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Chapter Text

The screams of the slaughtered shredded his ears as he hewed the throng before him. He knew not which way he was fighting, only that advance seemed to be where the orcs came thickest, and retreat was under his heels, across a road paved with the dead and dying. All he could see was the swing of his war-axe, founts of black blood from orc bodies, and the spasms of his fellow soldiers on the edge of his vision. His father’s banners had fallen. His father King Oropher had fallen. King Amdír of Lórien had fallen. Hours ago, maybe a day. Or two. His father’s pale face with a flag of blood unfurling from the mouth. Archers with their fingers severed. Soldiers with riven helmets. He no longer knew how long the battle raged, and it seemed that all his life had been spent in war. His throat cracked with the dry air. He smelled blood and iron, gut-stink and sweat. He was going to die.

“Retreat!” Thranduil shouted, knowing it hopeless. But in the instant of his father’s death he had become King.

If he had been king before this useless charge, his people never would have come to this end.

“Retreat!” He shouted again, dimly aware of Elves assembling out of the mire, peeling out of writhing grey masses that were Sauron’s orcs. Shining armor and mail, a flash of sword or axe, a snow of fletching. “Fall back! To the Banners!”

He did not need to name what banners. There were only two kinds under which to assemble. Men, Elves. Elendil or Gil-galad. He did not care which, only that his people were under them to regroup. He could collect who remained later.

If any of them remained later.

“My! Lord!” the broken cry of a fair voice called to his left. He knew not the fellow’s name, but he and others began to fall in, retreating over the soft bodies of their own dead under heel. A few soft moans came from the ground as they backed out of the fray, and whenever he heard one, Thranduil swung his axe toward the chest or neck of the Elf underfoot. Better to die in an instant than to be left to be raped or burned alive or stripped of flesh while living. There was no recourse for dragging the wounded out of harm’s way. Only those who could walk would be leaving.

He could not stop to think. If he did, he would be unmade, and the Sylvan, Sindar, Laiquendi, Avari, and Nandor under his command would all perish. There was no alternative. So he became simply the swing of his axe, the plunge of his dagger at a head, neck, chest, belly, leg, arm. Murder for orc, mercy for Elf. Black and red blood. Walking backward over the dead and dying. He could not register which; he could not dwell on it.

But they would come back in his dreams. Always.

For make it to the banners they did, panting, wild- or blank-eyed, and he trod up a hill of cinders, his face streaked with ash and sweat. Mask of blackened skin with streaks of white, for he was pale and stricken by the time he stood under the blue and silver banners of Gil-galad. At some point, when they had retreated enough to carry the fallen, he had stooped and dragged a soldier up by their waist. The body in his arms was light and slender. He peered at the face on the other side of the nickel helm and saw an Avarin woman with blue-grey eyes, her chapped lips flecked with fresh blood. An orc arrow protruded from under her arm, between divide of pauldron and rerebrace. The deep green of her tunic turned a muddied black with the flow of her bleeding. She breathed heavily, eyes unfocused, before lifting her head. Smiled, every tooth rimmed with blood. Her feral eyes seemed ready for revenge.

Thranduil nodded in silent promise, felt that in her murderous fury the woman would have enough strength to live.

A small phalanx of Elves and noble Men had come forward to encircle his retreating people, the soldiers of Eryn Galen. He was aware that it was not Gil-galad or Elendil up on the horses but thirds-in-command, Glorfindel of Imladris and Nordhred of Gondor. They divided and formed a protective wall around the retreating Sylvan army, open in the middle as a gate for the able-bodied, carrying the wounded.

“Lord?” Another voice came from behind him. A field doctor of the Men stood behind him, with a canvas stretcher being unwound from lodgepole handles.“Lord, please let us take him.”

“Her,” the Avarin woman in his arms growled, but allowed the man and his medic to take her, lay her down on the stretcher. They said nothing about her gender but made for the way uphill, to the ridge of red-black gabbro where the majority of the Alliance host waited.

Thranduil replaced his war-axe in the leather sheaf at his back and turned to reform the line of his people. Few. So few. Only about a third of those who had advanced down the mountainside into the marshy fields of Dagorlad. His father, King Oropher, he knew had fallen, but he saw not Beltir nor Farin nor Clarelneth, the generals of his father’s ranks. By glance and rough estimate, three out of ten had survived; he had enough for a few battalions, not even enough for a brigade.

Stunned, he kept staring at the retreating throng of orcs and trolls, willing more of his people to emerge, but none did. All that were left were those forming lopsided formations on the slope below him. The companies of Gil-galad and Elendil wheeled, formed a half-moon of soldiers around his people to return them home.

“No,” Thranduil said, his eyes staring into the hot, overcast world before him until they burned. “No, this cannot be all.”

He turned to watch the medics and field hands carry away the wounded, noticed a longspear on the sparse grass below his boot. The Avarin woman’s weapon. She would miss it. He bent and picked it up off of the rocky ground, sinter from dried hot springs crackling under his feet. Stood for a moment with the spear as a staff as all the desperate eyes of his people looked up at him. Wordless, he used the spear to point up the slope to the line of horsemen, Gil-galad, Elrond, Elendil, and Isildur among them. He did not need words.

Slowly, his people reformed the line and straightened formations into two neat columns. Some limped, some remained grimly silent, a few wept openly but retained in their position. All were spattered with blood, streaked with mud , slick with sweat. They marched in silent grief to join the ranks of Elves before them. They held not apart from the Noldor and Sindar as Oropher had commanded but fell in line under the banner of the High King.

Thranduil brought up the rear, limping, knowing that his grey mare was dead but not knowing how; Laelind had wheeled and ran when confronted by a mountain troll on the plain.

She had been a grassland horse, accustomed to rolling prairie that waved between Eryn Galen forest and the Hithaeglir range. She had survived skirmish and ambush. However, out here on the ruin of Dagorlad, with the sulphur fumes seeping out from Mordor and the endless army of orcs shrieking, she had become overwhelmed. Bolted. The mountain troll had been out of its element as well; he knew these hulking, brutish creatures, deadly and territorial but just as soon left alone. Likely forced to fight in this army of fell creatures, just as he had forced his mare into war.

The last he saw of Laelind were bunched haunches, her black hooves pawing against a sky lidded with storm clouds. Screaming into the arid wind. Gone, now. Likely mauled or pierced, in a thrash on the stones, or drowned in the mire of marsh.

Closed his eyes. Images unbidden: a Sylvan archer, arrow-fingers cut off, stripped of his helm and gasping as two great orcs held his head down in brackish water. The man’s ruined hands clawed at the thick wrists of his captors, while his booted feet slipped without purchase in mud. Rivulets of silty water rolled down his cheekbones as they cruelly lifted him to gasp a last breath, the lashes laying in dark crescents on his grey cheeks, lips livid with lack of air. The orcs cursed him, drove him back under. Thranduil had fought toward the archer but arrived too late; he had gone still, still, so still, and the orcs then turned on him.

The bass thump of hoofbeats reverberated over the sinter. “My Lord—King?”

Thrandruil opened his eyes, looked up at the face of Thôlred, his father’s herald. His herald, now.

The Laiquendi man dismounted from the blood bay gelding he rode, took off the Noldorin helmet that he had acquired during centuries of riding between Eryn Galen and Lindon.

“Sire,” he said, voice quavering in raw grief at the slaughter of his people. He removed his helmet and bowed, his dun blond braids gone sweat-dark about the head. Proffered the reins of his horse to Thranduil.

For a moment, Thranduil wanted to demur; he had not fought hard enough against Oropher’s hubris, nor his refusal to fall under the flags of Gil-galad, simply because they were Calaquendi—Noldor, his father had spat, a grudge held for millennia. As if the long-lost realm of Doriath meant anything. Every one of the Noldor who had laid her in ruins had also died long ago.

Thranduil hadn’t been born there but in the diaspora of Sindar scattered after Thingol’s fall.

Gil-galad and Elrond were innocents in their kindred’s killings. Galadriel had her own sins but even now allied with them against the Dark Lord.

And yet Thranduil had not stopped his father and King from the foolish rush alone against the forces of Mordor. Not in the tents before the ill-advised sortie, when Gil-Galad and Oropher had shouted inches from each other’s faces, not in the suicide rush out onto the battle plain.

And now his herald’s entire family was likely now lost in the marshes behind them.

“Sire, our people need to see you on your horse,” Thôlred murmured. “They need to see you on high, not trailing after them. Please, Thranduin. Take him. His name is Rhom.”

Thranduil’s skin prickled at the use of the nickname that Thôlred had used since they were young; they were of a similar age, and had met in the great migration out of Beleriand. The name of the river Anduin, swirled with the language of Doriathrin, made an affectionate pun of his name. To use it now was a breach of protocol between a King and his herald, but here, with only sour air and spilled blood between them, it was their only link to a ravaged past.

“Anything I should know about Rhom?” Thranduil asked softly, taking the reins of the shining bridle.

“His left flank is a light touch, but he is stalwart and accustomed to the road and varying surfaces. He is shod a fortnight past. Imladrim farriers. Not battle-shy.” Thôlred walked at pace beside his king. Replaced the helm and stepped away to better flank the mount in a way that gave Thranduil all of the authority.

“All my gratitude,” Thranduil said, raising his head and straightening his spine, not in pride, but as if to pull the shredded vestiges of the kingship up over his shoulders.

Three riders approached as they drew near the united front of Elves and Men. By the livery, Thranduil knew this to be Elrond himself, flanked by Glorfindel and a mournful-eyed Teler woman, Olawen. Buffeted, bruised, bleeding from cheek or knuckle. All bore traces of the battle that they had endured to extract Thranduil and his people.

Instead of condemnation, Elrond met Thranduil’s eyes with cautious grief, as if ascertaining Thranduil’s well-being in this moment of boundless loss. His grey eyes searched and his dark hair rippled in the wind from beneath his shining gold helm. Wordness, he bowed in greeting and circled his black stallion to flank Thranduil on the right.

Glorfindel rode his grey mare to the left with a nod of acknowledgement. His beautiful face likewise had dimmed with grief.

Olawen rode her palomino out at a wider range, escorting only, just as Thôlred walked outside of Elrond’s path. Symbolic, bringing the King of Eryn Galen under wing, under the leadership of Gil-galad, the High King of the Noldor.

Though he had advised his father to ride under Gil-galad’s banners in the first place, Thranduil felt a sting of broken pride, a burn of error. All his flaws were now laid bare. He should have resisted Oropher, should have withdrawn his own battalion; Oropher would not have advanced if he had.

Perhaps.

Perhaps Oropher would have gone anyway, minus a thousand or so men.

Gil-galad, soot-stained himself from the battle-front, raised his hand in hail as Thranduil drew near. The High King’s gaze was inscrutable, and next to him Elendil likewise remained impassive under his wingèd helm. Isildur gave him a brief nod, a condemnatory curl to his lip. A few dark chuckles and muttered whispers of “that blond fool” came from the captains of Men behind them; they likely didn’t know that all of the Elves heard it well. Thranduil took it as a burden which he should rightfully bear and took his place at the end of the row of Elvish leaders, the last and least, even outside that of Olawen of Lindon, who had spent most of her girlhood at sea.

“I am with you, my Lord—King,” Thôlred said, his voice low enough in the way of Elves that only Thranduil could hear. Andol, one of the archery lieutenants of his father’s army, stepped forward, and Iverin, one of the sergeants among the swordsmen.

At least he was not wholly alone, there on the igneous hills of Emyn Muil.

The assembled gazed out over the plain of Dagorlad, watching the orcs revel leagues distant, likely doing unspeakable things to the dead of Eryn Galen. Beyond that the vicious, high mountains surrounding Udûn, the cursed valley before the entrance to Mordor.

Thranduil let it wash over him all, the distant din, the whispers of Men, the silence of Elves, the smell of blood, dust, and ash.

His eyes were too dry in the arid air to weep.

Chapter Text

Some advances of the Alliance, most small and at the perimeter. They fenced the armies of Mordor in on one side, allowing some to peel off and be slain elsewhere, like steam pressure from the side of a boiling kettle. Ash from the ruined gardens of the Entwives had blown hither and yon, sometimes into the camps of Elves and Men, to choke the lung and scratch the eye. Thranduil’s people had been assigned to the rear guard in all skirmishes so he could be given time to collect and assemble his forces after their slaughter.

