A Crown of Green Leaves, Part 1 - for Ignoblebard (Haldir/Legolas, PG-13)

[eidolon-writes.livejournal.com]

Title: Crown of Green, Part 1
Author eidolon_writes
Written for: ignoblebard
Characters: Haldir/Legolas
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Characters and settings belong to J.R.R. Tolkien and his estate.
Author's notes: At end
Summary: An unexpected visitor arrives in Eryn Galen at Midwinter with more than just foul weather following on his heels.



“Only a foolish man would be abroad today.”

Edraith’s eyes narrowed to a gimlet squint and made a slow survey of the sky above and the frost-bound field below.

“Or a desperate one,” Legolas suggested, training on the dim shape traversing the waste.

“This will be a blizzard before the day is out, my lord, and no mistake.” Edraith’s tone was as much a warning as his words. “If we withdraw now, even the men on foot will make the hunting lodge before the worst of it arrives.”

The stranger persevered across the strath, the grey gash of the Anduin rippling behind him. He had appeared in the morning beneath a sullen sky with the wind already whipping at his heels. A premonition lit briefly on Legolas’ chest before fluttering in the pit of his stomach, a bone-deep sense of recognition bidding him against all good sense to hold. “And what of him?”

“Fools and desperate men are not my province; mine is your father’s men. And you, my lord.”

Legolas frowned. “Not often have I known you to leave the Forest Gate undefended.”

He meant to stall; Edraith no doubt knew it, and would not be so easily put off. He cast a damning glare at the hazy sun. “If the storm is as bad as the sky portends, the only things getting through it won’t be held off by a few bows and spears.”

The pronouncement carried the dark finality of a promise; the shiver burgeoning at the nape of Legolas’ neck had little to do with the chill. “Very well. Take the men on ahead.” He brushed his hand across the butt of his knife, the polished bone and whetted blade a solid assurance at his hip. His bow could be strung and drawn in a trice, and his aim rarely failed. “I will stay.”

“And will you tell your father his captain relieved the western guard and left his son with an interloper,” Edraith asked, a sardonic expression bending his features, “or will I?”

In the end, though, he begrudgingly retained his two finest shots and a mount for each, and sent the rest on to shelter, the wind gusting more relentlessly with each passing hour.

The snow came in earnest at midday. It fell inch over inch, laying new rime over old. The dogged man on the bleak and seamless landscape became a point on which Legolas could fix his bearings when the wind churned up snow enough to render earth indistinguishable from sky. The river soon vanished behind a fumy veil. The man’s form faded intermittently behind curtains of white, materializing each time slightly closer than before. Not once as the day wore on and the weather worsened did he stop or tarry, though the deepening drifts hindered his strides— strides that appeared unevenly labored—and for that display of obduracy, if nothing else, Legolas waited.

The waiting was tedious: the wind howled, mutinous and shrill, through barren branches; it whipped his cheeks with pellets of ice. The damp seeped through every layer, sinking through skin and taking root in his bones. Flakes gathered on his shoulders and settled into the creases of his cloak; he shook it off, only to have it return in an instant. The horses gave their rumps to the wind and hunkered together while white swaths spread across their backs.

The weak sun failed early, hounded into submission by growling clouds as the traveler drew near. The hitch in his gait had grown pronounced. His cloak was well-made yet careworn, his face concealed within its deep hood. A white pelt hung over his shoulders, pinioned by the strap of his quiver— a plain brown piece revealing nothing of its bearer or his origins. The ragged skin gave him a feral aspect, as did the bandage girdling his thigh tinted the color of rust by old blood. The form of a sword was visible under the cloak, but the man kept his gloved hands conspicuously in sight. He came within arrow’s flight of the eaves and then stopped: either he had ears sharp enough to discern the groan of bowstrings through the whistle of the wind— an Elf, then— or he simply had the sense to await admittance before venturing into the wood uninvited. One of the Dúnedain, perhaps. Snowflakes spiralled on the updrafts and danced around his wiry frame, the lightness of their flight a taunt to the beleaguered rising and falling of his chest. Whatever and whoever he was, he was exhausted.

