Summary:

The company enjoys an evening's peace. Elrohir fears it will be short-lived and seeks answers of a newly-woken Haldir.

Notes:

A long chapter for you this month! NaNo Prep is already underway (I have some mighty ambitions this round), so I will see you all in December. Until then, take care. Happy Reading!

Chapter 27: War Stories

"There's a different feel in the air tonight. Your luck is changing."

"So it seems."

Calen wore a far too-pleased-with-himself grin as he examined the dwindling pile of polished quartz on the table. Plucking up one of the whites, he turned it before the lamplight. Far from quelling his spirits, the trials Below had whetted him like a good honing steel, and endearing as the doe-eyed admiration had been, this newfound spirit over games of nim delighted Elrohir and spurred his long-dormant competitive streak. Until tonight, at least.

"Ware a braggart's mantle!" he warned though he had lost the last three rounds. He took two stones. In truth, his heart was far from their game: wandering up the white stairs to the treasury.

"You travel along distant roads tonight." Calen braced his arms against the table, ignoring the last piece between them. "I don't blame you for your distraction. Truly he is worthy of all the tales spun of him, our Captain."

Haldir had awoken that afternoon.

Rising, Elrohir poured himself a measure of wine. He did not often indulge—wine disagreed with him—but a pervasive chill had taken up residence in the common room. "How does he seem?"

"You haven't been to see him yet?"

Elrohir took a deep swallow, set the glass down deliberately. "Not yet."

So great had been Aragorn's relief, Elrohir could not muster even a fragment of jealousy. He promised himself he would celebrate this odd friendship so long as it brought that joy to his foster brother's face. In Aragorn's presence Haldir shed his grimness. The ready and boisterous laugh of old reemerged. The sharp tongue blunted some of its edge. Confronted by the depth and constancy of amity unbroken over half a century, Elrohir had loitered on the threshold, in equal part unwilling to break in on their private communion or subject himself to Haldir's undimmed eye.

"He's in good humor. For the most part." Calen huffed a laugh and winced, pressing against his ribs. "He does not strike me as one for lying idle."

"That he is not." Elrohir refilled his glass, poured a second, and brought both to the board with him. "I have not even asked—what of you?"

"Better than I could have hoped. I had not thought the air underground would feel wholesome, but it heartens me, somehow. I'm sore yet, but Angren pronounced me fit enough—if you can believe that." Calen accepted the glass Elrohir handed him, their fingers brushing. The touch kindled in the young man's eyes."But restless, yes."

Warmth crackled the length of Elrohir's arm. Perhaps… "You will have a tale or two stories to carry home after your deeds in the Second Hall. You proved yourself every bit as valiant as the most seasoned of us."

Calen's hand dropped away to trace circles about the rim of his glass with a forefinger, coaxing a song from the glass. "My deeds… I made a fool of myself, fell in a hole. Took injury without striking so much as a blow against the enemy. Missed them entirely when they noosed us. The Captain had the right of it. I would have been better served remaining at the Eyrie."

"None of that lies at your door," Elrohir insisted, hoping Calen would hear what he himself had not. "It was because of you we were able to fight free of the Orcs' net at all."

"It wasn't me though," Calen said. He lifted his finger, the single, ringing note trailing away, almost eclipsing his whisper. "It wasn't me at all."

"What do you mean?"

Breezing in to the common room that had become their haunt, Taereth thumped a bottle on the table between them. "A hot meal will stand you longer than a sweet embrace, lovers."

Calen aimed a cuff at him, neatly evaded, as Rammas and Angren entered, bearing the evening meal between them, steaming from the high hall. With a rueful smile in Elrohir's direction, Calen polished off his glass and hastened to lay the table, abandoning the victory within his grasp.

Though they had a standing invitation to dine with their hosts in the Great Hall, they preferred to make shift for themselves where they might indulge in their own tongue the songs and stories of home and take advantage of their hosts' well-stocked buttery: a discovery Taereth had been quick to sniff out and apply himself liberally to. Elrohir could not summon the wherewithal to scold him into temperance. They had earned a little ease.

He had kept Ori's news to himself. Let them have one more night's reprieve.

