5,016A/N: What f̶o̶u̶l̶ sorcery is this? Another update?
The Shadow of Angmar
Chapter 27: Then, Forth, To Seek Battle and Feud
"I do not like this plan," said Daewen, her voice nothing more than a whisper upon the wind. She and Harry lay atop a shallow bluff not far from the edge of the Dwarvish encampment. Concealed as they were beneath cloaks of Elven make, they were surely nearly invisible to the eye. Even should an army pass by upon the valley floor, just a few feet below them, they would remain undetected. At least, that was what they hoped.
Behind them, the Dwarves went about their motions, giving every impression of complacency. They were gathered here and there about many hearths, and the camp was awash in the warm light of their merry fires. Harry heard the occasional clunk of butting mugs punctuating sounds of quiet grumbling and infrequent bouts of gruff laughter.
In the distance, barely visible to Harry's eyes, the three peaks of Gundabad stood, tall and imperious, grim shades lurking lurking at the edge of sight. The dark basalt from which they were formed reflected little of the light of the waning moon, and it was only by the shadow they cast over the stars behind that Harry could see their outline.
To all appearances, the Dwarves had become lax. So close to one of their most legendary ancestral homes, and surrounded by so many of their kin, they had surely forgotten the cunning and inbred deceit of the Orcs.
Daewen tapped Harry lightly on the arm, and he glanced in the direction she was pointing.
Her eyes were more keen than his would ever be, but in the washed-out colours of the moonlit night, Harry could see that which she had found. The valley floor was moving.
The landscape around Gundabad had never been verdant, Harry knew. Even in the days of Durin the First, it had been a land of scrub and heather. Stark, and yet still there had been beauty in that austerity, but it had not taken the Orcs long to rob it of even that. In the centuries since Gundabad had been lost, all the land about the mountain had been turned, poisoned by their filth. It was a wasteland of barren, windblown dust that suffered nothing green to grow upon it. As he lay upon the bare earth, Harry could feel the resentment that had taken root deep within the land.
The Orcs blended into the dark, soured earth almost perfectly, and it was only by their movement, and numbers, that Harry was able to see the rough extent of their forces.
"How many are they?" he asked his companion. So acute was her hearing that even though he could barely hear the words, she heard them clearly.
"Perhaps as many as twenty thousand," she said. Her dark eyes were moving rapidly to and fro, tracking the nearly endless multitudes as they made their way ever closer to the Dwarvish camp.
"How long?" He didn't even need to open his mouth for his question to be understood.
"Not long, send the signal now," said Daewen. Her voice had to be a little louder than Harry's, for he had not the benefit of Elvish senses. "It will begin soon."
Harry nodded, and pulled out a small phial of clear liquid. He had not been idle during their long march, and what he held in his hands was perhaps the least flashy of his creations, yet it was still his proudest.
In its roots, it was a very simple potion. An infusion of golden elanor petals in the free-flowing fresh water of a mountain stream, combined with the smallest pinch of silver powder which, when mixed correctly and with all the care he could muster, resulted in a potion capable of emitting a warm, yellow glow. The first tricky part had been in suspending that effect until a final ingredient was added, for otherwise the concoction would be of little use to them.
Harry had once been told of a flower called fumellar, which grew in the gardens of Lórien, beyond the Pelóri mountains in Valinor beyond the sea. It was a dainty poppy-like bloom which glowed red like the sunset, for just a brief moment, as dusk fell across the land. It would have been perfect for the potion he wished to create, but it did not grow in Middle-earth, nor anywhere outside of the Gardens of Irmo.
The poppies he had tried in their stead held some faint echo of those distant flowers, but they had not been enough to stay the glow. He had then added nightshade, for he knew of nothing that could more effectively smother such vibrant life and light. As he added the nightshade, he also added both fresh peony buds, for their ability to to spring back into life once darkness had passed, and the crushed eggshells of a songbird native to the mountains. By stirring the nightshade in slowly, and alternating the direction, and granting more vigour to the other additions, he was able to strike the delicate balance.
The potion remained dark, but was ready to spring into life at any new addition to its mix.
That final ingredient would be the one that gave the potion the quality he was seeking. A single bee's wing was added to each phial of the potion except his own. Each wing was from a different bee in the same hive, and would serve to connect the potions in their effects even across great distances.
He unstoppered his phial, and added the final beeswing to it without flourish. A moment later, the liquid within became suffused with a soft glow, that slowly brightened. Harry then swiftly hid it beneath his clothes, before the Orcs passing just feet away could notice the light leaking from beneath his concealing cloak.
At that same moment, a dozen more phials, in the hands of a dozen different Dwarves, Men, and Elves lit up, and their strategy, long in the planning, was put to action.
