Author's Notes: Disclaimers as per previous chapters. The latter part of the chapter is drawn from my interpretation of information provided in chapters two and three of Return of the King, Book V and is, if anyone is interested, foreshadowed in Chapter V. There will be an Epilogue.

Wings of the Storm, Chapter XVI- In the Hands of Gods

Those who opposed Graldor had been slaughtered without mercy. They probably had not even asked for mercy, though Caldrion could not say with any certainty. The power of Graldor was waxing and had covered Aratur like a veil. In truth, Caldrion could not recall much of what he had done in the past few days. After all the followers of Smosur had paid the penalty for their treason, he and all the other people had returned to their normal daily lives but had gone about them listlessly, as though in a waking dream. The thought that he and Catrilas needed to make a final decision about leaving Aratur constantly gnawed at him but he could never remember to actually talk to her about it. The only really lucid conversation he could think of was with Othcyr, whom he had disabused of the notion that Aeschen was dead with the others by relating how he had allowed the soldier to leave. Otherwise he, and all of Aratur, had endured days or weeks of hazy quiet.

All of that changed one morning when a rider came in from the ongoing construction project that was Fort Neblis, bearing the news that a huge mass of orcs was coming toward Aratur. It had easily overwhelmed the workers, killing almost all of them, and would arrive at Aratur within an hour or two. As the whisper of panic spread through the town, the men arming themselves and the women frantically preparing to flee, Graldor summoned Caldrion to help him decide what to do.

Caldrion found the King in his bedchamber, his armor mostly on. He was standing motionless before his sword, as though hesitating whether or not to put it on. "Graldor! You must hurry!" He did not react. "We must hurry if we are to flee to Hillguard and assemble the Army to meet the orcs on the open plains where we will have the advantage. You must hurry and help the women and children escape."

Graldor turned to his friend, his expression blank and his voice flat. "The dark. The swirling dark. Neither stars nor moon to give it light. Eternal, endless night. And in it a fire, giving neither warmth nor light. And out of it a voice, as cold as the darkness, as penetrating as flame. 'Take up the sword. Become who you were born to be.'"

Apparently, Caldrion was not the only one having dreams. He wished he could discern the meaning of the King's dream. He could not understand how fighting one group of orcs with half his army would fulfill the purpose for which he was born. He wished Sirgo were still alive to tell them what it meant. He had no time for any of it. "What do we do?" he asked, prepared to simply follow the orders of his King.

Graldor picked up the sword. His face was calm, but his eyes were wild. They might have been fiery with madness, but they also seemed grey and completely lifeless. "We fight."

-

If every orc the Army of Aratur had ever fought were gathered on the same field, that force still might not equal the number of orcs arrayed against them this day. Worse, they marched in units that appeared organized, indicating a level of training and cooperation absent in the earlier groups. Aratur had no chance. Caldrion knew it and even Graldor seemed to suspect it. Time remained their enemy. Even if they had wanted to flee, Aratur was still far from evacuated.

So they had formulated a plan. It was bad enough that less than two thirds of the Army lived in Aratur rather than Hillguard, but close to half that number had been killed some days before. Caldrion was at the head of nearly fifty mounted soldiers, roughly half what remained of the Army proper. His job was to harass the orcs, slow their advance, break up their formation, and generally draw their attention away from the town. Because of the large number of noncombatants who had yet to leave, Graldor led the rest of the Army on foot, defending the crest of the ridge in front of the burial area outside of the gate. They were supplemented by other men, and at least a few women, able to bear arms once belonging to the rebels. It was a sign that Graldor was aware how dire Aratur's predicament was that he raised no objection when Walame the healer had gone in and taken armor and a sword.

Caldrion looked back toward the town. Hopefully his family had gotten everything packed up and was already heading toward Hillguard. No one had actually discussed what would happen once Aratur was emptied, but Caldrion hoped that Graldor would mount and withdraw, his own cavalry would follow, and once to Hillguard everyone would flee together, taking advantage of their additional speed to get away from the orcs. If he could find his family, they might just slip off and ride away together, maybe heading north like the elves.

