Deep and cold flows the Hoarwell, running flat across the fields and gullies, getting smaller all the time, until at last it is no more than a stream cutting into the living rock of the Misty Mountains. By then the trees were long gone. Even grasses could not grow on these slopes. Some bore snow all winter and had not thawed since the making of Arda. The air was especially thin, and they halted often, mostly on Elden's account as he was both a human and a pipe-smoker, neither of which lent themselves to keeping pace with an elf in sparse atmosphere.
There was no longer any trail. Only the most desperate souls passed through this way, in the dead of winter no less. The going was slow and miserable, on account of the caution required in walking across a slightly slanted stone surface that was covered with frozen water. To their right was a sheer wall, and just a few feet to their left was an icy chasm bounded by another vertical rock wall that lead down to the river and certain death. Elden kept his eyes averted. He hated heights.
The journey to reach this point had been equally miserable, perhaps worse. At least now the constant darkness of the storm had lifted. They had emerged on the flank of the North Downs and had proceeded directly across the plains, crossing over the southern reaches of Angmar's old realm and meeting the Hoarwell just south of the Ettenmoors.
It had taken them almost a month, and exhausted two thirds of their food supply.
They hadn't said much to each other along the way, there was no need. During the day they marched, breaking once for a meal, and then another before bed. At night they held each other tight as the freezing winds whipped at the fabric tent they had stretched out using tree branches. Elden was certain that the only thing that had kept them alive was Nellas's magelight. Otherwise they would both certainly be frozen solid somewhere. And to think he had once threatened those two southrons with the same fate...
"Are we taking another break?"
Elden snapped back to the present and found that he had stopped walking.
"No, sorry." Elden said, resuming the pace immediately. "Just... daydreaming for a moment."
The chasm went on for a very long time, and he was just beginning to wonder if they would be forced to spend the night sleeping on a narrow shelf of rock next to a precipice, the end wound into view. They stepped out into the sunlight, both of them shading their eyes from the unexpected brightness. The slopes of the mountain were gentler on this side, and past the initial rocky outcrops covered with ice, the landscape broke down into a pile of loose rocks. The Hoarwell branched at the base of the Misty Mountains, forming a wide loop with its two tributaries which rejoined one another and poured into the Anduin. This wide circle of land was marshy and full of reeds, but there were plenty of solid paths, as long as you didn't put your foot wrong. Across the Anduin's far shore lay the boughs of Mirkwood, deep and imposing. In between all this lay thick, green grass. It was as though they had stepped into another world where spring was already beginning.
They carefully made their way down the shale, slipping and sliding in some places, and ignoring the resulting cuts and scrapes. Without hesitation they both plunged into the reeds, which grew several feet taller than their heads and obscured most of the world beyond a few paces in any direction.
Little roads of dirt wound through the marsh. Just as Elden was beginning to wonder if they were deer trails or human ones, Nellas caught sight of something that erased all doubt.
"Look." She said, pointing a finger.
A human skull sat atop a wooden stake that had been pounded into the ground. A sign hung across it read "Turn Back".
They both looked at each other for a moment, and then at the world all around them, searching for a pair of prying eyes.
"I don't know about you, but I don't intend to turn back." Elden said.
"Neither do I." Nellas replied. "It's probably decades old anyway."
That said, no sooner had Elden placed another foot down than an arrow came whistling out of the blue and impacted just feet from them. They both jumped. It had struck the earth at an angle, and the feathers pointed back up to the hills they had just vacated. With her sharp eyes, Nellas could see men moving among the rocks.
"We must have walked right by them..." Nellas muttered.
Elden grabbed her hand and half-led, half-dragged her onward.
"Well lets not stick around, shall we?"
They ran blindly onwards, crashing through the reeds without pause to find a trail or path to keep their feet dry. When Nellas looked back she could see men on horses entering the marshy area, looks of eager violence their faces. The first arrow was followed by a volley that smacked the ground all around them. Through a break in the vegetation up ahead, Nellas could see the Anduin rushing on down it's endless march to the sea.
"Come on!" She yelled. "We have to swim, it's our only chance!"
When she turned back, however, she found Elden on all fours. A feathered shaft was sticking out of his shoulder blade at a funny angle, and a steady drip of blood was coming from it. She could see the grins on the horsemen closing in in a rough semicircle, doubtless thinking they had them trapped.
So Nellas closed her eyes, and sang a song of vengance. It was short and terrible, and when it was done a great fire sprang up around them, hissing as it ate up the damp reeds and decaying logs. Nellas wrapped her arm around Elden's torso and leaped from the bank, tossing them both into the foam.