After their meal, Elrohir drew up his usual chair near the hearth as Taereth finally persuaded Rammas to tell the full tale of the ambuscade at the Morannon where Haldir had earned his laurels. Though Elrohir had heard the tale before, her firsthand account absorbed him: the ruse they cobbled together fishing armor off the enemy dead, bright hair and faces fouled with marsh-ichor, blades dunned with soot as they stole a march through the Haunted Pass. The deadly ascent in the dark. The final confrontation just as what passed for dawn in that noxious land was cresting the Mountains of Shadow, and a Silvan of no particular title or repute dove into the breach—

There was no sound, as usual: merely a suggestion of presence in the doorway where there had been none before.

Haldir looked like a mariner flung onto shore beyond hope after the wreck of his vessel. His eyes glittered out of deep hollows: testimony to the quality of Estel's anodynes as much as a formidable spirit. He had managed trousers, sword belt, and surcoat (refusing, even now, to be out of uniform). The arrow hole in the latter hinted at the padding holding him together, and the weight he braced against the doorframe suggested a man, at least nominally, aware of his fragility.

He touched a conspiratorial finger to his lips. Only the ill-bred interrupted a storyteller in the midst of their tale.

"What lies and calumny are you feeding this impressionable lot?" he barked in hoarse echo of his once-battlefield-clearing call, startling Rammas to silence.

So raucous was their greeting, he jerked back, his fingertips reflexively touching the arsigil on his hip. Narrowing his eyes at Rammas he waited until the thumping of fists on the table died down.

"Every time you tell that tale, the number goes up. Next rendition you'll have me holding off an entire battalion on my own."

Rammas, her hand resting on her lamp, did not return his levity. She unhooded it, jabbing a lance of cold light into his face.

He flung up the hand on his uninjured side. "Leave off, Araukë. The occupier of the house is also the long-suffering owner of it."

She was unmoved. "Answer me this then: what did you tell me that perilous night at Sarn Gebir?"

"That if we live to see the dawn, I would help you be worthy of better deeds. And if I fall, you can help yourself to my provisions, but my sword stays with me."

Grinning, she waved him into her chair and fetched, of all things, a horsehair brush chased in silver from her pack.

"What does that all mean?" Taereth drew his fingers out of the lamplight.

"There was a time—when Morgoth's power was great—some spirits inveigled their way into houses that did not belong to them or clothed themselves in fair and familiar guise to conceal a wicked purpose," Rammas said, attacking Haldir's tangles with short, sure strokes. "It never hurts to be cautious in these dark days when the enemy's strength grows greater and ours wanes."

Elrohir frowned. It had not occurred to him that he might have brought something other than Haldir's fëa back from the Unseen. Was that why Rammas had been at his bedside when he woke rather than Estel?

Haldir scoffed. "Do the Noldor complain of waning strength? In the marshes, all your lot had to do was walk over us in your damascened plate."—wincing when the brush tugged a knot.

"And hard work it was, too. You lot make poor footpaths."

"No pity for the poor quintain." Sobering, he held each of their gazes in turn. "You gave good account of yourselves down Below. Commendations all round, if Angren has no objections."

Angren, sitting apart and gazing into the fire, made no answer. His broken cheek, courtesy of Raguk, was still painful. To say nothing of the news Balin's scouts had brought down from the Stair.

Haldir lifted his glass. "And laurels for our bold knight. Worthy of the greatest madmen of his house. Who faced down the din-horde like Menelvagor himself to pull our sorry chestnuts out the fire. There's a captain to follow."

So foreign was Haldir's penchant for praise, Elrohir found himself at a loss for the lucky recipient. Then another roar went up, Calen and Taereth thumping him on the shoulder so heartily, he nearly careened facefirst into the table.

Angren set down his glass as if to affix it to the wood grain and rose, his chair legs grating against the flags. Their laughter subsided.

"I leave the young bucks to their wassail. I, for one, would have a clear head come morning," he said, his gashed cheek like an open wound in the lamplight. "Time is growing very short."

In the wake of his departure, Haldir knocked his own empty glass on the table, a rat-tat as if to recall the displaced mirth. "You heard our good silgol. More wine! Taereth, give us a song! We're weary of battle-stories."

The midnight hour came and went. As the contents of the decanters dwindled, and bawdy barracks rondels gentled, Haldir took up a retelling of the Narsilion.

