Author's Notes: The Whopper: Part 2.
Gandalf007, I'm afraid I cannot offer you solace with this chapter... but I hope it will prove entertaining at the least. :) Thank you for your encouragement and comments. And for those reading, I see you too, and you are appreciated! I was going to wait until the weekend, but for once, I'm ahead of schedule and decided to go with it.
Chapter 22: Starfall
A dagger and the arrival of reinforcements had spared Elrohir when he had first encountered Raguk.
Among Orcs the strong wielded the chain of command, and Raguk was no exception. The muscles in his arms and shoulders bespoke a powerful opponent on any field. Mail sheathed him to the knees in a fabric of twisted wire. Gauntlets of unidentifiable leather covered his hands up to the elbows. The falchion he hefted might have weighed a goblin and a half. Only his head remained bare: a touch of arrogance enforced by a goblin's lack of reach and the braids of elven warriors hanging off his belt.
A wise defender would have kept his sword's length between himself and his enemy, prolong the distance, wield the cloak only at dire need. But 'wise' was not a word oft applied to Silvan folk, who tended towards the breathless charge, the rash maneuver that might save a rout.
Haldir's cloak-wrapped arm batted down the Uruk's falchion—a risky gambit, if he missed the blunted edge—and with the other thrust his sword's point at Raguk's unprotected face.
Raguk twisted to one side, steel rasping up his spaulders, and swatted Haldir's blade down with a mailed arm. Even as Haldir's withdrawal clapped him a glancing blow across the temple, he shook off the stun and pursued, pummeling his opponent over and over and over and over in a flurry of blows as if hewing at a particularly stubborn and deep-rooted tree.
Each time Haldir swayed aside or parried, blindingly fast, deflecting blows until his shoulders were flecked with chips of pillar and bits of the Dwarf kings' beards.
A lesser weapon would have bent under such punishment. A lesser man would have run.
Haldir, the fool, merely waited for his chance.
No peacock of the tourney, Lórien's Captain. His skill had been whetted in war, and even on the practice field, he preserved no gentility, despite repeated and ever-more-pointed reminders from the scandalized master-at-arms. Haldir would cant his head, listen politely, then reply: a young man with aspirations to knighthood must be more than a flaunting showman. He would be tested, as knights are tested, far from the sporting field, against an enemy who knew little and cared less for the finer points of "the rules of engagement." Valar help the ill-prepared knight when pain or exhaustion or mercy unmanned him and damn the Captain who, in pulling his strokes, had failed in his duty.
Raguk was frothing like a boar at bay, his blade notched. He backed off to adjust his grip.
Then Haldir moved: the way a mountain stream descends to hollow stone.
Oh, to watch him fight.
Elrohir's heart swelled with the old, fierce love. His breath counted the measure of stroke and counterstroke, the extension and the retreat then snagged when Haldir flung his rear leg back, caught himself on his offhand, almost level with the floor, and gouged up at Raguk's groin from beneath. Leg, shoulder, arm, and blade one exquisite line, no more apart from one another than a trunk from its branches and leaves. He was the Golden Wood given flesh and steel, exacting its vengeance on those who would burn it to ash.
Raguk jerked aside, cursing as the blade caught him. Haldir harried him, the pursued-now-pursuer; he searched out every grommet-gap, every opening. Between chin and breast. Inside the elbow and under the arm. Along the palm and behind the gauntlets. The vulnerable hollows of knee and thigh. And wherever his blade passed, Raguk began to bleed.
The Uruks, despite their command, had angled themselves nearer the fight, watchful for their captain. The goblins, more openly, were gawking. By the mutters and jeers, Haldir, in particular, had given them reason enough to hate him.
Norgush, however, had his finger poised on the trigger of his arbalest, his watch unwavering. "I know your kind, Elf. I know your tricks. Try anything, just once, this bolt will find your heart."
Patience in the face of deadly peril was not Elrohir's strongest point, but he summoned every fragment of it Haldir had ever tried to instill in him. He, alone of the company, still bore a weapon—none of the enemy had wanted to venture close enough to take it from him. While the whole attention of the hall concentrated on the combatants, Elrohir assessed the weak points. Haldir's dear-bought distraction would not go unused.
The mountain goblins had learned too well not to hem their quarry in all the way round. Better to give best than surround a band of desperate foes with nothing more to lose than their lives in one another's defense. To lessen casualties and allow for more sport, the Orcs had left a back way—though not a means of escape. Elrohir spotted it almost at once: a bigger gap than usual in the southward part of the ring about them. A bottleneck back towards the antechamber they had come from. Where their weapons were piled, overseen by a goblin who was occupied exchanging a gleeful flash of coin with a comrade.
When Norgush barked at his men for forgetting their duty, Elrohir pressed the toe of Calen's boot with his heel.
The scout jolted, glanced at him.
Elrohir tipped his ear to one shoulder as if easing tension from his neck—in the direction of their weapons.
Calen's face smoothed. His chin dipped in the tiniest of nods.