The raging current clawed at their bodies, yanking them this way and that. Twice they smashed into the sandy bottom, and on the second time Nellas felt her hold on Elden falter and break. There was only a moment to gasp for air before she was submerged once more.
Time seemed to speed away from him. Dark clouds swirled all around as he tumbled ever onwards. Faces leered out of the gloom. Many of them he knew. His father. His sister. The Southrons. The horses. They all passed before him and were swallowed up. Many more, though, he did not know. A sour-faced man with one eye. A girl in a radiant dress, her eyes alight with laughter. A young boy, dressed in the clothes of a street urchin.
At last he came to rest, and the clouds parted but briefly to show him a face he loved. Nellas.
Slowly, he became aware that this face was real, back-lit not by darkness, but by a radiant blue sky. Wet sand was at his back, and there was a terrible pain in his shoulder.
"Elden! Can you hear me? I have to take it out!"
Suddenly he felt a hand grasping at the source of the pain, and it intensified a thousand-fold. He screamed and grabbed her hand, trying to pry it back, but it might as well have been the wind trying to move a stone. The agony grew to a zenith, and something was wrenched loose. Then he fell into darkness once more.
Nellas sat on the bank of the river, watching Elden. She had managed to stem the bleeding and make his sleep comfortable with a remedy made of plants gathered near their landing point, but there was not much else she could do except wait. He had lost a lot of blood.
The cold and snow seemed to have been left behind now, but there was still a chill in the air. The river had mercifully spared their lives and tossed them ashore on the western bank, nothing short of a miracle consider what usually happened to those who found themselves unexpectedly swimming in the Anduin. The mountains were to her back, and on the far bank she could see the long green wall of Mirkwood extending for miles in either direction. She had traveled this river several times in her younger years, but now she saw it in a new light. She felt she could understand why and how the Rohirrim had come about. The only way to cross these vast green plains was with an alliance between those that went on two legs and those that went on four.
Briefly she thought about the friends they had left buried in the mountain, but she was not in the mood to mourn. Her present sorrows were sufficient without adding more. And yet... something about her did not feel sorry at all. Imladris was a long ways away, but farther down the river on the same bank as they now lay was Lorien, her birthplace. Her hair, which Elden had insisted that she cut short to avoid attracting attention, was beginning to grow out again. The sun was smiling. The day was beautiful. They had survived.
Presently, she got up and moved Elden's unconscious form to rest underneath the shade of a large oak tree. Then she began to explore her surroundings, softly singing a song in the tongue of men as she did so. Elden had taught it to her in Bree, and now it floated back up out of the recesses of her mind and bubbled on her lips.
"When the wind blows and the leaves all are down, come to me love in your best dressing gown... Sing to me softly and cradle me close, you are the one that I care for the most..."
On the tallest hill west of the bank, the ruins of a watchtower overlooked them. She thought about walking up to see what remained, but she did not want to leave Elden alone in case he woke up and thought she had abandoned him. Instead she poked through the thick reeds along the water's edge. There was a small lily pad that grew in the streams and rivers in this region, and it's flower could be ground to make a potent pain-relief remedy.
When she first saw the boat, her mind dismissed it as a stick of driftwood wedged in the mud at a funny angle, but when she looked again she realized that it was the bow of a small vessel. It had become hopelessly tangled underneath the plants that grew around it, but with a few strokes of her blade it drifted free. She reached out and grabbed hold of the rope that had doubtless once moored it to a fisherman's camp farther upstream. The rotten fibers strained and broke underneath her grip, and she just managed to seize onto the side of it to keep it from floating away, splashing muddy water on herself as she did so.
For some reason this made her laugh aloud. It could be the memories of playing in the muck after heavy spring rains, or it could simply be the strange stillness that surrounded them on all sides. She had never thought emptiness could be so vast, but as she looked around her heart leaped with wonder, as though seeing it all for the first time. There were no family or friends about her, save for Elden. They were not on a journey to parts elsewhere, they WERE elsewhere, and the journey was all around them, it's destination wonderfully uncertain. It was a glorious feeling, at once terribly freeing and terribly lonely in a way that was hard to put into words. Now she felt she understood how Elden had come to be the person he was. No one could long endure this feeling without growing a hard shell. It was a beautiful place to be lost in, but if you were not firm it just might suck the purpose from you and leave you a wanderer forever.
She found a long stick and planted it firmly in the ground, before knotting the broken rope back together and tying the boat off. She sat down beneath the shade of the oak to rest.
[A/N: The bad news is, there are only four chapters to go, but the good news is that they're all going to be larger than this one (well, except for #4). Thanks for reading.]