A gruffly barked order drew his attention back towards the advancing orcs. As they moved over slight rises and falls, the gaps between enemy units were widening, and Caldrion identified an opening that he thought he could safely attack. He pointed this out to his men: "Ride behind them, striking as many as you can. Do not linger long; ride through and regroup on the other side before the next set of orcs can trap us between them."

Having issued orders, Caldrion drew his sword, kicked his horse, and charged, trusting that the men would follow. Whether they actually would was beyond his control. The outcome of this battle was something over which he had no power. Indeed, he realized, none of the events of his life had fallen within his ability to influence. He was being swept along as part of something greater than himself, and he could only hope that the Powers directing that something intended good rather than ill.

He turned his head away from the orcs even as he approached them. How easy it would be to jerk the reins in another direction and put it all behind him. His actions had never truly been his own, but had always been leading toward something. What would it feel like to be leading and not led, to find out who he actually was, and not what these Powers had made him? As he drew up on the first orcs, he was very tempted to go find out when he decided that he had it backwards. Whether or not the Powers had made him thus, this was what he actually was, and to run away from it would be untrue to himself.

Caldrion wondered what it was that had led him to philosophically contemplate leaving his family as he cantered behind the orcs. Some did not react to his presence. These he stabbed or slashed as was most convenient given the position of his sword at the given moment. Some stepped forward to get out of his way. These he ignored. Others turned and tried to engage him. With these he attempted to avoid being harmed while seeking, if possible, to wound them as well. He came through the gauntlet unscathed and saw that his men had, for the most part, done likewise. The damage they had done to that one group was not insignificant, but as he surveyed the others moving around him, the impossibility of their task again weighed down on him. Even if they were to eradicate this unit, there were eight or ten more of similar size.

He wheeled his horse back around. There was time for at least one more pass before this first group was close enough to begin engaging Graldor. This time he was more aggressive, positioning his horse to actually run over some of the orcs and putting more effort into landing blows. He was rewarded with more casualties on both sides. The riders reassembled and took a breather as Caldrion took stock of the situation. The orcs had reached Graldor's line, but Graldor had donned his ring and they were holding their position admirably. Granted, Caldrion was not worried about the first group as much as the subsequent ones, who would meet a tired opposition and have large enough numbers to outflank the defense.

Meanwhile, the orcs were spreading out, probably intending to break through the undefended and largely indefensible wall of the town. That he would concede, as long as they did not take it too quickly. The best plan, he decided, would just be to slay as many as possible. That would slow them down as well as anything else he could come up with. "Ride through their ranks at will killing as many as you can. Stick together in groups and keep moving to avoid being surrounded and overwhelmed."

They broke into groups of half a dozen to a dozen, Caldrion leading one such group into the next unit of orcs that would march up to Graldor. Behind the fighting, he saw the arrival of the only reinforcements Aratur was going to receive. Halin had finally managed to gather seven horse archers and was moving them behind Graldor. Caldrion had no time to observe the effectiveness of the archers, however, because the orcs, or at least a small group thereof, turned to meet his little charge. He had to swerve to avoid impaling his horse on a spear, and a couple of those behind him were not so lucky. He did manage to kill a few, but on the whole he was having greater difficulty keeping mounted and moving, as the orcs were trying to trap him and thereby eliminate his only advantage over them: speed.

He continued to lead his group, trying to kill and avoid being killed, and moved to target the orcs that had stopped a short distance from the wall of the town. The outer orcs had assumed a defensive stance while the ones inside were working on something, though he could not see what. His focus remained on his movements: slash, stab, dodge, stab, dodge, dodge, slash, dodge, miss, slash, dodge, stab, slash, dodge, dodge, dodge.