"Oy, what are you doing?" Norgush's eyes narrowed.
Elrohir stiffened, but the Orc thrust his weapon towards Rammas, who was crouching beside Angren, awkwardly trying to fish her handkerchief out of her pocket with her bound hands. "It takes no one to command common decency," she said.
The cut on Angren's face was dripping onto his once-pristine collar. In an uncharacteristic gesture, he curled his fingers around her calf as she bent over him, her chin almost resting against his shoulder.
A terrible cry went up from the goblins.
Haldir had gotten a plant in one of Raguk's mail rings. Couching his blade under his arm like a lance, he thrust forward and pinned Raguk against the pillar and held on like death. So long as the arm that held it did not fail, the mithril-threaded blade would not bend. Raguk roared. Seizing hold of the blade, he ground free of Haldir's pin and—as the snapping pressure sent him stumbling forward—smashed him in the face with the guard. The blow knocked him off his feet, blood sheeting over his lips and chin.
The goblins surged forward like jackals, knives hungry. At the commotion, Norgush twisted towards the western portal.
Too close to bring the length of his blade into play, Elrohir smashed his pommel into the Orc's forearm, knocking his grip askew.
Displaced air whistled past his ear, ruffling his hair. Something clattered against the wall behind him. Norgush's string was empty. He flung himself behind a pillar, fumbling to set another bolt to the string.
The bonds unraveled from Angren's wrists—Rammas' boot dagger gripped in his fist. He split the others' in quick succession, parting the cords like silk. Freed, Calen sprinted towards their weapons, his face ghastly and wet with sweat. In an agile bound Elrohir would have thought beyond the ability of his broken ribs and cracked forearm, he charged the goblin who stood dumbfounded in his path and cracked his skull so hard against the floor, he didn't get up. Calen snatched up Taereth's bow and quiver and tossed them to waiting hands.
The Uruks about-faced. Too late.
The archer's unerring aim dropped two in the midst of their charge, his fletches protruding from their eye sockets. Angren and Rammas tore apart the last two of Raguk's guard between them.
Elrohir flung himself at the remaining goblins. They scattered before his wrath, Norgush cursing them roundly from his pillar.
Amid the mob about the western door, Haldir had nearly disappeared. He had regained his feet, but the remaining goblins were crowding so close to tear at him they were jostling and wounding one another as they drove him back towards the gullet of that dark door.
Elrohir, Rammas, Calen, Taereth, and Angren broke on their rear flank like the sea-wave that swallowed Númenor. The cadence of battle changed. The outcome sought was no longer victory, or even vengeance, only survival. No quarter would either offer. Nor surrender, accept. Haldir took Raguk to the ground with him this time, putting all the weight of arm, shoulder, and back behind his arsigil.
The noise Raguk made shivered over the goblins both and silenced the battlefield. An instant later the Fëanorian lamp flared again and erased the torches like lightning a candle. The goblins' shadows burned against the floor. Some fell flat on their faces. Dazzled, Norgush shied, and his second shot went sailing through the western door.
In the lull Elrohir whirled his sword high in a flashing arc. "Run!"
He snatched Zuraz out from his pillar as the Orc tried to sidle off. "I have not released you from my service. You are still our guide. To the north stair. Now."
They broke free and ran, Rammas shouldering Haldir.
From the direction of the bridge arrows whirred over their heads and at their heels. One pierced Taereth's cloak. Another jolted the stone a pace from Angren's boots. Zuraz ducked up the north stair, springing nimbly as a goat.
Behind them a horn rang out.
They flew blind. Impossible to tell who was with them, who was behind, how many were after them, where they were going. All Elrohir could do was keep hold of his weapon and climb. Zuraz bounded up and up and up, curving through stairwells and arches. Here and there, they passed signs of habitation. Crumbling walls shored up with scaffolding. Rubble cleared from half-fallen doorways. They kept climbing, limbs aching, breath sucking in and out of their chests.
Calen faltered—how he had even managed to keep the pace thus far, Elrohir dared not guess; he would not last at their speed much longer. Already the screeches and yells of vengeance echoed up from below.
Haldir slowed at the top of the landing.
"The way narrows here. One might hold it. For a time." His cloak was in tatters. His shirt streaked with blood from a broken nose.
Elrohir gaped at him. "You cannot hold them alone."
"Only room enough for one. No arguments." Haldir chucked him under the chin as if he were a cadet still, struggling to lift a waster too heavy for him. "Go. You will see them safe. Lead your men, knight."
There were too many things to say and not enough time to say them.
If they take you, do you carry a means of last resort as you taught us to?
The weight around my neck is heavy enough without yours added to the tally.
"Lay them waste," Elrohir told him. "Then be behind us."
Whirling he flung himself up the stairs after the others. He did not look back. If he looked back, he would not go forward.
Hardly had he cleared the next landing when sounds of engagement boiled up from below. It took every sinew in his body to keep forcing himself up the steps.
