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Chapter Text

Discovering the band of Orcs was almost haphazard.  Many years had passed since last such foul creatures had trespassed on those fair woodlands, and the Elves who lived there were not so guarded as once they had been.  One heard, of course, of the occasional raid or killing in other parts of the country, but such violence never came here.  The borders were quiet for weeks on end, the most excitement generated by some wandering traveler, usually lost or foolish, always Man, and easily prompted back the way he had come.  Honest daylight might bring visitors: friends to the inhabiting Elves or purveyors of textiles and metalwork and, that most prized of commodities, news.

It was not daylight, though, but a late night hour.  The scout in the tree was re-braiding his long hair when he heard the faint clinking of armor; he touched his comrade’s elbow and both uttered the discreet cry of doves at even.  Similar birdcalls immediately went up throughout the canopy.  The Orcs halted, knowing the sound of trouble but not the direction from which trouble would come.  Then the first arrows flew. 

One twisted beast went down, but their leader was wily—he barked an order in the ugly speech of his kind and the Orkish company disbanded in little units of twos and threes, quickly evaporating into the woods.  A strategy that left the Elves surprised and indignant: ill pleased they were to credit Yrch with a strategy that seemed so…well…Elven!  Taken off guard, the forest watch quickly reconstituted themselves as smaller hunting parties, but initial confusion had cost them valuable time.  Though they searched diligently they found no sign of their quarry, save the one dark corpse already growing cold.

-.-.-.-

“Nevhithien, this seems excessive.  You are aware there will be books in Rivendell, are you not?”  Fírhador was wryly chiding when he said it.  Everyone knew the fame of Lord Elrond’s library was the chief reason for Nevhithien’s desire to bide in Rivendell, trumping even the prospect of seeing her older sister, married and residing there these past two years.

“I know, Father, but it is so hard leaving any behind.”  The maiden heaved a sigh and stared at the fruit of her labors.  The portmanteau still bulged in an unseemly manner.  She pushed down on the lid halfheartedly, clearly unhappy at the prospect of having to repack it yet again.

“You are leaving some behind?” squealed little Veisiliel.  “Which ones?”

“Dear heart, do not be unkind,” Eleluleniel admonished her.  “Look at poor Nevhithien.  Can you not see her pain?”

They all laughed at this, both at the sly jest and at the very real woe in Nevhithien’s face, though she too joined in their laughter.  Amid the amusement Fírhador suddenly lifted his head, his dark eyes quite expressionless.  Eleluleniel noticed and stopped laughing, looking at him questioningly.  Nevhithien opened her mouth but her father lifted his hand in a quieting gesture and she swallowed the words on her tongue, waiting.  Neither girl was of an age for the thought-sending of their kind, but they were familiar with the sight of their parents communing wordlessly, both together and apart from one another.  It was the nature of the bond between married Elves to enable easier, more comfortable communication of their thoughts…yet their father looked anything but comfortable at that moment.  His eyes flicked back and forth and his lips moved vaguely as though he were trying to decipher a missive from very far away.

“Fírhador, would you come here a moment?” called a voice from another room. 

Consciousness returned to his eyes and Fírhador smiled at his three youngest.  “I go to your mother,” he said.  “Eleluleniel, see to it that your big sister leaves you something to read…and if you would spare a thought for your poor old father, Nevhithien, I like to crack open a book sometimes too, you know.”

“Yes Father,” both girls murmured as he left the room.

Entering his Lady’s boudoir he founded her standing by the window, looking out into the dark.  Thalawen turned to him, her eyes touched with the same faint anxiety as his own.  “Did you understand all of it?” she asked.  She too had felt the sudden flurry of thought out of the Northwest but had not been able to understand the precise nature of the problem beyond an impression of trouble.  This was more than enough to worry her since she and Nevhithien were to travel that way on the morrow.

“Orcs,” he said, “a small party of them, dispelled at the Northwest border.  One Orc was killed, no Elves were hurt.  That dispatch was not meant for us alone—I think every grown Elf in the region must have heard it.”

“I am not surprised,” she murmured.  “It is extraordinary!  To think that such creatures… Not since the Ring War have they set foot upon this land.  Fírhador, what does this mean for us?  Nevhithien and I…tomorrow, how can we—?”

“There was more to the message,” he interrupted gently.  “There will be an impromptu meeting at the home of Tirnon in a brief hour’s time to discuss the matter.  I can be there and back again very shortly to help you finish with your packing.”  She smiled at this—she had finished her preparations for the journey days in advance, as her husband well knew—and he smiled back at her.  “I do not think it will be a problem,” he said.  “We have not been troubled with Orkish mischief for quite a time.  Well, we were overdue for some, I suppose.  That is what Tirnon will say.  He is a sensible Elf, as I hope am I, and there shall be no fear of Orcs in the morning.”

“What about Orcs?” came a high voice, and Fírhador turned to find Veisiliel standing in the doorway, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.  He and Thalawen exchanged a wry glance.  Veisiliel was the youngest of their daughters, a bare twenty years of age, and had been a mere infant during the Ring War.  Orcs to her were little more than stories—bogeymen lurking in wardrobes and under beds.

“Orcs, my moppet?  Who is it you have heard speaking of Orcs?” he asked lightly.

“You, just then,” she said.

“Such clever ears you have!  Come here my love,” said Thalawen, and Veisiliel went to her with a giggle.  “Look at your hair, so tangled!  Let me take a brush to it,” said her mother, and picked up the ivory comb at her bedside table.  As she brushed her daughter’s hair she looked up at Fírhador.  :She is dear to me.  I shall miss her these six months.:

:And not me?:

She laughed at that.  :Yes, I shall miss you as well, dear husband.  You will look after the little ones?:

:With my life.  And you will look after Nevhithien?:

:With my own.:  Veisiliel chattered happily on her mother’s lap and Thalawen murmured to her absently, but her thoughts were with her husband.  :Oh Fírhador, it will be so good to see our Alageth again.:

-.-.-.-

In the bedchamber shared by the daughters of Fírhador and Thalawen, Nevhithien was still busy with her packing while Eleluleniel watched with wistful eyes.  “You will come back from Rivendell, will you not?” she asked.

“I hope I never come back,” said Nevhithien.  “Oh, do not look at me so, Leni, of course I will!  You know that Mother will compel it at the end of our visit.  And yet to think of all that I might learn—oh!  And all that I might do, if I might stay.” 

“I know what you will do, Nevhithien.  You will sigh endlessly and say you wish you could stay forever.  You will bully and pester Alageth until she gives in and asks Mother to leave you there.”

“Yes!”  Nevhithien’s dark eyes flashed with a fierce eagerness.  “I shall comport myself with distinction and I shall oblige myself to talk and laugh with the other Elf maidens when I am not reading and shall be nothing but a credit to our family, and wheedle with Alageth until she sees that I am old enough to stay with her and Belmílon, and I shall dwell and study in Rivendell all of my days, and when you are older you will come and visit me and I will teach you the manners that befit a fine Elf lady and will find you handsome Elf lords and arrange your dalliances with them.”

Her younger sister blushed and averted her eyes.  Nevhithien had been teasing her with jokes like these ever since she had discovered Eleluleniel’s growing interest in love tales and romantic poetry.  “Well,” she said, trying to change the subject, “but it is as Father says!  You go to Rivendell for their books and yet you decimate our own little collection.  You might leave us some.  And he thinks you have only the portmanteau—he does not know what really fills your traveler’s chest in lieu of proper shoes and clothing,” she finished primly.

“There is fine raiment in there,” Nevhithien corrected her.  “I had to pack some clothing to pad the books safely.”  Nonetheless she had the grace to look somewhat guilty.  “Here now, I am repacking anyhow.  You may pick out the titles you want me to leave.”

Eleluleniel smiled at the offer.  “May I?  There are a few I saw you put away…”

“Would you leave me utterly bereft of Beren and Lúthien?” the older girl cried dramatically.  “But do, do—take all that you like.  There shall be plenty of material in Rivendell.  Perhaps even first-hand sources.  I would like to know how they subsisted in their travels anyhow—did they have good way-bread, as we have these days?  Or did they live on edible roots and wild berries?  They cannot have had a very romantic diet to go with their cooing and lovemaking,” she went on thoughtfully.  “How their bellies must have cramped.”

“Nevhithien, you ruin everything,” laughed Eleluleniel, pulling books aside for herself.

“I only point out practical concerns.”

“Yes, I know.  It has always been your way.  ‘But how can a hound speak when its mouth is not fashioned to do so?  Did not Lúthien Tinúviel and Beren ever have to relieve themselves during their travels?’”

“These are pressing questions!  Especially when they journeyed to deceive Morgoth in their fell guises as a werewolf and a vampire.  How did such guises allow them to answer the call of nature?  And where did they find the privacy to do so in dark Angband with foes on every side?  Important questions for one who would be a historian!” said Nevhithien.  More seriously, she continued, “And I would learn more of the Dwarves, who are so mysterious and secretive.  It is said that Legolas and Gimli frequent Rivendell and are a great source of information on Dwarves and their customs and on much else besides.  And I would see and speak with the Men who frequent Rivendell in these times, and who bring their ideas of architecture and of geometry, and who bring also their many sundered tongues.  Oh Leni!  There is so much in this world to learn!”

Eleluleniel, looking at her, was struck by a sudden image of Nevhithien striding with joyful purpose down a darkling passage towards a destination Eleluleniel could not see.  With the image came a sense of impending loss and she embraced her sister spontaneously.

“Leni!” said Nevhithien with some surprise at the gesture, though she hugged her back.

“I do hope you will be very happy…” Eleluleniel whispered.

Nevhithien laughed fondly.  “Oh Leni.  You know that we will see each other again even if I were to stay in Rivendell at the end of these six months, which I will not.  I do not go for good.”

“You may well yet,” her sister murmured.  “Haenes did, and Alageth.”

“Leni!  I assure you, I am not getting married or going over the Sea.  Haenes and Alageth are both much older than us.  I am only forty-five—our parents will certainly not permit it.”

“Yet suddenly I feel that I will never see you again,” said Eleluleniel, still holding her, and, pulling close again, she laid her head on Nevhithien’s shoulder.  “I do not know why.”  She closed her eyes, feeling strange and sad.

“You are tired and it is late,” said Nevhithien, extricating herself gently.  “You always sigh so in the evening…and it is far past evening now.”

Eleluleniel sighed, only confirming her sister’s words.  “You are ever practical.”

“As are you.  You are really far more practical than I, you know, in many many ways.  And you know the truth of what I say.”

“My heart does not know it.”  The younger girl touched her forehead briefly, reluctantly.  “And yet I suppose I do know it, in here.”

Nevhithien smiled and took her hand, rubbing it gently.  “Then listen to your head, for it has the right of things.  It agrees with me, after all, and I am always right.”

“Yes dear sister,” she said softly.

-.-.-.-

The meeting was brief.  When Fírhador returned some time later his home was dark.  He paused at the room where his daughters slept and, on impulse, opened the door and looked in upon them.  Moonlight shone through the tall window on Nevhithien and Eleluleniel.  Eleluleniel lay still and silent, her blue eyes eerily crystalline, and he smiled to see his little bird sleeping.  At times, awake, she reminded him of his mother.  A chance turn of phrase, the way she carried herself, and her hair—those fair rivulets had skipped a generation.  Both he and Thalawen were dark.  So blithe and merry when she was awake, in sleep she looked grave and somber.

Nevhithien, unlike her sister, slept fitfully, her dark hair a tangled mass on her pillow.  As he watched her she rolled onto her side facing him, lips parted, brow creased: she looked nothing so much as quizzical.  The covers were half off her body.  Unthinking, falling back on old custom from when she was smaller and he would find her sleeping thus, he went to her and drew the soft linen up under her chin.  His movement was deft and sure; she did not awaken but sighed, her brown eyes staring past him, quite blank and void of expression.  He smiled down at her tenderly, thinking of the months that stretched before his two youngest without their older sister there to tease them.

As he was leaving the room Veisiliel in her own bed roused a little, enough to ask for water.  He went to fetch her some but when he came back she was already asleep again—all three of them were and, content, he went on down the dark corridor.  He did not go to his room but his wife’s, opening it quietly.

One candle burned with a flickering glow.  Thalawen sat on the edge of her bed gazing at him, her long white gown clinging to her supple body.  He closed the door behind him and she smiled as he came to her and took her hand and brought it to his lips.

They made love leisurely, though it was long since they had been intimate in this manner.  After, they lay talking in low voices.  They spoke of the coming separation and of matters for Fírhador to attend in Thalawen’s absence.

“You will see that my garden is cared for?” she asked.

“I will.”

“And that Veisiliel keeps up with her letters and her penmanship continues to improve?”

“I will have her practice with letters to you.”

“I do not know why I ask you this.  I know that Eleluleniel will be the one to take care of it.  She is so painstaking with her own penmanship.”

“That was Nevhithien’s influence.  It was wise for us to have more than one, was it not?”

“Very!” She kissed him and laid her head upon his breast.  “Ah, you are warm, love.”  She nestled closer.  “Dear dear Nevhithien.  Such a good teacher she is, with such an illegible scrawl herself.”

"She writes faster than she thinks.  She has a scholar’s enthusiasm but has not yet the discipline.  Rivendell will be good for her."

"Not if all she does is read and write.  No, she must keep some company with others her age.  It is not good for her to be always with her head in a book.  She is becoming a young lady; she must learn to converse with others and to mix and mingle.  Socialize with other young people her age, with lasses and lads alike."

“I think she will,” he soothed her.  “I think she will find like minds in Rivendell.  People who will stimulate her thoughts and help her grow.”  :So long as she does not grow too fast,: he finished grimly.

Thalawen laughed at this last addition.  “You are a fond father.”

"And how can I fail to be, with such sweet girls? Almost as sweet as their mother."  He stroked her shoulder.

“But it is as you say,” she said sadly.  “They do grow quickly.  Alageth married and in her seventies.  Last night I dreamt she was with child.”  :I told you, did I not? Imagine it, Fírhador.  Our first grandchild.:

"You leap ahead a bit I think," he replied, though he too had turned the idea over.

:I do not think I told you this but I also dreamt she went over the sea, as Haenes did.:

Fírhador raised an eyebrow.  He did not like this turn of discussion.  When Haenes had left—on the same ship as his own mother, and as both of Thalawen’s parents, and as many of their friends who had chosen to leave Middle-earth at the time of the Ring War—Thalawen had spoken of the two of them leaving as well with their three youngest.  It had not been his wish and ultimately they had agreed to stay and move into the Fourth Age together.  Yet still sometimes Thalawen spoke of the Sea…

He laughed and tossed off a lighthearted response: “Alageth go over the sea? Hah! She is too vain of her looks, my dear.  What, go over the sea to Aman and have her beauty outshone by the Vanyar who bide there, and the lovelies of the Noldor and the Sindar who have gone before?”

Thalawen lifted her head and looked at him.  “I think you are unkind, dear husband.”

“No, I speak truth.”  He put his arms behind his head comfortably.  "Alageth was ever spoiled by us for her prettiness.  Ah well, she has virtue enough to compensate for her vanity: she is generous of disposition, stalwart, loyal.  I will never forget the way she looked at Belmílon when first they married.  I know she is devoted to him.  And perhaps I am wrong: perhaps when you and Nevhithien go to see her you will find she has learned some humility in the interval.  Time and distance may curb the flaws of youth."

They went on speaking in this fashion of the accomplishments and the shortcomings of their daughters, and of what age and experience might temper or might change and make anew.  At length Fírhador yawned.  “It is late and I have kept you from your sleep, and you will need it for tomorrow’s riding.  My love, I must leave you.”

“Oh, stay a while! I shall not see you for so long when we part tomorrow.  And you never told me of your meeting with Tirnon.”

“You would delay me with talk of Tirnon and Orcs, eh?”  He laughed.  “Our meeting was fruitful enough.  Some of the border patrol will be riding with your party.  They have assured us that there is no threat.  Two scouts came at Tirnon’s request.  They had killed one Orc and brought the head to show us.”

Thalawen took in a breath at this.  “A grim sort of trophy.”

“Tirnon’s wife sat with us during the discussion.  She was not pleased by the display.”

“Himeth means well, but even I have been known to grow impatient at her prudishness,” his Thalawen said.  A pause.  “Was it strange for you? When last you saw an Orc it was during the War.”

He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and sat there, hands folded across his knees.  "When last I saw an Orc I saw many," he said slowly.  "They were fleeing before us, and we were cutting down their stragglers.  There was a fervent joy among our ranks.  Sauron was defeated, Middle-earth free of his evil, and the minions of his wickedness ran before us like deer before the hunters’ arrows.  In that moment our triumph was such that all things seemed possible, even an end of Orcs."

"There are still Orcs."

"There are still Orcs," he agreed, standing and taking up his garments.  "And yet, they are not what they were, neither in number nor in organization, and they do not come to this place.  This was obviously a small group, and it has received heavy dissuasion from returning."

Thalawen watched him as he clothed his nakedness.  “Nevhithien and I will leave tomorrow with the dawn,” she said.  “If you have no fear for us then I will have none either.”

“I do not fear for you,” he said, “yet I will ride with your party a little way, till we come to the end of our lands.”  He leaned down and kissed her forehead: a chaste gesture after their intimacy, but no less affectionate for it.  “There I will bid you farewell and ride back with heavy heart, and wait and think of you till your return.”  :For know that I love you, wife of Fírhador.:

:And I you, my own dear one.:

-.-.-.-

It was a lovely night and the trees were limned with silver under a full moon.  Quiet night sounds filled the dusky air: small animals in the underbrush scouring for food; the far-off cry of an owl, gentled by distance; a faint breeze stirring the leafy canopy of boughs overhead.  All seemed tranquil and still.

This illusion of peace was dissolved as two patches of a deeper darkness broke with the broader night, darting across open ground to convene in a squatting exchange in a patch of underbrush.  “Oi—close call, that was!” hissed the larger of the two.  “I’ve never seen anything like it!  Did you see Molurtz go down?”

“Pah.”  His fellow spat, continuing in an unpleasant voice, “That fool snaga never could keep his head in battle.  Yes I saw.”

“He looked a right pincushion.  Never seen anything like it before.”  There was a tight undercurrent to the guttural voice as it repeated itself.  Clawed fingers flexed against muscular thighs.

“Awww.  Were you frightened, Kurbag?  Thought you might take a scatter of elf-shot, yes?”

A growl.  “I won’t lie, Nazluk—I don’t like the idea of ten or twenty arrows sticking out of me, if that’s what you’re saying.”

“Hmmmmmm.”  The slighter Orc did not pursue this, standing and craning his neck to snuff the air.  “I do not think we are followed.  I have not caught a whiff of Golug this past half hour.”

“I will have to rely on your judgment as I have not smelled one myself.”

“What, never smelled an Elf?”  Incredulity changed at the grunt of confirmation, turning immediately to smugness.  “Nor seen nor fought with one before, I suppose.  Well.  There are fewer of them these days…I suppose it isn’t really so surprising a deficiency on your part.  Green warriors and untried Uruk-hai…”  He gasped abruptly as a fist closed around his neck, jet-black talons pressing dangerously near his jugular.

“Care to continue?” came a low purr.

Nazluk was stubbornly silent for a moment before jerking his head in the negative.  The heavy hand left him and the Orc sucked in a ragged breath.  Fingering the skin Kurbag had touched, he shivered.

“I am hardly untried.  I have raided any number of Men's homesteads.  I just haven’t gone south before.  It’s been an interesting trip.”  He stood and stretched, content that they were in no immediate danger.  The sharp cracking sounds of his strong back made Nazluk wince, but Kurbag sighed in evident pleasure.  “Been a good one, too, save for tonight’s spot of trouble.  If Molurtz is our only loss it won’t be so bad.  He always was a bit of an idiot.  Well?  What do we do now?”

Chapter Text

It was a beautiful day and the road before them was fair.  The company rode, laughing and conversing, beneath green foliage pierced here and there with slanting sunbeams.  Nevhithien alone was silent as she rode, content to look about her and to feel joy at the prospect of Rivendell.  Rivendell, Rivendell!  The word was like the refrain in a song and she was sure that she might compose one with quiet and with a little effort.  She could think of any number of rhymes but wanted nothing that was trite or that did not have the same loveliness as Rivendell, Rivendell!  Her lips moved with her thoughts.

“You see?  I do not believe she has said a word since she bid her sisters farewell.”  Riding behind her daughter, Thalawen spoke in a low voice tinged with chagrin.

“And yet what would you have us do?” asked practical Fírhador as he walking beside his wife’s dappled palfrey.  “It is early yet in the trip.  She will grow bored and look for speaking companions soon enough.”  Looking ahead again he blinked and began to smile.  “Or one shall look for her.”

‘And would I ever there might dwell, In Rivendell!  In Rivendell!’  Nay, trite is the only word fit to describe such drivel… Nevhithien shook her head in irritation before a low laugh made her turn it abruptly. 

A young Elf, one of their escort, was riding alongside her.  “Forgive me, I did not mean to startle you.  It is only that you looked so consumed in thought—it piqued my interest.  Afrted.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Afrted.  It is my name.”

“…ah.”

He waited, then inquired delicately, “And you are…?”

“Oh.  I am Nevhithien, daughter of Fírhador and of Thalawen.”  This was the appropriate response to such a question since she was juvenile and not yet of age. 

“Nevhithien.”  He spoke her name as if he savored it deeply, much as she had savored ‘Rivendell.’  “It is a lovely name.”

“It is sufficient unto its purpose, I suppose.”

He blinked.  “‘Sufficient unto its purpose’—what an odd way to speak of one’s name.”

She shrugged.  “How else may one speak of it?  Is there anything more mundane than one’s own name?  I am afraid I have not been in a position to see it otherwise for a very long time.”

“Then I will be the judge and tell you it is lovely,” said Afrted with firmness.

“That is good of you,” she said.  “I wish that I could say the same of yours.”

“Oh!  Stung!” he cried, clapping a hand to his cheek, and his horse whinnied as if it were amused.  “You do have a tongue in you,” he said.

She blinked at him, puzzled.  Why was he talking to her?  He looked barely more than her age but must have been older to be a scout.  Perhaps he was trying to be polite by talking to the one girl who was so quiet.  Yet…he looked at her as if he were truly interested in her.  His hair was ashen blond and clung in tight curls to his head; his eyes were gray and forthright and, to Nevhithien, wholly disconcerting.  He might have ridden with any of the other young ladies in this company and they would have been thrilled by his attention.  Nevhithien, however, was confused.

Not too confused for a comeback, though.  “You hear that I have a tongue, which means that you have ears,” she said with mild sarcasm.  “Remarkable that two such as we exist, with ears and tongues!  Truly there are strange things in this world.”

“And in the same company no less,” he answered her right back.  “I say!  How fortuitous it is that we should meet thus—you with your tongue and I with my ears.”

Nevhithien gave a sharp laugh.  “This conversation is foolish.”

“If it is then it can only be applauded, for I am enjoying it immensely.

“I—”  The Elf maiden blushed all the way to her slender ear tips.  It was an unfamiliar feeling but not unpleasant.  Outgoing enough with those she knew, she was rarely at her ease with strangers.  She found those unknown to her difficult to read; she was also not around many males aside from her father, yet it had become obvious, even to her, that Afrted was flirting with her.  She couldn’t think why.  She was adolescent, coltish and too absorbed in her own private thoughts to interest persons of the opposite sex.  What could possibly have drawn his attention?

Nevhithien did not realize that the idea she had of herself bore little resemblance to the maiden currently riding sidesaddle.  Her old coltishness had given way to the curves and unconscious grace of womanhood—she had not the great beauty of her mother or older sisters, but she was pretty and looked older than her years.  Introspective as she was, her seeming gravity lent an impression of maturity, even mystery, that Afrted had found alluring.  Now, as they conversed, he found her discourse more delightful than the looks that had drawn him.

Behind the two, Fírhador’s eyes flashed up at his wife merrily.  “You see how these things work out?  And you were worried.  Well!  Now you have nothing with which to concern yourself.”

He had, at first, no reply.  Then…

:He is too old for her,: Thalawen thought-sent grimly.

Her much put-upon husband groaned.

-.-.-.-

They had been speaking for some miles now and Nevhithien was beginning to relax and to enjoy herself.  Afrted, as it turned out, really wasn’t all that much older than her—he had reached his majority the year before and immediately joined with the border patrol.  “I am not suited to an easy life indoors,” he told her.  “I have never been able to sit still for long.  I do not think I have seen my family for two days together in the time since I joined.”

“And you do not miss them terribly?”

“Not a bit.  They cosset me so when I visit that I cannot wait to be away again,” he said.  “I suppose that sounds terrible to you.”

“Oh, it does not,” she assured him absently, but for the first time since leaving that morning she was thinking of her two young sisters and how they had waved to her as she left.  She looked back and saw her father walking beside her mother, the two of them wrapped in conversation.  “Is the border far?” she asked, feeling the approaching sadness of her father’s departure.  She was a little guilty not to have spoken with him since they had set out, especially since she would be gone for so long!  But Afrted's unexpected banter had entertained her so, she honestly not thought of anything else.

“Not at all,” the Elf said cheerfully, unaware of the bent of her thoughts.  “We shall be there in less than ten minutes.”  He straightened suddenly in the saddle.  “Ah,” he said, gazing ahead intently, “I must leave you now: I am summoned.”  He pressed his heels lightly to his horse’s flanks and the animal snorted and broke into a brisk trot.

Nevhithien watched him ride on ahead, admiring his fine seat and easy command of his mount.  He is fair to look upon, she thought, but better than that, he is good to converse with.  He was prettier than she favored as a rule but she thought that Leni would have liked his looks well enough, and she thought that he was someone she herself would like for a friend.  Afrted had told her that he planned to bide a time in Rivendell after their journey’s end: that he knew Rivendell and had friends there.  Perhaps, if she liked, he might show her around on their arrival…? 

Nevhithien decided she would like that very much.

Suddenly she felt an eerie prickling at the back of her neck.  She looked behind her but saw only her parents, and the rest of their little train: Elven folk astride their mounts, and pack animals piled with baggage.  Her eyes narrowed.  She looked ahead again and saw Afrted and the other scout riding very close together as though they conversed urgently.  She wondered what it was that gave her such a strange feeling, as though someone far away had called her name.

Then something dark hissed past her ear and she gasped, and her horse shied, and she heard her mother cry out behind her.  “Nevhithien!”

“Thalawen, stay calm!” barked Fírhador, breaking away from his wife’s side and running forward.

Níthir was dancing in place, snorting anxiously and making little attempts to rear and to wheel—Nevhithien, confused and not really understanding what had happened, had her hands full just trying to get her mount under control.  It was only when her father ran up and caught the bridle that the animal calmed enough for Nevhithien to look and see the tree beside her, and to see the black-fletched arrow that protruded from it.

Fírhador reached towards it but dropped his hand before he touched it, spitting out a single word: "Yrch!" 

Nevhithien's eyes widened—behind her, she heard her mother moan and one of the other women shriek, amid other sounds of astonishment and dismay.  Fírhador looked around them in a quick, grim manner, his eyes gone sharp and narrow.  When they passed over Nevhithien she almost flinched: she had never seen her father look like this before. 

Little wonder, for at that moment Fírhador stood, not beside his daughter, but beside old comrades: Elves and Warrior-Men with sword and bow, preparing to face the beasts of Gorthaur on the field of battle.  Then the sounds of Nevhithien gasping in belated shock brought him back to himself.  “Are you all right?” he asked curtly.

There was a pounding of hooves as the two scouts he had met the night before rode back to join them.  “Sweet Rodyn!” cried the one who had been speaking with Nevhithien as the other yanked the arrow from the tree with a cry of contempt.

Idiotic young pup, thought Fírhador, blaming Afrted for his daughter’s close escape, knowing that he was unjust to do so and not caring a whit. 

The two Elves who had been riding at the flank joined them: older than the scouts, of which Fírhador was grimly glad.  “Which direction did it come from?” demanded Túchir, seeing the arrow in the scout’s hand.  He was of stocky build for an Elf, craggy featured and broad shouldered.  He had been likened on more than one occasion to a Dwarf, but never within hearing distance.  He was also known for a doughty fighter and for a level head in a tight spot.

There was laughter through the trees: not so much laughter as a kind of guttural rough sniggering—so spiteful, so vulgar, so banal that it could never have emerged from the throats of Elves or of Men.  “That direction,” said Fírhador with black gallows’ humor. 

Túchir laughed a harsh laugh of his own.  “Well then,” he said, “if they have come looking for trouble they have found it.”  There were grim murmurs of assent among them, Fírhador included.

Nevhithien, hands white-knuckled on her horse’s reins, shuddered.  “Nevhithien, go to your mother,” said Fírhador.

:Go with her, son of Fimornon.:

Fírhador looked up at Túchir sharply.  :I will fight.:

:You have brought neither weapon nor mount.  You are useless to us.  Go with your daughter.:

:And leave you with these striplings?!:

:These striplings are grown Elves and armed!  Go with your daughter.  Go to your wife.:  Túchir and the other three Elves wheeled and cantered into the woods.  Fírhador was left staring after them, angry and helpless. 

Nevhithien, unaware of the heated exchange behind her, was doing her father’s bidding.  Her mare was skittery and nervous and it did not help that Nevhithien was so as well, but with meaningless soothing sounds and a firm hand on the reins she was able to turn the animal, coaxing it around and into a trot to join with her mother and the rest of the travelers.  Some of the others in their party—young women like Nevhithien for the most part, journeying to Rivendell to make their debuts in society—looked terrified.  Her mother, in contrast, looked frightened but not panicky, mouth drawn but eyes resolute.  She was no hapless maiden but Nevhithien’s mother, self-contained even in her distress.

Seeing this, Nevhithien felt some of her own fear…well, not dissipate, really, but she did feel that she ought to put up a brave front.  “Hah.  I suppose this is adventure,” she said with forced cheer.  “I do not think I like it.”

“Wise of you,” purred an evil voice to her right—a bare instant before the head of an axe split her horse’s side. 

Níthir let out a scream such as Nevhithien would never forget and foundered, falling forward to her knees.  Nevhithien lost her seat and fell, only to have her lower body crushed beneath a heavy flank as the mare fell sidelong, pinning her.  She cried out in stunned agony, frantically pushing at the dying animal’s writhing bulk and only vaguely aware of the shadowy form looming over her.

When Thalawen saw the hideous Orc attack Nevhithien’s horse she reacted unthinkingly.  Behind her Elves were screaming as other Orcs emerged from the trees and coarse undergrowth: brutish laughter filled the air but Thalawen did not hear it, surging forward on her steed.  The gentle palfrey was no warhorse but when Thalawen shouted and drove her heels in it whinnied frantically and charged the figure menacing her daughter.  Thalawen had time to see crimson eye-slits turn on her and widen suddenly: surprised windows on a fiery abyss.  And then her horse barreled into it, knocking the vicious monster to the ground.  The Orc crumpled in a heap, bloody battleaxe falling from its hands. 

Caring naught for the brute that she had slain, Thalawen immediately dismounted, hastening to her daughter.  “Nevhithien!”

“Mother, Mother, I am trapped,” said her daughter through gritted teeth.  They caught at each other’s arms as Thalawen gasped and groaned and tried to pull her free.  She was so single-minded in her efforts that she heard nothing behind her and did not know her danger until she saw Nevhithien’s eyes widen at something over her mother’s shoulder.  At that moment something heavy clouted Thalawen’s head: her world went dark…

Nevhithien stared up horror-stricken as the “dead” Orc smote her mother a terrible blow with its massive fist.  Thalawen’s eyes rolled in their sockets; it batted her aside, and she fell.  Not satisfied with this, the Orc turned and kicked the unconscious Elf woman once, twice, three times, unmindful of Nevhithien’s screams for it to stop.  Only then did the Orc turn on her again, and her blood froze as it looked upon her and licked its lips with a rasping black tongue. 

“Now then,” said the Orc in its ugly brand of Common Speech, the blandness of the words obscene in the wake of that moment’s violence, “now then…where were we before we were so rudely interrupted…?”

Nevhithien began to struggle with fresh urgency, scrabbling at the dead horse’s lifeless body, clawing at the earth in a vain attempt to drag herself free.  The Orc laughed and picked up its axe, testing the weapon’s heft as it approached her.  Nevhithien saw the trail of slaver running down the side of its jutting lower jaw, saw the bright spray of horse blood across its upper body.  She was trapped and her mother downed, possibly dead, beneath the attack of the same Orc that now threatened her. 

-.-.-.-

He heard the scream of a dying horse, turned to see his daughter falling to be pinned by her mare.  He uttered a fierce cry, running to her, only to find an Orc leaping up in his path with such suddenness as to be nonsensical, as if it had emerged from the very bowels of the earth.  It grinned to see he was unarmed, but Fírhador himself had no time to think of that, plowing into the creature.  The two fell to the ground—the Orc, taken off guard by the immediacy of his onslaught, snarled and snapped at him.  He evaded its sharp teeth, grabbing the creature’s neck and slamming its head hard against the packed sod of the road.  Goblin skulls are thick, though, and the creature roared and flung him sidelong. 

Fírhador did not look to reengage the Orc, all of his thoughts with his daughter.  He leapt to his feet, thinking to see the worst; instead he saw his Thalawen riding down Nevhithien’s attacker.  At that instant he felt, even amid the tumult, a surge of fierce pride in the beautiful Elf woman he had married.  And then instinct prompted him to dodge the blade that would have slashed his belly wide as he was engaged in deadly dance by the Orc, which had recovered its footing with the same speed he had. 

They circled one another, the Elf with a grim look on his face, the Orc grinning but no longer amused.  It would not underestimate him again, Fírhador realized, and he could not trust to further luck…yet nor could he afford to be delayed by the beast while his wife and daughter were in danger!

A flurry of thought in his head: Túchir and the others had realized the two Orc archers in the woods were decoys.  Mindful of the ambush behind them, they were riding back with all speed.  They will be too late, thought Fírhador with despair.  He could hear the screams of Elven women.  The Orc took a couple of swings at him.  He evaded two but the third cut his arm open.  He did not cry out—voicing his pain would only excite the Orc.  The Orc was excited anyway, leering to have marked him.  Its eyes gleamed and it came at him with redoubled fervor. 

Sudden hoof beats, a flash of gray as a horse rode in close beside Fírhador, and the Orc’s head left its shoulders in a fountain of black blood as the rider’s sword cut a bright arc through the air.  “Nevhithien!” cried Afrted.  He did not even look at the dumbstruck older Elf he had just assisted, spurring his mount as he rode to aid Fírhador’s daughter.  “Do not touch her, beast!”

Nevhithien was shuddering with revulsion as the Orc with the red eyes caressed her cheek, its hot breath falling on her face.  She knew that it was going to kill her, but it was drawing the matter out, taking pleasure in her fear.  The horse that lay across her lower body made the worst impossible, at any rate.  The Orc must have been thinking along these lines as well, for it chuckled and stood.  “Too bad there isn’t time for proper sport,” it said with cheerful resignation as it raised its weapon.

Then it looked up suddenly, eyes narrowing.  “Oh, not again,” it spat and leapt aside, narrowly evading the horse’s charge and narrowly evading the same fate that had befallen its comrade bare seconds before.  Afrted’s blade met only air as he swung.  The same could not be said for the Orc’s battleaxe, which bit deep into Afrted’s thigh.

He gasped and wrenched his horse around: it whinnied and reared, very nearly throwing him off.  The Orc stood its ground as Afrted rode at it again: this time it did not leap but took the most casual of steps out of the way, swinging its axe again to catch the Elf scout in his midriff. 

Nevhithien saw the bright spray of blood.  Saw Afrted’s mouth open and close, his face gone white and slack.  Saw him fall from the saddle just as she had done.  His horse ran on, screaming with terror.  Afrted lay where he had fallen, not so very far from her, a bubble of blood coming out of his mouth.  He whimpered, this brave warrior, and then the red bubble burst on his lips, and his features went slack and still.

She stared blankly, robbed of sense by the sight of this violent death.  She could hear the Orc laughing as it approached her again.  And then suddenly there was the interposition of her father’s body as Fírhador threw himself between her and the Orc. 

“If you want her you will have to go through me,” he said in the Common Speech.

The Orc grinned and began to raise its axe, but paused.  Fírhador knew what it had heard.  More than Túchir and his Elves were converging on the little clearing.  The dramatic increase of masculine thought in his head provided all the explanation necessary: a nearby patrol had become aware of their plight and was bare moments from them.

“Yes, flee,” he said in a cold voice, “for they are not children who come to fight you.”  His heart was bitter with grief for Afrted, whose sacrifice had redeemed the young Elf in Fírhador’s eyes too late.

The Orc lowered its axe with a look of chagrin.  “Dafrim mubaram, skutshokri!  Fun’s over, boys!” it yelled, turning to lope into the woods. 

There was a chorus of jeers and curses at this, at once disappointed and gleeful.  Their sport had been brief, but pleasant.  They had enjoyed the opportunity to knock some Elven women from their horses, to spoil and destroy, ransack and rob Elven belongings.  They had also killed a few of the women and had badly hurt several more.  Still, all good things must come to an end and they did not like the prospect of tangling with Golug warriors.  The Orcs dispersed into the thicker woods, where the Elves would have a harder time following on their mounts.

-.-.-.-

There were few who followed.  Some of the patrollers, arriving on the scene, gave chase, but most stayed to help the beleaguered convoy.  The dead were quickly covered, the injured cared for.  Nevhithien was extricated from beneath the body of her dead horse.  Amazingly, aside from a badly wrenched hip and extensive bruising, she was little the worse for wear.  She considered herself lucky.  One young lady had two broken arms and a sprained ankle.  Another had received a cut to the face; a poultice was quickly applied and it was not thought that she would scar.  There was another who had not been physically injured but whose clothes had been ripped from her body.  Covering was secured for her but she continued to shudder and weep as her companions endeavored to console her.  The Orcs had not had time to do all they might have liked: the maiden had suffered an outrage but had not been violated, of which there was grim gladness.  Elves do not survive rape.

Thalawen’s condition was the most urgent of the living victims: several of her ribs were broken, and her breathing was shallow and torturous.  She was lucky not to have been killed outright by the heavy blow she had received to her head.  She gripped her husband’s hand painfully as a healer bound her damaged body. Fírhador spoke words of encouragement to her in a low rough voice, caressing her slender fingers with infinite tenderness:

“…my love…my own true one, you were so brave—you preserved our daughter’s life.  You saved our Nevhithien…”

She did not say anything to him.  Her face was drawn with pain, her knuckles white as her fingers pressed into his hand while the bands of cloth were pulled taut over her broken ribs.  Only when it was over and she rose painfully, leaning on both Fírhador and the healer for support, did she turn to her husband, looking at him with grave eyes.  “Is this the world you fought for?” she asked him quietly.

The healer chose this moment to make a discreet departure.  Fírhador looked at his wife.  “Thalawen…?”

“You said there would be no trouble, Fírhador.”

“I did not think there would be,” he said, taken aback.  He already felt guilty for not having gone armed that morning, breaking the long habit of a veteran warrior.  Fírhador already blamed himself; he had not thought to face recrimination from this quarter!

“Mother, no one was expecting this,” Nevhithien spoke up.  “There is no one to find fault with, save the Orcs…”  She trailed off, seeing again in her mind Afrted’s face as he bled and died.  She felt sorrow for the death of a young man, of one who might have been a friend to her.  Who had been a friend to her for all that they had known each other so briefly: Afrted had given his life for hers.  She sorrowed but would not reproach herself for his death, for doing so would avail her nothing and would be to disdain the gift he had given her.  Rather she would live her life to its fullest and in so doing honor his memory.

She looked to where four bodies were being lifted up a-horseback, to be carried back to their families.  Some of the maidens were touching the shrouded figures and weeping.  Nevhithien shuddered and thought unhappily that she had done a lot of shuddering this day.

A horse snorted.  Túchir rode up beside them, his face grave.  “I commend you, brave Lady,” he said to Thalawen.  “Your horse has been apprehended, but you will not be able to ride this day.  A conveyance is being prepared for yourself and for your daughter.”

“I thank you,” said Thalawen, lowering her eyes.

“I can walk,” said Nevhithien.

“But shall not,” Fírhador told her flatly.  “You will jar your hip as little as possible.  Túchir, I thank you…but tell me, what is being done about these Yrch?”

“They will be dealt with, Fírhador, as we have the resources to devote to the task.  They are outside of our borders now and will not be allowed to reenter.”  :Let not thoughts of vengeance lead you astray, son of Fimornon.  The Orcs will receive their due.  It is your wife and your daughter who need you now.:

Thalawen was watching him with her dark eyes.  Fírhador, about to reply bitterly, looked into them.  He paused and for a moment hurt was writ large upon his features.  But, Look to your family, Fírhador, came his own voice in his mind, and his shoulders sagged.  He closed his eyes and nodded.

Chapter Text

It was early in the morning when he awoke, squinting his eyes against the pale sunshine.  Birdsong filled his pointed ears, and his nostrils flared with the smell of leaf litter and earth and growing things.  His arm was numb from the way he’d slept.  He sat up and moved it in a repeated chopping motion from the elbow to make the blood circulate freely.

Nazluk was asleep on the ground a short distance from him, dark body curled near double.  He had kept guard for much of the night but weariness had finally done the Orc in.  He lay motionless and insensible, or seemed so initially—as Kurbag watched he grimaced and flinched in his sleep.  A small ray of sun had slanted through the branches and was traveling over one skinny shoulder.

Kurbag stood and stretched, enjoying the sun for his own part.  Kurbag was not Uruk as Nazluk had called him scornfully but half-Uruk: spawn of an Uruk and an Orc.  His gray skin and some of his features resembled those of a regular Orc, but he had the size and general constitution of an Uruk.  He took pleasure in the day as an Orc like Nazluk does not, and his eyes, though useless in the dark, were possessed of great acuity in daylight.  Looking up he perceived the delicate articulation of individual leaves as they whispered against each other.  Looking forward he remarked the gnarled surface of the tree in front of him, the brown bark wrinkled and rough and seamed with irregular grooves.

Kurbag got up and, walking over, leaned into the tree.  He rubbed his shoulder against it in a slow, satisfying swirl, then turned to scrape back and arse against it in a full-bodied motion for a good long scratch.  Afterward his bladder informed him that he had to pass water.  Pissing on the tree would also piss off Nazluk, but pragmatism reminded him that he would have to endure the reek while he was waiting for the Orc to wake up.  Kurbag wandered off in search of a suitable place to urinate, and to see if he couldn’t get a better sense of where they were.

When he found the road he felt a prickling at the back of his neck. 

Man-roads are smoother affairs than the kind that Orcs, left to their own devices, will make for themselves—the roads of Men are wide and made for heavy traffic; they are generally fairly straight and Orcs find them a quick and cushy means of getting from one place to another (so long as they have no company from other travelers, of course.)  Both Orkish and Mannish roads, however, share a fundamental similarity: they are incursions on the natural world, avenues of passage made by systematically covering, cutting, uprooting, razing or otherwise removing anything that hinders progress.  A road, even the smoothest and cushiest of roads, is a kind of violence to the landscape.

This road was not like that.  It was a slender road and slipped through the trees in an organic way, less as if folk had made it through travel or industry than as if they had asked the trees to kindly grow farther apart on either side and so create a convenient means of passage.  He would almost have judged it not a road at all but some happy accident of tree growth if he hadn’t smelled travel on it—recent travel—and spotted a few mounds of horse dung in the middle way.  Glancing to either side, he went into the road and knelt for a closer look.  Fresh, made in the past hour.  Standing, he snuffed the air again.  Horses, but no people—no Man people, that is, but there was a scent in the air nonetheless: a kind of nameless woodsy odor that was not the woods.

Elves, thought Kurbag, and his stomach gave a lurch.  He had never seen an Elf but he had seen their arrows now, seen what they did to a body.  Seen what they'd made of his shield mate.  They had riddled Molurtz in seconds, and the other Orc had never had a chance. 

Kurbag was no stranger to death: often had he seen it dealt and often had he dealt it.  But the manner of dealing he had witnessed the night before, neither seeing nor smelling the foe, never hearing the sound of your own ending…it was not natural, and it filled his heart with a superstitious unease, particularly coupled with all he’d heard of Elves.  Stuff to chill your blood, it was, because for every joke about pansy-assed leaf-eared weaklings there was another kind of tale entirely…that of the tall Golug warrior with eyes of winter and taut bow drawn near double; of fierce tree-watchers skilled in dwimmer-craft who wielded spells as well as arrows, ensorcelled the sword from your hand and put a trance on you so you stood and waited for your end to fall.

Molurtz had been an idiot, but he had also been a warrior.  Had he felt the arrows pierce his body, or were his last sensations those of a dreamer, detached and drifting, dulled by Elven magic?

Elves had made this strange and creepy road, and Elves had traveled on it less than an hour before. 

Not liking how exposed he felt at that moment but not wanting to just slink off into the trees like he was scared or something, Kurbag did the predictable thing—he undid the front of his breeches and sprayed the path before him in a quick defiant sweep.  Then, slipping his member away again, he headed back to wake Nazluk and to tell of his discovery.

-.-.-.-

They stood together as their family disappeared through the trees, Eleluleniel waving wistfully.  She did not have the powerful yearning for travel that Nevhithien had: she thought of Rivendell without hungering for it.  Still, she could not help feeling a little down to be left behind.  Nevhithien’s face had been like an open road: raised chin, flushed cheeks, bright eyes all for the journey ahead.  Eleluleniel felt more like a departure point: like the fork in the road where loved ones say goodbye.

While she waved one subdued arm, Veisiliel waved both wildly: “One for Mama and one for Nevvy!  I wish,” she said with a heavy sigh, “that I had a third hand for Papa.”

“Father is coming back,” Eleluleniel pointed out.

Veisiliel gave her a look of childish horror.  “So I should not wave to him?  That is mean!”

“Are you saying I am mean?”  Eleluleniel flung her head back and laughed the merry ringing laugh she knew her little sister liked.  Smiling, she said, “It will be just the three of us these next few months.  We shall be very cozy together.”

“Shall we?”  Veisiliel caught at her arm as they turned and began to walk back up the little path to their house.

“Yes, we shall.  We shall be good and sweet and do all the things that Mother would usually do in her absence, and we shall be very kind to Father—for he will be missing her—and we shall be of great help to him.”

“Shall we cook?” asked Veisiliel.

Eleluleniel nodded.  “I am sure that he will let us do more in the kitchen.  I will ask him when he comes home.”

“Maybe he will let me use a knife.  Mama never lets me use a knife.  She says that I will cut myself.”

“If Mother says you are not to use a knife I am sure Father will say the same.  He has to obey her too, you know.  And we cannot think that just because she is away we can do whatever we like.”

“Oh pooh, you are no fun at all,” Veisiliel pouted.  “Leni,” she continued in a serious tone as they entered their home, “I want to write a letter.”

“Oh yes?” said Eleluleniel, turning to shut the door behind them.

“I want you to bring down the pretty box.”  This referred to the box in their father’s study wherein were kept the stationary, the seals and sealing wax, good pens and inks and other materials for fine writing.  “If you will bring down the pretty box, I will write a letter now for Mama and Nevvy.”

Eleluleniel smiled at Veisiliel’s earnestness—their mother and older sister had only just left, after all.  Nonetheless she nodded.  “But first you will write your letter out on practice paper,” she advised, “so that when you put it on the good stationary it is perfect and you do not have to stop and start another sheet.”

Veisiliel made a face but agreed and Eleluleniel walked with a light step to her father’s study, her low spirits of earlier not forgotten but pushed aside for the time being.  She was pleased by the way her little sister was responding to their mother and Nevhithien’s departure: with industry and good cheer rather than tears or wailing.  She remembered her own shameful performance at a comparable age when her father had left to fight in the conflict with Mordor.  She had wept and asked repeatedly when he’d be coming back, and all the while her mother’s sad eyes had become sadder and more distant, until finally Nevhithien and Alageth had pulled her into another room and told her she must not make such a scene!

“Can you not see that Mother is grieving?” Alageth had snapped at her, and those words had been like a slap to the face.  Nevhithien had teased her gently later about the fuss she made.  She had not sounded unkind, but Eleluleniel did not utter a word about her father again throughout the duration of his absence, though she missed him bitterly all the while.  She did not want to make her mother sad and so had swallowed her heart until the War was over and he returned.  Ilúvatar grant that I be good, she prayed when he came home, and that I never make my parents sad.

Smiling a little to remember this earnest prayer of childhood, she brought the writing materials to her sister.  Veisiliel wanted to go outside but Eleluleniel shook her head.  “After, when you are done with your letter-writing, or else the wind may blow it away.”

“There is no wind today,” said Veisiliel. 

“You never know.”

“Will you read my letter when I am ready with it?”

“Yes, and I will sit with you while you write it.  I think that I will write a letter of my own,” said Eleluleniel cheerfully.  “Let us both read our letters to one another when we are ready with them, and that way we may think of anything that we might add.  Or leave out,” she added sternly.  Veisiliel could become silly sometimes with everything that she tried to cram into her letters, and Mother did not like for them to be frivolous with the good stationary.  There would be more letters, after all.

They were both quiet for a while.  That is, Eleluleniel was quiet; Veisiliel hummed, and giggled from time to time.  After a reasonable span had elapsed she said that she was ready.  Eleluleniel had put down her own pen a short time before, and she sat and listened at first while Veisiliel read to her, then stood and moved around to look over Veisiliel’s shoulder.  Her sister’s Cirth were formed with clean clear lines, but while the individual words were readily legible they jostled and crowded one another.  Eleluleniel made a teacher’s obligatory admonition to space the words more neatly, but knew that Veisiliel would forget.  And, truth be told, her letter would none the worse for it.  Her penmanship was like her personality: youthful, bubbling with an exuberance that threatened to spill from the printed page. 

Eleluleniel knew that when their mother received their letters and read them in far-off Rivendell, Veisiliel’s childish runes and her own delicate Tengwar, it would be Veisiliel’s Cirth that made their mother smile.

There was soft scratching as they returned to their separate letters.  Eleluleniel was like her older sister in her love of writing, but whereas Nevhithien’s love was for setting down her thoughts, writing to the moment of her ideas and her plans, Eleluleniel enjoyed the simple act of putting words on paper, making the spoken visual and making it beautiful.  She delighted in calligraphy, and one of her favorite pastimes was taking poetry she liked and rendering it in exquisite flowing script. 

Eleluleniel should have become suspicious when her sister stopped humming, and when she no longer heard the scratch of Veisiliel’s pen.  She should have been alert for mischief but was not, all of her attention on the task at hand.

There was a sudden dark flash as the nub of Veisiliel’s pen jabbed her hand.  “Kiss!”

It was a light jab and not a painful one, but it startled Eleluleniel: she cried out and her pen gave a jump and scored a broad dash across her neat right-hand margin.  “Ohhh…” she said in a voice of dismay.  Annoyed, she looked up at Veisiliel.  “Why did you do that?  Look at what you made me do.”

“It was a kiss!” said Veisiliel cheerfully.

“This.  A kiss.”  Eleluleniel looked at the splash of ink across her knuckles.  “This is no kiss, this is a mess!”

“Mama says that what is done in love should be received in kind,” intoned Veisiliel.

“Mother did not say that meaning for you to poke me.  And now I have ink on my hand.”  Eleluleniel was thoroughly pained.  She looked at her hand with distaste and then shook it, which, of course, made no difference.  Water and soap would have helped had it been any other kind of ink, but this was the good ink and would not be fading soon.  “And my poor letter!  Ruined!”  She was glum for a moment before a thought came to her.  Tongue in cheek, she began to adorn the stray line with flourishes until it was a rose, full and blooming, at the edge of her letter.  There now.  No one would ever know it for an accident but herself.  Herself and Veisiliel.

“And now we can go outside!” her sister exclaimed happily.

“Oh can we?  I am not sure we can.  I love you but I am not at all certain that I like you at the moment.”

"But Leni, you promised!  You said after I was done with my letter-writing.  Le-ni!"

Eleluleniel considered herself a reasonable person.  She knew herself for what she was and what she was not, and she could list her own limitations with scrupulous honesty.  She was an avid reader; she was not a sparkling scholar like Nevhithien.  She had some loveliness of which she was not vain, for she could never aspire to the extraordinary beauty of their oldest sister Haenes, the sister she barely remembered, or of Alageth, own twin in likeness to Haenes.  She had her mother's quiet demeanor without her mother's inner steel; she had her father's thorough mind without his cleverness.  Perhaps when she was older she would have his talent in the kitchen, if she did not scorch the eyebrows off her face in the meantime.

There was one thing that she prided herself on, though, and that was her honesty, for she was ever scrupulous in matters of truth.  Her honesty compelled her to admit that her little sister's claim had some basis in fact.  "You are right, Veisiliel," she said grudgingly.  “It was a promise of sorts, and I shall have to keep it.”  She felt a sudden unease as she spoke, though she attributed this to her displeasure with Veisiliel.  “Yet I will keep it in a manner of my own choosing.  We shall go out into the garden and we shall weed the roses.”

-.-.-.-

“Elves,” muttered Nazluk as he eyed the road sullenly.  “Sodding stinking Elves.”  He, unlike Kurbag, had had some previous experience with Elves, none of it pleasant, and yet never had he found himself in a situation quite like this.  Somehow in their flight of the previous night they had managed to evade Golug warriors while blundering deep into Golug territory: Elf-land, filled with the eldritch filth.  Nazluk knew Elf when he smelled it.  The road reeked of their accursed stink.

He glanced sidelong at Kurbag, who stood by looking uneasy.  Faced with the unknown, the half-Uruk was out of his comfort zone and looking for Nazluk to take the lead, so Nazluk took it.  “Well, let’s not stick around here all day.  We’ll see where this road leads us, yes?  See if we can’t find some food.”  Earlier they had established just what provisions they carried between the two of them.  The answer: not many.  Replenishing their supplies was a sensible goal, and it would also lend them some sense of purpose while Nazluk figured out just how they were going to extricate themselves from this one.

They came on the house after some ten minutes walking.  The two Orcs froze momentarily at the sight of it, and Nazluk actually hissed.  Mannish dwellings were bad enough, but at least they weren’t like this!  The Elf home was a gray two-story building with high peaked eaves and tall windows.  It was comprised mostly of stone, though there was elegant carved wooden molding and crenellation, particularly at the windows.  A few useless little turrets stuck up at intervals.  It should have looked ridiculous, solitary and situated in the woods as it was—an exercise in artifice—but the ivy that twined the balustrades and foliated archway and that looped and spurled over the edges of the roof made it seem of a piece with the surrounding forest.  A fey dwelling it was, but also fair.

Nazluk thought it looked ridiculous.  His hand closed on the hilt of the knife at his hip: it cleared its sheathe with a silken sound and he looked at Kurbag, narrowing his eyes and inclining his head toward the house.  Kurbag nodded and the two split up. 

The last that Kurbag saw of Nazluk, the other Orc was vaulting up over the sleek ornamental banister of the elegant front porch.  Then Kurbag turned his gaze forward, wary of he knew not what.  He moved cautiously, keeping his body low and close to the side of the house.  An awkward moment when his foot caught in a thick vine spilling down the side of the wall to collect in a tangle at its base—he narrowly missed cursing aloud.  As he pulled his foot free he entertained the ludicrous but unsettling notion that some strange intelligence animated the house against him: a malevolent presence that had deliberately put the ivy there to trip him, trying to thwart his passage. If so, it was doing a lousy job.

He came to a window and stooped low, hand brushing the sill as he steadied himself to pass under it.  He was nearing the back of the house.  At that moment he heard voices and paused, caught in a crouching position, ears flicking at the sound of a tongue he did not know and high, musical words he could not understand.

-.-.-.-

“It is no fun to weed the roses when there are no roses,” said Veisiliel as she twisted up a snarl of sneak-greenery and threw it into the basket between them.

“We weed them so there will be roses later.  It is important.”

“But why roses?  Why do we not pull up the roses and leave the weeds?”

Eleluleniel answered with a question.  “Why do we have a garden at all?  We have it so that we may grow roses and all of the pretty flowers that would not grow in this place otherwise.”

“It is hard, though, for the little weeds.”

“Ah, but they are weeds.  They are hearty,” said the older girl cheerfully.  “We throw them out into the woods after and they take root as they like.”

“Still, it must be hard.”  Veisiliel spoke with grave conviction.

“Hmm…”  Eleluleniel looked at her sister thoughtfully.  She had been very good about the weeding, following instructions with an easy obedience to which Eleluleniel was not always accustomed from her.  Veisiliel was a lively pert child—it was not that she was naughty but she had a mischievous nature and was often quite careless about her older sister’s authority.  This current docility was most subdued.  Eleluleniel smiled suddenly.  “Veisiliel, I am hungry.  We are almost done here.  Would you like some of the little oaten cakes from yester-morning?”