Over Elrohir's half-hearted objections and the hole in his chest, he helped himself liberally to Aragorn's tobacco pouch (with the furtive air of a fugitive who expects recapture at any moment) and wreathed the table in the sweet and gauzy smoke of galenas. It twisted in and over itself shaping itself into an archer leaping with a silver bow, wicked faces with jaws agape, a ship in full sail with a wild-haired wisp of woman at its helm. Though the Noldor claimed the more turbulent histories, the Silvans had perfected the method of living dream with aught but pitch and rhythm, light and smoke. Such had been their bulwark against the Endless Night, the uniting force of their tribes when Morgoth's treachery sowed division and kinslaying fractured the Eldar. In true Tawaraith fashion the depredations of the Enemy loomed large, any indebtedness to the Valar for deliverance triflingly addressed, if at all.

Haldir's voice, low, melding with the crackling wood, evoked the wild woods of Elrohir's childhood, the bonfires of solstice-nights. The hearthstones were flame-warm against his back, the light fluttering across his comrades' faces. They had risked much on his behalf, even unknowing. He would lay down his life for any one of them, if it were asked of him, and the swell of gratitude and goodwill was not all an excess of wine and an easing of care. For once, the thought of such friends did not fill him with the urge to flee contentment and burgeoning belonging because it touched too near the old grief.

Perhaps…

"—for Arien the mighty was chosen to captain the Sun, that last fruit of Laurelin. She feared nothing. Not the fierce heats of Laurelin, nor the furthest icy trails beyond the Orocarni. For she had a heart of fire. The Great Enemy, who dwelt then in the North, hated her, but dared not assail her vessel so formidable was her power. Instead, he sent spirits of shadow to hound Tilion, steersman of the Moon, Oromë's huntsman, whom she loved, until he was driven off course, shipwrecked and adrift in the shadowy airs. In the last hour, when all hope was forsaken, she came and gave battle to the foe and won a bloody victory—at a terrible cost.

"Arien had taken a grievous hurt. To heal her and protect the last fruit of Laurelin, both had to be borne far beyond the Enemy's reach, so her crew loosed their vessel beyond the circles of the world, never to return. Tilion, undaunted, would have followed her even through the Door of Night. He trailed her distant glimmer though the mists of the world swirled ever between them, and he lost his way…"

Haldir paused. His features emptied of expression.

Hastily Elrohir plucked the smoldering fag-end from his fingers and ground it out against the mantle, deflecting an anxious glance from Rammas with a slight shake of his head. Such absences were not unexpected: the fëa growing once more accustomed to ordering its house. At least, so he hoped.

Haldir rapped the table again, chagrined at himself. "I've quite forgotten the ending."

Taereth grunted and muttered in a carrying whisper. "I think the Captain's taken more than is good for him." With that grave pronouncement, his head tipped to the table, and soon his snores signaled an end to the evening's entertainments.

Calen hoisted his bleary comrade to his feet, happy to be doing the carrying for once. Rammas took up an ember and, trailing her fingers across Haldir's shoulders as she passed his chair, she lit their way out.

Haldir's gaze followed her, but he remained where he was as Elrohir bent to bank the fire. "Leave it. I want a word."

"Is your wound troubling you?"

"I am well-dulled." He sat rigid, hands flexing against the chair arms until the wood creaked in protest. All music had gone from his voice. No more the lilt of a tale-weaver, but the gnarl of a wolf about to bite. "Of all men, you I trusted not to meddle in such arts. Have you any idea, my young fool, the Laws you violated? The danger you risked? The Unseen is perilous even for those of your vaunted bloodline."

Elrohir drew himself upright. "You're wroth with me…for saving your life?"

Haldir's fist crashed against the arm of his chair, a rictus of pain pulling his lips back from his teeth. "I have run up enough debts to your house. I don't need another. I certainly don't need you risking an unhousing for my sake. I'm not worth that."

Despite this flash of unmerited temper, Elrohir found no echo of it in himself. Had he not raked Aragorn over the same coals in much the same way? Anger was the shelter fear sought when those dear to them were imperiled—by their own foolishness, most of all.

"What's done is done. I passed through it, unscathed, and would not undo it."

Haldir wiped a hand across his brow. "I have been too long idle. What news? What of Raguk? My nursemaid would not tell me."

"The hour is late, and you are newly on your feet," Elrohir demurred, prodding the fire again. "It can wait—"

"Your report, roquen."

Elrohir clawed at the ashes around the edges of the pit until the flare of embers provoked more nauseating recollections. "Balin sent scouts as far as the head of the Stair. They returned a few days ago. The pine grove had been put to flame, withered right to the edge of the snowline. Raguk spoke true. The Eyrie's gone."

The loss was a bitter one, felt more keenly by Taereth and the others who had known them better, but Elrohir's heart still ached for Linwen, Haldir's first-sword, straight-backed and soft-voiced, for the silenced laughter, the robbed devotion to Lórien and their captain.

