October 26th 3018

And so it was that the scouts departed, heading out into the lands around Rivendell north, south, east and west, seeking what news they could gather, while back in the Last Homely House the hobbits rested and recovered, and the Wise planned and debated.

Aragorn left Imladris the morning following the Council with the sons of Elrond. The October day was damp and cool, and low mists clung to the hillsides and lay as a blanket over the waters of the Bruinen. They climbed up out of the valley into the golden sunlight of the early morn and sped away following the river as it thundered its way south-west, where in due course it would meet the Mitheithel and the Gwathló and after some six-hundred miles the rush of water that began in the mountains would slowly empty out into the sea. Aragorn kept his eyes open for any sign of Lith as they travelled, wondering if the Elf had lingered somewhere nearby, but no trace of the exile did he see and it was likely that he was far away by now.

The three sons of Elrond travelled together for seven days, tracking the debris from the path of the Bruinen's great flood away from the mountains. The Hunter's Moon waxed and then waned and they found no sign of living enemies, but made a total count of five more drowned horses and Elladan even found a slashed and tattered black cloak. This they burned, and they dragged the dead horses from the river lest their decay poison the clear waters downstream with their filth. Of the last ninth horse there was no sign, but for now they had hope that the enemy had been entirely scattered and unhorsed. Should Gandalf have been there no doubt he would have tempered their relief with dire predictions that the Nazgûl were free now to rise again in a form more swift and terrible. But for the present at least they seem to have fled from the North.

The brethren passed one night in Tadoliant before their ways parted. The small mannish settlement within its great timber fence sat high on the banks above the confluence of the Hoarwell and the Loudwater. Rangers passed this way often, and though the village had no inn, there were folk who would house a weary traveller for a few coin. They stayed the night with a family who were known to the Rangers; a potter, her husband and two small children, a boy and a girl, who stared at their strange guests with wide eyes.

The following morning Elladan and Elrohir set out east. Their road would take them into the passes above Caradhras and then along the Celebrant down the Dimrill Dale into the hidden land of Lórien. Aragorn himself continued west through the vast fenlands of the Nîn-in-Eilph and down at last to the ruins of the river port of Tharbad. There he met with the Rangers who were guarding the ford, and they were much pleased to see their Chieftain again. They reported no sign of the Nine passing south or east, nor of Gollum, but they gave other tidings which were less glad; they had driven out the goblins occupying the ruins, but orcs had been raiding down along the river in greater numbers, and wolf packs had been growing bolder, leaving their forests and harrying the villages even as far as the South Downs. The watch on the Shire had been doubled.

The days rolled into weeks, and autumn was passing into a crisp and cool winter before Aragorn set his sights back on Imladris and began his return to the north. The nights were cold and still beneath cloudless skies, and the mornings that followed were bright and the ground thick with frost. But the cold snap did not hold, and by the morning of the 15th November, Aragorn woke to see rain clouds squatting low above the distant mountains. He was still within the wetlands of the Nîn-in-Eilph when the weather turned and the rains began in earnest, and never was travel quite so wearisome as under constant rain that soaked all his belongings and meant not a single leaf would catch for firewood.

And it was then, after another three days of endless rain, that he encountered Lith again.

It was nearly evening and he was still two days away from Tadoliant. Cold, damp and weariness had conspired to steal Aragorn's attention from his surroundings, and he almost paid for his inattention with his life. The arrow pierced through the hide of his coat pinning his sword arm to the bark of a willow before he was even aware that he was not alone. Aragorn gave a startled breath and moved to tear his arm free but then a shadowy, cloaked figure dropped from the trees above and a knife blade was at his throat, pushing him back against the tree. He froze.

'Why do you follow me?' The voice spoke the Common Tongue, but the accent was noticeably Silvan.

'I do not follow you,' Aragorn said, carefully, holding very still. 'I am merely travelling.'

'I saw you pass by two weeks ago, searching for something. Now you return.'

'I am scouting for signs of orcs and wolves. You are not my concern.'

Lith moved slightly, and Aragorn could see the Elf's stormy grey eyes studying him, coldly.

'Why should I believe you?' The Elf hissed.

'I am a friend of Gandalf the Grey.'

'I know. That is why you are not already dead.'

'Likewise,' said Aragorn, and he moved his left hand slightly, letting the Elf feel the point of the sharp hunting knife Aragorn had pressed up to his ribs. The Elf may have taken him by surprise, but Aragorn would have been dead long since had he not developed reactions faster than a striking snake.