Veisiliel gasped.  “Honeyed oats?” she positively squealed.

Maybe this was a bad idea.  Mother did not like for Veisiliel to eat too many sweet things as they made her excitable.  But Mother wasn’t there… And she has been so good since Mother and Nevhithien left this morning.  She deserves a treat, thought Eleluleniel.  “Yes, honeyed oats.  They’re in the high cupboard in the kitchen.  If you will go and set them out I will join you shortly for a snack.”

Veisiel leapt up with a sound of pure delight.  Gracing her sister’s forehead with a kiss, she darted off in search of sweets.

Eleluleniel went on with her weeding.  She would finish this patch of earth, and then she would take up the basket and throw its burden of weeds into the wood, where they might take root and get by as best they could.  The ghost of her sister’s kiss lingered on her forehead.  The “kiss” of earlier also caught her eye, a black stain on her right hand.  Looking at it she was annoyed anew, but it also made her smile, however ruefully.  Still smiling, she began to hum as she pulled up the weeds. 

-.-.-.-

The voices had cut off and Kurbag was just beginning to straighten, thinking that the two Elves must gone inside, when he heard a low humming.  He crouched again but then came out of it.  Steeling himself, he continued forward and did not pause when the hum graduated to an unearthly chanting, and the strange words curled and twined in his ears like some queer enchantment worming into his brain.

“Navaer amar velui,
Navaer menel forodren.
Galu uireb alle, si
Mi aur a mi ithil faen
Thûl thuiant, aerlinn linnant.”

He moved smoothly but stealthily, not knowing what it was he would see when he rounded the corner.  His skin crawled at the strange voice—uttering what might have been some sort of spell for all he knew—but he was tired of skulking and ready for confrontation.  A small partition of trellises overgrown with the barren vines of climbing roses continued some way past the side of the house.  Pacing along it, he rounded the corner to find himself facing into a little cordoned area at the back.

The Elf was kneeling, digging beneath some bushes with a small trowel.  He felt his apprehension dissolve in amazement at his own fears.  He knew at once that this was neither warrior nor witch.  The Elf looked small and fragile: her back was to him and as she pulled up weed-growth she was singing.  Kurbag had always heard that Elven ears were keen, but she was clearly unaware of what stood behind her.  She was too involved in what she was doing.  Reaching over his shoulder Kurbag grasped the hilt of his sword, preparing to draw it from its scabbard.  As his hand closed on the weapon he took a step toward her.  The Elf continued singing to herself in a melodious voice:

“Ringyrn vain a dhelu
Di ’elaidh Lúthien carant
Io annan.  Pân en ardhon
Dinúviel egleriant.

“Gwathel vain, mas bennich?
Thêl, man amarth thurin lín?
I elleth gwannant na morchant,
Mi dhúath, ah melethron dín…”

She was rising to her feet and must have heard or sensed something at that point, for when she turned it was sudden, and he stopped stock still at the sight of wide eyes in a slender, delicately featured face.

Eleluleniel turned and saw the tall Orc in dark armor.  Gasped and took a step back, the trowel slipping from her fingers.  His hand was on the hilt of his sword; he lowered it and stepped toward her.  She whirled to catch the handle of the door and her skirts whipped against the edge of the doorframe as she darted across the threshold.  She caught at the door to pull it after her but it stuck ajar two feet, immobile.  He had reached the door and held it fast in his hand, looking down from a height head and shoulders above her.

She was small—small and slight—and his first thought, looking at her this close, was that he had never seen anything so clean.  The traces of earth on her hands were negligible.  She smelled of…he didn’t know what it was she smelled of.  Smelled of green life, of leaves in sunlight and the dark undersides of ferns.  Kurbag’s nostrils flared with the scent of her.

She also smelled of fear.  She was backing away from him.  There was a knife on the counter next to her.  They were in a room with knives, with pots and pans and cooking things: a room filled with potential weapons.  She had been holding a trowel when he saw her but had dropped it when she saw him.  Of course it would have availed her nothing against him, but still.  She did not touch the knife, and she had backed beyond reach of the counter now. 

He stepped over the threshold.

He filled the doorway with his looming form.  He is in our house.  He is in our kitchen, thought Eleluleniel, her mind stupid with fear.  Then—Veisiliel!  Where are you?  She had sent Veisiliel into the kitchen mere moments before.  Eleluleniel looked around for her sister frantically, and in that second the monster closed the short distance between them. 

She cried out as he caught her by the throat and her hands flew up to flutter ineffectually against his.  He ignored this—having neatly immobilized her, he leaned in and studied her closely.  She was gasping though he was not choking her, the breath coming fast between her lips, and he could feel the rapid pulse of her throat beneath his palm.  It was like the throat of a bird.  She was saying words, rushed and flowing and somehow musical even in her fear.

“Man anírach?  Nin nidhich!  Nin leithio!”

Some of her hair was caught in his fingers.  It rippled over his dark hand like liquid moonlight: softer than hair had any business being, and infinitely fine.  Her eyes were pale blue and terrified and she continued to babble in her mellifluous Elven tongue.  “What are you saying, little Elf?” Kurbag murmured, cocking his head as he gazed at her.

He was not expecting an intelligible response and so was surprised to receive one.  She had quieted instantly at the sound of his Common, which, though distorted by his growling guttural voice, she understood.  “Please,” she said faintly but very distinctly, “let me go.  You are hurting me.”

There was a loud crash and fierce cursing in the other room.  The Elf cried out and Kurbag lifted his head, fingers flexing on her throat as he looked past her to the entryway that opened to the rest of the house.  Nazluk appeared in it, breathing heavily.

“Oi,” said Kurbag, “what’s got you so cranky?”  He released the Elf girl, who now had no means of escape.  Both exits from the kitchen were barred for her.

Nazluk went into a towering rage.  Kurbag was not able to understand his entire tirade but was able to extrapolate something about bloody Elves and their bloody Elf-carpets that existed for the sole purpose of tripping unsuspecting Orcs.  It was catching his breath for the next round of expletives that Nazluk noticed the girl.  His eyes narrowed and when he spoke his voice was cold.  “Golug.  Kill it.”

The second Orc had been shouting and spitting in a tongue Eleluleniel had never heard before, but these last two words were in Common and were clear as crystal.  She trembled but endeavored to speak clearly, her words halting and careful.  “Please,” she said, “please do not kill me.  You have no need to kill me.  What you want I will give to you.”  Even as she said it she wondered frantically what they might want, thinking of all that her family possessed.  Love, light, life…these were wealth as her family held it, but Orcs would not desire such…

She had thought she was frightened but discovered new heights of terror when the bigger Orc picked up a stray knife lying on the counter.  He did not move toward her, though, examining the ornate handle of the knife instead.  “This is silver,” he said.

Silver.  Yes, silver!  Silver she could give them.  “I will find you silver,” she said, and began immediately to open drawers and cupboards, scouring their contents for anything that would satisfy an Orc’s appetite for the precious metal: fine cutlery, drinking vessels, anything she could think of.  She flung a cabinet door open wide, realizing, too late, that her little sister might well have hidden herself away in such a place.  But Veisiliel was not there.  After that she was careful about the way she opened anything much bigger than a breadbox, thinking with fear that if she was not careful she would reveal her sister.  Surely, surely Veisiliel was hiding somewhere—had become aware of the Orcs and had concealed herself immediately.  Eleluleniel could not allow herself to entertain any other possibility.

Nazluk sneered and left the way he had come.  The Elf continued to scour the kitchen.  Kurbag watched as the radiant creature flitted about the room like a frantic bird, face pale, lips parted as she looked for anything that would please him.  He leaned his powerful body against the doorframe and stroked the knife he was holding, his eyes hooded as he watched her.

Chapter Text

"He had better remember the food—skai!  The great fool," Nazluk muttered to himself as he stalked into the large foyer.  He gave the rug that had tripped him earlier a wide berth.  He’d not thought to watch for danger underfoot when entering the house itself had been so simple: he had only to take advantage of an open window to find himself in the dubiously pleasant surroundings of a large Elven dwelling.  Now as he prowled through the lower levels he found everything around him sleek and silken: glossy wood furnishings, woven hangings and more bloody carpets out to get him.

Nazluk hawked and spat on a beautiful tasseled affair, deriving a sense of vindictive satisfaction.  Then, in marked contrast with this bold display, he approached the stairs with a cautious step, his eyes fixed on the dark upper level and glittering with suspicion.  He held his knife at the ready as he made his ascent.

Once there he cased each room with brisk efficiency.  There was no one on the second floor—he established this quickly, brusquely opening wardrobes and checking under beds before thrusting his arm beneath each mattress for a rude grope.  This was an act that often brought reward searching the homes of Men, who were so distrustful and so protective of their belongings, but it yielded him nothing here.  The Elven sleeping chambers were all together functional and spare after the opulence of the lower level.  The disparity galled Nazluk.  He vented his frustration on the third bed with his knife, viciously shredding the pristine counterpane and the white sheets and mattress underneath.  The door to the fourth room he flung open with a curse, expecting another dead end.

Instead, a slanting sunbeam through an open window flung up a prismatic dazzle that made Nazluk shut his eyes with a snarl.  Opening them, a slow smile spread his thin lips.  On the bedside table a bright array of trinkets were arranged in a pretty display that warmed his wicked heart, and the dresser against the far wall was laden with more of the same. 

“Now that’s what I like to see,” Nazluk cooed as he picked up a bright silver mirror.  He smirked at the two mismatched eyes, green and yellow, smirking back.

-.-.-.-

She had gleaned every precious thing to be found in the kitchen, yet still she went from cupboard to cupboard, trying to seem as if she were searching.  There was nothing else, but she was buying time, desperate thoughts rushing through her mind.  She dared not attempt escape—his eyes had not left her for a moment.  She had established that her sister was nowhere in the kitchen, but that meant Veisiliel must be somewhere in the rest of the house, undiscovered and still possessed of some chance at escape.  Eleluleniel had to protect her sister’s odds.  She could do nothing about the other Orc who had stalked off, but she had to keep her monstrous guard distracted in the kitchen. 

As she continued to open and close various drawers, she expected him to challenge her at any moment, to offer violence or threat.  At some point he was going to realize she was stalling, and she was fearful of that discovery.

If she had known his thoughts she would have been mortified by her own transparency.  Kurbag was not a fool and could see the quick darts she made were to no purpose.  He did not call her on them, fascinated by her anxious flitting as she opened drawers and closed them again.  She moved like nothing he had ever seen.  Her feet never seemed to touch the floor.

Then his stomach growled.  The Elf faltered briefly and he knew she had heard it too, and he knew the purpose to which to put her.  She had faltered but regained her bearing, moving to another cupboard that she’d opened twice before: he stepped forward and caught her wrist as she reached for it.  “Stop that,” he said.  Her face flashed toward him, eyes bright with fear.  Her wrist was little more than the circumference of a twig.  His grip tightened.  “We need food,” he said.

“I can get bread for you,” she said quickly, trying to pull away from him.  “There is honey…fruit…”  The Orc was looking at her as if she had grown a second head.  Perhaps she had not used the right words—perhaps she had just said something ridiculous in Common—

“Not bread,” he said, still staring at her.  “Meat.  Flesh.  We don’t eat that other shit.”

She flinched at the word he used but nodded quickly.  Meat.  Very well, she would get him meat.  Then her heart sank as she spied the pantry door behind him and had a horrifying realization.  Playing hide-and-go-seek, the pantry had always been Veisiliel’s favorite place to hide: it was dark and cool, and there were low-lying shelves beneath which she might easily tuck her small body.  Eleluleniel thought she knew now where her little sister had hidden herself, but the realization caused her not relief but dread.  Her family ate little meat, and what they had currently was preserved and resting on shelves in the pantry.  “I—”

He saw the sudden change in her eyes as they fixed on something over his shoulder.  Still holding her he turned and noticed the door behind him.  “What’s in there, then?” he asked.  He turned to see her shaking her head, eyes wide with alarm.

“No,” she said.  “There is—”  He released her and she caught her wrist, feeling how his grip had bruised it, but she could not think about that now, terror driving out any thought of discomfort as he started toward the pantry door.  “Wait!  Please!”  His back was to her.  He had his hand on the doorknob.  Fear made her unmindful of the danger, and she ran forward as he turned it.

Kurbag opened the door.  It cast a rectangle of light across the floor of the little pantry.  He saw shelves laden with various goods—hard cheeses, bread, vegetables, fruits both fresh and dried.  The room was dark and cool.  It smelt of herbs. 

A small gasp to his right: he looked to find the Elf girl standing at his elbow, staring into the pantry interior.  He was surprised she should have come so close.

Veisiliel…little sister, where are you?  Eleluleniel’s eyes darted back and forth, scanning the interior of the pantry, but she did not see her sister.  A darkness out of the corner of her eye: the Orc was beside her, watching with disquieting intensity.  She froze for less then a heartbeat; then she was moving again, quickly, words coming out of her mouth.  “I will get your food,” she said, and though it frightened her to enter that small room with the Orc at her back she did so, hurrying to the shelves in search of salt beef and pork.

Kurbag watched as the Elf retrieved proper food from the shelves.  He wrinkled his nose at a cut of beef she carried out.  It filled his nostrils with a smoky smell: aged meat, and not normally to his taste, but heartening after some eighteen hours’ deprival.  The Elf was not moving lightly now, or quickly.  The thick slab was too much for her but she gasped and maneuvered it up over the edge of the counter and turned again in the direction of the pantry.  Kurbag stood in the doorway, leaning against the inner frame.  He had not moved since first he opened the door and he did not move now as she slipped through; she gave him as wide a berth as possible in that small space, pressing close against the other side of the entrance.

Her family kept little meat and she had gleaned what there was on the lower shelves.  In the dim light of the pantry she could find nothing more at first—then she perceived the dark bulk of a large ham on the uppermost shelf.  Eleluleniel stared at it helplessly.  It was huge and, more to the point, out of reach.  Biting her lip, she cast around for something on which to stand.  Her eyes lit on a wooden stepping stool standing in the corner—in a flash she had picked it up and carried it over, stepping onto the stool and stretching her arms toward the shelf.  The tips of her fingers just brushed the paper wrapping.  She made a muffled sound at the back of her throat.

Kurbag straightened, his tall form filling the entrance as he stared at the Elf standing on the puny stool and straining for something out of reach.  Her arms were pale and slender.  He remembered the shifting of the bones in her wrist, the quick pulse of her vein beneath his palm.  He stepped into the pantry. 

The little light in the room diminished.  Eleluleniel did not notice, absorbed in the task at hand.  It was not safe, what she was doing, but she swallowed and stood a-tiptoe and caught at the edge of a lower shelf, praying that it would not give and send her tumbling to the pantry floor.  The girl’s weight was less than she thought and with her other hand she was able to pinch a fold of the paper and tug the ham a bare increment toward her.

-.-.-.-

Hshhhhhh.  Hshhhhhhhhhhhh…

Jewelry rasped across the surface of the table as Nazluk swept it into the pillowcase.  Brooches, beaded bracelets, Elven finery—he knocked it all into the improvised sack with a careless motion of his arm, and shook it to make sure its contents fell to the bottom.  It felt…not heavy, but heavy enough considering what filled it.  Nazluk had not looked closely beyond ascertaining there was, in fact, gold; there was silver and crystal as well.  Closer examination could come later: for now, he stuck with the healthy philosophy of thieving all that glittered.

He cleared the dresser with the same economy of movement as he had the bedside table.  A few stray pretties bounced on the floor and Nazluk dropped immediately to snatch them up, the breath coming fast and eager between his thin lips.

He was feeling smug and all together pleased with himself when he left the room, but the swagger left his steps when he stopped at the top of the stairs.  He thought he had heard something.

-.-.-.-

When Leni sent her into the house Veisiliel had not meant any mischief.  She only wanted to add a postscript to her letter.  She knew that she was not supposed to go into Papa’s study when he wasn’t there, but the note she planned was brief.  She only meant to clear a little space at his secretary; she did not see how one pile of documents leaned precariously near the edge.  She squeaked and was on her knees in a flash, gathering pages together and arranging them as neatly as she could, but she knew her father would see that they had been disturbed…and he would know just who had done it.

It was not fair, she thought unhappily.  Such a little note she thought to make.  She had not meant to make a mess. 

A few belated sheets were still drifting lazily to the floor when she heard the noise out in the foyer—a creaking sound, like a window being opened or a shifting floorboard.  Leni must have come looking for her.  The Elf child stood and faced the door to the study, still partially ajar.  She knew that she would be found out and that it would go easier on her if she confessed right away.  Still she hesitated, for it was not happily she arrived at this decision.  It was guilt, then, and fear of rebuke that saved her life.  As she hesitated she heard a faint cry from another part of the house—then a crash in the other room, a voice raised in anger, and the voice was not her sister’s.  She delayed no further, running to the door and peeping round the edge.  In that moment the monster of a thousand bedside tales became real to her.

When the Orc stormed into the kitchen she obeyed her first instinct, pulling the door immediately closed and running to hide in a corner between her father’s secretary and the wall.  After taking up this hiding place an eternity seemed to pass, an eternity in which she heard many things but did not know what she truly heard and what she merely imagined.  Once through the muffling wood she heard evil words spoken in a harsh and unknown tongue—Nazluk, though of course she did not know this, before he ascended the stairs.

Since then, though, all was quiet.  It was the quiet that got to her.  In the quiet all she could hear was herself, and the voice that was herself said she could not stay here where she’d only be discovered.  Said they would come and find her, even here.  Monsters would not heed her father’s dictates.  The study was not off-limits to them.

Where were they now?  For all she knew, they were not even in the house anymore.  And what of her sister?  Where was Leni?

It was quiet now.  So quiet.  She stood and she went to the door.  She put her ear to the door and she listened.  She stood there long, biting her lip, and her hand rested on the burnished doorknob till the cool metal took on the warmth of skin and she could not bear not knowing any longer.

She opened the door.

-.-.-.-

The angle was impossible.  It was too high and too heavy.  She had brought it to the edge of the shelf, but there was no way she would be able to lift it down.  Her fingers whitened on the edge of the shelf.  Eleluleniel lowered her head as she caught her breath and tried to figure out what to do.

Something rough brushed the side of her thumb.  A heavy hand had come to rest beside hers.  She recoiled as if from an adder—did not have the space to jump down from the stool but in a jerking movement twisted to face the hand’s owner.  The Orc was an indistinct outline against the light of the pantry door, but the green glitter of his eyes was readily visible.  No Elf’s eyes were that color.  Even on the stool as she was he stood taller, and he was so near that his breath was falling against her brow, stirring the loose strands of her hair.

“I am going to fall,” she said, a note of fierce warning in her voice, though she knew it meant nothing as a threat.  He didn’t say anything, leaning forward instead.  She gasped and pressed back against the lower shelves, felt the edges digging into her back as he reached up and lifted down the heavy ham like it was no weight at all.  He shifted it under one muscular arm and continued to stand there, hemming her in.  “Let me down,” she whispered.  In response he reached forward and fingered a lock of her hair.  She flinched as he lifted it in a feathered spill of pale color.  “Please.”

For all that he had not hurt her, she was becoming increasingly frightened of him.  She had found him silver, she had found him food.  She did not know what more to offer him.  Her heart was pounding in her ears.  If he kills me in this place… Horrible images came to her mind of her father finding her body, or her sister finding her body…or worse…their father finding both of them—

Do not think it!  Do not think it!

She trembled as calloused fingers brushed her jaw.

There was a harsh exclamation in the other room, coupled with a child’s shrieking.  Kurbag’s head jerked away, and his hand clamped down on the Elf girl’s shoulder.  She cried out as he yanked her down from the stool, pulling her after him.

In the large foyer Nazluk had a terrified Elf child by the elbow.  As Kurbag entered his eyes widened at the largeness of the room.  He had raided his share of Men’s homes but had never seen an expansive interior such as this.  He did not have time to marvel for Nazluk was thrusting the little one forward.  “Look what I found,” he sneered.  “Another of the little maggots!”

She was a pretty thing with dark hair, and she cried out when she saw Kurbag’s own captive, reaching for her pathetically.  “Leni!”

“Muinthel!”  The older girl made a sudden attempt to break free of his grip but Kurbag held her fast.  She subsided, looking at the other Elf and speaking in soothing tones: “No dínen, Veisiliel.  Garo hîdh.”

“Nin naegra, Leni,” the child whimpered.

“Iston, gûr vuin.  Boe i min beren—”

“Shut up!” Nazluk snapped, giving the little one’s arm a vicious jerk.  She yelped, and the elder moaned as if she were the one to whom he had done it.  “No more of that filth, you hear, or I’ll give you worse!”  The sound of their fey speech enraged him.

“Where was she?” asked Kurbag.

“In that room behind me.”  He gave the older Elf a dangerous look.  “Funny you didn’t see fit to mention this one, eh?  How many more of you are there, hmm?”  She stared back at him, trembling—annoyed, he twisted the little one’s arm behind her back.  Both girls screamed.  “Answer me!”

“Stop it, there is no one else!  I answer truly!  Leave her be, she is only a child!”

Nazluk’s teeth were bared in a savage grin.  “Truly?  No more of you?  Are you sure?”  He increased the pressure.  His victim shrieked as he came near dislocating her shoulder.

This sent the older Elf into a frenzy that took both Orcs off guard.  “DO NOT HURT MY SISTER!  DO NOT HURT MY SISTER!”  With a sudden desperate effort that belied her previous docility she tore free of Kurbag’s hands, rushing Nazluk.  He was so startled that he actually fell back a pace.  “DO NOT HURT MY SISTER!  DO NOT, DO NOT!” the Elf kept screaming as she struck at him blindly.  There was no method to her attack—every blow was wild, driven by pure terror.  Once he got over the initial surprise he pushed back savagely.  She fell against Kurbag, who caught her arms; as soon as she felt herself imprisoned again the nature of her cries changed.  “Veisiliel, noro si!” 

In the sudden struggle the younger child had gotten free.  Nazluk snarled and went for her but she was already opening the front door—before he could reach her she had run out of the house.

It was a short flight, for Veisiliel did not see where she was going.  Her arm and shoulder burned with pain.  Blinded by tears, she fetched up against something unyielding: a hard body, standing in the road that ran before their house.  Strong arms came down to clasp her.  She wailed and tried to pull free but the arms held firm.  Voices spoke over her, and in her fear she did not immediately realize that they spoke in her own tongue.  “Little one, what has happened?  Why do you cry out?”

“She has been hurt!  Look at the marks on her arm.”

“Who has hurt you, child?”

She looked up at the two Elven scouts who stood over her, clad in the green raiment of the forest patrol.  She looked up at them and opened her mouth, but no speech emerged.  She turned and would have pointed back the way she had come, but it was the arm that had been abused and she could not raise it.

It was enough.  They could all of them see the dark figure that slunk back, hissing, into the house.

“FUCK!!”  Nazluk pulled the door closed but found no means of locking it.  “Bloody fucking Golug door!”  Turning, he grabbed the pillowcase of loot he had taken from upstairs and swung it over his left shoulder.  “We go now, out the back.”

“Back door’s open,” said Kurbag, “and the food’s there too.”

They kept close together and they watched the windows on either side.  In the kitchen Kurbag pushed food and silver from the counter into a sack while Nazluk kept a tight grip on the Elf.  She was whispering to herself, eyes cast upward and entreating.  He slapped her, nothing like what he really wanted to give her at that moment, but it was still enough to make her squeak.

“Stop that!” said Kurbag.  “Let’s stay focused.”

“I’m focused all right!” growled Nazluk.  “You mind what you’re about, yes?” 

He held her tightly from behind, a wiry arm across her breastbone.  Eleluleniel sagged a little in his grip, stunned by the blow.  She was thirty-three years old, barely adolescent as her folk reckoned it, and never before had a hand been raised to her in anger.  She could muster no outrage.  With Veisiliel’s escape all the wind had gone out of her, replaced by emptiness and a creeping dread.  Veisiliel was safe but she was not.  And she was on her own now.

They held her closely between the two of them as they exited the kitchen door, weapons drawn.  Outside the sun was bright and the incongruity of birdsong filled the air.  They were approaching the cover of the trees.  Eleluleniel, realizing this, tried to dig in her heels.  She had a sudden premonition that if they reached the trees she would never see her family again.  The slighter of the two Orcs struck her again.  “Don’t,” he said harshly, “or you die now.”  No pretence she would not die later.  He looked at her with eyes slit against the daylight, and the ugliness in his face made her shrink away from him as much as his hand on her upper arm would allow.

The taller Orc only grunted, but she felt his fingers tighten.  She knew that he too would not hesitate to kill her and she did not struggle further as they hurried her into the trees.

Chapter Text

Thalawen’s face was pale, and her nails were pressing into the back of his hand.  She gripped him as though she hung suspended from a great height and only Fírhador’s grasp kept her from falling.  The Elven scout who spoke to them watched both with wary sympathy.  Fírhador knew that look well.  It was the expression one wears with the victims of war, with the traumatized and the freshly bereaved. 

You cannot know what they will do.  You cannot know how they will react, and whether it may be with violence.

Their home vandalized, their youngest frightened and abused, their other daughter taken… A man might respond with a swung fist, a woman with her nails, her soul keening out of her mouth.  Thalawen had said nothing to this point, but Fírhador could feel her nails on the verge of drawing blood.

“We were on the way to join the others,” said Culas.  “The cry went up the wide wood over when your party was attacked.  My fellow and I were on our way to help.  We were passing your house when the little one ran out.”  He hesitated.  “There were two of us, and we had to make our decisions quickly.  We did not know their numbers and dared not engage with them directly before knowing more.  Alhael followed the Orcs while I stayed with the little one.  You saw she was not hurt.  Her arm is only badly bruised: if she does not tax it, it shall be as well as ever it was within the week.”

Thalawen kept her death-grip on his hand but her words was unfailingly gracious when she spoke.  “I thank you,” she said.  “It is good that you were here for my daughter.”

“It was luck,” said Culas, “and the will of Ilúvatar.  I think He will guard both your daughters.” 

Thalawen was silent.  “Yes,” said Fírhador in a hard voice he did not recognize as his own.  “He had better.”

There was no real response to this.  The other Elf gave a quick nod of his head and walked past them.  Fírhador heard the door behind them open and close and in the brief seconds between heard the sounds of voices raised in quick conferring tones: the patrollers Túchir had detailed to escort Fírhador and his injured wife and daughter back to their home.  When the door closed again he could still hear them, only faintly muffled, through the wood.

“You should not have spoken thus,” said Thalawen.  Her hand loosened on his as, in a distant manner, she raised it to her face and brushed a tendril of hair behind her ear.  Fírhador started for the stairs.  “Where are you going?”  She did not ask them so much as she gasped out the words.  She had made an attempt to rise.

He was at her side in a heartbeat.  “I go upstairs, to our daughter.  I go to Veisiliel.”

She gave a low exhalation, her fingers whitening on the arms of her chair.  “Fírhador, I cannot move easily and will not be able for some time.”

“You should not try.  You have no need.  I am here for you, beloved.  I will be your limbs.”

She stared ahead of her.  “When Veisiliel saw us she ran to me and clung so tight.  She hurt me, Fírhador.  I could not hold her as she needed to be held.”

There was a quaver in her voice that he did not know how to answer.  “I will do everything I can to make you comfortable,” he said, and knew his words to be hopelessly inadequate.  She closed her eyes, sucked in a painful breath.  Fírhador raised his arms in an aborted movement.  He wanted to hold his wife, his badly injured wife.  Helpless, he straightened and turned away from her.

“Do not go.”

“I am not going anywhere.”

“No, when they leave.  When they go looking for her.  Do not go.” 

He turned, and her eyes were still closed.  “She is not lost to us, Thalawen,” he said, his voice harsh with emotion.  “They took her with them as a surety for their own safety.  They will not harm her.”

“But when they are confronted.  I am frightened, Fírhador.  It should be others who do so.  You are too angry.  I fear—”

“What do you fear?  She is my daughter: I would never do anything to put her in danger!”  His Eleluleniel, his little one with the songbird laugh…

“But what of yourself?  It is for you that I—oh Fírhador, I fear for you.  I fear for both of us.  Please stay, I beseech you.  Tell me you will stay.”

He knelt before her and took her hand in his.  He chafed it gently between his palms, her fingers slender and shapely as the day when first he had held them and known her for his love.  He felt also the power in those fingers: the strength that had made those fierce marks on the back of his hand.  “My dear one,” he said softly.  “Do not make me say one thing and do another.”

She did not withdraw her hand, but it became limp.  “Of course.  I knew that you would answer so.  You will do as you see fit.”  There was no rebuke in her voice, but there was an expression on her face that pierced his heart.  It was not anger or hurt.  It was a far-off look in her eyes, as though she gazed at him across a distance of many waves. 

He left her after, sitting in that place, still staring ahead of her as he mounted the stairs. 

In the room where three daughters slept he found two.  Veisiliel lay sleeping, her eyes fixed on the ceiling, and Nevhithien sat at her desk staring down at the sheaf of paper before her.  She turned her head to look at him as he entered the room.  “How is Mother?”

“She is distressed,” he answered tersely.  He went to his little one and looked down upon her, down at the round eyes looking up at him.  “I marvel she should sleep so, midday.”

“You told her to go to bed, Father.  You put her there yourself and told her she should sleep.”

“Yes, but I did not expect her to go easily.  This is the time of day when she is most underfoot.”  He leaned down to kiss her forehead.  She did not even stir, but her small brow was furrowed when he straightened and the whites of her eyes were showing, as if she had taken alarm in her sleep.  When they had come home Veisiliel had clung to her parents and her sister as if for dear life, but she had not uttered a sound.  “Did she say anything to you, Nevhithien?  Anything at all?”

“No, and it is strange to have her quiet.”  The older girl gave a strained laugh, looking down again at the blank surface of an unwritten page.  “Often enough have I wished to hear her silent, but this is not how I wished it.”

“I have seen this often in the children of Men,” said Fírhador slowly, “when we came upon them during the Great War in villages and homesteads that had undergone great suffering.  Sometimes they could not speak for some time after.  Never did I think to see this in an Elf-child, much less one of my own children.  You must be kind to her, Nevhithien.”

“I will be kind, Father, but sometimes kindness is not enough.  I have not the easy way with her that Leni—”  She broke off, then said in a sudden sob, “Oh Papa!”

He crossed to her immediately and his arms were around her.  “There now,” he said to her softly, “It is all right.  It will all be all right.”  He said it easily, rocking her lightly in his arms.  Why had he been unable to comfort his wife in this fashion?  Why hadn’t he been able to find the words?  Nevhithien was crying against his shoulder and he whispered to her, “Shh.  Shhhhhhh.  They have only to form a party to rescue her and to bring her back.  All will be well, you will see.  All will be well: I will make it so.  I will go with them and I will bring her back.”

-.-.-.-

The sun was directly overhead, piercing the trees with javelin intensity.  They’d been at it some two hours now, reckoning off a compass that was mostly gut.  The Elf girl was stumbling between them, eyes rolling a little in her face, breath coming in gasps now, in a piteous condition that both ignored as they conferred in rapid Orkish over her head.

“He’s still on us.” 

“Any others?” 

“Just the one.  There’ll be more, though.”

“We could lose him.”

“We won’t lose him.  And where one is, more will follow.  They’re like bees.  Draw one and the whole hive follows.”

Kurbag hadn’t caught a sniff of the scout Nazluk said was following them, but he did not question the other Orc’s assessment for a second.  “So what do we do?” he asked, unnerved by the analogy.

“He won’t shoot.”  Nazluk said it with grim satisfaction.  “Not so long as we stick sharp to this one.  They don’t kill their young.”

“Just how do you know so much about Elves?”  Nazluk didn’t respond.  He had been cleaving tightly to the girl, pressed so close a knife’s blade might not have separated them.  Now he released her suddenly.  Kurbag looked bewildered.  “What are you doing?  You said we should stick sharp!”

“I don’t like the situation.”  Nazluk peeled out and away in a broad arc.  In his right hand he already held one knife—now he pulled another from the place at his left hip, stalking two-bladed back the way they’d come. 

“What am I supposed to do, then?” Kurbag hissed after him, but Nazluk had already disappeared into the trees like a slinking shadow.  “Fuck!”  The Elf stumbled again beside him.  He looked down at her and his fingers tightened.  “Pick up your feet,” he said roughly.  “We keep moving.”

He said it in Common, but Eleluleniel barely registered the words.  She followed in the direction in which he pulled her, her body alternately numb and aching.  She wanted above all to stop, to catch her breath.  She got what she wanted when the big Orc suddenly pushed her up against a tree and held her pinned there with one hand, looking back the way they’d come.  Only then did she realize that his fellow had left them, and she wondered to what purpose he had gone.

A rapid chatter arose in the tree they stood against.  A squirrel was scolding them from the branches overhead.  The Orc looked up in a disconcerted way, his fingers flexing on her body. 

She gathered her courage.  “If you would let me go,” she said, “you could go faster on your own.”  He looked down sharply, his predatory eyes trained on her.  She flinched but spoke on, “It would be best for you if you let me go.  Someone will come looking for me.”  Her father would come for her.  He had gone with Mother and with Nevhithien that morning, but he would be back by now: would have seen their home, know what had transpired, and he would come for her.  She knew this.

The Orc was looking at her and she thought he might be weighing her words.  “It would be best,” she said again softly.

“Quiet,” he said, and he turned his face away from her and returned to looking back the way they had come.  Overhead the squirrel still chattered, but its scolding seemed half-hearted.

Eleluleniel deflated a little but told herself nonetheless, My father will come.  He will come, or he will send someone.  Someone will come for me.

-.-.-.-

Alhael slipped through the trees with the silent ease of which only his kind were capable.  His full weight never touched the ground and he barely disturbed the leaf litter as he passed over it.  He had only seen the two Orcs he was tracking early, briefly, but he knew he was close on their trail.  There was no danger of his losing them.  The very trees whispered in their passing, murmuring of the young girl they had stolen.

Culas had stayed behind, comforting the little one and seeing to her injuries.  Alhael had elected to follow.  The temptation to close the distance between himself and the Orcs he followed was strong.  To notch an arrow and take aim, to let the arrow fly.  Mere fantasy of course.  He knew better than to take chances, not with the young prisoner they held at their dubious mercy.  He had seen her for the briefest second, little more then a head of pale hair that bobbed doll-like between them.  He would not risk her safety.  Trailing from a steady distance was where best he could serve her, keeping steady company with their movements.  From time to time he made sendings: brief mind-flashes to Culas and to the other Elves with him, letting them know his location.  It was not his task to engage the Orcs but to keep a cool head and to follow them, while his fellow Elves followed him in turn.

Nonetheless Alhael’s blood thrilled to the chase.  He had been young during the War of the Ring, guarding this green wood where the evil never quite came.  There was gladness when the Dark was defeated, but there was also shame in his heart and in the hearts of young Elves like him who had not opted to depart over the sea.  The fight for Middle-earth had come and gone, the great battle of his age, and he had had no part in it, hidden in his safe green wood. 

Now evil had come there and the blood, far from chilled, ran hotly, quickly in his veins.  He was more than the link in a chain.  When the others caught up he could make the transition from scout to warrior.  Then he would have his opportunity.  The Orcs would fall beneath Elven arrows, their captive would be rescued, and he would pay some part of an honor debt of fifteen years’ standing.  He could afford to follow and be patient.  He was young and he was eager, and they did not know he was behind them.

A broken twig, the displacement of leaf and mold: he knew his woodcraft well, and when the paths of the two Orcs diverged he dropped into an immediate crouch.  Faint these signs were, and fleeting: were it not for his following so closely, even he might not have found them.  The space of minutes would see them lost in the anonymous shifting detritus of the forest floor.  Alhael straightened, still looking down at the traces of their passing.  One, the larger of the two Orcs, had gone on ahead, drawing his captive after.  The other had cut out in a broad curve to the right.  Why would—?

The faintest sound behind him.  He whirled, narrowly evaded the blade that cut a dark arc where he had stood a bare instant before. 

Elbereth!  How did it get so close? screamed his brain, but he had no time to ponder the matter.  The Orc followed up with a vicious assault: a rapid alternation of the knives it carried in either hand.  Taken off-guard as he was, he brought up his longbow instinctively, using it to block the blades.  His attacker snarled and pressed home its attack, driving Alhael backwards step by step.  His bow quivered beneath a volley of blows as the sharp knives bit deep grooves in the oaken shaft.

Suddenly his back came in contact with something hard, and he realized that the Orc had neatly backed him up against the trunk of a tree.  Its lip curled up over its teeth as it drew the left blade back.

Alhael ducked and dived to the side, skidding through dead leaf litter, smelling mold and rich dark loam.  He heard the heavy thud, followed by harsh swearing as he leapt again to his feet.  He turned to see the Orc trying to yank the knife free of the rough tree trunk.  Alhael did not stop to think: he swung his bow, hitting the brute in its side.  The Orc jerked aright, snarling and twisting to face him with the knife it was still holding.  Emboldened, he took a step toward it, swinging the bow again, only for the Orc to catch the oaken shaft in its clawed hand.  Yanking, it jerked Alhael off balance.  He stumbled forward, felt the Orc catch his arm and twist it violently behind him…

There came a powerful blow to the small of his back, like the sudden slam of a fist.  His knees buckled inexplicably beneath him.  He thought it was his knees.  He could not tell: all sensation had departed his lower body.  The ground came toward him fast, and before he could throw out his hands to catch himself he was face down in the dirt.  His bow was caught beneath him, digging into his chest and belly.  He tried to push himself upright but something held him down.  Lifting his face he gasped raggedly, tried to turn his head.

“Don’t…move,” breathed a voice over him, and he realized he was pinned by a foot planted between his shoulder blades.

Nazluk placed his hand against his side and hissed.  He could feel the welt the Elven bow had left, feel its raised outline even through the material of his clothing, and knew that it would be there for some time to come.  He was lucky that he had not cracked a rib.  Bloody arrogant Golug bastards!  Fucking Elves that had to fight, that would or could not just lie down and die! 

He glared down at the Elf and as he did his anger cooled to an evil calm.  He had thought to kill the Elf quickly, favoring expediency over sport, but something else was clearly in order.  Nazluk had felt metal grate on bone, seen the sudden collapse of the Elf’s lower body as the blade severed his spine, like cutting the strings on a puppet.  Now he knelt slowly beside the fallen scout and touched the knife that jutted from his back, playing with the pommel.  The body beneath him squirmed and Nazluk’s narrow shoulders shook with silent laughter.  Too, too easy.  Wrapping his long fingers around the hilt, he jerked the weapon free and stood, waiting to see what the Elf would do.

Fire shot up the scout’s spine as severed nerves screamed agony.  His face distorted in a rictus of pain, but he did not cry out.  Instead he began to crawl, hauling his body along the ground, dragging his useless legs behind him.

“Just like a worm,” purred the voice.  An iron-shod boot dug into his side and he was kicked over onto his back to stare up at the Orc.  It dropped into a crouch over him, smiling maliciously.  “Now pay attention, worm,” it said, holding a knife that dripped with his own blood.  He was unable to look away as the Orc drove the slick blade into his left thigh.  A thin spurt of crimson, impossibly high, and the Orc watched him even as it twisted the knife in his flesh.  “Feel that?” it asked.

In an involuntary movement he shook his head.  Below the waist he felt nothing.  He watched wide-eyed as the Orc pulled the knife free again, leaned over him and brought the glistening tip to his face.

“Don’t worry,” Nazluk said softly.  “You’ll feel this.”

-.-.-.-

He came back to them bloody and grinning.  The knife he held was bright and clean, but his right hand he held fisted, and it was dripping red.  When he opened his hand she saw what was in it and she started to scream and could not stop, not even when the larger Orc’s hand was over her mouth and she was screaming into his calloused palm.  They finally had to use a gag to quiet her.

Then they were moving again.  The pace the two Orcs set was brutal, testing the limits of Eleluleniel’s endurance and rapidly exceeding them.  She would have fallen countless times had it not been for the larger Orc’s hand on her shoulder, jerking her after him.  He was leaving bruises on her, dark marks such as those he had left on her arms and neck.  She tried to be brave, to endure, but it availed her nothing.  In the end the tears ran down her cheeks, moistening the filthy rag that had been drawn between her lips and teeth.  She wept in helpless silence, unheeded by her captors.

It was dark when they stopped finally.  They had come on a hollow with tall trees and rough, stony ground.  The Elf-killer put up his hand in a halting gesture and the tall one stopped, hand tightening on Eleluleniel’s shoulder, watching as his companion scanned the woods around them with a sneer.  After a pause he gave a jerk of his head, and this was the sign for them to make their rest.  The hard hand on her shoulder pushed down unmistakably, forcing her to her knees and then onto one hip.  Fresh tears flooded her eyes as a sharp stone pressed against her flesh and she thought she felt it cutting her through the material of her dress.  If her hands had been free she would have pushed herself into a less painful position, but her wrists were bound behind her and she had no means of moving herself.  She was so distracted by pain that she did not notice when the hand left her shoulder.

They spoke over her head, harsh unlovely words that she could not understand and that hurt her ears.  She cringed low and squeezed her eyes shut.  Her legs had forgotten their grace—now her back forgot any semblance of posture as she hunkered forward, body bent near double.  She was bound and so had no means of defending herself; forced to sit, she could not run.  She wished that she might sink into the earth and so escape them in that fashion, but the earth did not swallow her and her bonds remained firm.  And so she sat at the mercy of the two Orcs, who seemed to have forgotten her, and prayed that they might only continue to forget.  For a time it seemed they did. 

They were some way past the border, well beyond Elven territory.  Nevertheless Nazluk was adamant they not light a fire and Kurbag was in full agreement.  Their camp that night was a simple affair: they only unrolled the sleeping pallets that had gone unrolled the previous night.  Then they opened the packs in which they had stored their spoils of that noon.  The gold and silver made Nazluk’s eyes widen and then narrow again.  He cursed the filthy Elves who kept such wealth, building hoards as the dragons of old. 

Kurbag himself did not curse, but his amazement only grew as he pored over his take.  He turned his head to look upon the Elf girl and wondered if her kind typically owned so many fine things or if the household they had robbed was one of unusual wealth.  Perhaps she felt his eyes upon her: she opened her own and stared back at him fearfully, and new thoughts entered his mind as her blue eyes did something to his belly. 

They ate well and spoke of leaving early on the morrow, and of how best they might go about the business of finding and rejoining their band.  Nazluk was glad of the salted pork, and also of the beef, both of which put him in a good humor.  His eyes flashed in Kurbag’s direction with strange heat, a lazy comfortable warmth such as Kurbag had known a good fire and a few skins of beer to lend Nazluk’s eyes in the past, though there was no fire and Nazluk was drinking nothing this night, preferring to keep his senses sharp for the watch.

Kurbag attributed Nazluk’s uncharacteristically pleasant mood to their exploits of that day.  He was feeling pretty good himself and, unlike Nazluk, had put a few away, which made him feel even better.  He found himself eying the Elf girl again and lazily reached over, undoing the gag Nazluk had put on her earlier. 

Immediately she gasped, eyes widening as she sucked air through her mouth and into her lungs. 

“Scream,” said Nazluk, “and no one will hear you, little Elf.  There are none of your folk in this place.” 

He laughed cruelly and she flinched.  She did not scream and Kurbag thought, looking at her, that she would not have been able had she tried.  Her small tongue rasped in her mouth as she licked parched lips reflexively.  Her mouth was clearly dry and sore from the gag.  Not thinking a great deal about it, he took up an untouched skin of water and opened it, kneeling beside her and holding it to her lips.  At first she took alarm and began to struggle, but he held a hand at the back of her head to keep her steady and, as the cool liquid passed her lips and she recognized the taste of water, she calmed and drank.

Nazluk watched in amusement.  “Waste of water,” he said in Orkish.  “She’ll not last the night.”

Perhaps it was waste.  Kurbag watched the muscles of her throat move in unabashed fascination.  How fine she was, he thought, how small and fine.  She might have been an inch or so shorter than Nazluk and, like Nazluk, was made slenderly, but where the Orc was wiry and hard her limbs were smooth, her flesh soft.  Soft and easily damaged.  Her body seemed to show every little mark. 

When she finished drinking he drew the skin shut again and laid it to one side.  Then he leaned in toward her.  He could feel her stiffen as, reaching behind her, he undid the cord that bound her wrists.

He had given her water and now he was untying her.  Eleluleniel did not know why he had not killed her.  She uttered a small sound as the strain on her shoulders was alleviated and her hands freed.  She dared make no sudden movement but drew them forward slowly and held them to her chest, closed-fisted, wrists crossed in a gesture of warding.  “Thank you,” she whispered.

The Elf-killer snorted.  The tall Orc only looked at her, the cord still in his hands.  He pulled it through his fingers over and over.  His eyes made her afraid.  Orcs tormented their prisoners, she knew, and she knew that they held a special loathing for Elves.  Old tales were in her head: the sacking of Nargothrond, Finduilas pinned to a tree.  Old tales, and stories nearer her own time, memories her father related of the War.  Orcs tormented their prisoners and killed those they tormented, and she had heard darker insinuations as well of bodies desecrated and devoured.  They had no qualms about consuming the flesh of Elves and Men and even their own kind.  Though she had just seen these same two eat their fill, still she feared this fate.

“Let me go,” she said, voice quavering a little.  She willed it steady.  “I will give you no trouble.  I will only go back the way we came.” 

“‘Let me go!  Let me go!’” the other Orc repeated mockingly, mimicking her in a high falsetto.

A tremor passed through her body but she only continued to look at the one who had captured her.  “Please,” she said.  “Let me go.”

He watched her with a face that gave away little, but there was a strange gleam in his eyes.  Abruptly he reached forward and caught her hands where they pressed against her chest.  She cried out and tried to pull away from him but he held them easily, winding the cord around and around her wrists so that this time they were bound before her.  Then, standing, he took her by her bound wrists and pulled her to her feet.  He drew her to the thin pallet he had unrolled earlier and pushed her down onto it.

The bedroll was coarse and unyielding.  She could feel the hard ground beneath.  “Please,” she said, “I will give you no trouble.”  He ignored her.  He was taking off his boots.  “What can I say to make you let me go?   Please.  Only tell me what to say…”  She was still forcing her voice to stay calm, but it cracked and broke at the end.

She was young and did not at first understand, not even when he began to unfasten his breeches.

-.-.-.-

Nazluk drew a long silver chain from amid other treasures, studying it coolly.  Silver, fine silver.  He would not have been surprised had someone told him it was true-silver, what the Elves call mithril, though he supposed these days that even Elves were not likely to have that precious metal in their possession.

“No!  Please!  Do not!  Do not do this to me!”

From the chain hung a stone of a kind he had never seen before.  It was black and brilliant, and in its depths a bright star flashed.  He turned it this way and that and it moved with the turning: a star with four twinkling points.  He palmed it with a smirk, thinking what a pretty trinket like that might fetch.

“It will kill me!  No!  PLEASE!”  There came a high thin scream behind him, followed by an anguished sob, and when next the Elf spoke it was not in the Common Tongue.  “Baw!  Nin naegra—nuitho, nuitho, nin naegrach!  Nin dagich!  Nuitho!  Baw!”

Nazluk’s lip curled at the sound of the Elf filth she was spewing…but there now, let her shriek and wail as she pleased.  There was no one to hear her, and she would be dead soon enough.  He had spoken truth when he said she would not make it till morning.  Everyone knew Elves died when they were forced: it was yet another of their weaknesses.

“A Elbereth, le nallon!  Nin lasto, Fanuilos!  Im harnnanen, firithon…firon—anno dulu enni… Baw!  Baw!”

Nazluk did not trouble himself about the Elf girl’s rape.  He wasted no love on her kind.  As a young Orc in the wake of the Ring War his den had been cleansed by a party of Golug who had entered caves where he and his dwelled and had slaughtered every living creature that they found.  There had been a lot of that sort of thing in those days.  Only he and a bare handful of his fellows survived.  He remembered how the cursed Golug swords blazed with unbearable blue flame, remembered cold patrician faces and eyes like ice.  The impression made on him had never left.

There was some more of that salted pork.  He took a piece and sat and chewed it long and slow, savoring.  Beneath the desperate cries of the Elf girl he could hear the fierce sounds Kurbag was making as he rutted her.  Nazluk did not turn to look but entertained the image in his mind, curious, lingering.  In his imagining the Elf’s part was negligible.  He had no lust for Elves any more than he had love, but he could hear Kurbag groaning.  Could smell him.  Nazluk’s hand slid back and forth along his own thigh absently before slipping down to cup himself through the fabric of his trousers.  He scowled to find himself soft.

The Elf girl was moaning piteously.  Her voice was growing weaker.  “Baw, naegra.  Naegra.  Naneth, nin naegra.  Firon—nin danc, Naneth.  Adar, edraith enni!  Adar, mas ce?  Ada…ADA!”

It must have been then that Kurbag spent himself.  Nazluk heard the quickening grunts, the sudden snarl, the Elf girl’s final scream as the half-Uruk cried out his completion in a rough sated voice.  Then there was quiet save only for Kurbag’s ragged breathing and the Elf girl’s weeping.  Long she wept, and low, and her soft sobs were like the murmur of doves roosting at even. 

“Avaníron hen,” she whimpered.  “Avaníron firo.  Avaníron firo.”

She kept repeating those words to herself for some time after Kurbag’s ragged breathing calmed and slowed to the steady susurration of sleep.  Nazluk listened in malevolent boredom and wondered what they meant.

-.-.-.-

Years seemed to pass as she lay there in the dark.  She had no sense of the passage of time.  Beyond the circumference of the little clearing small night animals went about their business and a faint breeze stirred the leaves of the forest canopy, but her world had receded to the space she occupied, and to the pain.  She was inhabited by pain.  Beside her she could hear his heavy breathing, and she could hear nothing else.  His leg was pressed against her leg, and it burned with unnatural heat.

I shall die here.

She would die here in the dark.  She had thought she would die as he did it to her, but she hadn’t.  She had not died after: not when he pulled out of her; not when he lay touching her, feeling her; not when he finally fell asleep.  Now he lay sleeping, and his leg was pressed against her leg, and if she moved he would waken.  She could not move anyhow.  She was dying. 

…I do not want to die.

She was afraid to die, and that fear was greater than the pain.  The night pressed down on her with the weight and substance of a body: longer than an Age, older than the world.

A sudden harsh sound.  His companion was coughing somewhere in the dark. 

Oh Mother, Mother, I am afraid…

She was afraid, as she had not been since she was a little child, of the dark.

Chapter Text

I am writing in one of those pockets of quiet that come sometimes, when the house is still and our well-intentioned guests are not here.  Glad I am when the ladies are gone, though it is not charitable that I should feel this way: they mean well enough, to be sure, and yet their gentle intrusions do press upon one so.  I know that Mother is always more tired after their visits. 

We have made up a room below so that she need not face the ordeal of the stairs, but even so it is hard for her.  It would not be so hard if she would keep to her chamber and receive visitors in there, but Mother is too much of a lady.  When I suggested it she only smiled a little and patted the back of my hand in that way that says so eloquently, ‘Whatever shall become of you, dear Nevhithien.’  I am sure I do not know.  Perhaps when I am my own person I shall simply never receive visitors at all.  One has to make so many considerations and I never have been one for attending to details.

What a sight the two of us must make as we hobble to and from her room.  Add Veisiliel to the picture and we are a pitiful trio indeed.  I made a jest of it this morning: "We do make a pretty picture, do we not, Mother with her bandaged sides and I with my bad hip, and you with your poor arm in a sling!"  I laughed when I said it and hoped for at least a smile from Veisiliel, but she only looked at me and I felt sorry for saying what I had, though I do still find it funny.  The image in my mind, I mean.  I suppose it does not seem so to others. 

I would ask Leni if she were here.  Leni has always been a much better judge of what is appropriate than I.  It is funny how I have always looked to her in this regard: surely as her older sister it should have been I to give such instruction rather than the other way around.  And yet she has always known the right thing to say, the right way to behave, as if these came to her as easily as breathing.  If I am honest, truly honest, and serious, as I am told so often that I never am, I have always envied her because of it. 

There now.  I have committed it to paper and I do not feel guilty at all.  It is not so very wrong to feel envy if one is able to admit it. 

Now all I feel is sad and more than a trifle self-pitying.  I have felt so out of my depth these past few days.  Leni would know what to do to make Veisiliel speak again.  She would know to anticipate Mother's needs and to be at her side even before Mother needed assistance, while I am ever awkward and unsure and wholly inadequate as a nurse.  In a thousand ways I feel myself bereft, and pray that Father finds her soon, for Mother's sake as well as Leni's.  Mother suffers from both their absences.  It would not be so hard for her if she had Father to comfort her and to persuade her that all shall be well, but I think he is bound and determined that he will not come home before he has found Leni.  I fear to think how it will be with us if he does not…and yet he will, surely.

He must.

-.-.-.-

They had traveled many miles from the forest that was their home.  For some in their party, he knew, it was the furthest they had traveled in their lives.  Sometimes he detected an eager undercurrent in the voices of these younger Elves.  This was an adventure for them. 

He remembered his own sense of adventure at that age, knew the extra energy it imparted.  He told himself that a sense of adventure did not have to be a bad thing.  For Fírhador, however, the business at hand was no adventure.  There was too much at stake.

Long they had been at a cold scent.  They had traveled at a spidered crawl, combing out across the terrain in an effort to rediscover the trail they lost when they found the dead Elf.  It was brutally slow progress.  Sometimes they would hit on a lucky trace of the two Orcs, losing it and finding it again as the terrain changed and the earth became stony or soft, but there was never anything to indicate that a girl was with them.

No body was recovered either, and Fírhador continued to hope.  Please Rodyn, she is my child.  Please, it is not so strange that we should find no signs of her with them.  She is too small and slight to leave a trace.  

There came a point when the irregular trail they followed met with the tracks of a large party of Orcs.  The heavy imprints of broad boot soles were readily identifiable.  Only the Glamhoth left such marks as these.  An hour later Túchir called a halt at a place where a fire had burned recently, fed by living trees cut down alive and fed green to smoldering flames.  It was a fire such as few Elves will build, save in the direst of circumstances.  Fírhador could smell a rank smell even beneath that of the smoke.  He wished, irrationally, for more smoke to cover the ordure of the Orcs, but it was midday and their stop was to be brief.  Even so, it seemed long to him.

He did not sit with the others but stood at the edge of the clearing, waiting.  He no longer understood concepts of hunger or thirst, but protesting the delay would do his cause no good.  Quite the opposite—he knew that Túchir watched for any sign of weakness.  The other Elf would not hesitate to send him away and so he answered each command with grim alacrity.  Somehow, though, it was harder to make eating a part of his obedience.  The thought that his daughter might be so close made it impossible to eat.

The night before he had lain with open eyes in the manner of his folk, but his eyes were open with wakefulness.  All the night long he had stared into the trees.  He stared now with, if anything, greater intensity.  He had a direction now, due West, and his gaze did not falter, even when he heard another approach him from behind.

“Good Elf, will you not break bread this day?”

His response was courteous but concise: “I thank you; I have no appetite.”  He had had none these past two days of searching, and the last thing he had eaten was a bite of lembas the evening before.

“Good Elf, with respect.”  The voice was quietly insistent.  “We are told in training that to deny our bodies sustenance is to deny our ears their keenness, our eyes their better clarity.”

They were the words with which one might admonish a child.  He turned, no longer inclined to be civil, but recognized the Elf who so addressed him and was quiet for a moment.  When he spoke his voice was mild.  “Am I a mortal man, to be so in thrall to my body?”

Culas took a step forward, and his gray eyes were unblinking.  “No more than I, and I would belie myself if I said I had more appetite than you.  Yet will you break bread with me?  For wisdom and for strength, and to appease the one who watches us both.”

That last might have sounded like an invocation of the One, but Fírhador knew better.  His eyes flickered briefly over the other Elf’s shoulder.  It had not occurred to him that Culas might be under the same pressure from Túchir, and yet he recognized at once the truth of what the scout said.  And more than that: he knew the deeper reason Culas sought him out, for all that the other Elf did not speak it. With a nod, he broke off half of the wafer Culas offered him and placed it on his tongue.  Both chewed and swallowed in a silence that Fírhador was first to break, asking Culas how it went with him. 

Culas did not respond at first.  When he did, his words were tightly controlled.  “There is this about the rituals of the body.  They are living reminders.  I remember those times that he broke bread with me; when we shared food and drink, or guarded one another in our sleeping.  I breathe and know he does not breathe the same air I am breathing.”

“His is a sweeter air, in the Undying Lands.”

“Lands to which he was untimely sent.”  Culas looked away, jaw tightening.  There was a shadow in his eyes, as if they looked on something other than what was truly before them. 

Fírhador knew what it was that Culas looked on in his mind’s eye.  He too had seen what had been done to the body of the Elf’s fallen comrade when they came on it two days before.  Whether it had been done before or after Alhael’s death could not be known, but all knew the cruelty and barbarism of Orcs.