Having made several passes, he stopped to reassess the situation in the uncontested space southeast of the town where he had begun his operations. The eight following him had dwindled to two: Lenniol, who, based on his many scratches but lack of serious wounds, was probably as thick-skinned as he was thick-headed, and Ared, an old veteran who was successfully fighting like one. Graldor's line had effectively dealt with the first orc unit and had mostly slain the second, but they were clearly exhausted. They had retreated slightly and were far more spread out. Two mostly fresh groups of orcs were moving up now, and Caldrion figured that it was a matter of minutes before the line broke entirely. If by some miracle Graldor managed to withstand the next onslaught, yet another bunch of orcs was moving in. To the north, he saw that the orcs in a defensive position just east of Aratur were laden with archers. The bad news was that this was decidedly not a good thing. The good news was that they were not shooting at any of those fighting them.

The worst news, however, came as he shifted his glance toward the town. A significant number of orcs must have simply bypassed Aratur, because they were heading west at high speed, directly toward Hillguard. He sucked in a gasp as he realized that their retreat was cut off. It was now apparent that the orcs had both knowledge of the area and the intention to completely eradicate the people dwelling therein. His realization was confirmed when the archers began firing, in both senses of the word, the town. The pause behind their defensive stance had simply been to kindle flame with which to destroy Aratur.

There was a rush as everyone still in the town, from old men to horses, came pouring out the gate. They too saw the orcs heading west and, as the beasts scattered, getting away from the fire, the mass just stopped and began milling, unsure where to go and with no one to lead them. Caldrion wanted to do so, but there were too many orcs between him and them. Graldor could not either, as he remained engaged, invincible on account of the ring but also powerless against such numbers.

There was nothing to be done. Now that his horse was rested, he turned it toward Aratur, hoping to reach his family, if they were still around, die with them, and take as many orcs with him as possible. As he did so, he saw a female figure emerge from the crowd and run into the graves. Even though he could not clearly see her, the fact that she stopped and knelt by Sceofsen's last resting place identified her as his niece Eoscla, presumably saying one last goodbye to her old friend.

Even as he and the two behind him smashed into the rear of one of the units attacking Graldor, the front thereof broke through the center as other orcs ran right by the line's northern flank. The line was completely broken. Eoscla presumably heard the orcs coming but made no move to get up, though she probably could not have outrun them anyway. She died bloodily at the end of an orcish blade. Caldrion sobbed, realizing that she must have truly loved Sceofsen, even if she had not realized how much until after he was dead, and, having reached that conclusion, she had chosen not to allow death to separate them.

Caldrion stopped and turned his horse slightly south. He could not worry about his family now. He could only worry about saving himself. There was a track, he remembered, that intersected a stream that flowed into the river that had its source near the path beneath the mountains. He could flee there, now, before the orcs that had closed the east, north, and west closed the way south. He could make a new life fishing on the coast south of the mountains, and live a long time, forgetting all he ever knew of Graldor or his mission.

He heard a wave of screaming and looked back. The orcs were beginning to slowly cut through the mob, and the fight was now every man, woman, child, and horse for him or herself. He saw Fremus screaming at the top of his fading lungs before he was cut down. Caldrion had almost broken through to a small group of soldiers when he looked up and recognized Aelia, Rickens' widow, and Walame, the former carrying her baby and the latter with huge amounts of orc blood covering her sword and armor. They were running toward the group he was about to free and between them were two children. All thoughts of flight left him as he realized that one of the kids was Hrethere, his bow in one hand and Eadgla's hand in his other. The group of men that he was making his way towards included Catrilas, Othcyr, and Eodryn, and Walame and Aelia were, in effect, screening his other children so they could join their family.

Fortunately, the orcs were going for easier targets: the slow-running Yilisond, his similarly slow wife Farvas, and her now seriously heavy sister. Their ends looked particularly painful, though Caldrion noted that they did have the positive effect of driving more horses in his direction, which would allow them all to ride and renewed the possibility that they all might escape together.

With new determination, Caldrion broke through the circle even as Lenniol finally fell, his arm having been lopped off. Ared had the presence of mind to grab his horse before the orcs killed it as well. With their rear now secured, Catrilas' group took out the last of the foes between them and the four running to them. In addition to his wife and two older children, the group included Thalond, who only a short time ago had chosen loyalty to Graldor over loyalty to his old friends Smosur and Wyslun, Cynebald, who had never supported Wyslun despite being, alongside him, responsible for triggering the chain of events that had led to the massacre at Rising Sun, Ratley, who had long ago suffered as a slave of orcs such as these, and Rievlyn, who, judging by the blood, could use a sword just as well as his cobbling instruments. Those seven quickly began gathering the eight or so horses they would need to keep all but the children from having to ride double.

