lock with those of his watching friends. There was no point to this brutal act - no advantage to be gained by this public slaying - and it was this fact that caused Buffy's heart to be torn between anger and horror as she remained helpless before this final cruelty.
"Brierend," Mirdan whispered, the name of Legolas' fallen brother, the former crown prince of Mirkwood and the wood-elf's closest friend, said as a simple, fervent prayer as Vashnak's blade fell in a gleaming arc, beheading the downed elf in a spray of bright blood and sending his dark head tumbling in a curtained arc to the pitted ground before them.
Feeling her breath catch in her throat, Buffy clutched one hand around the garnet as it burned against her skin hotter than ever. Unable to turn away, she watched as one orc lifted Mirdan's head by his lank hair and displayed it to his cheering comrades, the elf's broken body lying in a crumpled heap at his feet.
Yet while the enemy gave voice to their pleasure, the army of Gondor remained silent in their grief.
"May your beloved prince and Lord Mandos himself welcome you to his great halls," Elrohir whispered as he and the other elves lowered their eyes in respect to the fallen.
Buffy swallowed painfully as she loosened her claw-like grip on Legolas' stiff shoulders and the stone that throbbed against her skin, allowing a single moment of silence for the elf that she had already mourned before her fingers arched back to grip the leather pommel of the sword that had been gifted to her from her friends, pulling the blade free with the scrape of metal on leather.
With a roar, orcs and dark elves alike broke free of their lined formation and charged towards the awaiting army, their war cries and heavy feet shaking the very ground on which they trod. Eyes narrowed, Buffy turned, impatiently awaiting Faramir's signal as she tightened her one-armed grip around Legolas' waist. She had never done battle on this scale before, and yet it took only one look at the charging beasts to understand that they were about to meet the charge in true Gladiator style.
"Stay with me."
Startled by the brittle words, Buffy tore her gaze from the rushing army to see the hard lines of Legolas' turned cheek. His face looked as though it had been carved of marble, and the slayer felt her grief flare anew for Mirdan as she instinctively pressed against a back that had gone stiff and rigid with the emotions that churned behind Legolas' ice-blue eyes.
"Stay atop Drlum and the protection that he offers for as long as possible. Movement will be tight and we must defend against both flanks. Then, and only then should you dismount and take to your opponents."
Nodding at Legolas' instructions, Buffy tightened her grip on her sword's hilt as she turned back to the enemy. "Let's get this party started," she whispered, her palm growing slick with sweat as her eyes danced from Faramir's tense features to the approaching wave of darkness.
"Gondor!" Faramir roared as he hefted his sword in the air.
"Gondor!" his men returned as the horses surged forward, their metal-shod feet digging into the frozen ground and churning up black soil.
Jostled forward by the unexpected movement, Buffy tightened her grip around Legolas' slender waist, instinctively molding her body against his so that they moved as one atop Drlum's broad back. Knees and thighs clenched painfully against the horse's flank, Buffy ducked to the side as the fair-haired elf lifted his bow, arrow notched against the string before he released it with his next breath - the shaft flying straight and true and downing one monster, and then another, and then another and another so quickly that even Buffy could only marvel at the swiftness and accuracy of Legolas' bow. To either side of Legolas' dark steed rode Thoron and Elladan, both elves releasing arrow after arrow at the oncoming army while Elrohir moved in near synchrony with his brother.
"Hold tight, lass, and don't let yerself be blindsided in the shuffle!" Gimli called out as he bucked and heaved on the back of Elladan's horse.
Nodding dumbly, Buffy tightened her one-handed grip upon her sword, her eyes darting nervously towards the line of attackers that drew ever closer. The meeting of forces was going to be brutal, and Buffy found her uncertainty growing as she struggled to remain in sync with Legolas' movements, all the while avoiding the rapid pull of his right arm as he continued to unleash a rain of deadly fire upon the approaching army - an army that was moments from descending upon them.
An army that would drown her in their darkness.
Lungs freezing, Buffy felt the world fell still as this single thought thundered within her body - a body which coursed with fiery strength even as it quivered with fear. The fear and the strength felt so incongruous, battling within a frame that was far too small to contain such opposing forces. She was a slayer, and slayers weren't meant to feel fear - yet the fear was just as real as the strength that drove her to fight the very darkness that had been used to create the slayer line. Their darkness gave her power, and yet it was that power that she was meant to destroy.
Grip faltering around Legolas' lean form, Buffy felt her body begin to move at odds with the elf perched before her as she struggled with the rending within her. She was a slayer and yet why did this scene feel so wrong? Why was she so in doubt just seconds before a battle that would be on a greater scale than any she had ever fought before?
Shaking her head, Buffy tried in vain to regain her former focus, struggling to remember Legolas and Gimli's curt advice. Stay with the horse. Defend the flanks. Don't get blindsided. Stay with the-
"Horse," Buffy muttered, as with a sudden rush of clarity she finally realized what felt so wrong with this picture. She was a slayer - a warrior that had defended her world many times over in the brief years since she had been called as its protector - and yet not once in the past seven years had Buffy ever gone to battle on a horse. A Winnebago? Been there, done that - but a horse? Buffy realized that she wasn't in control of the beast that propelled her into battle, and that lack of control was ruining her game even worse than any of Angelus' taunts ever could. With a grim smile, Buffy understood that in this world that was to be her home, she belonged on a horse mid-battle just as much as she belonged in the trees.