Fírhador had had no time to grieve a young Elf he had never known in life.  For him, anguish and outrage were subsumed in a greater dread.  The creatures that had done this lived, and they had his daughter.  That took precedence over all else.  For Culas, of course, the blow had been more direct, more personal.  The dead Elf had been his friend. 

“Tell me of him,” said Fírhador quietly.  When Culas did not immediately respond he reached for his hand, and Culas allowed him to take it. 

The impressions Fírhador received were brief and few, but revealing.  A dark-haired Elf laughing; a fleet form running in the sun.  The mutilated body Fírhador had seen bore no resemblance to the energetic youth that Fírhador saw in Culas’ thoughts, yet he knew this must be Alhael.  Light practice blades flashing in a training bout; a correcting hand on Culas’ wrist as Alhael showed him a different stance.  Alhael in the crook of a high bough, look out over a green sea of swaying tree tops.  Alhael, very near this time, saying words that Fírhador saw rather than heard.  A beautiful maiden stood arm in arm with him, smiling.  As this last image registered in Fírhador’s mind, Culas took his hand away. 

“He was more than a friend,” said Fírhador.

“He would have been my brother.”

“Who…?”

“My sister.  He loved her very dearly, and she him.”  The shadow in Culas’ eyes deepened.  “Alhael called me his right hand.  My sister he called the other half of his heart.  She wears his ring.  The wrong these Yrch have done knows no bounds.  In taking his life they have hurt the lives of others and caused a lasting grief.”

“And a lasting anger,” said Fírhador, watching him.  “You would have vengeance.”

“I will have vengeance.”  Culas’ eyes, as he turned them again to Fírhador, were dark indeed.  “I will not rest until I have their blood.”

What could he tell this young Elf who suffered so, who had seen the butchery made of his best friend: companion of his days, guardian of his nights?  What could he say to fill the morass of such a bottomless hate?  Were circumstances other than as they were, Fírhador knew he would only have endorsed Culas’ vow, even supported it with a vow of his own.  And yet Fírhador knew that, when he found the Orcs who had his daughter, he would be willing to check all anger and all hatred, sacrifice all thought of vengeance if he could only see her free from harm and safely in his arms.  “Rituals,” he said carefully, “may put us in mind of the living as well as the dead.  I have a child who lives.  So long as she is alive, my first thoughts cannot be of vengeance.”  He looked into Culas’ face searchingly.

The scout was silent for a moment.  When he spoke his words were similarly careful.  “I have not forgotten your daughter, Fírhador.  To forget her would be to forget why my friend died.  He was seeking to protect her, and to see her rescued from the ones who stole her from you.”  There was no trace of blame in what he said.  The words were factual, the tone earnest.  “I would not wish for my friend to have died in vain…and I would willingly make the sacrifice he made if I thought it would secure an innocent life.”

They understood one another, then.  From the direction of the others Fírhador heard Túchir calling for the party to rise.  It was time for them to be moving again, yet despite his earlier chafing beneath the delay he did not immediately break his gaze with Culas, putting his hand on the scout’s shoulder instead.  “I thank you for your words.  And I do not think our goals irreconcilable.”

“Our quarry is the same.”  Culas clasped his shoulder in turn and gripped it tightly.  “Let us share in the hunt.”

-.-.-.-

“Are you sure that you want nothing?” asked Nevhithien as she helped her mother settle back against the high pillow.

“No, dear heart.”

“It is only that they brought food again…”

Her mother smiled tiredly.  “I am really not very hungry, Nevhithien.  Perhaps later.  It is only that I am tired now.”

Himeth would tire out anyone, Nevhithien thought to herself but did not say aloud.  In happier times it would have elicited a laugh from her mother, and Nevhithien wanted so badly to hear her mother’s laughter again, even if it came accompanied by reproof for speaking disrespectfully of her elders.  But there was such a tired look in Thalawen’s face, her eyes hollowed out with fatigue and with pain.  There seemed no place for flippancy in this room, where the curtains were kept drawn even in the middle of the day, and where her mother tried to smile with such eyes.  Nevhithien drew the lace coverlet gently over Thalawen’s bandaged ribs and bent to kiss her cheek.  Her hurt hip throbbed as she straightened.  “I will bring a tray in to you later,” she said firmly.  “It cannot be good for you to eat nothing.  It will be here beside your bed when you wake up.”

Thalawen sighed but did not try to argue.  “Very well.  Do go, Nevhithien, and tell them I am sorry.”

“There is nothing to be sorry for.  You are tired.  They understand.”  She could hear a murmur of ladies’ voices from the front of the house: as she pulled the door closed quietly behind her, she could hear the sound of the front door shutting as well.  It would seem she was too late to convey any apologies from her mother, even had there been anything to apologize for.  She headed for the living room, where she had left Veisiliel alone with their company.  Taking a deep breath, Nevhithien forced a smile on her face and poked her head around the frame of the door with exaggerated caution.  “Are they gone yet?” 

Veisiliel looked at her briefly from the window seat before she went back to looking out the window. 

Nevhithien sighed at her little sister’s lack of response but joined her and watched the little group of Elves as they walked away from the house.  Goodwives of neighboring homes, they made repeated visits bearing words of comfort, or what they considered comfort.  Their earnest prayers and sympathetic murmurs, however well intended, made Nevhithien uncomfortable.  “It is no wonder Father does not come home,” she said dryly.  “I think he stays away as much to avoid our many well-wishers as to hunt Orcs.  Well!  Let us see what they have left us.” 

Veisiliel uncurled herself from the windowsill and followed Nevhithien into the kitchen.  There she stood fingering her sling while her older sister lifted lids and opened jars, examining their contents.  “There are spiced meat pasties, and warm broth, and sweet nuts.  We shall eat well today,” said Nevhithien cheerily.  “Here now!  What would you like?”

They held their repast in the kitchen, where they had eaten for the past two days.  Eating alone in the dining room was too strange and awkward, but the back garden and front porch, both ideal in this warm weather, were out of the question.  Nevhithien had only mentioned eating outside once and the alarm in Veisiliel’s face was such that she had not done so again.  They ate quietly, with occasional punctuation from Nevhithien, commenting on the food or their many visitors or on some funny observation she had made.  She could never know if it was funny to Veisiliel, who responded to everything with the same silence: the most Nevhithien ever got out of her was a quiescent shrug. 

She kept at it anyway.  It was too queer to have silence in a room containing Veisiliel.  She had always been such a voluble child, wanting petting and attention.  Leni had been affectionate and outgoing at that age as well, but Leni had also been happy on her own, capable of entertaining herself.  Veisiliel, on the other hand, seemed always to want someone to play with, and in the absence of a playmate she had a special knack for getting into mischief.  There were times when Nevhithien, bothered at her reading or her writing, had been frustrated on this account, but Leni had always taken it in stride.  She had never seemed to mind spending time with their littlest sister, and she had been so clever at managing her, effortlessly devising little games to amuse her or little tasks to keep her productive.

Thinking about that and watching Veisiliel pick unhappily at her food, Nevhithien had an idea.  “It does not look as if you are very hungry.  I am going to put a tray together for Mother, but I am not at all certain what she would like.  Perhaps you could help.”   Veisiliel looked up at this, a rare spark of interest in her eyes.  “Come,” said Nevhithien in a casual way, “let us see what she might like.”

Together they compiled an assortment of food decidedly unsuitable to any adult palate, still less that of an invalid who had been bedridden for the past two days.  Veisiliel selected all of the treats that she most liked herself, most of them sweet and sticky.  Nevhithien knew it didn’t really matter, that most of the tray would go uneaten anyway.  It was little enough that Mother had eaten lately.  But Veisiliel obviously felt happy and important to be of use: she even started humming a little at one point, arranging a white linen napkin at the side of the tray.  Suddenly she stopped, squeezing her eyes shut tightly and balling her hands into fists.

“That was very pretty, Veisiliel,” said Nevhithien quietly.  “Would you like to carry the tray?”

The younger girl’s hands relaxed at her sides.  Wordlessly she nodded.

Nevhithien kept an eye on her as she carried the tray.  There was a lot on it and she was worried that Veisiliel would find it unwieldy, but she carried it in such a grave composed manner, with careful steps and steady arms, that Nevhithien had to repress a smile.  When they entered their mother’s room Veisiliel set the tray down on the bedside table with almost no sound at all, not looking at the bed or the person laying there.  Thalawen was obviously very much asleep.  Only after Veisiliel had straightened did she stand for a time looking at her mother’s face, which had settled into the serenity of sleep. 

Nevhithien stood by the door, loath to call her away.  She has barely seen Mother at all, the older girl realized.  Thalawen left her chamber only when receiving company, and when she was in her chamber she did little but sleep.  Nevhithien would go in by her to bring her food and to be sure that she was comfortable, but those times when she tried talking to her mother were always gently rebuffed. 

A healer had come on both days to assist Nevhithien with her mother’s bandages and to assess her condition.  “She was badly hurt by the one who attacked her,” he said to Nevhithien afterward in another part of the house.  “It was a bad experience, and she is in great pain.  It would be better if your father was here for her, but with him away her mood is very low.  Talk to her, but pay attention to how she fares, and let her sleep when she needs it.  The drink I have prepared will help with the pain, but sleep is the best remedy of all.”

It is not Father’s fault, thought Nevhithien unhappily, but she knew the healer wasn’t making accusations.  He was simply stating facts.

It was hard for Nevhithien and she knew that it must be harder still for her sister.  The only times Veisiliel saw their mother were when the once indomitable Thalawen sat propped out in the living room like a porcelain doll, being polite to company, or when Veisiliel was brought into Thalawen’s room at night for an evening kiss.  Then her mother would stroke her hair with an almost unbearable tenderness.  The damage to her body made holding her daughter too difficult. 

Now, as Nevhithien watched again, Veisiliel rose on tiptoe, reaching with her unhurt arm to gently pat the loose dark tresses of their mother’s hair.

-.-.-.-

Slender shadows gather in the trees, voices interweaving in low quick exchange.  “Not five hours from us.”

“And their numbers?”

“Twelve?  Thirteen?  A large party.”

“Thirteen?  So many?”

“The band that attacked the convoy.  Their party was large.”

“We are enough.  They do not know we come.”  One of the younger Elves, boastfully.  They are seven.  Seven Elves, his tone says, can easily overmatch thirteen Orcs.

“Was a child among them?”

“None was seen.”

“A care nonetheless.”

“More than a care.”

“If we move now, we can be there by daybreak.”

“We move now.”

“By daybreak.”

“By daybreak…”

His breath is steady, and he isn’t sweating.  His skin is cool and dry.  Yet in his chest his heart is pounding; he can hear it pounding in his ears.  A hand on his shoulder.  He knows Culas’ touch in the dark.  “It is soon, then.” 

A bare few hours.  He nods, a terse jerk of the chin.  There is a fire in his veins, like a burning liquor coursing through his blood.  He wills it to die there.  Let the fire chill.  He will need all of his wits about him. 

Then they are running, swift shadows flying through the trees, and their feet never fully touch the ground.  He is as fleet as any of them, and his heart cries out to her in advance of his body.  Though he knows she cannot hear the thoughts of his mind, he sends them to her with grim intensity.

Little bird.  My Eleluleniel.  Little bird, I am coming…

-.-.-.-

Nevhithien woke from another ill dream, which she tried not to remember.  Laying there, the chill of perspiration on her brow, she willed herself to stop shaking.  The trembling passed, but her unease lingered.  She drew a ragged breath, staring up at the ceiling.  Then she turned her head, looking at the bed across from hers.  It was still empty.  Nevhithien closed her eyes, feeling the tears prick behind her lids.  Sister.

Her eyes flew open again and she pushed herself up on one elbow, looking beyond Eleluleniel’s bed to Veisiliel’s bed beside the door.  It too was empty.  Immediately she slid her lower body over the side of the bed and rose clumsily to her feet.  When she stood it sent a jolt of pain through her hurt hip but nonetheless she shuffled to the foot of the empty bed and stared as if staring would change things.  Sighing, she pulled the uppermost coverlet off the bed and bundled it under her arm.  “Oh Veisiliel,” she said under her breath.

It was out in the dark corridor, at the top of the stairs, that she paused.  Standing there she became suddenly, preternaturally aware of the silence of the sleeping house.  She heard her heart begin to beat faster in her chest.  No.  She would not be afraid in her own home, in the place where she had been born.  Nevhithien set her jaw and descended the stairs in a crabbed and sideways manner, positing most of her weight on the rail.  Her hip protested all the while. 

When Veisiliel had wandered before, it had taken Nevhithien long to find her.  Now she went straight to their father’s study and looked within.  The pallid gleam of a small face fear-flashed in the direction of the opening door, confirming her suspicions.  This time she knew better than to say anything but only went to Veisiliel, who pressed huddled at the corner of the tall dark secretary.  She could not kneel but she bent a little to arrange the blanket over her little sister’s trembling shoulders, and waited until they had stilled.  “Come you,” she whispered then, “I was frightened to find you gone.”  She waited a moment before continuing, “Will you not keep me company tonight?” 

Veisiliel said no more than she had before.  She only uttered a child’s soft sigh and suffered Nevhithien to take her hand and lead her, once more, up to their room.  There Nevhithien did not let her hand go but walked her firmly past her own bed, and then their lost sister’s, to Nevhithien’s own.  She drew back the covers to let Veisiliel crawl in before climbing awkwardly after.  As Nevhithien drew the covers over them Veisiliel turned and pressed her small body up against her. 

“Ahh!” the older girl cried out, and then laughed a little in spite of herself.  “Your skin is cold, little sister!  You must stop these late-night wanderings.”

Veisiliel pressed her face against Nevhithien’s side and began to a cry in a queer gasping way.  Nevhithien stiffened.  She put her arms awkwardly around her little sister, held her until the paroxysm of grief had passed and Veisiliel finally lay sleeping.  But Nevhithien lay through the dark hours with Veisiliel half on her, uncomfortable and unable to sleep, as the morning sky outside began to lighten.

Chapter Text

It was not yet morning when they found their quarry.

It was not twelve or thirteen that they faced.  Sixteen Orcs occupied the clearing: big Uruk-hai, bred for endurance and power and day.  But it was not day now, and the vile Yrch slept.  They lay in loose units around a fire that was own twin to the wasteful affair of the day before.  A few embers still glowed in the sooty circle, which was girded by large stones.  Dried remnants of last night’s meal curled and smoldered on the stones, flesh of some unknown creature.  A noxious stench rose from the place: the rank stink of the Orcs themselves, and the smoky char of their fire, and the now faint but still sickening smell of burning flesh. 

After a moment’s reconnaissance Túchir drew them back to a point further from the camp, where they could discuss what they had seen and what to do next.  “It is important that we act quickly.  They will begin to awaken soon, and they number twice our party.”

“Yet we cannot act in haste,” said Fírhador.  “There are other considerations.”

“Did you see her there, Fírhador?  I did not.”  Túchir’s voice was rough.  Though sympathetic, he was not one to encourage false hope. 

Fírhador’s eyes flashed dangerously and he might have said something unfortunate if Culas hadn’t chosen that moment to speak up.  “It may be there are others we do not see by the fire.  I do not have either of your years or experience…” he looked between the two older Elves, “…but it seems unlikely to me that all of the Yrch would sleep so without appointing a guard.”

The others in their party looked uncomfortable; Esgalon, the youngest and most boastful, actually cast a nervous glance over his shoulder.  Túchir, in comparison, raised an eyebrow at Culas before nodding acknowledgement.  Fírhador felt a rush of gratitude to the scout: Túchir might question their judgment but he also had to know that Culas, thirsty for vengeance, would not desire unnecessary delay.

Ten minutes later Fírhador was crouched in a patch of undergrowth, scanning the camp of sleeping Uruk-hai.  

There were those Elves who had never seen Orcs of any kind, much less the pet monsters of the White Hand.  Ordinary Orcs are an appalling sight: twisted, their bodies often stooped and bent, with unharmonious proportions.  The Uruk-hai, it was said, were the product of ordinary Orcs bred with Men to produce a hybrid race: Man-tall, with an inhuman strength.  They were more human in appearance, which made them more disconcerting than ordinary Orcs in some ways; if it weren’t for the bestial ruin of their faces, the feral quality of their tangled hair and claws and sharp, sharp teeth, the Uruk-hai might have been mistaken for tall, powerfully built Men.

Fírhador had slain Uruk-hai in the War of the Ring fifteen years before.  Someone else might have become distracted by their ugliness, absorbed and consumed in the horror of their existence.  Instead, Fírhador’s eyes moved impatiently over the hideous creatures, scanning for the pale hair, the slight slender body.  Looking in vain.  There was no sign of Eleluleniel.

Culas slipped down beside him a moment later.  He knelt at Fírhador’s side, close as a lover, his fingers moving on the older Elf’s thigh in a quick patois.  He was using scout-speak, a terse but practical and soundless mode of communication delivered in touch and finger signals.  Scouts were generally limited in their thought-sending: most were young and nearly all were unmarried.  Greater strength and finesse came with years and the marital bond.  In the meantime, a young scout like Culas relied on scout-speak as the more dependable form of communication.  …was one guard far side of camp…

Fírhador’s own scout-speak was rusty and halting.  He turned his face to Culas and mouthed one word.  Was?

…dead…lasion killed it…

It was fortunate at that moment that Elves did not swear lightly.  Fírhador had begun to realize that the only way for him to learn his daughter’s whereabouts or if she was…that the only way for him to learn of her fate would be to speak with one of the beasts in some way.  A lone guard, separated from its fellows: if there had been some way to disarm it, take it alive without rousing the others—

The thought of such a lost opportunity filled Fírhador with anger.  ...had to kill…not just detain…i ask you… His fingers jerked in stilted fury over Culas’ forearm before falling still, fury replaced with resignation and renewed resolve.  There were still sixteen Orcs left.  Culas continued to watch him in silence; carefully he signed: …you see her…anyone see…

…have not seen her no one has…i am sorry…but…  There was a strange look in Culas’ eyes.  …something i saw i should say…i do not… 

He stiffened suddenly and gave Fírhador’s thigh an urgent squeeze.  One of the Orcs was stirring.  They became very still.

It turned onto its side and for a few seconds Fírhador dared to hope that it was only moving in its sleep, but then it grunted and got up on one elbow.  The muscles of its shoulders and back rolled sinuously beneath the filthy material of its tunic as it rose to its feet.  And then it turned toward them.  Fírhador tensed and had to restrain himself from crouching lower.  Hidden in the undergrowth as they were, garbed in woodland colors, they should not be readily visible to the Orc…but any movement, any sound at this point, could easily betray them.

It cannot see us, he told himself, even as it ambled in their direction.  It cannot…  He gritted his teeth as it stopped some yards to their right, relaxing only the barest of fractions when he realized that it was about to relieve itself.

It stood, feet planted apart, at a slight angle to their position and as it stood it swayed slightly.  Perhaps it labored under the after-effects of some heavy drought of the night before; this certainly seemed likely from the time it was taking.  From where they crouched Fírhador could make out the heavy jaw line, the side of a broad cruel mouth parted in a grimace of pleasure, revealing sharp yellow teeth.  Its urine was acrid and very strong.  He wrinkled his nose at the pungent odor.

Suddenly the Uruk’s nostrils flared as well.  It paused and looked over one shoulder, its line of sight only a few feet over their heads.

Fírhador could feel the faintest tremble in Culas’ hand—whether in fear or eagerness he could not tell.  Carefully he moved his fingers on the younger Elf’s wrist: …stay still… 

There was a doubtful look in the creature’s tawny eyes.  It finished its business and turned toward them, still lacing up its breeches.

It can smell us.  It can—oh Rodyn, I do not want to kill it but we cannot let it rouse the others… he thought desperately.

“WHAT THE FUCK—” came a roar from the trees on the other side of camp.  It broke off in a gurgle.  The Orc’s head jerked in that direction, but Fírhador and Culas had no relief at the distraction.  A second guard…and it had been able to alert the others before it was dispatched.

In that instant, Fírhador acted quickly.  He knew that the whole camp would be on its feet in a matter of seconds, and then the rain of Elven arrows would begin.  I need one of them alive!  Leaping up out of his hiding place he threw an arm around the Orc’s thick neck and smashed his fist against the base of its skull.  He jumped back to avoid the body as it crumpled to the forest floor.

“Bagal, Golug-hai!”

“Oi, nalt hombaurri, they’re fucking on us, move!”

He recognized the second voice: it was the one that had assaulted Thalawen and Nevhithien, the large Orc with the battleaxe.  And then he saw the red-eyed brute among its bewildered shield mates, kicking them into action as the first arrows began to fly. 

He is the leader.

An arrow struck the Uruk in the shoulder: it gave a bellow that was more rage than pain and angrily broke off the feathered shaft.  By now the other Orcs were on their feet, roaring challenges to the trees around them.  They could not see their foe, only the flying death the Elves were dealing.  Something whistled past Fírhador’s ear: an Uruk screamed and fell, followed by another.  Another lifted its own crossbow, taking aim, but before it could fire an Elven arrow lodged in its throat.  It went down in a spray of black blood.

They cannot stay there.  They have to move before they are massacred, thought Fírhador.  Rather than falling back into the trees he had dropped down on one knee, studying the Orcs coldly.  Túchir had instructed his archers to keep moving between shots: create the illusion that there were more of them than there actually were.  Fírhador reached back over his shoulder, but it was the grip of his backsword that his hand closed on.  He will tell them to disperse: he can do nothing else…

“Pro’shat, pro’shat!” 

Fírhador might not understand the words, but their meaning was obvious.  The knot of Orcs broke and scattered for the trees.  An Uruk ran in his direction with pounding footfalls of its iron-shod boots: it did not see him due to the chaos and the camouflaging effect of his clothing.  He waited until it was almost on him before plunging up, drawing his weapon in a hiss of steel and disemboweling the beast mid-run.  The Orc immediately behind it came to a stop, bringing its own sword forward with a startled snarl.  Sidestepping with a whirl, he severed its hand in a single swing: as the Orc stared for a stunned moment at its gushing wrist Fírhador continued the movement, cleaving its neck with his second arc.

He dropped again to one knee.  The world spun around him but he would not let himself succumb to dizziness, forcing himself to focus.  He watched as two more Orcs fell, one with an arrow in its chest, the other with a shaft protruding from between its shoulder-blades.  They were the last in the clearing: the rest had disappeared into the trees, where they would be dispatched by his fellow Elves. 

How many of the Orcs were still alive?  Five?  Six?  He did not care.  There was only one that mattered to Fírhador.

He is the leader.  If any of them know where she is, then he will…

He rose, throwing his body into a sprint.  He had to find the red-eyed Orc before anyone else did.

-.-.-.-

Curse those Golug bastards!  They’ve turned me into a bloody pincushion!

Dushgar’s fingers were clenched over the broken end of the arrow protruding from his left shoulder.  The wound oozed sluggishly.  It wasn’t as bad as it might’ve been: he wouldn’t be bleeding to death any time soon.  The one in his back was a problem, though.  He couldn’t reach it to snap the shaft: when he tried the pain nearly made him black out.  Couldn’t afford to do that with the thin-skins running around, now could he?  So it would have to wait until he was clear of this mess. 

Even as he thought it he gave a grim chuckle.  He knew there’d be no getting clear of this.

There came a sudden cry from the trees to his left and he knew they’d gotten another of his lads.  Uftar maybe?  Nar, Uftar had fallen by the fire.  Gorthaur’s balls, it had all gone to shit so quickly, so very quickly.  He was the only one left.  Not for much longer, though.  “Fuck me if I don’t take one of them with me,” he muttered to himself. 

That was when the third arrow struck him.  It thudded into his back not two inches from the other, and a bare hair’s breadth from his spine.  He bellowed, his body describing an arc of agony.  Then some serpentine coil of hatred enabled him to turn immediately in the direction it had come from, to charge the one who had shot him.  The Elf was standing between two trees, struggling to fit another arrow to its bow: Dushgar was already on it, knocking the puny weapon aside and knocking the Elf down too with his massive fist. 

Elves are infamous for their composure, for their dignity and grace.  This Elf was evincing none of those qualities, staring up at him in wide-eyed terror and scrabbling backward on the ground. 

“Oh no you don’t.”  Raising his foot, he stomped down on the Elf’s ribcage, putting all of his considerable weight into it.  A crunching sound beneath his boot; a high shrill scream.  No way the other pushdug scum hadn’t heard that.  He didn’t have much longer, so he needed to make this count.  He grabbed the Elf by the collar of its leafy-green tunic, thrusting it up into the air.  The act sent a flare of white pain through his shoulder and back.  “Now how many ways can I hurt you…”

“Put him down.”

Dushgar reoriented on the newcomer with a snarl: an older Elf with the mien of a warrior and with a blade such as a warrior carries.  Not that bow-and-arrow shit.  There was also something oddly familiar about him, but Dushgar never had been able to tell one Elf from another, they all looked the same to him.  He sneered.  “Oh I’ll put him down all right!”  With a violent sidelong motion he slammed the stripling into a tree before turning again to face his challenger—

—only to find those pale eyes not three feet away, the tip of that shiny sword at his throat. 

Never take your eyes off an Elf. 

Hand gripping spasmodically at his wounded shoulder, he hissed down the length of the curving blade.  “You pointy-eared fuck.  I’ll rip your head off.  I’ll use your skull for a piss-pot—”

The pressure behind the sharp point increased.  He felt it drawing blood.  Had he lacked any sense of self-preservation he would have said fuck it, would have launched himself forward on the blade to get the fellow holding it, take him along on that last trip into the dark.  “—of course, I’m always open to negotiation…” he said in a gargled voice and took a step back, hands up and open at his sides.  Life, even to an Orc, is sweeter in its final moments.  It also occurred to him that the Elf might easily have killed him by now, and to wonder why it hadn’t.  He got his answer in a moment, but if anything it only confused matters more. 

“Where is she?” demanded the Elf, taking a step forward so that its blade remained at his throat.

Huh?  “Who?”

“My daughter, Orc.”

Dushgar was genuinely bewildered.  “Your wha’?  What are you—wait a minute.”  His eyes narrowed.  “I remember you!  You’re the one who was gonna be the hero!”  The memory returned to him of the dark-haired bint beneath the horse, of how every time he tried to nail her someone would get in his way, and that last someone had been this crazy bastard.

If you want her you will have to go through me.

Forgetting the danger of the situation for a moment, Dushgar grinned at the Elf.  “Haw.  Forget your sword that day, friend?  Got a point to prove now?”

“Do not toy with me, Orc.  Tell me where she is!”

Looking into the Elf’s steely eyes, Dushgar felt a cold chill run through his body: the jittery feeling you get in the presence of madness.  Ah, he knew what was going on now.  The daughter had probably died that day and this fellow had lost it.  Elves did that sort of thing—he’d heard all kinds of crazy stories about Elven obsession and madness and bloody revenge.  But if the Elf really was insane then his judgment was off, and that meant that he, Dushgar, still had a chance.  “Now now,” he said in his best approximation of a soothing manner, “let’s try to discuss this calmly, eh?”

“Answer my question, Orc!”

“Oh, I want to, believe me, I really do.  Your daughter, yes.  I even see the resemblance.”  Dushgar’s hands were still up and open at his sides.  The sword hadn’t left his throat for a minute but the Elf’s eyes were fixed solidly upon his own.  Counting on the Elf to be too fixated on him to notice, Dushgar began to lift his right hand, increment by furtive increment.

“Where is she?”

The pressure of the sword against his skin relented by the smallest of fractions.  Now or never.  “When last I saw her she was under a big fucking horse.  Hey Elf! tell your daughter she’s supposed to ride the horse, not the other way around!”  He made his move, grabbing the blade. 

He could feel it as it sliced into his palm.  He was expecting that, counting on his thick leather gauntlet to protect him from the worst of it, thinking he could stand the pain if he could yank the weapon from the startled warrior’s grasp…but he had never gripped Elven steel before.  The keen edge slid through leather and flesh like a knife through butter, gliding over the bones in his hand.  An icy fire licked up his wrist.  He fell to his knees, doubled over his ruined sword-hand.  “Oh shit.  Oh shit oh shit oh shit…”

“Spawn of Morgoth!  You are dying and you would fight me in this condition?”  Dushgar uttered a volley of profanities that were, perhaps, not as impressive as they might have been under other circumstances, for he was rocking helplessly at the same time, whimpering in pain.  It hurt worse than the arrows.  The Elf kept talking craziness over his head.  “Orc, listen to me.  You will die, but I can show you mercy.  I can make your death quick if you tell me where she is.  Not my Nevhithien.  Not the girl under the horse, she is safe from you forever.  But my second youngest, my songbird, my heart’s joy…listen to me!”  The Elf grabbed him by the shoulders.  “Do you understand?” 

Roaring, Dushgar pushed him away.  “Gerroff!  You crazy Golug shite, get off of me!”  He tried to get to his feet again but his injuries had taken their toll and, in his weakened state, Dushgar lost his balance.  Agony ripped through him as his full weight, falling upon the shafts of the two unbroken arrows, drove them into and through his upper body.

In the wake of agony came a kind of calm.  He lifted his head and stared at the arrow tips emerging from his chest.  Head dropping back again, he swore up at the green canopy of leaves overhead.  What a way to die.  What a stupid, shitty way to die.

The Elf’s head interrupted his view.  There was at least something to comfort Dushgar in all this: the warrior did not look like much now.  The cold imperious manner was gone, displaced by something terrified and frantic as the Elf grabbed him again.  “Listen to me!” he cried.  “She is only a child and she sings like the daughter of Thingol!  She has hair like silver, and my mother’s eyes, and she stands no taller than my shoulder!  You must have seen her!  Tell me while you still draw breath!  Tell me you have seen her!”

He could feel his body shutting down, could feel the world going away.  It was a strange feeling and yet, even out of it as he was, he made the connection.  Hair like silver…and the same pale blue eyes.  “Oh yeah,” Dushgar muttered slowly.  “Her.  I remember that one.  But she wasn’t singing…”

“PLEASE!  Tell me!  You must tell me what you have done with her!  Tell me where she is!”

And the malevolence that had been with Dushgar at the hour of his birth was with him also at the end.  He closed his eyes in a kind of horrible amusement, for it hurt too much to laugh.  Opening them again he grinned up at the Elf, putting all of his teeth into it as he said the one word.  “Rations…”

-.-.-.-

It was the last thing that the creature said.

Fírhador was still kneeling over the body, staring down at it, when strong arms caught his shoulders and pulled him back.  He did not know how long the others had been there, but there was no question Túchir had heard that final damning word.  He held Fírhador for a moment’s stiff embrace.  Fírhador suffered himself to be held, but he was shaking his head when Túchir let him go.

When he returned to the Orc he had downed at the start of battle, Culas was standing over it.  Fírhador knew at once it was no good.  A blow to the head such as he had used was a risky move at best.  The Orc was not dead but foam flecked its lips; it jerked spasmodically on its back, and there was an absence of any intelligence in its eyes.  Culas had only been waiting for Fírhador to see; when the older Elf, sickened, turned away, he knelt down and dispatched it.

They dug a large grave and they delved it deep: deep enough to bury all of the Orcs, bury their sight and their stench.  Only fire could scour them from the earth, Fírhador thought but did not say.  Elves do not burn their fallen foe.  He dug as deeply as the others and, after the last noisome corpse had been laid within, he was the first to start shoveling earth back into place.

He would accept no condolences for his daughter.  He would not believe what the Orc had said.  “I would have found her.  We would have found her body,” was all he would say, and he shook his head in a continuous disavowal.

The others said nothing.  Even Túchir did not invoke the obvious: her remains dragged away after the butchery, short work for the scavengers.  The sundering of her body, her lovely bones, strewn and scattered in the night.  They did not have to say these things: Fírhador was capable of thinking them, logically.  He could make himself examine the concept in whole and in its discrete parts.  But it did not work.  He could not make it fit. 

Of course she is not dead, he thought.  Yet what am I to tell them?  What can I tell Thalawen?

Esgalon, the young Elf whom the Orc leader had tormented, was in a bad way.  They had given him what treatment they could provide themselves but he would still need the help of a skilled healer.  Túchir decided they should start back at once.  A litter was assembled and Fírhador was the first to take his turn at carrying the injured youth.  Seeing how Esgalon rode with white face and clenched jaw put him in mind of Nevhithien: she had blushed and protested when she was obliged to ride in the litter, and she had borne the pain with similarly suspect stoicism. 

Thinking of Nevhithien, he wondered what he was going to tell her.  She had bidden him farewell with such fierce confidence on his departure.  I know that you will find her, Father.

They traveled until they could no longer clearly see the way before them; they slept not far from the Orkish camp they had found on the previous day, and rose early to continue their travel, passing the remains of the Orcs’ fire not long after.  The charred smell was less oppressive, and the smell of the Orcs themselves was disappearing as well. 

Fírhador moved more slowly than the others, his mind half in another world.  He had slept during the night but his dreams had betrayed him.  Now, awake, fragments of those half-remembered dreams kept coming to his mind, and doubt assailed him for the first time.  The Orc had spoken with evil intent, he knew, but evil is not always false.  His heart insisted that his daughter lived yet his mind knew the ill sense of this: how could his heart run so contrary to all rules of logic?  The Orc had addressed him as if he was mad, and other Elves thought his judgment impaired.  Was he foolish not to consider the possibility that he was wrong…?

“I would walk with you, Fírhador, if you will let me share your footsteps.”

Fírhador blinked, looking at Culas.  He had thought himself hindermost in their party and had not realized Culas also lagged behind.  Belatedly he nodded.  “Forgive me, friend, my thoughts were elsewhere.  You have no need to ask.”

Culas nodded and fell in step beside him.  Though neither spoke further, Fírhador found that his mind did not easily resume the paths it had been pursuing.  Instead he glanced from time to time at Culas.  He had thought the other Elf was avoiding him after the battle: they had exchanged no words since then and Culas seemed to make a point of not looking at him.  He believes what the others do, Fírhador had thought, but now the scout had made a point of seeking him out, to what purpose he did not yet know.

They came to the place where the tracks of his daughter’s captors met with those of the Uruk band.  Here Culas broke his silence.  “This is where they met,” he said.  “But there is nothing to signify that they continued together.”

Fírhador stopped walking.  “What are you saying?”

Culas turned to him.  “I saw one of the Orcs who took your daughter, Fírhador.  It was brief and from a distance, but I saw it.  It did not look like the creatures we killed.” 

Fírhador listened as Culas went on to describe a rawboned physique, shorter stature, mottled gray skin like the underside of a stone.  “It was no Uruk you saw but a goblin Orc.”

“And I did not see it among the Orcs we slew.”

“That was why you sought to delay yesterday’s attack.  You were looking for it.”

“I looked but I did not see it.  I wanted to tell you when the fighting began.  After, I hoped that I might discover it among the bodies, but I had no fortune there either.  That was when I thought that it might not have been traveling in their company to begin with.”

Slowly: “Then, if that Orc was not with the others…”

“…it may be that both of your daughter’s captors live.”

“And my daughter with them,” said Fírhador.  Culas said nothing.  “Did you speak of this to Túchir?”

“I did.”  Culas began walking again.

“And?”

“He told me not to speak of it.  He said that the glimpse I had of the Orc was too fleeting, that it mattered little in any case.  That your daughter is certainly dead, whether the Orcs who killed her were Uruk-hai or not.  That it would be wrong if I encouraged you to think otherwise.”

“And what do you think?” asked Fírhador.

“I do not think your daughter lives.”  Culas paused as if leaving him space to protest, but he said nothing.  “I thought it unlikely after I saw what was done to Alhael, but I prayed that I was wrong.  I could not bear to think my friend had died for nothing.  Yesterday, however, I had the chance to see what Orcs really are.  I do not think any child of the Eldar can hope to survive more than a day in their company…and it has been four days since your daughter was taken.  I believe the Uruk leader spoke true when it said what it did.”

“As does Túchir—yet you have gone against his instructions.”

Culas nodded.  “It would have been wrong for me to keep this from you.  I think your daughter does not live, but I believe her killers do.  That is something you are entitled to know.”

Fírhador was silent.  “Thank you,” he said at last.  Though it hurt that Culas believed Eleluleniel dead, he could only be grateful for what the scout had imparted.  He had to frown, though, thinking of Túchir.  That the other Elf should have thought to keep this from him!  “I can no longer expect any support.  Túchir is influential among our peers.  If I ask for assistance in my searching he will say I recruit for a foolish cause.  If even you think my belief is wrong, I cannot hope for help from others.”

“I would not say that.”  Culas gave him a steady look.  “These Yrch have robbed us both.  I will not rest until I see them pay with their lives.”

Fírhador took a breath and let it out again, relieved to know that he still had one ally.  “It would seem, then, that our hunt is not yet over.”

The discussion that followed was dispassionate and to the point.  They spoke of practicalities: of rest before returning to the search, of the supplies that they would need.  Horses, they agreed, were the only possible option.  They could no longer hope to accomplish anything scanning for a trail on foot: it had already been four days.  Rather, they would need to make broad sweeps of terrain and look to see what they could find in that fashion. 

All the while they made their plans, Fírhador thought of Thalawen.  She had not wanted him to leave before.  How would she react when she found out his search was not over, that he returned only to set out again?  Each time the thought came to him he pushed it away.  It is for Eleluleniel.  It is for her daughter also.  She will understand.

Chapter Text

Veisiliel broke her long silence today.  At my writing earlier I lost track of all time and had completely forgotten about feeding her or Mother or myself, when suddenly I felt that I was being watched, and there she was in the doorway.  I asked her why she watched me so and she told me she was hungry.  What a sight I must have looked at that moment.  I actually stammered in reply, I was so surprised to receive an answer. 

She is not very talkative but at least it is a beginning.  Father will be glad to know she speaks again.  I only wish he were here.  He rode out again yesterday at noon.  He spent an hour in Mother’s little room downstairs before his departure, but there was never a sound from within.  Mother was quiet with the ladies today.

…

It has been nine days.

The healer says that staying indoors prevents my hip from healing properly.  Veisiliel did not want to go outside but I made her accompany me anyway.  I am tired of feeling as if we are always in hiding.  We walked around the perimeter of the house and I held her hand all the while, and it is not the first time that I have thought this but I can never be a mother, I do not like holding hands with little ones.  It is such a warm moist business.  Nonetheless we performed two full rotations, and when she said she wanted to go inside I was glad enough to do so, for my hip hurt me.  She said little afterwards but at dinner remarked that perhaps tomorrow we might walk the outer perimeter under the trees.  I thought this was a good idea. 

Perhaps I will be able to persuade Mother to go outside with us, once I have made up a comfortable place for her to sit. I am sure that the sun and the open air would do her good.

…

I snapped at Veisiliel today and I would have felt badly after, only it was so tedious at breakfast watching her stir her spoon in dreary circles through her porridge until I finally could no longer stand it and told her to Eat It, It Will Not Disappear On Its Own.  She jumped a little in her seat and gave me a hurt look, but at least it was not the frightened rabbit look that she has worn of late, and she answered me pertly as well, which is reassuring in its own right. 

I do not like to scold, though.  It puts me in mind of Alageth and how she would snap at us when she was irritated, and how easy it was to irritate her.  I write that last, I confess, with some measure of satisfaction.  Looking back, I know that I took some pleasure in baiting her simply because it was so very easy to do.  What a dreadful sister I am.

…

Father has come and gone again.  This last visit of his was all too short.  It is interesting that I should call them that, the times when he is home.  I just noticed that now.  And yet that is what they feel like: visits, swift and fleeting. 

I think that Veisiliel is making up for lost time: she is a perfect saucebox of late.  I will not say I wish she was quiet again but is there no happy medium?

-.-.-.-

“Nevvy?”

“What is it, Veisiliel?”

“When you sit and write like that, what are you writing?  Is it a story?”

Nevhithien shrugged absently.  “Everything is a story, Veisiliel,” she said.  Struck by what had been intended as a casual remark, she scrawled it in the margin of the page.  She felt pleased with her own cleverness.

Veisiliel padded up beside her, peering at the crowded page over her sister’s elbow, which Nevhithien made no attempt to shield.  Veisiliel did not know Tengwar.  “Your script is not so pretty as Leni’s.”

Now Nevhithien did look up as, stung, she pushed the creamy sheets out of Veisiliel’s line of vision.  “That is because I do not waste my time on curlicues and gewgaws.”  As soon as she said it she felt guilty, realizing it sounded like a criticism of their absent sister.  “That is to say, I have other aims in my writing.” Veisiliel was looking at her curiously, so Nevhithien leaned forward on one elbow, twirling her pen a little as she tried to explain.  “I seek to write to the moment, to describe the world around me and the events that take place.  To make a record of what transpires.”

“Do you think that you would forget otherwise?”

“No.”  Unable to find an explanation that didn’t sound pretentious, Nevhithien decided to change the subject outright.  “What do you want, little sister?”

“I am bored.”

“No one can be bored who makes use of her imagination.”

“Oh, you ALWAYS say that,” complained Veisiliel.  “Well, I have no imagination then, and I think you must not either.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I do not think you have nearly so much to write as you pretend.  I think that you are just playing at it.  Sometimes you write but mostly you just sit and stare at the desk and tap your pen against your teeth.  Trying to look important.”

Perhaps it was because she had been interrupted at her writing: she was always a little out of sorts when jarred from her books or her pen.  Perhaps it was Veisiliel’s petulant tone, or maybe she had aimed too near the mark.  Whatever the reason, Nevhithien felt a surge of irritation.  “Well I like that!  So speaks the child who cannot pen a line of script, who cannot read a word of it, who does not know one character!”

Veisiliel’s mouth fell open and she backed away.  “It is not my fault I cannot pen script!  I—I—”  She turned abruptly and fled. 

Nevhithien sat blinking in her chair.  Annoyance faded as quickly as it had arisen, to be replaced with guilt instead.  Guilt, and sudden concern.  True, she should not have spoken so to her sister, but Veisiliel’s response seemed out of proportion to a few ill-tempered words.  The chair scraped on the floor as Nevhithien rose to follow her sister.

She found her in very short order.  The door to their mother’s vacant room was closed, and she could hear the sniffling sound that was coming from within.  Entering quietly, she saw Veisiliel lying on the bed with her face pressed against the pillow.  “Little sister, I am sorry I hurt your feelings.  Will you tell me what is wrong?”  Veisiliel made a response of some sort, but the words were muffled.  Sighing, Nevhithien crossed to the bed and sat beside her.  “Tell me,” she said again.

Veisiliel’s damp face turned upward, the picture of misery.  “It is not my fault I cannot pen script.  She was supposed to teach me!  When my Cirth were better, when my runes were perfect, she said she would teach me my Tengwar.  But she is not here!  It is her fault, not mine!”  And she pressed her face down into the pillow again.

Nevhithien stared down at her.  “Oh little sister…”  She started to put her hand on Veisiliel’s back, but Veisiliel gave an angry wriggle.  Feeling her usual sense of inadequacy in such situations, Nevhithien did the only other thing she could think of, which was to lie down on the bed as well.  She regarded Veisiliel’s quivering shoulders for a moment.  “You know it is not Leni’s fault.  It is not her fault, and it is not yours either.”

A sniffle.  “…I know.”

“Will you let me hug you now?”

Another sniff.  And then Veisiliel turned onto her side, looking at Nevhithien with annoyance.  “Why do you have to ask first?  Leni never asked.  She just did it.”

Nevhithien flinched as if she had been struck.  “I am not Leni, Veisiliel.  I wish that I was, but I am only myself.  Do you think I do not miss her as much as you do?”  She didn’t try to keep the hurt from her voice.

Suddenly penitent, Veisiliel squirmed up against her, putting her arms around Nevhithien’s neck.  “I am sorry, Nevvy!”

Nevhithien held her back and closed her eyes.  “I know, little sister.  I am sorry too.”  She felt very tired.  It was past noon and, while they were both under stress, she wondered if the time of day wasn’t also a factor.  “Maybe we should just stay here for a while,” she murmured.  She knew better than to use the word nap, not if she wanted Veisiliel to comply. 

There was no immediate response.  Veisiliel stopped gripping Nevhithien after a time and they lay quietly side by side.  It was quiet for so long that Nevhithien finally thought her sister must have fallen asleep.  She did not move but opened her eyes, staring up at the ceiling, and then turned her face toward the far wall from the bed.  A gray shadow moved on the wall: the sun was coming through the window at an angle, shining through the gauzy curtains to create the illusion of a shifting shroud.

Nevhithien watched the shadow and its gentle permutations, and thought about where they were.  In their mother’s bed, in their mother’s room.  She thought of how the room had looked when they came back that day: how the bedding had been all pulled apart, and the dresser pulled away from the wall; how her mother’s things had been on the floor.  Now it was white and clean and impeccable…and empty, void of her presence.  Knowing that she was in the same house, just a floor removed in the room made up for her below, made it somehow even emptier.

“Nevvy?  When will Papa bring Leni back?”

Nevhithien was not expecting the question, but it didn’t take her entirely off guard.  “I do not know, Veisiliel,” she said truthfully.  “Soon, I hope.”

“It has been a long time.”

“It has been two weeks.”

The little girl sighed.  “That is a long time for me.”  A brief silence.  “…Nevvy?”  She swallowed.  “They think Leni is dead.”

Nevhithien’s heart plummeted.  She turned her face back toward Veisiliel, staring at her.  “Who thinks that?” she finally whispered, terrified that Veisiliel was going to say it was their parents.

Veisiliel looked at her, biting her lip, and then the words spilled out: “When they come and bring food.  I hear them talking: Himeth, and the other ladies.  I hear them talking by themselves.  They say it is terrible.  That it is so sad for our family.  That maybe we are going to leave now.  That Mama talks about our going away.”

That Mother talks about…  “Mother is very sad,” said Nevhithien slowly.

“We cannot go!  How will we find Leni if we stop looking and go away?”

Seeing Veisiliel’s increasing agitation, Nevhithien was quick to reassure her.  “We will not go away anywhere.  You see how Father is, how he comes back only to leave again.  He is bent on finding her.”

“But what if—”  Veisiliel broke off.

“Yes?”

 There was a quaver in her voice.  “What if she is dead?”

It was the question Nevhithien had feared now for some time, and she had not known how she was to answer it.  So she was surprised at what came out of her mouth.  It was a laugh, as if what Veisiliel had said was so implausible as to be funny.  “Oh Veisiliel, that is just silly.  Leni is not dead.”

Veisiliel turned her face fully toward Nevhithien, staring at her with her child’s eyes, searching Nevhithien’s face with an un-childlike seriousness.  Nevhithien held the gaze steadily, smiling all the while, and was relieved when she saw belief flood her little sister’s face.  “But how do you know?” asked Veisiliel, even as her body relaxed.

“Because Father says she is not,” Nevhithien said, “and I believe him.”  She did believe.  She had to at that moment.  She could not allow any doubt to creep into her voice with Veisiliel hanging on her words.  “What cause would the Orcs have to take Leni if it was just to kill her?  They needed her to make their escape.”

“But after that?”

“Then she would still have been valuable to them.”

“Doing what though?”  Veisiliel looked dubious.  “She is not such a very good cook yet, Nevhithien.  Her bread hurts my teeth.”

Nevhithien laughed.  “It is true they cannot want her for her cooking,” she said.  Veisiliel’s use of the present tense had not escaped her notice and she made sure to use it as well.  Sitting up, knowing that it would give her words greater authority if she was upright, she gestured as she spoke.  “Perhaps for her embroidery?  She is very good with a needle.”

“I do not think these Orcs care for embroidery,” said Veisiliel, wrinkling her nose as she too sat up.  “Their clothes were ugly, and they smelled bad.”

“Perhaps they want her for mending, then.  That is very easy for Leni.  Think of all the times that she has mended your own garments, and hers, and mine.”

“That is true…” Veisiliel trailed off, and then her eyes widened.  “Oh Nevvy!  Maybe they will ransom her!”

Nevhithien blinked.  “Ah…”

“Like the bad Men in the tales—and the Orcs too, the Orcs too!  They would ransom captives sometimes and give them back for gold and silver!”  She looked at Nevhithien eagerly.

Nevhithien’s scholarly sensibilities launched a loud protest.  “Well, that was very long ago, in times of war, and those were very important prisoners…”

“Yes, but Leni is important to us and the Orcs would know that.”

Nevhithien swallowed her hesitation, seeing her little sister’s excitement.  What, after all, was the harm in allowing her this little fantasy?  And truthfully it had appeal for Nevhithien as well.  “Yes, it is quite possible,” she agreed.

Her sister deflated suddenly.  “But we would have had something by now…a message…a letter…” she said glumly.

“Orcs probably cannot write very well. Maybe it is taking them a while,” said Nevhithien dryly.  This earned a giggle.  Encouraged, she expanded, “Two weeks.  No, that is not long enough—they will need twice as long as that.”

“They should ask Leni for help.”  Veisiliel grinned.  “But they are probably too stupid for her to teach them!”

“Yes, she has given up on them by now.”  Nevhithien chuckled.  “They are trying to form their letters and she is praying to the Rodyn.  She is saying, ‘Elbereth preserve me from these awful Orcs.  They cannot tell their telcos from their lúvas.’”  Even as she said it, she felt sheepish.  “Oh…”

“I cannot tell them apart either,” said Veisiliel, though she laughed a little.

Nevhithien did not.  “It was very unfair of me to say that to you, little sister.  And I have been remiss.”  Leni had not only been Veisiliel’s chief playmate but her teacher, schooling her in history, in reading and writing and in basic arithmetic.  Two weeks without the stimulation of lessons of any sort—it was no wonder she’d grown bored and peevish.   “Would you like to learn Tengwar, Veisiliel?”

“Well yes, but how can I without Leni?”

“I will teach you, of course.  Where do you think Leni learned hers from?  Haenes taught Alageth and me, and I was the one to teach Leni.  There is nothing to stop me from teaching you as well.  I only wonder why I did not think of it before.”

Veisiliel’s face brightened.  “Really?  But…Leni said we should wait until my Cirth was better.  And I…”

“Yes?” Nevhithien prompted her.

“I have not written anything at all in so long,” Veisiliel said, her voice lowered in embarrassment.

“Then that is the first thing we will change.”  Nevhithien stood resolutely.  “Come on you, get up.  We will begin at once.”

-.-.-.-

Lessons saw a definite improvement in both their moods.  Veisiliel was much more cheerful now that she had something to occupy her time, and she was more studious than Nevhithien had expected.

It is our third day of lessons and I am very proud of Veisiliel.  She puts great effort into her Cirth and does well in her other subjects also, though sums made her anxious.  Her runes are very nearly perfect, and I have told her that tomorrow I will begin teaching her real Tengwar in the mode of Beleriand.  It is easier to learn and more of my books are written in that mode than in the mode of Gondor, though Gondor’s script is the more practical to know in this Age and she will have to learn that as well.  I must think about these things, but of course it matters little to Veisiliel.  She is only excited to begin writing as Leni and I do.

Had circumstances been otherwise, Nevhithien might have become smug about her prowess as a teacher.  As it was, she knew that much of Veisiliel’s eagerness to learn stemmed from her profound belief that their missing sister would be restored to them, and a desire to impress Leni and to make her proud when that day came.

One morning Veisiliel woke Nevhithien in a great flurry of excitement to tell her that she had just seen their father leading Tálagor to the stable, with Culas and his own horse following behind.  Nevhithien dressed quickly and they both hurried down to the kitchen.  When the two wanderers came in after caring for their mounts they found hot breakfasts already waiting.

“My sweet girls!”  Fírhador caught Veisiliel up in his arms.  As she kissed his cheek he winked over her shoulder at Nevhithien.  “What did you think you were doing, making all of this food when we have been eating nothing but road fare?  Our poor shrunken stomachs cannot take it!”

“They can and will,” said Nevhithien, laughing at him, though inside she did not much feel like laughter.  Her father looked leaner than on his last return home, and his once cheerful eyes held a private sadness now at all times, even in moments like this when he was smiling.  His companion Culas stood leaning in the doorway to the kitchen, watching with a half smile of his own.  Smile smile smile, and none of them mentioned Leni or the fact that she had not been found.  Those unsaid words inhabited the room, more real than any that were spoken. 

Over his breakfast Fírhador talked often, as if trying to cover the ghost-words.  When he stood his plate was still half full of food.  “I will go see if your mother is awake.”  Nevhithien turned her head to watch him leave, and wondered that he had not done so straight away on his arrival. 

“My arm is all better now,” Veisiliel was saying to Culas.  “See?”  She held it out to him.

“Ah, very good…but can you make a fist?  You will have to make a fist before we can declare a full recovery,” he said.  She did so, and he told her sternly to make a better one, and when she had clenched her hand to his satisfaction he remarked with great enthusiasm on her grip and on the swell of her childish bicep.  “I now pronounce you fully healed.”

Culas was a sober youth.  He knew how to be with little children, how to say the things that made Veisiliel giggle and laugh, but when he was not talking to her he was very quiet.  Nevhithien didn’t have much to say to him either.  When she looked at him she thought of his friend who had died trying to rescue her sister, and when she thought of his friend she thought of Afrted, who had died saving her.  Her father had told her the Orc that had killed Afrted and hurt her and her mother was dead, that he had put its body in the earth himself, yet she still dreamt sometimes of its burning red eyes.  She thought of all of this when she saw Culas, and so when she spoke with him she either said too little or much too much. 

Having something in common, contrary to what others may think, does not always make for easy conversation, she thought wryly.

Culas looked in her direction just then, as Veisiliel continued to chatter, and Nevhithien did not avert her gaze.  He returned it without any expression on his face at first; then he gave that half smile again, and there was something ironic about it, as if he had seen something of her thoughts and shared the sentiment.  Nevhithien smiled back and shrugged.  It was a small exchange and did not perhaps mean much, but it made her like him more than she had before.

Just then Fírhador returned.  “You will have to forgive me if I do not rejoin the three of you.  There is something I must see to.”  He stood on the threshold, not fully entering the room.  He was not looking at them.

Looking to cover the awkwardness of the moment and her own disquiet, Nevhithien said that of course there was no trouble about it, she and Veisiliel would just set something aside for him to eat later.  Then Culas stood and said that he would also take his leave.  This was only understandable—Fírhador had established no definite time he would be finished with whatever was going on—but Nevhithien caught the look in the other Elf’s eyes as he addressed her father. 

And then it was her alone in the kitchen with Veisiliel, looking at the partial plates of food that Fírhador and Culas had left behind.  Veisiliel was crestfallen, and Nevhithien did not feel much better.  “Well,” she said, “I suppose that we had better tidy up.”

There was a feeling of unrest after that.  They made some meager attempts at study but Veisiliel’s heart was not in it and Nevhithien finally suggested it might be better to stop and take up later where they had left off.  At this point Veisiliel disappeared into her own pursuits and Nevhithien, at a loss for anything else to do, did the predictable thing and opened her journal. 

She began rereading her entries of the past few weeks, but the words made no sense, or if they did, they seemed shallow and meaningless.  Taking up her pen, Nevhithien tapped her teeth.  She planned to write of her happiness at their father’s return, her hope that he might be able to stay a few days before setting out again.  She planned to write of Veisiliel’s progress with her Tengwar.  She started to do so, but the words that found their way onto the page were not the words she had planned.  She wrote instead of the interrupted breakfast, of her and Veisiliel’s disappointment.  She wrote of the momentary affinity she had felt with Culas, and about the resentment that replaced it when he seemed to know something she did not.  And then her entry took another turn.

I wish I were an honest person.  I wish I could take risks: that I could write about the things that truly matter.  I ramble on about how Veisiliel fares with her sums or whether Mother has appetite on a given day.  There is no risk in speaking of these matters.  It is harder to put pen to that which I cannot define.  When Father’s words ring false in my ears, or when Mother says nothing when he speaks.  The sense of a conversation beyond my range of hearing, dropped at my approach.  It is harder to write about my doubts, about what keeps me worried and awake at night.  They are my parents, but I am frightened for them.

I am my father’s daughter.  I have always favored his optimism, his unassailable belief that what is wrong can be put right.  That what is lost can yet be found, and what is broken mended.  I wish I could be honest.  I try to write the things I know, the things that are concrete.  But I am fearful of that which I cannot hear.

-.-.-.-

When she was unbound, Thalawen said.  When her body had healed and she could endure the journey.  Elves are normally quick to heal but grief had slowed that process for her.  When she was unbound, she told him, she would go.

The look in his eyes hurt her heart, but when he tried to touch her thoughts Thalawen repelled him gently.  “No, beloved.  I will be my own person in this.  I will think with my own mind.  If it must be said then let it be with words.”

He drew back at the rebuff, turning away from her, and when he spoke his voice was strained.  “It is what you have wanted.  Do not pretend otherwise.”

Dishonesty had no place between them, not even to protect his feelings.  “For long and long, yes.  I do not pretend otherwise.”