Walame and Aelia were fairly close to the others when Hrethere stumbled. Eadgla kept running as her brother struggled to regain his footing, and thus the three women had safely met the others before a column from the final unengaged unit of orcs moved between them and Hrethere. After mounting their horses, they began trying to fight their way through this new obstacle. Hrethere, for his part, had reacted with surprising calmness, simply taking arrows and disposing of some of the orcs separating him from his family.

Something drew Caldrion's gaze further up. Graldor, his already blurry figure made more shadowy by the flames of the burning city dancing behind, was standing alone, killing every orc that came close. He was wielding his sword with both hands and delivering blows with unnatural force, but his movements were sluggish, as though weighed down by the years that had not aged him visibly. At the moment, he was surrounded by a substantial number of foes. Even as he looked at them they surged forward, intending to bring him down with sheer weight of numbers. Before they could lay hands on him, however, he sheathed his sword, pulled off his ring, and stuck it in his pocket, perhaps intending to die on his own terms.

That was not, however, the plan of the orcs. Several horses were brought forward. Graldor was helped to mount one, and six orcs, at least a couple of which were probably leaders, given their stature and the heightened ornamentation of their armor, mounted the others. The remaining orcs opened a path for them, and they began heading east. Graldor merely sat on the horse, looking world-weary as though all the fight had left him, though whether he was taken resignedly or went willingly into this captivity Caldrion could not tell. It did not escape his notice that Graldor's own horse trampled Memara, his cook of so many years. This King had repaid years of loyal and unquestioning service with death.

Some voice in his head told him to yell for Hrethere to take down the King before he could ride away, kill him before it was too late. Caldrion was about to do so but, turning, he saw a pair of orcs sneaking up behind his son. There was no need to even think about the choice between killing Graldor for reasons he could not understand and saving his son's life. He yelled for Hrethere to turn around, which he did, firing two rapid arrows to slay his assailants before they could reach him. Graldor and his escort were now out of Hrethere's range. He then turned his attention back to those keeping him from his family, but with guttural roars another group of orcs came charging at him, this one too big to take down with what arrows remained.

Hrethere looked like he was about to bolt toward his family and hope for the best when Halin suddenly rode up behind and pulled Hrethere onto his horse. There was no time to move, however, before the orcs hit. As some of them surrounded him, others ducked in and literally chopped the horse's legs out from under it. Caldrion was not the only one wailing as the orcs' repeated hacking motions and the fountains of red blood left little question to the fate of his good friend and son.

Caldrion and Catrilas might have continued pointlessly fighting the orcs in their grief, but Ared yelled at them "Come on! We must get out of here!" Cynebald, visually noting that all their apparent escape routes were clogged with orcs, asked "Where?" Caldrion turned his horse, grimly told them "Follow me," and sped off to the south. A group of orcs to the east of them saw their flight and began running to cut them off, but the orcs had neither the speed nor the appropriate angle to do so. The riders forded the river, hastened across the last of the plains, and then started up the track into the mountains.

Before they were lost in the trees, Caldrion looked back. Aratur was naught but burning wood, with a beacon of smoke towering into the summer afternoon. Orcs swarmed around it like ants, and it seemed likely that these seven men, four women, and two children riding into the mountains were all that remained of Aratur. He imagined that the same would soon be true of Hillguard. It would certainly be razed, though he had hopes that Frealine, Dunev, or some other people from that town would survive.

Turning east, he thought he could spy the other survivor of the failed dream that was the Araturian Kingdom of the Plains. Graldor was now gone beyond Caldrion's reach, and the King's fate was no longer in his hands. He had failed. This whole task assigned by the Valar was somehow a sham, otherwise it would have succeeded. He had failed. For good or ill, he was running away and no longer had his purpose. He might have laughed at this new-found freedom, but something told him that he would never escape his past. He had failed. Graldor was riding east with the orcs, and he was riding south with what remained of his family and friends. He had failed. He would never know how badly.