“Bararith, second archer.”

“Rúhim, fourth lancer.”

“Alumír, first swordsman.”

The tents of Eryn Galen had been set up in the depths of the Elves’ camp, the pearl-like beauty of their canvas almost obscene amid the ruin of volcanic hills. Thranduil, his herald, and a scribe had set up in the largest, while the commanders of his army requisitioned, sorted, and arranged the rest of their people. This would double as the King’s headquarters and bedroom, counsel chamber and armory. Several long-fluted glass lanterns cast light as warm as summer against the cool night. A collapsible desk and spindle chair stood in the middle. Narrow banners of Thranduil’s house swayed to the side of each door. Sword and knife, bow and shields hung or stood propped along the tent poles in rough ceremony. Raw rock lay underfoot.

Thranduil and his herald Thólred stood yet clad in their armor as symbols of office, though the Elves that entered the tent did so in various stages of armor or dress. Both herald and king wore their hair unbound and without decoration, Laiquend dark blond and Sinda pale gold.

To the south and west lay the carcass-choked marshlands and hot springs that even now steamed the bones of their kindred. The orcs had cast the bodies of the fallen into the acidic waters, mostly Elves, but a few hundred Men who had come to their aid lay tossed beside them. There would be no recovery or covered graves. No cairns. No flowers to unfurl and soften. No lamenting to the stars.

There was no time for mourning, just as there was no time for kinging ceremonies. An irony in the long span of an Elf’s years. Thranduil exhaled sharply at that, gallows humor allowing no more than a breath for a laugh.

He stood behind the Noldorin scribe that Gil-Galad had leant to him and watched the man’s ink-tattooed fingers flick a well-quill across the page. A tunic of deep blue spanned his shoulders, which revealed he was a man of the sword as well as the pen. Line and notation, curved Tengwar covering the straight stroke of Nandorin runes. Oropher would have hated the elegant Fëanorian script, and Thranduil felt a small cinder of satisfaction burn within his belly at that.

Thólred waved another Elf indoors, for the queue spiraled in two elegant lines as they counted who remained of Eryn Galen. He watched a Nandorin man pass by, took in the half-open mouth and glazed eyes, and looked past him to meet Thranduil’s gaze.

“Ianthar.” The man said, voice hoarse. His eyes fixed on the roster of names that had been recorded months before in Eryn Galen: thousands of Oropher’s people, Elves of Middle-earth all. None of the Calaquendi, with their tall, broad bodies and shining skin. He stared at the scroll of names, lines dragged through nearly three quarters of them, indicating absence.

Indicating death. The names of the deceased had been crossed out in black ink, and now Erestor of Lindon was making three new rosters of who remained. Ink the color of forest moss, for those who yet lived: archers, lancers, swordsmen.

The Noldo scribe looked up from the desk at the slender Nandorin man, who stood swaying and draining of color. Armor hanging loose, the chestnut hair in a ragged, half-combed fall.

“Rank?” Erestor asked gently, pen poised. “Ianthar, your rank?”

“...Fifth archer.” Iantar looked from the heavily lined page to the new ones, half-filled. “My wife, Nórliel?”

Thranduil, stomach sinking, stepped forward and took the archer by the arm. Led him away. Spoke low as he could as he guided the man out of the back of the tent into starlight. “She is not here, Ianthar. We have crossed out her name. None have returned in five days.”

Rotten, all in ruin. Beside him, Ianthar nodded like a horse tossing its head. A motion only, no comprehension.

Thranduil considered listing Ianthar as a casualty; he knew the signs of an Elf fading from grief. Death was not guaranteed but likely, the longer the grief endured. He stood taller than the fragile man before him, who had begun to bow as if curling to the ground in faint.

“Ayet,” Thólred muttered a soft curse as he stepped forward from the tent. He took Ianthar’s other arm. “He’s likely not slept since before the charge, Sire. He needs to rest.”

“If he sleeps he might not rise at all,” Thranduil muttered, watching the archer’s eyes drift close, snap open. “Nevertheless, you do need sleep, Ianthar. That is a direct order.”

He had started out speaking in a king’s sonorous intonation, but as the man in his grip drooped so did his voice. He shook his head as he and his herald guided the stricken man to a physician’s tent, helped him inside, where a Nandorin healer stood up with a gasp of dismay. She dried her wet hands on the pale blue tunic-dress that she wore, which smelled of bitter herbs and coagulating powders.

“Here,” she said, voice terse as she pointed to an empty cot among several full ones. Dried blood made the shape of fingers on one side, muddy dark on smooth canvas. “Will have to give him a tincture of poppy in this state,” she said, turning to scold Thranduil. Physicians and courtly fools were the only ones with leave to speak to a king, so. “He has been awake so long that his very fatigue will begin to devour him. Keep him from sleeping. Are there any others in our ranks who appear thus?”

Thranduil glanced at his herald, who helped to lower the archer to the bed.

“Yes, Sire,” Thólred said, acknowledging the silent command. He was to take assessment of every Elf that stepped through the scribe tent’s door.

“Will not a poppy tincture do more harm than good?” Thranduil asked, resisting the urge to flinch when the healer glared up at him from beneath her crown of deep brown braids. “I fear that if he sleeps so deeply he will die.”

“He’s guaranteed to die if he doesn’t sleep,” the healer said, half hissing through her teeth. Called in the direction of the door. “Erseldë! Get the red bottle out from the tall chest.”

“Aye,” came a faint voice from beyond the tent wall.

Thranduil and Thólred stood back and exchanged places with a woman with braid-coiled hair, watched the physician and young healer bend to attend to Ianthar.

“Your service is commendable,” Thranduil said, bowing in thanks at the turned backs. “I thank you…?”

“Gilith!” The physician pointed at the door with the narrow lance of her finger. “Out, sir.”

The king and herald half fell over each other in their haste to leave, and under other circumstances this would have caused them to laugh, slap shoulders, walk off in merriment. But now, with the dying man at their heels, everything remained stark.

“Think you he will die?” Thranduil asked Thólred.

“Not without Gilith’s permission,” Thólred said, as they crossed the way back to the roster tent. “She is a good soul. She is my brother Filion’s aunt-in-law. …Was my Filion’s aunt-in-law.”

Thranduil looked to his friend, who had turned from him to stare out into the starlit labyrinth of tents, horses, and people sheltering for the night against the hillside. He did not clarify what Thranduil already knew; all four of his brothers had died out in ash-dead Dagorlad.

Inside, Thólred took up his position and scrutinized every Elf that stepped through the door as Thranduil again watched Erestor record the names. Doing their duty and throwing all their will into reorganizing their people would keep them from dying of grief.

“Gwenar, second swordsman.”

“Mirel, third lancer.”

Thranduil recognized the Avarin woman whom he had picked up on the hill above Dagorlad, when they had come out from the battle. Her right arm was yet in a sling, the orc arrow having caused some lingering damage. Pale, sharp-chinned, with great, dark eyes. She glared at the scribe before her, not in anger at him but at the circumstance, the world. She ran her good hand through her black hair, set loose in grief, and blew air out from pursed lips.

“Leastways, I would be a lancer if I had my bloody spear,” she said, and there was a small chuckle from the people waiting their turn at the door.

“We have someone you might miss,” Thranduil said, opening his palm in the direction of the far wall. Thólred, glancing behind him, drew the Avarin woman’s weapon out from where it stood propped, and she grinned as if greeting an old friend.

“Heledir!” She took the elegant pole sword, wrought with a gleaming mahogany handle, into her good hand. “We are reunited.”

“Shall I record ‘Heledir’ into the roster as well?” Erestor asked, arching an eyebrow at Mirel.

“Might as well, for all the use your lot have,” she said, pointing at the ink pen with a toss of her chin. “Does that have any reach?”

“Far greater reach than any lance, madam, even that of mighty Aeglos,” Erestor said, referencing High King Gil-Galad’s own spear. “Swords and lances may kill any great number of enemies, but a pen and ink can topple entire kingdoms.”

There should have been jest in the words, but Erestor’s smooth, husky voice held no trace of it. He met the woman’s eyes with an equally hard glance. Thranduil recognized the haughty threat couched within Erestor’s choice of words: Mirel’s sharp glaive was named Kingfisher, and here Erestor threatened the fall of kingdoms. Too close for comfort, given his own new title; Thranduil placed a hand on Erestor’s shoulder, bore his weight down with a hard clamp of thumb and fingers. He bowed to Mirel and swept his free hand toward the back door.

“Good to see you so reunited. Thank you, Lancer, and be at peace.”

Mirel returned the bow but still met his eyes, an Avar’s custom of deferring, but never submitting to the power of a King. She strode off into the night with the long lance glinting silver in the lamplight.

Erestor moved not from under Thranduil’s hand, though the muscles of his shoulders tightened and remained so even after Thranduil stepped away.

“Silev, first archer.”

Thólred had turned to watch the Avarin woman leave, gazing after her with a man’s appreciation for the swell of hips and a fine lancer’s arm. Thranduil stepped into his sightline and shook his head once. His herald turned back to the task at hand, registering the last few dozen of their people into new lists of names. From there, they could better integrate and reassign, folding Thranduil’s forces into those of Elrond’s Imladhrim and Glorfindel’s battalion of swordsmen.

Soon, task done, Erestor rose and wiped down the fine nib of his pen with a moist cloth. Capped it with unnecessary flourish. He bowed to Thranduil in silence, looking past the Greenwood King rather than at him. Thranduil ignored the silence and gave his own in return, rather than thanks or censure. He felt diminished and too much like his father, deep within, even as he chose to return slight with slight.

Thólred stepped close to him as the Noldo scribe slipped out into the night, the moonlight glimmer of his skin apparent the moment he stepped into shadow. None of the Laiquendi, Nandor, or Avari shone thus, unilluminated as they were by the Light of the Trees in long-ago Aman. Yet, none felt bereft, proud of their darkness that allowed them the greatest stealth as they flitted from shadow to shadow. There had been talk of selecting the choicest of Thranduil’s people as scouts for this very reason; they could move undetected among the mountains surrounding Mordor. Lighter and more uncanny than Men, an Avar, Sinda, or Nando would be ideal for such pursuits, while a Noldo or Vanya would shimmer like a lit beacon.

“Bit of an adelonta, isn’t he?” Thólred muttered, even as he picked up a sheet to admire Erestor’s fine handwriting. “Did you know that he is my very distant cousin-by-marriage?”

Thranduil glanced up sharply from the list of archers. “Yours?”

“Aye.” Thólred smiled, bitterly. Refined this to a Sindarin: “Yes. Though I doubt he knows that. He was married to my mother-kin. Mànliel. My mother’s cousin’s daughter. She died at the fall of Eregion these centuries past. She was one of the Thalosim who ran with the Sons of Fëanor. Under Maedhros’s very banner. You likely heard the rumors that Erestor was affiliated with the eldest of the Dispossessed?”

“I have,” Thranduil said. “Rumors of rumors, which I know you collect in your travels. Are they true? Did he march under the banner of Maedhros?”

“Aye.”

Thranduil frowned and bent back to the list. “That explains the quick turn of his temper. I’ve seen it several times, in my dealings with the Imladrim. Why did you not tell me?”

“I felt it unimportant. As I said, Erestor knows not of our kinship, if one could even call it that. His wife is dead, my mother gone, my brothers died in—”

And here Thólred clapped a hand over his mouth, bent at the waist. The green-written page trembled in his hand like a leaf about to fly from a blast of icy wind. His brows knotted and Thranduil dropped his list to the slanted desk, stepped forward to ease his friend into an embrace.

“Ay… ay, they’re all gone,” Thólred said into his shoulder, the plates of their armor grating against each other as they pressed close. His voice ground to gravel, breath hot against Thranduil’s neck. “Filion, Celethúl, Mîrred, Bregin, Oropher. How? How is this? How can pride do so much damage? That Ianthar’s wife—his wife, Thranduin! You and I are yet unwed and know not that grief, but his whole future was in her. Now, he has no future. No home hearth nor belly full with child. He looks half dead with loss. How many mothers among our people will go without their sons and daughters? How many wives lost their husbands or the other way ‘round?