“You blame me for what happened.”

“I do not blame you, Fírhador.  I blame this world you cling to.  This Middle-earth you would defend.  It is not for us; it rejects us.  The good is devoured, the beautiful taken.  I will have no more taken from me.”

“Stay.  If only for a time longer…”

“I have stayed, beloved, fifteen years.  When those I loved departed over the sea, I kept my place at your side.  I would not leave you, Fírhador, but I will have no more of this world.” 

He began to pace, began to speak quickly, and she listened to what he said and spoke in those moments that were given to her.  And did not yield, though it hurt her to watch him as he strove to master himself: hurt to see the suffering she caused.  She felt pity for him and regretted that it should come to this, for she loved him deeply.  But memories stirred in her: all the lonely days and nights that she had spent during the War when he had left her for so long, and she had feared for his safety, for all of their safety.  There had been lonely days and nights again, this time confined to her bed, the world shrinking around her to the confines of the four walls of her room, and she had lain there with nothing but the pain of her body and her innermost reflections, and the conclusions she had finally drawn.  She loved him, but she could no longer stay.

“You could come as well, you know,” she said as she watched him.  “There is a place for you also on the gray ships.”

“I cannot go,” he said, shaking his head.

“Why?”

“I cannot leave her.”

“You cannot leave what is already gone.”

He stopped and looked at her, eyes bright as flame.  “You are wrong, Thalawen, by all my love for you.  She lives.  In my heart I know it.”

“In my heart I know I will not see my daughter again on this side of the sea.  You would stay and seek endlessly for Eleluleniel.  Rather would I go to her and hold her once more in my arms in the Undying Lands.”

He took a step toward her.  “If you go, you go alone.  I will not depart on the gray ships, and Nevhithien and Veisiliel also will remain.”

She stared at him.  “You would deny our daughters passage to Aman?” she asked slowly.

He spoke from a sense of deep resolution.  “I would preserve their right to decide their own futures.”

“As parents we must make decisions for our children.”

Fírhador shook his head.  “To leave on the gray ships is not to return.  Till they are of age they will remain here, in the land that they know, in the home of their birth.  They must be allowed the years to know what they are doing, and to choose.”

“You would keep them here so long?  You would risk losing them as well?”  She saw how he flinched but continued: “Nevhithien will not reach her majority for five years, and Veisiliel for another twenty-five.  I am their mother.  Have I no say in this?”

“It is you who desires to leave.”

“It is you who keeps leaving.  Fírhador, think.  What kind of life can they have with your continual absence?  Even here you are not here, not truly.  Your mind is in another place.  You think of nothing but her—”

“Of course I think of her!  How can I not?  How can you not?”

She made an abrupt movement that sent pain through her bandaged ribs.  She gasped and Fírhador, chastened, extended a hand toward her, but she waved it away, still gasping.  “Can you believe I do not think of her?” she demanded when she could speak again.  “I mourn my lost child.  I grieve Eleluleniel.  But you would rather go mad than grieve and let her go.  Your greatest fear is that she should be dead.  Have you thought of what the alternative would mean, Fírhador?  Of the hardships that she would endure?  There was never a more gentle soul than hers.  In all the years of her life she knew nothing but tenderness and loving kindness.  She was not made to endure cruelty!”

“I know it, Thalawen.  I know it well.  And yet how else would you have it?  Would you rather she was dead?  Can you say this, truly?”  His voice was rough with emotion.

She looked away from him and was silent for a time.  When she spoke there was no longer anger, only a kind of tender resignation.  “There are those occasions, Fírhador, when wishing life upon another is no kindness.  Yet even then no mother could truly wish death upon her child.  No mother can say with honesty that she had rather her daughter were dead than living.  Rather, beloved, I say this.  Better in the hands of Ilúvatar than in the hands of monsters.”

Chapter Text

If he dozed at some point Nazluk was not aware of it.  He kept his watch as the night wore into the early dawn hours and the heavy dark began to lift.  Beneath the trees he could not see the stars wink out one by one.  He could not see the sun either but knew the sign of its rising as a slow glow began to suffuse the surrounding trees.  Somewhere a songbird made its morning trill, hailing the dawn.  Nazluk stood, idly scratching the rough skin at the back of his neck as he faced the eastern perimeter of the little clearing.  “Ho, you stinking daystar,” he said, and laughed softly.  “Can’t find me here.” 

Nazluk had always considered sunrise a personal affront.  Sunlight aggravated his eyes and skin, making him squint and smart.  It forced him to slink in shadow and shade; it limited his movements.  The sun also favored enemies: day was the province of nasty Man-people and wretched Elves.  Sun was no friend to Orcs…save possibly the Uruk-hai, and Nazluk was none too fond of them either. 

Kurbag was half-Uruk and Nazluk had odd feelings about that: at once sneering and strangely wistful, though he would never have admitted the latter to himself.  He couldn’t help but wonder what it was to walk freely in the sun, to bask in its warmth.  For all that Nazluk hated sun he liked its warmth.

The night had been a mild one—they’d made no fire, wanting to be able to move in a hurry if it became necessary, but there’d been no need for a fire anyway.  That was good.  He would not have to worry about putting it out, kicking dirt and gravel over the remaining embers.  Camp would be simple to pick up this day.  They were traveling light…though not so light as they had traveled yester-morning.  Nazluk smirked to think of the fine trove he and Kurbag had brought away from the Elf-home.  Stretching, he brushed grit from his arse and strolled into the outlying trees, unfastening his breeches as he went.

The half-Uruk was still sleeping when Nazluk returned: a dark recumbent form beneath tall tree-shade, breathing deeply.  Nazluk thought of waking him but decided their departure could wait a while longer.  In an immediate addendum he told himself he would not spend another night on guard.  If they did not find the others before evening came it would be Kurbag’s turn to keep the watch.  He had a perfectly good nose and ears, and the lack of sleep was starting to tell on Nazluk—there were dark semi-circles under his eyes and his ears were beginning to droop. 

Kurbag made an odd snorting sound and turned onto his side, causing Nazluk to squint.  Fuck, but that one could sleep deep.  As he looked in Kurbag’s direction he also noticed the crumpled form beside him.  Nazluk’s lip curled and he stalked over to look down at the body: the Elf-girl of the previous night, used and finished now.  She lay on her side, eyes glazed and lifeless, wrists still bound before her.  Her dress was hitched up over her waist, her thighs smeared with blood and dried black spunk.  They would leave her behind them when they broke camp: carrion she was now, food for whatever beasts should chance upon her when they left.

Food.  Meat enough they’d brought away with them the day before, but as Nazluk’s stomach rumbled the look he gave the dead Elf was freshly speculative.  Elves were good eating from what he’d heard, but he wasn’t sure if his stomach’s reaction was due to genuine interest or revulsion. 

Only one way to find out. 

Nazluk knelt beside her, drawing the knife at his hip.  His nostrils flared—he could smell Kurbag’s heavy musk but he could also smell Golug, and it was not a smell to his liking. Curiosity was a demanding master, though, and he put his free hand on one smooth haunch to steady the carcass for his knife.

The consequences of this simple action took several years off his life.  What should have been cold flesh contracted beneath his hand and the dead Elf’s eyes shot wide open.  A long moan escaped her lips.  Nazluk gave a strangled yelp and toppled backwards onto his arse.  He scrambled to his feet, his heart beating wildly and angrily at the source of his sudden surprise.  “Bloody fuck!  Kurbag!”

The larger Orc woke blinking, his dark features stupid with sleep.  “Huh?  Wha’?”

“That…bloody Elf…is alive!”

-.-.-.-

A hand on her hip brought her back to the world with a rush like being born, returning with unchecked velocity from a dark place far away.  The light was an assault on her eyes, and she cried out beneath the sudden weight of her flesh. 

In tales sleepers wakened do not realize where they are or recall recent events.  It takes them a moment to remember.  For Eleluleniel, there wasn't a second when she didn't know where she was and what had happened.  There was a raw angry ache between her legs and inside of her, and she did not have to pause to remember. 

Why am I alive? she thought. 

Then: It does not matter.  They will kill me now.

Over her a rapid exchange was taking place, largely one-sided and strident, and she recognized the voice of the Orc who had hit her and had hurt Veisiliel.  She cracked her eyes against the morning light to see him gesticulating at the taller figure staring down at her.  The sight of the second Orc made her squeeze her eyes shut again: still she could see him emblazoned in her mind.

He cannot see me, she told herself nonsensically, I am not here, I am not here…

Suddenly she was being yanked to her feet.  The slighter of the two Orcs had her by the front of her dress.  He was growling something in her face, something that she did not understand.  She did not know their language.  She shook her head helplessly and he hit her.  “Stop!” she cried.  “I do not understand!” 

The Orc sneered.  “Don’t understand, eh?  Yes, I imagine you wouldn’t.  Stupid twat, why aren’t you dead?  There is some Golug witchery here, yes?”  His Common was difficult to understand; his intent, however, was clear enough as he produced a knife, brandishing it before her eyes.  “Is it proof against a blade, I wonder…?”

“Oi!”  A sudden rush, a black spiral as the knife was knocked away.  Pain wrenched through her shoulder as she was jerked from her tormentor’s grasp, to be confronted instead by the one who had raped her, by the face that had gone from savage to stupid over her, those same brutish features overlain now with a kind of vast bewilderment. 

Eleluleniel did not see this.  All she saw was a wide mouth, a slick tongue passing over yellow teeth…feral green eyes, fixed and unseeing…leathery gray skin creased in a savage rictus as he grunted over her…

“No,” she gasped.  She struggled and, with an impossible burst of effort, managed to pull free.  Kurbag made no attempt to catch her.  There was no need.  Without his strength to support her, the Elf girl wavered and fell, weak as a newborn foal.

Kurbag’s sudden intervention had startled Nazluk into momentary silence.  Regaining his tongue, he snarled and folded his arms across his chest, speaking in Orkish: “Fine then, you do it.  You brought her in the first place, you kill her.”

“But she’s supposed to be dead already.”  The half-Uruk was still staring down at the Elf girl.  “Isn’t she?” 

“Supposed to be but clearly isn’t.”  Nazluk prodded her roughly with his boot.  “Maybe the little slut wanted it, hmm?”  He said it contemptuously but knew it for a false conclusion.  He knew the sounds of pain and terror when he heard them, and he had heard them aplenty the night before.  Kurbag, however, looked thoughtful, as if giving the notion due consideration.  Nazluk rolled his eyes.  “In any case, we need to be rid of her.  So long as she’s alive, she may draw more of her filthy kind upon us.”

“You weren’t worried about that last night…”

“She was supposed to be dead by morning!”

“But she’s not.”  Kurbag dropped into a low squat over the Elf girl, rocking a little on his heels as he looked down at her.  Her face was pressing into the grass and as his shadow fell across her she shrank further in on herself.  Her head was in the crook of her bound wrists, her fists clenched over it, fingers curled tightly into her palms.  He leaned forward and touched the back of one hand, fascinated to see how it tightened further.

“She may die yet,” he said at last, standing.  “Let’s get it together if you want to be moving.”

Nazluk stared at Kurbag over the prone body of the Elf, the dumbfounded look on his face almost comical.  “You’re not going to kill her?  You’re just going to leave her here?”

Kurbag sat on his bed roll.  He grunted as he reached for one of his boots.  “I didn’t say that.”

“Well you’re not bringing her with us!  Didn’t you hear what I said?  There might be more of her kind after us.  Gorthaur’s balls, I’ll kill her if you won’t.”  Exasperated, Nazluk picked up his knife again but made no move to use it.  Kurbag had fixed him with a warning look.

“Bugger you, Nazluk.  You said she was mine to kill and she is.  Anyhow, I don’t think she’s dangerous.”

“You don’t think at all!” Nazluk snapped.  “She’ll only slow us down.”

A shrug.  “So if she does I’ll gut her.  Come, I’ve already got my boots on in the time you’ve spent bitching at me.  Tend your own business and let me keep mine.”  Kurbag turned his back on Nazluk as he began to roll up the sleeping mat.

Angry but impotent, Nazluk hissed and whirled on his heels.  He knew that the upshot of this was only delayed, that the Elf would be dead soon enough.  Nonetheless he swore under his breath as he gathered up his belongings.

-.-.-.-

The arguing between the two Orcs had stopped for a space.  They had been at it for nearly an hour: mostly the Elf-killer, in a tone that alternated between coaxing and sarcastic, before the taller Orc responded with enough heat to quell him for a time.  Now they traveled mostly in silence, and any words they exchanged were brief and, Eleluleniel thought, carefully neutral, for all that they were in a tongue she did not understand.

She walked with her eyes on the ground at first.  The ground was uneven beneath her feet and she was frightened of falling with her hands still bound before her; she was even more afraid of locking eyes with her captors or of doing something else to draw their attentions.  The Elf-killer, she knew, was eager to be rid of her.  His fellow seemed of a less murderous disposition, but she had another reason to fear him now.

The more afraid because he had let her live and she did not know what to think of her reprieve.  She had lain in the grass fully expecting to be killed, but when he put his hands on her it was to raise her up, to give her water as he had the night before.  She was afraid to drink, remembering what had come after, but all he did was draw her up and set her on her feet.  “Walk,” he told her and she obeyed, though movement deepened her hurt, had even made her bleed.  She had felt it beneath her dress and been ashamed. 

Her wrists were still bound before her, and as she walked they slid back and forth across her belly.  Her lowered eyes fixed upon her hands.  They seemed somehow alien, as if they were not a part of her body.  There were grass stains around the fingers, and a dark mark across the knuckles of one of them.  She stared at it and wondered for a moment what it was before she recognized Veisiliel’s kiss.  Tears blurred her vision, and in that moment’s distraction her foot caught on an unseen root: she cried out and stumbled forward.  He had half-turned at the sound and, horrifyingly, she fetched up against his leather-clad side.  At once she wrenched her body away and would have overbalanced were it not for his hand on her elbow, keeping her from falling. 

“Oi.  Watch yourself.”

“Idiot!” snapped the Orc behind her.  “Will you not kill the little bitch and be done with it?!” 

His fingers tightened as he raised his eyes to glare over her shoulder.  “Will you not shut your mouth lest I shut it for you?”

He was holding her trapped between them.  The other Orc had come up close behind her and she could feel his angry breath on her neck.  The proximity of both made her skin crawl: she thought that she must surely scream.  What came out of her mouth instead surprised her.  “Please,” she said to the gray hand that gripped her elbow, “untie me.”  Their focus on one another had loosed her tongue, and they must also have been surprised for they stopped arguing.  Wetting her lips, she said, “If you untie me I will not be so clumsy, I know that I will not.  Please untie my hands.  It is hard for me to walk with them bound.”  She raised her head as she spoke, making herself look in the eyes of the one who held her.

“You should be glad of walking in the first place!” snapped his fellow.

“What have your hands to do with it?” he asked. 

His eyes were unnerving but his grip relaxed the barest of increments: she could feel it, and the illusion of ground gained heartened her.  At the same time she hesitated, searching for the words to explain herself.  “They help my balance, and allow a means of support, and of catching myself if I fall.  And the rope hurts my skin.  Will you… Please untie me.”  She hated herself, for she felt as if she were begging.  And yet she spoke in the most level voice she could: it was plain truth she uttered.

“‘And the rope hurts my skiiiiiin’… Poor wretch, how it suffers.  I know!  We could cut your hands off!  Would you prefer that?  Or would you rather we break your legs?” offered the Elf-killer maliciously.

She made herself ignore him.  “Do you think that I will run if you untie me?” she asked the tall Orc.

“Won’t you?” he asked in return.

Have a care!  Oh have a care, Eleluleniel, lest you trap yourself with falsehood.  “Where is there for me to run?”

A snarl from behind.  “Kill her, Kurbag.  Kill her, or gag her again, but shut her up.  Just because I must smell her doesn’t mean I have to hear her.”

“Don’t listen then, if it bothers you so.”  He looked at her thoughtfully.  “I suppose it makes no great difference.”  His fingers tightened on her elbow again and she gritted her teeth as he drew her toward him.  Lifting her bound wrists, he held them level with her head as, with his other hand, he began to pick apart the knotted cord.  This elicited a torrent of angry Orkish from behind her, which he ignored beyond a muttered, “Nadal goj-lat, Ologru.”

She held her ground while he unwound the last of the cord from her wrists, forcing herself to stand docilely when she wanted nothing more than to yank away.  She knew that that would be unwise.  “Thank you,” she said to him. 

He was pulling the cord through his fingers again as he had the night before, looking at her as he had then, but then he turned.  She had barely time to realize this was the sign for them to start walking again when a vicious shove came from behind, followed almost immediately by a second. 

“Enough of this, you little worm, move!  Go on, go on.”

Gasping at the sudden onslaught, she managed somehow to maintain her footing and to walk quickly forward while the other Orc drove her viciously from behind.  Even as she clenched her jaw under his abuse, she risked a glance down at her hand and at the splash of ink there.  She covered it with her other hand and imagined that she could feel it beneath, like a faint whisper of comfort against her palm.

Chapter Text

At midday they came across a brook where water bubbled over smooth black stones.  Here they made a peremptory halt, Nazluk pushing the Elf down roughly onto the mossy bank.  “Move and I’ll gut you.”  She shrank from his raised hand.  Satisfied that she wasn’t going to budge, he knelt beside the brook and set about filling his and Kurbag’s empty drinking skins. 

Kurbag, for his part, got down on his belly and put his mouth to the cold clear water.  It was good to drink as much as he wanted.  After his thirst had been appeased he splashed more against his face and throat and stood, wiping at it with the back of one hand.  

When he turned around the Elf girl was keeping very still.  Probably to avoid antagonizing Nazluk, and very sensible of her too.  Walking in front as he had, Kurbag had grown tired of listening to the tedious stream of Nazluk’s abuse.  He picked up one of the skins the other Orc had filled, holding it out to her, and she took it with a quiet word of thanks.  Kurbag shrugged noncommittally.  Orcs aren’t much for politeness and he wasn’t used to this constant please-and-thank-you business.  Then:

“You are Kurbag?” she asked suddenly, quickly, like she’d been gearing herself up for it.  Seeing how he stared at her, she faltered, “It is only…I heard him call you that.”

He glanced at Nazluk and was rewarded by the sight of the other Orc’s back gone stiff and still.  “Yeah.”

“Oh.  Oh good.  I did not know if…I mean…” 

She stopped short and Kurbag, bemused, watched as the fingers of her slender hands twined anxiously in her lap.  “If what?” he prompted.

“…if you had names.”  It was not a lie, though it was not wholly true.  She had vague memories of the long animosity between the Dwarves and the Orcs of Hithaeglir.  The Orc leaders had had names, she was sure of it, though she could not remember what they were.  Nevhithien would have remembered.  Nevhithien always knew such things.

“Of course we have names,” said Kurbag.  “What would we call each other if we didn’t?”

“I can think of a few things,” muttered Nazluk darkly.

Kurbag ignored him, studying the Elf.  “What’s yours then?”

She had been preparing herself for this question.  She had been readying herself ever since he untied her hands.  He had given her water and had untied her when she asked him, and in her mind she had built on this.  He is open to persuasion.  He is not wholly cruel.  If she talked with him, if she got him to talk with her, perhaps she could convince him to set her free.  And so when he asked for her name she gave it.

Kurbag cocked his head.  “…huh,” he said at last.  And thought, Long fucking name.

“Skai,” said Nazluk with contempt, “will you waste time with foolish chatter?  I’d just as rather be moving again if that’s your plan.”  He said it to Kurbag but he glared at Eleluleniel.  Kurbag might buy this pathetic act, but Nazluk was no fool.  Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to, you snaga twat… 

“Not before I take a leak,” said Kurbag.  He looked down at the Elf.  He had already forgotten her name.  “You gotta piss?”  She cringed but nodded and he took her arm.  “Come on then,” he said, pulling her up and after him into the trees.

She was actually feeling pain from restraining herself; nonetheless she was reluctant to go with him anywhere and her feet dragged as she followed.  The Orc did not even notice, pulling her along until he came to a likely tree.  “Stand there,” he said, pushing her to one side.  As he unfastened his breeches she shut her eyes tightly, and when he started she wanted to cover her ears.  It seemed to take a long time.

Kurbag shook himself dry afterwards and did up his laces.  The Elf girl was just standing there, stiff as a post.  “Come on then, I thought you had to go.  Never miss the chance to piss.”  He grinned a little at the way it rhymed in Westron.

“I…we need privacy for that,” she said faintly as she opened her eyes.

“You what?”

“Privacy.”  There was a blank expression on his face.  She gathered up her courage.  “Please do not look at me, during.  I will be quick.  I promise.” 

He stared at her, and she felt her face grow hot.  Then he folded his arms across his chest and leaned his shoulder against the tree, lifting his eyes deliberately to the leaves overhead.  It was a small concession, but it was clearly all he was going to give her.  Biting her lower lip, she crouched down carefully.

Privacy?  The fuck?  Kurbag was thinking.  What is that, Elf logic?  He was only inches from her.  He could hear her, he could smell her, why should averting his eyes make a difference?  Lowering them again, he could not see anything for the way she held her dress over her knees.  The image was compelling, though: her pale hair, and her slender shoulders, and the gentle curve of her back.  She looked small at that moment, vulnerable and fey.  As she finished she raised her own eyes to find him looking down at her.  She blanched and quickly pulled her dress down around her ankles again. 

“Done?” he asked, though it was obvious she was.  He caught her shoulder.  “Then come on before we get bitched at.”

Of course Nazluk bitched anyway.  “What took you so long?” he demanded as they rejoined him.  “Bloody fuck.  From the time you were taking I was starting to think you must be balling her again.” 

He might as well have hit her from the reaction he got: her face went completely white.  Kurbag only snorted.  “Come off it, Nazluk, eh?  I thought you said you wanted to get moving.”  He rubbed his forehead with a sigh.  “Oh, and you can take the lead for a while.  All that jawing of yours is giving me a headache.”

“Fine by me,” Nazluk muttered, casting his eyes upward.  It was more than time for Kurbag to take up the rear, and at least now Nazluk wouldn’t have to stare at the Elf girl’s stupid back for a while.  But as they walked he heard fragments of low exchange behind him from time to time: Kurbag’s rougher, deeper register, followed by the hesitant soft girl-voice of the Elf.  It set his teeth on edge. 

Fucking Golug.  Fucking half-Uruk bastard.  I don’t like it: she should be dead.  There’s something funny about it, something queer about her. 

I don’t like it. 

-.-.-.-

Eleluleniel did not know why she was still alive.  The only explanation she could come up with was that she was being protected in some way: that some unknown agency had intervened on her behalf.  She had called on Elbereth in her terror.  Maybe Elbereth had answered.  Yet, if the Rodyn had aided her, why had they allowed her to be hurt, and why did she remain with the ones who had hurt her?

She did not know what to think.  She only knew that she was alive and that she was in a dangerous position.  Her captors were Orcs, violent and unpredictable.  Nazluk seemed especially vicious, ruled entirely by malice, but Kurbag had violated her.  The thought of ingratiating herself with him was appalling, but he was clearly the more reasonable of the two and she did not know what else to do.  Maybe if she kept talking to him she could establish a rapport with him, appeal to his better nature.  It might be madness to think of Orcs having a better nature, but she had to try.

Asking his name and sharing hers had been the right instinct.  It made Kurbag talkative.  As they walked he asked her questions and she did her best to answer.  If the situation had been otherwise, if the one asking had been anybody else, she would have been tempted to laugh at them.  Instead she had to respond seriously to questions like, “Why don’t you wear green?  I thought all Elves wear green,” and whether it was true they talked to animals. 

“I talk to our horses sometimes,” she said, not understanding.  Many were the hours she had spent in Tálagor’s stall or with Níthir, Nevhithien’s mare.  “I bring them an apple or a carrot.”

“What do they say?” asked Kurbag.  It took her a moment to realize he was serious.

Kurbag’s knowledge of her kind was culled from what he’d heard from others, a lifetime of smutty jokes and cautionary tales, envy and superstition.  It was occasionally leavened by accounts of real tangles with Elves, but these were often even less reliable, full of boasting and exaggeration.  Because of this his ideas were fragmented and contradictory, and he had sense enough to know that at least a few of them were false.  

Well, there’s another down, he thought as she dispelled old notions of green-clad Elves exchanging conversation with large-eyed woodland creatures.  If anything he was relieved.  Creepy image, that.

Another creepy thing he’d heard: Elves lived forever…and this, she said, was true.  “Now how is that possible?” asked Kurbag skeptically.  “You’d be overrunning the place by now—and anyway, I know our lot has offed a shitload of yours.”

Her slender back hunched forward a little.  “We are immortal, yes, but not invulnerable.  We do not die of natural causes, but we can be hurt.”  As she said it she looked back at him over one shoulder, a searching look on her face.

Kurbag was still busy thinking about Elven immortality.  “I don’t buy it,” he said.  “A really long time, maybe.  But forever is a long way off.  How can you know your folk live forever when forever hasn’t come?”

“You know what I’ve heard about Elves?” asked Nazluk without changing his pace.

“What’s that?” asked Kurbag.

“They bounce.”

Kurbag guffawed at this, and Nazluk laughed also: harsh unkind laughter.  He did not turn his head, but Eleluleniel knew the cruel look in his eyes as surely as if he had.  She did not let hersef flinch: instead she looked back at Kurbag again.  Ask it, the words came into her head.  Ask him now.  “Does it please you to hurt others?”

He was still laughing at little at Nazluk’s joke and didn’t really hear what she said.  “Mm?”

“You asked about my kind.  It is what I have heard about yours.  Do…do you like hurting others?  Do you take pleasure in killing?”

He looked at her, head canting to one side.  His tongue played over his teeth.  It wasn’t something he had thought about before, and he answered without guilt or guile.  “Sure, I like it well enough.  It’s something that I’m good at.”

Kurbag’s casual honesty was as horrifying as the sense of what he said.  “Good at?”

“Well yeah.  I have to be, don’t I?  Kill to eat, kill to win.  It’s kill or be killed in this world.  Nothing your lot don’t already know.”

Stricken, she faced forward again, staring at Nazluk’s back.  “My kind takes no pleasure in killing,” she said softly.

“No?”  Kurbag was surprised.  “Maybe they’re doing it wrong.” 

Eleluleniel’s fingers moved over the dark mark on her hand as if it would protect her.

“I mean, you need to do it to survive.  Better to be good at it, to enjoy it.  Otherwise you’ll just hold back, and that can get you dead.” 

This was a philosophy like none she had ever encountered before, and it both frightened and bewildered her.  She caught at the one thing that made sense.  “Then you…you kill in order to protect yourself?”

He shrugged.  “Or if I’m pissed off.”

She could think of nothing to say to this.  At that moment she had some sense of the chasm that gaped between his sensibilities and hers.  She wondered in dismay how she could ever hope to bridge that.

Kurbag waited for the Elf to say something more.  On an unconscious level he liked it when she spoke, liked the sound of her voice.  When she didn’t, though, he wasn’t bothered by her silence.  Just looking at her was nice too.  His eyes idled comfortably on her slender frame.

Just then Nazluk stopped up ahead.  “Hah,” he said with sudden intensity.

“What?”  Nazluk held up his hand sharply and Kurbag shut up, pushing past the Elf to stand behind the other Orc instead.  Listening, he heard gravelly voices, faint but unmistakable to his keen ears.

“You hear them?”

He asked it in Orkish and Kurbag responded in kind.  “Yeah.  But they’re not our band.”

“They’re coming this way.  I’d say about…two minutes.”  Nazluk’s eyes narrowed in thought.  “Give me the sack.”  They’d divvied up much of the swag they’d taken the previous day, but what they hadn’t yet was in the sack Kurbag carried, along with the salt pork and beef.  Kurbag passed it to him and Nazluk quickly slung it over his shoulder and trekked off into the undergrowth. 

He was gone just long enough to get Kurbag nervous.  When he returned his hands were empty and he gave the half-Uruk a quick nod as he took up a position next to him.  Behind them the Elf was keeping very still, either infected by their tension or because she too had heard the approaching band.  Nazluk ignored her, saying to Kurbag in a low voice, “Just keep your head, yes?  This doesn’t have to be a problem,” as the other Orcs came into view.

The foremost Uruk, laughing at something one of his fellows had said, didn’t see them at first.  When he did he made a startled exclamation.  In short order Kurbag and Nazluk found themselves hemmed in, five Uruk-hai behind and on either side, while the rest of the band faced them front on.  Kurbag looked around with hooded eyes, his stance mildly defensive.  Nazluk, meanwhile, was noticing that the band consisted entirely of Uruk-hai, with no regular Orcs to speak of.  Shit, he thought, though he tried not to betray his misgivings.

A large Uruk carrying a battleaxe stepped forward.  From his authoritative manner and the deference of the others, it was clear he was their leader.  “Well now, this is unexpected.  A little out of your way, lads?”

“Maybe a little,” said Nazluk.  “We were separated from our band.”

The Uruk didn’t look at him.  His eyes were fixed on Kurbag.  “Yeah,” said Kurbag warily. 

Outwardly Nazluk didn’t respond to the snub.  Inwardly, he bristled.  Bastard, he thought.  Damn Uruk bastard… but he forgot his anger at what the Uruk said next.

“You wouldn’t happen to be Bragdagash’s strays, would you?”

Kurbag’s shoulders straightened.  “Bragdagash?  You’ve seen Bragdagash?”

The Uruk nodded and gestured to the others in his party.  “Dushgar.  This lot are under me.  You Molurtz or Kurbag?”

“Kurbag,” he said, relaxing more, “and Nazluk.  Molurtz didn’t make it.”

“Your chief thought the same of you.”  Dushgar grinned, exposing jagged yellow teeth.  “Hear you boys had a problem with some Elves.”

“More like they had a problem with us.” Kurbag felt like he could afford a joke at this point, even if it wasn’t very clever.  “We didn’t know they were there.”

“And what’s that then?”  Dushgar nodded in the direction of the Elf girl.

Kurbag started to open his mouth.  “Rations,” Nazluk interjected sharply.

Dushgar actually laughed at this.  “Rations, eh?”  He walked toward them.

Eleluleniel shrank a little as the large Orc approached.  His eyes were on her, red and dark and shining as blood welled from a freshly pricked finger.  He didn’t seem to have pupils.  She wanted to back away but was too keenly aware of the other Orcs behind her.  Instead she moved closer to Kurbag, fixing her gaze on his heels so she wouldn’t see those amused red eyes looking down at her.

“More than rations from the smell of it,” Dushgar said with a low chuckle, which was echoed by several of the Orcs in his party.  

“Yes, well,” said Nazluk, tired of the small talk.  “Where was it you saw Bragdagash again?”

“You know, I don’t believe I said,” said Dushgar, nonchalantly running his thumb along the edge of his battleaxe.  “Want to find him, do you?”  He addressed the question to Kurbag, who maintained a silence that could have been construed as stoicism.  Actually, he was extremely discomfited.  Dushgar was in his personal space, as was the axe.  “You know, I don’t entirely understand how this happened, your getting separated and all.  A few little arrows flying out of the dark and you all fled with your tails between your legs, is that it?  At least that’s how it seemed when it was described.  But maybe I’m being harsh.  What do you think, Yargul?” he asked, stepping back toward his fellows.

The Uruk at Dushgar’s right flank looked like he was enjoying himself.  “I dunno, chief.  Sounded pretty gutless to me.”

“Chickenhearted, in my opinion,” said the one on his left.  “Running from a few pissant Elves?  They’re not so tough.”

“You would have handled it differently, of course.”  The corner of Nazluk’s mouth twisted as if he had bitten into something sour.

“Damn straight!  We waylaid a bunch of them yesterday after leaving your lot.  Easy as taking a shit!  Next time they see Orcs they’ll know better than to try anything, right chief?”

“Now now, let’s not be too full of ourselves.  After all, it looks like these fellows have had a few adventures in the meantime, eh?  I’m wondering where they got the girl, and what else they might have picked up.  You lads wouldn’t object if we had a look at those packs you’re carrying, would you?” asked Dushgar lazily.

Of course they wouldn’t, and even if they had, what good would it have done?  They watched while their packs were upended and the other band pawed over the stuff on the ground.  As the shining treasures from the Elven household were confiscated, Kurbag tried to look on the bright side, thinking of the sack Nazluk had hidden.  At least we still have that, he thought to himself, just as a faint breeze moved through the trees where they stood, carrying on it the faint smell of salt pork.  Kurbag stiffened.  Maybe he was just imagining things…

“Uftar, why don’t you go see what that is?”

The lefthand Uruk grinned and trotted off in the direction that Nazluk had taken the sack.  Fuck, thought Kurbag, and looked at Nazluk, who was standing with his arms folded tight across his chest, his wide thin lips pressed together.  He glanced behind himself at the Elf and was actually startled by her proximity.  He hadn’t realized she’d come so close.

Uftar returned carrying the sack.  He brought it straight to Dushgar, who opened it and looked within.  “Well now.  You were busy, weren’t you.” 

He didn’t seem annoyed at the attempted duplicity, just pleased at the discovery of more loot.  Since there was nothing else to lose at this point, Kurbag decided to prevail on Dushgar’s evident good humor.  “How about our band then?”

“Just follow our trail back a ways, perhaps a day’s journey.  You should come to a deep gully with long overhanging tree roots on the other side.  They were camped there—we met them in the morning hours.  As for where they went after that, I have no idea.”  He closed the bag, shifting his attention to the other Orcs in his band.  “All right you ugly bastards, fall in.  We’ll push on a little further.”

“Hey chief,” spoke up one of the Uruk-hai behind Kurbag, “what about her?  She’s not a bad little piece.”  He extended a clawed hand toward the Elf girl’s shoulder.

“Don’t be greedy, Bugrim.  As generous as these lads have been with us, the least we can do is leave them their ‘rations.’  Besides, you’ll only end up fighting over her.”

“Aw…”  Bugrim did not seem convinced but fell in with the other Uruk-hai anyway.

Dushgar himself lingered, hefting the sack with a genial smirk.  “Well, this was a profitable encounter.  Maybe we’ll run into each other again some time.  Say hello to Bragdagash for me, eh?”  He laughed and turned away.  Neither Kurbag nor Nazluk said anything as he fell in with the hindermost of his company, sack slung jauntily over one shoulder.  They stood among the scattered remnants of their packs and watched the band of Uruk-hai until they were lost amid the trees.

-.-.-.-

“Those muscle-headed Uruk fuckstains.”

Kurbag nodded agreement, watching as the fire cast twisting shadows through the dangling tree roots.  They had come many miles since their run-in with the other band, and were camped in the gulley Dushgar had described to them.  They had gotten that out of the encounter if nothing else: a sense at last of where they were going and a definite plan of action for getting there.  Finding the remnants of their own band’s fire and building one of their own was some small consolation for other frustrations.

Nazluk had had some creative things to say about Dushgar and his Uruk-hai once they were out of earshot, and he was still griping about it.  Nazluk did that, dwelled on things, picked over them like a dog worrying a bone.  Of course losing their spoils bothered Kurbag as well.  Going to all that effort just for somebody else to reap the benefits was galling, and he said as much.

“Gah.”  Nazluk was a few years older than Kurbag and was used to sudden changes in fortune.  He scowled into the heart of the fire.  “It’s their contempt that I can’t stand,” he said bitterly.  “Their contempt and their bloody cock-certainty.”

Kurbag gave him a look of disbelief.  “How’s that?  Losing all that shiny stuff didn’t mean anything to you?  It certainly meant something to me.” 

Nazluk lifted his gaze to Kurbag, measuring him for a long moment.  Then he put a hand to his left shoulder, sliding his claws under the ragged sleeve of his tunic and hiking it up.  Kurbag’s eyes, confused at first, widened as gold and silver flashed in the firelight and tiny jewels glittered.  Nazluk let him have a good look.  Before hiding their sack earlier he had taken the opportunity of grabbing the bracelets within and shoving them up his arm, as many as would go.  It had not been easy.  Nazluk’s arms were wiry and lean—he would not have been able to do it otherwise—but forcing the rigid bands over the muscle of his upper arm had been painful.  They dug into his flesh, his mottled gray skin bulging between and on either side of the beautiful Elven bracelets.

“Son of a bitch!” breathed Kurbag.

Sitting beside him, Eleluleniel looked at her mother’s jewelry on the Orc’s arm, then looked away.

“Those look tight, though.  How are you gonna get ’em off?”

“You don’t think they’re pretty?” asked Nazluk dryly.

“On an ugly bastard like you?”

Both Orcs laughed but Nazluk was the first to stop, wincing as he tugged at one of the bracelets.  “It’s going to be difficult.  I’ve had them on a while.”

“You’re lucky if you don’t lose your arm.  Let me see.”  He got up and came around the fire.  Nazluk stiffened a little as the half-Uruk squatted next to him; Kurbag attributed this to the pain in his shoulder.  “Oi!  And you’re always calling me a fool.  Look at what you’ve done to yourself!”  The constricted flesh was bruised and swollen.  Orkish blood is hot by nature, but Nazluk’s skin felt hotter than it should have under Kurbag’s fingers.  “Don’t you snaga Orcs usually carry oil with you?”

“In my pack,” said Nazluk sharply.  “Just give it to me and I’ll take care of it.”

“You can try.”  Kurbag handed the pack to him with a skeptical expression.  “Looks like a two-hander to me.”

He was right, though it pained Nazluk to admit it.  He was able to take his tunic off and smear the oil on his shoulder with no problem, but working one-handed with slick fingers did not make for a good grip.  After a minute he let Kurbag take over.  Kurbag had several advantages over him.  He had a second hand available, for one thing, and he could afford to be rougher since it wasn’t his shoulder.  Nazluk hissed as Kurbag manipulated the outermost circlet of braided gold, twisting it around his shoulder like he was trying to unscrew something. 

“Garn, Nazluk.  You might have said something earlier and spared us this.  There, I think it’s loosening.”

“The bracelet or my arm?” asked Nazluk through gritted teeth.  He swore as Kurbag gave a jerk that popped it slickly over Nazluk’s bicep.

“That’s one,” said Kurbag.

“Wonderful.  He can count.”  Kurbag ignored Nazluk’s sarcastic commentary, removing each bright band in a similar fashion.  To Nazluk it seemed to take forever, but it was actually just a few minutes before eight Elven bracelets lay beside the fire. 

“Well, that’s the last of them,” said Kurbag, rubbing his shoulder.  “You’re going to be stiff tomorrow, though.”

It was tempting to remain like that, to let Kurbag continue kneading his hurt shoulder.  “Tell me something I don’t know,” Nazluk muttered, pulling away.  “You’re keeping watch tonight, yes?”

“I said I would, didn’t I.”

“Hmm.”  Nazluk turned his gaze on the Elf sitting across the fire from them.  “If you fuck her again keep it down.  I haven’t slept properly for two days.”  He said it in Westron—deliberately, so she would understand—and was rewarded with the sickening fear that flooded her face.  Bloody abject terror, nothing willing about it.  Last night, he thought, must have been some kind of fluke.  This time she’d be dead come morning.

-.-.-.-

The other Orc had gone to sleep, or seemed to have done so, lying on his pallet with his back to the fire.  Kurbag was sitting, turning one of her mother’s bracelets over in his fingers.  She recognized the piece.  It was the plainest of the bracelets Nazluk had preserved, a simple band of silver, unadorned save for the circling inscription.  He ran his thumb along the bright outer curve.  “Is this just supposed to be pretty, or does it say something?”

“Le annon vîr 'lân, ar hen annal enni.”  He looked at her, waiting.  “It says, ‘I give you bright treasure, for you give such to me.’”

“You can read all that from over there, huh?”

Eleluleniel was silent.  She could not see the inscription from where she was sitting.  She knew the words by heart.  Her father had given it to her mother when she was born. 

Kurbag put the bracelet over his fingers, up to the barrier of his knuckles, as if he meant to put it on.  He took it off again and stood, coming around the fire.

His gait was relaxed; nonetheless her limbs tightened.  “Where is it you are going, you and Nazluk?” she asked, trying to cover her fear.

“We’re looking to rejoin our band.  That lot we met earlier gave us directions.  Told us how to find them.”

She hadn’t known what was said during the encounter, which had made it all the more frightening.  The common wisdom was that Orcs were as belligerent with each other as they were violent toward other races, and Kurbag and Nazluk's tension throughout had only lent credence to this.  When nothing more sinister than robbery ensued she was relieved.  The other Orcs had been large, and there had been many of them, and she had felt their eyes on her.  As small as her chances of survival were, they would have been less than nothing if the other band had taken her.

That knowledge was not comforting at the moment.  Kurbag was standing over her now.  He hadn’t made any move to touch her, though, so she kept speaking.  "Your band?  You have been separated?  Is that why you were on our land?  Was it because you were lost?"  He sat down beside her, watching her.  She felt the panic rising up inside and tried to quell it.  If she kept speaking to him, if he spoke to her in turn, nothing would happen…

“Why are you talking so fast?” 

His eyes were intent on her.  If she lied he would see.  “I am afraid,” she whispered.

“I know.  I can smell you.”

She trembled.  She could not help it.  “Please do not hurt me.”  He raised a hand toward her and she jerked away, eyes wide.  “No!”

He thought only to touch her hair, but her sudden movement triggered predatory reflexes.  Quicker than she could evade him he caught her arm and pulled her toward him.  She started to scream; he put his hand over her mouth but she continued to struggle, making sounds behind his hand like a frightened animal.  “Stop that,” he said.  “I’m not hurting you.”  His words had no effect.  Small as she was, the terror in her slender body was tremendous.  It felt like she would beat herself to pieces in his arms.  He pushed her down onto the ground, pinning her with his upper body.  “You’re not helping yourself.  Do you want me to gag you?  I’ll bind your hands again if I must.”

She stilled gradually, though he didn’t know if the sense of what he said had penetrated or if she was simply exhausted.  In the red glare of the firelight her eyes were creased with misery.  Fresh tear tracks streaked her face.  Kurbag waited another moment before taking his hand from her mouth.  She was crying.  “Please, please do not hurt me…”

He huffed, getting off of her.  “Skai…”  Sitting again, he looked down at her, bemused.  “I wasn’t even horny.”  She continued to cry.  The side of his hand was moist from her tears.  He brought it to his mouth and sucked absently, tasting saline and dust.

Chapter Text

A pop from the fire made Kurbag look up.  A log had shifted, sending up a flurry of sparks.  Through the flames, against the rough-hewn side of the gully, dark shapes roiled and twisted.  He stared for a moment, transfixed; then he growled and looked away.  Just the shadows of the hanging tree roots.  He had noticed the effect earlier: it was disquieting, but nothing more.

He looked down at the Elf again.  She was still weeping but more softly now, her sobs replaced by shallow, shaky inhalations.  Her face was turned toward the ground.  “Come on, get up,” he said.  “I told you.  I’m not in the mood.”

She didn’t respond at first but the creak of his leather jerkin as he reached for her got her moving.  Pushing herself up awkwardly into a sitting position, she ran the back of one hand across her tear-stained face.

Kurbag grunted, settling back.  “Long night ahead.  Got to stay awake, keep my eyes peeled.”

She nodded.  She was not looking at him.

“You thirsty?”  She shook her head.  He shrugged and undid the drinking skin at his belt.  Swallowing a mouthful, he sighed and settled back.  “Plenty of water, though I could do with something stronger.  Wish those bastards hadn’t taken all our booze.  Food too, curse them.  We’re in near the same shape that we were before.” He paused, a thought coming to him.  “I guess you’re probably hungry.”

“I am, a little,” she said softly.  It was an understatement.  Had she been a child of Men, she would have been starving.  Being Elf, she was not so quickly incapacitated by hunger, but she was young and had had nothing but water since the morning of the day before.  There was a restless gnawing in her belly.

“Well, once we’ve rejoined the others they should have some food.  If we really leg it tomorrow I expect we’ll catch up to them before the day is out.”

She was holding her hands fisted in her lap; feeling her nails biting into her palms, she forced them to relax.  She was still wary, but all he was doing was talking.  His conversational turn was confusing to her, his words almost meaningless in the aftermath of her earlier panic.  I’m not in the mood, he’d said, but what if that changed?  He’d said that he could smell her fear; did he realize she was afraid now?  Was that why he kept talking to her: trying to put her at her ease?  Letting her guard down was the last thing she wanted to do!

Kurbag was aware of the Elf girl's fear.  As close as he was, there was no missing it.  He didn't care so long as she didn't start shrieking again, and was just glad she didn’t seem to have woken Nazluk with the fuss she'd made.  Kurbag was not inclined to hear more of that one's sarcasm.  In any case, he did not want to fuck the Elf.  All he wanted was to talk.  He would have spoken to Nazluk if the other Orc had been awake, but Nazluk was asleep.  The Elf was not.

“Can you see in the dark?” he asked suddenly.  She stared at him and he placed a finger under one eye, tapping.  “The dark,” he said.  “Can you see.”

“No, I…I cannot.”

“Me either.”  He said it thoughtfully.  This was one matter on which he envied the snaga Orcs: there were many times when he had thought it would be useful.  “What would you do, then, if you could see in the dark?” 

“I…”  Thoughts were coming to her of flight, of running from him, impractical thoughts born of fear and confusion and pure exhaustion.  She tried to will them away.  She could not say these things out loud, but she had to say something: he was watching her in the firelight.  “I do not know,” she said, and then, slowly, “I would go out into the garden at night.  I would walk out to the kitchen garden and wait.”

“For what?” 

“For the rabbit to come,” she said.  It was as if she saw it as she spoke.  “It comes in the night and eats the lettuces.  We find the ragged leaves in the morning and know that it has been there.  My mother has stood outside and watched for it at night, but she has never seen it.”

Kurbag grunted noncommittally.  “That’s not surprising.  It probably doesn’t come because it can smell her.”

“That is what my—what my father says.”  Eleluleniel felt a lump in her throat to think of him, as she had felt to think of her mother.  She swallowed.  “But I wonder if, perhaps, it is only that she cannot see it in the dark.  Perhaps it is in the shadow of the trellises, waiting for her to go inside again.  If I could see in the dark, perhaps I could see it there.”

“And then what?”

“And then I would see it, and it would not know that I saw it, and it would not be afraid.”

Kurbag waited, but she didn’t offer any more.  “Well,” he said matter-of-factly, “that’s not much, is it.”

She closed her eyes.  She could feel her heart hurting in her chest.

“I mean, if I could see it and it couldn’t see me, I’d make short work of it,” said Kurbag.  “Rabbit is good eating when you can get it.” 

He said more then, but she was beginning not to hear him.  Though his words in no way soothed her, she could feel her senses dulling: they had walked many miles that day and the strain had taken its toll.  She made herself listen to Kurbag in case he said something important, made quiet noises at those times when he seemed to want some kind of reply, but was unable to do much more.  There came a point when she was leaning over her folded arms, her body bowing slowly forward.  Then her head snapped up: she made a strangled sound and held herself tightly, staring at him.  Kurbag was studying her with an unreadable expression.

“Tired, huh.”  Turning from her, he fumbled with something: she could not see what at first for the obstruction of his body.  Then he stood, the sleeping mat unrolling to the ground as he did so, and let it drop.

She stared at it, immobile.  Memory flooded her of the hard thin pallet, of him pushing her onto it.

“Go on then. Unless you want to sleep on the ground.”  He sat, looking at the fire, but something made him look at her again.  She was staring at him with eyes that seemed to take up half her face.  She hadn’t moved.  “What?”

“Why are you giving this to me?” she asked in a queer voice.

He blinked at her, wondered if she was being stupid on purpose.  “Won’t be doing me any good tonight, will it?  Come on, I thought you were tired.  If you don’t sleep now you’ll just be tripping over your own feet later.”

She hesitated a moment longer.  Then she reached over and touched the edge of the mat, rubbing the material slowly between her fingers.  Evil associations aside, it posed her no threat in itself.  It was rough and it was not clean, but it was better than bare hard-packed dirt.  Her eyes fluttered toward Kurbag again.  He had shifted his gaze back to the fire, its flickering light kindling little green flames in his eyes.  There was a kind of brooding half-frown on his dark face, as if his thoughts were elsewhere.

Looking back at the pallet, Eleluleniel swallowed and felt a pricking in her eyes.  They were already sore from weeping but exhaustion mingled with indecision was bringing her to the brink of tears again.  She blinked hard, willing herself not to cry.  He said he did not want to.  He said so.  And she was tired, so tired.

Pivoting her body onto the pallet, she sat balanced for a moment on one hip before, carefully, she laid herself down facing away from him.  She lay with her knees bent, her arms folded across her chest, and tired as she was, she lay stiffly for a time, for she still feared another assault, even after what he had said to her.  But it didn’t come and it didn’t come, and gradually her limbs loosened as she slipped into the dark labyrinth of sleep.

Kurbag, for his own part, watched the fire and the writhing shadows of dark tree roots through its dancing flames, and thought of what the morning would bring.  The Elf didn’t figure in these ruminations, for Kurbag had meant it when he said he wasn’t horny.  Under other circumstances the nearness of her, the scent of her distress might have stirred him, woken his hunger, but this night he was too uneasy in his skin to think of rutting.  He didn’t like the place they were camped, its dark trees rearing blackly overhead; didn’t like their twisting roots, the shadows at their base.  It was more than just creepiness.  Backtracking Dushgar’s band had brought him and Nazluk once more within spitting distance of Golug territory.  Sitting in this dark cavity of earth, he felt isolated and exposed.  Vulnerable to attack.

Talking was a way to take his mind off the matter and pass the time; then too, Kurbag was sociable by nature.  Yet the Elf had been all but falling asleep in front of him, and if she didn’t get any sleep she would only be clumsy and foolish in the morning.  So, not thinking too deeply about it, he had given her his bedroll and let her be.

Now as he sat he became aware again of the sound of her breathing, quiet, rhythmic, fear-smell just a memory.  It was obvious that she was finally asleep.  Knowing this, he turned his head and looked his fill.  She was good to look on.  He made no move toward her at first; then he leaned over her slowly, shadow falling across her luminous form. 

He was startled at first by the sight of her blue eyes gazing into the middle distance - thought she must be awake after all - but her gaze was too steady, her breathing too regular.  It piqued his curiosity.  He held his hand above her shoulder, thinking to jog her awake, to ask if sleeping with open eyes was a peculiarity of hers or if it was characteristic of all Elves, but waking her, he knew, would set her to shrieking again, and then she would lie awake and fearful for hours.  Instead he brushed her arm with the side of his thumb.  She did not wake but made a soft unhappy sound, and her pale brow knotted in her sleep.  He ignored it, resting his hand on the softness of her upper arm, and marveled at the texture of her skin.  He thought that he had never felt anything so smooth.

-.-.-.-

In dreams she ran.

She ran barefoot through a dark forest, and the earth beneath her feet was hard and cold.  Trees rushed past on either side, tendrils of mist curling through obsidian trunks.  All of the trees looked the same, and they blurred into one another so that there was no way to tell where she was, or how far she had come.  Once she thought she heard the sound of drums.   She did not know if they came from before or behind her, but she could feel the beat of them in her body: a queer five beat pattern like nothing she had ever heard before.  As suddenly as they had risen they faded again and there was nothing, not even the sound of her own footfalls, not even the sound of her own breathing as she ran.

Sometimes as she ran she thought she saw something keeping pace out of the corner of her eye. Maybe it is the rabbit, she thought, but she could not remember what rabbit and the words, as they went through her head, were only so much nonsense.  She would look and see nothing, and then she would know that she ran alone and it had always been so.

She did not know what she was running from, or what she might be running toward. She felt as if she ran in place. She thought, It may be I shall run forever.

Yet even as she thought it her surroundings seemed to blur and recede.  She blinked…

…and found herself lying on her side, her hands curled close to her chest.  The fire was little more than a smear of char, a few sullen embers still glowing in the black.  It was morning and her mouth was as gritty and dry as the gully in which they had spent the night.  When she lifted her head the stale smell of the sleeping mat clung to her hair and she could feel the imprint of the coarse material on her cheek.  Neither sensation was a pleasant one, but somehow at that moment they were tokens of reassurance. 

He had not hurt her again.

“You awake?”

Though he spoke suddenly she did not shy from Kurbag's voice.  Of course: he still maintained his vigil.  Nodding, she sat up, brushing her loose hair away from her eyes as she turned to face him.  The Orc was sitting just as he had been the night before, cross-legged, hands on his knees.  She wondered, first in silent amazement, then tentatively aloud, if he had stayed sitting like that all night.

“Nar.  Had to get up a few times, didn’t I? Walk around, get the blood moving.  Don’t like it when my legs go dead.” He stood, kicking one foot as if to illustrate his point.  "You need to piss?” She shook her head.  “Well, I do.  Come on.”

Since there was nothing for it she stood and did not protest his hand on her elbow as he steered her around the smoldering remains of the fire.  They passed Nazluk both ways, going and coming back: he was lying on his own pallet, coiled still and silent as a snake, and she was careful not to walk too close.  Kurbag, noticing, shook his head.  “You won’t wake him, poor bastard.  He’s been up two nights running.  Be better when we’ve joined the others and can both catch up on our sleep.  Pissy as he’s been, it’ll do him good.”

“He does seem…cross,” she ventured.

Kurbag snorted.  “That’s one way of putting it.  I think he’s happiest when he has something to complain about.  There are those times when he’s half pleasant, but that’s usually because he’s asleep.”

This made Eleluleniel laugh.  It wasn’t a big laugh, but it was sudden and uncontrived, and it took her by surprise.  Then Kurbag laughed as well, and something inside her stirred with quick-dart suddenness.  Sharing laughter: that meant something, surely.  It was like permission to hope.  He could have hurt her again in the night, but he had not.  He had spared her, had even given her his own mat to sleep on.  He had been kind.  Perhaps her tears of the prior evening had touched him.  Perhaps he had spared her out of compassion.  It was more than just a reasonable explanation: she wanted to believe it.  She wanted to believe that he would let her go.

Neither she nor Kurbag saw Nazluk stir at that moment.  They did not see his eyes open at the sound of unexpected laughter, or the look of surprise and rising fury that showed briefly, nakedly, on his twisted face.

-.-.-.-

A sound night’s sleep had not sweetened Nazluk’s disposition any, and nor did discovering that the Elf was still alive and with them for the immediately foreseeable future.  He did not comment on this fact, but his ill temper found other avenues of expression.  Kicking dirt over the remains of their fire, he made terse comments about the lateness of their departure.  “We could be an hour’s journey from here if you’d woken me sooner,” he said, looking up pointedly at the bright patches where the sun shown through the leafy canopy.

"I thought the extra kip would do you good.” 

“Is that it, really?  Or is it that you were otherwise occupied?”  He dropped into a knee-cracking squat that made Kurbag wince.

“‘Otherwise occupied’?  What are you going on about?”  The half-Uruk was completely baffled.

Nazluk did not respond to this.  Grabbing one end of his sleeping mat, he began to roll it up with angry methodical movements.

Kurbag realized that he wasn’t going to get any sense out of Nazluk in his current mood.  He stared down at the snaga Orc’s bent shoulders and back, feeling annoyed.  “Did you wake up on a rock or something?  Look, I thought you could use the sleep – I didn’t realize you would be so testy about it.  My mistake then, let's just not go on about it."

Nazluk snorted, standing up.  He shouldered his pack.  “Quite right,” he said coldly.  “We’ve wasted enough time this morning as it is.”

It wasn’t often that Nazluk would, in fact, drop a subject he was genuinely angry about, and Kurbag expected him to return to the matter with further vitriol as they walked. At the very least he expected sarcasm and snide commentary. Nazluk kept quiet, though, and Kurbag was relieved.  If it wasn’t up for further discussion then it wasn’t really that important, to his way of thinking.  Sometimes Nazluk was just tetchy.  At any rate, he was keeping quiet now so Kurbag felt free to forget the matter. 

It was otherwise for Eleluleniel.  She might not have understood what passed between Nazluk and Kurbag, but it was easy to see that Nazluk was angry, and unlike Kurbag she could easily tell that it had to do with her.  She knew it in the sensation of Nazluk’s eyes burning into her back, his silence as he walked behind her.  He did not drive her and rail at her as he had the day before but his silence was no less disconcerting. She resisted the urge so far as she was able, but there were those times when she would look back, only to find him staring at her, eyes bright with baffled hate.  The anger that flared up in them at those moments quickly saw her facing forward again.

It was Kurbag who led to begin with, but it did not stay that way.  He began to have difficulties following the trail and when progress became halting it was Nazluk who came to the fore.  Nazluk could always find something: a boot print, whole or partial, or a broken leaf where rough bodies had pushed past.  Yet signs like these were decreasing.  The terrain was changing as they went: the ground becoming harder, the plant life scanter, and soon Nazluk too had to pause and puzzle over provenance.  At one point he half-knelt, fingering the curving edge of a shallow cut in the earth, while Kurbag stared down over his shoulder and fidgeted over the time it was taking.

