Will you indulge for a moment, gentle reader? :-) I would like to say thanks to all of you who've added this – or any story of mine – to your favorites list. It took awhile to figure out the system out here , so it was also awhile before I realized how important those lists are and how many readers actually come my way when someone adds something I've posted to their favorites list. So thank you to each of you who've done so. It's the best kind of PR an author can receive. - Tanis
His brain registered only a blinding flash before the percussive blast knocked him to his knees. A few feet behind them a tree shattered into splinters, its rending death shriek barely audible over the immediate clap of thunder that shook the ground.
Aragorn staggered back to his feet, hauling Harwan up as well. "We must keep moving!" he shouted, trying to make himself heard above the howling of the wind.
The storm was full on them and it appeared the shelter of the trees might very well be their death rather than their salvation. No matter, to stand still was to die sooner.
They had crossed the beach as swiftly as their injuries and the deeply churned sand would allow, but watching over his shoulder, Aragorn had had the fanciful notion that the ever purpling sky, squeezing out the sunlight, had looked malignant. He had thought it only his imagination, but he felt it now - a malevolent seeking driving before it needles of rain born a on a wind that smelt of burnt sulfur and resinous pine.
Instinct closed down his mind, erased all traces of thought beyond survival, kept his feet, and sometimes hands and feet together, moving forward and up, scrabbling for footholds on the wet, slippery path.
Darkness had closed around them like a giant fist, a blackness so complete that between lightning flashes Aragorn could not see his hand in front of his face. Panting, he continued clawing his way up the hill.
Around them the forest, gloriously clad only this morning in its ancient beauty, was fighting for survival too. Through the uproar assaulting his ears, Aragorn still heard the majestic death songs, soaring arias of pain as trees sung into being and nurtured in infancy by Yavanna herself were uprooted and toppled by the malicious winds and lightning. He had lived too long among elves not to believe in the sentience and sacredness of all life. Each new lifted voice ripped at his fëa as the seeking claws of malevolence raked wildly at all living things, leaving in its wake a swathe of destruction.
A slimy coiling encircled his wrist and Aragorn, horror suborning fright, flung it off with all the wild strength of youth and racing adrenalin – before he realized it was Harwan grabbing at his arm.
Heart still in his throat he turned abruptly to glare at the sailor, lost his balance on the slippery slope, and dropped precipitously on his arse. Only Harwan's quick, blind grab stayed a long, ignominious slide back down the mountain and an even more difficult climb back up.
Aragorn picked himself up, found his balance again and shoved the thankfully short, rain-soaked hair away from his face. "What?" he demanded loudly and irritably.
If they lived through the afternoon it would be miraculous in the extreme. The danger aboard ship could have been no greater than their peril exposed here on the mountainside, at risk from a lethal combination of elements seemingly invoked by a virulent will.
Harwan's pointing arm was revealed with the next flare of lightning and the gelid fingers again braceleted Aragorn's wrist, this time pulling him off the trail and into the dripping underbrush.
Lightning dogged their heels like hounds on the hunt, spraying sparks and splinters with equal ferocity, but the ancillary effect at least pushed back the darkness, allowing better maneuverability and thus greater competence in covering the ground.
They hurried through an open glade, the rain slashing like daggers at clothing and bare skin alike before they passed again under the eaves of the still standing trees and gained what slight shielding they offered. Aragorn ground his teeth and stumbled on after his companion, oddly thankful for the slapping leaves and branches. They were some indication at least, that his guide was still before him when the fey lightlessness momentarily darkened his vision again.
One moment he was moving forward with all speed, the next he was plastered against a solid wall of muscle and bone, surprisingly warm against his cold cheek. Instinctively, he rebounded a pace.
"Harwan?"
No answer beyond the whipping wind moaning through branches, tearing at tenacious leaves, and the rain tattooing irrevocable patterns upon this morning's lush landscape.
"Harwan!" Something very close to panic pierced his tenuous hold on reason. Aragorn strode forward frantically, tripped over the kneeling man and fell head over heels down the side of a deep, rocky depression. He landed with an oomph, all the breath driven from his lungs, on back and shoulder, tucked up like a curled centipede, in the middle of a small stream.
"Har-" the shout died as pebbles and fist-sized rocks began to rain down on him and, as lightning flashed again, a pair of rapidly descending boots appeared above him. Aragon rolled away hurriedly as Harwan landed with a splash, more or less on his feet, in the exact spot Aragorn had just vacated.
The sailor barked an order, gesturing urgently back along the channel, and began wading down the gently-sloping streambed.
