I wrote this as a follow-up to the brief little snippet I wrote about Lyngard’s conversation with Candaith. I really dropped myself in it with that one. I had to explain how this lady of Rohan got involved in the wars of Middle Earth. Here’s what I came up with:
The night was dark and still. The waning moon, near-spent, would not appear for some hours yet. A figure glided noiselessly through the shadows of the forest. A solitary twig snapped underfoot and a squirrel, startled, slipped around a tree-trunk high above, eyes wide and ears erect. Its black gimlet eyes stared after the tall form as it blended into the darkness and was lost to sight.
“Hah! The forester’s daughter out on her own again this late,” the little creature thought. It paused as its sensitive nose caught a whiff of the contents of the walker’s pack. “Aha. About time, too.” It gazed after her a moment longer, blinked and skittered away.
A little further on, where the trees were at their thickest and there was a jumbled mound of great, mossy boulders, the forester’s daughter, whose name was Lyngard, halted for a moment in an inky patch of shadow. Her hooded head turned this way and that in the blackness. There was a faint smell of smoke. She advanced warily, then bent double and slipped through a gap between two great knuckles of rock. Even to a close observer it would have looked as if she had vanished from the face of the earth.
At the base of the rocks, time, water and tree roots had fashioned a low cave with curved earthen walls. A small fire flickered in the centre of this secret space, before which lay a tall man. He started momentarily as Lyngard entered, his hand diving under a rough woolen blanket. A moment later, he relaxed and half-smiled.
“It was dangerous of you to come this way again so soon, Lyngard,” he said. His voice had the lilting quality that at once confirmed that he was an elf.
“Edronil, you know I had to,” the human girl replied. She knelt beside him and took his hands in hers. “I had to look on you one more time before you left.”
“You shouldn’t have!” the elf said fiercely, even as he kissed Lyngard’s hand fervently. “This tortures us both.”
“I cannot help the way I feel about you,” Lyngard told him, her blue-green eyes boring into his.
“Nor I,” he confessed, meeting her gaze with equal fervour. “But this cannot be. Well do I know that you could spend the rest of your life by my side. But I cannot spend the rest of my life with you.”
“It’s so unfair.”
“It is. If I were a free elf, I could choose a mortal life with you…”
“Oh Edronil,” Lyngard blushed.
“…but I am not free,” he added bitterly. “My lord the Woodland King commands, and I must continue to serve in this War that has no end in sight, save our final defeat.” Lyngard dismally dropped her gaze downwards. The elf in his turn gazed sightlessly into space. “Our only hope,” he mused, “would be if you dedicated the rest of your life to martial skills and joined us at the last in battle. At least then we might die together.”
Lyngard looked at Edronil, trembling slightly. “And that is exactly what I have decided to do,” she said determinedly, fixing him with such a gaze that even the Elf was taken aback.
“You cannot mean this!”
“Wherefore? What else is there for me?” For a moment Lyngard was silent, thinking back to that fearful day when she and Edronil had met. As ever, she had been spending the day scouring the woods for stout timbers to feed the ever-hungry ovens and forges of Edoras. At first she thought that the cries of battle were the young bucks of the garrison out training and she was eager to sneak up close for a peek. But then there came a blood-curdling yell, unmistakably a death-cry, in a voice so harsh and evil that it froze the marrow. Half-minded to turn and run, blind instinct urged Lyngard forward through the trees to a scene the young woman would never forget.
His back against a tree, the tall elf was beset by perhaps half a dozen orcs. One huge foe lay dead at his feet, but the rest pressed him, and he was already exhausted and bleeding from a score of deep wounds. Before she could stop herself the young woman let forth a terrified scream that in the close confines of that forest clearing seemed loud enough to split the very trees.
The orcs spun to face what they could only assume was a fresh attack. One grinned hungrily at Lyngard, but then the hideous gash of a smile twisted into an expression of shock and pain as an elven-sword ran him through. As he fell and the others turned back, the elven warrior summoned his last reserves and swung his twin blades in a blur of steel. The orcs fell away, wounded and dying. A couple of cowed survivors tried to flee, but the elf struck them down with a final mighty pair of strokes. In turn, utterly exhausted, the elven champion collapsed at the base of his tree.
In the sudden silence, Lyngard remained rooted to the spot with shock. She stared at the tumbled bodies of the orcs in terror. She had no way of knowing if there were any more orcs in the forest, how close they were, and if they had heard the noises of battle too. And what of the elf? Was he alone here, or were there more of his kind? And alone or in company, what was an elf doing here in Rohan anyway? She looked long at the stricken elf, uncertainly.
There could be no question of seeking help. Once Edoras got word of an elf captured within the borders, it was plain that he would be taken away, probably tortured and certainly killed as a spy. As it transpired, that was precisely what Edronil was. She dragged him to shelter, made him warm and did what she could for his wounds. His elven-hardiness protected him somewhat from the venom on the orcs’ weapons. Though she loathed to touch them, she hauled the orcs’ corpses into the thicker bushes and left them to the forest beasts to dispose of. She stayed by the elf’s side most of the time for several days after, and he in his turn, for want of anything better to do as he healed, told her who he was and of the war in the North, and of his mission. He had been sent to scout out the incursions of the Witch-King’s orcs into the fields of Rohan, and to assess, in greatest secrecy, the strength of Rohan’s forces and their movements, and what threat they might pose to the elves of Edronil’s homeland. Neither the Mirkwood elves nor the riders of Rohan saw fit to trust one another in those uncertain times, and that of course was precisely what the Witch-King wanted.
Exactly when it was, amid seclusion and the sharing of secrets, that they both discovered that they loved one another, neither of them could be sure. But that they loved each other there was no doubt, though the realisation was tinged with sadness. They knew that Edronil was excluded from the haunts of Men, or at least the Men of Rohan, because he was a mistrusted alien, and Lyngard in her turn was held apart from the elves by the bonds of her mortality.
“What else is there for me?” Lyngard repeated her question to the elf’s silence. “You’ve told me what is at stake. If we do not take arms against the Enemy, we will lose all!”
“Aye,” he said eventually. “I told you too many stories of our heroic and hopeless cause that you now wish to join it. I am sorry.” He squeezed her hand gently.
“No need for more sorrow yet,” Lyngard said. “You will leave at dawn?” Edronil nodded. “Then so will I, though in another direction.”
“You will not be persuaded to remain? There will be questions asked if you just disappear.”
“This will be nothing new. There have been disappearances in my village already. At least now I know the likely reason,” Lyngard said, meaning the orcs. The thought of it made her shudder. “At least if I choose this fate, the next time an orc crosses my path he will not find me weak and helpless.” Edronil nodded. “My family are already wondering why I am spending so much time alone in the woods with so little in the way of food or lumber to show for my wanderings. They will think I have run off with some fellow; it is not unheard of for a maid of Rohan to do this. It will almost be the truth, after all,” she smiled at Edronil. “And if I go now, leaving just enough of a trail that I can be followed for a day or so, you will have a much better chance to slip away undetected. I don’t want them to find you, Edronil! They mustn’t!” She clung to him, fiercely.
“Yes, your counsels are good,” Edronil agreed at last. He thought hard for a few moments. “You should head for Bree; there may be news there concerning the affairs of Men in this War. If you can, find the Rangers, they may be able to tell you more. They are a folk of secrecy and shadow, but I know they can be trusted.”
“Bree, yes,” Lyngard murmured, having only a vague idea of the way. “But in the meantime,” she smiled, kissing him, “we have tonight.”
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