“And for pride, Thranduil. Oropher and Amdír’s pride.”

“And my compliance,” Thranduil said, voice wrenched and bitter. His usual steady baritone trembled, like paper water-curled at the edges. “I resisted him, but not enough.”

“No. I was with you,” Thólred said, pulling back. Though his fair tenor voice quavered as if crying, there were no tears, only eyes red from sleepless nights and blowing ash. “I saw you trying to dissuade him from his useless charge ‘til the very end. I only rode with a last message to Gil-Galad because Oropher asked it of me. That last errand is the only reason why I stand here, rather than lie in those fetid marshes with my brothers. A last message to distract ‘that all-consuming Noldo.’”

Thranduil reached up to tug at the straps of his armor. Needing it off, needing to embrace, to sleep, to set this day aside forever. Thólred reached out to help him, speaking bitterly as he unbuckled, lifted, parted armor from leather, mail, and cloth.

“Do you know what that message said?”

Thranduil shook his head.

“It said nothing.”

Thranduil shook his head and blinked hard in disbelief. “Nothing.”

“Nothing. It was an empty missive, completely blank when Gil-Galad broke the wax. The King looked up from it, right at me, as if he were about to drive a dagger through my throat. I looked at him nigh helpless, my mouth falling open like an idiot’s. I held out my palms to show him I had no part in it. Elrond put an arm at his chest to stay him. It was at that moment that we heard the horns of Oropher and King Amdír, saw their forces spill out onto the plain of Dagorlad. I turned in time to see the phalanx spear right into the orcs. I saw then what was to happen. Everyone on the edges of Emyn Muil saw it, that there was no chance and it was a suicide charge.

“I saw you on the right flank, just at the edge of the marshes. That is like what saved you. Most of these people here,” Thólred gestured at the lists of names on the desk, “they were on that flank near you. The marshes are treacherous, but they slowed orc and troll as much as they slowed horse and Elf. It allowed Elrond and Isildur’s forces to part and come after you. I rode alongside Elrond, heard him cursing and begging the Light of his father—Earendil—to save you. You, Thranduil. Not Oropher nor Amdír. He knew them lost from just glancing at the battlefield.”

Thólred bent to collect Thranduil’s nickel-dark armor and placed it on a simple wooden form along one wall. Went to tie the back door shut against the rising night wind. Thranduil halted him as he passed by to tie the front door shut, instead bent to unbuckle and pull at his friend’s armor, mirror to his own even if not as fine. Returning duty with kindness.

He held Thólred’s words between his teeth, gritted them hard when he thought of his father’s pride.

Thranduil had loved his father but seldom—if ever—agreed with him. He saw the necessity to hold themselves apart from the Noldor and Vanyar of Gil-Galad in peace time. However, he also saw the advisability in aligning under one Elvish banner for this Alliance against the Dark Lord Sauron. Some among the Teleri and Sindar had already pooled to ride under the High King’s banners.

There had even been a few tribes of Laiquendi and Nandor under Gil-Galad. Their lairds had sensed the expediency to align under forces much larger than themselves and parted from Oropher along the way out of Eryn Galen. They had begun to linger with the Noldor by the time they passed the slopes of Fanuidhol.

He had pointed all of this out to his father, but Oropher had heard him not. Placed a paternal hand on Thranduil’s shoulder and assured him that he would understand one day. The Noldor subsumed, the Noldor assimilated. The Sindar should hold apart, mighty and fine as they were. Their numbers larger than that of the Noldor, did he not see? The Noldor had been many when they first came to these shores, but had they not died off, some most horribly, having earned wretched fates?

The Noldor had a great talent at dying. Let them die under the banner of their High King.

And if the Sindar and Nandor and Avari must also die, should they not die under their own command? They could die and deny the very summons of Mandos, linger forever in the lands of Middle-earth, either within a body or forever unhoused in the land that loved and bore them. Was it not an honor to die so free?

The counter was, of course, that many of the Elves had begun to intermarry regardless of origin, particularly as the Second Age advanced. The destruction of Ost-in-Edhil and the entirety of Eregion had caused a spill of survivors to flee to Imladris or Lindon. A handful here and there even crossed the eastern mountains into Eryn Galen. There, a few of the Noldor had integrated, marrying Avar or Nando and adopting their more simplistic ways of forestry, foraging, and migrating in small tribal bands. A world removed from their former stone cities of Aman. Literally.

Thranduil pulled Thólred’s armor off of him and smiled a little at his friend’s relieved stretch. There was no joy in the motion, but there was release, and that was precious and vital in a time of such loss. His friend moved to turn off the lamps, and they dwindled, one by one.

He thought of the bereaved archer and his lost wife: one lying on a pallet bed not several yards distant, the other decaying under an inverted bier of water. He placed his friend’s armor across the spindle chair, doubting its strength under leather and metal, but it remained upright.

Thólred had tied the front door shut and was bending to unroll a set of blankets across a ground-cot.

“Stay,” Thranduil said, placing his fingertips in a span across Thólred’s shoulder. “There are guards enough without the doors. You do not need to stand within as well.”

“Not wide enough,” Thólred said, pulling back a blanket of wool and bear fur. In his fatigue a slight, native burr curled his voice. “We’d have to cram, Sire.”

“Then cram,” Thranduil said, sprawling on the bed. Too tired to attend to his face and teeth, in spite of the water basin that had been placed in his tent. “We did on the road from Beleriand. We have bivouacked in the Grey Mountains. Three summers ago on the way to Imladris. What is different now?”

“You are King,” Thólred said simply.

“I am still Thranduil.”

“You are.” Thólred rubbed his temples and knelt, spilled onto the pallet next to him. “Thranduin.”

Thranduil said nothing but drew his friend into an embrace, something that he assumed would be brotherly; he had no siblings of his own, for his parents’ ardor seemed to have cooled soon after his birth.

There was a half-sister somewhere, the daughter of a first marriage that Oropher had back in vanished Doriath. One of the many ways in which Oropher had held himself apart as an Elf of Endor, rather than Aman; those Calaquendi were too pious, too bloodless to burn with passion, had one tepid marriage, each.

Yet, Oropher’s youthful marriage had gone sour, between his self-righteousness and the wife’s wide-wandering habits. Thranduil wondered about that unmet half-sister, whether she still lived or had died. All he knew of her was that she was named Fanien and had married a Noldo refugee from Gondolin. Oropher had never spoken to her again, and had told his son even less than that.

And now he would never know.

Thranduil stared up at moonlight splotched on the tent roof and listened to the sounds of the camp settling down around them. Usually, the starlight-loving Sylvan Elves lingered under moon and stars, singing, creating, or sporting in the dark of night. Here, however, with half of the Alliance host being mortal Men, remaining awake during the day and slumbering by night became necessity. Elves in generally slept every third or fourth day, meaning that this nightly rest felt unnatural.

Still, long years of war likely stretched before them, either pitched in battle or wearing down by siege. The nameless war at the fall of Eregion had stretched long enough, and here they were at Sauron’s very gate.

He heard a horse champ, the rustle of tent canvas, the physician at her tent calling low to one of her aides. He smelled Thólred’s soft hair and the curl of campfire smoke. Thranduil began to drift into the waking dreams of his people.

“She was… interesting.” Thólred’s voice lifted out of the dark. Thranduil blinked, had thought his friend sleeping.

“Who was?”

“That Mirel who so raised Erestor’s ire. The Avar.”

“Mm. I know little of her, save for that she is Aenwë’s daughter. She would come with him, betimes, when they brought word from the north and east.”

“That the Avar fellow who claims he is Morwë’s son? From Cuivienen?”

“The same.”

“Mm. Any credence to his claim? Do you believe him?”

“My father did; for all his faults, he was thorough in his reconnaissance and chose his alliances wisely. Aenwë never did steer him wrong, gave advice that always turned out to be sound. He very well may have seen the parting of the Eldar from Cuivinenen.”

“And that Mirel is his daughter?”

“Yes. She is very young.”

“A long span, for one so ancient to have a child so new in the world.”

“She’s not that young,” Thranduil said, smiling. “A long-year at the least. Like to be wed and ready for children of her own, if not for the souring of this world.”

“So true for us all,” Thólred said, winding down, yawning finally after nigh three weeks of sleeplessness. Even Elvish endurance had its limits. “But we wed not and have children not in times of war.”

“Trysts, only,” Thranduil cuffed his shoulder gently. “I saw your eyes linger on her.”

“One must do something life-affirming,” Thólred’s voice colored by a small twist of joy. Like a seed under tundra, hoping for spring. “Instead of being in her arms I lie here with you.”

“I can let you go,” Thranduil said, meaning it but also swallowing a slip of fear that his friend would leave.

“No. Not tonight. We need sleep. We all need sleep.” And here Thólred rolled to face him, placed a hand upon Thranduil’s breast. “Close your eyes if you must, but sleep, Thranduin. I am not too proud to beg you.”

“And you. Close your eyes, less you have to gaze at my face all night.”

“There are few fairer,” Thólred said, grinning. “Sleep.”

“Yes, Sire.” Thranduil smiled, closed his eyes, and let sleep take him.

Chapter Text

The greatest losses upon their host had thus far befallen the Alliance before the Cirith Gogor, Carach Angren ever close as they pressed in attempt to breach past the gullet of Udûn. Mordor itself lay before them like an endless black throat, the clouds above and distant reaches seeming to swallow the very light of the world itself. The air in Mordor seemed to hum with a sub bass sound beyond hearing, felt in the teeth rather than heard in the ear. Mortal Men cast uneasy glances into the abyss, and the Elves noted the red fires burning deep within: volcano and coal fire, prone to smoulder. Now that the Gates had been broken down, they would press forward and try to establish on the plain of Gogoroth beneath Sauron’s stronghold. There was talk from Elendil’s people about establishing towers for shelter and observation.

Thranduil, sweating beneath his armor but outwardly cool, walked with his herald after meeting with the Alliance council. They passed through the ever-more shabby looking Greenwood camps, half the tents erected, the others left bundled. Their people now slept in small groups on the ground. Ever-armored, ever ready.

Hands behind his back, head held high with grace, Thranduil nodded in acknowledgement whenever his people bowed to him. Inwardly, he seethed, jaw clenching after the brash rumbles of the Dwarves and the dismissive inclines of Elendil’s head whenever he spoke to the assembled leaders of Elves and Men.

Gil-galad still had not lost the indifferent expression that he held in Thranduil’s presence since the charge upon Dagorlad. The High King listened to him speak while staring off into the middle distance or tilted his head in Thranduil’s direction to indicate he heard, but a direct response never left his mouth. Rather, it was Elrond who would turn to Thranduil in council, asking a question, prompting a response. Glorfindel had a habit of placing a hand on the back of Thranduil's shoulder whenever he supported a point that the Greenwood King made.

Their acknowledgements made poor comfort after such endless slight.

Thranduil hadn’t sparked the charge that led to the loss of Oropher and Amdír. He hadn’t led the maneuver that led to the deaths of three quarters of his people. Damn Gil-galad to everlasting flame, anyway.

Thólred had attended this council, having gone into the mountains of Ered Lithui with a select company of Elves to reconnoiter the valleys below. Numbers of orcish and Mannish troops around Amon Amarth, the terrain around the fortress of Barad-dûr, estimations of resources and strategic positions throughout Mordor: he and his people had taken it in and relayed it all. The Avarin woman Mirel had stood at his side, her hand on her lance, face as impassive as the stone that surrounded them.

“Sire?” Andol, the Captain of his archers, trotted forth from beyond the pillars of volcanic tuff that twisted through the southern rim of Udûn.

Some of the natural ravines closer to camp had been claimed as places to basin-bathe or relieving stations, for Elves were fastidious and clean. Even Prince Anárion had visited the basins of clear water and bars of herbal soaps.

A few smaller coves had been claimed as trysting places, couples emerging from them with their armor askew and hair in need of brushing. No children would be gotten, but the life-affirming act of sex gave his people something to live for in such a dead place. Thranduil had been tempted, once, when a Nando woman with honey-blonde braids had raised her brows and given him a nod toward these coves. Her name was Calenlí, an archer whom he had entertained several times back in the Greenwood. These enjoyable trysts felt as if they had taken place yéni ago, rather than some months past. He had turned toward her, hands already going to the skirts of his armor to find belt and buckle. His hands craved to cup and slip and fondle, remembering the sweetness of her flesh.

