[Amanaduial the archer]

Seated to the side of the camp, his back against one of the scraggy trees around the borders of the Dunedain’s camp, Faerim shook his head like a dog as the snow began to settle on his long, light hair. Looking up, the boy squinted against the snow to watch it falling, silent and strange, from the heavens. Something about the soundless passage that the snowflakes took from the velvet sky seemed to hush the camp, and the slow, dizzying dance that they performed as they fell from those ethereal heights made the boy shiver as he watched them, not only from the cold. Sighing peacefully, he finally drew his eyes and turned back to other matters, matters of the real world. He removed his long coat and then, despite the cold, removed his leather jerkin. The sleeves were rolled up, as usual, but the colour of the shirt was far from the snowy white it had once been: fighting in the woods alongside the elves, and again in the tunnels, had seen to that. But it was only when he had removed his long coat and jerkin that he saw the true measure of the latter fight: the material around his right forearm and shoulder was crimson with blood, a jagged rip slashed through the cloth. A souvenir given to him by the spider. Frowning – he had not realised the cut was so deep – he gently touched the wound with his fingertips, and grimaced a little, drawing back from the wound as it stung. Undoing a few of the top buttons of his shirt down to about his mid torso, he pulled it over so that his shoulder was revealed, again clenching his teeth as he peeled the cloth back from the wound: it had had some time to fester there and the dry blood had effectively stuck shirt and skin together.

Below the spider-wound was a smaller scar, a clean, straight line just below his elbow. It was partially healed, yet still burned with muted fire: a wound from a sword blade, sustained in the seemingly doomed rescue of the elves. His first battle…It seemed a million years ago now; he had become used to using a sword, no longer against a training opponent but against a real flesh and blood enemy. It had been an eye-opener and no mistake! He almost smiled at the memory. Faerim had changed that day, for better or for worse: he had learnt to fight a genuine adversary, but he had also learnt something about those in authority. Something about his heroes not being as pure as he had always suspected – a lesson springing from the moment when Hirvegil had blackmailed him with treason. That was not a lesson that Faerim could smile at as he looked back at it… Both lessons had hurt, but while the former had been physical pain, it was the latter that had been the harder to take. As the snowflakes fell on his newer wound, raw and now bleeding where the shirt had been pulled from its cloying grip, the touch of the ice on his skin and open flesh made the boy shiver again, but the soft, tingling paths that the wintry fingers stroked across his skin were not unpleasant: as the sound of the women from the camp, as the cracking of the campfires, as the light breeze that ruffled the strands of light hair across his cheeks, the sensation of the snowflakes on his skin only served to remind the boy that he was alive.

Unlike so many others…

The light crunch of snow in front of him made Faerim look up, but slowly: he had guessed who it was before he saw Erenor’s fair, pale face beneath the hood of her cloak. He smiled tiredly. “The snow stops you from moving quite so silently, Lady Erenor.”

Wordlessly, the elf took a few more steps towards him, her feet this time almost silent on the snow. Looking up again, she returned his smile. “I thought I should have given you some warning: all of us have had more than enough nasty surprises today.” It was one of the first times that Faerim had heard her refer to herself and the elves along with the Dunedain together: maybe battle had advantages, however few. It was in battle that he had discovered more about Erenor, after all. It was to battle he had intended to pledge his young life, determined to save the elves, the Dunedain, his family… Not that it had done much good in the end. As he shifted against the tree, a few dry scraps of bark and dirt fell from it, and he flinched slightly, caught off-guard, as something fell into the wound on his arm. Erenor indicated it with her head. “Looks like she gave you something to remember her by?”

Faerim looked up, puzzled. “’She’?

“The spider.”

Faerim nodded but his expression darkened even under the shadows that the tree cast across his young face. “Why give her – it – that creature a gender?” he replied, his voice soft but deeply angry. “I would not give any such thing a sex; would not give any enemy such as that anything to humanise it.” He hesitated for a moment, looking away, then added bitterly, “Today has been rather a lesson in mortality for me.”