“Who goes there?” The sharp report of Edraith’s command carried over the distance. “Show yourself.”

The stranger pushed back his hood, revealing a shock of pale hair and cervine features. Legolas drew in a sharp breath.

“Stand down!” Edraith barked. Bows lowered; the forest returned to stasis. “You are on the wrong side of the river, Galadhel.”

Legolas could not quite make out the muffled retort.

“Let’s go, lads,” Edraith summoned his marksmen and grinned with half his mouth. “This one has no need of our welcome, and he’s brought a storm to chase his tail.”

And so it was that Haldir of Lorien, rawboned and weary, limped through the Forest Gate just before the turning of the year.

The storm was the least of what he brought with him.

* * * *

“You are hurt.”

As a greeting, Legolas considered, it left much to be desired.

“I did not come by this”— Haldir’s hand brushed a leg of the pelt — “by happenstance.”

“You’ll ride pillion, then.” As an order, this, too, left much to be desired. “We are withdrawing to my father’s lodge before the blizzard hems us in.”

“I’m hardly in a position to refuse,” Haldir muttered, but the sag in his shoulders when his fate was pronounced spoke more loudly and less wry: relief. He settled in behind Legolas not with his accustomed grace, but with deliberation and care. Only in the arm slung casually around Legolas’ waist for balance, the thumb hitching in Legolas’ belt, could Legolas recognize any vestige of familiarity or ease.

“Where is your horse?” Legolas asked after Edraith and his men had gone out of earshot. “You could not have started out this journey on foot...?”

“Gone,” Haldir replied tersely.

“You are lucky you reached us when you did.”

“Yes,” Haldir answered. That, and nothing more.

The dull thump of hoofbeats grew louder on the well-packed path. “So, what news, sojourner?” Edraith dropped back and reined up his beside them, white breath venting from his horse’s nostrils. “This is not the time for northerly ventures. A needless risk; I’d thought you wiser.”

“Nothing good,” Haldir replied after a pause. “Yet nothing that will not keep ‘til morning. Forgive me, Edraith, but I’ve not the heart to speak of it now. You’ll have it from me when I give it to your lord and his boy.”

Legolas felt only the echo of gall from a jibe holding only the echo of Haldir’s usual humor.

Edraith studied him, then said only, “Very well.” He nudged his horse on and drew the last straggling men up with him, snapping the occasional order to move on and heed the pace until the column had passed out of sight.

Few could refuse Edraith an answer and have his refusal go unchallenged; Haldir was one. Young by Edraith’s reckoning— though nearly everyone was young by Edraith’s reckoning, who had been a seasoned man standing at the side of Aran Oropher— Haldir had earned his regard in no small part because he was not inclined to take what Edraith considered needless risks.’ The captain’s opprobrium must have stung.

The thunder became a low and loury rumble, lightning flashing in the brume. Haldir retreated into his hood and was silent. Legolas pressed on until the dense heart of the forest enveloped them, and the clustering pines defrayed the worst of the wind. As the miles passed, Haldir leaned against him more heavily. The encircling arm grew slack. Even then, it was a long time before he surrendered to his weariness and let his head rest on Legolas’ shoulder to sleep. Even in sleep his guard never fully fell; he jerked awake so sharply when Legolas halted at the lodge that Legolas himself startled. He dismounted swiftly, wincing when his feet hit the ground. Cold air rushed across Legolas’ back where Haldir’s body had warmed it.

Within the lodge, the din of happy chatter rose with the chimney smoke. Reprieve from the day’s routine had enlivened the men despite their long march: the blaze in the hearth threw heat across the rushes, and hungry fellows had already raided the stores for cheese and dried meats, tucking in at the long table, tankards of small-ale rattling amiably against the worn wood. Well and good, Legolas thought. Midwinter’s Eve would soon be upon them, and though the forest had darkened, the men’s spirits yearned towards light.

But Haldir carried his burden with him even once he had set his pack aside. He kept at a distance from the others and stared ahead blankly, as if neither food nor fire could reach him.

What did you see, my friend? Legolas wondered. What trials befell you on the road alone?