But then Iverin, the Captain of his swordsmen, had interrupted with a summons from Gil-galad himself. Calenlí’s hopeful expression had fallen, and Thranduil briefly entertained thoughts of murder before going with his man toward the Council tents.

“Sire, any word on requisition?” Andol now asked. “My archers need their arrows; we have gleaned all we can from the carcasses of orcs and fell Men.”

“Dispatch to the northernmost reaches of Ithilien for oak and pine commence in two days,” Thranduil said, as the three men fell into a matched stride down the dry riverbed. Mordor was a dry and empty place, but the wash in which they were now camped had been scoured for millenia by violent, seasonal rains. “More pressing is the need for water. The mountains here, fell as they are, provide rill and spring. A larger question is where we will find water and forage when we draw nigh Barad-dûr. The orcs have hunted any game to extinction.”

He did not voice what he thought they fed on; some thoughts were so dark they were unhealthy to consider.

“Yes. In due time for water and wafer,” Andol said, his sharp-planed face hard with concern. He had acquired a gash under his left eye and the wound was healing in wide knots, giving him a harsh air. He had once been known for his harpist’s fingers and kind green eyes. “Encampment is set for the next few nights. When is our next advance?”

“Depends on when we get the arrows,” Thranduil said dryly, sliding a glance over to Thólred . His herald gave him a grim smile and shook his head. It all depended on how set upon they would be by ambush, which was a matter of when, not if, where orcs were concerned. Even now, they could hear them clattering in the hills, occasionally shrieking when slain by parties of restless Elves on errant. “We shall keep you informed.”

“Yes, Sire,” Andol said, turning on heel and marching back the way he had come. The Nando man who was his lover had been keeping pace with them, several yards distant, with his helmet propped on his hip. They now linked hands and strode back toward the smithy, where swords and daggers were being sharpened to keen edges.

“No other word?” Thranduil asked his friend as they continued on.

“No, Thranduin—uil.” Thólred glanced at the retreating back of Andol, with his long brown plait flicking like an annoyed cat’s tail. “Aside from the movement discussed at the Council there is no other information to be gleaned from within the Morgai.”

“I meant from you,” Thranduil said, lowering his voice to the velvet whisper for which he was well known. “You as my friend, Thólred.”

“Oh. I assume you allude to the fact that Mirel was also on the reconnaissance mission,” he said, mouth ticked up in a sly, one-sided smile. “Yes, she was there. But so was her son. Findalor.”

“I—ah.” Thranduil grimaced. “I am sorry. I knew not she was wed, else I’d not have encouraged your affection.”

Thólred sighed. “Not wed. Widowed. Six coranar ago, in the Cirith Elu. The husband was one of those Noldor who came east and integrated themselves into the Nandor settlements. Met a bad end on a talus slope, to which they had fled in ambush while out on a hunting party. Violent Men of the Forodwaith, likely kicked out of their own tribes for being maladaptive and outlaw. In truth, I spent more time at Findalor’s side, rather than Mirel’s. He was… inquisitive. Barely a man himself. I gather that he saw my interest in his mother. I felt interrogated beyond my measure.”

“Lucky you were not in actuality,” Thranduil said, pausing to nod in acknowledgement of the physicians on their way back from collecting water at one of the few springs that gave forth sweetwater. “Her son is half Noldo, then? Did he not shine like the edge of the moon below the horizon and give your position away?”

“Nay. Noldor aren’t uncanny, Thranduil. That is Oropher talking. He swathed himself in dark cloth and hooded himself with a cloak. Growing up in Eryn Galen, he walks with the grace of his mother’s people and is more like them than Noldo. Nary a sound. I like the lad.”

Thranduil scowled at Thólred for comparing him to his father but had the grace to blush. “Then it is good to encourage affection for the boy. You’ll a friend, if naught else. What else have you learned? You speak different languages enough to pick up on conversations most assume go unheard.”

“Nothing of great use. Gil-galad will keep you in the West Company. For your skill but also because it is far enough from what is left of the Dwarven ranks in the Eastern Guard. Isildur has taken one of the field nurses under his wing and into his tent. Rumors abound. Glorfindel is as kind as ever and offered to give us some of his swordsmen—he is too good, Thranduil. I think part of me hates him.”

Thranduil smirked. “My father felt similar about Finrod, who was lost in Beleriand. Met him once and hated him thoroughly as too kind and gracious. This was before we learned of the Kinslaying, but the impression remained after, even so. So too, with Glorfindel.”

“Are we Moriquendi rotten?” Thólred grinned.

“No. Rather that we are too worn and realistic, Thólred. Our people have been battling the Shadow for millenia longer than the Noldor and Vanyar, and that one is a shining example of both.” Thranduil said, keeping secret that part of him wanted to see Glorfindel naked, just once, just to know what he looked like. “The Kinslayings were grievous enough trespass, but let us not pretend that there haven’t been similar among our people when resources were scarce. Our sins aren’t grand enough for song or lays or poetry. The Noldor simply had farther to fall, from hallowed Aman.”

As they walked to the edges of camp they drew round again, sometimes slipping even into Quenya, which Thranduil had learned long ago and spoke only in secret; it allowed him to listen to conversations between Gil-galad and Celeborn, Erestor and Glorfindel. They spoke freely in the tongue of Aman, assuming that neither Thranduil nor his herald could comprehend.

He did have his suspicions that Elrond knew, for there were a few times that the Peredhel noticed him and paused mid-conversation with Gil-galad to tell a sly, off-color joke. While the High King could laugh freely, Thranduil had to firm his mouth, lest he give his understanding away. Elrond would give him a fond glance, once the High King’s attention lay elsewhere.

Thranduil, for his part, would return a regal nod and retain whatever merriment he felt for himself, file the jest away to tell Thólred later.

As they drew back through the camp a third time, Thólred noticed young Findalor half skipping away from the supper line. Cradled loaves of light bread in his hands as though they were more precious than gold.

“Heya,” the young man grinned, his coloring and face shape all Noldo but body lighter and narrow, like an Avar. He glimmered in the falling night. “Heya, Thólred! Come break bread in our circle? There’s enough, today.”

“Aye. Alumír managed to line some bees to honey. I have a small amorpha, if you would like to share,” Thólred said, approaching the young man. He paused and looked to Thranduil in question.

Thranduil bowed to dismiss him as young Findalor bowed to him in turn, nearly dropping one of the bread loaves. Awkward display done, Thólred smiled kindly and took his leave with a salute and smart turn of his heel.

“I suppose you want to share the honey with my mother?” Findalor asked, was overheard, and there was a general stifle of laughter.

Findalor was so young he didn’t know that he had just made bold innuendo about the emerging relationship between his mother and the king’s herald.

Thranduil smiled a little to himself as he turned to leave, settled his grey cloak more firmly about his shoulders. The surprise of Mordor was that for as hot as it burned during the day, the air grew icy by night, with no trees and moisture to hold the heat in. He walked alone, turning several matters over in his mind, until he was startled by another matching stride. Hands on sword hilts, he turned to find Elrond Peredhel walking beside him, a sheepish expression on his kind face.

“Well met, King Tharandoel,” Elrond said, his refined Noldorin accent rounding out the vowels. He nodded toward the lidded sky. “El! There are stars.”

Thranduil looked up and saw that the endless clouds had indeed given way to a few ragged edges that allowed the night sky to shine though. He recognized the angled wing of half of the Butterfly and stopped to stare in wonder. Elrond drew close to stand beside him, and he could feel the heat of the Peredhel’s body, smell the cedar oil in his long, dark hair. They watched the three silver stars glimmer, and around them the Elvish camp became silent, faces tilted upward, watching the stars under which their forebears had awoken. A few fair voices lifted in song, and a chill ran across Thranduil’s skin. He clasped Elrond’s hand a moment until the clouds drifted shut and the song fell.

The two men began walking again in silence, gloved hands parting, each deep in his own thoughts as they made their way under the growing dark.

Bereft. His father dead, his people murdered, lives asunder. The very stars snatched away. Thranduil’s throat ached, and for a moment he felt that he would cry.

“I would speak with you, Thranduil King, if I may,” Elrond said as they drew near the water-sculpted tuff cliffs, which soared and dipped in odd shapes.

“Yes, Lord Elrond,” Thranduil led the way into a small cove in which a small, fitful tree grew. Had they been closer to the camps of Gil-galad, Elrond would have led. It was a respectful give-and-take that the two men were careful to grant each other.

Had it been Gil-galad that approached him, the High King would have led and Thranduil made to follow.

The thought burned, and Thranduil tamped his temper back down.

“How fare you?” Elrond said, once they drew nigh the stunted tree and dipped to sit upon the water-smooth boulders at its roots. There was no preamble, no lordly diction, only the Peredhel’s kind grey eyes and fatigue in the slump of his shoulders. This was not a conversation of leaders but peers.

Thranduil paused for a long moment to retain what little of his pride remained. Did not trust his voice.

“I am unwell,” he said, surprised at the shape of the word in his mouth. Like the tree, sheltered by stone and unnoticed, allowed to grow. “Acting the part of king is easy. Remain stalwart, speak with resonance, point with one’s sword. If I stop to think on our losses and where we go from here I am undone, so I do not think that way.”

Elrond nodded once, head tilted elegantly to one side in silent question. This was a talent that the Peredhel had, and though Thranduil was several decades older, he felt that Elrond was far more ancient and wise than himself. Whether this was the elemental Maia within or the mortality of his Mannish lineage, Thranduil could not guess, but it always unraveled him regardless. For torture and pain he could keep his mouth shut—had to learn this in the fall of Beleriand, under the onslaught of orcs and dragon-fire—but Elrond’s compassion caused his words to spill from him like water down stone.

And so, forgiving, because he could not share his innermost thoughts with anyone else, not even Thólred, Thranduil let himself speak.

“I failed my people,” he said, voice breaking, turning from Elrond so he would not have to look at those patient eyes or endure the press of a kind hand. He let himself cry, so long as his friend could not see. “I did not hold fast enough against my father Oropher, though I knew ours was a fool’s errand.

“My people admired him for a reason; he was their King and one chosen at that. When he came east from Beleriand he spent time organizing cities and villages, using foresters out of Doriath to hew connecting roads. He did not require that the Sylvan people fall under his leadership. He simply offered protection and a vision of a Forest in which its scattered tribes could link in dire times, rather than searching for each other in the wilderness. At first, they named him Reeve, then Lord, then King.

“That inspired loyalty, for unlike Thingol, Oropher did not require that the morbin Elves give up their culture or habitations. He instead allowed them to approach his settlements and integrate at need. There was no scrubbing of indigenous tradition, no assimilation into the Sindar culture required. We took up many of their holidays and traditions, ourselves. Many retained their clannish or migratory ways, but they fell under his banners as the darkness consumed Amon Lanc.

“I watched them myself, Elrond. Nandor with their hair plaited in many braids and woad painted on their cheekbones. Sylvan, arrayed in green and brown, their short bows meant for close quarter among trees; they are better at engineering bows than any of our people are. There were remnants of Laiquendi mingled with the Avari, who can pass so closely for Noldor so as to be nigh indistinguishable, save for the darkness of their bodies. I am sure that many used that to advantage in Ages past, if rumors hold true. I confess, I admire the audacity.

“And though my father was a different man behind the closed doors of our chambers, where he could be sour-tempered and fatalistic, he did hold stalwart and show kindness for people under his care. He truly loved them, Elrond, truly worried about the Noldor of Lindon subsuming all that they had built over the past millennia.”

Behind him, Elrond shifted, and Thranduil cast a glance over his shoulder in fear that someone else had approached. He saw only Elrond, who was listening with his head propped on his hand. No judgment, no quarrel, only his endless patience and encouraging silence.

Thranduil looked down at the sand at his feet; his tears had dried hard and saltful on his cheeks. He bent and used a gnarled stick to trace whorls and patterns in the grey floor.

