Chapter Text
April 20, 3018
Not for the first time, Sumara of Jehengrabad wondered how she had let Ammahud, that doddering old soothsayer, talk her into this all those years ago.
The nameless wild man at the entrance of the forest had assured them that it would take a little over a week to travel by wagon eastward by Old Forest Road. That timeline had come and gone, and the gnarled boughs of Mirkwood continued to loom over them with no end in sight.
The woman clung to the fact that even if the wild man hadn’t been accurate about the length of the journey, he’d at least given good counsel about how to avoid the great forest’s legendary perils. They’d scrupulously heeded his advice to never stray from the path into the mist-choked thickets that lay on either side of them, and, as yet, they hadn’t encountered anything overtly hostile.
In fact, they hadn’t spotted so much as a squirrel for days. Just insects. Swarming moths, biting mosquitoes, burrowing ticks. No giant spiders yet, thank the gods for that, though old cobwebs draped from the canopy like undead vines. Mirkwood was eerily quiet. Not even birdsong relieved the silence that blanketed the woods.
More concerning to the woman at the moment, however, was that their path was slowly but steadily narrowing, as if their company was not intended to pass through to the other side of Mirkwood but instead curl ever inward into its depths. Like they’d wandered into the gaping mouth of a great serpent, realizing too late that they’d been devoured whole.
Last night she had drawn the short straw and taken first watch while the others huddled inside the wagons. Leaning against the warm back of one the slumbering oxen, she had trained her eyes on the faded lettering painted on the cloth canopy of the wagons: “Barahir’s Haradrim Players.” Its cheerful garishness beamed out into the forest like a fool's grin.
Even though temperatures still dropped to below-freezing after dusk, they dared never light a fire. They had learned early on that the flames attracted black moths as big as bats. By the end of her watch, Sumara had been shivering uncontrollably, her sanity strained to the breaking point by the feeling of being relentlessly watched by unseen eyes.
Still shaking off the horrors of the previous night, the woman chose to walk alongside the wagons rather than sit atop with her companions. As she pulled her hood over her head, she wondered how much longer she could resist the urge to throttle Barahir and Asghar over their increasingly vicious arguments, or when she would finally give up and join Garwine in his endless weeping.
The woman gave the ox trotting closest to her a stroke behind the ears. Their animal companions seemed undaunted by their grim circumstances, and she found some comfort in that. They drank out of whatever gullies they wandered across and nibbled at the straggly grasses that lined the edges of the path without seeming to suffer any ill effects. Blessings be upon your oblivious contentment, the woman thought, for we’ll soon be butchering you for food if we don’t escape this forest soon.
Their hobbit guide Heribald would have words to say about that. He loved his team of oxen like family. If his dark mutterings of late were any indication, he’d happily ground the lot of them into cattle-feed if given the excuse.
The woman pictured of Petunia the ox, Baldy’s favourite, absently chewing on the hair of her hobbit-made corpse. A sharp cackle escaped her, its frayed edges echoing against the trees. Dust Mother take me, she thought. I’m losing my mind.
Then suddenly the thickness of the air seemed to lift. A spatter of drizzle cooled the Haradon woman's face.
She stopped in her tracks — something was different. They’d been caught in rains Mirkwood before, but it had never felt so…clean. She glanced anxiously over to her companions, who were blinking as if coming out of a stupor. She dug into her pockets and pulled out her compass, the only gift Asghar had ever given her. Its little arrow had been spinning madly ever since they’d entered the forest: an unsettling omen that Barahir’s latest contract might prove to be their downfall.
The arrow was now pointing due north.
"North?" she breathed aloud. She shook the compass a few times, but the arrow stayed fixed in one place. They were definitely walking northwards — but how? According to all their maps, Old Forest Road ran as straight as an arrow along an east-west trajectory.
From the corner of her eye she saw Asghar and Barahir draw their swords.
And then they were surrounded.
***
"Drop your weapons!" Tauriel ordered, her bow taught and ready.
The auburn-haired lieutenant concealed her surprise behind a forbidding scowl. They’d thought from the noise that they were dealing with orcs, and the Royal Guard had been hastily assembled to confront them. But it was a handful of men — travelling, she realized with increasing disbelief, with a pair of ox-driven wagons. How had wheeled carts come so far into the root-tangled depths of the forest?
No one moved for a few breaths — the humans trying to apprehend what was happening, and the elves in no rush to enlighten them. The falling rain filled the silence.
"Are you— are you elves?" a strangely accented voice inquired.
Tauriel turned her bow on the source of the question: a hooded woman, skin the colour of a sparrow’s wing, was staring at her with the darkest eyes she’d ever seen. A long, thin scar marred one side of her upper lip. It was a knife wound, and something a human might acquire if they were involved in the rough violence of banditry.