The Elf said nothing. For a long moment he did not react and they stayed trapped in the stalemate. Then Lith slowly lifted his own blade away from Aragorn's neck and stepped back. The man let him move away, lowering his hunting knife to his side, though he did not sheathe it.

'What are you doing here?' Lith said. He looked as rain soaked as Aragorn, his face ghost-white in the gloom.

'Scouting,' Aragorn replied. 'Lord Elrond wishes for news of the lands around Imladris.'

'They sent you to kill me,' Lith said, flatly. 'I heard too much at that Council, and now they must ensure I cannot tell another.'

Aragorn shook his head. 'No,' he said. 'I did not even know you were here.'

'Where are the other two?' Lith said. His posture was tense, ready at any moment to attack. 'The Elrondionnath.'

'They had business elsewhere,' said Aragorn. 'They are no doubt many leagues from here by now.'

Lith said nothing in response to that but watched Aragorn in an intense silence. Aragorn shifted slightly and noticed pain in his right arm; the Elf's arrow that pinned his coat had struck him after all. Still, the Elf could have shot him through the heart and as he had not, Aragorn was fairly confident that, for all his reputation as a murderer implied, Lith did not actually wish him dead.

'If we're not going to kill each other, might I take care of this?' Aragorn said, pointing to his arm. 'It's bleeding.'

The Elf still said nothing, so Aragorn took his silence for assent, sheathed his knife and turned to examine his arm. He was surprised to see not an arrow but a thick bolt such as those fired from an orkish crossbow, and where it pinned him to the tree the shaft had cut a deep gouge through the skin and outer muscle of his arm.

Aragorn carefully loosened the bolt from the tree, stepping away. He investigated the wound as well as he could with his fingers. Lith watched, his face dispassionate. Though the Elf's knife had disappeared, Aragorn saw he had reclaimed the crossbow from somewhere and was holding it ready in his hand. It was certainly not of orkish make.

'That is an uncommon weapon,' Aragorn said but Lith didn't answer. So much for the distraction of conversation.

Aragorn felt around his arm to the point of the bolt still embedded in it, and realised it did not have a head of tapered iron or steel but that the wooden shaft itself had just been carved to a point and fire hardened. That made removing it a much simpler proposition. Keeping Lith in his peripheral vision as much as possible, Aragorn sat and then slowly drew the bolt back out of the flesh the way it had entered. Hot blood welled up as the bolt came free and he tossed it aside, cursing quietly, though the flow of fresh blood would aid in cleaning out the wound.

'Is it serious?' said Lith, after a long time.

'No,' Aragorn said. 'At least it won't be if I can keep it from festering.'

'How do you do that?'

Aragorn looked up, feeling sure the Elf must be jesting or mocking him, but he seemed nothing but genuine and slightly curious. Elves as a rule concerned themselves little with fears of infection, being highly resistant to most bodily ills, though most who had any dealings with mortals were familiar with the concept.

'It needs to be cleaned and kept dry,' Aragorn said. 'Fortunately, I have some skill as a healer. I need fire and hot water. Dry bandages if I could get them as my gear is sodden through, but I see no chance of that this side of Tadoliant.'

Lith just stared at him with the same faintly questioning expression.

'That is the settlement two days up the river from here,' Aragorn clarified. The Elf nodded. After another long moment he said:

'I can light a fire.'

'Good for you,' Aragorn said, the pain in his arm making him more waspish than was his custom. The Elf didn't look as if he had noticed.

'There is a better campsite beyond that ridge,' The Elf volunteered again, and waited.

Aragorn sat back, looking carefully at this strange Elf. 'First you shoot me, then accuse me of trying to assassinate you, and now you invite me to your camp?'

'Yes,' said the Elf, who was either immune to Aragorn's tone of voice or perhaps so out of practice with conversation that he did not notice it. Aragorn considered the probable insanity of this course of action for a moment, but really there was no choice. At least he could keep an eye on Lith if he stayed close. If they parted now he would have no idea where in all the night the Elf was, and that might be worse.