-

They did not stop until after nightfall, and only then because Catrilas insisted. Caldrion had wanted to travel through the night in case there were orcs in pursuit, but everyone had at least scratches of some kind, and Walame had a fairly nasty wound in her side that she had told no one about. Once they had stopped, they lit a fire, again contrary to his wishes, so they could warm water in which to bathe everyone's injuries. The one concession to security that Caldrion obtained, largely because Ared agreed with him, was to put out the fire and move away from it to sleep. It would not do to attract unwanted attention while most of them were at rest. This first night, he knew, would be the most critical, because if orc pursuit did not find them by the next morning, their speed, even through the forest, would be too much for the orcs to keep up with.

Given that no orcs made appearances during the night, the subsequent journey held no surprises. When they reached the spot where Sirgo had died calling the flood, Caldrion paused to remember him and pray that his self-sacrifice had not been in vain. Once they reached the river, which was immediately surrounded by a fairly flat floodplain, the riding became easy, even if the mood was still melancholy in the extreme. In addition to all the losses they had already suffered, no one was in the best of health. Walame, Ratley, and Thalond still had bad wounds that were not healing well, and Eadgla had developed a sniffle more typical of the winter months.

Walame was the first to succumb, going to sleep one night and not waking up. Her body was wracked with fever, and her wound had reopened overnight, draining the life from her already weak body. They took her herbs and poultices, even though none of them had enough skill to properly use them, and then gave her to the river.

It was in that evening that they came to the spot that most likely marked the path that led to the pass under the mountains. Though there would have been plenty of light on the plains, the towering mountains threw the whole of the valley into shadow. It was Eodryn who actually spotted the path winding up the mountain. It was composed of a series of tight turns that gradually ascended the mountain's face.

Ahead of them, the valley seemed to narrow, likely indicating that it was approaching the gorge through which it descended from its source. Caldrion, who was uncertain about using a path that had probably been carved by orcs or humans many years in the past, sent Rievlyn and Thalond ahead to confirm that the river was indeed coming to its source before committing the group to going up the mountain.

The more he thought about it, however, the more it made sense. A pass beneath the mountains was most likely a series of caverns discovered and perhaps improved upon by men. For the nomads to have heard rumors of this pass, it must have, like the path, been around for some time and was thus probably the product of a civilization eradicated by the slow decay of passing years, given that it seemed unlikely that orcs would have come so far into the mountain range. Maybe these ruins served as the base of those few uncivilized men who hunted in the mountains.

It made sense. He started up the path and the others followed. He had not gotten very far when Rievlyn came riding back toward them in haste. "Run! They got Thalond!" Caldrion did not have the chance to ask who he was talking about, because as the cobbler started following them up the path, a group of maybe thirty wild men, ill-clothed and ill-armed, came into view. Caldrion thought that his band would have at least some small chance of defeating them, but it would be better to just continue up and hope that they did not follow.

Unfortunately, they did, and what advantage of speed the riders had was largely negated because they really needed to take the turns slow. As they neared the top, blocks of stone were set at three of the turns, the last of which was carved in the shape of a man, short and fat, with a sense of evil issuing from his dark eyes and sharp teeth. It was clearly recent work.

As he reached the top, he saw the workers. There were hundreds of them, the men of the mountains, and by the terror he felt at observing them he knew there would be no safe passage through. It was a city, moreso than Aratur had ever been. Standing stones lined the road that went through the center of the grassy plain, with primitive but serviceable wooden houses placed in a seemingly organized pattern primarily to the right of the road. It seemed a topographic anomaly, a most improbable place for a civilization, but then, when had anything in Caldrion's experience been probable? The most frightening sight was the huge semicircle of sheer rock face, which in form most resembled the ampitheatre in Vinyalonde but dwarfed it in scale. What scared Caldrion about it, though, was not the physical location but the men therein. They were on their knees, looking to the east, and it was obvious, even at this distance, that they were shedding their own blood by cutting themselves with knives. It was a temple, and certainly not to the Valar in which Caldrion believed.