“Follow me.” He tugged at Haldir’s elbow and led him away. “My father’s rooms are more fit for sleeping.” The habits of solitude and wariness would not be broken in an evening. At least, not in this evening.

Haldir shivered, caught up in a draught only he could feel. He gave Legolas a wan smile. “You are a gracious host.”

Edraith, as skilled as any among them in the tending of wounds, washed and debrided Haldir’s thigh with the same ruthless efficiency with which he attacked every task in his purview. “You are fortunate. It could have gone much worse for you.”

Haldir suffered Edraith’s ministrations with bared teeth. “Worse than this?” he hissed. His fist twisted in the bedding. A fine sheen of sweat glinted on his brow.

The wolf’s bite had left a constellation of raw, red craters in a mottled bruise. The pelt, discarded when Haldir had cast off his cloak, crouched at the foot of the bed as if readying to pounce again. “You will have quite a scar,” Legolas told him.

“I have...many scars,” Haldir bit out, the dismissive roll of his shoulders at odds with his faint and halting voice.

“Many scars, many stories,” Edraith muttered. He held out a mug. “Warm ale. Drink it.”

Haldir, well beyond arguing, drained the mug in three swallows. Edraith pressed a wrist to his forehead, gave a satisfied grunt, and then withdrew. Haldir sank down against the bed, drawing a trembling fist across his mouth. The last vestiges of color had fled his face, leaving the dark circles to carve hollows beneath his eyes.

“You must be famished.”

“Quite.” The word was little more than a rasp.

When Legolas returned a few minutes later with a plate, Haldir was dead asleep, an arm thrown across his forehead. He had managed to draw his trousers up, but not to remove his wet boots. Legolas slipped them off carefully and set them near the hearth to dry. He left the plate, but cleared away the empty mug. Dark dregs formed a sickle shape around the bottom. Warm ale, indeed. Legolas covered him with an eiderdown, snuffed out the candle, and let him be.

* * * *

“More has gone to blight since last I came.”

A night’s sleep in a warm bed and Edraith’s draught had chased some of the shadows from Haldir’s eyes, but his his humor had little improved. He had delivered his brusque assessment to Legolas as they passed the charred ruins of a spider’s den some miles from his father’s halls. Fire had at last sufficed to destroy it, but snow refused to cover it.

The dour appraisal hurt. “Many things remain fair and untroubled here,” Legolas protested. “Look.”

The outskirts of a settlement along a stream could be made out through a crowded stand of birches. Every homestead wore tokens of the season: swags of holly dangling from the eaves of every roof, evergreens festooned with ribbons and hung with suet-cakes to make fat the wrens and sparrows. At dusk, lanterns would cast merry beams in the branches, and icicles would sparkle in crystalline reply. Who would not be moved by the colonnade of beeches towering in steadfast ranks outside his father’s halls? The great gates swung wide as they rode up, a grand and welcoming flourish. This was not fabled Doriath with a Maia’s girdle to guard it, but it was home. With that came a feeling of peace and inviolable security, however illusory Legolas knew it to be.

Edraith had preceded them them into the great hall and stood beside Thranduil’s chair of carven wood. Flames crackled in a hearth tall enough for a man and danced in cleverly-wrought torches jutting from the stone pillars.

“Welcome, Haldir.” His father sat straight and proud on the dais. “Your coming here is unexpected.”

“Aran Thranduil.” Haldir sketched a swift and awkward bow. “I am grateful for the succor of Eryn Galen.”

Thranduil eyed him sidelong, appraising him in silence for a long moment before speaking. “Edraith tells me you barely escaped the storm. I would hear what news you have from abroad, yet I wonder one as well-traveled as you ventures alone in the north in these times: there are many snares about for the unwary or the unwise.”

Had Legolas not been watching closely, he might not have noticed the clench of Haldir’s gut, the words like a fist to tender flesh.

Tread lightly, Father, he appealed in silence.

“I did not start out alone.” The words were clipped, the tone a shade too sharp. But Haldir stood to Thranduil’s challenging look without apology. Deeds had ever been a tongue more suited to Haldir than words; they allowed him grace where words sometimes did not. “I departed Lorien at my lord’s behest. News came from Imladris that two healers had vanished while returning from a settlement of the Dúnedain—”

“—Imladris’ healers are Imladris’ concern,” Thranduil interjected, recompense for Haldir’s impertinence.