Buffy was a slayer and a slayer did battle from the ground.
Grip tightening around the pommel of her sword, Buffy leaned forward once more, molding herself against Legolas' back as she pressed her lips against the edge of his pointed ear. "Meet you on the ground!" she called out, casting her voice above the pounding of so many heavy feet and the roars of those that were hefting their weapons before them, only scant precious feet away. Pulling back, she allowed no chance for the distracted elf to answer as she risked a quick glance behind her, gauging the location and distance of the men that urged their horses behind the fair-haired elf, before turning forward to select her first opponent from the black maw that yawed before them - a large orc whose eyes glittered with malice as he joined the rush of his malformed brethren.
Lips stretching into a thin, determined line, Buffy released her tight grip on Legolas and placed her hand flat on Drlum's dark back, feeling the powerful muscles rippling beneath the suede skin as she put all of her weight on that one arm. In one fluid movement, knowing that timing was everything, she propelled herself into an unsteady crouch on the horse's back, her sword still tightly gripped in her right hand, before launching herself through the air towards her unsuspecting victim.
As the forces of Gondor crashed against the abandoned forces of Mordor with a deafening roar of steel on steel and sword against flesh, the cries of the attackers vying against those who were mercilessly cut down, Buffy's own small body torpedoed into one large orc with all of the momentum of a rushing freight train. Grunting as soft skin collided with hard armor, Buffy jammed her sword through thick plates of metal and into the black skin beneath even as they were both driven against the tangled grasses of the Pelennor Field.
Rolling with the impact, Buffy lost her grip on her sword as she quickly fell into a crouch upon the trampled ground, her eyes locked upon the horses that stampeded past her petite frame with such force that she had to struggle to remain upright. Yet the moment that the army cleared her location, she was already up and moving back towards the fallen body of the orc that she had killed, one hand pulling free the dagger that had been sheathed at her side as her eyes swept over the carnage.
The moon was bright and full above, casting a pale glow on the chaos that reigned on the fields about her. Everywhere she turned she saw orc and man and dark-elf, pitted against one another in a fierce battle in which the loser would spend eternity ruing the mistakes that would be made this night. Already bodies littered the battlefield - the faces of orcs forever locked into twisted masks while those of the men were etched with pain and surprise. Everywhere the orcs and dark-elves fought against those who were still mounted as they pulled the men from the valiant horses that were dying beneath them. The shrieks of the dying warred against the grunts and cries of those who spread death without mercy or thought, and Buffy, the one person in her world who had been created for such violence, found herself reeling from the overwhelming, gruesome nature of a war that her blood had created.
Blood.
Feeling the heat course through her veins, Buffy's mind cleared as her senses warned her of a threat that soared towards her turned back. Throwing herself forward in a tight roll, the slayer twisted and came to one knee as she released her dagger with a blinding swiftness, the light refracting off the metal blade as it cut through the air and sank into the chest of a stormy-eyed mornedhel, piercing his heart and ending his life before his blade could sweep forward to destroy her own. Without sparing a glance toward the beautiful face of the downed dark-elf, she quickly turned and retrieved her sword from the orc's dead body before stepping back to pull the dagger from the elf.
Armed once more, Buffy spun towards a Gondorian soldier who was being overwhelmed beneath a wave of jeering orcs, the dying shrieks of the man's horse grating against her sensitive hearing. Darting forward Buffy slashed with sword and dagger, the sharp blade cleaving through black flesh as orc blood splattered the ground, coating the grasses and making each step treacherous upon the slippery ground. Orcs were falling beneath her blade as she struggled forward, yet by the time she reached the center of the circle the man had already stopped screaming, and there amongst the orc carcasses she found his broken body, the red of his blood mingling with the black that poisoned whatever it touched.
For a brief moment Buffy faltered beneath the man's unseeing gaze before another cry caught her attention, causing her to turn back to the mayhem that surrounded her. "We're not going to win this," she whispered, realizing for the first time the futility of the battle that they fought, her eyes sweeping over an army of courageous men who were hopelessly outnumbered. Yet this time there would be no last-minute saving grace. There would be no miraculous rebirth from death; there would be no rocket launcher or library of explosives; there would be no merging of selves and there would be no magical salvation - and most of all, there would be no hobbit who could save them all with the destruction of one small ring.
There was nothing to save them.
Arms aching from the strain of fighting an enemy that had no end, Buffy staggered against someone's dead horse as her breath burned within her lungs. They had been fighting for hours, and yet for each orc and dark-elf that fell beneath her blade, it seemed as though three others stepped forward to take their place. She was a slayer and graced with a slayer's stamina, but even she felt as though her arms were made of lead and her legs of jelly. How the men of Gondor remained standing after so many hours of battle was beyond her, and a testament to the fortitude of the grim-faced people.
"Buffy, enni!"