“I should have wrested away command from him,” Thranduil said, now drawing the five stars of the Butterfly. The glimmer from Elrond’s skin cast enough light to see by. “I know not how, but I should have made a greater endeavor. But how can one sunder loyalty from pragmatism? All I could do was follow and hope that I could lead whoever remained afterward, away from death.”

He felt there was nothing more to say. Long silence stretched between them as night fell fully. A few small creatures, gleaming green along their sides, slithered from beneath the stones and back again, timid at the presence of unfamiliar Elvish feet. Thranduil dropped the stick and pulled his cloak shut, feeling chill.

Elrond sighed and took the stick up again, began to draw a long-keeled sailing ship among Thranduil’s swirling stars.

“I knew one who spoke as you just did, long ago,” Elrond said, speaking slowly as if measuring his words. “He followed his father in ways that seemed devoted. However, only those closest to him knew the true reason as to why he followed his father so closely.

“He followed not out of law, nor love.

“He followed his father to make attempt to keep his father in check, for this man held great power, more than any that our people have ever known.

“However, in trying to keep his father’s ravenous pride in trammel, he instead fed the flames of his desire. He helped to hasten the downfall of his people and those whom he loved, even unto death, all because of his good intent. He had lied to himself, thinking he steadied his father’s pride. Instead he tempered it, making it stronger, until it, too, consumed him.

“Many died horribly, ravaged by torture or sword or flame. He could not call halt and attempt to wrest power from his father, because he feared that in doing so it would prove his people’s very unmaking. And by then it was too late for him to correct course. The Oath he swore bound him fully, and it sundered the man who he had been from the man he eventually became.

“Your heart and his are alike in this manner. For all of your noble intentions—and they were noble, Thranduil—you and your people were led into war by pride.”

Thranduil had guessed whom it was that Elrond was comparing him to: “Maedhros,” he said. Exhaled sharply as if trying to expel the name from his own mouth.

“Yes.” There was no challenge nor condemnation in Elrond’s voice, and his glance never lost its gentle expression.

“...Do you think I could have wrenched away my people’s loyalty for my father, and in his place led them away from slaughter?”

Elrond smiled, his eyes deep and infinitely sad. “No.”

“They would have followed him unto death anyway,” Thranduil said, more to himself than his friend.

Elrond made no answer, only gripped his shoulder and rose, stretching to prepare the walk back to their camps. The ship he had drawn sailed on a sea of stars. Thranduil stood also but made no move to stir from beneath the small tree. He raised a hand and stripped off his grey glove to hold the narrow bore of the trunk, feeling the raw but determined flow of life beneath its bark. The tree whispered in the night wind, and Thranduil closed his eyes, imagining the sound of soughing trees multiplied by thousands.

“For what it is worth, I do not think Maedhros could have wrested power from Fëanor, either.” Thranduil said, his voice so soft he was unsure that Elrond would hear.

The night behind him remained so quiet and still that Thranduil thought himself alone, his thought unheard, but then he heard Elrond speak with a trace of a smile in his voice.

“Goodnight, Tharandoel King.”

“Be at peace, my Lord Elrond” Thranduil said in his turn. Remained alone in silence for a time after his friend had gone.

Chapter Text

With his face buried against Calenlí’s neck, Thranduil could smell the late-summer grasses of the Anduin Valley. Dry grasses, the same color as her hair, grasses with the promise of next spring’s green bound in their deep roots. He thrust into her several more times, until he could feel the rhythmic pulse of her body, the tightening of her legs. Her rusty moan curled into his ear, and he let himself go with a sweet ache.

Lying with her these few days past had brought him some measure of solace from the dreams that had begun to emerge unbidden. Dreams of the archer with his fingers severed, of Thólred’s brother Bregin with his intestines pooled about his feet and his gut gaping open. Of the screams and gasps and wails of pain for brother, wife, sister, Sire. Or my King, my King, my King. Dreams of Oropher’s body seizing as he was speared fore and aft, an arc of blood erupting from his mouth and eyes rolling. Looking toward his son in denial and shock, the ruined mouth whispering “Help us.” Unheard across the rent of battle.

There were times he woke with a start and a shudder, teeth chattering and unshed tears hot in his eyes. Thólred, who slept in a bedroll at his side, would start up and lay gentling hands on him as they both roiled in their own internal hell.

Necessary suppression, Thólred once suggested, both of them coated in sweat from poor sleep and the lingering heat of day. None of them had had time to mourn or feel the full weight of terror that they had endured at Dagorlad, which had not been a battle at all but a slaughter. They could suppress and find footing in a soldier’s stoicism during waking hours, when the mastery of thought and emotion conquered nearly all.

Suppression of memory, glossing over detail, was self-preservation. It allowed one to keep his wits about him, essential for battle plan or skirmish.

But in dreams the defenses crumbled, spilled open. Horrors curled around and walked about as if in midday. The only difference was that dream-spears did not pierce and dream-maces did not crush. The spiritual and psychological wounds remained quite real.

Thranduil opened his eyes to ground his drifting spirit in the reality of Calenlí’s wheat-colored hair and the scent of her body, warm like that of baking bread. He kissed her temple, her skin hot beneath his lips.

“My Lord,” Calenlí whispered in his ear, and Thranduil cupped her cheek, pressed a kiss into her mouth and drank deeply of her. His hands sought her breasts, the swell of her thigh, slipped between them to palm down her flat belly, lower to touch the tender flesh where they yet joined. She shuddered and tried to touch him as well as she could between half-shifted and unbuckled armor, for he had freed only enough of his body that they could enjoy each other.

Outside, someone faraway called his name, and Thranduil knew he could not linger.

“Apologies, Calenlí,” he whispered, taking a folded handkerchief from beneath his pillow, reaching down their bodies to press it between her legs as he withdrew. She caught at it, closing her thighs modestly, and drew her linen skirts about her. Thranduil, still breathing hard and smelling of sex, pulled his own linen and armor back into place, swept his cloak behind him.

Her mouth curved with a tight expression, not quite a smile, and she reached up to grasp his hand, kissed the bruised knuckles. “I await you, Lord,” she said in her low, musical voice, “but it would be wise if you returned to me.”

“As you command,” he said, clasping her slender hand in both of his. Felt robbed when he had to let it fall.

He bent to kiss her forehead and pointed at his own soft dressing robe as he walked away from the pallet bed, leaving Calenlí with an unspoken invitation to stay in his tent as long as she chose.

“Damn it,” he muttered, pressing out past his guards and sliding his twin swords home in their sheaths.

“Many pardons, King Thranduil,” Glorfindel said from atop his grey mare, whom he had slowed to a walk in the narrow avenues of the camp. Most of the Sindar stepping back to let him pass looked to him in admiration, though there were a few ill-tempered glares. The advance toward Barad-dûr was swift but already wearing thin on them all. Endless twilight oppressed. Volcanic fumes made ill or sank into deadly, invisible lakes in the hollows.

Glorfindel pulled his mare around to flank him. “I have called for your horse Rhom—there is movement afoot on the southwestern side of the Gorgoroth, and Elendil fears a flank of fell Men will break for Nurn, only to surprise us from Ephel Duath or Nagroth, later on. They are moving past the Road that will take us to the foundations of Barad-Dûr.”

“And our battalion has been summoned to quell them,” Thranduil said, taking his nickel-grey helm from Ithilor and pulling it down firmly upon his head. He held a gaze with his guard meaningfully and glanced at the tent, indicating that he guard should not enter. The Nando man nodded smartly and resumed his vigil, sword high against his shoulder.

Thranduil mounted Rhom and wheeled to trot southward, Glorfindel close behind. Though the mighty Lord was technicality his commander, Glorfindel treated him as equal when out upon the battlefield.

“Thólred?” Thranduil asked, a catch in his voice as Rhom broke into a fast canter.

“Already there,” Glorfindel called, his golden hair streaming like a banner from beneath his helmet. In spite of the ash and ruin around him, there was a light in his grey eyes that remained joyful after the grim work of war was over.

Thranduil did not know whether to feel jealous or take heart, and he briefly allowed himself to imagine Glorfindel, naked and smiling, beneath him on the pallet bed. It would be like making love to sunlight.

“I do not suppose that the Alliance will ever send Amroth’s battalions, or Isildur’s,” Thranduil said, pulling himself from that idle fantasy with a note of self-deprecating humor.

“Nay,” Glorfindel said, mischief shining bright in his fair eyes. “Those Princes remain in Gil-galad’s good graces.”

Thranduil grinned, finding kinship in Glorfindel’s wicked jest.

“Prince Anárion, however, awaits us at the edge of the plateau.”

“And what did he do to gain ill favor and an errand such as ours?”

“Disarranged the High King’s boots,” Glorfindel said, urging his mare to a high gallop.

Thranduil laughed outright, vindicated in his sour dislike of the Noldo king. He had heard, through idle camp gossip, that Glorfindel found Gil-galad’s haughty remove to be “a bit much.” This dig at the King’s expense seemed only to confirm the rumor.

They picked up more riders along the path, pale grey ash trailing from horse hooves and running feet as they pursued a small battalion of Harad men southward. These were outlaws among their own people; the Men of Harad pursued these outcasts if they tried to re-enter their homelands. By heading them off, the Alliance would be doing the Haradrim a favor.

The quarry spotted, Thranduil and Glorfindel hastened pace, their people splitting to fence the retreating Harad outlaws in. Glorfindel drew his company alongside that of Prince Anárion, and Thranduil raised one sword in hail. The bearded Man raised his in turn, grinned from beneath his helm. He was enjoying this dark sport as much as one might, not out of lust for blood but as a quest for justice.

Anárion had lost much in his life to the darkness of Sauron. The vain and wicked among his people had fallen under the Maia's machinations. His isle home had been swallowed by the sea, his people cast asunder, innocents drowned, the Faithful Men of Númenor rendered homeless and houseless. The brothers Anárion and Isildur had built their fair city of Minas Anor upon the hills, their mighty city of Osgiliath astride the River, true, but scarce was there enough peacetime in which they could enjoy it.

Yet another happiness deferred and injustice inflicted. Time lost with belovèds, wives, husbands, sons, daughters. Mortal lives were so short, shockingly short. And here were these fair and faithful Men wasting their lives away in war that had been inflicted upon them.

How much they all lost when—

The smell of rotting flesh hit Thranduil hard, and he shouted even as Rhom laid his ears flat, screamed from beneath his silver chanfron. In spite of the horse’s terror, he did not let up his charge. The Harad vanished into pocked hills of black cinders, riven and upheaved between jutting dikes of igneous rock. Thranduil turned to look east, at the rearing shape of Mount Doom glowing fitfully against an ash-plume sky. Below the mountain lay a wide valley that approached the fortress of Barad-dûr.

He signaled a halt, sensing that the Harad had been laid as bait to attract the attention of the Alliance, and he feared what might erupt from there.

“Lord Glorfindel?” Thólred asked, drawing near on the black gelding that he had borrowed from the faction of Avari. The horse’s fur blended into the eternal night of Mordor. Its nickel-dark barding caught the light and gleamed in a way that suggested Thólred rode a horse made from darkness itself. “King Thranduil? What see you?”

“I know not,” Thranduil muttered, aware that their battalion had abandoned the small company of Haradrim to their flight and rode into smart formation behind him. Unease curdled his belly as he looked about, straining to see in the dark night. The mingled company of light and dark Elves likewise turned and began to mutter to each other as they caught the scent of death.

“That isn’t animal,” Thólred said.

“Nay. That is the smell of dead human,” Prince Anárion said in his husky whisper, and he drew to flank the Elves on his own red stallion. The wings of his helmet gleamed, shining with the red fire of Mount Doom, hissing in the darkness.

Somewhere, deep underfoot, the earth roiled and heaved, a shudder of earthquake sensed by Elf and Horse but remained unnoticed by the Men of Gondor. In the dark valley before them there was a faint rattle, a clang, then silence. This snaking valley was known as The Road to Barad-dûr, though there were many, laid out in precise, radiating lines, now blocked by trundled rubble and detritus from Sauron’s smithies and ovens. This Road, however, snaked through the volcanic-thrust foothills of Mount Doom and was likely the source from which the hordes of orcs poured forth, as if born of ash.