Haldir’s nostrils flared when he drew breath. “One of the missing was Lorien-born and apprenticed to the Healer’s Guild in Imladris. Winter has brought famine to the north. Famine, and a great plague upon the Men of Eriador. Not even the Dúnedain have been spared. Only Imladris remembered the ancient remedies, thus Imladris sent those with the knowledge to give aid. Not all of them returned. Elrond sent searchers far and wide, his own sons among them. And yet—nothing.”

Thranduil frowned. “Where comes your part in this?”

“The healer from Lorien was espoused to a scholar in service to my lord. Mallos, he was called.” Haldir’s voice strained at the name. “He was beset with worry and sued for leave to go in search of her. My lord believed him unsuited to the trip, and too distraught beside. My duties were light; I volunteered to serve as his escort and his protector.”

“And you found more than you bargained for.”

From the gravity in his tone, Legolas reckoned Edraith had uttered similar statements far more often than he might have wished.

Haldir’s eyes fell to the flagstones. He blinked rapidly, as if to dispel a thousand vicious visions. “Yes,” he said. “I did.”

What came next was an account of horrific violence, the tale of a winter which had brought cruelties far, far worse than snow and sickness.

“The entire settlement?” Edraith looked at Haldir in disbelief.

“All of them, to a man,” Haldir confirmed. “And to a woman. And to a child,” he added softly. “Slaughtered with such monstrous—” He shook his head, letting his silence travel where his tongue balked.

“And your missing healers?” Thranduil asked.

“We found them, too. Near the Ettenmoors.” A haunted expression suggested the missing had fared no better than the dead.

Edraith cursed under his breath and Thranduil pressed his fist to his mouth. Legolas said nothing; nothing could be adequate in the face of such brutality. The malign powers emanating from Dol Guldur forced Eryn Galen to keep its eyes and ears focused on the black tower; how easy it was to forget that the reach of evil extended well beyond their borders. How easy it was to imagine the Hidden Valley and the Golden Wood immune from the tribulations of Mirkwood.

“Mallos went mad with anguish.” Haldir looked from Thranduil to Edraith, and from Edraith to Legolas. “He was a scholar; he was not like us. I don’t think he truly knew...”

Thranduil’s slow nod was one of understanding. “A man who lives his life in books may forget that the words on his pages were deeds once, done by living men.”

“And men who live no more,” Erdaith added soberly.

“We found tracks,” Haldir continued. “Mallos insisted we follow them. We did, until we discerned they led toward Mount Gundabad. I told him it was unwise to go further, and the sons of Elrond agreed. The mountains are not safe, they told him. They do not go that way unless they have no other choice, nor without strength of numbers and arms. But vengeance had dimmed Mallos’ eyes to consequence, and grief had dimmed his ears to reason; he vowed to go on alone if we would not go with him. The sons of Elrond turned aside.”

Legolas began to see the path Haldir must have tread. “But you did not.”

“I was his escort, not they. I should have dragged him back to Imladris by force.” He opened his mouth and took one sharp breath, then another. “I knew what dangers lurked and he did not. He did not stand a chance against what awaited him.”

“And what awaited him?” Thranduil asked, though the knowledge showed already in his face. A thousand lightless tunnels and airless caves wound below the rocks at the juncture of the Misty Mountains and the Grey.

“An Orc-hold, of course, and treacherous terrain beside. I barely held on to my own life; I could do nothing to save his. Nor either of the horses.

“The scent of blood brought the wolves.” He gestured toward his injured leg. “They have crossed the frozen rivers and swarmed into the foothills, driven either by hunger or under some malefic charge, I do not know which.”

“Likely both,” Thranduil replied, his steepling his fingers against his lips. “More than once of late we have found wolves in the southern reaches of the wood, as though drawn by a summons from Amon Lanc. It is rumored the Necromancer has given them a taste for two-legged prey. We leave none alive to prove the rumor true.”

“So you came here from Gundabad,” Edraith prompted.