"Coming!" Buffy sighed as she pushed away from the horse's stinking carcass and towards the fair-haired elf that had called to her. Somehow she had stumbled upon Legolas and the others a few hours into the fight, and since then the blond elf had refused to allow her from his sight, always calling to her in his language when she drifted too far from his side. At first she had been thankful to once more have someone watching her back, just as the Scoobies had done for so many years, yet after the first few summons and after so many hours of ceaseless fighting, Buffy began to find the elf's attention just one more thing to add to her list of things to deal with this long night.
"I was just taking a breather," she muttered as she paused mid-stride to duck beneath an orc's wild swing of his curved blade. "Not like these guys were going anywhere," she added as she forced her aching arms to lift a sword that had gotten heavier and heavier as the night passed on. Gritting her teeth against the familiar burn, she swung the blade in a clean arc, neatly decapitating the monstrous creature and sending a wave of blood to wash at the feet of the twin elves that fought side by side.
"Ai! Buffy, watch what you are doing!" Elrohir groused as the dark blood stained his dark leggings.
"You are getting sloppy!" Elladan added with a dark grimace at his own similarly soiled garments.
"Oh, would you two just stop your bitching?" Buffy grumbled as she caught a passing orc in the stomach with her long-handled sword, the metal tearing through cloth and skin in a way that caused dark blood to splatter her leather coat whose tan coloring had long since been lost beneath so many layers of blood and filth. "Stupid prissy elves," she added for good measure as she sidestepped another passing orc, one hand tangling in its black, matted hair while her foot connected with its back in a powerful kick that sent its body hurtling forward, its neck snapping with a wet crack that was lost beneath the mournful wail of a single horn.
"My Lord, Sauron's beasts call a retreat!" one man called out to his steward as Buffy turned to the others in confusion.
"A retreat?" Buffy repeated incredulously as the men that remained began to raise their voices in cheer. "But why?" she asked as she sensed Legolas move silently beside her.
"The sun is rising," the elf noted as he directed her attention to the shadowed lands to the East.
Buffy watched as the orcs and dark-elves retreated in a fractured line towards the decimated city of Osgiliath - a city that still burned upon the river Anduin - scattered soldiers following in their wake until their steward called them back. Lifting her eyes towards the dark mountains that lay opposite the grand river, the slayer watched as a red sun began to shed her pale light over the lands, lightening the dark shadows by almost imperceptible fractions. "That doesn't make any sense," she argued as Faramir stepped beside their small group, his tired features twisted in a dark scowl.
"This battle was won too easily," he agreed. "The orcs cannot fight beneath the sun's light, but that should not stop the dark-elves from finishing what they have begun. Why would they forfeit their advantage?"
"Perhaps because they feel as though they forfeit nothing by their retreat," Elladan mused as his brother moved silently beside him.
"They don't think we have a chance of winning?" Buffy returned, trying to ignore the small voice that had been whispering that same conclusion all night long.
"No, they already know we have no chance of winning," Legolas corrected in a soft voice as his arm bumped against her shoulder, drawing her gaze to his ageless features. "This battle was naught more than an example of their might. They will come again when the sun sets, and this time, they will hold back nothing."
"But why? Why give us one more day?" she demanded, feeling her frustration begin to mount as the fair-haired elf slowly turned his face away, purposely avoiding her gaze and leaving the small group bathed in silence.
"They give us one more day to change our mind," Thoron stated, saying what his prince could not. "They give us one more day to return you to them," he continued, his dark eyes boring into her for the briefest of moments before he turned and began to nonchalantly wipe his blade clean upon the soiled garments of a dead orc that lay at his feet.
Flinching at the elf's pointed reminder of the role that she had unwittingly played, Buffy turned away from the others and began to move amongst the many bodies that littered the sparse fields, her sword dragging at her side. Already the cries of the wounded and dying began to echo over a world that had finally fallen silent. It was a silence that she had wished for at one point when the clamor of heavy feet and the orcs' raucous cries had been too loud, and yet now it was a silence that left her feeling more empty than ever before.
She had done this. She had come to this world, and in doing so, she had destroyed it.
Pausing beside the body of a man that looked no older than her, Buffy gazed upon pale features that were smudged with dirt and crusted with drying blood. Absently she dropped her sword as she crouched beside this stranger, one hand twining with his cold, stiff fingers before she even realized what she was doing. This man - no, this boy was dead - and his death, along with countless others, all lay upon her shoulders like a heavy mantle that was destined to break her once-proud stance. She had caused this and she-
"Come, mellon-nin," Legolas whispered as his pale hand fell upon her sloped shoulder. "There is nothing that you can do for him now. Let us help those who can still be helped."
Nodding stiffly, Buffy tore her gaze from the boy's dead eyes as she accepted Legolas' proffered hand and allowed him to pull her to her feet. He was smiling at her - his perfectly sculpted lips lifted in the smallest of arcs - and yet that small gesture was enough to banish some of the cold that had tried to mire her beneath its icy surface. "Those that can still be helped," she repeated, flashing him the best smile she could muster under the circumstances as she turned her eyes to the many wounded that dotted the vast plains.
They had work to do.