She looked past the woman for more clues of villainy. A hatchet-faced man with stringy grey hair tried to stand up from the lead cart, but his brawny companion clapped a hand on his shoulder, wisely girding him in place. Sitting on the cart in the rear was a pale and thin young man whose arms were coiled tightly round the arm of the curly-haired hobbit beside him.
Tauriel looked down the shaft of her arrow, finally deigning to answer. "You guess correctly. You have trespassed into the Woodland Realms, and we do not take kindly to strangers entering our lands without leave."
"Er, begging your pardon, good lady," the hobbit spoke up, breaking the travellers’ stunned silence, "but we were told that Old Forest Road was free for all to use."
The "good lady" narrowed her eyes at him in suspicion. No one used the Dwarven Road anymore. Though its western side was still broad and flat enough for wheeled travel, anyone using it would eventually find themselves mired in the impassible marshes in the east. Not to mention they would have attracted the attention of Dul Guldor. Whoever advised them to take the road was badly misinformed — or more likely, did not exist at all.
In any event, Tauriel reminded herself, they were hundreds of miles away from there, and even if the mortals had lost their way, they should have been hindered from travelling so far north by the forest’s hostile geography. "How did you cross the river?"
The company of humans looked at each other, thoroughly confused. "Which river, exactly?" the brawny man asked.
The elf ignored the question. "Did you not encounter any spiders?"
"We were told we’d be safe if we kept to the road."
"By whom?"
They all looked sheepish. "A wild man at entrance to the forest." It was the woman who spoke again, sounding mildly embarrassed by her ludicrous response.
Later. We’ll deal with that later, Tauriel told herself, tamping down her mounting exasperation. "State your business in these woods," she demanded.
The woman hesitated, glancing back at the older man. "We are troupe of minstrels from Bree. We have been invited to Dale by King Brand."
After a few more tense moments, Tauriel lowered her bow with a sigh. Her fellow guards took their cue and lowered their bows as well. "Minstrels?" She repeated in disbelief. "And you were willing to journey over the Misty Mountains and through Mirkwood to peddle your craft?"
The woman flinched as the older man loudly cleared his throat. "My master can tell you more," she murmured.
The older man took his opportunity, dismounting from the wagon, slicking back his rain-soaked hair and bowing with a flourish. "If I may, lady elf, I am Barahir of Dol Amroth, and these—" he indicated with a curt nod of the head, "are my Haradrim Players. My troupe specializes in the mysterious, exotic music of the Southron peoples, and our reputation has spread so far and wide that even the most remote kingdoms of Men have bid us to come play for them." He gave her a smile that reminded Tauriel of bleached bones. "If you require proof, I have the king’s summons, with his royal seal. Would you like to inspect them?"
In response to her silent nod, he pulled out a parchment from his travelling sack, offering it to her with another obsequious bow. The elf gave the papers a brief inspection, and to her surprise the seal did belong to Dale’s reigning monarch. "Why would King Brand summon a company of players from far-off lands while he is in the midst of preparing his people for war?"
"Ah," the man sighed, theatrically clasping at his heart, "times of strife are when music is most vital. It soothes men’s souls and girds them to face future hardships. Our company is notably skilled in that regard, and the king was willing to pay handsomely for it."
Tauriel's scowl deepened. If the late master of Esgaroth was any indication, mannish rulers would cling to extravagances even when their entire town was engulfed in dragon-fire.
Black tendrils began to claw at her belly at the memory of the Battle of Five Armies. "But you cannot be foolish enough to brave these woods again," she protested, before a much darker possibility came to her. "Or perhaps you are planning to travel eastwards into the lands of our enemies!"
The older man’s face slackened with weariness — perhaps the first genuine emotion Tauriel had seen him express since he first opened his mouth. "My lady, we are not journeying to Dale for a mere handful of performances. These dark times have made men wary of strangers, which tends to include itinerant players like us. We hear that Dale has become a prosperous land since the dragon Smaug was slain, and we hope to make a place for ourselves there." He raised an eyebrow, and beads of rain trickled along the wrinkles above it. "I don’t know about elves, but men will venture a great deal to keep from starving."
Tauriel hesitated. They had a convincing enough story for why they had risked travel through Mirkwood. But the likelihood of mortals simply stumbling upon a secret elven path was unfathomable.
With a gesture too subtle to be perceived by men, the Silvan elf reached out to the Green for guidance. The response was muted but prompt: to her surprise, the teeming network of vibrant life surrounding them seemed untroubled by the interlopers.
Very well, then, Taurel allowed. But the final decision on the minstrels' fates would come from a different authority.
"You may make your case to our king," she said, shouldering her bow. "Leave the wagons."