“What do you think?” Kurbag asked finally, deciding to risk his annoyance.

Nazluk was silent at first.  “Grushak, would be my guess,” he said at length, drawing out the words like he didn’t want to commit himself.  “He’s heavy, and his heel is broader than the others.”

“Any idea how long ago?”

“I’d say if I had, yes?” He planted his hands in the dirt and brought his face nearer the ground.   “If there were a scent,” he muttered, “but there’s not a bloody whiff of them…”

“We won’t make time by talking about what’s not there,” said Kurbag.

Nazluk snorted and knelt back.  “For once you’re right.” He stood and cringed involuntarily as he stepped out of Kurbag’s shadow, for there were fewer trees now to shield him from the sunlight.  “Let’s keep moving.”

They did not make a midday stop, for it was Nazluk who set the pace now.  He didn't want to take the time, and there really wasn't any need.  They had no food, water they drank from leather skins as they walked, and they did not need to rest their legs, for both Orcs were inured to long hours of travel.  It was not so for the Elf who traveled with them.  She had neither their strength nor their endurance, and she had had nothing to eat for two days.  I will not fall, she told herself, though her head was swimming and her legs were weak as water.  She had told Kurbag she would not be clumsy if he untied her.  She did not want to be bound again.

“Kurbag,” Nazluk said in deliberate Orkish, “she’s falling behind.”

Kurbag looked back.  He grabbed the Elf's wrist, giving her a hard pull so that she gasped and half-stumbled, half-ran to keep up with his longer strides.  “She isn’t now,” he said.

“You said you would gut her if she slowed us down, yes? Look at her.  She can’t keep up with us.  What good does it do, towing her along like that?”

Kurbag grunted.  “Weren’t you the one talking about rations?”

“Then why not kill her now and provision ourselves with her flesh?  It would be the work of a minute if you let me do it.  I’m faster with a knife than you are.”  Stumbling beside Kurbag, oblivious to what they were saying about her, the Elf girl clutched at her right side.  She made no sob, but there were tears of pain in her eyes.  “Look at her.  She’s weak.  She can’t keep up.  We’ve no food, and you waste water on her that we can’t afford to spare."

"We have water enough."

"Not for long.  We were fortunate to stumble across that stream yesterday.  We can't always trust to luck.  Eh?"  He looked back at Kurbag with narrowed eyes.  "You understand what I'm saying, yes? We have to think ahead."

"I am thinking ahead."  Nazluk snorted and faced forward again.  "Oi!  I am!" said Kurbag sharply, giving the Elf another yank.  He lengthened his step until he was side by side with Nazluk, looking down at him as they walked.  "Listen, we do have water enough for now.  We aren't starving, so we can wait to butcher her for a time longer.  We don't know how far we are behind the others.  Kill her now, she's a burden.  Why carry her in pieces when, alive, she carries herself?"

A long pause followed this.  “There may be some sense in what you say,” Nazluk muttered.

“It’s a convenience,” said Kurbag.  “So you can stop going on about it.  I know what I’m about.”

Do you, Nazluk thought but did not say out loud.  In fact, he did not open his mouth again for some time.  When he did it was purely with regard to the business of tracking.  He did not speak of the Elf or cast any further glances her way.  Kurbag had made it clear he was not ready to hear reason and attempts at persuasion had only made him stubborn.  Leave it, then.  Nazluk was no fool to belabor a lost point.  Kurbag would come to the same conclusions on his own, or Nazluk would watch for his own chance with the Elf.  There would be no need for persuasive arguments over a corpse.

-.-.-.-

It was evening before he could be induced to halt.  Even then he would not sit but walked rapidly back and forth, eyes fixed in the direction in which they were heading, nostrils flaring as if he were afraid that he would lose the scent.  There was a scent now: faint, but one that both Orcs could smell, and Nazluk was convinced their band could not be far ahead. 

“Oi! sit down, will you?  It’s making me dizzy, watching you pace like that,” said Kurbag as Nazluk passed him by yet again.

The other Orc shook his head.  “I don’t like delays.  Not when we’re so close.”

“If they’re as close as you think then we’ll be reaching them soon enough.  Here!”  He tossed Nazluk a drinking skin.  “Put water in your belly.”  That stopped Nazluk from pacing at least, but he continued to stand as he drank.  “It wouldn’t hurt you to sit a spell.  You’ll be wearing through your boot soles at this rate.”

“I’ll rest when we’ve rejoined the others,” said Nazluk.  He walked away to stand under the far trees, clearly uninterested in further words with Kurbag.  Kurbag shrugged and drank deep of his own skin before offering the rest to the Elf. 

They were sitting on the trunk of a fallen tree, a venerable forest giant that must have fallen some four or five seasons before, for the wood of it was worm-eaten and crumbling and thickly grown with moss.  Eleluleniel felt faint as she watched Kurbag drink, and when he handed her the skin she took it without thanking him, without even thinking, she was so thirsty.  There were barely three mouthfuls remaining; she held the last behind her teeth for several seconds, trying to make it count. 

“You’re quiet,” said Kurbag as he took the emptied skin from her.  “You had more to say earlier.” 

Of course, he’d not said much to her either.  The pace that the two Orcs had set was not one conducive to conversation.  But they weren’t moving now and he was looking at her expectantly.  Tired as she was, she cast about for some plausible topic.  “Do you think that you will find your fellows soon?”

Kurbag nodded.  “Aye, no reason we shouldn’t, we’re close enough.  And Nazluk’s bent on it.”

She looked to where the other Orc stood like a skinny shadow under the trees.  “He does not like me,” she said softly.

He laughed.  That was an understatement if ever there was one.  “He’s not partial to Golug.  And he thinks you’re holding us back.”

“And he is angry at you for it, because you bring me.  He would rather I was left behind.”

Dead, eaten and shat out, more like.  He did not say this out loud.

“And, perhaps…perhaps he is not wrong?” she went on tentatively.  “I am not as fast as you are.  You could probably go more quickly without me.  If I were gone I would no longer be a hindrance, and Nazluk would not be so cross.  It would be better, would it not? for you to let—for you to leave me behind?”  She looked at him hesitantly, hopefully as she said it but shrank at the dark look that passed over Kurbag’s face.

He was annoyed to hear the same points repeated so soon after justifying himself to Nazluk.  “I know enough to do what needs doing,” he said shortly, and the Elf dropped her gaze quickly, staring down at her hands.  Eyes following hers, Kurbag’s anger faded.  “What is that, anyway?”

“What?”

“That mark.”  He had noticed how she would touch it from time to time, particularly in moments of fear or confusion.  She covered it instinctively but Kurbag took both her hands in his, prizing them easily apart.  Drawing her right hand toward him, he scrutinized the dark stain on her knuckles.

“It is nothing,” she said.

“It’s no birthmark.”  She tried to pull out of his grip but Kurbag held fast, tracing the irregular outline with his fingertips.  Writing is not a common occupation among Orcs and he did not recognize ink when he saw it.  All he could think was that it was some sort of bruise.

“We’re burning daylight,” Nazluk’s voice intruded.  He had approached without either of them noticing and stood close by, watching what went on with narrowed eyes.  “Of course if you wish to travel by night it is fine by me, but I should think you would prefer some light to walk by.”  Kurbag let go of the Elf’s hand and she snatched it back to her chest.  She rose shakily and Nazluk glared at her.  “Let’s go,” he said to Kurbag, and then they were moving again.

Nazluk could not drive such a hard pace now as he had before.  He tried at first but gave way sullenly to Kurbag’s growling.  They moved in twilight now and it was not so easy for the half-Uruk to see.  Another hour and it was quite black, and then they were reliant entirely on Nazluk’s eyes, for his vision was keen even at night.  He continued to lead the way, finding some small satisfaction in the stumbles and low curses behind him.

That was a bad time for Eleluleniel.  She could not see in the dark anymore than Kurbag could, and she did not have his keen sense of smell as compensation.  All there was for her were touch and hearing.  Hearing availed her little for she only heard Kurbag’s rough breathing and occasional muttered Orkish and not much else.  Touch was pain: the grip of Kurbag’s hand, the scrape of his iron-shod boots at her heels.  He was walking with her thrust before him like a shield in the darkness, and sometimes he would tread upon her.  After the third or fourth time he pushed her forward and held her that way, at arm’s length. 

She walked stiffly, fearful that she would trip, unable to see more than two feet in front of her as she was.  Worse, she might walk into Nazluk and she knew that could well prove fatal.  She feared Nazluk, his anger and his knives, and even Kurbag’s rough mutters for her to move faster, the painful constriction of his grip on her shoulder, wouldn’t make her pick up the pace.

“Have her walk behind you, Kurbag,” she heard Nazluk say somewhere up ahead, his voice exasperated.  “That way makes no sense.”

Kurbag grunted irritably but he stopped, pulling her back.  She felt his hands pass over her as he walked around her, and then his hand was on hers.  Pulling it to his hip, he placed her fingers over his belt.  “Hold on,” he said.

He was no longer holding her but she dared not think of running.  Kurbag said that he could not see in the dark, but she knew that Nazluk could; then too, she held on because there was nothing else that she could do.  At that moment, whatever else Kurbag was, he was the only real and certain thing in her blind world.

It was still nightmarish and stumbling progress.  Her tongue cleft to the roof of her mouth, and she closed her eyes: it was no difference whether they were open or closed in this impenetrable shadow.  She began to feel as if her mind were deserting her.  Thought was no more help than sight.  All she could do was put one foot in front of the other, holding as tightly as she could to Kurbag’s belt.

“Not far now,” she heard him say and thought he was saying it to her.

“No,” said Nazluk. 

Then both Orcs stopped in their tracks.  She opened her eyes. 

At first she saw nothing and thought that Nazluk must be uncertain of the way.  That idea brought terror.  If he was lost then they were all lost, all three of them, and they would be trapped in this darkness forever.  But as they stood there her eyes began to adjust somewhat, and she began to perceive dim forms.  She gasped suddenly.  A black shape had moved in the tree ahead of them.  She would have thought she had imagined it, only Nazluk uttered an ugly word in Orkish.  The shape moved again and an answer came in kind.  Kurbag spoke as well and the thing descended, hanging briefly from a low branch before dropping to the ground before them. 

For a few seconds it was lost in undifferentiated darkness, and then the shadow stepped forward.  It was like a misshapen child, wide-shouldered, large-headed: a squat twisted something with red eyes.  She could not distinguish any other features beyond its general size and shape.  It came closer, addressing Nazluk and Kurbag in the same guttural tongue they used with one another, and its tone as it looked over the three of them was one of surprise.  Then the goblin-Orc swung a long arm, skinny and strange, as it turned and hurried before them.  Nazluk and Kurbag began at once to follow, and Kurbag’s hand caught her wrist as he pulled her after him.  She could sense his and Nazluk’s excitement: a high feral gladness that both shared in equal measure. 

All that Eleluleniel could feel at that moment was a sick scared feeling, like a heavy stone in her belly.  It only grew heavier as she saw the dim red glow ahead in the trees, the silhouette of their small guide showing blackly against it as it moved toward the ominous light.  She did not want to go anywhere near that glow: even the black trunks of the trees seemed menacing against it, and if Kurbag hadn’t been gripping her at that moment she might well have bolted.  Though she stopped short of outright resistance her feet were dragging as he pulled her forward.

It was a fire, much larger than the one that Kurbag and Nazluk had made the night before, and a number of Orcs sat around it.  They looked startled, hands going to their weapons as the smaller Orc who was leading burst upon them, gabbling what Eleluleniel could only assume was a hurried explanation of their arrival.  Then Kurbag and Nazluk stepped out after him, and on seeing them the entire band came to their feet, and there rose among them a furor of surprise and glad shouts.

In the sudden tumult Kurbag let go of her wrist.  Not knowing what else to do, she caught helplessly at his belt again and kept a white-knuckled grip on it, staring down at the ground.  Around her she could see the dark legs of the Orcs who hemmed them in.  The sudden press of bodies unsettled her, and her tender ears were overwhelmed by the clamor of their voices.  They did not speak entirely in Orkish, she could tell that some of what they said was in Common as well but she could not understand any of it.  Even had they spoken entirely in Common she would not have been able to understand for their harsh speech and the way they all spoke at once.  Well did she see the truth of the name her folk assigned Orcs: the glamhoth or “din-horde” of history and legend.

Then the voices stopped.  She looked up to see one of the Orcs, the largest, had raised his hand.  This was evidently what had made the others fall quiet.  The Orcs immediately in front of Kurbag and Nazluk yielded space for him to approach.  He was tall and broad-shouldered, powerfully built, with an ugly face and hard dark eyes, and there was something disturbingly familiar about him.  He had that about him, she realized, that reminded her of Dushgar from the day before: that same combination of size, authority and imminent danger.  She had been frightened then and she was frightened now for the way this Orc stared, though his eyes were on Kurbag and Nazluk rather than her.  He came close and in the quiet Kurbag spoke up.

“Hullo, Bragdagash,” he said.  “Sorry to have kept you waiting.”

“You piece of shit,” said the big Orc in a harsh deep voice.  Eleluleniel’s heart failed her at this but the Orc uttered a great laugh and clapped Kurbag violently on the shoulder.  Kurbag bore under it, grinning widely, and the other Orcs laughed as well.  “You cocksucking son of a whore.  Sorry to keep us waiting indeed.  Well, you are two lucky sods and no mistake.  Hoi, lads!” he shouted, stepping back.  “Let’s get them down by the fire!”

Chapter Text

“Hey Kurbag,” said one of the Orcs, jabbing a thumb at Eleluleniel, “what’s that white thing on yer arse, eh?  That’s no Golug, surely?”

“Yes it is,” said another.  “Look at the ears.”

“Let’s have a look then!”

Hard bodies jostled her, rough fingers catching at her garments.  Frightened, she held all the tighter to Kurbag’s belt, much to the onlooking Orcs’ amusement.  “Haw!  Isn’t that sweet?  Look how she’s clinging to him!”

A hand clamped down her shoulder as one of the larger Orcs bared his yellow fangs at her in an open-mouthed grin.  “Hurrrrrr.  You great bastard, don’t tell me you brought me a present,” he said, flashing his toothy smile at Kurbag.  He was tall and brown-skinned and his black hair fell loose and ragged around his shoulders.

Kurbag grinned back at Mushog, but his expression faded slightly as he saw the Elf girl’s fingers knotted over the edge of his belt, saw her trembling mouth.  He put his large hand over hers, unhooking her from his belt.

“There’s a story here, I’ll warrant,” said Bragdagash, having a seat.  “Come on, then.  You boys have some explaining to do.”  He shook his head, chuckling again to himself as Nazluk and Kurbag divested themselves of their packs.  “‘Kept us waiting.’  Skai.”

-.-.-.-

An hour had passed and the surfeit of beer and food was making the two prodigals pleasantly woolly headed.  They had come to the meeting with Dushgar and his band now, and the others were alternately jeering and hooting about how that had gone down.  “Stone me, lads, if they didn’t dick you over proper,” laughed old Rukshash, shaking his head in mingled amusement and regret.

“All that shiny,” lamented Pryszrim.

“Not all of it,” said Kurbag, and told about Nazluk’s trick with the bracelets.

That got everyone’s admiration and a round of cheers for Nazluk, as well as eager requests to see the swag he had been able to salvage.  Nazluk produced the shining circlets and there were collective murmurs of appreciation and greed as the bracelets made their way to Bragdagash.  The Orkish chief took a long moment to appraise them, turning each individually in the flickering firelight.  “Not too shabby,” he said at length.  “No cause to complain about these.”

“They lost a whole bag, though,” said one of the Uruk-hai.  “To those stupid tossers we ran in with before.”

Nazluk bristled at this, feeling that the other Orc was slighting him and Kurbag.  He was spared the need for a cutting reply by a snaga Orc who spoke up before him.  “So what should they have done, then, faced down an entire company of Uruk-hai?”

“Aye!” said another.  “You saw that lot: they were nearly twice our number.  Don’t be daft, Lagdush.”

“That’s not what I’m saying, you little snot,” said Lagdush.  “I’m saying: bag of shiny, eight pieces.  Bag, eight.”  He held up either hand, imitating a set of scales.  “That’s all I’m saying.”

“Eight’s still more than nothing.  Where’s the last shiny you brought in?”

The others laughed at Lagdush, whose face darkened; he made an aborted movement as if he were about to get up but the Orc sitting nearest him caught his shoulder, grinning and clapping him on the back at the same time, and he subsided.  “All I’m saying,” he muttered, folding his arms over his chest and glowering at the fire.  “It’s a shame those cunts got all the swag, that’s all, just because there was more of ’em an’ all.”

“Didn’t get everything, though, did they.”  Mushog was sitting near Kurbag’s Elf, smirking; as he spoke he reached over and tweaked her ear. 

There had been some fumbling from this particular Orc earlier as he touched her arm or fingered the material of her dress, but that had stopped as they all became caught up in Kurbag and Nazluk’s story.  She had kept silent, not wanting to draw attention, but at his unexpected pinch she uttered a small cry and pulled away from him.  At once the eyes of the entire band were upon her, curious and cruel.  There were some unpleasant sniggers.

Mushog laughed and tweaked her ear again.  “Pointy, just like the tales.”

“They are pointy—no more than our own, though,” said a goblin-Orc.  “But I thought they were supposed to be tall.  She’s a bit on the slight side, ain’t she?”

“They grow slowly,” said the old Orc from before.  He watched the Elf out of one eye, for his left eye was ruined and the skin around it scarred, but his right saw with an evil intelligence that more than made up for its lost fellow.  It was a surprising blue and moved over her with frightening acuity.  “I’ve heard that sometimes it is a hundred years before they reach full stature.”

“Garn!” said several of the others in tones of disbelief.

“That’s stupid,” said Lagdush, who was still sulking.

But Rukshash only continued to look at her, and when he spoke it was to her.  “How old are you, child?” he asked in Common.

“Th-thirty-three,” she said in an almost-whisper.

He nodded as if satisfied by the answer.  The others hooted.  “HAW.  Will you listen to the little granny!”

Kurbag did not say anything, but the Elf’s answer had surprised him.  Thirty-three.  He did not know his own age, not to the precise year, but he knew that he was a good decade shy of that.

“Pretty grandmother, with her pale hair.  Is it pale everywhere, d’you suppose?”  Mushog slid his hand up the Elf girl’s thigh and squeezed.  Terrified, she struck at his hand; he laughed and caught her wrist.

“Here now, leave off,” said Kurbag in Orkish, setting aside his thoughts for later.  “It’s not nice to muck with another fellow’s plaything.” 

If they hadn’t been better mates that might have started something, but Mushog just let go of the Elf with a good-natured chuckle.  “Oh come, it was only in jest!  I’ll not meddle with her.  Two days, though—you have more restraint than me, friend, not to have done something by now.”

“Who says he hasn’t?” said Pryszrim, a gawky foolish snaga Orc whom the others often mocked.

“Well, it’s obvious, innit?” Mushog shrugged.  “She’d be dead sure enough if he had.”

Nazluk’s eyes narrowed.  He looked at Kurbag, waiting for him to say something, to correct Mushog, but Kurbag only swigged his beer, not speaking.  The Elf had drawn closer to him, away from the Uruk; she sat with her head lowered so that her shining hair fell about her face, not looking at any of them. 

Hatred roiled in Nazluk like a beast twisting in his breast and belly.  “The only good Elf is a dead Elf,” he said abruptly.  He was gratified when the others laughed and drank to this. 

“Here, Naz, tell us about that lulgijak that tailed you.  Was he easy killing?” asked Shrah’rar.  There was a small spate of similar questions.  Nazluk had spoken in passing of the Elf scout tracking him and Kurbag and of how he had killed the scum: now they urged him to tell it again.  He did so in greater detail, telling how he had doubled back to come up on the fellow from behind, and of the brief engagement that had followed before he cut the Golug down.  The listening Orcs were grinning as he related what came after. 

Nazluk told all in loving detail, fingers stroking his knife idly as he remembered.  “It wasn’t half of what I would have dealt him if I’d had the time.  But it was some payment for my bruises.”

“Did he never scream?” asked Mushog.

“Oh believe me, he screamed plenty before it was over,” said Nazluk.  Suddenly his eyes rolled up.  His head fell back and his upper body jerked, and a terrible cry sprang from his throat as if a thousand blades were piercing him.  Dark laughter and whoops of approval answered Nazluk’s imitation of the tortured Elf.  He straightened again with an evil smile, his gaze shifting to the Elf girl.  She had jerked her head up at the sound of his scream and was staring at him with wide round eyes.  “So much,” he said in a slow satisfied way, “for the vaunted fortitude of Elves.”

-.-.-.-

Nazluk’s account kicked off a round of stories and jokes that kept them at it for another hour.  That was when Bragdagash sat back, saying he’d had enough of them for the night.  If they were going to keep flapping their tongues they could take it elsewhere; as for himself, he was of a mind to sleep.

“Hey boss.  We still moving on the morrow?” rumbled one of the Orcs, an unusually large snaga named Grushak.

“Narrr…” Bragdagash stood, stretching.  “We’ll bide here another day, let the lads sleep in.  We can afford it.” 

The lads in this case, of course, were Nazluk and Kurbag.  Nazluk looked glad of it, and it was certainly a relief from Kurbag’s point of view.  The initial exuberance of reuniting with his fellows had passed now, and he could feel the weight of the previous night’s watch heavy upon him.  It was only compounded by a full belly after a longish spell without. 

He stood, pulling up the Elf girl reflexively alongside of him.  There was an immediate rash of leering and lewd speculation.  “Oi, you gonna give us a performance then, Kurby?  Maybe a little show for your mates?”

“Bugger off.  At this time of night?  ’S’all I can do to get the rest of me up without expecting me to rouse my todger.”  He yawned comfortably.

“Skai!  Trouble standing, eh?  None of us have any problems in that department.”

“If you aren’t up for it I can think of some as are…”

Kurbag made a casually obscene gesture over his shoulder.  There were sniggers in response.

Eleluleniel followed where he led, staring down at his hand on her wrist, at the dirt beneath his black talons and in the creases of his knuckles.  She had kept her eyes down throughout the time beside the fire, save for an early attempt to look at the Orcs through the fringe of her hair.  She had thought to assess them, to determine their numbers and their strength, but the play of fire and shadow over their harsh faces confused her and made them seem more than their numbers could have been.  Even as she knew, logically, that there could not be as many of them as there seemed, the sight of them induced paralysis.  It was not their taloned hands or teeth or their malformed bodies that terrified her.  It was the evil light in their eyes as they looked at her, the way that they kept looking at her.  Any thought of initiative had deserted her beneath the weight of that collective malice.

Do not look.  Do not look at them, you only give them power over you.  They are making you too frightened to think. 

Looking would avail her nothing if she could not think.

Kurbag released her and her hand dropped to her side.  She turned her head, staring at him as he unrolled his sleeping pallet and then as he began to take off his boots.  He grunted as he pulled a foot free, glanced at her.  “Oi,” he said, and jerked his head toward the mat.  She only stood, not moving, as he took off the other boot, then straightened and turned toward her.  “Come here.”  Still she did not move.  He cocked his head and started toward her.  That was when she bolted, or started to; he lunged after her, catching her by the elbow.  She tried to break free and he caught her other arm as if it were nothing.  “Come on, stop that.”  She struggled but he was stronger than she was.  It was easy for Kurbag to pull her over to the mat.

“You need help with that one, Kurbag?  We can always give you a hand!”  There were hoots from the direction of the fire.

She had struggled wordlessly to this point, neither speaking nor crying out for fear of drawing their attention, but their laughter loosened her tongue.  “No,” she said, shaking her head, “no, no…”  He was forcing her to her knees.

To Kurbag it all felt like a singularly dismal repeat of the night before.  It was annoying.  “Will you stop it, eh?  I’m too tired for this.  Just lie down.”  She didn’t stop, and he lost patience.  Grabbing both her wrists in one hand he held them tightly as, with his other hand, he reached for his pack and the cord within.

With her wrists tied she stopped fighting him, or at least she stopped struggling.  Instead all of her joints seemed to lock in place, her slender body to go bolt-hard and unyielding.  He manhandled her anyway, forcing her down onto her knees and then onto one side.  Lying behind her, he pulled her against him in a crude spooning position, securing his arm over her ribs.  There was no tenderness in it.  He did not think she would run, bound as she was, but she had tried to bolt a bare few moments before.  He would not risk her trying again.  Even if he didn’t catch her, the others would make short work of her if she did.

He closed his eyes, then opened them again.  Her entire body was stiff and trembling against him.  It was not particularly comfortable.  He sighed annoyance and leaned forward, grumbling into her ear.  “I said it, right?  I’m not going to fuck you.  Just relax and then we can both sleep.”  She made no response.  He grunted and settled back again; he couldn’t tell if she had heard him or not.

Slow steps approaching.  “Eh, lad.”  Rukshash’s voice sounded faintly amused as he passed them for his own sleeping pallet.  “Tied or not, don’t be surprised if you wake with your own dagger in your throat.” 

-.-.-.-

Her body remembered what had happened.  For all his rough assurance it was long before she could stop shaking, and when she had mind enough to know her own surroundings it was quiet.  She did not know how much time she had lost: enough that there was no more laughter from the fire.  There were no sounds at all beyond the faint hiss and crack of the logs, the rasping snores of unseen sleepers.  In the dark the monsters slept. 

His heavy breath stirred her hair.  She wanted to pull away but his arm was around her and she feared the prospect of waking him.  Lying with his heat at her back was like leaning against an oven.  The back of her dress felt soaked through; she was damp with perspiration.  She wondered if he could feel it.  He probably couldn’t through his thick leather clothing.

If she hadn’t fought him he would not have bound her.  She had not wanted to be bound again.  Yet she had had no choice in the matter, subject to fear beyond her control, the instant revulsion of her flesh.  And now her wrists were tied before her as they had been that night: hands pressed one against the other, palm to palm. 

She brought them to her face, pushed them against her mouth and cheek and tried to send her mind elsewhere.  At first she thought of home, but thought recoiled from those last memories.  Instead she thought of standing with Veisiliel, waving to her parents and her older sister.  Of Mother and Nevhithien, riding together to Rivendell.  They would have turned back when they heard what happened, but Eleluleniel ignored this and anything that reminded her of her current circumstances.  Instead she created a scenario in which they had heard nothing, knew nothing.  In which mother and sister were three days into their journey with only the brightest of prospects before them.  She conjured it with all of her power, making herself see every detail: bright sun dapple and bright horse tack, happy Mother, happy Nevhithien. 

When she slept she wanted to dream that she too was riding with them, somewhere far away.

-.-.-.-

They came upon the camp of sleeping Orcs, and they moved with a silence beyond anything mortal.  Their blades were sheathed to prevent the blue glimmer from betraying them, but hairlines of eerie radiance shown between the hilts and scabbards.  One hung back to dispatch those nearest the fire; the other approached the half-Uruk and the girl beneath his arm.  The eyes of the Golug warrior glittered in the dark.  There was no sound as he drew his weapon—

Kurbag’s eyes flew open, lips peeling back in a snarl. 

Nothing.  No one stood over him, no blue blade hung poised above his neck.  He was with his fellows again, and there was no way that anything could make its way unheard into a circle of keen-eared Orcs. 

He felt a faint movement beneath his arm. 

She had awakened when all of his muscles tensed at once, jarring her from sleep.  He was holding her too tightly and she could hear him breathing quickly, almost gasping, near her ear.  Even as she realized this he caught her shoulder, pulling her onto her back.  She had time for one aborted cry before he clapped his hard hand over her mouth.  He was staring down at her but didn’t seem to see her.  There was something erratic in his gaze.

There was little enough light but he could see the Elf girl under him, her pale skin, wide eyes above the dark shape of his hand.  It took him a few seconds to process the image.  He took his hand away slowly and in the silence she spoke. 

“Did you have a bad dream?” 

Kurbag stared down at her as if the words were wholly foreign.  His heart still pounded in his ears.

“I-I had one also,” she stammered.

The quality of his breathing changed as he listened to her.  He was not hearing the sense of what she said but the sound of her voice.  She was speaking very quietly, not quite whispering, eyes fixed on him intently.  She lay completely still beneath him.

“I was lost, and I…I could not find my way.  I was so frightened.  Did it…in your dream… Were you afraid?”  Silence.  “Please say something.  When you do not say…anything, I…”  She cut off as he placed his hand on her elbow.  It slipped down her arm to the juncture of her wrists and remained there, fingering the cord that bound them.  She swallowed.  “They are all asleep,” she said.  Now she was whispering.  “If you let me go, they would not…they would never know… If you took me to the edge of your camp...” 

His hand moved to the skirt of her dress, pressing against it, feeling her through the material.  Her breath hitched in alarm.  “No.”  She tried to wriggle upright.  It was easy for him to plant a hand against her chest, to push her down again and hold her that way.  “No.”

He wedged his knee between her legs, pinning her skirt beneath it.  Leaning forward on the hand that pinned her, he fumbled with his breeches.  Her head turned desperately from side to side.  She was crying already, tears running down her face as he took himself in hand.  “No, you said that you would not.  You said so.  You said.”  In a nightmarishly ineffectual gesture she struck upward at him with her bound hands, beating at his chest, but he only pushed them over her head.  Taking the hem of her skirt, he hauled it up over her thighs before pressing down upon her.

The blind prodding of his phallus provoked her to greater frenzy.  Her scream split the still night air.

“Oi, what the fuck,” a voice muttered somewhere nearby.

“Looks like our Kurbag is having a bit of fun.”

“Fine time he picks for it.  No consideration what-so-bloody-ever.  Here now!  Don’t you know we’re trying to get some kip?”

Unthinking, crying out in misery, the Elf girl turned her face in the direction of the voices.  Several pairs of eyes hovered, glowing, in the dark.  “Please,” she sobbed, “please help me!”

“More than I’m worth, thin-skin,” said one cheerfully.  “Best lie back and take it: he’ll be done soon enough.”

She shrieked as a hard slam drove her forward.  Her hair, caught beneath her, yanked her head back painfully.

“Couldn’t wait till we could see it proper,” the other complained.  “Holds off three days, yet he can’t manage a few more bleedin’ hours—”

“Please…” she kept sobbing, “…please…”

“Hah!  Hear that, Kurbag?  Can’t get enough of you, that one, you have her begging for it.”

“Go on, you great pillock, give it to her!  Show ’er what for!”

Kurbag ignored them, pounding with blind intensity until his moment of crisis came.  He went rigid, trembling with release, then groaned and slumped down heavily.  Lay that way for a brief time before rolling to one side.  There was laughter and mocking commentary, mainly in regard to the length of Kurbag’s performance, or lack thereof.  With nothing more in the offering, though, that quieted down soon enough.

She pulled her bound hands over her eyes, whimpering.  Kurbag watched her absently for a while before turning onto his back, staring upward.  At that moment he had no thoughts, felt little beyond a general comfortable satiety.  It was amazing what a good fuck could do.  The tension of a few moments before was gone now, spent and dissipated, and he felt easy in his flesh.  What had he dreamt of?  He no longer remembered, nor did he care.  It was good enough to lie like this and to feel the night air on his skin.

Chapter Text

It was difficult for the cord and the shaking of her hands, but she covered herself as best she could.  Pushing the skirts of her dress down over her legs, she was horribly aware the entire time of the Orc lying by in the dark.  If he was still awake, though, he gave no indication of it, and he did not stop her when she squirmed off of the pallet and onto the bare hard earth.  She lay there as far from him as she dared, terrified of him but frightened also of the others that she could not see.  Too frightened to make any attempt at escape, and how far could she have gotten, bound and surrounded as she was? 

Hysteria beat within her like an unvoiced scream, and if she did not contain it it would break her.  Worse, it would rouse Kurbag again.  Pressing her fists to her eyes, Eleluleniel felt tears starting behind the heels of her palms.  She swallowed hard, willing them gone; she would sob herself sick at this rate.  Yet she felt bewildered and betrayed: she had trusted him, or started to.  How could she have been so stupid? 

I told him my name.  How could he hurt me again, when I told him my…

The tears continued to come despite her efforts.  She pushed her face into the crook of her elbow to stifle them.

She did not sleep again.  She was aware of every sound, every shift of Kurbag’s body not three feet from her.  The barest change in breathing was enough to see her stiffen, fearful of another attack.  Long hours passed in this way, and when morning came she was exhausted. 

The outlines of sleeping figures formed first, slowly in the gathering dawn.  Then came the gradual articulation of several faces in the growing light.  It was a clearer picture than the flickering campfire had shown the night before: rough mottled skin and broad cruel mouths, misshapen foreheads and lower jaws.  They were faces unlike any Elf’s, immeasurably ugly and cruel, their features wholly ungentle even in sleep.  Eleluleniel stared at them, unable to look away, almost too tired to be afraid.  When the first of them woke he did so grumbling, rising up and lumbering off somewhere she could not see.  He was gone for a few moments and when he came back he found the same place as before but did not lie down immediately.  He knelt and fumbled and she saw him produce a dark swathe of something that he pulled over himself before he fell back to sleep. 

The morning light was blue and chill.  The realization of day approaching brought her no comfort.  As others among the Orcs awakened in their turn she closed her eyes.  It was a feeble defense but it was all she had.  She lay listening to the sounds of them as they began to move about, some wordless, some exchanging snatches of guttural conversation. These were the creatures that would kill her. 

-.-.-.-

The sun was slanting throught the trees when Kurbag stirred.  He woke to a sense of great well-being, nostrils thick with the smell of other Orcs, body thoroughly rested after a solid night’s sleep.  He would have been content to lie like that but the urging of his bladder prompted him to rise.  Sitting, he caught sight of the Elf girl.  She had squirmed away from him at some point in the night and lay well clear of the sleeping pallet.  She lay very still but when he put his hand on her arm she flinched.  Satisfied, he patted her arm and got up to relieve himself.

“Slept long enough, have you?” came Bragdagash’s voice.  The chieftain was sitting over by the remains of the fire.  He grinned at Kurbag over a hunk of charred flesh from the night before and bit into it, tearing away a piece in his strong jaws.

Some of the others were also up and mucking around by the fire.  One of the goblins had a long stick, which he was using to trace idle pictures in the ash.  He looked up, casting Kurbag a dirty squint.  “Oi.  You woke me up last night, you rotten bastard.”

“And good morning to you too, Shrah’rar,” said Kurbag, smirking as he passed them by.  He was feeling good just now: better than he had for some time.  It was good to be with the others again, to enjoy the security of larger numbers and the company of his kind.  It made him feel more certain of himself.

“Eh Kurbag, watch your step.  Someone’s got the runs,” Bragdagash called after.  Unless they were planning to stay at a given site for more than a few days in a row, Bragdagash rarely bothered ordering anyone to dig a jakes, they just made a point of crapping a sensible distance from camp.  Stepping in something nasty wasn’t a problem: they could easily avoid it with their sense of smell, and if you did step awry it was simple enough to scrap your boots off against a rock or the rough bark of a tree.

Turds were one thing, though; the shits were another.  Kurbag watched his step.

There was a place where the trees grew more thickly and the sun did not pierce their cover.  He stopped there and did his business.  Fastening his trousers again after, he heard a bird twittering off somewhere in the greenery.  It stopped suddenly in mid-trill and a hush descended on the forest.  Kurbag’s fingers paused, then returned unhurriedly to the task at hand.  He gave his laces a final cinch before turning to go back.

Abruptly he feinted left.  He felt the displacement of air to his right and a heavy blow clipped his shoulder.  Dropping down, he lashed out with his foot.  The first kick hit nothing—the second caught his attacker in the shin.  It did no damage but did establish where the enemy was.  Kurbag rolled sidelong, avoiding an iron-shod boot aimed at his kidneys.  Throwing his arms out, he caught the other fellow’s leg and yanked him off balance.  His attacker swore loudly and went down, and Kurbag quickly squirmed forward, pinning him.  “Missed me that much, eh?” he panted.

Mushog grinned up at him.  His fist crashed into the side of Kurbag’s head.  Kurbag shook his head, dazed; Mushog pushed him sidelong, quickly moving to pin him in turn, but the half-Uruk recovered and grabbed his arms.  They grappled together on the forest floor, vying for dominance. 

It was not a quiet fight, broken with grunts and sharp curses, particularly those of Kurbag, who felt like he must be rolling over every rock in the immediate vicinity.  He was the more skilled of the two fighters, or thought he was anyway, but Mushog was that bit heavier and he had Kurbag under him at the moment.  “You rutting bastard,” Kurbag hissed up at him as the other Orc laughed.  He grabbed Kurbag by the throat, ready to slam his head against the ground, but Kurbag snapped his skull up into Mushog’s with an audible crack. 

Clapping a hand to his forehead, momentarily unseeing, Mushog made a highly undignified sound, somewhere between a snarl and a whimper. It was easy for Kurbag to roll him off and pin him again.  This time there was no resistance: his last move had knocked any further fight from Mushog’s brain.  When Kurbag told him to give he yielded.

“Shit,” said Kurbag, sprawling on the Uruk’s chest.  Now that they weren’t trying to kill each other, he felt safe enough taking a breather.  “You don’t do things halfway, do you.”

Mushog, hand over his eyes, grunted affirmation.  He groaned suddenly.  “Aunnnngghh…I have to puke…” 

Kurbag got clear hurriedly as Mushog scrambled up onto his hands and knees.  He was, indeed, noisily sick.  “Bleeding Eye…”

Mushog spat a few times before kneeling back, eyes shut, squeezing the bridge of his nose.  “Fuck, but you’ve given me a thumping head.”

“Whose fault is that, then?”  He stood, not offering Mushog his hand.  From past experience it was just as likely that the other Orc would try to pull him off balance if he did.  Mushog clearly wasn’t in the mood to renew their fight, though, taking another moment to get up.  “How much of that is last night, anyway?” Kurbag asked him as he rose, looking none too steady on his feet.

“You insult me.  I barely had a skin.”

“Oh aye?  I put the count at three—and I’ll wager you had a fourth for breakfast by the smell of your breath.”

Mushog guffawed.  “Haw.  That’s medicine!  Does you good to start the morning off with a little nip.”

“Ah, right then, I’ll remind you of that the next time I see you pissing blood.”  Mushog punched his shoulder and Kurbag punched him back.  “Why don’t we get some real breakfast, eh?  I saw Braggy eating something.  Made me hungry.”  He turned, starting back toward the fire.

Mushog only stood where he was, scratching his neck.  “Mmmm, yeah…it’s no wonder you’ve an appetite, the morning after.”

“Eh?”

“That’s what the snaga were saying this morning.  Saying you shagged the Golug last night.  While we were all asleep—garn, Kurbag, couldn’t you have waited?  I thought we were mates!”

“It’s your own fault for not waking up.  How do you think that would serve you if we came under attack?”  As Kurbag scoffed, though, he thought about the Elf.  The others assumed that she was dead, and he hadn’t said anything to make them think otherwise.  He felt oddly reticent on the matter, and why that was he didn’t know.  She was his prize after all.

“Skai, you’re just changing the subject.”  Kurbag turned away from him again.  This time Mushog followed, lengthening his steps to catch up.  “So tell me, did she struggle?  Was she very tight?”  He leered.  “I only want to know what it’s like to do an Elf.  They said she screamed like anything.”

Kurbag shrugged.  “Perhaps you’ll catch one of your own sometime and find out.”

“Bastard.”  Mushog said more and nastier in this vein, but Kurbag only chuckled.

They were rejoining the others now and a number of heads were turning to look at them.  “Oi.  Back at last, then?”

“That was a longish piss,” said Bragdagash dryly.

Grushak chuckled.  “Sure boss, long for a piss.  If that’s all that went on.”

“I reckon they were off shagging in the brambles,” said Pryszrim outright.

Pryszrim was stupid; nevertheless, laughter attended his theory, and Mushog’s own laughter was the loudest.  “Yeah, that’s right.  He had an itch and only I could scratch it!”  He grabbed at Kurbag’s arse.

“Piss off,” said Kurbag, snickering as he knocked Mushog’s hand away.  “What’s there to eat?”

Of comparable age and constitution, both Mushog and Kurbag possessed hearty appetites and fell upon what they were given with great vigor.  Kurbag in particular had not forgotten the periods for which he had gone without in the past few days.  He had eaten well the night before and he ate with the same energy now, polishing off several pounds of flesh.  As he ate he listened absently to what was said around him.

“We’ll need to cover a lot of ground tomorrow,” Bragdagash was saying.  “I wasn’t planning on staying two nights in the same spot so you can expect to be making it up.”

“Slavedriver,” said Iggrut.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing.” 

Bragdagash gave the green-skinned snaga a look.  Iggrut smiled innocently.

“It’s fair enough,” said Lagdush. “I never like staying in one place for long anyway.”

“Give it another twenty miles as we’ve been going, then turn south again,” said their chief.  “That should put us right… Eh Nazluk, you’ve decided to join us?”

“With all the noise this lot makes, I had no real choice,” Nazluk said dryly.  “We move again tomorrow, then?”

“That’s right.”

“Mm.”  Nazluk was circling the fire and the Orcs who sat around it, evidently looking for a comfortable spot to sit.  Drifting behind Kurbag he looked down at the half-Uruk with narrowed eyes.  “So then.  Kurbag.  Were you planning on feeding your pet this morning?”  Caught in mid-gulp, Kurbag accidentally swallowed the wrong way.  Nazluk said, “It’s only that she’s not been fed, and she’s probably thirsty as well…”  He took a seat as Kurbag continued to cough and choke.

The others were too busy laughing at Kurbag at first to register the sense of what Nazluk had said.  Mushog thumped him on the back while Rukshash snickered.  “Bit off more than you could chew, eh lad?  Drink something, that’ll help it down.”

Kurbag couldn’t answer, not because he was still coughing but because of the enthusiastic pummeling that Mushog was giving him.  “Stop it,” he managed at last.  Mushog got in a final whack before he left off.

“What was that you were saying then?  ‘Kurbag’s pet’?” asked Lagdush, looking at Nazluk.  The other Orc was reaching for a drinking skin and didn’t answer.

“That little Elf piece he brought back with him,” said Iggrut.  “Eh Nazluk, but you must have been sleeping sound.  She got done for last night.”

Nazluk, swigging his beer, gave Kurbag a deadpan expression.  “Unh…” said Kurbag, shifting uncomfortably.  “She didn’t, actually.”

“Well then what was all the noise about, then?” complained Shrah’rar.  “It sounded like you were banging her to me.” 

Several of the snaga were nodding, clearly witnesses to Kurbag’s late-night tryst.  The others looked confused and interested.  Nazluk had begun smirking faintly. 

Feeling cornered and a bit resentful, Kurbag got up.  He left the fire and went to the slight figure of the Elf, who lay deathly still beside the sleeping pallet where he had left her only a short time ago.  She squeezed her eyes tight when he reached down, as if she thought this would protect her, but he caught her by the arms, pulling her upright, and as he dragged her toward his fellows she gave up the pretense and stared at the ground, anywhere but at him or the others. 

He stopped short of the fire.  There were mutters of surprise and several of the Orcs got up to come and look.  As they approached Kurbag let go of the Elf abruptly, stepping back in wordless permission.  She made a frightened sound and tried to pull away, but their hands were already on her and there were more of them than her.  Motivated by curiosity as much as anything else, they handled her freely, and while they did not hurt her they were not overly gentle either.  Kurbag watched, not saying anything.  His scent was on her and it was strong, giving the truth to his words. 

“But she should be dead then,” someone said.

“You would think so, wouldn’t you,” said Nazluk.

Mushog was confused but not one to pass up a jibe at Kurbag’s expense.  “You sure you put it in her, friend?  Maybe you missed.”  He continued slyly, “Or you did something else wrong…”

Kurbag scowled at him.  “I know where to put my dick, right?  I fucked her proper.”

“Both times, I’m sure,” Nazluk agreed placidly.

Bragdagash, who’d been keeping quiet, frowned at this.  “You did her before?”  He didn’t say anything further, but both Kurbag and Nazluk knew what he was thinking.  He was wondering why Kurbag hadn’t mentioned this. 

Kurbag, for his part, didn’t know either.  He was annoyed at himself for not doing so because it looked odd now, like he had kept it back on purpose.  “’Course I did,” he said.  “That first night when we made camp, I did her then.  Why wouldn’t I?”

Bragdagash settled back, still frowning a little.

“I know it’s strange.  I was surprised too after.  I’d always heard the same about Elves, but I guess you can’t believe everything.”  He was remembering before, when he had talked to the Elf girl, and the things he had always heard that she had confirmed or disproven.  “We hear these different things and they don’t all make sense alongside of one another, right?  Can’t all be true.  I’m thinking that story about them dying after is just that: something that’s been said a lot but isn’t so.”

But Rukshash was standing a little distance from the Elf girl and he was shaking his head.  “You’re right in part, lad.  There’s plenty false is said of them.  But that one I’ve heard from those who would know, and seen myself as well.  More often than not, the light goes out of their eyes before a fellow’s even spent.”

“Well this one’s still here,” said Lagdush, who held her at that moment.  His broad hand covered her small breasts.

Rukshash looked at the Elf girl thoughtfully.  There was white-eyed panic in her face: she looked ready to die of fright.  “It’s strange enough to be sure.  She’s just a titchy little thing.  There doesn’t look to be anything out of the way with her.”

She tried to twist away from Lagdush but the archer’s grip was sure.  He held her firmly despite her struggles.  Orkish laughter greeted her efforts at escape and the wide eyes that she cast at them and at Kurbag.  He stared back, then redirected his gaze at Bragdagash and said a little gruffly, “Anyhow, that’s all I know on the matter.”

Kurbag’s defensiveness hadn’t escaped him, but there was nothing insubordinate about it.  The Elf thing was odd but Bragdagash’s experience with Elves was limited; longevity wasn’t usually a concern with captives anyhow and the point would soon be moot.  “Fair enough,” he said.  “I don’t see that it matters much either way, only if something’s strange say so next time, eh?  I don’t like surprises.” 

The Elf girl was still straining in Lagdush’s grasp.  He let go of her and she fell forward, landing painfully on her knees and the sides of her hands, for with her wrists bound she could not catch herself properly.  Lagdush and the others roared.  She had fallen at Rukshash’s feet and he threw his head back, hooting with laughter.  “Well here’s one tale disproven, they certainly aren’t graceful!”

-.-.-.-

Eleluleniel knelt, body hunched over her hurt hands.  She had torn her skin on the ground and it burned like fire.  Gasping, she held them tightly to her chest, rocking back and forth.

The old Orc in front of her was still chuckling.  “Come now, girlie, up you get.  Let’s see some more of that Elven grace.”  He got behind her and put his arms around her, pulling her upright.  Standing, they were the same height.  He clasped her shoulder, looking her over with faint lechery.  “I like them with more flesh on their bones, but you’re not a bad catch.  Wager you’re a sweet little ride.”

“Bah, you old fucker, you can’t barely even get it up no more,” jeered one of the others.

The old Orc grinned.  “And do I care?  I’ve seen more snatch than you ever will, Iggrut.  Anyhow, I can make a special effort if I really want to.”

He was squeezing her shoulder.  There was something uneven about the pressure of his hand.  Eleluleniel stared at it, realizing with slow horror that it was missing several fingers.  The thumb and forefinger were intact, but the middle finger was less than a stump and the other two were gone entirely.  Something very straight and very sheer had sliced through the Orc’s hand at an angle, and the skin had grown over puckered and shining. 

Rukshash noticed the direction of her gaze.  His grin widened.  “Nice, isn’t it?  It was a gift to me once, from one of your kind.”  He made as if to brush his ruined flesh against her cheek.  Horrified, she jerked away from him.

“Ooooooh, she don’t like that!”  The skinny arm of one of the smaller Orcs wrapped around her waist, uncannily strong.  “Wants gentle treatment, she does.”  It licked its lips at her, thrilled by the fear it saw in her face.  Eleluleniel was terrified, but not of the goblin.  Kurbag stood behind it and his eyes were fixed on her.  She tried to pull free but the goblin held her fast, snickering: “Now don’t be like that, I’m just being friendly.”  But it must have seen that she was looking past it, for it turned its head.  Its squat body slumped at the sight of Kurbag, and it yielded her up with obvious disappointment.

He came close to her and she stared up at him, unable to move.  His mouth opened, but if he spoke to her she could not tell, for he had put his hand on her shoulder and when he did that it was like there was a howling in her brain and she could hear nothing else.  He tugged her against him in a clear gesture of ownership.  She swallowed against the ominous response of her innards; she would be sick…but there was nothing in her body to bring up.  Beyond the sullen wave of nausea, goblin voices, dark and eager:

“—cleave her now?”

“Mind yerself, lad.  That’s Kurbag’s look-out.”

“Here Kurby, you up for it then?”

Kurbag didn’t say anything.  Something jagged was digging into Eleluleniel’s ribcage.  She did not have to look to know what it was: one of the mail pieces appended to his leather clothing.  There was another at eye level.  It was dark and the edges were crumbling and brittle with rust.

“Ehhhhhh.  Fuck this shit—nothing’s happening.  If we’re not getting a piece of it, I’m still hungry.”  There were voices in agreement.  Food enough to be had, and there didn’t look to be any sport yet with the Golug.  Denied that, their thoughts returned to their bellies. 

But Kurbag still held her, and his claws pricked her skin.  “Come on,” he said to her in his rough voice, and there was an edge to it that brooked no opposition. 

He took her apart from the others, and he used one of the drinking skins to rinse the blood and embedded grit from her hands.  Then he started to give her what was left.  She wouldn’t drink at first, but he pushed his thumb into the corner of her mouth and it scared her.  She opened her mouth quickly and water spilled over her teeth and down her throat.  Thirst rose up suddenly within her, making her swallow in quick hard gulps. 

He held the skin to her mouth until it was empty.  “More?”  She shook her head.  He grunted, then looked at where her hands lay in her lap.  He put his own hand on them and she flinched.  “If I untie you, you won’t run.”

“I will not run,” she whispered.

“They’ll cut you down,” he said, looking at her with narrowed eyes.  “Don’t run.” 

She sat very still as he undid the cord, and with the smell of his seed there was the smell of her fear.  He leaned in.  “Stop it,” he said.  “I’m not doing anything to you.”

She pulled back from him.  “I will.  I will stop.  What do you want me to stop doing?  Only tell me.”

He stood up, looking down at her, then left to rejoin his fellows.  She heard them greeting him in a friendly way as he sat with them.  “Eh, Kurbag.  Won’t she run off if you leave her like that?”

“Nar,” he answered.  “She’s no fool.  She knows what’ll happen if she does.”

“Awww.  The poor little thing,” Nazluk said.  He was looking straight at her, and there was a cruel smile on his face.  There was also challenge.  She knew that he wanted, more than anything, for her to run.  It was what she wanted too.  And if she ran they would cut her down, and she would die here in this place.  There would not even be a grave.  They would strip the flesh from her body and no one would ever find her bones. 

I will not run, not now, when they are only waiting for it.  That way is death.  Elbereth help me.  There has to be another way.

She turned from them and stared at the torn skin of her hands before turning them over.  Veisiliel’s kiss was fading.  Several days had passed since her sister left it there, and Kurbag had rubbed it when he rinsed her hands.  Eleluleniel covered it and then uncovered it again and pressed it to her mouth.  “Help me,” she whispered against it as if it were the charm that would send her home.

Chapter Text

“Wonder what that bastard Dushgar is about,” said Mushog, picking his teeth.

“Counting his spoils, most likely,” said Lagdush.  “Thieving scum.”

They had finished eating by now.  Comfortable and well-breakfasted, they were ill-inclined to move and talk had turned to the Orc band they’d encountered the other day.  “Eh, Kurbag.  You said they also had a run-in with Elves?” Mushog asked his friend.

Kurbag nodded.  “That’s what one of them said, anyhow.  Sounded like a talker, but I figure he was telling the truth.”

“If it had just gone down a little differently, we’d’ve shown ’em what,” groused Lagdush.

Kurbag blinked.  “Who?  The Golug-hai, or Dushgar’s lads?”

“Either.  Both.” 

“Sha, Lagdush, you take things too personally,” said Bragdagash.  “It was Nazluk and Kurbag they dicked over and that wasn’t anything we wouldn’t have done in their place.  Dushgar and his boys get along same as we do.  Besides, he didn’t have to let ’em go on their way.  Could just as easily have cut them down where they stood and rifled their dead bodies: had less trouble than the other way.”

It was casually enough that he spoke of how things might have ended for the two unfortunates, but Kurbag didn’t take offense.  Bragdagash was right, after all.  “He told us how to find you again,” agreed Kurbag.  “Gave us the directions to your last camp.”

“He did, did he?”  The Orc chieftain narrowed his eyes.  “Now that’s interesting.  Don’t know what to think of that, if that was a good faith gesture on his part or him looking to piss me off.  Probably both, knowing Dushgar.  I’ll have to get that out of him next time we see each other.”

“You and he knew each other back when, didn’t you, boss?” said Grushak.  “I heard you say as much when we had our little get-together.”

“That’s right.  We fought under the White Hand back in the War.  Just raw warriors together, same division.  All Uruk-hai, of course, because that’s the way it was back then.”

“Just back then, eh?” said Nazluk in a skeptical tone.  He shrugged when Bragdagash looked at him.  “Only I couldn’t help noticing the company your old friend keeps, that’s all.”  No snaga faces among them.

Bragdagash shrugged.  “He makes different choices than I would in his position, I will say that.  He has his own way of doing things, and it’s worked well enough for him so far.  But then again, I have my way, and it’s worked for me.  I’m not partial to the kind of big band that Dushgar favors, for example.  Myself, I think it’s better to keep things fairly small and flexible.  Easier to maneuver.”

He wasn’t talking about the all-Uruk business, Nazluk noted dourly, remembering again how the other lot had ignored him and deferred to Kurbag in his place.  Folk might say things had changed since the War, but Nazluk knew better.  Make a claim like that and there will always be a Dushgar on hand to prove you wrong.

As he mused on the injustice of it all his eyes strayed toward the Elf girl again.  She was sitting where Kurbag had left her, staring off into the trees as if she yearned to disappear among them.  Nazluk allowed himself a small tight smile.  If she didn’t try to bolt it was just a matter of time before somebody offed her.  Nazluk hadn’t missed the bothered look on Bragdagash’s face when he heard that Kurbag had fucked the Elf earlier.  He’d half hoped Bragdagash would order her killed out of hand, but it wasn’t surprising that he hadn’t.  It would have made him look bad with the others: there was an understanding when you took a captive that it was your own business what you did, whether you offered to share or not, and interfering there was just bad form…

But Bragdagash would have something to say, Nazluk knew, if she lingered beyond a day or so.  She shouldn’t even be here now, not three days after Kurbag had taken her.  A few choice words on the subject, Nazluk knew, would easily find the others in agreement, and he planned to say plenty.

Bragdagash was telling some anecdote from his soldiering days, an exploit in which he and Dushgar had both taken part.  “This was after the Hand fell, and I will have you know it was a sticky business, what with the strawheads riding the land and even the bloody trees out to get us.  A band of us were holed up in an old redoubt: a Man place emptied out years back, not so very far from Isengard.  Some stonework still standing but it was mostly scree and, trapped there as we were, you can be sure we soon knew every nook and heap and cranny stone by stone.  That’s why Dushgar and I were so surprised when he found the cellar.  He tripped over this rusty ring sticking out of a stone slab in the ground and when he’d finished cussing about it he called me over and we pulled the stone away.  We went down in there and we found…”  He trailed off, looking slyly at his audience.

Pryszrim seemed alarmed at the pause.  “What?  What did you find?”

“Swag of some sort.”  Lagdush affected boredom, but it was obvious that he was hooked.

Bragdagash grinned.  “You might say that.  Casks.  Barrels and barrels stacked against the walls, and all of them empty.  We did find some tall jars, though, and when we lifted their lids, would you believe it!  There was still drink in there!  Well.  Of course the only right thing was to tell the others of our discovery, and that’s just what Dushgar and I did.”  He smirked.  “After we’d downed the lot, of course.”

There were snickers.  “I’ll bet that pleased them to no end,” said Grushak dryly.

“Oh yes, and they showed us their pleasure too, especially our commander.  He took it out of both our hides, but we were too drunk to feel the good of it.  For the next few days the others were clambering all over, hoping to find an iron ring of their own…but that was the last proper drought any of us would taste for some time to come.  After that Dushgar and I were limited to ditch water until our commander finally figured it was safe enough for all of us to move on, and right foul it tasted after our bit of fun in the cellar.”