The slopes of the vale rose into the dark sky, all stone and no soil, no living thing able to grow with tenacious or hopeful root in the hostile earth. All stood in dark shades, a few hard sills of pale stone slicing through the black granite, like sword-slashes in solid armor. These sills seemed to glow with a sickly light, though there was no moonlight to catch nor starlight to mirror, only the roiling clouds above. The ash floor glowed with sickly green hues. A hum just below the realm of hearing caught in Thranduil’s teeth as he strained to see through the dim expanse. The valley turned and coiled right, out of sight and kenning.

“This is unnatural,” Anárion shook his head and held his sword in a manner that suggested he remained ready for ambush. “What foul necromancy lies ahead I know not, but we need more than we have to quell it. I have heard dark tales that—”

“Nothing living stands in that valley,” Glorfindel said, the certainty in his summer-warm voice sounded like prophecy.

“Then there is no danger?” Anárion asked, peering to see what the Vanya could.

“I did not say that,” Glorfindel said, grimly setting his horse upon the path. “It may be that an ambush awaits us. Nonetheless, we were drawn here for a purpose. Let us go and see what message the Dark Lord has left for us to find, and we will return with that message held in our mouths for the Alliance to hear.”

“I like it not,” Anárion said, his eyes narrowed even as he turned to flank the shining Elf lord.

“Nor do I,” Thranduil agreed. “However, my senses tell me the same as Lord Glorfindel’s. Nothing living stands near this valley’s mouth or ere past the bend. This feels less like the invitation for battle and more like something is…”

He hesitated, not having the word for what he felt.

“It feels as if something fell is meant.” Thranduil shook his head, unable to express the growing dread in his heart.

Glorfindel nodded in agreement and chirruped softly to his horse. She walked forward on her own accord, her ears laid flat against her head, now flicking forward, swiveling around, searching, laying flat again.

Rhom’s head snaked down, his ears likewise held back so that the silver guards of his chanfron stood as the stalwart pair. Thranduil could feel the tension along the horse’s spine, from nose to croup, and he hummed softly, touched the twitching withers with one gentle, gloved hand.

The company of Men and Elves advanced slowly into the valley. Towers of grey tufa, the remnants of strangled springs, coiled and reared above, shadows spilling from pockets and fissures in the stone. The wind rose and fell as they walked, now carrying the smell of death away, now pressing it hard against them, enough to make even fearless Glorfindel cough. Thólred flicked his tongue once behind his upper lip, indicating nausea, and Anárion gave a soft, guttural choke before shaking his head, pulling himself back to an impassive expression. Thranduil winced and felt his hand fly unbidden up to his nose and mouth as a sickly sweet smell of rot assaulted him.

The last few pillars rose like gateposts, and at last the Company could see what stood beyond in the side-stepped vale.

“Valar preserve us—” Anárion began, stopped his horse short.

“Ai, ai,” Thólred sighed, and Glorfindel glanced at him in sorrow.

A violation of Man and Elf stood before them in the glimmering dark: the bodies of a thousand held up by pole and pike, some riven, some naked, some half hung with armor that indicated soldiers of high rank. Thranduil blinked hard, his mind trying to deny what his eyes saw.

Farin, one of his father’s generals, slit from navel to chest, everything inside of him gathered and left trailing to the ground below. His armor had been placed below him so that blazon shone, identifying him by rank and division.

Clarelneth, naked from throat to feet. Her pale hair had been torn from her head and tied around one ankle.

Others, two Men with their heads removed and tossed at their feet.

Three Elves with charred bodies. Archers all, fingers missing, bow-wrists snapped. Two Noldor swordsmen, their blades splintered and throats slit.

One of the Laiquendi, with the lower half of his body twisted at an unnatural angle, indicating a broken spine.

Even the body of Thranduil’s horse, his Laelind, had been dragged here and sat preserved with some foul necromancy; the rest of her sleek grey body was missing but the arc of her neck and her narrow head had been cast down hard upon the stone. Her clouded eyes glowed and her lips had pulled back from her teeth in an endless scream. The blazon of his tack and bridle had marked her; she was the mount of a Prince.

Thranduil heard someone chanting in a rising voice “No, no, no, no, no…”

It sounded like his own, but it could not be him, for he was not speaking. His throat was too dry, too ravaged by endless dust and ash and dry air.

He heard the voice strangle.

He felt a detached sort of pity for whatever wretched soul that trembled so close to breaking. But looked ahead, counting quickly by rank of Man and Elf to know what he would find flanking the last two sides of the valley: Oropher and Amdír.

Amdír Malgalad hung with his wrists bound to a crossbeam, his fair, fawn-colored hair ripped and snarled, his eyes gouged, so that he wore a mask of blood. The lines around his mouth and the bruises at his hands indicated that he had been alive when blinded. The orcish dagger that had killed him still stuck in his sternum. A fragment of Lórien banner had been knotted hard against his neck.

Oropher hung on the other side, eyes intact and gone milky white, his pale hair used to tie his head back to the pike riven through his torso. His hands hung at his sides, fingers limp and curled, mud half-mooned beneath each nail. The blood that had erupted from his mouth remained, unfurled as a sickly rust-brown flag, clotting in the mail of his armor. His mouth gaped, black and tongueless, and though this made him seem monstrous, the last vestiges of vulnerability and fear remained on his fine brow. As the battalion stood before him, the mouth seemed to open wider, almost impossibly wide, and an angry hum of buzzing flies poured forth from his lips.

Thranduil tilted his head to one side, the world swinging too far to the right, seeming to swell so that he staggered and swayed, tilted left, left him trying to find footing. What evil spell was this, to turn the very world on its poles and hinges, to toss the earth as though it were the deck of a ship, to—

“Thranduil—!”

There was the sound of soft percussion. Someone spat a curse of dismay in Quenya.

“Help me stop him,” Thranduil heard Glorfindel mutter from his left, and to his right Thólred’s gentle voice dipped into a wordless cadence, almost like a lullaby.

“No, no, no. Ada, no.” The voice rose from a soft chant of denial to an outright scream, long and crumbling with anguish.

Thranduil kept staring straight ahead at the abomination before him.

“Thranduil,” Thólred said, and his hands were on his king’s shoulders. They were standing on the ground in front of Oropher, and the flies swarmed thick about the open mouth. He felt the raw cinders crackling under his feet. “ Thranduin. Thranduin, come away.”

“How?” Thanrduil asked, blinking, bewildered, dizzy as though he had been breathing too much. Breathing for himself and his father, both.

“Come away.”

“How came I to be here?” His throat burned raw. He clutched at Thólred’s gardbrace. He glanced wildly behind him, saw Glorfindel on his feet and bleeding from the corner of his mouth. He held Rhom’s gleaming reins in one hand, the blood bay’s saddle empty.

“Come away. Please, Thranduin,” Thólred’s pale face distorted as if wrung, and at last Thranduil could see how close he was to crying. “There is nothing for us, here.”

“No quarry,” Thranduil said, clinging to the mission upon which they had been sent. “No quarry, here.”

“Nay, not now, no,” Thólred drew in a sharp, trembling breath and laughed. Reeling with near hysteria. “No enemy, here. Come away, Thranduin. Let us away and to camp. There are others living there. There is nothing here.”

Beyond him, Glorfindel gave a doubtful glance back over his shoulder, where Prince Anárion was shepherding the battalion of Elves away, for there were more among their kindred here than that of the Men. The Vanya’s grey mare lingered, standing shoulder to shoulder with Rhom, and they pressed their heads close as if counsel of their own.

“Not here,” Thranduil said, clutching Thólred’s shoulder. He had to get his friend away from here, from the desecrated corpse of his brother—nay, brothers, for Thranduil at last recognized Filion, his herald’s favorite, laying nearby with his severed head set between his feet. Eyes mercifully closed. Mostly closed.

“Come away, Thranduil,” Thólred said, his voice abruptly down to its normal pitch, his blue eyes finding focus in his king’s own. “Come away. Their pain is over. There is nothing we can do for them.”

Thranduil looked back to Oropher once more. His father looked so pitiful hanging there, the last remains of his fear and pain evident in the lines of his face, the shape of his shoulders. The blood and flies and clouded eyes were masks only. He recognized his father and felt a wellspring of love and hate open inside of him.

He saw his father not as the violated corpse before him but standing alive and hale, an Age past, walking with him east out of Beleriand, murmuring into his son’s ears of the glory of Doriath, the regal bearing of Thingol, the pride of the Sindar. They would build anew what had been lost or stolen. A realm far, far to the east, away from the chaos of the Noldor and the encroachment of Men, in their own warded forests. Thranduil would have the home that he so craved, one of beauty and starlight, or sunlight falling through green leaves, each more precious than an emerald stone. Summer glasses had hissed against their legs and danger loomed behind their backs. His father had smiled at him with gentle eyes, his pale gold hair alive with sunlight. Caught Thranduil’s hand in his own, as if offering him a jewel instead of a promise.

And Oropher had more than fulfilled that promise, building a kingdom up from scattered peoples and clans, Amon Lanc rising as a glowing city woven through with trees and streams, close-knit villages and open roads, the rise of sweet voices and flowing wine. Starlight, friendship, full bowl and cup. His father had promised and freely given.

It was not Oropher’s fault that war and ruin came to them, tore at Eryn Galen with spear and fang. But it was not the fault of the Noldor, either, nor the rise of Men who now treated Thranduil and his people as belovèd brethren.

His father’s pride had been both his blessing and his doom, and now Oropher had come to his end. Thólred was right. His pain was over, and there was nothing more that Thranduil could do for him. He could not even bear his body hence, only leave it for carrion crow and orc.

He walked back toward Oropher and took one of the ruined hands in his own. Felt the flesh hard beneath sliding skin. Decay setting in, ruin soon to follow.

“I promise,” Thranduil whispered, voice breaking on the word. He could not say more, but he meant everything that Oropher had said to him, long ago on what would become the shores of Harlindon.

He turned away and let his father’s hand fall.

Empty, bereft, he walked away without looking back. He went to Glorfindel, who handed him Rhom’s reins and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. The Vanya’s mouth was bruised, and a twin ache in Thranduil’s knuckles let him know that he had been the one to strike the fair Lord.

“Apologies, Glorfindel,” Thranduil said, and for the first time tears brimmed hot in his yes, fell unheeded. “I was wrong.”

“You have too much to bear,” Glorfindel said, taking Thranduil’s hand briefly in his own. It had been the same one that had held Oropher’s, and Thranduil lingered with his fingers against the warm palm, the pulse of singing, living blood.

Beautiful.

The three Elves each swung up onto their horses, walking away to join their people on the plain of Gorgoroth. The volcanic cloud above them parted for a moment to reveal sky and star, then billowed shut as swiftly as an eye shutting against the dark.

Chapter Text

The ashen plains glittered below him with the burning torches and campfires of his people, while above them the black slopes of Mount Doom glowed at vent and fissure. The firelight of the Elves and Men burned brighter, the yellow of sunlight or star, while the fires of the mountain burned red, as with the fever of infection. Thranduil lifted his eyes up toward the black fang of Barad-dûr, which seemed to rip at the very heavens with spike and spire. Somewhere in that monstrous tower stood Sauron. The Abhorred, likely gazing back down at him. Thranduil did not look away but stared until his eyes burned and watered.

“The quiet disturbs me.” Glordinfel said, likewise looking up at the fortress, head tilted back, his golden hair dancing upon the wind. Their small group stood on a ridge just northwest of the fortress, Mount Doom looming to their right. “Morgoth brooded in Angband, and now his Lieutenant broods in Barad-dûr.”

“He cowers, most likely,” Prince Anárion snorted. “Just as his Master hid from the fury of your King Fingolfin knocking on his door.”

“Biding time does not mean one cowers in fear,” Elrond said. Looked down at the encampment and made mental note of the coming and going of Alliance troops. His sharp features had hollowed a little as the stress of the past months of war took their toll, though his bearing remained upright and lithe. He looked like a hale Man in his forties, prime in the span of a mortal life. “Sauron likely attempts to lull us to complacency, then will strike with a viciousness not seen in his machinations for a millenia.”

“He likely means for us to run out our supply and strength.” Erestor nodded at the encirclement of mountains to the north and west, just visible in the greasy light that passed for Mordor’s midday. “There is naught but rock and stone between here and the mountains, so that we must haul in both food and feed. Ithilor and his ilk have been able to clear some of the springs, but most remain fetid and beyond redemption. The orcs threw their dead into them so that the Alliance would thirst.”