The men from below were approaching the last turn while those above had seen the intruders but were gathering to attack rather than trying to do so piecemeal. Caldrion turned to his wife, hoping to hold her face before his eyes as he fought his last battle. Ironically, all he could think of relating to Catrilas was the night he had met her, one both of them would be just as happy to forget. But thinking about that reminded him of other things he had heard about that day…

Ratley was not content just to think. As their pursuers entered the last turn, he spurred his horse and charged them. Ared and Cynebald followed, even as Caldrion yelled for them not to. He dismounted and pulled out his sword, a final, desperate plan forming in his head. Below, Ratley managed to kill a couple, but he focused too much on striking his foes and not enough on directing his horse. A wild man standing next to the edge simply grabbed the reins and yanked, sending man and beast tumbling over the side. Also tumbling was Cynebald, betrayed by his own horse, which tripped, presumably over a stone. The rider undoubtedly broke his neck on impact. Ared managed to avoid Ratley's error and Cynebald's bad luck only to die when, after charging directly into the mass of men, they simply parted before him. Without the anticipated collisions, he was unable to slow down enough before following Ratley over the brink.

Caldrion was reaching deep inside himself. If he could successfully blind the Enemy, perhaps he could, as Sirgo had, call the power of the land to his defense. As the men drew closer on both sides, he stood silently, arms raised in supplication, his sword lying at his feet. His armor suddenly exploded off of him, hurtling into the assembled foes. They stopped in fear and surprise, hesitating until another came forward to lead them, as Caldrion staggered and fell to his knees.

Othcyr looked behind her. Every one of the wild men on the path was dead, some lying where they fell, other bodies having dropped over the edge.

Caldrion, through great strength of will, somehow managed to pull himself back to his feet and pick up the sword he had dropped. With his armor gone, he was wearing only a tunic, which seemed far too clean for all he had been through. He had seen this before.

He turned to his wife, his breath coming in shallow spurts. "Go. Travel by day, light no fires by night. Follow the rising sun to the great river and follow it north. There is no refuge in these mountains." He turned back toward the wild men.

"Will you not come with us?" Catrilas asked.

"My errors have doomed me. They must be washed clean with blood. If I tried to flee, and I am unsure that I could ride now, we would all die."

"Then I will die with you." Eodryn declared, directing his horse to stand next to his father. By their expressions, Catrilas, Othcyr, Rievlyn, and even Aelia felt the same way.

"No," he answered his son. "You must go. They will need a swordsman to fight for them." And die for them, Caldrion thought but did not add. He looked back at them one last time. "Go."

He turned around. He heard, but did not see, the hooves of the horses returning down the mountain. His attention was held by the man who must have been the leader, for he was clad in flowing black robes and wielded a wicked mace and the others moved carefully forward at his beckoning. Caldrion was glad of that. The more cautious they were, the more time he could give the others.

The wild men could see the others riding off, but one blocked their path. Clad in the white tunic, he looked like nothing so much as an angel. But no angels came to this place, only demons. His face was calm but determined. They would not get his family and friends, the last folk of the broken dream that was Aratur. One of the men cried "A sacrifice! Make him a sacrifice to the Dark Lord!" And the rest picked up the cry "A sacrifice! A sacrifice!" as they closed in for the kill. Caldrion held his sword before him, ready to meet his doom.

-

(And so my father's tale comes to an end. Whether it is history, legend, or misguided creativity is for others to decide. While undoubtedly a flawed narrative in terms of its distortions of space and time and its obvious borrowing from later history, I have come to the conclusion that, at some level, it contains something that, while not necessarily true, is of undeniable value to our ongoing studies of the tactics of the Enemy and the nature of his servants during the Dark Years. As such, I believe it was worth my time to record and deserves a place amongst the other assembled records where it may, given further scrutiny and perhaps the discovery of heretofore unread manuscripts, help fill some of the holes in our knowledge.)

Hamfast, son of Samwise Gamgee
copy submitted for the library of Brandy Hall
the 15th day Afterlithe, S.R. 1485