The others laughed at the end of his story, particularly Rukshash.  His good eye gleamed as he said, “That reminds me of one I heard back in the day, when the tide turned near the end of the War.  Stop me if you’ve heard this story.  Some Harad boys were caught in a tight spot.  Hemmed in by Gondorians, and they knew they weren’t going to escape; it was either surrender or stay where they were and be flattened.  Or starve, which was also a strong possibility at that point, since they’d been on short rations for ten days and none at all for two.  But!  It so happened that they still had a quantity of alcohol on hand…”

The others were nodding.  They had heard this story before but it was a good one, and Rukshash told it engagingly.  They listened, grinning, as he continued:

“So they came to a decision amongst themselves and, rather than let the booze fall into the hands of the Gondorians, they drank it all.  And when the last drop was swallowed those boys came out from their hidey-hole in one last mad rush, screaming and leaping forward into the arrows and the naked swords of the soldiers of Gondor—”

“Ya harri hey YA HOI!!” the entire band joined in with a raucous shout.

Rukshash laughed and took a long swig from his drinking skin, as if acknowledging those Harad boys and their final charge.  Wiping his mouth afterward with the back of his hand, he sighed in pure satisfaction.  “Ahhh…that’s the way to go.  Slaughtered to the last, of course, but I’ll bet they went out happy.”

“It’s like when folk argue whether it’s better to die drunk or die fighting.  Better to do both,” declared Mushog.

The old Orc chuckled appreciatively.  “Eh lad, you have the right of it there.”

The topic turned to dying then, and the best way to die, and the deaths that they had seen and had dealt out.  It went on for some time before Kurbag got up.  Nazluk had been watching him and had marked the way Kurbag glanced from time to time in the direction of the Elf girl.  “Huh,” Nazluk remarked once the half-Uruk was out of immediate earshot, looking after him as if just noticing that he had left.  “I was joking earlier, when I said that about him feeding her.”

“What?” asked Iggrut.  He looked in the direction Nazluk was looking. 

Kurbag had, in fact, taken a chunk of the meat with him.  “All the better to fatten her with,” said Rukshash with sly humor and the others snickered.  There was a sense of anticipation among them, a shared thirst for blood.  Even if they didn’t get a go at the Elf girl themselves, watching was fun in its own right; then too, many of them had the same curiosity about the taste of Elf flesh that Nazluk had felt.

“You’re probably right,” Nazluk said, allowing a trace of doubt in his words, enough to make some of them look at him curiously.  He shrugged, dropping his voice a little.  “Taking her made sense at the beginning, of course: we might not have escaped otherwise, yes?  I just don’t understand why he didn’t kill her later, when we were well clear of it and after he had his sport.  It held us up, him dragging her with us…”

-.-.-.-

“Here.”

Eleluleniel stared at the piece of meat Kurbag held out to her.  On one side it was black and charred.  On the other side it was just black.  All of the old tales clamored in her head, even over the hunger she felt.  “What is it?”

“Horse from a few days ago.  We killed its rider.  Same day we got split up, though that happened later.”

How old this made it she did not know.  She was still coping with its provenance.  Not the flesh of Elves, then, or of Men, but little better to the folk she sprang from.  “We do not eat horses,” she said faintly, too stunned to think that she might offend him.

Kurbag wasn’t offended but interested.  “Huh.  Why not?”

“We esteem them.  They carry us.  We hold them to be beautiful, wise…”

“I’m told that pigs are smarter,” Kurbag remarked.  It was Shrah’rar who had said that once, and Kurbag hadn’t cared to ask him more on the subject.  Everyone knew what Shrah’rar was.  The Elf hadn’t made a move toward the meat, though her eyes were still fixed on it.  He held it closer and she pulled back.  “Best eat it.  You’re hungry, aren’t you?”

She was.  And the flesh came of an animal, and the animal was dead, and it was not Man or Elf.  She took it from him carefully.  Perhaps she would not have eaten it despite her hunger, except that he was watching her. 

He kept watching, even after, when she shoved it back at him and scrambled to her feet.  He didn’t try to stop her.  It was pretty obvious that she wasn’t trying to escape. 

She knelt some distance from the sleeping area, still gagging.  The sight of what she had brought up made her want to retch further but there was nothing more in her stomach.  She was oblivious to Kurbag’s approach until he spoke.  “You’d better eat the rest of it anyway.  There’s nothing else, after all.”  His voice sounded doubtful, though.

She gasped, fingers whitening on her knees as she tried to gain control of her body.  She was nauseated by his closeness as much as by the food he had given her.  “Why?” she managed.

“Why what?”

“Why would you feed me?”

He stared down at her.  Her shoulders were trembling.  She looked small: smaller than she actually was, even.  “Don’t you want to eat?” he asked.  She shook her head, which could have meant anything at that moment, but Kurbag only assumed she was answering his question.  “So wait on it, then.  It’s here when you do.”  He dropped it in the grass beside her.

She shuddered, drew a few quick, short breaths as she felt her body settling.  Her hair hung loose about her face, and a few strands were crushed against her forehead with perspiration.  She touched them with her fingers and made herself straighten, pushing her hair back over her shoulders so that it hung down her back.  Somehow this simple action seemed to steady her.  She exhaled and, turning her head, looked up at him.  “No,” she said in a calmer voice.  “Why are you keeping me alive?”

He shrugged.  He’d been staring at her hair as she handled it, caught between wanting to touch it and wanting to look. 

When it became evident that he was not going to say anything she said, “I did not think you would do that to me again.  What you did last night…you said you would not.  Did you realize how much it hurt?”  She felt foolish the moment it came out of her mouth.  It was what she might have said to rebuke a child for cruelty to a kitten or some other creature.  But a little child would have understood what she said.  There was no understanding in Kurbag’s strange eyes.

“It didn’t hurt me,” he said matter-of-factly.

-.-.-.-

“Where’s Mushog?” he asked the others later, when he returned to the fire.  The Orcs still there were considerably fewer in number.  It was only the smaller snaga Orcs now, which wasn’t surprising as they tended to be less active during the day than their larger fellows.  They’d also just had a heavy meal, which contributed to their lassitude.  Pryszrim and Rukshash were napping by the fire while Grushak, who was large but still of the same temperament when it came to daytime activity, snored under a nearby tree.  It fell to Shrah’rar and Iggrut to respond.

“Gone with Lagdush to relieve Grymawk,” said Shrah’rar.  “He never came off night shift.”

“Prob’ly fell asleep,” said Iggrut.

“Well I ask you, is it so surprising I did?” came a cranky voice as another small Orc joined them.  “Up all night, no one ever came this morning, I’m only flesh and blood after all…”  Grymawk flung himself down beside the fire, knocking the outsized crossbow on his back askew.  He had to stand to adjust it before dropping down again in a huff.  “And of course I miss everything that happened after that, so now I have to get whatever was told secondhand: bloody unfair, I call it…”

“Will someone shove something in his facehole?” muttered Grushak from under his tree.  Grymawk’s complaining had woken him.

“Here, chew on this.  If you’ll just shut up long enough we’ll soon give you all the dirt you can stomach.”  Shrah’rar pushed drink toward Grymawk as well. 

The goblin needed little urging.  His cheeks soon bulged with food, chased with Orc-draught; swallowing, he groaned happily.  “That is better.  Didn’t realize how hungry I was.  Funny how that goes, innit?”  Eating at only a slightly more moderate pace, he listened as his fellows related, in somewhat abridged form, the talk there had been the night before and what Nazluk and Kurbag had to say for themselves, following with the revelation of earlier that morning. 

Kurbag did not contribute to any of this.  He had made himself scarce, doubtless off after Mushog and Lagdush, so Shrah’rar and Iggrut were somewhat freer in their speech than they would have been had the tall half-Uruk still been near.

“That is odd,” said Grymawk, swallowing his current mouthful.  “That’s not like anything I’ve heard.”

“Odd?  Bloody creepy if you ask me,” said Shrah’rar.  “I think there’s something witchy about her.  Nazluk about said as much.”

Grymawk tore off another bite and chewed thoughtfully, then swallowed.  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” he said with a shrug.  “She was glowing last night.”

“…how’s that?”

“She’d this sheen about her.  Only a little, mind you, but it was there.”

“Garn!  You’re making it up,” said Iggrut.

Grymawk looked annoyed.  “I’m serious here.  When I was on guard last night.  I heard something coming, you see, and I could see this bit of a gleaming.  I thought it was foxfire, though it wasn’t so bright, but it was something like that and it gave me a turn, coming through the trees like it was.  Of course then they got nearer and I could see Kurbag and Nazluk, and then a little Golug with them, and after that I didn’t have time to sit and think about anything else.  But it was coming off of her, is what I’m saying.  Her face and her hair, and any bit of skin that was showing.”

“You’re shitting us,” said Iggrut.  “We didn’t see anything like that and we saw her last night too, remember.”

“I told you, it wasn’t that bright.  It was very faint.  You saw her by firelight, you wouldn’t have noticed.  I saw her in the trees.”

They took a moment to digest this.  Pryszrim, who was awake now, had propped himself up on one elbow and was listening with his large ears cocked, his eyes and mouth wide open.

“Witchy,” said Shrah’rar again.  “What’s the point of that, do you suppose?”

“Could be useful, maybe?  For them as can’t see in the dark?” Pryszrim offered in that over-eager way he had of joining a conversation.  “Bein’ shiny-like, you know – you’d never lose your way…”

“Nor would any arrows trained on you neither.”  Iggrut gave him a disdainful look.  “Golug are prey.  If they’re bright at night, it just makes them easier to catch and kill.  If it’s not just a story, that is.”

Grymawk shrugged.  “It’s no skin off my nose whether you believe me or not.  I know what I saw, that’s all.”

“Simple to prove it one way or another,” said Iggrut, standing and casting a purposeful look in the Elf’s direction.  The others glanced at each other before getting up as well.

Eleluleniel had tried again after Kurbag left to eat the meat that he had given her.  She knew that she needed the sustenance, but it was no good: she felt her gorge rise at each mouthful and could not go beyond a fifth.  She had failed to say grace before the beginning of her foul meal.  Make it enough, she thought in quiet prayer as she willed what she had eaten to stay down.  There was a rancid sick taste at the back of her throat, though, and she did not know if prayer would be enough.

A sound of some sort made her turn her head.  One of the goblin-Orcs was approaching her with an air of intent: a green-skinned creature with a crooked nose and cunning black eyes.  He stopped and cocked his head a little, looking her up and down deliberately.  “Hoi Grymawk!” he called back over his shoulder.  “Nar shofanog Golug-kulamak flasog-lat.”

“Dautas-draut, pa-gog’hom!” 

Three other goblins trudged up behind him.  They were gray-skinned and the one speaking was the smallest of the Orcs that she had seen.  All four of them were on the small side, shorter than her, but their bodies were formidable, compactly made; they had the same sharp nails and teeth as their larger fellows, and they were all of them armed.

“Skai—flasog-lat lat hom jashatob—”

She did not know why they were looking at her or what they were saying.  Slowly, carefully, she shifted her body so that she was facing them, preparing to defend herself, but she knew there wasn’t much she could do against four Orcs and their knives.

“Lat-marr, Iggrut.  Burz-ishi shof, nar lata-dil.”

“Hurr, nar marr… Kaum-uuk kulamak flas-lat?”  The green Orc began to move, pacing around her.  The others moved in the opposite direction.  Before she even realized what they were doing the ringleader barked a sharp directive. 

They were on her in the same instant.  She fought them blindly but it was no use.  In a raucous onslaught they brought her down, even as she tried to knock them back, to pull free.  An arm whipped across her throat and wrenched her head around with a suddenness that brought stars to her eyes.  She could feel how the rest of her body continued to struggle while from the shoulders up she was pinned like that, her face pressing into a skinny Orkish thigh.  Like a fish… she thought, seeing herself distantly as she jerked in their hands.  Their voices argued above her.  They were speaking two tongues now, an ugly mix of their language and Common, but it made no difference.  She couldn’t understand a word of what they said.  And then her head was hauled back painfully and a knife was in the ringleader’s hand.  She heard her own wail rising in her ears.

Shouts of anger and a black-clad figure waded into them, flinging two of the goblins off her; the other two quickly scrambled aside and stood at some distance, mingled alarm and amusement on their faces.  One of them was the green-skinned Orc with the knife.  Kurbag shouted at him and he answered back in a cheerful, impudent way.  He held up his other hand now and she saw what he held in it.  It was a lock of pale hair.

“You idiot! What for?” demanded Kurbag, switching to Westron.

“Because we wanted to see, yes?” the Orc called Iggrut said right back as he gestured with his trophy.

Her hand went at once to her head, but her hair was long and she could not find the place where it had been cut away.  That was what he’d wanted?  Only her hair?  But as Kurbag and Iggrut continued to snap at one another it became clear that, yes, this was the reason for the assault.  She was completely bewildered.  That was why they had all descended upon her at once?  She would have given it to them gladly enough to keep them from attacking her!  The whole thing was ridiculous, and even funnier than four Orcs attacking her for a mere lock of hair was Kurbag’s own outrage, as if he was the one who had been robbed.

Evidently this was exactly the way he felt.  “You’d no call to do that!” he told them hoarsely.  “That’s mine! Fucking hands off!”

The others fled the scene as if they were so many naughty children, though Iggrut made a more deliberate exit, a decided swagger in his step.  Kurbag turned and began at once to examine her, looking to see if the knife had cut her, running his fingers quickly through her hair.  Unlike Eleluleniel, he found the place where her hair had been cut away immediately, and he swore overhead in stormy wrath.  Beneath his heavy hands the Elf girl shook with helpless laughter.

Chapter Text

Following the scuffle with the Elf, Iggrut was feeling very self-satisfied.  Once out of shouting range with Kurbag he grinned and showed his prize to the others.  It was, so far as they could tell, only hair, and had no special luster such as Grymawk had described, though it was certainly pale.  "You were wrong, Grymawk," said Iggrut.

"Maybe I was and maybe I wasn't," Grymawk said, handling the lock of hair and examining it closely.  "Might be because you cut it off her…”  He shuddered a little and pushed it toward Pryszrim.  "Brr, I don't like touching it.  Feels like cobwebs."

Pryszrim took it gingerly but when it wasn't sticky he rubbed it between his fingers and sniffed it.  "It doesn't smell bad anyhow," he decided.

Iggrut scoffed.  "It smells like Elf," he said, taking it back.  "Not a scent to my liking.”  But he fashioned the lock of hair into a little knot and fastened it mockingly at his belt, like a battle trophy, and very handsome it looked.   It was probably the closest he would ever come to a trophy of that sort.   There weren't so many Elves as there once were and it wasn't often you ran into them.   Knotted at his belt like this, it occurred to Iggrut that others wouldn't have to know how he'd actually come by it.   He imagined himself showing it off at some other time and place, with none of his present band around to gainsay him.

See this?  There's an interesting story behind this one.  Came from the head of a Golug warrior. You don't believe me, just touch it – run it through your hand, like.  Feel that?  Isn't that fine?

Smirking a little at this fantasy, he thought to himself that it might be even more convincing accompanied by a finger, or better yet, an ear.  He'd have to take the opportunity when it presented itself, when the Elf wench died.

-.-.-.-

Off keeping company with Lagdush, Mushog was caught on the prongs of his own horniness.  He complained of it at some length to the other Uruk, who had heard it all before and so was not as sympathetic as he might have been.  "Poor you," said Lagdush with heavy sarcasm.  "You think you've got it worse than the rest of us?"

"Maybe," said Mushog in all seriousness.  "…Yeah.  Yeah, I want it worse.  I was born wanting it, I want it so bad my whole body's throbbing, when I sleep at night I dream I've turned into one giant aching cock…”  As he spoke his hand drifted down to cup himself through his breeches.

"You dream you're a dick?”  Lagdush laughed outright at this.  "You'll have no argument from me!  Just a cock or did you also have balls?"

Mushog scowled.  "Fuck you, Lagdush.  I suffer and all you do is make fun."

"Well what do you want?  I'm not about to bend over for you.  Now if you were to drop your breeches for me—”  Mushog's lip curled and Lagdush snorted.  "There you go, then."

"But shit…”  Mushog was sulking, a particularly ugly look on an Orc.  "It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't know there was twat nearby."

"Why don't you ask for it, then?" came a voice.  They turned to see Nazluk approaching at a casual pace.  There was a bland look on his face.  "It's Kurbag, after all.  You're both friends, yes?  Or do you think he wouldn't share?"

Nazluk was deliberately keeping any trace of sarcasm out of his voice.  He settled his shoulder against a tree, maintaining a companionable distance from the two Uruk-hai as he waited for them to process what he had said.  Mushog cocked his head a little, bemused, but Lagdush was the one to speak first.

"I wouldn't if I were him," said Lagdush.  "Wouldn't share, I mean.  If she were a Man-person I might, they're more durable, but Elves don't lend themselves to that sort of thing."

"Most of them don't, to be sure.”  Nazluk nodded agreement but allowed his eyes a quick flicker toward Mushog.

His words, predictably, were a cue for the Uruk.  "This one's held up well enough, though, right?  Kurbag's had her twice now!"

"Third time's the charm.  You'd likely be the one to do her in," Lagdush said dryly.

Mushog, taking this as a compliment, looked smug.  Knowing he needed to get them back on track, Nazluk mused, "One, two…yes, it's been twice now.  Doesn't seem particularly fair, does it?  But she's Kurbag's to do with as he sees fit, hmmm…well, maybe he'd let you have a go if you asked him."

It was reasonable enough, of course, but it was the doubtful way he said it that Mushog didn't like, as if asking to fuck the Elf would only make him lose face.  Kurbag was a mate, after all.  Mushog shouldn't have to ask.

-.-.-.-

That's given them something to think about, Nazluk thought afterward, a tight smile at the corner of his mouth.  Played right, Mushog was one of the more suggestible members of their band, and very predictable when you knew how his mind worked.  Lagdush was more stolid, less quick to anger, but he had a sullen streak a mile wide when he felt he had a grievance.  His snit over Dushgar and the other band was only case in point.  And Lagdush had two balls and a dick in fine working condition.  He might act like it didn't bother him now, but give him another day and the Elf not dead, he'd be as randy as Mushog.

Of course the scenario Nazluk preferred had the Elf dead before the coming of another dawn, but he'd been surprised twice already on this score.  He did not intend to be surprised again.  Three mornings had come and gone, each finding the Golug still alive, and he was prepared to entertain a fourth if he had to.  Better to build the others up carefully.  They were still assumed that she was just going to die: captives of their band never lasted long, lingering a few days at most before they succumbed beneath repeated torment or were finally dispatched by their tormenters.  So it would be with the Elf as well.  She would expire soon enough, or Kurbag would kill her.

Nazluk had also believed this in the beginning.  Unlike the others, though, he had enjoyed the dubious pleasure of the Golug's continued presence for several days now.  Miserable quivering creature that she might appear, she hadn't died yet, and she didn't look ready to drop of her own accord any time soon.  Why should she start playing by the rules now?

More questionable than her persistence was Kurbag's own conduct, his failure to dispose of her.  If his treatment of her were more brutal Nazluk wouldn't have been concerned, but there was little of cruelty in Kurbag's manner with the Elf.  Beyond fucking her he seemed to view her with curiosity and a strange sort of interest that set Nazluk's teeth on edge.  Nobody else might see it, but Nazluk's brain insisted something very queer was going on.

Being pushy with Kurbag, trying to force him on the matter, had been a misstep on Nazluk's part.  It had only put the other Orc's back up, made him stubborn.  Nazluk could not afford annoying the others in the same way.  Better to take a light touch: an opportune word here, a mild comment there, such as he had used with Mushog and Lagdush or with the others that morning over breakfast.  It shouldn't take more than that, especially since, as he told himself, they were bound to see what he already saw.

That business with the Elf's hair, for instance.  That had not been his doing, but nothing could have better served his ends.  It wasn't Iggrut's place to mess with the little wretch, nor any of the other Orcs for that matter, but Kurbag's response had been perfect.  He had not gone to rejoin Lagdush and Mushog or to engage with any of the others.  Instead he had become defensive.  Even now he remained with the Elf, scowling at the snaga Orcs whenever any of them ventured near, as if he expected them to have another go at her the minute his back was turned.  This attitude of Kurbag's needed no comment.  It didn't strike the right note at all, and if he kept it up he would do his own cause as much harm as ever Nazluk could hope for.

All he needed to do, Nazluk reasoned, was just sit back and watch.

-.-.-.-

Dinner that night was entertaining.  Iggrut still wore his knot of Elf hair at his belt and kept directing impudent looks at Kurbag, which Kurbag pointedly ignored, and at the Elf girl, who did not see them but only stared down at the folds of her dress.  This did not discourage Iggrut, who continued to smirk, fingering the knot conspicuously.  At length he succeeded in capturing Mushog's attention.

"What's that you have then?" asked the Uruk.

"Bit of hair from Kurbag's Golug.  Pretty, isn't it?"

Mushog's eyes widened.  "Ehhh?  Garn!  When'd you give him that, Kurbag?"

"I didn't," said Kurbag irritably.

"That's not a bit fair!  We're much better mates than you and Iggrut are.  I should get one too!”  Mushog reached for the Elf.

Kurbag sat ramrod straight.  "Oi.  I'll do it, right?  Just give me a minute.”  He drew his knife and indeed, one minute and one startled Elf girl later, Mushog had his lock of hair.  This triggered a volley of similar requests from the others, which Kurbag handled with short shrift.  "Enough's enough," he said.  "You can talk to Iggrut or Mushog about it, I'm done."

"Feh, you're no fun," said Rukshash.  "Give us a look, Mushog!"

Kurbag didn't much care whether the others thought him fun or not.  He pushed his knife back into his belt brusquely.  Beside him the Elf sat with her clenched fists in her lap, still trembling after the blade, not looking at him or at any of them.  He did not look at her either but was keenly aware of her and her silence all the same.  At that moment Kurbag just wanted to be off away from the others: take the Elf out into the dark and fuck her under the trees.  The sudden rush of angry arousal made him shift a bit.  Rukshash, who was sitting nearby, grinned at him, and Kurbag scowled.

One of the goblins was talking about the weather, wondering how the sun was likely to behave on the morrow.  "Who cares under cover like this?" asked Lagdush, who had little empathy for snaga grievances about sunlight.

"Can't count on trees forever," muttered Grymawk.

"Scared of a little sun?  You're free to walk in my shadow," Mushog teased him.

Grymawk gave him a withering look.  "And have you farting in my face all the while.  No thank you."

This drew laughter from the others, including Mushog.  "Skai.  You love every minute of it!"

"What, that reek?"

"When Mushog makes wind, squirrels die and little birds fall out of their nests," Rukshash intoned darkly.

"Leaves shrivel and stars go dark," said Grushak.

Mushog was still grinning, but not so widely as before.  "Right, that's—"

"There's the answer, you see.  We'll aim him at the sun: one good shot and the sky would turn black."

"He'd blast it right out of the sky!"

Mushog protested over the hooting.  "Oi!  That's enough!  Hear you fuckers talk—you think your farts stink less than mine?”  His gaze fell on Pryszrim, who was still giggling and who happened to be holding the second lock of Elf hair.  "Give that here," Mushog growled, snatching it back.   Crestfallen, Prysrim stared at his empty hand.

This provoked new mischief from Iggrut, who was still playing with his little knot.  "Eh lads," he said, twisting it around his crooked finger.  "What does an Elf fart smell like, do you suppose?"

Kurbag lifted his head, giving Iggrut an annoyed look, while across the fire Nazluk looked up with a calculating glint in his eyes.  Quiet enough till now, he had become utterly still and watchful.  Kurbag wasn't facing him at that moment and none of the others noticed Nazluk's change of manner.  They had turned their attention on the Golug.

"Do they fart, d'you reckon?" someone wondered.

"Must do, mustn't they, from time to time.  Got the same bits we have."

"Not all the same bits," said Pryszrim.  "I mean, that one doesn't."

"Ooooh, figured that out, have you?" Grymawk mocked him.

"Eh, Kurbag.”  Lagdush leaned forward, inviting his fellow Orc's confidence.  "Does your Golug fart?"

Kurbag, who had been glaring at Iggrut, now stared at Lagdush.  "Why ask me?"

"Er, well," said the Uruk.  "Figured you would know, wouldn't you?  Being as you've had her to hand an' all…"

"Well, I don't.  I've not been paying that kind of attention to her, so I really have no idea."

Was that a defensive edge to Kurbag's voice, or only wishful thinking on Nazluk's part?  No matter.  He knew the right moment when he saw it.  "Really?" he said now, as if surprised.  "I would have thought you were an expert."

"What's that supposed to mean?" asked Kurbag in annoyance.

"Oh, nothing.  I only mean that, associating with her as you have these past few days, it makes sense that you would pick up a few things about the Golug-hai and their nature, yes?  Some things the rest of us might not know."

As if Iggrut weren't bad enough…so now Nazluk was getting into it again, eh?  Kurbag uttered a low growl.  "I don't know what you're getting at, Nazluk, but I wish you would speak your piece plainly and not play your sneaking word games on me."

Nazluk looked confused.  "Hey?  What is it I said that was so sneaking?"

"You know what I'm talking about.  Quit saying I'm…”  He trailed off, unsure of how to continue.  What word had Nazluk used?  "Associating," said Kurbag.

The others were watching closely, interested to see where this was going.  Fireside interest levels always went up if a fight looked imminent.  Nazluk glanced at them as if for guidance.  "Eh…I didn't know there was anything wrong with the word associating.  I only mean you've been around the little Elf wench for a while now and so you might know more about her kind than we do.  That makes sense, doesn't it?  I wasn't trying to imply anything, if that's what you're thinking.  Really, what else would I mean?"

He sounded genuine, but Kurbag saw how Nazluk's eyes slid ever so slightly sidelong, where the Elf sat by in her cocoon of silence.

She heard the things they said.  Of course she did.  There was no way not to hear them, not unless she covered her ears outright, and that would only invite more of their attention.  But nothing said she had to listen.  The conversation around her, what she understood of it, alternated between disgusting and cruel, so she escaped it as best she could by searching for something else to focus on instead.  Food, at first, but food was all too easy.  Hunger was always with her, a restless animal twisting in her belly.  It made the thought of food a kind of torture, and she fled old memories of bread and milk.

So strange, what the mind in flight will linger on.  By an Orkish campfire, in the company of Orcs, she found herself thinking of her sister's sleeve, torn in play not many days before.  The last time she plied her needle had been wholly perfunctory, her overwhelming feeling exasperation.

"Veisiliel, why can you not be more careful with your clothing?"

Had she known it was for the last time, she would have done things differently.  She had chosen red thread to repair the red fabric, to hide both the tear and its mending.  Now rather she would have chosen the yellow of marigold, and covered the entire sleeve in tiny tight cross-stitches.  She saw it lying across her knee, clear as anything.  How beautiful it was!  As if the red sleeve had been dipped in golden pollen.

Brushed with the dust of flowers…

A hand clamped down on her left shoulder, forcing her brutally forward, wrenching her from her pathetic fantasy with a gasp.  She thought at first this was some punishment for having her own thoughts, for daring even so small an escape.  But Kurbag's anger was directed elsewhere.  "You can just fuck yourself," she heard him snarling.  "I've told you once: she's mine to do with as I please, and it's not your place to interfere!"

There was the heat of the fire somewhere just in front of her, terrifyingly close, but before she could try to struggle back from it or even cry out, Kurbag was hauling her upright.  Her vision blurred, she had the brief but vivid impression of many eyes watching, any two of which might have belonged to the target of her abuser's anger.  That was all the time she had to look, for Kurbag didn't waste another minute before yanking her roughly about face and frog-marching her out of camp.

"Dunno what he's up to," he was grumbling furiously.  "Why must he always be playing games?”  She could not see where she was going and it quickly became obvious that Kurbag couldn't either as he stumbled along, growling imprecations in the dark.

"Oi, Kurbag!”  The voice came from close behind them.  "Kurbag…oi!  Hold up just a tick, eh?"

Kurbag fell silent and they stopped as the sound of following footsteps and violently snapping twigs came close behind them.  Beneath his hands, Eleluleniel turned her head to see the figure of a tall Orc hard by in the gloom.  "What do you want, Mushog," asked Kurbag shortly.

Mushog spread his hands.  "Nothing, nothing.  Only you're pissed at Nazluk, right?  I can see why: I don't know what he's done this time, but he's a cunt.  It only makes sense you'd be sick of him when it was the two of you on your own.  Three stinking days!  Must have been hard, him up your arse every waking minute."

Kurbag grunted.  "You're right about that."

"Anyhow, it's no good letting him under your skin.  No one's going to listen to him when it's just him talking.  Only if you let him get to you and it looks like there's something for him to be talking about—"

He broke off as Eleluleniel choked back a sob of pain: Kurbag's claws had just bitten reflexively into her shoulder.  Mushog's eyes flicked toward her and in that glance she saw plainly enough what was in them.  It was not Kurbag's claws that prompted her flinch then.

"What do you mean, 'something for him to be talking about'?" Kurbag demanded.

"Well there isn't anything, of course," Mushog covered none too smoothly.  "That's just what I'm saying.  Just some snaga bastard mouthing off, right?  Nothing to let yourself be bothered about. You don't have to listen to Nazluk's shit.  You have better ways to spend your time.”  He paused, moistened his lips before continuing pointedly, "Maybe…while you're at it…you could use a mate, right?  Just to have someone to talk to an' all, maybe share a bit of sport.  Spend some time with, while you take your mind off Nazluk's bullshit."

He looked at Eleluleniel again and she cringed.  There was nothing subtle about Mushog and it was obvious enough what he was after.

It was obvious to Kurbag as well.  And while under other circumstances he would have been amused, maybe even invited Mushog along, at that moment it was just an added level of annoyance.  "You know, I'll think about that," he said coldly.  And, turning his back on the other Orc, he pulled the Elf girl after him.

-.-.-.-

Without any deflection against the thorns and other hazards of the undergrowth, Kurbag soon developed a more careful pace.  It was still dark, but not so bad he couldn't make his way comfortably enough if he took his time.  Once he told himself that, he found he didn't stumble so often.  Not so for the Elf, who continued to falter and to drag her heels behind.  It wasn't so surprising: she had to have guessed why he was taking her so far into the woods.  He might have saved himself some trouble, doing her closer to camp, but the business around the fire had him out of sorts; he wasn't in the mood to give anyone a free show, and that included Mushog.

Especially not him, great bloody fool that he is.  Coming after me like that…

At that moment Kurbag couldn't have said who he was the more pissed off at, Nazluk or Mushog.  "Stupid bastard," he muttered, stopping at last and shoving the Elf against a tree.

For Eleluleniel, the scenario had become horribly familiar.  He kept her pinned with the pressure of his greater bulk, hauling at her clothing and then his own, and paid no attention to how she fought him.  She gave it to him with both fists, shrieked at him to stop, but she might have been beating at a mountain for all the notice he took of it.  All he did was cover her screams with his hand.

When he took it away long years later, her mouth was as wet as her eyes.  She slipped from his grasp, clutching at herself and breathing in hard gulps to keep from drowning.

What had seemed forever to her had been very quick for Kurbag.  Fastening his breeches again, he wondered why it hadn't helped.  Why he still felt aggrieved.  He had only to look at the Elf slumped against the tree to know the answer.  This was why things were so complicated, and it was why they would remain that way, so long as she was there.

Putting his hand around her neck, he pushed her back against the rough tree trunk.  She caught at his wrist, eyes darting over his face.  He looked at her closely, saying nothing.  She mouthed a "no" that the constriction of his hand preventing her from voicing; her fingers were digging into his wrist but with barely any nails to speak of, she couldn't even break the skin.  Sighing irritably, he released her and started to walk away.  A few steps and he turned, only to stare at her again.

"Whuh—why…”  Her voice sounded strange and guttural.  Eleluleniel swallowed, still feeling the choke of his hand on her throat.  "Why do you keep l…looking at me."

"I'm wondering if killing you isn't simpler."

A sob escaped her, a wretched sound that welled up out of her even as she fought to stifle it.  A second followed, and then a third.

Kurbag studied her as if she were doing something terribly interesting that merited scrutiny.  "I didn't say I was going to."

"But you are guh…going t-to…"

He did not respond to this, only watching as she struggled to gain control of herself.  "What's the Elf word for asshole?" he said after a moment.  When she didn't answer he asked her again.

Eleluleniel closed her eyes.  Taking in a ragged breath, she let it out again.  "We do not have such a word," she answered wearily.

"No?  Aren't there any asshole Elves?"

"We do not use such words for others."

"So there are, and you just don't call them on it," he hazarded.

She shrugged, and wished she hadn't.  Her back was bruised and throbbing.  Kurbag stepped in close to her and panic caught her, but he just leaned his shoulder into the tree, his body bare inches from hers.  Her skin crawled with his nearness.  Before, when he had violated her, at least he hadn't insisted on talking to her afterward.

"Nazluk," said Kurbag, drawing the name out in a meditative way, "is pissing me off right now.  You wouldn’t know that, not understanding our speech.”  He paused but she said nothing.  Interpreting her silence as he chose, Kurbag went on, "Well, he is what you might call an asshole, and a right prick into the bargain.  He's squeezing my balls, and I don't like it.  I'll take orders from Bragdagash, and I'll hear advice from a mate, but this constant prodding and poking and lighting of little fires beneath my arse to make me jump… I won't jump for him.  I won't."

With all his talk of don't and won't, she wondered what it was he expected her to say.  She cast her eyes low, avoiding his gaze.  "What will you do," she asked, staring at his boots.

He grunted noncommittally, looking down at the top of her bowed head.  "It's my choice, I'll make it on my own terms.  Not Nazluk's place to tell me what to do with my own business, nor anyone else's.”  A wisp of her hair was caught against the wrinkled bark of the tree.  He took it between thumb and forefinger, absently winding it around.  "He wants to see you dead, and I am ill-inclined to give him anything he wants just now."

Then she lived on sufferance, as a way of spiting Nazluk?  That might keep her safe for now, but it could not last forever.

"If you let me go, that would displease him as well.”  Her voice held little hope.  She expected him to make short work of the suggestion.

But Kurbag didn't say anything.  He was quiet for so long that at length she raised her head and looked at him, to find him watching her in the dark.  "You're persistent," was all he said, but he continued to look at her as if in thought.

-.-.-.-

Mushog was not very talkative after he came back to the fire.  It was obvious that his run after Kurbag hadn't gone the way he wanted.  This left Nazluk feeling vindicated, though he didn't say anything.  That would be highly unnecessary, and might even be overkill.  He knew that Mushog would be chewing over his words from earlier, and they would make bitter digestion of an evening.

Nazluk was not the only one with an eye on Mushog.  Bragdagash had kept out of the conversation earlier, watching instead to see how things played out.  Never one to be highhanded, he preferred not to wade into this kind of thing unless there was a real need.  Mushog's miffed libido wasn't justifiable cause by Bragdagash's standards, but he was already suspicious of something more at play, and Mushog was not the only one he was watching.

Kurbag had not come back yet when the others began turning in for the night, and there were jokes at the expense of their absent teammate, some envious but others mocking.  Iggrut had coined the phrase "bitch-flight" to describe Kurbag's dramatic departure earlier, and this was pretty funny stuff to a band of mostly inebriated Orcs.  But even joking trailed off in the face of comfy bed mats and an early start in the morning.  Some dropped right off while others tended to sundry matters before they bunked down.  Grushak was sitting on his as-yet unrolled sleeping pallet, sorting through his packs.  Better to make sure everything was in place now—it made one less thing to do in the morning.

"Hoi.  Grushak.”  He looked up to find Bragdagash looking down at him.  "Take a minute," the Uruk said, and walked away.

Grushak glanced at the pack he held between his knees.  Refastening the flap and putting it aside, he got up to follow.

In the dark beyond the circle of firelight and the immediate sight and hearing of others, Bragdagash didn't take long getting to the point.  "I want your thoughts."

"What on, boss?"

"This Elf thing.  I'm not thrilled with Kurbag's attitude."

"Hmm.  Seems to me it’s as much a matter of Nazluk's attitude as Kurbag's."

"You don't think he has a point?"

Grushak looked amused.  "Nazluk?   Hurr.  He's usually got more than one.  I'm happy if I know what any three of them are at a given time."

This made Bragdagash snort.  "I guess that's true enough.  And it's certainly clear he and Kurbag are at odds with one another: have been since they came back.  I've no mind to interfere in squabbles between my lads.  They're big boys: they can clean up their own shit."

"But?"

"But this Elf thing bothers me as well."

Grushak frowned, a frown that said he didn't like it either, though he didn't say so out loud.  When he spoke his words were measured.  "His own business.  Said as much by the fire, and he has the right of it.  It's custom, and not Nazluk's place to meddle.”  Scratching his head, he added slowly, "Of course, it's not always enough to leave it at that.  One fellow's business is his own, but when it starts becoming everybody else's, well…"

"Then it's another animal all together.”  Bragdagash looked thoughtful.  "You think it's at that point?  I should make it my business?"

Grushak shrugged.  "See what the morrow brings.  This Golug, she's a delicate little thing.  I know she's past the due date, but odds are still good she don’t see sun-up tomorrow, and that takes care of that.  No fuss no muss – and none too soon, if you ask me.  I've found out something about myself, boss.  I don't like the smell of Golug while I'm eating.  It gets into the food."

Bragdagash chuckled.  "Yours too, eh."

Grushak smiled, but it was a humorless kind of smile.  "I will tell you something else, and without you asking me first.  If I were Kurbag, we wouldn't be having this conversation.  No games past the second day.  I slit their throats when I'm done with them."

Chapter Text

It was dark, and the sleeping Orc camp was still and quiet.  Near one dark bulk the Elf girl slept as well, hands curled close beneath her chin.  In that whole place there were none awake, save for the trees who watch always.  Now they spoke with one another in the soundless speech so few apart from them may understand.

…poor child…poor little one…

…she cannot stay here…something bad will happen…

…yet it will go ill with her if she tries to flee…

…it may be he will free her…

…trust not in the Orch…he has lied before…

…hope not in that…she cannot wait for that…

…something bad will happen…

…if she stays…

…something bad is going to happen.

Eleluleniel’s eyelids fluttered.  Without any other movement she came to full wakefulness, listening with all of her body.  In her dreams she had seen herself sleeping and heard the trees speaking overhead.  Now she did not hear their speech but she felt their unease with the simple understanding born to any child of Elves.

Had the trees been speaking or had she only dreamt it?  Did it matter if she had?  What they said was true.

Something bad is going to happen.

Kurbag was lying close by.  She could hear him snoring low behind her.  Then she heard him stop, heard the soft squeak of leather, and knew that he was moving.  Swallowing down her fear, she turned onto her back as quietly as possible so that she could see what he was doing.  He had rolled onto his side facing her, no longer snoring, but his eyes were closed and his mouth hung open.  There were crumbs of dried spittle at the corners.

Lying on her back, she looked sideways at him and then up, up at the shadowy mass of leaves overhead.  Dawn was coming, and early morning would see the whole camp awake and watchful.  If not now, when? she thought to herself.  Then: I will do this. 

She sat up slowly and took a careful look around.  There were several of them lying about the sooty circle of the extinguished fire, bellies up, while the rest slept further out as Kurbag did.  They slept in the same dirty clothes she had seen them in during the daytime.  Some slept uncovered while others lay beneath rough pelts pulled up against the coolness of night.  Covered or uncovered they were all of them ugly and absurd, slack faces and drooling open mouths like a tableau from a child’s bedside tale. 

Like Lúthien before the throne of Morgoth, when she placed him and all of his creatures under a sleep.  Or Beleg when he rescued Túrin from the drunken Orc camp.  Or that old children’s song of Demaerion Half-Ways…the one in which he drugs the goblins and steals their shoes…

Remembering these snatches of story was some help in curbing her fear.  She was gathering the courage to stand when her gaze passed over one of the recumbent Orcs.  His eyes were open and looking back at her, eyes fixed and unblinking as those of a sleeping Elf.  But Orcs do not sleep with their eyes open. 

Eleluleniel froze. 

Nazluk uncurled and sat up, stretching his body in a languid, unhurried motion, and smiled at her.  His mouth smiled, but his eyes held all the warmth of a serpent.  Lifting one hand, he made a flourishing, expansive gesture, one that needed no explanation.  

Go on then.  Try it.  Leave if you want to leave so badly.

For a moment she could only stare back at him, her immediate plans for escape in shambles.  He did not want her there, but this invitation to go was mockery.  She knew that he would kill her if she tried.  Finally, lying back unhappily, she turned on her side and stared into the trees.

As for Nazluk, he felt very good.  Seeing the Elf girl’s furtive movements when he opened his eyes had been unexpected.  Perhaps, if he’d been thinking more clearly, he should have closed his eyes again before she realized he was awake.  Let her put some distance between herself and them, and then roused the others with news of her escape.  Or he might have risen and followed after her by stealth, cutting her down once she was in the trees.  If he killed her legitimately, while she was trying to get away, Kurbag would hardly be in any position to gainsay him.

Nazluk drew a slender knife from beneath his sleeping pallet and began to clean under his nails with it, glancing up every so often at the Elf girl’s back, the outline of her shoulderblades through the soft material of her dress.  Thinking of the dismay that had been on her face, his smile widened.  No, he felt no regret.  The Golug lived but her position was far from favorable, and he had a very good feeling about the day ahead.

-.-.-.-

Generally when Bragdagash called an extended march he could expect groans and protests, good-natured or ill-tempered depending on how his lads had slept, the terrain they were expecting, the state of the weather.  This morning it was different, for when the Uruk chieftain gave the order to fall in the Golug stood in Kurbag’s shadow, timorous and silent beneath the eyes that watched her.  Some looked surreptitiously, glancing nervously over her as if she were an alien object with unknown, possible dangerous properties.  Others stared outright in baffled hunger or resentment, or both. 

It wasn’t like the day before, when the others had first found the Golug still alive.  There had been surprise and confusion then, but mostly joking and a keen sense of anticipation.  They were expecting a show, and they knew it wouldn’t be long before they had one.  But Kurbag hadn’t delivered.  Now it was Day Two, and their allotted rest and relaxation was behind them now, along with any immediate chance for sport.  They had ground to make up, and there was one more in their company than they had been expecting.

Bragdagash look at the Elf girl, his ugly face inscrutable, and then his eyes flicked toward Kurbag, and then he directed his gaze to the larger group.  “Got all your shit then?  That’s good, because we’re legging it.  You lot’ve had it easy.  Gonna be covering a lot of ground to make up for yesterday.”  He started off at the head and the others fell in line behind him.  Calling back over his shoulder: “I think it’s only fair to warn you that I didn’t have breakfast this morning.  No stragglers, unless you want your name to be Lunch.”

Normally this gibe would have netted a good laugh.  Today the response was quieter as more than half the Orcs present looked at Kurbag’s Golug.  Up at the head of the column Bragdagash himself did not look back, but he kept stock of the muttering he heard behind him.

Surprisingly as the hours passed the Elf did not fall behind.  Kurbag was keeping to the middle of the line, and the girl was cleaving close to him.  Perhaps she was fearful of the other Orcs who watched so closely, and of what would happen if she fell within their reach.  But there was something else the smaller Orcs soon noticed, and this became the subject of a rapid exchange between them: whispered, in rapid Orkish, so the subject in question would not hear or understand.

“What in fuck?”

“What is it, Shrah’rar?”

“Look at her feet.”

“What about ’em, then?”

“Can’t you fools see without my having to say?”

“…!”

“See?  No footprints!  I’m telling you—”

“Come off it, Shrah’rar, the ground is harder here…”

“Horseshit.  Kurbag’s making marks.”

“Kurbag is built like a sodding house.  Try another.”

“Grymawk’s making marks, then.”

“I am not!”

“Why ain’t she leaving tracks?  Is she lighter than Grymawk?”

“P’r’aps.  She don’t look it, but…”

“Could be.  She’s skinny enough.  Not like Grymawk—”

“I’m fine for my size!”

“No one’s saying you aren’t.  Quit being a snaga.”

“Why ain’t she leaving tracks?”

“—too fuckin’ weird.”

“…m-maybe she’s a ghost?”

This last was uttered by Pryszrim and prompted such a volley of jeering and abuse that the entire column slowed as everyone stared at them, and Bragdagash asked irritably if they would care to share.

“It’s just that Pryszrim’s an arse, boss,” explained Iggrut, and the matter was dropped.  Not by the snaga Orcs, however, who continued to argue the matter, albeit more quietly.

Rukshash, who was some small distance behind them, was not part of the conversation.  Nonetheless he could hear snatches of it in passing.  He did not see the proof of what they said; by the time he reached the place where the Elf had trod, four noisy goblins had beaten that path before him.  Still, it was no more than his own experience told him of Elves: eerie and fey, but wholly in accord with what she was.  Little enough trace her kind leaves of their passing, for their step is light.  It is said they can cross even fresh fallen snow without breaking the crust. 

-.-.-.-

The Orcs kept moving through the long morning and noon, deep into the afternoon.  It was surprising how well the Elf kept up, and irritating to Nazluk.  Had she been laggard it would have made good ammunition.  He would have been even more annoyed had he realized that he was partly responsible.  For Eleluleniel the march was hard but bearable compared to the brutal pace she had endured those first days of captivity, when her captors had sought to put as much distance as possible between themselves and Elven pursuit and when Nazluk had driven her and Kurbag on their third day of travel. 

Bragdagash was not under the pressures of escape or catching up to a lost Orc band.  He only wanted to make up the miles they had missed on the day before, at a speed he deemed reasonable for his lads.  He made no allowances for the prisoner who travelled with them—like Nazluk, he would have liked it well had she been obviously struggling or unable to keep up at all.  When he finally called a halt for them to take food and rest for a time, he eyed her briefly.  It would have made things simple for him if her weakness were an obvious hindrance. 

She looked proper fagged, but not like she was going to keel over any time soon.  He decided to leave it.  “Be a half-hour breather, boys.  We’ll be marching into the dark hours, so anyone who needs to crap best do it now.” 

A good half of the band had already dispersed, presumably for this purpose; the others did not need to be told twice.  Bragdagash sought out a place to take his own advice before returning to the collection of abandoned packs.  He wasn’t surprised to see that one Orc was already back there waiting for him.  Rukshash was sitting on a discarded bedroll, and he stood up when he saw Bragdagash coming back.  “Moment of your time, Braggy?”

“What’s on your mind then?” said Bragdagash, walking over to join him.  Rukshash gave a cursory glance over his shoulder and Bragdagash nodded.  “Right, somewhere more private.”

“Oooh chief!” said Rukshash with a coquettish show of surprise.  “Never knew you fancied me!  But do we really have time for that?”  Bragdagash chuckled as the two of them walked away together to a more secluded place in the trees.  Once there Rukshash’s demeanor changed as he became more deferent.  “Here now, Braggy,” he said softly, “I didn’t like to say anything before now, and you may not feel it’s your place no more than it is mine, but it might be one of us ought to…well.  Kurbag’s not showing any initiative to make an end of her, so I’m just wondering if it wouldn’t be best for one of us to take care of that little Elf piece.  Discreet-like, if you know what I mean.  It doesn’t have to look violent.”

“Why do you say that?” asked Bragdagash.

“Eh…”  Pressed for his reasoning, the old Orc looked reluctant but went on, “It’s not me saying this, mind, but only some of the lads.  They’ve gotten it into their heads there’s something funny about her.  Something queer, like it might could hurt us.  I’m not saying that, I’m only saying that some of the others are, is all.”

“So that’s not what you think, then?”  At the shake of the head that he received, Bragdagash pressed him: “Then what do you think?”

Rukshash stopped hedging and spoke directly.  “Skai, I think she’s queer too.  There’s nothing natural about her still being around—what is it, four days after Kurbag first tupped her, and him having her again more than once?  Mind you, I don’t think she’s more than some kind of fluke, and I don’t think she presents any hurt to us, little slip of a thing like that.  Only, having her around is bothering the others, and they think she might be putting some kind of a witching on Kurbag.”

“You don’t think she is?”

Rukshash scoffed.  “Nar.  Any witching on Kurbag, he’s put it on himself without no help from anyone else.  He’s like a lad I remember back during the War.  Big Uruk, tall as you please and not someone anybody in his right mind would mess with.  But he found a little kitten somewhere—”

Rukshash laughed outright at the look on Bragdagash’s face.  “Oh aye, you heard me right.  It was after we had hacked our way through a tark outpost in Ithilien.  Guess some of those soldier boys were keeping it for a mouser or some kind of lucky mascot.  Little luck it brought them, but it surely charmed old Forod.  He took that little creature with him everywhere.  When it wasn’t tucked in the collar of his tunic it was,” he patted himself on the shoulder, “up riding, like so.  Who would believe it!  A big fellow like that, ugly as a horse’s backside, thought nothing of ramming the butt-end of his pike through some poor snaga’s gut if he took a disinclination to the fellow, and all the while this little bit of fluff was perched up there by his hairy ear…

“You want to talk about morale issues?  No one could say Forod wanted for balls or pure viciousness when the situation called for it, but this baby-cat of his was reflecting on the rest of us.  Making ALL of us look bad.  Who can take a fellow like that seriously?  And yet there was nothing would make him get rid of the thing: not jeering, not straight talk, nobody could induce him to give it up.”

“So what happened?” asked Bragdagash.

Rukshash shrugged.  “Who knows?  We were on a march at that point.  Hard march, long miles in bad country, some skirmishes with Wild Men, and all of us hungry and bone-tired.  It happened some time during the night, while Forod was sleeping the sleep of the dead with that little kitten curled up on his chest – I’m not making this up, mind, that really is the way the two of them would sleep.  Only this time, when he woke…

“Could be the kitten ran off in the night.  Could be some of the lads took their opportunity while Forod was out of it.  Rations weren’t so good, and we were all of us hungry.”  He said it as if with deep regret, but there was a wicked gleam in his eye. 

Bragdagash, who had been keeping it together manfully as Rukshash told his tale, began to snigger, at which point Rukshash gave up the pretense and joined in with hard, harsh caws of laughter.  Between chuckles Bragdagash had the rest of poor Forod’s story out of Rukshash.  It did not end happily.  Evidently Forod had not taken the loss of his pet well.  He had raged endlessly when he discovered it missing, railing against his travelling companions, and only dire injunctions from their lead officer had saved some of the smaller Orcs that Forod suspected from being gutted.  After that the Uruk became unsociable and suspicious of the others, while they became equally wary of him. 

“After that it was only a matter of time.  We had an engagement with another lot of Gondorian soldier boys and, picking up the pieces afterward and counting up the fellows who’d left us for the Dark Lands, we soon found that Forod was one of our casualties.  Funny thing was, some of the wounds on his body didn’t look like they were made by Man-weapons.  Gondor’s boys carried smooth swords, clean and straight.  These wounds, the edges were more irregular.  Looked almost as if they had come from blades of Orkish make, if you catch my drift.”

“So you figure Forod was done in by one of his own shield mates?”

“All speculation after the fact, innit?  He had some normal-looking wounds as well.  Could be one of those tark soldier boys hacked into him enough to slow him down, and some clever Orc came on him after in the confusion, decided to finish the job off proper.  But who can say for certain?  It may be that even the fellow who gave him the finishing cut ain’t sure his was the one to do it, all these long years later.”  He smiled slyly as he said this.

“Why you wicked old goblin,” said Bragdagash, tremendously amused.  “You tell an ugly tale, old one, but you tell it well enough.  Here now, do I have to worry about Kurbag with a dangerous bastard like you around?”

Rukshash affected an air of hurt.  “Pugh, what a thing to say!  I like Kurbag, he’s a good lad.  Just needs someone to look out for his best interests, is all.”

“Yes, well, I reckon I have Kurbag’s best interests at heart myself.  But you’ve said your piece and I’m glad of it, and we’ll leave it there for now.  I’ve got my eye on the situation.”  His voice was mild for an Orc but nonetheless signaled a close.

The old warrior scratched his armpit comfortably, seemingly serene in the face of Bragdagash’s faint warning.  “Ah…I’m sure that you do, boss.  Pays, though, to remember that you’re not the only one.  And while we’re having this pleasant conversation there are others chatting it up as well.”

-.-.-.-

The Elf did not have to ask for privacy this time.  Kurbag, anticipating her request, had stopped near a briar large enough to afford some concealment.  While she stepped behind it he looked back the way they had come but saw no one.  Not that he really expected to see anybody.  It was a modest enough bank of time that Bragdagash had given them all, and they would have better things to do with it than following Kurbag and giving him grief.  Still he waited with his eyes on the way they had come until the Elf had finished her business, before he attended to his own.

When he turned again, lacing himself up afterward, it was to find her gazing in the same direction.  “We won’t go back just yet,” he said.  “I’ve a mind to take my break away from those assholes.”

“They will not expect you?” she asked, looking at him.

He shrugged.  He really didn’t care.  “Still got a good fifteen minutes, I should say.  I’ll spend it how and where I please.”

A quarter of an hour.  That was not very long.  Nevertheless she screwed up her courage and turned to face him directly.  “Will you let me speak to you?” she asked him.

Looking faintly amused: “I’m listening.”

She took a step toward him.  I know he will not listen to me, she thought.  It will be nothing I have not said to him before, and it will do me no good to repeat it.  He does not hear what he does not want to hear.  It was strange – strange, and disheartening – to talk to someone in a language that both of them knew and yet find that he would not or could not understand her. 

She brought her closed fists to her chest and took a deep breath.  “Leithio nin,” she said. 

Kurbag blinked and shifted his stance.  There was no recognition in his eyes, but there was curiosity and she would use it.  She spoke as carefully and clearly as she could.  "Ab leben oer ieston doled na mâr nîn.  Sad hen al-nín.  Gen a vellyn gîn goston.  Adinnu mabennich o lam nîn, a cenin hi achen be edhellen: Anno dulu enni.  Leithio nin."

He had watched her intently as she spoke.  Now he waited as if to see whether more was in the offering before asking what she’d said.

“I said, ‘You asked me before about my Elven speech, so I speak to you in that way.  Give me my freedom.  Let me go.’”

He scratched the back of his neck, looking at her.  “Is that all you said?”

It was not.  She repeated herself, translating her Sindarin faithfully, word for word.  As she did so she looked into his face for some clue as to what he was thinking.

What Kurbag was thinking was of the way her speech lilted in his ear like a song, fey and fair.  He was reminded of the garden where first he had heard her singing, seen her kneeling with her trowel.  “They’ll notice if you don’t come back with me.”

“You could tell them that you...that you slew me.”  It would be a lie, but he was an Orc, and it would not be her lie.

His response was blunt.  “They would wonder where the meat was.  Someone would go looking.  And where do you think you would go anyway?”

She did not know, and she would not have told him if she did.  “Something bad is going to happen,” she said softly.  The trees had said so.  Even if they hadn’t, she knew that it was true.  She could feel it coming closer, like some rough beast watching in the shadows.

“Well,” he said.  “That’s vague.  Covers a lot of territory, doesn’t it.”

Eleluleniel’s shoulders slumped.  What was there to say that she had not already said?  She had known that it would do no good, but she had hoped.  She had hoped.

Studying her, Kurbag raised his fingers to her jaw.  She flinched and stepped back from him; lifting her chin, she watched him warily.  He cocked his head, his brow knotting.  “What are you thinking when you look at me like that?”

No lying.  “That I do not want you to touch me.”

He exhaled through his nostrils, a huff of hot damp breath like a horse.  “Just a little thing you are,” he muttered.  “I could circle your waist with my hands.”  She tensed but he made no move to carry out the thought.  “Best stick close.  You may not be safe otherwise.”

Safe?  She felt a kind of half-crazed laughter bubbling up inside.  She wanted to ask him how he defined the word.  Instead she held her tongue, following as he led her back to the others.  The trees said I cannot trust him.  If anyone is to help me I must be the one to help myself.  But it was five days now and so far her best hope had been that morning: a narrow window of opportunity from which Nazluk had barred her.  

Then you must watch for another, she told herself, but there was a heavy sick feeling in her stomach.  She had a foreboding that there would be no further chances.

-.-.-.-

The march, when they continued it, was tree-covered but uneven, with slogs uphill and down, treacherous roots curling underfoot and sudden outcroppings of stone.  On the one hand it wasn’t always easy going; on the other it was an engaging terrain that made them pay attention to what they were doing.  This included their captive.  Eleluleniel had never seen country like this before: all of her life had been spent in the green wood where her parents made their home, where she had been born and her sisters before her.  What she knew of the outside world came from books and adults and from letters from Rivendell, and these had generally focused on other concerns than regional topography.

Here were plants she had never seen before and mottled rose-colored stone, songs of birds she did not recognize.  The trees overhead were broken here and there with blue sky, bright sunshine slanting down on silver lichens and blue-green moss.  This displeased the smaller Orcs, who grumbled and lowered their heads and pulled their packs up on their shoulders to shield their necks, but the Elf saw it all in a kind of wonder despite her continuing apprehension.  How vast the world was.  There was beauty everywhere.

If Nevhithien was here she would be writing all of this down.  Every blade of grass, every flower and fern.  She would be so busy staring down the length of her pen, she would not even see where she was going.  I wish…

The thought died there.  She could never wish for her sister to be in her place, not even for a moment.