A shout went up from the Dwarvish encampment, it sounded panicked and rushed, a call to arms in the face of an unexpected attack. A lie, of course, but one which their enemies were all too willing to believe. The approaching Orcs heard it, and the stillness of the evening was shattered. It was almost as if they were of one mind, for a great cry went up from them, and the very earth trembled to hear it. Cruelly spiked swords were drawn from grubby scabbards, and without having to be commanded by whatever it was that led them, they broke into a chaotic charge.
The mere thought of so many Dwarves, unawares and unprepared for their attacks, saw them consumed by their cruel bloodlust. Yet, still they were Orcs, and even in the face of such frenzy, stoked though it was by the long anticipation of their hunt, they were cowards to the bone. Even as their great host charged forward, the forefront of the charge slowed. None wished to run ahead, but neither did any of them wish to fall too far behind. Harry looked on as their thronging horde rolled up the valley with a deceptive slowness, like a wave upon a beach.
Their hesitation gave the Dwarves all the time they needed and more.
Harry knew the Dwarvish camp had looked to be in poorly managed disarray, but that had always been the plan. In truth, every mug was filled with water or coffee, and every Dwarf was tense with anticipation. Had the Orcish scouts been able to get a clearer view of the camp, they would surely have noticed the carefully hidden trench that encircled it, and the shallow-buried weapons stored near it. Not only that, but beneath their travelling cloaks, the Dwarves were all armoured and ready. Haldir and his company had ensured that all their careful preparations remained unknown to the skulking Orcs who'd attempted to scout out their positions earlier in the evening.
It took the Dwarves just seconds to form up in an unbroken spear-wall all along the camp perimeter. They were more than ready by the time the Orcish front-line reached the hidden trench.
When the roiling wavefront of the Orcish charge met the trench, the tone of their terrible war cries changed almost immediately. From his vantage point behind the bulk of the Orc vanguard, Harry watched as those unfortunate few who were at the very forefront of the charge felt their feet fall through the carefully placed twigs and loam. The momentum of their charge, and the unstoppable weight of battle-hungry Orcs behind them saw them plunge into the hastily excavated pits.
Such a trench would surely have been impossible for any other army. Creating such a pit under the watchful, if distant eye of enemy scouts was surely a task beyond the craft of Men or even Elves. None knew digging and shoring like the Dwarves, and the army that was camped there counted more than five thousand of them amongst their numbers.
At the direction of Thrain and Náin, all around the perimeter of the camp, a few tents had been erected before all others. While the rest of the camp was being established, those few border tents had been busy indeed. From those tents the Dwarves had excavated the entire trench from below ground, carefully shoring up the loam above with excess kindling, gathered from the woods on the nearby ridge. Then, once the pit had been excavated to a width of nearly ten feet at all points, the bottom was filled with hastily sharpened stakes, and a few spare spears.
It was those stakes that inflicted the first casualties of the evening, and the night air, which had only minutes previously been quiet, with only the sounds of mock merriment to be heard over the chirping of night-time insects, was filled with cries of surprise, terror, and pain. In the first seconds of the charge, hundreds of Orcs fell afoul of the trap, and their attack immediately faltered. Those at the back pushed on, while those at the front pushed back. Those unlucky Orcs who found themselves in the middle of it all were lucky if they were not crushed underfoot. The Dwarves wielded their long spears with all of the skill and tenacity that was native to their people, and all along the lines spear met flesh, and more Orcs died. Behind the spear wielding Dwarves, more bore the short compound bows common among their people, and so arrows flew through the darkness into the attacking hordes. So closely packed were the orcs that perhaps only one in ten missed its mark.
Harry knew that Dwarves did not have the same keen sense for archery that Elves had, or even Men, but they were more than accurate enough to find a target among the heaving multitudes of Orcs.
Panic would soon take hold, Harry realised. Ripples of uncertainty passed through the tightly packed orcs, and at the edges a few turned and ran. The assault would soon be in full retreat, and that was not something they could afford to permit. Harry pulled out two small stones, unassuming in their pitted appearances. The only thing setting them apart were two small Cirth runes engraved upon the surface of each. When he struck them together, the true plan was revealed.
A tiny spark flew from the stones, and leapt through the darkness, unseen by the unnerved Orcs. It drifted down through the air behind the rock upon which they were hidden, dropping slowly to the earth below. It was quickly trampled beneath dozens of filthy feet, yet the spark was not extinguished. For a period of three rapid heartbeats, nothing happened, and the panicked cries of Orcs continued to echo all around him.
Then, just when he'd begun to think he'd perhaps made some mistake, the spark took. It was as if a great beast, kin to Scatha the Worm, had drawn in a great breath, and all who were near felt the great inhalation, though the orcs knew not what it portended. A moment later, a wall of flame, twice the height of a man and which burned with all the furious energy of dragonfire was birthed from the dry earth. With a speed far exceeding even the most swift of horses, the flames traced a long path around the Dwarvish camp, cutting a path of blazing orange through the darkness.
