Elrohir
Heat, it burned through his clothing and into his flesh. A living breathing heat that sucked the breath from him and demanded his life. Yet he did not die though the last of his companions had, only three short hours before. He had simply stopped and sitting upon the heated ground, breathed his last. Elrohir had shed bitter tears for the ranger had been young, barely thirty summers. He had dug with his bare hands a hollow grave and committed to the merciless soil his body.
Elrohir staggered for the hundredth time in as many minutes but he did not fall. He could not, for his brother was captive somewhere in this punishing heat, in the hands of slavers, unfeeling men who dealt in blood, tears and death. He stopped suddenly as he saw a flash a long long way ahead.
"Elladan," he whispered, his dry tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth for a second. He swallowed but there was nothing wet there.
Doggedly he continued though he had no real idea of where he was going, for the Wastelands was a vast unchanging place, a place where nothing broke the unending fields of brown. You could see forever in this place and yet, there was nothing to see.
He carried no bag, no flask, or food but had been on the march for nine days, following his instinct and the vague signs left behind on the bare earth. But his mind drifted constantly for though he paid no heed to it his body had begun to cross that line that separated him from death. His skin was burned a dull red and no sweat broke from his pores to cool him. His hair was dry and brittle and blew like dead weed about him, his hands shook and his legs and chest burned for every breath was liquid fire in this place. His could hardly see for the sand had irritated his eyes to a swollen red.
That morning he did not hear when the wind changed its hum for it took all his energy to stay on his feet. But the wind picked up, whipping loose soil around him and he hunched his shoulders against it, not realizing that it was the harbinger of danger.
Oh Elrohir death comes on swift wings for thee!
In one bloodied hand was his sword, the scabbard long gone, how he could not remember. The other hand was pressed against his side, against the wound that had bled so ferociously, the wound that had caught Elladan's attention and left him vulnerable to them. Elrohir mistepped as his mind replayed the scene as it had done each day when guilt and remorse overwhelmed him.
They had pushed back the raiders. The captives had been freed and had fled back to the border, but the raiders had not broken and run as the twins and rangers had expected them to. They had fought and were still fighting viciously, more willing to die it seemed than give up their precious cargo. So the dunedain and elves had had to pursue them, following them into the desert making sure that each man was dead. How could they know that a bigger more deadly force awaited them in the sands.
Elladan, Elrohir remembered had been the first to see them, rising out of the ground like ghosts. He had shouted a warning urging them to retreat, but the desert men had surrounded them like carrion birds.
They had fought for their lives then, each man dealing with at least two raiders. He had seen Elladan cut down three, by then he himself had just killed his fourth. Then out of nowhere a blade had got past his defences and slid into his side as easily as it cut through bread. He had cried out more in surprise than pain, but it had been enough. He saw Elladan turn, his hazel eyes fierce with battle and concern. He saw his brother begin to run towards him, his mouth forming the sound of his name. Then something hit him hard on the head, the hilt of a sword, the hand of a friend, the fist of an enemy, he did not know, but Elrohir went down the blade in his side sinking deeper into his flesh. But he saw, just before the blackness came, one more of the enemy cut down by his brother's blade, then he saw no more.
"Muindor nin." he whispered looking off across the desert. "I will find you."
But the Wastelands it seems had other plans. Behind him the wind had whipped the earth into a fine fury. It howled and danced with evil intent. Even as he walked it advanced...
The wall of sand buried him whole without a thought, without pity, another victim in its eternal cycle.
000
The captives had fled, running back to their villages to be greeted with tears of joy and laughter, and then tears of sorrow for those who had not survived the sands. But the survivors told the tale of their brave champions, those dark silent men, those rangers, who had fought for their freedom with such fierce determination, none of whom had returned from the desert.
"None you say," questioned the stranger with eyes shining strangely.
"Nay m'lord, nor' even the elf kind who rode with 'em." said a young man who held in his arms a sleeping babe. "They bid us flee, to not look back, to just keep going, and that's what we did."
"How long ago lad," asked another, his grey eyes sharp.
"Nigh on fifteen days now," said a woman quietly. She observed the four strangers clad in dark clothing of reds and oranges, armed with strange weapons, no secretive rangers these. They carried themselves with such unconscious grace. Elves, she guessed though their hoods covered their ears, searching for their friends. She was mostly right.
Their quest took the company to the village of Angam, it sat at the edge of the desert, a precarious balance of bustling life and silence, right where the green of the gardens gave way to the brown of the sands. There they learnt what they had feared to put into words.
"I saw them m'lord, they were cut down, even as we ran we could hear their screams..."
Aragorn strode angrily to the wooden fence that marked the boundaries of the village. "They cannot be dead, they cannot." he hissed turning to face the three elves that stood together watching him.
"Calm yourself, tithen pen. No one here believes that they are dead, we will continue to search." said the eldest. Then he looked past he young man to the shimmering desert beyond. "Though we must prepare ourselves, this journey will be long and hard, and we do not know what lies at the end."
The wastelands had given rise to many creatures of light and of shadow. They lived a wary existence each mindful of the other, each seeking to be the first to reap the meagre bounty that the desert grudgingly gave up from time to time. So it was that this creature, moulded by the harsh endless days of heat, stumbled across the buried elf while foraging in the wake of the storm. At first it hesitated, thinking the thing to be feigning death, but then, by prodding and probing, it triumphantly latched onto its prize and pulled it by the legs across the sands into its burrow. Elrohir's lids fluttered briefly as darkness pressed down upon him.