Still they climbed. An hour. An Age. The lamp kept flickering, casting gaps of darkness before them. At every turn they expected an arrow in the back or a sword thrust from behind. So hard was Elrohir listening, he thumped right into one of his comrades. Red glints like coals in a banked fire peered up at him reproachfully.
"Why have you stopped?" he demanded.
"Told you this wasn't the way. Damn fools, the lot of us."
A blank wall lay before them.
The tide of battle was cresting behind them. Haldir would not be able to hold them long. If they had not already overborne him…
A certain serenity enveloped them: the kind Elrohir had first experienced at Amon Sûl when their position was overrun, the kind that settled on soldiers who had only to ready themselves for the last, headlong charge. Better a fight to the end than for dragging hands to pry them from their earth. Taereth set his last arrow on the string, but didn't draw it. Calen, though swaying on his legs, wobbled to the landing behind Elrohir's shoulder. Rammas, the last to lose hope, was searching the wall with her lamp. Between his hands, Angren held a curious wooden figure. A little knight of oak such as any would-be warrior might have in his youth; the knife-sharpened features were almost worn away with time and handling. Only Zuraz sat apart in the furthest shadows, silent, with arms draped about his knees.
Doom. Doom. Doom, doom.
Above the clamor of battle, drums began to throb.
The yells and growls sharpened, tinged with shrieks of dismay or cries of pain. The clang and clash of blades dwindled into a lengthening silence as calamitous as the battle had been and more disquieting. Somewhere below the horn went again: no longer a brazen challenge but the piping notes of retreat.
Doom Doom-doom-doom-doom, the drums rolled.
A clatter on the stairs.
Elrohir lunged—in the very check of his swing, noting the golden, gore-streaked hair. He pulled his stroke wide, and Haldir fell almost at his feet, shadowy movement flinging itself behind him. The longblade flicked sideways, an extension of Elrohir's will even more than arm or instinct. It cleaved Norgush's evil weapon in two—and Norgush with it—even as the Orc rounded in pursuit, sliding another bolt on the string.
His body crashed back down the stair.
Silence, save for Haldir's ragged breathing.
The sheer absurdity of it set Elrohir laughing, and once he started, he couldn't stop. He laughed until hot tears pricked his eyes, and he had to sit down on the top step with his sword at his side, his hands palsy-stricken.
"Are you hurt?" Haldir, propped against the wall beside him like a tree heeled over by a storm-wind, reached for his knee.
When he leaned forward, a cough jolted his frame, flecking Elrohir's cheeks and chin. He twisted his face away apologetically and raised a sleeve against his mouth. With his other fingertips, he brushed Elrohir's surcoat, dappled with a spatter of fresh red.
"No."
"Then you deserve a hiding," Haldir gritted out. "I told you to get to the north stair. Not—And don't tell me 'direct reflection of leader—'" He was blessedly interrupted by another wracking coughing fit. He kept making abortive movements to stand. His skin had taken on a sallow, damp tinge.
"Stop. Stop. Damn you."
"Wind's… all out of me."
"I know. Let me look."
Gingerly Elrohir tipped him forward. Norgush's first bolt had spiked him deep in the back. Close range. Upper left. Only splintery broken ends remained of the fletches. Taking the collar of Haldir's surcoat between his fingers, he gently lifted it, revealing a bloom of vermillion. A fingernail's worth of ugly, triangular point protruded from the linen.
He set his jaw tight against the cold snarl of terror churning up his throat.
"Bad…as that…is it?" Haldir said. "Don't tell Linwen. She doesn't want… her oak leaves."
His breath hitched, and a low, crowing whistle, cruel mockery of his Orc-taunting in the First Hall, joined each inhale. He wasn't ashen yet, nor did he appear to be bleeding much—in a way they could see, anyway. Minutes, hours. That was the trouble with arrow wounds. Things might go awry at any time.
Elrohir wiped bloody froth from his chin and straightened. "My kit—"
Was not with him. It, along with everything else in his pack, he had left below. Rummaged and torn apart by looting Orcs, most likely.
The cadence of Haldir's whistling breath changed pitch. His gaze flicked over Elrohir's shoulder.
Norgush was getting up though awkwardly and crookedly as if parts of him weren't aligned right. Blood trailed down his ear. With a snarl, he raised his deadly weapon again. Elrohir was too far now to strike him.
A spear tip burst through Norgush's breast, and he fell to the stair again with his weapon beneath him. This time he didn't rise.
A square, clever hand plucked the spear from the slain Orc. Its owner stood barely higher than Elrohir's belt and had a black, bristling beard with eyes almost as dark, full of warning. His nose hooked like a bird's, every line in his rocky face seamed and weathered as a slab of granite.
"You forest-folk are far from your halls," said the Dwarf. "And making trouble in ours."
Author's Note
Camp NaNo is upon us (already)! I've decided to take the month of April to get ahead. We are officially into the last 100 pages here, and I want to make sure my monthly update schedule stays more or less consistent, so the next chapter will come in May!
Thank you for those who have joined me on this journey! I can't believe we're closer to the end now than the beginning!