'Very well,' he said. The Elf watched him get to his feet and then he went to retrieve the crossbow bolt Aragorn had thrown aside. Lith wiped it on a cloth and then returned it to the quiver at his hip. Aragorn raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

With no few misgivings, Aragorn followed Lith as he led the way on through the gathering dark. They did not walk far, perhaps a mile, but it was long enough for Aragorn's doubts to turn and fester in his mind. This Elf was an exile and a criminal so dangerous he had been forbidden from keeping Elvish company until he died, or until the world ended. That Gandalf trusted him counted for much, but the wizard had been deceived before, as the recent business with Saruman proved. Lith had been encountered near Isengard after all, and then later he had been privy to much at Elrond's Council which had been kept secret from most, even from those held in higher regard. Was he in league with their enemy, a spy perhaps, or playing a part in some kind of trap? But as much as his wary thoughts suggested it, Aragorn found he could not somehow bring himself to believe Lith was an enemy agent. For one thing, sending a marked outcast on a mission of infiltration would be most unlikely to succeed. For another, though the blood drying on his coat might attest otherwise, Lith still did not seem like an enemy. Aragorn considered his own ability to judge the character of others to be quite sound. Never before had it failed him. Whether a gift of his Númenorian bloodline, a learned Elvish trait or indeed just blind luck, he had always an instinct for deceit and for sensing the influence of the Dark Lord on others. He sensed nothing now.

Lith finally turned aside from their path and slipped beneath a low stand of trees. Beyond was a hollow dell, half sheltered from the rain by a rocky outcrop. Lith pushed an arm into a narrow crack in the rocks and returned with a bundle of dry firewood which had been hidden there. This place was clearly known to him. Lith set about making a fire and at last he put down the crossbow, though he kept a bolt to the string and the weapon close at his side. It seemed he was as uncertain of Aragorn as Aragorn was of him.

Finding fresh water was not difficult in this land and by the time Aragorn returned, the campfire was kindled in a hollow where the light was concealed on all but one side by the edges of the dell. The trees were not growing densely enough to keep out the unceasing rain entirely, but the fall was lessened somewhat by their branches above, and they also blocked some of the wind. Lith had been right; it was a good campsite.

The Elf watched in silence as Aragorn heated the water in his small cooking pot and turned to treating the wound on his arm. It was indeed fairly shallow, no deeper than a finger's width, though it was long and had bled freely. Aragorn repaired the gash as well as he could considering he was stitching by firelight and using his left hand. Lith made no offer of help and Aragorn asked for none. At the moment he was grateful enough that the Elf had ceased holding a weapon aimed at him.

At last the wound was stitched and bandaged, and Aragorn pulled his shirt, jerkin and coat back on, for all the warmth the sodden fabric would provide.

'I'll mend,' he said at the Elf's questioning look, and then gestured to the crossbow. 'Tell me. Was that a good shot aimed to stop me reaching my sword, or a poor shot aimed to kill me?'

In the firelight he saw Lith's mouth tighten. Was that guilt?

'I was not trying to kill you.' Lith said, quietly, fidgeting with the worn glove he wore on the hand of his shield arm. 'I was...afraid.'

Aragorn said, 'It is an interesting weapon, the crossbow.'

'Yes,' agreed the Elf, shortly.

'I have never seen its like before,' Aragorn continued.

'It...' Lith paused and then added, 'it is my own design.'

'Come now,' Aragorn pressed. 'After the trouble you have put me through, the least you could do is let me see it. I must say I am curious.' He was curious, but he also wanted to see what the Elf would do when asked to surrender the weapon. Aragorn might be sure that Lith was not a servant of evil, but he was as yet still a very unknown entity and might have dark intentions of his own.

Lith looked for a moment as if he might refuse, but then he removed the bolt from the flight groove, released the string, and held the crossbow out. Aragorn took it and studied it with careful interest. It was made of hand-carved wood, with metal and rope fittings and a string of braided Elf-hair; heavy certainly, though compact, and like all of the Elf's gear and clothes, much worn and repaired. Lith had probably made it himself.

'Why do you use this type of bow?' Aragorn asked, handing the crossbow back. 'I can see it is a powerful weapon, but it cannot be as accurate nor as fast as a longbow, and those are far simpler to craft.'

Instead of answering, the Elf stood up, slinging the crossbow onto his back. 'I go to fetch more water,' he said, shortly, and vanished into the night without another word. Aragorn sighed.

Lith returned soon after with their waterskins refilled and made no attempts to restart any conversation, though Aragorn could feel the Elf watching him constantly while he crouched by the fire.

'Do you carry provisions?' Aragorn said at last, examining his own dwindling supplies. He was a week out from Tharbad and at least ten more days from Rivendell, and his bread was already flecked green with mould. He had enough other food for his own needs but if he must feed the Elf also he would have to hunt.

Lith nodded. 'I have waybread, cheese and dried fruit,' he said, then his eyes flicked away, almost guiltily. 'I usually gather what I need from the wild, but Lord Elrond sent servants with provisions for me before I left Imladris. There is much kindness in his heart.'