Like a fish, Aragorn flopped over on his back, the stream coursing around the barrier of his body, those needles of rain stinging his face, and cursed Borlath, Harwan, and all the Valar. Rising was less easily accomplished this time, as now his shoulder throbbed in time with his aching head and a knife-sharp flash of pain caught him by surprise when he finally got his feet under him again. Slumping against the rain-slicked vertical wall on the opposite side from their descent, he breathed deeply, settling his weight slowly, praying to the Valar he had just been cursing that the ankle was merely sprained and not broken.
The chasm was at least twice his height, they would have to scramble getting out of it, but he did notice immediate benefits. The roar of the wind was abated, the flying debris lost its deadliness the moment it dropped below the level of the steep incline and most importantly, they were below ground level, mitigating the chances of being struck by lightning.
He would have missed it in the dark had not those icy fingers snatched at his wrist again. Though this time, with fear worn down by exhaustion, he did not even twitch, just stopped and waited for direction.
His hand was guided to what felt like an overhang of rock, then his shoulder – the bad one – pushed down so he had either to push back or drop to his knees. He went down. And then lightning illuminated a small, dry space, barely large enough for the two of them, hollowed out of the vertical stone wall. It was little more than a bed of pebbles overhung by a thick lip of boulder, but it was above the stream, out of the wind and rain, and, for all practical purposes, safe, if not comfortable.
Though the day had neither started nor progressed well, there was a least a glimmer of hope that they might be fortunate enough to see its end, so long as no flash flood higher up the mountain turned their little stream into a raging river.
Almost before his posterior hit the dry ground, Aragorn was wrapping his arms around his knees, dropping his forehead incautiously between them so he jerked back up when his bruised forehead met boney cartilage. Harwan's large hand shot out, seizing his chin unerringly, even in the dark.
Aragorn pulled back. "It is no worse than the one you bear; in all likelihood, much better. I was never unconscious."
He was surprised when the fingers loosed his chin and he felt his companion's arm rise to explore the goose egg on his own forehead. He had spoken Common, with asperity, so perhaps the translation had been conveyed in tone if not actual words.
The bump on Harwan's head had not bled, but it had been the size of a pomegranate the last time Aragorn had had good look at it. Thinking back over their ascent, Harwan seemed to have had no difficulty navigating the terrain, moving with ease around or over fallen, and falling, objects in their path. Which made it unlikely the man was suffering from concussion. Still, it would be better if they both remained alert and awake.
To that end, he almost left the broken sword strapped to his back; it made it uncomfortable to lean back against the wall. But in the end he shimmied out of his soaked coat, unbuckled the straps and took it off, laying it sheathed between them. The coat he threw over his knees and hoped it would dry.
Despite the wind still howling overhead, the sometimes intermittent, though often continual flickering of lightning, and the equally frequent cracks of thunder, despite being cold and wet and dripping still from head to toe, he kept nodding off.
For the first time in his life, Aragorn began to process a sense of how time flowed for his elven kin. There was no essence of movement decreeing moments passing, no discernment of hours ticking away; no measurement at all - beyond his heartbeat. Only the storm relentlessly battering the island.
Had it been only a few hours ago the boat had dropped them off on the tranquil beach? That he had been leisurely bathing in the spring? Only a day ago he had been so pleasantly occupied wandering the streets of Númenor admiring the art and architecture of the infamous doomed island of his forbearers? Just this morning he had dreamt of the fair Even Star? Truly just a few days since he had boarded the ship?
Surely he had lived a lifetime in the space of this long afternoon.
He wondered how Borlath and crew were faring. Had they outrun the storm? Would they turn back immediately? How long before he and Harwan could feasibly expect to see the ship's sails on the horizon if all was well? If not … he refused to let his mind wander in that direction.
Night fell, though the only difference was the quality of the darkness.
Beside him, Harwan slept. Eventually Aragorn allowed his straining eyes to close as well; there was little to see even when lightning lit the landscape. He had stared for what seemed like hours at the water seeping down the hard-packed earth and stone of the wall across from their little niche and was thankful it did not appear to have affected the level of the stream in its bed. Occasionally, when the rain let up a bit and thunder ceased to hammer his ear drums, he realized he could hear its merry gurgling as it wound along its course impervious to the elemental forces wrecking havoc above.
He tuned his ear, as his brothers had taught him, to hear only the stream and gave up fighting his exhausted body. His heart slipped away to Irmo's fair gardens where one of the Maia wove dreams specifically for Aragorn of far away hearth and home.
TBC