They came to a place where the trees ended at the top of a stony slope down into a long ravine.  The goblins complained of the sun, and the Uruk-hai were also annoyed, for the going was treacherous with rocks that slid or skittered away underfoot.  But there was nothing for it, so they started down.  The Elf girl moved as carefully as any of them.  Though her tread was light she was still fearful of the steep descent.  She stumbled at a little at one point and Kurbag looked back over his shoulder.  Taking hold of her arm, he tugged her forward to walk in front of him. 

This simple action did not go unnoticed; behind them, Nazluk smiled with private satisfaction.  What he saw others saw as well.

At the base of the ravine the Orcs did not immediately resume their march but paused to confer.  Not all of them liked the idea of traveling in an open gorge in daytime, but Bragdagash and Lagdush had both been this way before as part of separate bands, and Lagdush backed the chief up when he called it a smart route.  No Men in these parts, for stone is not hospitable to farming, and marching through the defile itself would be a time saver, cutting through the mountainous terrain in which they traveled.  If they kept moving they could be out by nightfall.  That sounded pretty good to the others, and they fell in line again.  There was room enough they might have gone several abreast, but the ground was uneven underfoot and so single-file was the way of things.

There was no telling who really started it.  It began as a discordant humming that several of the Orcs took up, with little differentiation between them.  Over the buzz Lagdush was the first to lift his rough voice, raising it in song.

“Down past the sea of Núrnen
In the shade of Orodruin
I knew a lad, Yashaga,
Who was born to wrack and ruin.”

Mushog joined in with the others following after, including Kurbag, who sang enthusiastically:

“The bitch who whelped him whelped her last.
She cried, ‘There’s no more room!’
Yashaga did not care for that.
He tore apart her womb.

“Hey!
Yashaga!
Yashaga, fucking hey!
Hey!
Yashaga!
Ya hoi ya harri hey!”

The voices of the Orcs were guttural and raucous.  She was not able to understand all of the words, for which she could only feel gratitude.  What she could understand was bad enough.  Tilting back her head, she looked to the sky that ran like a seam of solid turquoise high above them.  The angle of the sun was such that it did not shine directly into the canyon.  A passing cloud, the blackness of a bird…she longed for something, anything to interrupt that opaque sky.

“When he was six he killed a bear,
When he was twelve a dragon.
He wears its claws around his neck,
Its skull became his flagon.
He plays his music on two pipes
Made from its horns an’ all,
And on his back he bears the sack
That held its scaly balls.

“Hey!
Yashaga!
Yashaga, fucking hey!
Hey!
Yashaga!
Ya hoi ya harri hey!”

Stoney walls on either side, Orcs before and behind.  There were eleven in the band all together, but their harsh voices echoed and reverberated, their metal-shod boots rang on the stone, and the walls flung back the sound of it magnified.  Eleven Orcs became a hundred and eleven, and walking single-file only preserved the illusion.  Lagdush’s brawny body blocked Eleluleniel’s view of the Orcs in front of him, and she would not look back at Kurbag or the Orcs who marched behind.

“When he was eighteen Gorthaur said,
‘Bring me that Orc Yashaga.
He’ll lead my armies into war,
The mightiest of snaga.’
Yashaga laughed and cursed at him,
He pissed in Gorthaur’s Eye!
Yashaga is the only one
To make the Dark Lord cryyyyyy—”

Kurbag, for his part, was enjoying himself.  It had not, up to this point, been a good day.  Mushog, normally a mate, had been monosyllabic that morning, answering anything that Kurbag said to him shortly if at all, and this had made Kurbag short with him in turn.  Kurbag wasn’t completely clueless.  He knew Mushog still had a hair across his arse over that snub the night before.  So maybe Kurbag hadn’t been as friendly as he could have, but honestly, Mushog had seen the mood he was in—surely saw what he was dealing with now, for that matter, what with Nazluk and the other snaga Orcs trying to get a rise out of him and Bragdagash aiming looks at him all day.  

Despite his words to the Elf about wanting to take a break from the others, maybe it would have been better to seek a few minutes with Mushog.  Put things right between them and even get his thoughts on what was going on.  What good is a buddy if you can’t talk to him about shit like that?

Focusing on something other than his frustration, belting out a good marching song in company with the others, just felt really good at that moment.  For all its roughness Lagdush had a good voice, the best of any of them.  Kurbag certainly couldn’t carry a tune and Mushog was even worse.  Hearing the Uruk’s cheerful tone-deaf shouting behind him made Kurbag grin and sing even louder.

“So now Yashaga’s twenty-four
And over twenty stone.
It takes four lads to lift the axe
That he hefts on his own.
His eyes they are two burning coals,
Broad are his hands and shoulders.
His dick it hangs down to the floor,
His balls are fucking boulders!

“I sat and drank with him one night,
I thought that I was able.
Yashaga downed twelve drinking skins:
He drank me ’neath the table.
I woke up with a thumping head,
A-muttering his name.
My coin was gone, and my arsehole
Has never been the same.

“Hunh!
Yashaga!
Yashaga, fucking hey!
Hey!
Yashaga!
Ya hoi ya harri hey!
Hey!
Yashaga!”

They broke off with a final shout and a mingled burst of hooting and laughter.  Kurbag turned his head and grinned at Mushog, who grinned back in that open-mouthed way that showed all of his teeth.  Nothing threatening about it: just high spirits, no apparent rancor.  So maybe now they were friends again and later, when the time came to make camp, they could sort it all out between them.  Maybe they could talk about the Elf and what Kurbag should do to put himself back in Braggy’s good graces, without feeling like he was caving to Nazluk.  So far the best he could think of was doing what the Elf kept asking for and letting her go.  Ridiculous as it was, he still found himself thinking about it.  He could only imagine how Mushog would laugh…

“Let’s do ‘Gorthaur’s Other Eye,’” someone was saying.

“Nar, ‘The Elf-Bitch Queen of Gondor’!” another countered.

Lagdush was evidently taking requests.  “Who else for ‘Elf-Bitch Queen of Gondor’?”  It must have been a rhetorical question because he didn’t wait for anyone to respond but promptly launched into the song:

“Oh her legs are white as lilies but they’re scarlet in-between—”

“Hi!  Shut it back there!” 

Lagdush shut up and they all clattered to a halt as Bragdagash, at the head of the line, thrust his arm into the air.  The snaga Orcs stuck their heads out at the sides, trying to peer past their larger comrades, but the ravine took a bend where Bragdagash was standing and they could not see through stone.  At that moment he was the only one who could see what they had stopped for.

It was a pile of scree that towered well above his head: a jumble of fallen stone and slag that filled the striated walls of the pass.  “We have a complication, boys,” he called back dryly.  As the others pressed in behind him they all groaned and complained at the sight of the rock slide.  He gave them a minute or so to get it out of their systems before urging them forward again (“Yeah, I know it’s a bitch but we’re not going back…just suck it up, come on…”) and they started to assail the treacherous mound of rubble.

“What’s that you’re muttering, Nazluk?” Iggrut asked. 

“He’s holding her hand again.”  Nazluk shifted his eyes toward Kurbag, who was indeed helping the Elf girl mount the stones.

Iggrut yelped and snarled as a cluster of rocks gave way beneath his feet, almost taking him with them.  “Wouldn’t mind a little assist myself,” he said sarcastically, glaring up at the half-Uruk’s back.  If Kurbag heard he was ignoring them.

“Well, you won’t be getting it,” said Nazluk.  “He has no eyes for anyone but her.”

“Bad luck, I call it,” Shrah’rar muttered.  “These rocks shouldn’t be here.  They weren’t here before – that’s what Bragdagash and Lagdush said.  It’s a bad job.”

“What, and you think that’s because of her?  It’s obvious they’ve been here for some time now,” said Grymawk.

The other Orc shrugged.  “Still think she’s bad luck.”

Grymawk cursed and pulled his hand back.  He had cut his palm on a jagged stone, and as he examined it beads of black blood welled up from under the leathery skin.  Well, she certainly wasn’t good luck, that’s for sure.

It was hard going and tedious, for they all carried heavy packs and they had to take great care going up and coming down again on the other side.  Still they made it over without any major misshap, outside of Pryszrim, who took a tumble near the base and fetched up in a dazed heap on his back.  He had landed near Grushak, who was shaking grit out of his boot.  Putting it on again, he picked the other Orc up and casually dusted him off, a process that for Pryszrim was like being buffeted by a tree.  The dust it sent up made several of them sneeze.

“Good job, lads, but this has cost us time,” said Bragdagash, looking up.  He could not see the sun from here, as he hadn’t since they first began their march through the ravine, but the quality of light was changing.  “Give it a minute’s walk and then we’ll hump it.”

“Aa-owww, my arse!” complained Mushog, who had just taxed muscles in his legs and backside that didn’t normally get much use. 

“I’ll massage your pretty arse cheeks later with my own hands, Mushog.  For now, move!”

Bragdagash was true to his word, the part about speeding up anyway.  They had just time to accustom their legs to level ground again before he moved them into a brisk trot.  The defile was wide enough here that they could move in twos.  Threes, in some cases: the Elf was jostled between Kurbag and Iggrut, who leered sidelong at her.  “Hi, Lagdush,” he called, “why don’t you take up that song again?  Make the running easier!”

“Not for me it wouldn’t,” Lagdush called back pointedly, but he caved in to further appeals from the others and his own vanity.  “Awright, awright then, since you’re begging for it, here’s the Elf-bitch Queen ’erself.

“Oh her legs are white as lilies but they’re scarlet in-between
And her mouth is just as scarlet if you follow what I mean
And the crack that’s at her back is always wide and welcoming,
She’s the wide-arsed Elf-bitch Queen of Gon-dor…”

Eleluleniel’s mouth was dry, her eyes blinking in the dust of the ravine.  She was tired and somehow the thudding of the earth beneath her feet caused a numbing sensation to spread through her whole body.  Even the vile song of the Uruk and the shouted accompaniment of his fellows seemed to die down as she slowly grew innured to the noise around her.

Then she felt a sly hand on her bottom, moving down over the back of her thigh.  She shrieked and pitched into Kurbag, who cursed and thrust her sidelong, holding her at elbow’s length while he turned his head to glare past her.  “Iggrut!  Fucking knock it off!”

“She’s a clumsy one, ain’t she?” huffed Iggrut cheerfully.  “Best look that she don’t trip you.”

“You little shite—!”

“Oi, pick up the pace, you’re slowing us down!”

“What the fuck, Kurbag…”

“…She’s the whisker-humping
Guard-distracting
Cook-defiling
Horsey-loving
Wide-arsed Elf-bitch Queen of Gon-dor…”

Spray of goblin spittle on her neck; Kurbag and Iggrut were shouting at one another, and it felt as if Kurbag would crush her shoulder in his angry grip.  She stumbled, and then stumbled again, and was horrified by the treachery of her own feet, which would surely call down the wrath of the entire Orc band upon her.  And then she realized that it wasn’t her: it was the ground itself that was shaking underfoot.

“—ai, shakamubi!”

“ROCK SLIDE!!”

The alarm went up from all of them, shouts of warning as fear replaced the anger of a few seconds before, and they were not jogging anymore but running, smashing up against one another to escape the cascade of debris.  One of the goblins got under Kurbag’s feet: Eleluleniel saw Kurbag draw his foot back and literally punt the smaller Orc forward.  Something hot spattered the side of her face, and a heavy stone struck her between the shoulderblades.  It would have knocked her down if the press of bodies hadn’t held her upright.  She could no longer see for the thick yellow dust that billowed up, obscuring everything.  She could not hear her own coughing for the roaring in her ears. 

Suddenly she fell sideways as the bodies gave way to her right, where Iggrut had been.  She staggered blindly in the gritty smut, separated from the band of Orcs.  Threw her arms out, reaching through the dust, and encountered nothing, no one. 

Alone.  She was alone and she felt nothing but panic.  Freedom was no comfort in this place, for she would surely die amid the dust and falling stone.

Eleluleniel faltered and slowed and stopped, pulling the neck of her dress up to cover her mouth and nose, trying to carve out a space of silence in the chaos.  She could not hear herself, but she whispered into the material of her dress.  “I commend me…” she whispered, “…I commend myself t—”

Two strong hands caught her, lifting her up.  Two strong arms clasped her tightly. “Hold on,” his voice said, and she did so, clinging onto Kurbag for dear life.

Chapter Text

It was well into dusk now, and gloom had gathered in the narrow passage between the steep sides of the ravine.  Freshly deposited stone lay still and undisturbed, but there was still a fine dust floating on the air.  The three Orcs had tied rags across the lower halves of their faces and were making their way back carefully.  They glanced up from time to time, wary of another rock slide.  So far so good.

Shrah'rar, fore-most of the goblins, paused and nudged Grymawk just behind him.  Said quietly: "Hey.  There he is."

Amid the rubble the body lay, doubled back over the packs on which it sprawled.  There was a layer of yellow dust upon it, smoothly describing the contours of limbs and clothing.  The body itself looked to be in fairly good condition: it was the head that was the problem.  A sizeable boulder was aligned squarely between the shoulders, where the head should have been.

The goblins circled their comrade slowly, mindful of their step.  Behind the boulder a dark crusting of grit extended several feet.  Coming alongside the boulder, Grymawk placed an experimental foot against it and shoved.  It didn't budge.

"That's one dead snaga," Shrah'rar said.

Grymawk laughed and Pryszrim giggled, a little hysterically.  It wasn't that they had disliked Iggrut, but he did look pretty funny at that moment.  His body was bent backward over the fulcrum of his knapsack, his taloned fingers curled in the dust in a final paroxysm that must have been agony but might under other circumstances have been pleasure, and from the suggestive jut of his hips…

"He looks like he just shot a load," said Grymawk.  Shrah'rar snickered behind his rag as he grabbed at the heel of one boot and started to tug.

Pryszrim watched with wide-eyed dismay.  "Why should you get the boots?" he whined.  "I need new boots more than you do!"

Shrah'rar did not even look at him.  "Because he's closer to my size, of course…and because I went for 'em first—" Bracing himself, he pulled more energetically.  Grymawk, for his part, had decided that moving the boulder was a bad job and was working to shimmy Iggrut's packs out from beneath the dead Orc's frame.

Pryszrim scowled at them.  He was larger than they were and should, by rights, have had first pick of whatever he wanted, but he lacked the force of personality to back it up.  Nonetheless he ensconced himelf on the other side of Iggrut, across from Grymawk, going for Iggrut's belt pouch and the contents of his pockets.  Coin and flint-and-steel and something else: a knot of fine smooth hair.  Pryszrim snatched the Elven lock, happy as a crow with tinfoil.

After they had pillaged the corpse Shrah'rar stood back and surveyed it again.  The boulder-head inspired a sense of whimsy.  He took up a piece of stone and scraped it against the rough surface.  Seeing that it left a mark, he straddled Iggrut's chest and went to work.

Grymawk had emptied Iggrut's pack but was still turning it over in his hands, feeling carefully for hidden seams that might divulge more treasure, while Pryszrim sat by idly, winding his new prize through his fingers.  As he did so he thought again of how the Elf girl's head had pressed against his thigh.  It had happened briefly during their struggle the day before, her shining hair in his lap, and he shifted a little in arousal, remembering.

"Don't he look pretty!" said Shrah'rar, pausing to admire his efforts: eyes like angry slits over enormous nostrils and a fleering toothy grin on the boulder that had flattened Iggrut's skull.

Grymawk looked and laughed.  "I think he'd find it funny if he were here to view it proper."

Shrah'rar chuckled and patted the unresponsive shoulder beneath his thigh.  "Hope you like it, pal," he said.

-.-.-.-

Thwack.  Thock thock.  Thwock.

Lagdush beat his jerkin against the tree, knocking up little clouds of dust.  Feeling them begin to settle again on his hair and shoulders, he ducked away, shaking his head.  "Shit.”  Rolling the garment into a tight bundle, he wedged it under one armpit.

Mushog was leaning bare-chested against another tree, looking in the direction of camp.  "Not gonna be much fun sleeping here," he remarked.

Camp had been set up just outside the mouth of the ravine, where it opened on the outskirts of a darkly forbidding wood.  Beyond a grim determination to be out of the gorge before sundown, once that was accomplished none of Bragdagash's band had the energy or the will to press on any farther.  They were tired and mistrustful of the trees: no one wanted to sleep between the grim walls of the ravine, yet nor were they willing to sleep in the forest's inauspicious shade.  The compromise was the graveled earth on which they camped, a deposit of countless centuries of rainfall sluicing through the ravine.  Uncomfortable ground for sleeping, and both of the Uruk-hai anticipated sore backs on the morrow.

It only made Lagdush's mood fouler.  "Dry as an old bone.  If there was water around here at least I could take a fuckin' bath."

"We'll be doing it snaga-style tonight," Mushog agreed.  With a generous, somewhat leering smile: "I'll do yours if you'll do mine."

"Hmph.  What about Kurbag?"

"Kurbag?”  Mushog's grin faded, and he glanced toward the fire.  "Maybe his little Golug will do it for him.

Lagdush snorted, poking Mushog in the shoulder.  "Let's go drink," he suggested.

Heading back to the fire, they veered from an otherwise straight path to give the Elf girl a wide berth.  She was sitting on Kurbag's bedroll, hugging her knees, silent and seemingly still dazed.  There was a crust of black blood on the side of her face and neck.  Mushog and Lagdush watched her out of the corners of their eyes so as not to look at her directly.  Kurbag was nearby but more than that, the Elf made them uncomfortable.  This in turn fed their resentment.

I want her gone, thought Lagdush as he crouched beside his pack, and the look in Mushog's eyes said something similar.

Rukshash was sitting on a large boulder.  He had taken his boots off and was swinging one bony foot idly while Bragdagash stood with his hand up the back of the old Orc's shirt.  Eyes slitted a little, Rukshash leaned back into the Uruk's claws.  "A little to the right…" he sighed.

Bragdagash did as his subordinate wanted, but his attention was only half on the job.  "They should be back by now," he said, frowning slightly.

"Heh!”  Rukshash chuckled and extended a languid claw.  "Only speak and see them come…"

Everyone looked up.  Three dusty figures were emerging from the ravine.  Bragdagash watched closely but when no fourth Orc followed he was not surprised.  Really, it was amazing that they had all of them gotten off as lightly as they had: cuts and bruises and sand-scraped skin, but no broken bones and only the one casualty.

"Scratch harder, boss," said Rukshash plaintively.

Bragdagash gave him a few more rakes across the spine before withdrawing his hand.  "You're on your own now, old one," he said in response to the mournful noise the other Orc made.

Lagdush growled as the goblins approached.  "Don't you lot come any closer until you've beaten that shit off."

Ignoring Lagdush, Bragdagash stepped forward.  "Did you see him at all, then?  Or was he completely buried?"

"We saw him," said Grymawk.  "Wasn't pretty, but he obviously went quick."

"He had a rock for a head," said Pryszrim.  "Shrah'rar drew a face on it," he added.

Behind Bragdagash, Rukshash was shaking his head.  "Poor dumb bastard," he said, though whether this referred to Iggrut or to Pryszrim was anybody's guess.

Bragdagash exhaled.  "Well," he said, "that's that.  We're ten all together now, and I can't say as I'm happy about it.  But it is what it is, and I know what you are capable of.  There's no reason we can't get by with ten."

"Ten, boss?" Shrah'rar spoke up at that moment.  "Don't you mean eleven?”  He glanced in the direction of Kurbag's bedroll.

Bragdagash looked at the smaller Orc.  "I said ten, Shrah'rar.  As in ten Orcs all together."

The goblin shrugged.  "Fair enough."

Whether his shrug had actually stirred up any dust or not, it was at that moment than Lagdush sneezed.  "Oi," he managed, and sneezed again.  "Dogfucker," he said, glaring at Shrah'rar.  "I thought I told you to go beat off.

Shrah'rar grinned and Pryszrim tittered.  "Well we will now, won't we?" said Grymawk, holding up a little clay vial.  "Iggrut won't be needing this anymore."

"You should come with us, Lagdush.  You could use his scraper," said Shrah'rar.

"I don't need any bloody—ow!”  Lagdush rubbed his shoulder and gave Mushog a dirty look.

"Sounds good," said Mushog brightly.

Bragdagash cocked his head, amused at their antics.  "Just keep it away from the fire is all I ask.  We're down to ten now.  I don't need a stray cinder sending anyone up in flames."

"By the woods, then," said Shrah'rar.  "We need to beat our clothes out anyway…"

-.-.-.-

Out by the trees, Shrah'rar grimaced as he stepped free of his breeches, slapping grit from his gray flanks.  "Ai.  That crap really did get into everything.”  Picking up his breeches, he began to wallop them against an innocent trunk.

"Maybe we should do our trousers too," said Mushog to Lagdush.  The other Uruk folded his arms across his chest, eyeing Mushog.  "Have it your way," smirked Mushog as he stooped to take off his boots.

Nazluk had joined the impromptu hygiene session.  Glancing at Mushog as the Uruk stripped down, he remarked, "Too bad about Iggrut, eh?  Poor bastard never even had a chance."

"Mm.”  Mushog nodded his head emphatically.  "Shit way to go."

"I'm gonna miss him," said Grymawk.  "He knew how to keep things lively."

"He was by the Elf wench when it happened, yes?”  Nazluk spoke in the uncertain voice of someone trying to remember, and was gratified by the instant change of mood as his words met with low growls.

"That was his blood on her neck," said Lagdush.  "I wondered where it had come from.  Obvious enough she wasn't hurt."

"The stone that struck him didn't strike her," said Grymawk.  "And you should have seen this rock, Lagdush.  It was huge."

"Flattened his head like it was a rotten fruit," said Pryszrim.

"Bad luck—"

"That's more than 'bad luck,' friend."

"Reckon she brought it down a-purpose."

"Only lucky she didn't get the rest of us…"

"Could be she was madder at him than the rest of us—"

"Hey," Shrah'rar paused as he smeared his shoulders, looked directly at Lagdush.  "You were singing, weren't you, Lagdush?  He asked you to sing that song.  Maybe she didn't like it."

"Well I didn't like having half a mountain dropped on my head," growled Lagdush as Mushog oiled his back.  "Fucking Golug…"

Mushog growled as well, but he wasn't saying anything, maintaining an uncharacteristic silence.  While the others muttered and grumbled their grim confidences he only continued greasing Lagdush's hide, then took up the scraper and slid it down the Uruk's back.  Not a task he was familiar with, but the dirt and excess oil peeled away easy enough: no trick to it at all.  As he scraped Lagdush's back he stared over the Uruk's shoulder in the direction of the Elf on her lonely bedroll, his eyes like slits of gold.

Nazluk settled his back against a tree, running a scraper down his arm as he watched them all with a private smile.  He was well pleased.  Far past the groundwork stage at this point: they had made all of the connections he could have hoped for on their own, and a few more into the bargain.  Tonight, he thought.  Yes, tonight. 

Tonight it will be resolved one way or another.

-.-.-.-

Sitting on Kurbag's bedroll, Eleluleniel could not have suspected what the Orcs were saying about her.  What they thought her capable of.  Had the idea been suggested to her she would most likely have laughed.  The rock slide in the gorge had shaken her more than it had them.

As a little child she had been fearful of storms, hiding her face in her mother's skirts when thunder shook the house.  It was her father who had led her to the window, had shown her how to look and not be afraid. 

‘Count the seconds between lightning and thunder to know how near the storm is, or how far… Do not be afraid, little bird.  You are safe with us and nothing here can hurt you.’

She had taken that assurance to heart, believed in the essential benevolence of the world around her.  Houses stood firm, protecting families within their loving walls.  Wild beasts were more afraid of her than she could ever be of them, and lightning never struck in the wood in which her folk dwelled.

Now there was an angry throbbing between her shoulder blades where a stone had struck her, hard and hurtful as a fist.  The world was cruel, with a careless cruelty even where there was none willful.  What did stone care if it struck her?  Why should it care more than if it struck an Orc?

Stop it, came a voice in her mind, sharp and familiar.  You are acting as if you were small again, scalding your finger on a hot kettle and thinking it personal.  As if the kettle itself had betrayed you.  Father never told you that lightning could not strike the house!  Why should stone not fall if it is dry and crumbling?  And you cannot pretend you did not know there was evil in the world.  Why do you believe Father went to fight a war?  You are acting like a child.

I am a child, she protested.  She recognized the voice now.  It was Alageth, her older sister, who had so often been impatient with her when she was younger.

Do you remember the stories we told you, Leni?  When you were small?  Do you remember the one about the bear?

The bear...

'The bear came out of the wild wood, and it did not know bad and it did not know good.  It only was.' You are like the boy in the story, who went to talk to the bear and was eaten.  Whose fault was it, the boy or the bear?  What good does it do to rail against the bear?  It is obedient to its nature.

But it was a story, only a story.  There were never any bears in our wood.  Unbidden a memory came of the garden and she shuddered, gripping her knees all the more tightly.  I did not go to the bear, it came for me…

"Why didn't you go with the others, then?”  She looked up to see the old Orc, the one called Rukshash, standing over her.  She thought at first that he was talking to her, but he was looking over her head.

Kurbag's low rumble came from behind.  "Took care of my clothes earlier.  As to the other business, I'll wait till we find a river or a spring."

"Your choice, lad.”  Rukshash glanced down at her and smiled.  "Though if it's a matter of the Golug, you could leave her for a few minutes if you wanted, you know.  I'd see to it she doesn't run away."

She shrank a little beneath his gaze, sensing something else behind the words.  Gravelly footsteps behind her as Kurbag came close.  She could feel his heat at her back.  "I am not concerned about her running."

"Ahhh.”  Rukshash chuckled softly with his blue eye fixed upon her.  "So that's how it is, then."  He lifted his face and continued to speak, but his words were no longer in Common and Kurbag responded to him in kind.  The conversation between them was obviously about her and likely of great personal consequence to herself, but she could not understand a word of their speech beyond the ugly syllables for 'Elf.'

Golug, she thought.  That is my name among them.  I told Kurbag my name, but he has forgotten it.  Perhaps I too will forget if I am not rescued.  If they do not kill me first.

"…you'd be saving yourself a world of trouble, lad," Rukshash was telling Kurbag in Orkish.  "They're looking for someone to blame, and it should coincide with your own plans neatly enough."

"What would you know about my plans," the half-Uruk muttered.

"I know that you can't keep dragging them out after today.  There's talk of bad luck and—well, me?  We've lost two good Orcs in under a week.  If I did not disbelieve in luck…"

"We lost Molurtz before I ever even saw the Elf!"

"Small difference when it was her folk who killed him.  Now be reasonable, Kurbag.  Look at Bragdagash: there's a good example for you.  He's an Uruk, true, but he's sharp for all that.  He knows how others think, and he knows the importance of making a gesture.  A token of good faith where one is needed.  And he also knows, when folk are looking for someone to blame, better to give them what they want, eh?  He's got a stake in the matter too, after all.  It was on his say that we took the road we did."

Kurbag was bemused by what he took to be a change of subject.  "What of that?  We all thought it a good route at the time."

"Aye, but he's the boss, and it still comes down to his decision.  And that means he has an interest here as well.  It's more than some no-tits little Elf overstaying her welcome, or some foolish lad not playing nice with the others.  Braggy don't just look at a root or a twig.  He has to see the whole tree."

Kurbag was quiet, whether in thought or in stubbornness.  "I want to keep her," he said at last.  "She's mine, I took her.  When the rocks fell I went back for her.  She's mine to keep or kill as I choose.  It's not just my choice.  It's my right."

Rukshash shook his head, smiling a little, as if Kurbag had just said something particularly endearing and mentally defective.  "'Want to keep her'?  Well, well… I guess we all of us want something.”  He looked down at the Elf and laid his gray hand on her head, drawing his nails through her silken hair.  She flinched beneath his hand.  "Just remember what I said, eh, Kurbag?  And be ready for what your choice may bring.”  He took a few steps backward, still smiling, before turning to walk away.

Kurbag watched him go, ill at ease, unable to simply dismiss what Rukshash had said.  He looked at the Elf girl with her bent back.  As he watched she straightened slowly, like an animal emerging from hiding: shoulders lifting timidly, head turning to look at him.  "Please.  What did he say?" she asked.

"You're a problem," said Kurbag.  "But you're my problem.  I'm cleaning that crap off your neck."

Using a rag, he made her turn her face from him while he scrubbed at her jaw.  Flakes of dark blood fell away.  Her hands knotted in her lap as he applied water from a drinking skin and wiped at the sides of her neck and face.  She would have much rather done it herself, but Kurbag paid no attention when she said this.  His hands were rough and she closed her eyes against the strain on her neck.

When she opened her eyes there was an Orc in her line of vision: one of the smaller ones.  He watched her with bright red eyes from a distance of several yards, and there was what seemed to be a bright ring or coil around his forefinger.  He was playing with it as he watched her.  Kurbag did something that made the vertebrae of her neck grind on one another and she winced, shutting her eyes again.  When she opened them she saw two more Orcs: another small one and one of the big Uruk-hai, the one with the large bow on his back who had sung in the gorge.  And there were others.  Her eyes flicked sideways and she saw them watching from a periphery of several yards' distance.

Something bad is going to happen.

Kurbag finished cleaning her at that moment.  If he noticed that they were being surrounded he gave no sign of it.  Dropping the rag and taking her face in his hands, he brought his own face close as if examining his work.  "Don't say anything," he muttered so that only she could hear.  "Be quiet and stay still.”  He took his hands away from her, picking up the drinking skin and bringing it to her mouth in an unmistakable gesture.

"Why don't you give her Orc-draught, Kurbag?" somebody asked in Orkish.  "I mean, if you really must waste a good drinking skin on a little scab like that…"

"You should give her Orc-draught: that'd be fun to watch.”  In shrill Common: "'Oh help, it burns!'"

The leather neck butted up against her teeth.  The water inside it tasted of dust.  "I don't know that she can take it," said Kurbag, not taking his eyes from her.  "'S'posed to burn through their guts, innit?"

"That's the point," said Lagdush.  It might have passed for a joke if he had meant it that way, but there was no humor in his voice.

"That's not the kind of sport I want with her," said Kurbag, finally looking at them.  "Not yet at any rate."

He should not have temporized.  Lagdush seized on the opening.  "Then when?" demanded the Uruk.  "How long are you planning to keep her?"

"Why should you care?  It's enough that I want to.  She's mine to keep or kill as I please.”  Out of the corner of his eye Kurbag saw that Bragdagash had drawn close, as had Rukshash, and that now they too were part of the ring of Orcs who watched him.  Only Grushak was absent, assigned to guard duty.  It was the whole band that watched him—

No.  Not him, but the Elf girl behind him.  The realization annoyed Kurbag.  He straightened to full stature, redirecting their attention toward him.  "As I please and when I please," he said.

"So when's that gonna be then?" asked Shrah'rar.  "Maybe you could give us a clue, eh?  More than an hour…less than a day… Some time next year, maybe."

"Huh.  Pretty eager, aren't you.  What's the rush, I wonder?"

"She's fucking bad luck, that's what."

"'Cause she's witchy," Grymawk said.

"Garn," scoffed Kurbag.  "Where do you silly snaga get these ideas?”  As he said this his eyes wandered toward Nazluk, who had not spoken thus far and who still wasn't talking.  Kurbag glared at him, fancying he saw a smirk on those thin lips.  Little wonder Nazluk wasn't saying anything.  The others were saying it all for him.

"She shouldn't even be alive.  You've fucked her, what, five times now?  It's fucking creepy!"

Three times, not five, Kurbag thought but didn't say out loud.

"She should be dead.  Even if screwing her didn't do it, you should've killed her after," said Shrah'rar.

"Iggrut would still be alive," Pryszrim added, accompanied by mutters of agreement.

Kurbag rolled his eyes.  "Well that makes all the sense in the world.  So this little Elf made all those nasty rocks fall back there, eh?  Don't you think if she could do that she'd've done the rest of you lot as well?  Iggrut died because a rock bashed his fucking brains out—it's too bad but there, it happens.  What, you think she's some kind of little magic Elf who makes rocks fall on people?"

Lagdush gave a short laugh.  "She might've done just as easily, mightn't she?  She's certainly witched you proper.  Go ahead, Mushog.  Tell what you told me earlier."

"Right, Mushog, you go on and say it so I can hear as well.  I'd like to know what you've been putting around behind my back.”  Kurbag folded his arms across his chest, looked pointedly at Mushog.

Mushog did not look as angry as Lagdush looked or as Kurbag felt.  More than anything he appeared annoyed, and confused.  His brow was furrowed as he looked at Kurbag and at the Elf girl who cowered behind him, and he spoke in careful Orkish.  "Only that I saw you both, is all.  Heard the two of you together, going off with her and speaking Elf-talk when we were taking our breather earlier.  You were in the trees and she was talkin’ Golug at you while you just stood there listening."

Kurbag gritted his teeth.  He wanted to demand how Mushog had seen him without him seeing Mushog—especially since he had been looking—and how much skulking it had involved.  He did not do so in as many words, only asked pointedly, "And what did you say to me?  Seeing as it bothered you so much."

"Didn't say nothing to you.  You never even saw me.  I was in the trees and I went back before you knew I was there.”  It was obvious he knew how this sounded and he became defensive.  "Well what was I supposed to say, huh?  It was weird!  You can't say it wasn't.  Like she was putting some kind of spell on you and you were just standing there, letting her.  What was she saying to you, huh?  It could've been anything!"

"You would know if you had actually listened," said Kurbag.

The Uruk looked stubborn.  "Sure, I know what she said she said, but that don’t mean she actually said what she said she said.  And you don't know that either, Kurbag, so don't go acting like you do!"

"Well I won't then.  I'm not even sure I know what you said just now.”  There was a staccato burst of laughter from the listening Orcs.  The stubborn look on Mushog's face cracked enough for him to look sheepish, but Kurbag wasn't done.  "Truth is you were just looking to get your dick wet, isn't that right?  You know you might have asked me any time.  I would have said you could, any one of you.”  He aimed a not-entirely-friendly smile at Lagdush.  "Even you, shit-for-brains."

Lagdush scowled, unconvinced, but the look on Mushog's face was priceless.  "You mean that?"

"Said so, didn’t I?  You want her?  She's right here.”  Kurbag's eyes narrowed: Mushog's face had become wary and some of the others had actually taken a step back.  "Oh come on, what?  What is it now?"

"It's just that she is queer, isn’t she," Shrah'rar muttered.

"How do we know she's safe?" Pryszrim asked outright.

Kurbag was exasperated.  "Well what do you think?  You think your dick's gonna fall off if you stick it in her?"

He said it sarcastically, and so he was flabbergasted when a number of Orcs glanced at Nazluk.   "Well Nazluk said—" Pryszrim began.

"Nazluk said…?  Nazluk actually told you that?  Of all the stupid—" Kurbag wrenched at his laces angrily as he advanced on the smaller Orc: "Does it look like my dick's dropped off to you, huh?  Does it?"

Pryszrim squealed and backed away.

"You've made your point, Kurbag," Bragdagash finally spoke up.  "Now put it away before it catches cold."

"Boss, I am pissed off!" complained Kurbag, ignoring the guffaws around him as he turned toward his chief.  "Any one of these assholes could have talked to me any time, but no, it's just bitch bitch bitch behind my back…"

"It does sound like there's been some failure to communicate," Bragdagash said dryly.  "Well, you want to talk, so talk.  We're listening."

"I'm entitled to what's mine, right?  All I'm saying is I don't want to kill the Elf.  Later maybe, but she's good sport for now.  Why should I want to cut that short?  If she were an inconvenience I'd understand: I told Nazluk I'd kill her if she slowed us down.  Well, she never did, and she don't eat much so it's not like she's a drain on our resources.  It's clear she didn't have anything to do with that rock slide earlier or she'd've done something similar by now.  This lot is welcome to her any time so long as they don't go gutting her, or maiming her or marking her up without my leave.  She's mine to kill, but I'm willing enough to let the rest of you use her how you want.  Gorthaur's balls, I've been willing all along!”  He said it so forcefully that he actually felt aggrieved.  At that moment he honestly believed it.

"Seems fair enough," said Bragdagash.  "But I've never known you boys to play nicely for long.  No maiming, marking or murder, eh?  All well and good, but she looks delicate.  What if she checks out anyhow while one of us is having fun with her?  Someone who isn't you, Kurbag? Better say now, because I don't plan on having to settle another dispute about this."

Kurbag turned and looked at the Elf girl.  She was keeping silent and still as he had told her, a frightened spectator to all that passed between them.  There was no way she could understand all that had been said, but it was clear she knew it did not bode well for her.  She stared at him with eyes that feared him and pleaded for his protection.

"If she dies," he said, "then that's my own loss, isn’t it."

-.-.-.-

Long they argued, the gravel of their voices rising and falling but more often rising, and she could only hope that Kurbag would safeguard her.  It was when he finished speaking and they became silent, looking at her, that she knew this was not going to happen.  Kurbag moved suddenly, pulling her upright and thrusting her into the ring of waiting Orcs.  She threw her hands up, flinching away from them.

"There.  That's what you've been so afraid of," Kurbag said.

The words were so much nonsense in her ears.  Afraid?  Of course she was afraid, terrified of their teeth and knives.  They watched her as she shrank beneath their collective gaze.  Then one of the slighter Orcs, a goblin shorter than her, stepped forward and shoved her, hard, into the muscled frame of one of the Uruk-hai.  The Uruk snarled and pushed in turn so that she collided with someone else, eliciting another fierce shove.  She gasped, panicking as the world pitched crazily around her, became a violent place of brutal hands and bodies knocking her first one way, then another.  She could hear the ugly laughter of her tormentors as they grew bolder, throwing themselves wholeheartedly into the game.

It seemed to go on forever, only stopping when a pair of long arms wrapped around her, pulling her close.  A hard belly pressed against her back; a blast of hot damp breath engulfed her ear.  "No marking you, maybe, but nothing says we have to be gentle…"

Stupid from the buffeting she had received, she barely understood what was said to her until she felt the first clawed hand on her dress, the first blunt knee between her legs.  She struggled desperately against the arms that held her.

"Yeah, like that…like that…" a rough voice crooned.  A harsh tongue scraped her cheek as she began to scream.

Chapter Text

Afterward, she did not move. 

She lay where the last one left her, her body curled double.  For a time her mind was empty, void of thought.  There was nothing, and then, slowly, awareness crept back.  She ached and was cold.  Mercifully, she could feel nothing below the waist.  Had they broken her, she wondered?  If they had, they wouldn’t want her again.  They wouldn’t want something broken. 

But pain came on her like another violation, worming up inside, and she tried to hide from it; tried to escape, as she had been unable to escape her tormentors.  She told herself that she was a snail, slow, small, insignificant, and none could see her.  She had withdrawn to where no one and nothing could touch her.  There was no pain where she was.  She was not this body in the dirt.  She was a secret nautilus.

Gradually Eleluleniel realized that someone was standing over her.  She thought wearily that Kurbag was going to take another turn, but he just stood looking down at her.  After a time he stooped to pick her up, but when he touched her she began to scream.  It was a raw rattling sound; she had screamed away the lining of her throat and her voice was almost gone.  Distantly she wished he wouldn’t touch her.  She thought that, if she were to scream for much longer, blood would come out of her mouth and she would never be able to speak again. 

He let her go but continued to crouch beside her like she was a puzzle that he could not piece together.  After a brief interval his talons stirred her hair, parting the smooth strands.  She made no response, had not even the strength to shudder.  Eventually he got up and went away.

As much as she hurt, she was nearly asleep when he returned, and her drooping lids flew open in panic when she felt a sudden weight descend upon her.  It was a furry hide such as the Orcs slept under on cold or rainy nights, when the air was particularly chill or dank.  She felt the thick fur ripple against her body, trapping heat, while the smooth inner pelt was turned outward against the elements.  Wordlessly Kurbag adjusted the hide on her as a parent might tuck a child in for the night.

-.-.-.-

She could not walk for two days after. 

When they broke camp the next morning she thought that they would kill her out of hand or leave her where she was, but Kurbag carried her.  Some of the Orcs looked askance at this but made no comment.  Kurbag’s actions had settled the matter to their satisfaction…all save Nazluk, who might say nothing but who sneered nonetheless.

Eleluleniel was not afraid of Nazluk, for all that his face threatened murder.  He at least did not wish to have her: he seemed as revolted by the notion of contact with her body as she would have been with his.  She also did not struggle when Kurbag carried her, suffering his arms in silence.  She feared Kurbag—he had hurt her, hurt her badly—but when he was carrying her at least the others didn’t touch her.

But when they settled in for the night and Mushog sauntered over with clear intent, Kurbag was no protection.  He had taken a stance and, whatever he might feel about it now, he was keeping it.  He got up while Mushog positioned her to his liking, and when the Uruk began thrusting into her Kurbag was nowhere to be seen.

She wept while it was done and moved feebly, but did not scream.  She had no screams left in her.  In any case, the sounds she’d made the night before had only served to entertain Mushog and the others.  He had called her “Squeaker,” and laughed.  He did so again now, amused by the gasps and faint cries he wrested from her, even if she wasn’t screaming.  There wasn’t much that didn’t seem to amuse Mushog, and his eyes flashed down at her with wicked good humor while he raped her.

One of the smaller Orcs came later.  She didn’t see which in the dark.  She felt the eager shape scrabble over her, felt raggedy-nailed hands paw briefly at her thighs, and then came the familiar stabbing between her legs and she turned her head to the side, waiting for it to be over.

Even with these fresh insults her flesh continued, appallingly, to heal.  The second day she was able to sit up.  Kurbag brought her food, which she did not touch, and water, which she used to clean herself.  In the open midst of an Orc camp though she was and for all her good upbringing, modesty was subdued by necessity.  With the civility of long habit she asked Kurbag for a rag, and he gave her one.  She used the paltry thing to scrub herself as best she could, dabbing methodically, ignoring his gaze upon her as she sponged away their dried leavings and her own urine, and blood.  She felt tremendous shame at the blood, and a new surge of fear to see the half-Uruk eying it.  He didn’t touch her, but she could sense something like hunger behind the look.  He took the rag when she was through, and she didn’t see what he did with it after that.

Though other Orcs sought her out there was no second group assault.  On the third day she rose again and walked to the edge of camp to relieve herself.  It hurt, unsurprisingly, and she could not suppress a moan of pain.  There was still blood but less than before, and she thought that she would not die today.

“You’re still around, eh?”  She looked up at the ill-natured voice to see Nazluk leaning against a tree, scowling at her.  “I thought Elves died,” he said.  “What are you, anyway?”

She mouthed the words, trying to make sense of them.  What was she indeed?  “I do not know,” she whispered finally.  “I do not know anymore.” 

Nazluk eyed her sidelong with a kind of vindictive curiosity.  At length he spat.  “Dung I suppose.”

Tears stung her swollen eyes.  What made it worse was that she could not argue with him.

-.-.-.-

On the fourth day they were traveling again.  Kurbag did not carry her but had her walk near him at all times.  When the way was broad enough to permit, he walked beside her with his hand on the small of her back.  They traveled a long way that day.  They stopped when Lagdush, who had disappeared some time before, emerged from a thicket up ahead and led them to a nearby glade where he had shot a beautiful doe and two fawns.  Pleased, Bragdagash called a halt for the day.  The Orcs found the fresh venison a pleasant change.

That evening Kurbag sat under a tree and pulled Eleluleniel down beside him.  “You have such soft hair,” he said, and took her on his lap. He began to run his fingers through her hair, idly probing out tangles and picking them apart with astonishing delicacy.

She had said little to Kurbag those past few days.  Now she took a chance on speaking back.  “Why will you not let me go?” she asked him.  He didn’t say anything, only continued to toy with her hair.  “Please let me go,” she said softly.  “I want to go home.”

“Hair like the moon,” Kurbag whispered.  “Hair like silver.  Little moon-elf.”  He stroked it, winding her tresses through his fingers.   Under her, she felt his quiescent member harden.  Her lips trembled.  There was a time when she would not have known what this meant, but that time was past.  One of his hands dropped to free himself into the night air, stroking and tugging languorously.  Lifting her, he turned her to face him; strong hands holding her thighs apart, he lowered her for impalement.

He finished buried in her deep as he might go, and she could feel him pressing up against her womb.  Orkish usage had given her a keen and agonizing awareness of her internal parts.  Another nudge and he would damage her beyond even the extent to which she had already been damaged.  She whimpered in pain and fear of the danger she was in.  Chin dropping to rest on her collarbone, she uttered the faint mewl of a dying animal, but he only held her in place, stroking her back with a slow motion, up and down.  Abruptly he laid his hand upon the curve of her spine, steadying her against him. 

“Please,” she whispered, closing her eyes, her forehead on his chest.  “Please let me go home.”  She said it over and over again in the gloom.

-.-.-.-

On the fifth day they came to a road, which the Orcs decided to follow for a time. A tinker’s wagon had broken down not a mile from where they started, its front wheel lodged in a pothole. Seeking to draw his wagon forth, the frustrated driver was trying to coax his mare to greater efforts, but a recalcitrant horse proved the least of his problems when he suddenly found himself surrounded by a band of snickering Orcs.

“Need a hand?” Bragdagash asked the terrified man in amused Westron.

They did not have much sport with him. He died too soon for it to be worthwhile, before they had a chance to leave many marks. He was a stocky older man and Rukshash speculated that the tinker’s heart had given out on him. They did get the name of a village from him before he died, though, and annoyance was forgotten in cheerful talk of a raid. Bragdagash detailed Lagdush and Mushog to go on ahead and scout around the village before reporting back, while the other Orcs turned their energies to looting and vandalizing the wagon.  Shrah'rar, who had an unsavory interest in animals, made several attempts to approach the mare, but she was skittish and showed him the whites of her eyes, kicking out fiercely. She managed to clip his shoulder with one wicked hoof and the others laughed at the string of curses he let loose.

Kurbag vaulted up into the wagon from behind.  Ducking to clear the dizzying array of pots, pans and kettles that hung from the ceiling, he scanned the interior.  It was obvious that the tinker had basically lived out of his wagon: the quarters were homey and clean, with a rug and with high latched cupboards, and there was a bed at the front. A narrow bed, but one neatly made and spread with a colorful quilt. Kurbag appraised it thoughtfully as he contemplated bringing Squeaker in and rutting her on it.  He savored the image of her lying under him, hair spilling over the crisp white pillow…but just then the wagon gave a lurch and he nearly lost his balance. Sounds came to him, even muffled through heavy wooden paneling, of screaming horse and raucous Orcs. What with that and the clattering saucepans, it was rather more noise and activity than he cared for when he was screwing.

What was it that the wagon smelt of? Snuffing the air he quickly found the source: a basket containing Mannish foodstuffs—dried fruit, two loaves of bread, half a wheel of cheese and a small jug. Disdaining weak Mannish drink, unenthused by the fruit and bread and outright revolted by the cheese, he picked up the basket anyway.

Outside of the wagon, Eleluleniel was trying not to hear the horse, as she had tried not to hear the piteous cries of the old man whom the Orcs had set upon.  She was looking down the road the way they had come, and wishing that someone might come along it.  A warrior.  A ranger.  A company of either, or both.  But of course there was nobody.  A road… Since chancing upon it that morning, she had nursed a hope that the road might mean travelers, and aid.  But all there had been was a poor old tinker.  She was glad that the man had died quickly.

The Orcs were not paying any attention to her, too busy with their current cause for amusement.  She looked down the road the way they had come and wanted to run.  It was a foolhardy idea, of course: they would retake her in a minute in the open.  She looked instead to the trees, and the cover they might provide.  Escape?  Of course she had thought of escape!  But she’d had few opportunities before this.  She had waited too long those days immediately after her capture, and then when Kurbag had—when the other Orcs—

She had not been in any condition to try. 

But her body was stronger now.  If she were to flee into the trees she might be able to put some distance between herself and the Orcs: even take to the branches and lose herself in the bright sun-dappled foliage.  And there was the road.  There had been no road before now.  If she fled now she could come back to the road again and follow where it led.  She could find someone to take her home.

“While they do not watch,” she whispered to herself, and she could feel the trees around her listening.  They were not the trees she knew at home, but trees had heed for Elves.  She was Elf, whatever Nazluk said, whatever her sickened heart might try to tell her, and trees heard Elves…trees helped Elves…

Now, she thought to herself, but did not say aloud, for even as she thought it she heard footsteps in the gravel behind her.  She could have trembled for very disappointment, but schooled herself to reveal nothing and turned to him, only to lose her composure when she saw what Kurbag carried.

He was already smirking and when he saw her reaction he grinned all the wider.  There was no masking the hunger in her face.  It was little enough he’d managed to get down her throat, beyond water and some deer flesh yester-eve.  He just hadn’t had the right provender was all!  “Ah,” he said with characteristic brilliance and, scratching the side of his neck with his free claw, continued, “…food?” 

Oh, that’s clever, he thought to himself, and not for the first time wished he had the sharp way with words that Nazluk did.  But Squeaker’s attention was all for the basket in his hand.

Bread.  It was so long since last she had tasted bread.  Sitting on the grassy bank that overlooked the road, Eleluleniel ate with a haste she knew to be unseemly.  She did not care, tearing off pieces and putting them in her mouth quickly, fearing that any moment Kurbag would take the food away, though he showed no signs of doing so.  Sitting on the grass beside her, he examined a brown earthenware jug that had been resting in the basket.  Uncorking it, he snuffed the mouth and grimaced.  “Thin-skin fare,” he muttered and raised the jug like he was going to throw it.  Then he glanced at her, reached over and set it on her lap.  “Here, wash that down.”

She was very thirsty but when she picked up the jug the smell rising from it made her pause.  She sat holding it a moment, caught between thirst and regret.  “I cannot drink this,” she said.

“Too sweet?”

She shook her head and handed the vessel to him.  “I am not allowed.”  She wasn’t old enough to drink brandy, though her older sisters were.  She was not yet forty.

“Not allowed?  Who’s stopping you?” asked the half-Uruk, baffled.  He thrust the jug at her.  “Go on.  If you want it, drink it.”

She took the vessel back again.  It was not, she supposed, as if she had never tasted alcohol.  Nevhithien had allowed her some secret sips of wine once, guardedly given amid giggles behind the closed door of their bedchamber.  She would not make herself foolish.  She would drink just a little.

The jug of brandy smelled strongly of plum, and when she drank it was sweet and tart and good.  She took a few careful swallows.

“How is it?”

“It is good,” she admitted.  “Thank you.”

He looked pleased.  “Here, give me that.”  Hefting the jug, he took an experimental gulp and nearly choked.  “AI!!  Shum ambal pushdug!  Awful!”  He threw her a flabbergasted look.

“What’s that you’re chugging there?” demanded Rukshash, wandering over in their direction.  “Garn!  Keeping the best for yourself, you big bastard?  Give it here.”  A disgusted Kurbag handed him the jug and watched, fully expecting Rukshash to spit the contents out as he had.  Instead the old Orc drank slowly and steadily, finally lowering the jug with a sigh and wiping his mouth on the back of a skinny arm.  “Ah.  Now that’s good brandy.”

Kurbag couldn’t believe it.  “How can you say that?  That stuff is vile!”

Rukshash snorted.  “The problem with young rowdies like you, Kurbag, is you just don’t know quality.”  He jabbed a thumb at Eleluleniel.  “Now her, she’s different.  Raised to it, I’d imagine.  And me, hah!  Good plum brandy, oaken cask, aged two years?  This would’ve done for officers’ fare during the War.”

“You old liar.  You were never an officer.”

He laughed.  “Knew how to pinch from ’em though, didn’t I?  Hoity-toity Uruk bastards couldn’t moderate their contempt: if they’d only taken their noses out of the air and looked down at us for a change, they might’ve known what was going on at belt-level.”

Eleluleniel felt a moment’s strange dissonance.  She was sitting on a green sward having something resembling a picnic with her captors, and Rukshash sounded like an old Mannish friend of her father’s: an aging soldier who often reminisced about the Great War.  The queasy brew of the familiar and the profane was disturbing.  Kurbag might seem almost solicitous at times, but she had learned her lesson about him, learned it painfully, and Rukshash was no amiable old man but an Orc.  A memory came unbidden of a few nights previous.  Not all of the Orcs had used her physically.  Some had watched.  Rukshash was one such; he had never touched her but he had watched, and grinned, and she had seen what he did with his hand…

“Hey Squeaker.  Squeaker!”  Kurbag touched her arm and she flinched as she returned to the present.  “You still thirsty?”

She looked at him with haunted eyes, and then at the jug from which Rukshash was drinking, the mouth of the vessel pressed between his rotting teeth.  “Not for brandy,” she said dully.

-.-.-.-

Nothing came of the village.  From what she was to understand later, it had turned out to be more of a town, large enough to have a wall and men enough to guard it.  Not the kind of fun that Bragdagash was looking for.  Suddenly priorities shifted from planning a raid to putting distance between themselves and their original target.  Nobody in the group was in a very good mood.  The Orcs were all cross and Eleluleniel was devastated.  They had left the road, and she had missed an opportunity that she did not think would come again.

-.-.-.-

On the sixth day she heard a ringing sound, loud and long, in her left ear.  No one else seemed to hear it, not even Grushak, for all that he was on her.  It started the first time that she blacked out, and continued seemingly without end.  When Grushak grunted and shifted the angle of his thrusts the ringing became louder.  When she came to after her second blackout he was gone.  The ringing continued: fainter now, but unmistakable.

Ringing in her ears, and she had never blacked out before.  She wondered if she was starting to lose her mind.  Maybe that was what she was doing instead of dying.  Maybe this was dying, but she did not think so.  If it was, it was nothing like the tales.

Someone nudged her coldly with an iron toe.  “Not dead yet?”  When Nazluk saw her blinking up at him he curled his lip.  “Then cover that mess and get up.  Bragdagash wanted you to feed the fire.” 

He sneered at her when she did not move fast enough to please him and pulled her harshly to her feet.  She thought her pelvis was damaged when Grushak first began, he had entered her so hard, but this did not seem to be the case.  She had a new fear of the Orc.  He was not an Uruk, but he was as large as one, and he had not been gentle.  None of the Orcs were, but Grushak used his claws.  She did not think that Kurbag would have liked this, had he seen. 

But Kurbag was not around and had not been since that morning.  It was difficult for her to tell the time: the sky was overcast and gray, and the clearing in which they were encamped was bleak, but she thought it was some time past noon.  “Where is…” she said, and trailed off.

“What?” Nazluk demanded.  “Either finish a question or don’t say anything in the first place.”

“Where is Kur—”

He cut her off irritably.  “On guard duty, doing his job for a change.  Will wonders never cease?”  Mismatched eyes narrowed.  “Why do you ask?  So eager to take another tumble with him?”

She blanched, started to open her mouth and stopped.  The ringing in her ear had suddenly gotten loud again.

Nazluk looked at her suspiciously.  “You seem stupider than usual.  Why are you making that face?”  Her answer made him speculative—“That sounds like a head injury.  Did you take a thump to it at some point?”—but he snorted when she responded in the negative.  “Well, you wouldn’t remember, yes?  With any luck it will do you in, but I doubt it.  You’re stronger than you look or you wouldn’t be here.  Hold still!”

He took her head in his hands, probing her skull.  It was not with her good in mind that he did this but out of hope for her misfortune, and glee at a chance to cause discomfort.  Holding her head at a taxing angle he manhandled her roughly, scraping her tender scalp with his talons.  She squeezed her eyes shut against this treatment, clutching blindly at his wrists, but he only ignored her and continued his brutal examination.  She could hear him muttering under his breath, fragments of Orkish woven with Westron:

“Lulgijak, kisug dobat Golug…and you smell of flowers and of trees.  I don’t get it, what does he see in you?  Marr auga, dil-vorbat—tru-uk voskor dajal-ob agh nar gajol rrok palhur-ishi…” 

As through a dark veil she saw his green and yellow eyes flicker over her, searching, searching. 

“Nothing!” Nazluk said finally, and let her go with a parting yank to her hair.  “Sniveling filth!  You’re probably making it up.  Well, come on, there’s been enough delay.  Look, the fire’s gone out.”

He hovered constantly that next long hour, and whatever secret frustration it was that preyed upon him he took out on her.  It seemed she never ceased to give him fuel.  She had not built a campfire before in her life, nor tended one.  Most Elves delight in cooking, men as well as women, and many were the happy hours she had spent in the kitchen with her father or with one or more of her sisters.  There, the tame orange flames of a brick oven were all she’d had to deal with as she baked bread and prepared simple meals, allowed occasionally to assist with the finer dishes.  She had certainly had no experience with sifting through the gray ash of an open pit-fire, rekindling faint embers by blowing on them to bring them glowing back to life.  Nazluk snarled at her when she didn’t know what it meant to bank a fire; he was nearly apoplectic when it came out that she had never gathered kindling, and that she did not know which wood served to make a fire burn bright and fast or hot and slow. 