Silence behind him: braced, heavy.

"Casualties?"

"It had snowed. Everything was ash. No one answered their calls, and they dared not endanger their own folk lingering into nightfall." It was too hot near the fire.

Thumbing the cork off a brown-necked bottle, he tilted three fingers of pale spirits into a glass, added a fourth, and pressed it into Haldir's hand, which grasped it the way a man tempest-tossed would a taut rope.

Elrohir did not say he was sorry (though he was) nor would he do the Captain the discourtesy of trying to placate him with false assurances. No words could lessen the crush of such a blow. No entreaty lift the burden of responsibility. That was the curse of leadership. Those you set to the watch could be lost in the field just as easily as those you led into battle. Elrohir, at least, had fought beside his soldiers in the Redhorn, had been there to rally them at the last, even if he had failed. The remorse that would have gutted him had he been otherwhere, even pulled by demands greater than duty, was too horrible to contemplate.

At length Haldir raised the glass to his lips and drank it off. Balancing it carefully on the chair arm, he said. "I cannot wear all the lost around my neck, Elrohir. Their weight would bear me to the ground."

Elrohir crouched beside his chair so their eyes were level. "If you had not come, we would never have found Estel. Or the Elessar."

The glass tumbled off the chair arm and cracked on the flags. "You've seen it? Tell me all."

Elrohir recounted his meeting with Ori and Frár in the treasury. When he had finished, Haldir sat back with eyes closed, head tipped back against the chair. "So. The long watch ends at last. She said it would be so."

Elrohir did not answer this. The remark had been directed towards the fire. "All this time, you were seeking it. Why didn't you tell me?"

"I did not think you wished to hear from me. Besides, my searches too oft proved fruitless. I was not going to open those old wounds unless I was sure."

"And now you are sure, what do you intend? Will you storm the treasury with sword drawn? Repay hospitality with robbery?"

"I thought I might ask first," Haldir said, lightly. "The Elessar cannot stay here, and Balin knows it. It is not meant for mortal folk. It will weary them untimely. Evil is drawn to it. Dol Guldur must not lay hands on it. Or anyone else."

"Zuraz, for instance?" Elrohir scooped up the fallen glass, fumbling to disguise his hand's sudden tremble. It was this he had hoped to ask.

Ori had only told him Zuraz had found the Elessar—not where or how. Or when. He needed to be sure. He needed to be sure all those who had had a part in the most terrible night of his life were destroyed. That the Orc had only found it, abandoned, in the snow. Picked it up as a lark. A lucky find. It had to be so.

It had to be.

"Too much to hope Balin would slay him out of hand."

"You recognized him. And Estel said there was old business between you. Before Mirkwood."

In his eagerness, he'd overplayed his hand. Warmth and drink and a late hour all but demanded the coaxing forth of secret confidences, but Haldir, even dulled, was an old warhorse. He was quiet for so long, staring, unseeing, into what remained of the fire, Elrohir began to worry he was drifting again, had made up his mind to quit this mad course when Haldir spoke:

"He belonged, at least the first that we know of, to the tribes of Gundaband: deserters and runagates who had escaped the old wars. Some of the White Council believed their forays into the passes were driven by something other than their master's will, a Darkness that slept below Caradhras, but nothing was done until one traveler—a good friend to your father—was taken on his way home. He was found, eventually, at the edge of a catch-basin, brutalized and branded with the ghâsh. One of my fellows and I were dispatched. But our reconnaissance went awry. Tuilinn took a mortal hurt with no Elessar to hold him this side of the Qalvanda Road. Poor, brave fool. He had only me. I could not save him. I didn't even save myself."

"I remember."

Finding Haldir, frozen and near death in the snow, was one of the few things he did remember. Over the years, his mind had built a wall around the images and order of that night's events. Some Mannish trait, perhaps, granted him the grace of forgetfulness. But cracks had opened in that wall, despite his best efforts, and they were widening. When the wall crumbled, the darkness would drown him. So he brandished the only torch he had to hand.

"You must be mistaken. You must be. They're dead. All of them are dead. Orcs are not so long-lived."