The Elves sighed collectively at that, for out of all elements, they found water the most beautiful and fair. To profane a well or spring was itself an act beyond redemption.

“What figure you, Master Erestor?” Prince Anárion asked. Ran a hand through his shoulder-length hair, which clotted with oil and dust. The baths of their first camp were a memory many months past. The Men had begun to smell of sweat and dirt, not from lack of care, but of resources. Anárion had tried to mask this with a dab of wax perfume that smelled of sugared citron, but he still smelled earthy and care-worn next to the Elves. “Are the springs enough to keep man and beast watered, or do we need to plan on trundling in supplies from beyond the fence of mountains?”

“Watered enough for now, but not well.” Erestor quirked a grim smile to mark the pun. “Enough to keep thirst at bay, but anything else beyond drinking will need to be carefully quantified.”

“I was afraid that would be the outcome.” Anárion snorted. “Perhaps that series of watchtowers is in order. We can add cisterns to the plan of tower and wall at each.”

“Better to end this here, and forever,” Thranduil said, still looking up at the Tower. Not a light from within. “If we ever bear retreat we will leave Sauron with improved watchtowers and water supply. What foul creatures that would haunt there is of concern. They would be fortified as well as our kindred might.”

“You count me among your kindred. The heart warms.” Anárion chuckled and cuffed Thranduil fondly upon the arm. The mail guard of his glove clanged against Thranduil’s rerebrace. “And in spite of the smear of lemon and sage that I must wear. You still smell of cinnamon spice and nary a hair out of place.”

“I do count my friends among my kindred,” Thranduil said softly. “I have none now left of my own.”

There was no reply to a grief as deep as that, but Elrond reached out a hand and surreptitiously took one of Thranduil’s for a moment. Flanking his other side, Glorfindel placed a hand on the small of his back, and kept it there. All of the Elves knew of such grief; Anárion, though separated from them, had a wife and children. His father and brother lived yet, were in the valley below.

A long silence unfurled, in which the wind hissed or lulled, smelled of sulphur and the sweet stink of horse dung. A faint hail came from below, and Anárion made leave. Erestor followed him, talk of cisterns resurfacing as they trod down the cinder hill.

“Chancing the takeover of watchtower and station is a choice we must make,” Elrond said, looking to Thranduil, who at last dropped his vigil and met his gaze. “Anárion is correct. We must find ways to supply the Alliance. For good or for ill, Sauron has shut himself and his mightiest warriors inside Barad-dûr, and for now we must remain.”

“Bide,” Tharanduil said, biting the word as though it were a bitter fruit.

“Yes. Bide. No entreaty or missive has brought the Dark Lord forth, so for now, we must tarry. All our combined might cannot draw him out, nor can any craft or cunning. The fastness of Barad-dûr is undeniable. There, Sauron has the upper hand.” Elrond nodded up at the jagged fortress. “Yet, hope remains. If he fears an Alliance of Men and Elves and Dwarves then perhaps Sauron himself can be unmade.”

“Celeborn comes nigh,” Glorfindel said, noticing the tall Sinda, who was making his way up the cinder hill in his silver armor, a hand on the haft of his war axe.

Thranduil’s own hung from a harness on his back. Though a traditional weapon among the Sindar, he preferred the twin, short-bladed swords at his hips, and used the axe only in the closest of quarters. He schooled his expression into one of careful neutrality; Oropher had disliked the silver-haired Sinda lord for his marriage to Galadriel, who was counted among the Noldor in spite of her one-quarter blood. Thranduil himself felt neither fondness nor malice, though Celeborn had an unnerving habit of talking past him when they spoke. He could not take offense at this, however, for it seemed a habit Celeborn had with everyone, not just Thranduil himself. The man was both shy and direct, wise in his counsels.

“Lord Elrond,” Celeborn said, returning their hails with a quick swipe of his palm through the air. He met Thranduil’s eyes briefly, stalled to bow in greeting, and resumed his dogged climb.

Thranduil’s smoldering temper thinned for a moment; though he did not count Celeborn as friend, the awkwardness of the tall, lordly man was one that he found oddly endearing.

“Lord Elrond,” Celeborn said again, as if finding a lost train of thought. “Gil-galad calls counsel in regards to the watchtower proposals as put forth by Elendil. The Noldorin quarrymen have volunteered their services, as have the Dwarves—” Here he paused, mouth twitching in distaste. “I gather that some would enjoy putting aside the title of soldier, for a time, and retake up the hammers and chisels of masonry.”

“Who would not like to put aside the title of soldier?” Elrond said, stretching. He winced and rotated his right shoulder tenderly, for he had taken a hard blow in the last advance up the fell Road. “I wish I had more than Lord and Herald to offer. They are empty words in a place of such darkness.”

“You are a healer,” Glorfindel said, his grey eyes soft.

“Yes, but not a physician,” Elrond said, descending to join Celeborn before the other man had to clear the summit. “My skill in healing may find use before the end of this siege, for I fear that we have a long span of years before us. However, until then, I am naught but an advisor. Glorfindel, Thranduil—I will tend to this matter and bring word to your camps.”

“Does Gil-galad need us as well?” Glorfindel called to Celeborn, and slid his arm about Thranduil’s waist.

“Nay. Not at this time. Neither have Amroth nor Nordhred been called. This is a quorum only. Full council will come tomorrow, unless the doors of Barad-dûr spring open.”

“Unlikely, both alas and in good fortune. Gentlemen, until tonight,” Elrond said, nodding farewell. Cast a glance over his shoulder as he and Celeborn descended the hill and gave them both an exaggerated expression of dismay. Glorfindel chuckled and raised his eyebrows once in commiseration. The meeting was likely to be tedious.

Thranduil did not smile but resumed watching the Tower. Glorfindel’s arm about him felt good; Thólred had taken the slice of an orc’s pick across his back and had lain in the physician’s tent for two weeks, letting the flesh knit. There had been a dire few hours, when it was uncertain if the man would lose the loss of his legs, so close had the slash come to the interior of his spine. Blood loss was another matter; his entire face had drained white, even to the gums when he gave Thranduil a weak smile. Sure that his friend was lost, Thranduil had turned and gone back into the fray, fighting with a dispassionate, blank-faced stare that was more unsettling than any rage or snarl. Glorfindel himself had approached Thranduil during an impasse in the battle, told him that Thólred lived. Had not left his side since, save for when duty or decorum took him.

Grief doubled and trebled. Oropher’s death, the loss of three quarters of his people, the violation of body and corpse, the near-death of his chosen brother. Thranduil existed in a state of perpetual detachment, staring off into distance and seeing naught, or focusing so vigilantly that all else fell away.

He was dimly grateful that Amroth, his counterpart in Lórien, had not seen what had become of his father Amdír. Two companies of Men had been dispatched to take down the bodies of the fallen Elves, and a company of Elves had gone with them to take down the fallen Men. They buried their dead together in a hollow within the valley, grey shale made to slide down over them, a cairn of volcanic rock covering the surface to create a tomb. The burial was so complete that nothing would be able to unmake it, save for the slow wear of erosion, and by then the bodies themselves would have long gone to dust.

But the memory remained sharp in his mind. That was enough.

He was aware that Glorfindel was speaking to him, and tore his gaze away from Barad-dûr, looked to the shining face of his friend.

“...gave me a dozen, if you want to see them. They got the idea from the Men of Arnor and Gondor; apparently it is much beloved among the children there.”

“I am sorry?” Thranduil asked, feeling small.

“What the Noldorin smiths gave me, from the last forge we had in the wash. They call them marbles, like the stone. Only they are made of glass.” Glorfindel reached under the hem of his green cloak and brought forth a small velvet pouch with a drawstring knotted. “There is volcanic sand enough here to melt down, refine and make pure. They added some minerals to make colors. Here. Hold out your hands. Paired, like a bowl.”

Thranduil did as he was told, unsure what Glorfindel was describing. He had been far away in his mind when the Vanya had spoken.

The spheres of glass tumbled like jewels into his gloved hands, and Thranduil flinched at the rattle. Red as ruby, green like peridot, blue as spinel, or pale as opal. One, orange as a topaz, about the size of a quail’s egg. He blinked at the rare glitter of beauty in his palms. Looked up to Glorfindel in surprise.

“Stunning. What does one do with them?”

“According to Anárion, slip on them when one’s children forget them in the middle of the floor,” Glorfindel said. “In truth, they are part of a game the children play. Draw a circle and roll them at each other using the slightly larger marble, try to knock them out of the circle by using geometry and dimension. It is similar to the game of percóron, that the Nandor love.”

“Toys in the middle of war,” Thranduil said, softly and to himself. “Foolish.”

“An act of defiance,” Glorfindel said, his voice gentle. Not offended in the least. He opened the pouch and helped Thranduil pour them back inside. “The smiths are weary of repairing and sharpening blades; to make art in a place of privation is to reclaim some of what we are, before we forget who we are entirely. Not unlike bringing a harp onto the slag slopes of Thangorodrim.”

This was a reference that Thranduil knew he was supposed to understand, but his memory had a habit of flagging and falling off on tangent lately. No sleep, no joy, no resolution. He could not keep a thought on the correct course, only react, eat mechanically, drink when thirsty, respond when spoken to. All thought of happiness or plans for the future had evaporated. He only existed in the moment. Calenlí stayed with him in his tent at night, returning from her work in the physician’s tents during the day, or else sharpening weapons at the smithy’s wheel. She caressed him but made no move toward lovemaking. He lay with his head cushioned against her bare breasts. Dimly aware that he had planned to marry her if they ever returned to Eryn Galen.

He still would, if they returned.

“Let us walk,” Glorfindel was saying, the pouch of marbles again tied to his belt. The Vanya was not a frivolous man. Thranduil sensed that he had merely been trying to draw him out of the ramparts of his thoughts. He followed his friend, not meekly, but as one exhausted beyond measure and seeking home.

He glanced down at Elrond and Celeborn, now entering the edges of the camp. He watched them a moment, headed through the throng of people and tents, the camps haphazard due to the terrain. Horses could not be corralled and people could not sleep nor work where volcanic shards cut or ash billowed underfoot. They had to seek out hardpan playa or else make do with the crush of cinder. Hellscape, Anárion had called it. Like a circle of the Underworld, according to Mannish myth.

“I understand them, now,” Thranduil said abruptly, surprising even himself.

“Whom?”

“Elrond. Celeborn. During the fall of Eregion.” Thranduil kept walking, the slow, measured pace of two Elf lords in contemplation. Their kind could sleep thus, walking, dreaming as the ground passed by underfoot. He would not sleep now, but he craved its embrace. “Their friend and kinsman. That Celebrimbor.”

“Yes,” Glorfindel said, sighing. Caught Thranduil’s meaning exactly, as if it had also been on his mind. “I arrived in Middle-earth in time to witness that… desecration.”

“I looked upon him in pity then,” Thranduil said, remembering what had become of the Noldorin lord, after his capture and torment in the halls of the Mírdain at Ost-in-Edhel. “I felt pity, but not grief. My thought then was that he brought his ruin upon himself, to trust ‘Annatar’ so, against the counsel of his kinsmen. Proven double, when Annatar became Sauron. Now that I see the same in my father, I wish that that fate had never come to Celebrimbor. Everything he did, he meant kindly, with thoughts of preserving his people against death and darkness. Instead, he let both in by the front gate.”

He stumbled as a sharp rock turned loosely underfoot, caught himself with only a small hitch in his stride. Glorfindel reached out to steady him, kept his arm about Tharanduil’s waist as they walked.

He thought of Celebrimbor’s lifeless body, naked, riven through with pike that had pierced out from his right shoulder. Like Oropher, his long, black hair had been used to tie his head upward, so that all could see his face. His expression had been terrible to behold, brows knotted, mouth squared with pain. The black arrows that had pierced his corpse had likely been fired into him after death, for they bled not. That was a small mercy, though the rest of his much-marred body told of torture enough. He had been burned with etching fluid, gelded, fingers broken, starved and beaten and likely worse, for his wrists had been bruised and abraded by cord and shackle. This spoke of struggle, held cruelly still while marred. His hands had been left to hang at his sides, and as the pike swayed they turned, palms outward, as if beseeching for forgiveness of his folly.