The elf did not reply immediately and in the silence that followed Faerim’s comment, only silence moved amid the snowflakes. After a moment, Erenor responded. “I am sorry about your brother, Faerim.” Her voice had a softer tone to it this time, less of the aloofness usually present audible in her voice. Even when she had spoken to Faerim before, this voice was not one he had often heard: it was the tone she had used when she explained the nature of elven souls to him after the deaths of Rosgollo and Gaeredhel. It was a reminder that she understood, that elves too could feel the pain of death, even if they themselves were immortal. Faerim nodded his thanks silently, then opened the satchel that lay beside him, a flat bag made of sturdy cloth, and from it produced two items that the elf immediately recognised: the dagger and belt of the two elven guards. Erenor wordlessly stepped forward and sat beside Faerim, pushing her hood back and taking the dagger in her hands, fiddling with the hilt and the leather binding the handle before the tang.

“It is hard to lose someone you love.”

The words were a prompt and Faerim immediately replied. “Hard?” he almost spat the word, his head snapping around to face Erenor, before he caught himself before the elven lady and turned away again, his voice softening. “Yes…yes. I don’t know…oh, my Lady Erenor, I always imagined that I would die before Brander, that I would die in battle long before his time was up – it seemed to make sense! That I would be able to take care of him for as long as I lived, and that he would become part of Fornost as much as any other, that his sight would never be a disadvantage – but…but that I would be able to protect him.” He shook his head, blinking rapidly a few times. “Not this. Not a death at sixteen, alone in a labyrinth of caves far away from our home.”

He heard Faerim sigh softly, before she walked slowly around to right side and gently took hold of his arm, inspecting the wound but remaining quiet for him to speak. “I cannot forgive myself, Lady. I cannot forgive myself for not reaching him in time. I came to my brother’s side only when it was already too late, as he…as he died…” he choked and turned his head to look straight forward, clenching his teeth and raising his chin defiantly, determined not to cry. The elf regarded him in profile, her head slightly on one side, inquisitive, but Faerim did not look at her. Brander had died mere seconds after Faerim reached him as they came back to the caves, a sword wound through his slim chest finishing him off cleanly, as painlessly as could be expected in battle. But it was not painless: it was a death in battle in a strange place, a death which was never meant for the blind boy. Faerim swallowed, closing his eyes as he remembered his brother’s face as he held him, those brilliant green eyes sparkling light the brilliant gems that must have once been hewn from those blasted mines, a faint smile on his face as Faerim brushed his blonde hair, hair the same colour as his own, from his brother’s face, pushed it behind his ears and told him that it would be alright….

Faerim almost yelped as his arm suddenly froze, and pulled away from Erenor. But the elf held fast, a slightly wicked grin on her face as she held the makeshift ice pack to his wound. His arm spasmed slightly and he clenched the fist, but Erenor shook her head. “Don’t. You’ll only bleed more.”

“It’s bloody freezing,” he replied simply through gritted teeth. The Noldorian elf smiled sweetly, her pale face framed by dark hair on which the snowflakes nestled like a snow crown: a smile for which Faerim could have forgiven her anything. He glared at her, then his lips opened to flash her a chilly smile as he laughed. He raised an eyebrow and pointed at her with the forefinger of his left hand. “You are evil, Lady Erenor.”

The elf laughed too, shrugging lightly and turning her eyes to his arm once more. She removed the ice pack and he was almost surprised to see his blood sparkling on the ice, seeming to become part of it. Flinging it away, she picked up a new lot and Faerim tensed his arm as she packed it on. They sat in silence for a moment, the Dunedain youth and an elf generations older than himself, and rather than break the silence, he simply watched her, marvelling at how similar the elves were to Men, and yet how much stranger and different she was, knelt beside him, helping him although she did not need to. Otherworldly.

Sighing, the boy looked away, not wanting to be caught staring at Erenor so, and looked instead up to the stars above. He had been told once that when Men died, their souls would take to the skies, to keep their silent vigil from above, the tendrils of distant light they stroked the air with their attempt to reach the world they had left. But as he felt the ice, heard Erenor’s soft breathing, watched the softly winking stars, and recalled his brother’s joyous, merry face now turned to stone, he was not sure he could believe such a legend. His brother, like so many others in the tunnels, was gone, but to the stars? He tried to imagine it, Brander’s bright, unseeing eyes replacing the sparks of merry light in the distance…But in his heart, the boy was left, alone and silent, staring up to the silent snowflakes that fell from the stars.