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Voronwë tried not to think of death; it reminded him he was still alive. He hadn’t noticed that an orc’s dart had nicked him as they hunkered behind a fallen log in the woods, waiting, shivering, in the snow for the hunting party to pass them by. It had been such a tiny sting, like the crack on a lip.
Voronwë had been focused on stillness, on looking as dead as the forest was silent in the heavy snowfall. The orcs had been hunting something else – a deer, perhaps, and had moved on without investigating the two darker shadows in a black hollow. The fact that at least one of them hadn’t been able to aim was why he found himself dragged along on a makeshift litter, seeking shelter in a sea of white.
The dart had been poisoned to paralyze, not kill. The orcs liked their prey alive when they found it. When he had discovered the wound, Voronwë had tried to reassure Tuor, his mortal companion, but his speech had already begun to slur and Tuor had just missed grabbing the elf’s cloak as he fell.
Tuor shouted now, somewhere nearby, and Voronwë focused on the cold as he tried to work his way out of the haze. Trying to move his arms revealed he’d been tied down. Voronwë blinked again, and found that some patches of white now looked a bit darker than others. He wondered, idly, if this is what it was like to see through mortal eyes. What a nuisance.
“You will allow him into this cabin or I will burn it to the ground!” Tuor bellowed somewhere just out of sight.
His vision might be clearing, but with it came searing pain. Every snowflake brushing his face was like a needle. His nose was the center of an embroidery wheel. His limbs burned and the sticks of his litter yanked his hair until it felt like it would be pulled out by the roots. Even through his thick fur cloak, the night’s cold was fierce and clung to his skin until he was sure moving would rip it off. Yrch, said distant, familiar voices in the back of his mind. Yrch. Voronwë rallied himself and shuddered against the bonds that held him. He was not mad yet. He was not going to be put down like a dog. Yrch, the voices murmured again. Voronwë heaved.
Tuor and the elderly man with the ominous-looking club both leaped at the sound of cloth ripping and branches snapping. Voronwë had woken and rolled on his side, gasping into the snow.
“He’n look fine to me,” groused the old man. “Take him and be gone before my son gets back and shows you how to use this.” He brought the club up so fast he knocked a notch out of the top of the door frame, sending a hail of splinters down on them both.
Tuor exhaled carefully. Only years of close calls had saved his nose. He took a glance around the cabin. A pitiful stack of firewood, no meat in the pot, and a neatly-folded, dry hunting cloak told him that a son was not here, and had not been for some time. He felt a little spike of sadness whittle its way into his chest. Setting his jaw, he pushed it down.
“My friend and I will die if we are not given shelter for the night.”
“Then they’ll find you come spring.”
Tuor mulled over his next words carefully. “I am on a mission from God” wasn’t likely to work on this man. Wetting his lips, he reached out and caught the club before the elder could bring it down again. The man was surprisingly strong; Tuor could see his knuckles whitening.
“Grandfather,” he ground out, “If you let us in for the night, I will pay you in meat and firewood.”
“I am well,” Voronwë gasped behind him. He had pulled himself up to his knees. “I am – of the Noldor – more than – poisoned darts – I – am stronger - .” He collapsed into the snow without any of the customary elegance Tuor had come to expect. He thought he could hear the elf heaving.
Tuor turned to the older man. “He is hardly any threat now.” The older man seemed to agree. His grip on the club had weakened.
He raised one frosty eyebrow. “Broke through those bonds clean enough,” he said, nodding towards the splintered sticks and torn fabric scattered on the ground behind him.
Tuor had to agree. He hadn’t expected a paralyzed man to have enough strength to rip himself free of even the half-baked litter he had lashed together. Then again, Voronwë was no man. Taking a risk and switching to the tongue of the Easterlings, Tuor murmured, “He’s ill from poison right now, and more stupid than dangerous.” Leaning in, he added with a grin, “And this club seems decent enough. It’s a little small, but you can hit him with them if he gives you trouble.” The elder cackled.
Voronwë staggered to his feet. “I do not know – what you just said – but I will have you know – that I can walk away from here – any time – on my own.”
Tuor could not help but sigh. The club was beginning to feel heavy again.
Voronwë had gathered himself over the course of twelve hours, shaking off the last of his vertigo just in time to throw the old man’s club on the roof of the little hut. For some reason the doddering grandfather who was their host kept trying to hit him with it. He’d escaped to the rooftop himself and was now biding his time with his bow and arrow. The smells and sounds of two orcs were crisp in the air now that the snow had stopped. Voronwë nocked his arrow and watched as the black-cloaked pair emerged from the clearing a little less than a hundred feet away. They stunk.
Unblinking, Voronwë let fly his arrow. The bolt drilled clean through the orc’s skull and pinned the creature against the tree trunk behind him. Both he and the goblin’s companion stared for a long moment before the second orc squealed and took up a spear, hurtling toward the old man’s cabin.
“Izzat an orc?” came a frail cry from below. “Damn wicked folk. Your kin, most like! Got ears like yourn!”
Voronwë suppressed a shiver and rolled his eyes. Despite his current sentiment, he wasn’t about to let the old terror die.
He swore. The orc had closed the distance by half in his moment of distraction, and by the time he strung another arrow, the orc would be bursting through the door.