His hazel eyes had fallen half open, the blood against his left temple marking what had killed him, for his skull had been riven by hammer or pick. Sauron had used whatever Celebrimbor had kept in his jeweler’s studio to try and draw information out of him. Thranduil knew not what information Sauron sought, but it had to be weighty to call for such cruelty.

Or perhaps not. Sauron had been known as Morgoth’s master torturer, and likely inflicted pain for the pleasure of it.

And though Thranduil had stood in horror among Amroth’s eastern-flank soldiers with a small contingency of his own, he felt the slightest note of disdain at Celebrimbor’s death. Well-meaning fool. Generous to a fault and eager to dazzle his kindred. Proud, to the ruin of all. Typical, for a Noldo.

The Men of Gondor spoke it best in one of their ancient idioms: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

And now his father was guilty of the same. In attempting to fortify the Sylvan Elves against the chaos of the Noldor, he and Amdír had led the majority of their people unto death.

He glanced up at Glorfindel, who walked with a serene countenance and read the contours of the land ahead of them with a practiced eye. The golden-haired lord was half Noldo himself, though he favored his mother’s Vanya lineage. Fawn-colored brows, golden skinned, sharp-jawed with a delicate mouth, the upper lip more plush than the lower. His skin glimmered with a radiance visible even in strong sunlight. Even now, in the midst of such grief, there was peace and joy within his eyes.

As if sensing scrutiny, Glorfindel returned Thranduil’s gaze, pausing on the down-slope of the hill.

Thranduil did not startle, nor avert his eyes. Only took in the beauty of the man before him, knew that he himself looked haggard and worn by comparison.

Glorfindel reached up to cup his face, took a breath to say something, thought better of it. He smiled, leading Thranduil down the hill and back toward camp.

“What was it like.” Thranduil asked, as they finally found even ground and looped back toward the pearl-white tents of the Elvenkind.

“What was what like? Gondolin?” The Vanya’s melodious voice almost caressed the name of his fallen city.

“No. Dying.”

It was Glorfindel’s turn to stop short, and he looked to Thranduil with an expression caught in confusion. He thought a moment, gazing at the lidded sky, then smiled sadly. Shrugged. “Our kind doesn’t ask that question. Or if they would, they keep it to themselves.”

This was not a rebuke, though he sobered and took both of Thranduil’s hands in his own. “Why do you now ask?”

Thranduil only stared back at him, felt as if he were figuratively drowning under the gentle scrutiny of his friend.

“Are you asking for your father?”

Thranduil’s throat clotted shut on the answer.

“Are you asking for you?”

He dropped his eyes, and Glorfindel drew him into an embrace, cupping the back of his head as if he were a boy. Thranduil buried his head in Glorfindel’s shoulder and sobbed, wracking breaths that made no sound. In truth, he knew not why he asked, only that it was rude and gauche and far too intimate a question for the length of time that they had known each other. That the Vanya held him in comfort made him feel worse, and yet he could not let go.

They stood that way a long while, until the smell of cooking fires warmed and comforts of hearth and bread and salted meat rose on the wind. There was even the scent of baked apples. Thranduil had no appetite and felt wrung, drained of the energy to make it back to camp, only a half mile distant.

“Dying was painful. I can confirm that and will neither embellish nor reassure. However, in truth, the battle and fall of my city was worse than dying,” Glorfindel said. His musical voice was calm, as if recitation, though it trembled at interval as he continued to speak. “Watching those whom I loved being murdered was worse. My Roswen, whom I loved above all else and would have wed a summer thence. My brother-by-heart Ecthelion, and my friend Rōka who had survived Angband, only to perish at the North Gate. My cousin, King Turgon, his Tower falling from beneath his feet.

“Those hurt far worse than my own death. There are not words enough to express how gutted I felt that day. Not only for the loss of those whom I loved and called friend, but children, entire families—lost to sword and mace and flame. The thought of losing more of my kindred was the only thing that drove me to keep living, and I took up the rear guard as Idril led what was left of our people out of the valley.

“I was in terror. That is never mentioned in songs. I was deeply afraid as I fought the last Balrog upon Cirith Thoronath. My legs were shaking and though I remained focused on trying to slay that creature of fire, my heart pounded so that my chest ached. My mouth was as dry as the air of Mordor. I did not want to die.

“But I did. Though my hand was seared with the Balrog’s blood, I thought that I would live as it tumbled into the chasm below. I flung myself backward against the horn of rock on which we had fought, but we had been dressed for festival, rather than onslaught. I had only the barest armor, my dagger, my sword. I wore worked boots of soft blue leather, rather than a soldier’s sabatons. I had not time enough to braid my hair back as I should. I still wore golden flower beads in my hair, and I heard them clacking upon each other during our flight.

“The Balrog grabbed my hair as it fell, and I fell with it. In that moment, I was not afraid, only shocked to silence. I was undone at the sudden pain in my head and the weightlessness as we fell through the cold mountain air. It had been midsummer in Tumladen, but winter clung to the peaks. I had nary a moment to understand what had befallen me. Then I struck a ledge, shouted, fell again. The pain swallowed everything, and as I tumbled I lost sight of the world.

“But I had not died. Not yet. I woke on a jut of rock and heard the most sorrowful wailing. I thought it was the crying of my people, but they were far above me and the voice was alone.

“Pain was my world then. It cradled me as I had been cradled as a child. The worst of it reverberated in my hips and lungs, which felt lacerated beyond repair. They likely were. My ribs were burst and broken. My mouth was full of blood. I could see my hands trembling and clutching at the falling night, the first stars wet in the sky above. They were sometimes obscured by the smoke of our burning city. I came to understand that the wail was coming from my own throat. This awful, rent cry that barely sounded like my voice at all.

“Then it felt as if warm water trickled through me, and the pain began to ebb. I felt such sorrow for the broken body in which I dwelled. I felt loath to leave it but knew I must. All I could think of, as I left it behind was that it had once been cuddled and kissed by my mother, held high in play by my father, jostled by friends, and caressed by the hands of my beloved. And there it was, ruined beyond repair in the darkness of the Echoriad. I felt it would be so lonely, but I left it behind. Before me was the gentle light of Mandos, calling me home. I went. It was only later, reembodied in Aman, when I heard that the Eagle Lord Thorondor lifted that poor body up and took it to my people. For that I was glad, though it too now lies beneath the sea, along with the graves of Fingolfin and countless deserving others.”

Thranduil, lulled by the sound of Glorfindel’s soft voice, stood half asleep in the embrace of the other lord.

“Funerary rites are for the living, I assure you,” Glorfindel said, after a long pause. “By the time I left my body, I was ready to part with it. Time both stretched and contracted in that instant. Between feeling regret and being eager to go I am sure only a moment passed, yet it felt as long as the span of yéni.

“I am certain that similar held true for Oropher. He struggled against dying, but I am sure in that long-instant he beheld you and his people, felt his ruin, and was ready to go. I felt no sorrow when I left my body behind, though I mourned yet for my people.

“I left Aman before many of them reembodied, and there is no certainty that they ever will. Still, for all my sojourn here, I hope to return one day to find my Ecthelion made whole, and my Roswen at her potter’s wheel, and my Rōka no longer scarred from his time in Angband.”

A long silence stretched, the nightwind of Mordor picking up, falling again. Thranduil opened his eyes and counted the hearthfires kindling. “Why did you return?”

“How can I sit in idyll in Aman when there is need here, Thranduil? When the Istari came to aid Middle-earth, I knew that I must go, also. It was a calling. And for all that it cost me, I am glad I came.”

Thranduil watched the evening fires shine in the dark like mortal stars. After a time, he straightened, not shamed by Glorfindel’s devotion to the lands of Middle-earth but knowing that it was just and correct. He, too, must exhibit the same. There had been love still in the Vanya’s soft voice when he spoke of his King Turgon. He had forgiven the Noldo’s folly, staying too long in one place and ignoring the behest of the Valar to seek shelter elsewhere.

If there was redemption for Turgon, there could be for him and his people, as well. Hide, delve, fortify, but they must never cower to the point of stagnation. Their home in Emyn Duir would suffice for now, though if Sauron triumphed and spilled northward to darken Eryn Galen—the high limestone hills to the northeast were nearer the Taur Sîr, had natural karst caverns. There could be shelter there enough, though they would need shaping and refinement, vent and air circulation. Perhaps the Noldor quarry masters, or perhaps the Dwarves, uncouth as they were, could be persuaded to come and delve in exchange for gem and freshwater pearl.

He lifted his head and began to plan, flicking through mental list and note, thinking of a future without Sauron. Thólred, his herald keeping the western roads open to Imladris. Calenlí, with her knowledge of herb and blade, heavy with his child. They would have allyship with Prince Anárion to the south. There were the new Mannish settlements to the east with whom he could exchange aid.

Glorfindel, sensing his kindling spirit, stepped away at last and began walking back to camp alongside him.

“I need to see to Thólred,”Thranduil said, again speaking aloud to himself, for he needed sleep dearly.

“Of course. Do you want company, or attend alone?”

“You need not part, unless you have errand of your own.”

“Friend Thranduil, you are my errand.” Glorfindel said, and again placed his soothing hand upon his shoulder. “In truth, Elrond asked that I stay by your side at need. He would do so himself, save for that he must attend the High King’s counsel. Fortunate, then, that we are of a kind, and companionship has grown from the seed of duty.”

Thranduil frowned, drawing nigh the edges of camp. “I would not take you from your own concerns.”

“Aside from commanding, I have none, and in a time of biding there is naught to do but prepare and plan. And one cannot do that at all hours of the day, else we worry ourselves to shreds. No. I am happy to come with you, and fortunate in friendship thereby.”

They threaded their way to the physician’s tent, surprised that Thólred had been released and sent to his own bed. Thranduil bee-lined toward his quarters, for Thólred had been keeping his bed in a small annex there, and found his friend propped up on saddle and pillow, with young Findalor at his feet. Thranduil’s weapon’s cache, secretary desk, and trunk of clothes filled the small tent, but gave it a comfortable, cluttered air.

The youth scrambled to bow to Thranduil and Glorfindel as they entered, hit his head on one of the pole beams, and sat down hard with an embarrassed wince. Thranduil couldn’t help but smile and patted the young man’s back twice to show that no such decorum was needed, sat down cross-legged next to his herald.

“Off gallivanting?” Thólred asked, trying his best to drink hot tea from a metal cup. Hissed when he burned his lip and set it down again. The warm smell of honey uncurled with the steam from the tea. He remained pale, his hair gathered into a single tail, but there were soft roses at last blooming in his cheeks. “As you see, I have remained behind to hold down this bed.”

“A wily foe,” Thranduil said, the faintest thread of humor pulled through his voice. “How did you manage?”

“By behaving like a sack of oats.” Thólred smiled but searched Thranduil’s face with concern, took the hand of his king, and squeezed twice. “There is hot tea enough, but only two cups for the four of us, if you do not mind sharing. I am afraid I am a poor host.”

“Better reception than we have received so far,” Glorfindel likewise stretched out on the hard ground, idly clearing a circle in the hardpan shale at his hip. “I feel that Sauron will not be forthcoming with wine and sweetmeats.”

“The state of his pear orchards is shameful,” Findalor quipped in bold essay, and was rewarded by the soft laughter of king, commander, and herald. The young man smiled to himself, blush faint across his nose.

“I am not too proud to share,” Thranduil said.

Thólred barked a laugh, grinned knowingly.

Thranduil smirked. “Thank you for hosting this soirée.”

Glorfindel took out the small pouch of marbles as the four men spoke, taking turn at jest or consolation, keeping the conversation as light as they may after so much darkness. Findalor, curious about the jewel-colored glass, turned up the lantern light and found a letter-opener to draw a circle in the hard dust. Mastered the game quickly and introduced wager as he and the golden Vanya competed with the glittering toys.

At one point in the evening, Thranduil caught Glorfindel’s eye and mouthed “all my thanks,” across the short distance.

Glorfindel smiled and bowed his head, his grey eyes bright with joy.