'Aye,' Aragorn agreed, thinking that this had been the most words the Elf had yet spoken in one stretch. 'And Gandalf too. You seemed to know him well.'

'Mithrandir,' Lith said. 'Yes. I am his friend, I think.' With the air of one changing the subject, the Elf asked, 'Where now are you bound?'

'I am returning home to Imladris. And you?'

Lith did not answer again, and it occurred to Aragorn that the question had been an unintentionally cruel one to put to someone under eternal exile. He himself had wandered the wilds for many decades, fought in numerous wars, found himself lost and far from home. But there had always been a home, however distant and unachievable it had seemed at the time. He always had Rivendell to return to. This Elf had nothing.

But then he heard a memory of his own voice, saying they called him Faithless, Oathbreaker, and remembered the anger on the fair faces of Luinmeord and Almscella, the Wood-elves. This Elf was a Kinslayer. He had ended another immortal life with his own hand, and for that there was no forgiveness. He could have taken from the world a smile like Elladan's, a wit like Elrohir's, a soul like Arwen's...

I was not trying to kill you, Lith had said. I was afraid.

'I know what you are,' Aragorn said, suddenly.

'So do many,' Lith answered, shortly but somehow without bitterness. 'They made sure of that.'

An owl hooted in the darkness of the trees, and they both looked up. Lith turned away to watch the bird's flight, but Aragorn's eye was caught instead by the scar that marred the Elf's face. The mark looked pale, almost silvery in the firelight, formed as it was of two long, rough slashes that intersected in a cross over the right cheek, passing from below the inner crease of his eye down to the earlobe, and from the hairline near his ear tip almost all the way to the corner of his mouth. Aragorn had rarely seen an Elf form any kind of scar tissue before; their naturally superior healing meant wounds closed rapidly and easily, and left barely a mark. A wound that caused an Elf to scar must have been reopened again and again to disrupt the healing. Aragorn realised then, uneasily, that the disfigurement must have been intentional.

The Elf noticed the focus of Aragorn's attention and he quickly turned away, pulling up his hood to cast his face into shadow.

The realisation that Lith had been deliberately defaced was an unpleasant one, but there was still so much that Aragorn did not yet know. In that moment, for all his well-honed caution and long years of patient endurance, this mystery and the deep well of Lith's secrets was most vexing. It seemed probable given his accent and Elrond's comments that Lith had once been counted amongst the Wood-elves, but Aragorn might never know anything more of who this Elf had been before he was declared nameless. What awful circumstances had led him to the murder of another Elf, a crime that had seen him cast so utterly into the darkness with no hope for redemption? Who had been the victim of his crime, and what grieving family had they left behind? But Aragorn did not find the courage to ask any of these questions. For one thing he was afraid Lith would not answer. For another, he was afraid that he would.

'Why were you at the Council?' Aragorn asked, instead.

'Mithrandir asked it of me.'

'Why?'

'I do not fully know. He said that I may be asked to recount what I knew. I see and hear many things in the wild, and the birds often give me news. As early as midsummer I saw the Nazgûl riding north through Dunland. Gandalf said my observations may be of interest to the Council, and that in this time of peril old ills would be put aside and that my presence would be tolerated in peace. But he should have known better. I should have known better. I am Faithless. I am Oathbreaker . My words cannot be trusted.'

'You did not need to leave Imladris so suddenly,' Aragorn said, marvelling that the Elf had replied at all, let alone so loquaciously. 'Elrond would not have cast you out, whatever the other Elves said.'

'I have learned not to stay where I am unwelcome,' said Lith, quietly. 'I had no desire for further encounters with the Elves of the Greenwood. Besides, it was at peril to himself that Lord Elrond took me into the valley. I would not have him risk more for one already condemned.'

Conversation dwindled after that as they turned their thoughts and hands to preparing a simple meal. Lith asked no more questions of Aragorn and his answers to the Ranger's questions dried up to nothing. He seemed almost exhausted by their interaction. Aragorn couldn't help but wonder if this was the most the Elf had spoken to another in a long time. It made the mystery of why he had led Aragorn here to this campsite clearer. Yes, there was guilt for Aragorn's injury for though the Elf had made no apology for it, it had been clear from his concern for Aragorn's well-being that he regretted causing the harm. But his other motive now was becoming apparent, and it was far less sinister than Aragorn had feared.

The Elf was lonely.


TBC