Leaping from the roof, he landed lightly on his feet and dodged the creature’s spear, tearing it away and slamming his shoulder into the orc’s chest. It fell with a grunt, and Voronwë pulled out his knife and stabbed it in the throat. He closed his eyes and listened carefully, but the remaining wood was still and empty in the snow. He scrambled off the orc as he pulled out the knife, spilling black blood all over his new gloves. He would have to burn them.
Voronwë looked at the creature’s pointed ears, then at its eyes. They were a clear, storm grey.
“You’ve been killing orcs,” Tuor observed as he heaved himself up to the old man’s cabin, trailing three rabbits and stag. Voronwë was sweeping snow over the last of the black blood pooled in the old man’s doorway.
“Had to get out of the house,” Voronwë replied. “The old man keeps trying to kill me.”
“Well, we’ll be gone tomorrow afternoon after I finish bringing in the firewood.”
“I can manage that,” Voronwë volunteered, eyeing the axe set against the door frame. “You go tend to our host. He likes you.” After a long moment, he added, “His club is on the roof.”
Tuor raised an eyebrow. “You took his club?”
Voronwë gave a half-hearted shrug. “It was either to be used on the orcs or me.”
Tuor set down his load and studied the elf. “Are you sure you’re ready to travel? Usually you’re telling me that you would have returned with three dozen elk by now.”
Voronwë gave a vague smile, which caused the knot of concern in Tuor’s forehead to double in size. Recognizing defeat, the elf sighed. “Do you know there are stinging nettles in the ocean?”
Tuor blinked at Voronwë, taken aback. “I’ve only seen the ocean the once, and you and fish were the only thing in it.”
Voronwë waved Tuor’s comment away. “Stinging nettles. Like little bowls of – lace, if you know what that is, or cobwebs. They have many tiny . . . threads, like legs, and when they touch your skin, they sting. Some are so powerful, it’s like being burned alive.”
Tuor had trouble imagining such a creature living in Ulmo’s realm, but listened as Voronwë continued. “One of my companions fell overboard into a whole crowd of them, and by the time we pulled him back on deck he couldn’t even scream anymore. He just – hissed. And growled.”
“Did he live?” Tuor asked.
“For a day, perhaps two,” Voronwë answered, in a vague, faraway voice. “The captain had to kill him.”
If Tuor had still been holding his spoils, he would have dropped them. “Why?”
“He tried to kill our healers,” Voronwë replied, using the toe of his boot to draw a spiral in the snow. “He barely looked like himself anymore. Red eyes, veins black against his skin. The captain said he’d gone mad with the pain. It took three of us to hold him down while the captain ended it. We’d never seen the like before.”
“Three of us?” Tuor echoed.
Voronwë gave a hollow laugh. “I sometimes still find myself back there, in that cabin. When I’m drowning, part of me always feels I deserve it. For the Eldar, regrets only grow with time.”
“I’ve put plenty of good men out of their misery,” Tuor said firmly. “And my regret, I think, is no greater than yours.”
Voronwë sighed, and nodded acknowledgment. “You are right, of course. What I keep remembering today is what they called him afterwards, after we’d thrown his body overboard.”
“What did they call him?”
“Yrch,” Voronwë said, letting his voice hiss with the word. “Up in the sails, belowdecks, out of earshot of the captain. ‘Yrch,’ they whispered to each other.”
“Why did they call him an orc?” Tuor gaped in horror as he spoke.
“Orcs were once elves,” Voronwë answered. “They were not born elves,” he hastily added as Tuor’s eyes bugged out in growing alarm. “It is said that Morgoth took some of the first of the Eldar and corrupted them, torturing them until they became something else, something dark and twisted. They called my friend ‘yrch’ because that is what orcs are – elves engulfed by suffering. Or so they say.”
Voronwë stooped and picked up the rabbits Tuor had dropped. “When you were bringing me here, and the pain returned after I recovered my senses, I imagined this is what my companion felt like before he died. These orcs I killed had my ears. They had my eyes. Who is to say, given enough pain, I would not become as one of them? It has no doubt happened to nobler beings than I.”
Tuor stood for a long moment, staring into the darkening evening sky. “If that happened,” he said, finally, his voice thick and strangely quiet, “I would kill you first. And I would hope you would do the same thing for me.”
He looked down, hiding his face in the shadows of dusk. “That will not happen, however, because our mission is too dire. We have to have faith that Ulmo will at least get us to the gates of - of our destination.” He cast a suspicious look at the closed shutters.
When Tuor looked back at the elf, he found Voronwë smiling. “You should go inside first, to help the old man’s nerves.”
Tuor rocked up on the balls of his feet nervously. “Why? Is he that upset that you took his club?”
“He was getting quite . . . difficult in his efforts to attack me. I was afraid his little bones might break. I had to tie him to a chair.”
Tuor let out a suspicious snort that turned into a more respectable gasp. “He’s an old man!”
“I put his chair near the fire, and draped a blanket over him! I’ve checked on him several times. He’s . . . cozy. He’s been snoring.”
Tuor harrumphed and pushed past Voronwë, leaving the elf to deal with the spoils of the hunt. “I can’t guarantee you won’t be sleeping on the roof tonight,” he warned.
Voronwë looked up. With evening came a cool west wind from the sea, and the clouds hurried east, revealing a blanket of dappled silver light and a bright half-Moon. “All the better to see the stars.”