With a series of vicious shoves, accompanied by cursing in both Westron and Orkish, he drove her into the outlying trees and stood by scowling as she burdened herself.  Her jaw set as she followed the directives of her harsh taskmaster.  Nazluk was cruel, but his was an angry cruelty: honest hatred with nothing libidinous in it.  She listened carefully to what he told her, siphoning sense from sadism. 

“Not that rotten shit—have you no head?  Stupid bitch!  It will send up smoke fit to choke us all.  Look for the dry wood, the stuff that’s dead and is starting to punk.  Punk is rotting.  Not yet rotted.  Lulgijak…useless fucking Elf…”

After a while she no longer registered his contempt, finding an old serenity in labor.  She felt that she was being productive after a long period of idleness.  In the days since her capture Eleluleniel had been used and mistreated and forced to travel great distances with her captors, but little enough had she been given to do with her hands.  She had never been one to enjoy sitting idle; gathering firewood and tending a fire were nothing like embroidery or gardening, but they were still work and something in which to lose herself, if only for a time.

Nazluk, venom spent and finding nothing else to rail about, finally left.  The ringing in Eleluleniel’s ear dwindled and died away at last, and in her heart something heavy seemed to lift.  With the Orc gone she felt safe enough to quietly hum a favorite ballad.  She felt the trees around her listening and so she hummed for them as well as for herself.  She dared not sing her song aloud, but she could think it in her mind, and there it floated free and clear as a song in summer air.

It was not summer, though.  It was mid-spring and overcast, the air oppressive and dull.  It was a day tailored to Grushak’s liking.  He sat by the fire and sharpened his scimitar, and enjoyed the novelty of sitting, without pain or discomfort, under an open sky.  Grushak was large but he was not Uruk, and he had the same sensitivity to the sun as other non-Uruk-hai.  In a thoroughly decent mood, he looked up at the mustard-gray smear of cloud-cover overhead and wished there could be more days like this.

He heard Mushog before he saw him, and smelled fresh blood.  “So there was a farm-holding,” he said amiably.  “Well well.  Then you were right and I was wrong.  I don’t suppose I get a doggy-bag?”

“Not to worry,” said Mushog.  “Plenty to share.  The others are bringing back some of the meat.”  He grinned.  “It was fun!  They barricaded themselves in, so it actually took us a while to get to them.  Good sport to be had.  Four generations, can you imagine? from the little pink newborn up to the old great grand-dam.  You should have heard some of the nasty things she called us—before we shut her up, that is.”

“Four generations.”  Grushak shook his head slowly.  “They live too long, these Men and their families.”

“All penned up in the same house, too.”  Mushog made a face of disgust.  “Breathing in each other’s air and everything.”

“Not so different from the caves.”

“Unh.  I wouldn’t know.”

“Hmm.”  Grushak chewed on that one for a moment.  Regular Orcs were, if anything, more restless than their Uruk-hai brethren, quick to swarm out of their subterranean and mountain dwelling places at the slightest provocation…when they bothered waiting for provocation.  Crowding and infighting kept them itching, launching their continuous incursions on the outer world: the great battle hordes of years gone by might be a memory, but seasonal sorties and raids were a mainstay of Orkish life.  And those were just the quickie-jobs.  Roving mixed units such as Bragdagash’s band had the muscle and the flexibility to keep up good momentum, loping around the fertile lands for months on end.

They had covered much ground in their travels.  Had seen and learned and killed a good deal.  A little run south and then they would prepare to make the long stretch home.

“Where’s the Elf?” asked Mushog suddenly.

“Mm?  Getting firewood—can’t you hear that insipid noise she’s making?”  They both fell quiet, and Mushog’s ears pricked up as he heard the faint strains of the Elven girl’s humming.  Grushak grunted.  “I’d’ve told her to shut up by now, but it’s actually less irritating than the sound of Nazluk’s voice.  Raking her over the coals earlier, he was, and me trying to take a nap.”

“There’s a lot of wood already,” Mushog said, observing the pile beside the pit.

“She’s been at it for some time.  Tends the fire a bit, then she goes straight out for more.  I suppose it’s exercise for her.”

“Exercise?  Aw!  Haven’t we been giving her enough?”  Mushog laughed.

Grushak shrugged.  “You may have.  I gave her a little go today, but I was not impressed.  There’s no there there, if you ask me.  I don’t like ’em that soft.”

“Soft.”  Mushog was gazing off, a thoughtful smile on his lips.  “Have you had a look at her mouth?  It’s so small…and such little teeth.  I’ll bet she has a very soft mouth.”  The Uruk’s tongue passed over his fangs.  Turning, he headed in the direction of the trees. 

“You’re fucking insatiable.  You know that, right?” remarked Grushak sardonically.  The only response was throaty laughter.  Grushak rolled his eyes before turning them to his sword again.  Mushog had clearly had a pleasant excursion—Grushak smelled sex mixed with the blood—but there you go: some people are never satisfied.  He heard a dull rumble in the distance and looked up.  The yellow sky had gone greenish and the air around him seemed almost to crackle.  Didn’t feel like it was gonna rain, though.  On the one hand Grushak was glad: he never fancied being wet.  On the other, rumbling without rain was unsettling.  Perhaps a little spatter wouldn’t go amiss.

Kurbag’s Elven girl wasn’t humming any more.  Her small voice had fallen silent, displaced by Mushog’s low chuckle.  Grushak didn’t notice, waiting as he was for thunder.

Chapter Text

The half-Uruk prowled around the gutted holding, taking care where he put his feet.  The others had left a considerable mess behind them: pieces of crockery and broken furniture strewed the floors of the lower level of the main building, while the upper level stank of blood and fear and death.  It would have gotten him hard if he hadn’t been so focused.

Bragdagash had let Kurbag off guard duty when the little dispatch of raiders returned.  The first thing he’d done was back-track their scent, finding his way to the place they had hit.  It was getting late, and what with the foul weather and being inside and all, it was difficult to see.  Kurbag had not inherited a regular Orc’s keen night-vision.  Nonetheless, scent revealed a scene as vivid as any he might have seen with his eyes.  Here was where they’d made first kill.  Here they had entered the outer quarter where the men were waiting—waiting, only to have the shit kicked out of them.  Here was the innermost apartment where the women were shielding their youngsters when Bragdagash and his lads burst through.  And here the smells became a confused medley: heavy, heady.  Appetizing.

Kurbag shook it off and trotted down the stairs again.  He’d just ducked up for a peep, really; he knew that what he was looking for was not here.  Not in the main building.

He found it in one of the outlying sheds.  The door was off its hinges, but with nothing of interest to an Orkish raiding party within the interior was relatively untouched.  A few desultory chickens were roosting on top of a feed bin when he pushed the door open—he knocked them aside with a casual swing of his arm and they flapped off squawking.  Kurbag lifted the heavy lid easily, took a whiff of the contents and promptly sneezed.  Wiping his nose ferociously on the back of his hand, he felt around for something in which to tote the grain.

-.-.-.-

She was still heaving, even after her stomach had brought up all of its contents and that sour taste burned away everything else.  She continued to do so until her vision was swimming and her belly cramped with exertion.  She thought she was done when she finally stood again, but then she heard them laughing around the fire and the reflex to gag returned.

When she tried picking up the kindling her hands trembled so badly that she dropped it all: the wood only slid out of her grasp.  Her arms might have been boneless for all the good they did her.  In that instant she despised her body, hating her own flesh with a purity of loathing beyond anything she felt for the Orcs.  The intensity of this sudden wave left her spent and despairing.  It was no good.  It would never be any good, and nothing was ever going to get any better.  She looked at the wood she had dropped with a dull eye and picked up a piece, turning it over and over in her hands.  Then she let it fall.  There was a heavy sound as it struck the ground, but she didn’t hear.  She was already walking away.

She walked slowly and steadily at first, thinking that any second one of them would shout after her, bark an order for her to come back; that one or more would give chase.  But none of them did.  Steady and slow until she was out of sight of the campfire, and then until she could no longer hear them.  And then she began to run.

She ran until her dress no longer whipped around her legs but clung like a second skin.  She ran until the trees on either side were a blur and all of her breath was gone, and her lungs and heart were afire.  And kept running till the fire had burnt to ash.

Only then did she stop, turning and crumpling against a black tree trunk, and she wept into the rough bark.  “Where am I going?” she sobbed.  “There is nowhere for me to go.  There is nowhere for me to go.”  She had wanted to run for so long, and it had taken running for her to realize this: there was nowhere, no haven.  There was no road.  She was lost in a forest of strange trees many miles from her home, and many miles from anyone who could help her.  And in any case, who, helping her, could fail to revile her?  She would be shunned.  Even her own family would look on her with revulsion.  “I am fit for no one’s company,” she whispered.  “No one but…”

And she uttered a choking cry, and fell to her knees, and it was worse in this position, for Mushog had made her kneel…and she felt again the stony ground beneath her knees; felt again his fist in her hair, holding her head in place…and again she was gagging, and she fell forward onto her hands, dry-heaving over the dark earth.

They had ruined her.  They had ruined her.  And now she had nowhere else to go.

“But I cannot go back!” she wept.  “I cannot—not to that.  Oh Elbereth, help me.  Take me away from this place.  Else make of me some other thing.  A tree, a stone, a snail… Take this from me, I cannot bear it.  I cannot bear myself…”

A faint tremor passed through the tree beside her.  She raised her head and looked on it, blinking tear-filled eyes.  “Are you Huorn?” she asked softly.  A tendril of regret was all the reply.  The tree was tall and broad of circumference, but it was a tree, nothing less, nothing more…and it could offer her only its sympathy.  She nodded.  She hadn’t dared hope, not really.  Brushing her hand against its rough exterior, she whispered, “Thank you.”

Rising slowly she leaned into the hard tree trunk with her shoulder.  She was weary beyond measure.  "I do not know what to do," she said, sighing.  "Perhaps I will stay here.  Or I may wander on through the wood.  They will come for me sooner or later.  They will see that I am gone and come hunting.  They may kill me."  In a low voice: "I am afraid to die.  After all that has happened…afraid.  Is that not funny?"  She gave a mirthless laugh, and felt pain to do so.  Her jaw ached from the Uruk’s usage.

The tree's comfort enveloped her in a gentle nimbus, leaving her nearly undone.  Real kindness: not like Kurbag's strange overtures, but a concern that truly had her good at heart.  "I will not forget, my friend," she whispered.  "I will think of you, whatever comes.  Wherever it is I go.”  And for some time she rested at the tree’s side in silence.

But the communion between the two was broken as the forest took alarm and the outlying trees broke into anxious murmuring. 

…comes…he is coming…

…comes for the singer…

…comes for the Elf child…

…who comes…

…Orch…

“No,” she whispered.  “No…I will not…I cannot…”  Fear made a fool of her: a foolish child.  He was coming for her, but she would not let him take her again.  She would not go back.  The tree was tall and broad.  It was long since Eleluleniel had climbed a tree, but she climbed this one, gasping as she dug her slender fingers into its wrinkled skin and pulled herself up, up to the first level of branches and then hand over hand beyond, high as she might go.

-.-.-.-

"We circled each other.  He made a feint.  I blocked with my shield.  Yes, I carried a shield in those days.  It was standard issue for us grunts: small, round, and bloody useless for close combat, but this time it served me well.  I snarled at him.  He backed up a step.  So that was good...he knew I meant business!  Just then—"

"Oi Kurbag, where've you been?" Lagdush interrupted this gripping narrative.

Kurbag hefted the purloined burlap sack.  "Around."

Mushog, not entirely soused but feeling no pain, gestured enthusiastically.  "Siddown, siddown.  Rukshash is telling his eye-story again."

"Oh yeah?  Which one?" asked Kurbag, scanning past the little group around the fire.

"Skai.  ‘Which one,’ he asks, as if I told a different story every time," Rukshash grumbled.

"It does change a lot in the telling,” said Pryszrim.  Rukshash pinched him savagely and he yelped.  “Ai!  Why do you do that to me?” he whined, rubbing his arm.

“Because I like to hear you squeal, pig.”

Shrah’rar and Grymawk both snorted—Pryszrim gave them an angry look and they laughed outright.

“Why aren’t you sitting?” Mushog asked Kurbag plaintively.  He patted a space on the ground beside him.  “Share a skin with me.”

“That’s all right…I’ve something I need to take care of first,” said Kurbag vaguely, sidestepping his fellow Orcs.

“I’ll just bet you do,” Mushog snickered.  “Try a change of position!  Your dick will thank you for it.”

Kurbag grunted, only dimly registering the Uruk’s words.  He didn’t see Squeaker anywhere, and he had sudden misgivings about the time he’d taken at the farm holding.  When he got to the trees at the edge of the clearing he snuffed around a bit, and his suspicions were confirmed when he nearly stumbled over a discarded batch of firewood.  The Elf who had gathered it was nowhere to be found. 

Dropping the feedbag, he had enough sense to keep his cursing quiet.  “Fuck.  Fucking fuck,” he muttered as he looked behind him.  The others were all laughing at some joke of Bragdagash’s—all but Nazluk, who’d been appointed night shift when Kurbag stepped off guard duty.  The sour Orc was ensconced where Kurbag himself had been keeping watch all day: on the far side of camp, the same direction Kurbag had just come from.  No way had Squeaker broken out on that side—she’d’ve been nabbed before she got ten yards, and Nazluk would have told the whole band.  Instead no one seemed aware of the disappearance but Kurbag.

“And it’s gonna stay that way,” he told himself fiercely as he struck out after her.  There was no way any of the others were going to find out about this—he’d never live it down.  Well, who would have expected her to run after all this time?  Kurbag thought of the sack of grain he’d filched and his anger grew exponentially.  “Damn Elf.  I got her fucking food for her too!”  He was snarling as he tracked her scent, following her fear and the smell of her sweet flesh.

The further he went the angrier he became.  The darkness did nothing to help his humor, nor did the roots he kept tripping on.  When he bashed his shoulder he was sore and paranoid into the bargain.  Swearing as he stumbled again, he drew his sword and menaced the trees around him, not caring if he looked a fool.  “Back off,” he snapped, not sure to whom he spoke but meaning it.

There was an eerie hush, and Kurbag slowly realized that the trail ended here.  He looked up.  It was night and his eyes were an Uruk’s at night, but she was readily visible in the branches of the tree above him.  She glimmered even in the darkness, poignant and fair as a fallen star.  Kurbag, who did not think in such poetical terms, still caught his breath at the sight.  It almost made him forget his anger.  Almost. 

“I don’t know what the fuck you thought you were doing, but you can come down from there,” he growled, sheathing his blade.  “Right now.”

She didn’t move.

“You know, it’s a damned good thing the others haven’t noticed you gone.  If any of them had caught you pulling this shit they would have killed you out of hand.  You’re lucky I’m not so sensible.”

She didn’t move.

“Get out of the tree, Squeaker.  I’m not telling you again.”

He saw her shake her head.  “I cannot,” her voice came faintly.  “Please.  Please do not make me.”

He exploded then, beating his fist against the tree as he swore horribly and heaped threats upon her.  When he finished she was trembling and crying under the barrage of abusive language, but she only continued to cling where she was and to say that she couldn’t come down.  “‘Can’t’?  You mean won’t!” he snarled.  “You want me to come up after you?  Is that it?  Squeaker, if you make me come up there, you are going to regret it.”

“Please stop!” she wept.  “I cannot come down.  Please, just leave me!”

His anger was exacerbated by fear that any minute somebody might blunder onto this embarrassing scene.  The others were busy with their own pursuits and probably thought he was still screwing the Elf somewhere, but at some point they were going to notice how long he had been gone.  And if they discovered the reason he would never hear the end of it.  Kurbag did not plan on losing face amongst his fellows.  That was not going to happen.  “You brought this on yourself,” he growled, grabbing the rough trunk and beginning to work his way up the tree. 

It was not a smooth climb.  He had no experience with this sort of thing and his progress was awkward.  Though rage propelled him upward, he did not like to put distance between himself and the ground; his talons were of some help piercing the thick bark but that did not mean a half-Uruk belonged in a tree.  When he had hauled himself into the first level of branches he crouched in the crux of a sturdy bough, peering down nervously.  Rising, he hooked his arm over another branch for support and looked up, narrowing his eyes.  Squeaker was staring down at him, her face white and drawn: when she saw the expression on his face she pressed closer to the tree.  Muttering obscenities, Kurbag went back to climbing.

-.-.-.-

…child…he is in my branches…

She clung to the tree, her face against its trunk.

…little one, little one…I cannot protect you…

She could feel the tree’s distress.  Had it been Huorn it would have cast her pursuer off by now and crushed him.  Because it was not Huorn, it could employ only those little acts of defiance any tree may muster: the subtle roil and twitch of bark, the barest shifting of branches.  But Kurbag did not have the perception she did.  He attributed that slip of the foot to his own awkwardness; that branch had not moved, he had only fumbled.  These were inconveniences, not enough to distract him from his grim purpose.  Not when he was as angry as he was.

And he was angry.  She could feel it, and she was afraid.  She had mounted as high as she might and dared no further, knowing the slender limbs beyond were too frail.  Kurbag, some fifteen feet below her at this point, was far larger than she and a clumsy climber, but he was still closing the gap between them.  She could feel his wrath rising as a tangible heat, like a hot breath on her legs.  He had brutalized her but he had not vented his anger on her before, and she was still shaken by what he had shouted from the base of the tree. 

She wondered how, after all that had happened, she could still be stunned by harsh words.  Somehow the Orc had continued to deceive her, else she had deceived herself.  She must have trusted him on some level, still nourished some faint hope.  What hope?  That he might see her in her tree and walk past?  That he might yet be moved by her pleas?  Not likely.

There was sudden quiet below her.  He had maintained a steady, bestial snarling ever since he’d started climbing, so the silence was strange.  Blinking swollen eyes, she turned her face away from the tree and looked down.  He was feeling deliberately of the branches around him, searching for the thickest available.  There was a look of deep concentration on his angular features.  Grasping the base of one bough, he pulled himself up another level.

…ah…said the tree…I…

There was a cracking sound, and both Orc and Elf cried out as the branch Kurbag stepped onto gave way. 

Eleluleniel closed her eyes, feeling ill.  When she opened them he was still there, limbs locked around the trunk in a death grip.  “Fuck,” he gasped.  “Fuck, fuck, fuck…”

“Please stop,” she said softly.  He ignored her, gouging deeply into the tree with his claws and hoisting himself up that way, with no more care for branches.  “Please,” she said again, knowing it was useless.  And then he was at her feet, and he was breathing shallowly and quick.  “…please…” she whispered as he drew himself, impossibly, fully level with her, and she shrank away. 

That was when he hit her.

It was a hard heavy blow with the back of his hand.  If it had been his closed fist he might have killed her.  As it was, she saw a bright explosion of light: she lost sense briefly, and her hands went slack.  She would have fallen if he hadn’t caught her arm, snatching her against him roughly.  She could feel him trembling just as she was trembling, and she heard a strange rattling sound that she realized was the sound of her own teeth chattering against each other.  There was a taste of blood in her mouth.

“‘Please’?” Kurbag was saying. “‘Please’?  You little idiot!  What did you think was going to happen?  Did you think that I was playing games?”  He continued to tremble with what she thought at first was fury, but when he didn’t hit her again she realized.  He was afraid.  No, not even afraid: terrified.  His whole body was quivering with it.  At first she was utterly bewildered—what did he have to be frightened of?  Then she heard him mutter, “Oh fuck, how far up are we anyway?  Oh fuck.” 

He groaned, and somehow that sound restored her to a strange semblance of calm.  Her own trembling slowed, and the agony in her cheek dwindled, dying to a painful but bearable throb.  She listened as from far away, with a kind of detached interest, to the dialogue he was having with himself.

There was only one way he could go, of course, but that branch snapping had shaken him badly, and there was also the Elf girl to consider.  She was quiet enough for now, pinned unresisting against his chest, but he didn’t know how long it would be before she launched into another of those unnerving crying jags to which she was so prone.  He had made this climb to fetch her down—now he had her and he wasn’t sure how to do it.  Couldn’t use his arms to hold her and climb at the same time.  Couldn’t have her follow, or he’d just be in the same position as before, with her not coming down at all.  The only way he could see was to have her go first, and so he spoke to her tersely.

“Listen, Squeaker.  Listen carefully, or I will break your neck, I swear I will.  Do you understand what I’m saying?”  She didn’t say anything and he gave her a rib-buckling squeeze.  “Do you?”

“Yes!” she gasped.  “I understand!”  And added something that he could not hear.

“What was that?”

“I said—” she made a hiccupping sound.  “I said I thought you were being rhetorical.”  And laughed: a high, tremulous bubble of laughter.

Annoyed, he gave her another squeeze.  “When I am being rhetorical I will let you know,” he growled.  “I want you to go down ahead of me.  I want you to climb a little way at a time.  On my say-so, and when I tell you to stop, you stop, got it?” 

“I will stop when you tell me.”

There was a brief silence. 

“Well?” he said impatiently.

She met his green eyes with her own pale blue gaze.  “You have to let me go.” 

His right arm still held her pinned against him.  With a final growl of warning he released his grip on her waist and she turned toward him, now studiously avoiding his eyes.  Carefully she began to descend, following the tree’s silent cues.  To a resentful Kurbag she seemed to move with all the weight of a leaf in branches that protested his own bulk.  “Stop,” he snarled shortly.  “You wait right there,” and began to feel his own way down.  It was a much slower process for him—he could feel the branches he chose creaking dangerously beneath him, and this made his choices hesitant and tense.

Then it began to rain.  It was as he met her midway that he felt the first fat drops and cursed.  He had been focused on climbing and had certainly had no eye for the heavens or for the changing cloud cover.  It was not a hard rain, but already the branches were becoming damp with it—slick and treacherous to his nervous sense of proportion.  “Far enough,” he muttered, “that’s far enough,” and wedged himself into a sturdy nook.  Squeaker was standing beside him wordlessly, her feet planted on a lower branch, her slender arms around the trunk of the tree.  Taking her elbow in a firm grip, he drew her onto his hard thigh. 

She sat there silent and seemingly tractable, though he could feel the stiffness of her body.  Was she uncomfortable?  Good!  Yet he didn’t think it with the same degree of satisfaction that he would have felt barely minutes before.  The worst of his anger was curbed now, replaced with a grudging resignation: they’d neither of them be moving any time soon.  At least the others wouldn’t be abroad in this mess.  They’d have bedded down out of the damp by now, not sparing a thought for him and Squeaker beyond maybe a dirty joke or two.  Fine by him!

Eleluleniel, unaware of his thoughts, hung her head as she listened to the tree’s quiet murmuring.  Its broken bough ached and it was dismayed by the continued presence of the Orc in its branches.  “Sorry,” she said, “I am sorry…”

“I’ll just bet you are,” Kurbag muttered behind her.  She flinched but did not correct him.  His arm around her was not painful, but she knew that it could be if he was provoked.  “Why’d you run, anyway?” he went on.  “How far did you think you were gonna get?”

“…I did not think ahead.”

He snorted.  “I’ll say.  That was some plan, Squeaker.  Find a tree and climb it, huh?  Really clever.” 

The rain continued to fall.  Kurbag, sitting with the Elf girl on his lap, studied the web of glittering droplets that was her hair.  While the rain steamed off his hot slate-gray hide it collected on the exposed skin of her pale shoulders and neck in little beads.  As he watched, she shivered and raindrops ran off in shining rivulets.  “You cold?” he asked.  His tone was no longer sarcastic.  She shivered again and he muttered something about her taking sick.  Having nothing with which to cover her, he slid his other arm around her as well and pulled her against him, calloused fingers knotting over her belly.

Her kind did not become ill easily, and Eleluleniel had never heard of an Elf dying from fever, save it be a fever bred of poison.  But Kurbag’s heat penetrated even the thick leather he wore, providing some relief against the chill night air, and she had nowhere else to go.  The crude metal affixed to the front of his jerkin hurt her: she shifted fitfully and he loosened his grip enough to let her find a less uncomfortable position. 

When she was settled again he grunted.  A particularly large rain drop had struck his ear, causing it to flick irritably.  “When is this gonna be over?” he said under his breath.

“I was wondering the same thing,” said Eleluleniel quietly.

“Were you.  Hmm.”

Not about the rain, though.  “What will happen when the rain stops?”

Kurbag heaved a sigh.  “We go back to the others, and they don’t hear a word about this.  I’m sure as fuck not saying anything, and you won’t either if you know what’s good for you.”  Not that he could see any reason why she would.  It wasn’t in her interests, and she said so little now as it was.  Barely even spoke to him anymore.  This was the most that she had said in a while.

“And then...?”

“And then march, most like, though Bragdagash may wait for things to dry out a bit.  Usually likes to make tracks after we hit a place, but rain is always a good cover.  So we march, or we lie up for another day and then march after that.  You know.  Business as usual.”

She knew exactly.  Days and nights following in their succession: always the marching, and after the march… She lowered her head.

“You know we’re going southerly, right?  We’ve veered north for a few days now, but that’s where we’re working our way, is south.  They say it doesn’t rain down there, or else that it does but for weeks on end so that everything rots.  I asked Rukshash which was true.  He says it depends on where you are.  There are Orc-friendly Men down there, and Men who hate us, and that depends as well.  Haven’t heard there are any Elves, but maybe…”

She considered his words.  She did not think it likely.  She had never heard that there were Elves in the southern lands.  “Will you go even unto Khand?”

He shrugged behind her.  “South of the Nurnen and into Harondor.  I don’t know after that.  It’s not my country and I only repeat the names I’ve been told.”  There was a brief silence, and she could sense his eyes upon her as he studied the top of her head.  “What do you know of the south?”

Quiet demurral.  “I should know more, but I only remember Khand.  And what my sister said, about the stars.  She said that they are different there.” 

“Your sister?”  An image stirred in Kurbag’s brain: a small girl with terrified eyes and long dark hair, black as a raven’s wing.  “The little one?”

She shook her head again, staring into the outer dark.  “No.  My older sister.  She is very clever.  She has memorized whole maps of Eriador and Rhovannion, and not only the lands of Elves and Men but of the heavens as well.  There is no star she does not know.”

“Is she pretty like you?” asked Kurbag.  

The Elf shuddered, hard enough that he yelped and gripped her tighter in response.  “Oi, Squeaker!  Have a care, eh?  We’re high up,” he said in a strangled voice.  She subsided but it was a while before he himself could relax.  In the meantime he tried to calm his nerves with further conversation.  “What is it she said, then?  About the stars.”

Rain slid down Eleluleniel’s face.  She was thinking of Nevhithien busily spreading out one of their father’s charts, weighing it down with whatever was to hand: an inkpot for one corner, a biscuit plate for another, impatient fingers smoothing down the rest.  ‘Look at poor old Túrin, turned on his head!  Menelvagor is transposed, and Helluin is above him.  This is what happens to our stars in the southern skies, Leni, at least those that do not vanish entirely.  But in their stead new stars appear, and whole new constellations…’ 

She felt a kind of grief to think of her sister, as though she were remembering someone who had died.  Only Nevithien was not dead but very far away, and Eleluleniel would probably never see her again this side of the sea. 

But Kurbag was repeating his question, and she answered him as best she could from the shadow of her grief: “They change the further south you go, and some you cannot see at all.  The northernmost stars are no longer in view, and the rest are upside down.  But there are other stars we cannot see from here, and the sky is all alight with their shining.”

Kurbag listened to this doubtfully.  Stars they couldn’t see?  The night sky turned around?  It all sounded very odd, and more than a little unlikely.  He said as much, but Squeaker’s response wasn’t particularly satisfying.  It was what her sister said, she told him, and she did not entirely understand it herself.  “Huh,” said the Orc, and he tilted his head back and looked up through the branches at the night sky overhead, ignoring the cold trickle that ran down the back of his neck.  “I guess it’s not so strange at that,” he said after a moment.  “We can’t see our own stars just now, but they’re still there.”

His words kindled a little flame inside.  Unmindful of Kurbag’s uncomfortable bulk she craned her own head back and stared up into the heavens.  “That is true.  They are only obscured by cloud,” she murmured.  “They are just behind the rain.”

-.-.-.-

The rain faltered and finally ceased altogether as the heavy clouds moved on, and the stars appeared in their thousands, and Kurbag gave her the word to start climbing down again.  He was restless and irritable from their long stint in the tree, and eager to plant his boots on solid ground.  She descended carefully and when she reached the bottom he uttered a sharp command to stay where she was until he had reached her.

Eleluleniel waited at the base of the tree, peering up through its branches as she scanned the sky again for her star.  She could not find it now among its fellows, but she knew it was there, for she had seen it from Kurbag’s arms: the first little star peeping through a breach in the clouds.  It vanished soon enough, but she had searched for it and at length it had reappeared in a small dark patch of sky where it shone as yet alone, remote and distant, burning with a cool clear light.  The patch widened as the rain slowed and others also began to peer through, their numbers gradually increasing, but still she watched her little star.  In truth she was unable to look away from it, it was so keen and bright and far away.

Of course she had to at last when Kurbag told her to start climbing, and now she could not find it again.  There were many more stars now and they filled the sky: stars in their myriads, stars beyond counting.  She watched and thought she might weep from their beauty.

“‘Sky piss.’  That’s what Mushog calls rain, and he’s not far off,” grumbled Kurbag.  He swung down clumsily from the last branch, landing heavily on his feet beside her.  Crouching a moment, he ran his hands over the wet grass and rubbed them together before wiping them on his trousers.  Some of his previous anger had returned: he was cold and damp and sore and stiff, and as he straightened he glowered down at the Elf.  “Don’t you ever pull that shit again.  Do you hear me?  That was more than just a nuisance.”

She nodded, and he squinted at her in the dark.  Putting a hand on her shoulder, he stepped in close, peering down at her face.  “Skai.  Look what you made me do,” he muttered at the livid welt on her cheek.

They picked their way back through the trees, crept into camp like thieves or bandits, the half-Uruk’s hand tightening on her wrist every time he thought she was going to make a sound, though in truth she was quieter than him.  For all of their skulking the others stirred, and one of the snaga Orcs roused long enough to aim a crude gibe at them, which Kurbag ignored.  It took some time before he found his gear: stowed beneath a tree where one of the others must have shoved it, for neither he nor Eleluleniel remembered him leaving it there. 

He had not slept with her for some nights now.  It wasn’t that he spared her his touch, only that he did not make her lie with him afterward, giving her a fur in which to enfold herself while he slept on his pallet.  This night there was no proffered fur.  He lay with her locked under his arm, and she did not cry but turned her head, gazing up at the sky and the stars.  They were the stars that shone on her family and home and the familiar wood where she was born, the same stars from which she had been taught her constellations as a little child, and which she had pointed out to Veisiliel in turn.  Somehow it was comforting that these same stars shown on her here in a camp of sleeping Orcs, so far from her old life.

These stars…

They are the stars that have shown on Elves for thousands of years, since the first wakenings by Cuiviénen.  They were appointed by the Starkindler herself, sown in the heavens before the First Age of the world.  They have shown in good times and in evil, and on darker things than this, yet they shine undimmed.  Day will bring harsh voices and the cruel laughter of Orcs; night will bring its attending torment but it will also bring the stars…

Are stars enough?

The question rose unbidden, indefatigable, and she pondered it in her heart.  The answers she arrived at were not comforting.  Now the stars were beautiful, but she foresaw nights when that beauty would be hollow, when the solace that they offered would seem trifling and cheap.  They spoke to her of peace and a serenity that could bear all things, but she foresaw an hour in which that serenity was transmuted to purest indifference.  The stars shed their light on good and evil alike; they sailed above all shadow forever, untouched and unspoilt.  They were not troubled by the sorrows of Elves or Men.  They knew nothing of pain.  What did stars care, any more than stone?

Yet will I look on them, thought Eleluleniel.  They are distant but they are fair.  Now I look on them and they ease my heart, and there will be nights like that as well.  It is little enough that I should look at them. 

It is little enough that, for those times when they suffice, I have the stars.

Chapter Text

It was past noon, and a warm sun was shining through the window.  The Elf child looked out on the garden behind her house and the wobbly image of the woods: green and glimmer-lit through the uneven glass, as if they were underwater.  She did not press her nose to the window but breathed against it so that her breath left a silvery vapor.  Drawing back, she watched it slowly disappear.

"I hate this house," she said flatly, her words falling on empty air.

It was not the first time she had said it.  She had said it that morning to her sister at breakfast but Nevvy had only raised an eyebrow at her over the porridge.

'Veisiliel, you do not hate our house.  You do not hate anything.  You are not old enough.'

Veisiliel disagreed.  Maybe she wasn't old enough to know as much as Nevhithien or their parents.  But she was certainly old enough to know how she felt.

Shuffling back on her knees, she stood up from the windowseat and picked up the lid, looking in as if she might see something different.  But no, it was always the same.  Folded blankets and a smell of dead flowers.  Closing it again, she drifted in the direction of her father's study.

The barest touch of her hand caused the door to swing open silently.  She stepped inside, her eyes turning at once to the dark secretary that dominated the room.  The chair that stood before it was pushed back but there was no one in it.  Books and ledgers lined the upper shelves, and a neat sheaf of papers was stacked near the edge of the little sliding tabletop, almost as they had been on that day weeks before, when she had crept into the study to add to her letter.  Now when she went to the secretary she ran her finger over the dark varnished wood and the tip of it came away gray with dust.  Her father was not in his study so much now when he was home.  He would take what he needed from it and go lock himself up with her mother, where the two of them would speak in quiet, careful voices.

"He does not love you anymore, poor thing," said Veisiliel aloud, patting the wooden secretary.  "If he did love you he would write on you and keep you clean.  Now look at you.  All dirty.”  She wiped at the front of it with her sleeve, and then she pulled the skirts of her dress around herself and stepped into the corner between the secretary and the wall.  Carefully she scooted back, crouching down in the little crevice.

Veisiliel still woke up in this place from time to time, opening her eyes in her father's study uncertain of how she had gotten there.  Nevvy had asked before why she did it, but she did not know herself.  It did not make her feel better, or safer.  Indeed, often the closeness of the space frightened her, as did the darkness of the outer room, encouraging all manner of imaginings.  Sometimes she would think she heard something from the foyer beyond her father's study: a creaking sound, like a window being opened or a shifting floorboard.  Then she would think of Leni come back, standing in the outer room, and she would want to stand up and call out to her sister.  But other times, it wasn't Leni…and then the terror in her would grow and climb, a vicious nailed hand clawing its way up her arm until she nearly shrieked.

Now, though, there was nothing.  The stillness was absolute, and it was lonelier and sadder than anything in the whole world.  Almost, then, Veisiliel wanted the clawed hand.  Even fear was better company than this silence.  Closing her eyes, the Elf child leaned sidelong against the secretary, rubbing her cheek disconsolately against the smooth wood.

-.-.-.-

"Ah!”  Nevhithien cried out as the needle slipped.  She put her finger in her mouth.

"Did you get any on the material?" asked Thalawen without looking up.  She was sitting in the tall-backed chair that stood beside her bed while Nevhithien sat upon the bed itself.  The injured Elf woman had the strength now to sit upright for several hours in this way, and so she spent each afternoon, mending and embroidering, giving Nevhithien instructions and reminders about everything from organizing the larder to when she should bring down the winter clothes for airing, and all the other household concerns that would soon pass into her care.

"That is the first thing you ask?" grumbled Nevhithien around her finger.  "Not whether it hurt?"

Thalawen's mouth quirked a little over the garment she was stitching.  "Really, daughter.  I gathered that much from the noise you made."

The maiden sighed gustily as she rubbed spittle into the stain.  "I shall never be able to do this, Mother.  My hand is made for the pen, not the needle.  My fingers feel like sausages when they hold it, and about as useful."

"Yet master them you must, fingers and needle, if you are to manage when I am gone.”  She lifted her head, gazing at Nevhithien with an expression of fond resignation.  "It is not as I might wish, but it is better than it could be.  At least you shall not be weaving.  Only hold out till autumn and you will be able to barter with Mendes.  Her cloth is always of fine quality, and she loves our elderberries for her cordials."

"Very good!  If I can only keep the foolish shrubs alive till then, I promise you that is what I will do…" It was at this moment that Nevhithien's thread tugged free of her needle altogether.  She stopped what she was doing, silently counting to ten before putting the ragged end of the thread in her mouth.

I am not made for this, she thought, sucking irritably.  I can sit long hours over a book or a ledger, but I cannot do anything practical.  Cleaning, sewing… I am better at gardening than either Mother or I put on, but I still stepped on our best bean plant yesterday, and now here I am: gouging holes in myself, and I cannot keep a simple needle threaded!  Clumsy, foolish Nevhithien…

"Those Yrch took the wrong sister," she muttered under her breath as she jabbed at the needle's eye.

Silence.  Feeling a chill creep over her, she looked up to see her mother's face gone still and pale, eyes fixed upon her.  "I did not mean to say that," she whispered.

"Yet it passed your lips so easily," Thalawen murmured, gazing at her.  "Do you often think such thoughts, Nevhithien?"

"I…I have thought it before.”  Hurriedly, trying to explain herself: "It is only that Leni was so much better at these household tasks.  I do not have the inclination or the ability…"

"Does the memory lie on you so lightly, that you forget the maidens slain on the road to Rivendell?  I promise you, their mothers do not forget them.  Do you think that I have forgotten the sight of you pinned beneath your own poor beast while that evil creature toyed with you?  Only be glad they did not take you, Nevhithien.  They would have ravaged you, riven the soul from your body and driven it in torment to Mandos.  It is only Eleluleniel's tender years that spared her that… I pray, at least, they spared her that…"

She had bent her head over her work again, but her hands were trembling and Nevhithien, appalled, saw how the garment jerked in her lap.  Dropping her own mending, Nevhithien reached out and caught her mother's hands.  "I am sorry," she said, gripping them, searching desperately for the words that would assuage her.  "It is so easy for me to speak foolishness.  I open my mouth and say the words but I cannot call them back again.  Please forgive me, Mother."

Thalawen breathed in deeply, clasping Nevhithien's hands in turn.  She did not say anything but she squeezed them tightly.  "I am sorry as well," she said finally.  "I too speak more than I might wish.”  Her voice was weary.  She straightened her shoulders, tugging her hands away gently, but Nevhithien saw the glister in her mother's eyes that she had learned to recognize as pain.

Her mother had not fully recovered from her injury of weeks before and there were yet bindings on her body, admonitions from the healer not to exert herself.  It hurt Nevhithien to see her in pain, though she realized that in some measure it comforted her as well, for that meant her mother remained incapable of travel.  The knowledge shamed her.  "Do you—do you need to rest?" she asked, thinking to get up if the answer was yes.

Thalawen shook her head.  "No.  It is better when my hands have something to do, and I am able to think more clearly as well."

"That is what Leni used to say.”  Nevhithien kept her tone light, but she watched her mother carefully as she spoke.  "That is what I meant before, you see.  I am not loath to work, but far more do I prefer my studies.  There is more satisfaction for me in a book than in embroidery or weeding.  But Leni, she enjoyed being productive, as do you.  Her mind was fashioned after yours, while mine—"

"You are like your father."

"Mm."

Thalawen smiled ruefully.  "My mother—your grandmother—she used to say that I took after my father.  'Children take after their parents,' she said, 'and you are your father's daughter.' But I did not like it when she said that.  I thought, 'But I am yours as well, and more than that.  I am my own self!'  I found it difficult when I was young, to know that I could never be wholly my own person.  That I would always be someone's daughter or sister, and later wife and mother.  I wondered if I would ever find that pocket of myself that was my self, and mine alone."

"And did you find it?" asked Nevhithien, curious.  Her mother did not often speak this way.

"To be honest, I think I am still looking," said Thalawen.  "I suppose it is just as well I have not found it yet.  Life is long already without knowing such a thing too soon.  We are not like the short-lived Dwarves or shorter-lived Men.  We have time to discover these things about ourselves."

"Perhaps you will learn it in Aman," Nevhithien said, trying to sound neutral.

But Thalawen's face clouded over, and she shook her head.  "Not for long and long."

For a while then the pair of them worked in silence.  At first Nevhithien tried to focus only on her father's shirt and the long rip at the shoulder.  She wondered how he had come by that tear and thought of him riding through the close boughs of unkindly trees, or pushing through wild and thorny thickets.

Then her thoughts wandered closer to home.  She thought instead of their tame little garden and of the exchange that she had had there with her little sister the day before.  Spring was giving way to summer now, and the sun had lain warm and heavy on their shoulders as they knelt by the radish bed.  Nevhithien had stopped her weeding for a moment, wiping her brow with the back of one arm, when Veisiliel spoke up suddenly:

'Nevvy?  Do you still believe that Leni is alive?'

'Of course I do, dear heart.  And Father believes as well, remember?'

'But Mama does not.  That is why she is going away.  How can she believe one thing when Papa believes another?'

Nevhithien, feeling awkward, tried to explain: their parents were different people and people do not always agree.  Even parents may sometimes believe differently from one another… But Veisiliel had only shaken her head, and kept on shaking it, stabbing at the earth with her trowel.  Disagreements about food she could understand, or a favorite song or color, but a missing sister was something very different.  'They cannot both be right,' she insisted.  'And that means that one of them is wrong…'

"What are you thinking of, daughter?"

Nevhithien felt a little embarrassed, like a child caught in mischief, but she took a breath and answered honestly.  "I was thinking of you and Father," she said.  "I was thinking of how you can both believe so differently from one another, and make such different choices.”  She told her mother of Veisiliel's questions the day before and how it had been so hard to know what to say in response.  Thalawen listened without a word, no sign of judgment on her face, as Nevhithien finished: "She was right, of course, and knew it, and she would have an answer, no matter how I tried to evade her."

"And what did you tell her, in the end?"

"I said…that I did not know how it was possible to believe so differently.  I said that, regardless of who is right and who is wrong, you are both acting out of the same love.  It was the best answer I could give her, and the only one I knew to be truthful."

Thalawen looked thoughtful.  "It is a good answer, and a wise one.  It comforts me to know I leave my littlest in your hands.  Long have I watched you with Eleluleniel and now with Veisiliel.  I know you are not always confident, but you have always been gentle.  Now I see you are learning tenderness.”  Nevhithien squirmed, embarrassed by this close appraisal, but her mother went on: "And now I will ask a question that, perhaps, you will not wish to answer, knowing that your father and I think differently as we do.  Do you believe as he does, Nevhithien?  Do you believe Eleluleniel yet lives?"

It was the first time either of her parents had asked this question of her.  Certainly her father never had.  Fírhador's faith was unshakeable and he spoke always as if the world shared his knowledge, even when it clearly did not.  While Thalawen did not speak overmuch of her missing daughter, and when she did there was grief in her voice.

We have used Leni's name more in this hour than in a week of days, thought Nevhithien as she searched for the words to answer her mother's question.  "Believe what he believes, I think I can say.  As he believes, I am less certain.  The quality of my belief is not unmeasured, and I cannot help questioning myself.  Perhaps, I think, perhaps I believe only because I wish to believe.  Perhaps I believe because it is easier that way.  It is easier to think she is alive, to hold out that hope.  It is harder to think the other way.  I am not sure that, if I believed her dead, I would be strong enough to bear it."

"There are darker fates," said Thalawen grimly, "but it is not for comfort that I think her dead."

"Why do you, then?" asked Nevhithien.  "Father does not question himself, and you do not question yourself either.  At least, you never seem to.  Are you truly undivided in your mind, Mother?  Do you never have doubts, as I do?  Never ask yourself whether she might live?"

Thalawen shook her head.  "No," she said, looking at Nevhithien.  "And I will tell you a thing I have not told your father.  But you must remember, first, the War, and the dark days before it, when you were younger than Eleluleniel, and our folk murmured of a coming Doom.  Many then spoke of journeying to the Havens, and there making the passage West.  Your father's mother made that journey, as did my own father and mother, and greatly I desired that we go with them.  I did not wish to be sundered from my kin, or for my children not to know their own grandparents.  More, I had a foreboding that we would not meet with kindly usage in the Age to come, whoever the victors might be.  Yet it was your father's desire that we remain to see what should happen; for himself, also, that he should lend his might in the cause against Mordor, and for his children, that they should have the years to make their own decisions. 

“Only our two eldest were yet of an age to make that choice.  Alageth chose to remain.  But Haenes…

“Fírhador did not press her to change her decision or ask explanation beyond what she gave.  'I feel compelled to make the journey,' she said, and that was enough.  After all, she was ever the quiet one, keeping her own counsel.  Our wise child, first in years: our beautiful grave sibyl.  'It comforts me,' I told her privately, 'that you should sail with your grandparents, and be some company for them in the far lands of the West.'

"'But it is not for them I go,' said Haenes, and told me what I tell you now.  Of the War with the Dark Lord and its destined reckoning she would not speak, for that was hidden from her.  'But my heart misgives me for our little family,' she told me, 'and I fear what yet will come to pass.  Father will not come, I know this well.  His heart is fixed on staying, and if I tell him now he will only blame himself later.  But you, Mother, you will listen to me.  If I had words of advice I would give them to you, but all I can say is, Watch over my sisters!  When I sleep a voice comes sighing in my dreams, and without change it utters the same refrain.  I do not know when the hour will be, only that it shall come indeed:

"'One will go untimely to the Undying Lands, and pain and sorrow will be her companions.

"'The walls of Alqualondë are as real to me as the walls of my childhood home, for I have seen them nightly in my dreams.  Long have I desired Valinor, Mother, and known my own path leads there, but I go also to wait for this lost one, this one come untimely, to receive her when she arrives.  How she will depart these lands I do not know, but that she will come at last is certain.  Her hurt will be great, as will her sadness, and she will need to be comforted—'"

Thalawen had drawn now to a close, her voice trembling a little as she finished.  "She was speaking of Leni?" whispered Nevhithien.  "Haenes…she knew?  She knew what was going to happen?"

"In some small part, that is all I can imagine: the partial, clouded knowing of a seer, that one would go untimely… Now do you see why I must leave, Nevhithien?  Eleluleniel, she is far away, and she is suffering.  It may be she has been released into Haenes' charge, but it may be that she lingers still in the Halls of Mandos.  Surely no evil of her own doing binds her there, my precious child, my innocent!  But I fear the evil of the Orcs and how they may have maimed her.  It is said that pain and grief can hold the houseless spirit thrall, though blameless it depart Middle-earth.  If she died in great terror and torment then she may yet be in the Halls, and I cannot bear to think of her so, alone and frightened without her mother.  Or if she has been released, I would not see Haenes left to comfort her little sister by herself.

"Now I bide with you and give you all the guidance that I can, for I do not desire to abandon you and Veisiliel.  Nor yet do I want to leave my husband thinking that I blame him, when we are all victims of the same ill fortune, and when I was the one entrusted with warding our children.  But my heart is not here on this side of the sea, Nevhithien.  It is in Aman seeking lost Eleluleniel, and it will seek and grieve forever until she is found."

-.-.-.-

Nevhithien pulled the door closed quietly behind her, then leaned back heavily against the frame.  Her thoughts were disjointed and scattered in the aftermath of all her mother had said.  Almost Nevhithien resented her mother for these confidences, for passing on her innermost anxieties and fears.

But who else does she have to confide in?  Father will not listen to what she says, not really.  He will stand by her and nod, perhaps, but then he will only debate with her.  He will not lend any credence to what she says.  It is not what he wants to hear.

It is not what I wanted to hear either.

For a moment she tried to reconcile the two images of Leni now at odds in her mind: the gentle, playful sister of her own memory and the frightened, tortured ghost-child that her mother envisioned.  But she could not do it.

I cannot think of Leni that way.  My mind, it is not strong enough.  And yet, just because I do not want to think a thing, that may not make it any less true.

She laughed then: quiet, bitter laughter.  It seemed she did not have much of an imagination after all.

It was mid-afternoon.  Thalawen had retired early and now Nevhithien was at loose ends.  She wandered through the house, calling for Veisiliel and wondering where her little sister had hidden herself.  Not finding her immediately, she was just beginning to grow anxious when she heard a response to her call.

"I am here," the voice came muffled from their father's study, and indeed, the door stood partially ajar.

Why am I not surprised, thought Nevhithien, stepping inside to find her sister in the usual corner between secretary and wall.  Less usual was the piece of paper Veisiliel studied, her brow furrowed with great concentration.  "Hullo, little sister.  Is that something of Father's?  He would not be pleased to see you rifling through his documents."

Veisiliel only shook her head.  "It is not Papa's," she said simply, and turned the paper so that Nevhithien could see it.

Nevhithien looked and felt an eerie prickle at the back of her neck at the sight of the familiar script.  "Where did you find this?" she asked, kneeling down slowly.

"It was under Papa's secretary," said Veisiliel.  "I put my hand down, and I felt the corner of it under my finger.”  She held it out to Nevhithien, who took it and scanned it with astonished eyes.  "I said I wanted to write a letter to you," said Veisiliel.  "That day when it happened, after you and Mama and Papa had gone.  I said that I wanted to write to you and Mama, so we both wrote letters, and then we went out to the garden.  But I wanted to add to my letter, so I crept into Papa's study.  The papers fell and I did not want Papa to be cross with me.  I was trying to gather them up, and then I heard a noise—" She drew a shuddering breath, remembering.  "I did not mean to make a mess…"

"Oh Veisiliel.”  Nevhithien leaned forward impulsively, hugging her little sister.  "You saw how our house looked that day.  I promise you, the mess those awful Orcs made was far worse than anything you might have done!”  She felt the little body relax within her arms and gave a parting squeeze before she drew back, smiling at Veisiliel.  "But you see what happened, do you not?  Her letter slid under the secretary, and it has been there all this time!  Did you read it?"

"Some of it," said Veisiliel.  "But it is hard.  Her Tengwar is different from what you have been teaching me.”  She looked at Nevhithien with faint accusation, as if she thought her older sister was shortchanging her.

"It is more ornate," said Nevhithien.  "I taught Eleluleniel as I am teaching you now, but she preferred the script she saw in books and taught herself to write that way as well.  But see?  Beneath all the flourishes and embellishment, they are still the same characters.  Now come, sit here beside me and we will both read it together…"

-.-.-.-

To my dear Mother,

You are not an hour gone as I write this and Veisiliel has insisted that we pen letters to you.  She is sitting across from me, hunched and intent, her shoulders taut and bunched like a little cat.  She will miss you and Nevhithien these long months that you are gone, and I will miss you both as well.  Still, I know that you will be happy in Rivendell, thought I suppose that is not enough to describe Nevhithien, who is doubtless in transports of rapture.  I will ask you to stop reading here and pass this note to her...

Nevhithien, write me of the environs of the Last Homely House.  Do not leave out a thing!  (I am sure you will not.) Tell me of the Library and its weighty tomes, but I hope you also have eyes for the rest of Rivendell.  I am sure you have made many interesting observations of the folk who live there, their habits and their fashions.  Tell me of Alageth, glittering in their midst.  Is she well, and her husband? 

I pray you give our brother a kiss from me, and all of my love.  I always wanted a brother, and it was too bad of Alageth to finally bring one into our family, only for the two of them to leave our little wood forever.  But maybe you and Mother can persuade them both to visit us at last.  I should like that, I think, when you return, to see our Alageth and Belmílon in tow.  Now, give me back to Mother...

There.  It is an hour now since you have left and soon, I know, Father will return without you.  Then we will be lonely indeed, but all shall be well.  I will do my best in your absence to keep our home as clean and orderly as you do, and take care of Veisiliel and Father also.  I know that I cannot hope to do so well as you, Mother, but I will try.

Now Veisiliel is shifting in her chair - I have promised her we shall go out to the garden after we have finished our letters.  Please forgive my brevity!  It is cruel to keep her sitting long, and there will be more letters.

All of my heart,
Eleluleniel

Fírhador read the letter through a second time.  He swallowed hard and lowered it carefully so as to keep from reading it a third.  Thalawen was watching, and he tried to smile at her.  "It is strange to read this letter," he said.  "Almost as if I hear her saying the words aloud."

"I had a similar feeling when I read it," said Thalawen.  Fírhador began to hand it back to her, but she pushed it toward him gently.  "No, keep it, my love.  It was written to Nevhithien as well, and my heart foretells me it will be of comfort to you."

Gently his fingers brushed the simple rose that bloomed in the margin of the letter.  "Thank you for this," he whispered.

She reached forward and cupped the side of his face.  "You have been gone many days, husband.  If it agrees with you, and you do not immediately wish to change your clothing, perhaps we might go into the garden.  This room grows small around me, and I would ask how you and Culas fared during your travels."

They walked together around the garden, and Fírhador was careful to restrain his steps, trying not to exceed her pace.  The healer had advised his wife to make these gentle circumnavigations of garden and house, saying that the air and exercise would do her good and help her to mend faster.  Fírhador put what that meant out of his mind, focusing instead on the questions Thalawen asked him: the distances that he and Culas rode each day, the weather and terrain.  No Orc spoor had they found of late, though reports of Orkish mischief were plenty when they visited the living places of Men and their families.

"The problem is that, five and six days out, it is not easy to tell the deeds of Orcs apart from those of wicked Men.  When a wagon is found ransacked and its driver dead beside the road, is that the work of Orcs or bandits?  The bones of a house stand blackened and consumed, but who can say what wielded the burning brand?  There is much evil in the world, and the tongues of Men are quick to name it ‘Orc.’  It makes our task much harder," said Fírhador grimly.

"And still you ride?" asked Thalawen.

He shrugged, a wry twist at the corner of his mouth.  "And still I ride.  Till my thighs are chafed and blistered as those of a callow youth, and my legs are bowed as a horse's shoe.  Till my reputation is gone entirely and I have canvassed all of this Middle-earth on my fool's quest, still will I ride, and I will not rest till hope is cold within me.  Till hope is cold, or I have found her."

Thalawen shook her head.  "Obstinate son of Fimornon!  But I love you for your hope, and I would not part from you in bitterness.  We both seek our daughter, though we seek her in different lands.  If the roads we choose are different, nonetheless, I suppose we are on the same quest."

He looked at her, bemused.  "You speak otherwise than you have before," he said carefully.

"My thoughts on the matter have not changed, but perhaps my understanding has grown.  It may be I have taken a lesson from our Nevhithien, who spoke to her little sister of choices made in love.  All the wisdom of the world is foolishness if it does not spring from that."

"Ahhh… Well.  If Nevhithien says it you should listen to her.  She takes after me, of course, and you know—"

Thalawen heaved a sigh.  "I know, dear husband, I hear it often enough.  You are always right."

"I am always right," he repeated.  In a strange voice: "And yet still you would leave me.”  She was silent, and Fírhador himself said nothing as for several minutes they walked in silence.  Then: "It will be difficult for you, carrying all of those letters.”  The comment was out of place with what had gone before, and she looked at him in confusion.  "Well!” said Fírhador with a snort, "you cannot think that I would let you go without letters for my parents, do you?  Or without regards tendered to your own mother and father?  And Haenes, who I have not seen for so long… I wonder how the land of the Rodyn agrees with our oldest daughter."

"Veisiliel will relish an opportunity to show off her new Tengwar," said Thalawen slowly.  "She could not even pen Cirth when her grandparents left.  And Nevhithien… Oh.  Oh dear…"

"See, you have arrived at my very thought," said Fírhador slyly.  "She will write reams, if I know my middle-born.  All this effort to heal your poor ribs, only to see you break your back toting all the mail of Middle-earth…"

"Wretch!” she exclaimed, cuffing him.  "You need not grin when you say it."

Fírhador rubbed his arm.  "I will have my revenge for that.  I think I will spend tonight counting those of our friends who have sailed from Mithlond since the Ring War.  Already I can think of at least seven.  It would be rude of me not to send letters for each of them as well."

She looked at him, the smile fading on her face.  Haltingly, as though it pained her to speak, she said, "Fírhador…if you are earnest in this matter of letter-writing, and not wholly in jest, then I ask you…will you also write a letter for Eleluleniel?  I know you do not think that I will find her, but I…I would not go to her empty-handed."

They paused on the faint path that their feet had trodden into the grass and he turned toward her, his face briefly vulnerable and naked.  Taking her hands, he held them gently in his own.  "I will write two letters and place them in an envelope together.  One will be for her if you should find her.  The other is for you, if you do not."

She let out her breath.  "Some elaborate I-told-you-so, I suppose," she said, but he shook his head, holding her with his eyes.

"No, beloved.  You will be far away, and in pain, and you will have need of comfort.  I will not be with you, but that letter must do in my stead till finally I come to you in Aman.  And…keep the letter for Eleluleniel.  In truth I do not think that you will find her there, but she may yet come in time.  I would have her know her father loves her."

Touched, Thalawen brought his hands to her lips and kissed them tenderly.  "You need not fear, dear husband.  Eleluleniel knows that well, wherever she is.”  And they stood like that for some time in the gathering shadows of the garden.