"He slew Emlin. He cut her throat, so she wouldn't cry out. And while she lay bleeding at his feet, he hacked off her knight's braid. I found him later, wearing it. I took the fingers that held the knife. If I had taken his head, I could have spared us much, but I…" The golden corona Rammas had braided from Haldir's forelocks gathered all the remaining light in the room, yet his face was dark, and he did not finish the thought. "It is not entirely unheard of: such longevity. Some of the histories name one called Boldog, a Great Orc-chieftain—or clothed as one—said to live a thousand years and more, second only to that great calamity Glorfindel cast over Cirith Thoronath that I need not name."

"I never took you for a scholar of the old lore."

"Thank you."

"There are no such powers as that remaining in Arda," Elrohir insisted. "And even if there were, Zuraz is hardly that."

"He's worse. He is not known by a single banner. He has many. His influence spreads like mold in the damp: silently, slowly. Infecting even the light. Even the good. Not all evil deeds find their way into your father's books of lore."

The pine faggots had whitened to ash, and though they gave off a pulsing heat still, only deep inside did a glow still smolder. An unblinking eye. Something deep at the center of it burst in a rush of sparks.

Elrohir's legs were tingling. He lowered himself heavily to the floor. "Why did you not speak of this when we came on him?"

"Would you have taken me at my word? Would it have altered your decision? No. You would not have slain one bound and helpless, even knowing what he was," Haldir said. "Besides, you are many things, my boy. A good liar is not one of them. He would have known you then. Best be forgotten."

Elrohir lifted his head at that. "What could he possibly want with me?"

"You are the scion of one of the greatest remaining houses of the Eldar. A banner Elves and Men alike might rally beneath, if you chose. The enemy could only hope for such a victory as your loss. Some on our side would take it rather amiss, too."

"Flatterer." Elrohir's wry smile faded. "Since that night, I have always felt a shadow dogged me. A pursuit I couldn't shake. Cannot. Even now."

"You need not have any more dealings with him." Haldir's hand rested briefly on his shoulder.

Elrohir shifted uncomfortably. His Captain's storms he could weather, but compassion would take him off at the knees. "I never thought I would lay eyes on the Elessar again. I gave up after Archet. All these years, you searched…You always were stubborn."

"Your mother used to tell me much the same."

No word of Celebrían had passed his lips since her departure. At least, not where Elrohir might hear of it. He kept his eyes on the last, red ember of the fire until they ached. He did not ask why Haldir had sought the Elessar so long. Even after its recovery would no longer return to them the one they would have moved Seen and Unseen to save. He knew the answer. But to voice their secret aloud would abandon all armistices between them.

"It is late. I am for bed." Bracing himself on his captain's knee, he levered himself to his feet.

Haldir's hand closed about Elrohir's wrist. For all his seeming fragility, his grip did not lack for strength. "Leave Zuraz to me, Elrohir. Promise me. I want you safe."

On the eve of Elrohir's knighting, he had knelt, just so. But no solemn promise did he make this time. He had already sworn one rash oath of late. And if what Haldir said of Zuraz was true, indeed, no rule of Law or love would keep him from his vengeance. Instead, he lifted their joined hands to his lips and pressed his own secret against Haldir's sword-roughened hands in a warrior's wish: the same he would take from the safeguarding runes on his sword hilt the eve of a fateful battle.

He would not prove foresworn.

Withdrawing, he lit Calen's candle and tamped the last red glitter under a pile of ash. "Why the Narsilion, of all tales, tonight? Arien and Tilion were little sung in the Hall of Fire."

"I left out the bit of Arien's folk cavorting wild and naked in the sun-waters."

"Taereth will be most disappointed to hear it." Candle in one hand, Elrohir beckoned with the other. "Come along, old warrior. You will catch it hot if Estel finds you here amidst such wreckage and his empty purse."

Navigating their painstaking, slightly weaving way towards the healing hall, Elrohir fought the growing urge to shiver. The corridor's chill pierced the comfortable warmth of wine and fire both. "I like to imagine Tilion found her again at the last."

Haldir's grip on his shoulder tightened. "So do I."

End Notes

Araukë - (Q.) a possibly questionable, female form of "Arauco" which is translated as "demon". In my head, "Rammas" is an epessë, taken after the War of Wrath. This name is her "real" name, the one she bore before and around the time of the kinslaying in Doriath, which Haldir rarely uses.

Menelvagor - "Swordsman of the Sky," a name for the constellation Orion, gathered by Varda from among the ancient stars and set as a foreboding of the Last Battle. (from The Silmarillion: Of the Coming of the Elves and the Captivity of Melkor")

Tale of the Sun and Moon - Haldir takes liberties with the Silmarillion's version of these events