Haldir nodded. “The Orcs and the mountains stood between me and Imladris; too many leagues and the storm stood between me and Lorien. If the Orcs had not taken me, it would have been wolves. If it hadn’t been wolves, it would have been the cold. And if it hadn’t been the cold...well.” The tale had taken its toll; he was sickly pale even in the kind light of flame. “And now I must wait until snows subside to bear home the news of my failure. It is cruel this knowledge will be so long kept from their families. They will pass the winter in ignorance while I have not even bones to return to them, for whatever solace it might give them.”

“That they remain in ignorance is unfortunate, but cannot be helped.” Thranduil’s shoulders rose and fell equanimously, the response, Legolas knew, of one whose own losses had inured and annealed him until he took every new loss with philosophical insouciance. “And while you would carry the weight of your charge’s fate on your shoulders, consider that he was a man grown— in service, as you say, to Celeborn, and thus not without wisdom, if not with skill. If desperation drove him so witless neither you nor the sons of Elrond could dissuade him from an avoidable fate, the fault lies not with you.”

Haldir’s expression was unreadable, but Legolas did not imagine he took the slightest comfort in his father’s wisdom.

“You, Haldir, are welcome in my halls for as long as you would linger. Should you have the patience to outlast the winter, I shall send you home on a horse from my own stable— but that may be some time.” He glanced at Haldir obliquely and added, “Eryn Galen has not the luxury of arcane magic against the season’s tides, and I will not endanger a noble beast unnecessarily.”

A muscle in Haldir’s jaw twitched, and Legolas did not think it was only the pain in his leg this time which rendered his bow so stiff. “A most generous offer, Aran Thranduil. You have my thanks.”

“Father, I do not think we will be at table this evening.” Legolas stood, eager to end Haldir’s obvious discomfort. “Haldir is weary and his leg requires rest.”

“Your time is your own, unless Edraith has need of you.” His father lifted a hand in dismissal. “Do not forget we will be cutting crowns three days hence!

“Bring Haldir with you,” he added. An afterthought, as if Haldir did not stand below the dais before him. “It will raise his spirits.”

They had gone only a few paces when Thranduil spoke Haldir’s name.

“I am sorry for your loss. I shall light a candle to speed the souls of Mallos and his wife to the Halls of Waiting. Rest now, and be well.”

His voice had become condoling, and Legolas was glad of it. He knew his father was sometimes slow to acknowledge the sorrows of others, but only because they too keenly recalled his own.

* * * *

“Will it suffice?”

He had chosen the suite because it was near his own and because the song of the stream carried through the stones. He hoped Haldir might take comfort in it. If a taste of those waters could send a body to sleep, perhaps the sound of it could quiet a troubled mind.

“More than.” Haldir moved tentatively from one room to the next, looking from floor to ceiling. “I am accustomed to a great deal less.”

“Yet I have heard the telain of the Galadhil are quite grand.” The realm of his kin in the south was little more to him than a tapestry woven from tales of silver leaves and songs of gold. Without Haldir, it might have remained to him a place only of legend. “I hope to see them for myself someday.”

“My own is small and quite unassuming,” Haldir said. “Though I suppose it homely enough, for what little time I spend in it.” He tested the cushions of a chair near the hearth before settling into it. “It is beautiful, is Lothlorien; I could weep for want of a mallorn tree within my sights. I have been so long abroad, my memory of them is dimmed. My mind has been filled with...lesser sights.”

Legolas closed his hand on Haldir’s shoulder, an indurate ridge of bone palpable beneath clothing and skin. Travels and travails had skived him down to an essential leanness. “Mallos’ death is a terrible thing. But my father has the right of it: it is not yours to carry. Lay this evil where it belongs: at the feet of the Enemy.

"You have been too long among strangers,” he added when Haldir’s silence grew brooding, “and too long in the cold. You have forgotten that many good and beautiful things endure."

"And you would show me such things, I suppose."

"I would.” He squeezed the knotty shoulder, felt Haldir’s flinch of surprise. “Two days time I will give you to rest and nurse your wounds."

"And on the third day?"

"On the third day, my friend, I will show you how we celebrate Midwinter in the Greenwood!"


On to Part Two...