During the long days of their march, Harry had worked tirelessly on that part of the plan. Creating a potion that could burn hot and long, merciless and fierce, was no great challenge to him. His first magical creation after his arrival in Middle-earth had been something similar, but that potion had nearly killed both him and his companion.
This fire was so much more than that. He had taken a single hair from every Dwarf, Man and Elf in the army, and mixed each into the huge cauldron containing the incendiary mixture, alongside the ash of burned Myrtle leaves ensured that it would not burn any among their host. He had gone further though, at the behest of Haleth. Each horse among his company also had a hair added to the potion, with not only Myrtle, but also the dried sap of a specific mangrove Harry had found during his journeys in the south, which the people there called blind-your-eye. Not only would the horses not be burned by the fire, but they would also be unable to see it.
The results of his long labours were better than he could have imagined. As the fires sprung up, hundreds more Orcs were burned in mere seconds, and the wavering army fell into complete confusion and dismay. Yet half the army had no hope of flight. Caught between the immovable wall of the Dwarves and their defences, and the impassable flames, they could do nothing but die under their arrows, or by their spears.
The other half of the army was a little better off, though the sounds of their dying compatriots, and the sudden appearance of the flames filled them with alarm. One among their number pulled himself up onto the rock on which Harry and Daewen were hidden.
He was larger than most of his kin, and had mottled black skin that was covered in all manner of hideous scarring. Unlike many of his kin he was not wearing the same armour of black iron, but instead a mismatched set of various Dwarvish and Mannish designs. One of his greaves even had styling that Harry recognised as Elvish. He raised his wickedly curved sword high, and roared into the night to draw the attention of his army to him "Elvish Sorcery!" he cried in a voice that sounded like a rusty saw being dragged over a stone. Unpleasant though it was, it was loud enough that the Orcs nearby turned to him, and their blind panic waned. "Soil, use soil to smother their flames! We can still have Dwarf flesh this night!"
Harry saw that his words had been able to rally some of his forces, and in that moment he decided to intervene. He glanced over at Daewen, who must have seen what he was thinking, for her eyes went wide and she shook her head in the smallest of gestures.
It was for nought, though. Harry was already rising from the ground, materialising behind the Orc like a spirit of the earth itself. As he rose, he drew his sword, and the black star-metal of Anguirel glittered once in the light of the distant moon.
The Orcs below saw him rise, and a great shout went up, some attempting to warn their leader, while others merely descended back into a panic. What their cries were enough to alert his target. The huge Orc turned with unlikely speed, and his sword met Harry's moments before the blade of Eöl could separate his head from his body.
It availed the beast little, for though his first strike was turned aside, Harry did not stop in his attack. A moment after the first blow would have landed, his staff swept through the darkness. Reflected fire shot down the length of its intricate silver inlays. It hit the Orc in the side with all the force Harry could muster, and a bright flash of purest white turned night into day for the briefest of moments.
The Orc was sent flying through the air by the magic Harry had imbued into the staff, and his broken body was cast down into the swarming army below, to their resounding consternation. The Dwarves and the wall of fire were both suddenly forgotten, and instead they all charged towards the rock with a single will.
Daewen stood beside Harry and drew her bow in a single smooth movement. "I told you I did not like this plan," she said in a conversational tone that did little to hide the worry that Harry could see in her grey eyes.
A great cry went up from the Orcs clustered around their promontory, and for a moment Harry feared they might be in trouble, as their enemy's panic had been washed away by rage when they had watched their leader dispatched with such ease.
Then the horns of the riders of Haleth sounded in the night, and the thundering of hooves echoed between the valley. A great war cry went up from a thousand throats, and the riders emerged from the darkness like terrible apparitions, and the Orcs fled before them. They flew across the earth, and it seemed as though the horses did not even need to touch the ground, such was their haste. At the forefront of the charge, Haleth led. "For Eorl! For the Riddermark!" he cried.
His cry was taken up by all the Men of his company, and the night was filled with a mighty furor as they bore down upon the Orcs, who saw that their doom had come for them. With their leader dead, and half their number lost to the impassable fires, they stood little chance. They were packed densely, but few among them held spears, and fewer still were able to bring them to bear in time to threaten the riders who were already upon them.
Harry saw the Orcs break at last, the thundering hooves of the Riddermark Men sending them to full flight, but there was no path they could find that would take them away from the merciless blades, spears and arrows of the Eorlingas. The fire was behind them, and the charge hit them on all sides. Those who found a gap in the wall of death were soon felled by arrows, loosed from the dark distant hill behind which Haleth and his forces had concealed themselves.
It was bloody work, and soon the riders surely found their sword-arms grow tired, but they did not stop. In the middle of the affray, Harry and Daewen fought, back to back. The flashing lights and booming sounds of Harry's sword and spells were a stark contrast to the focussed silence in which Daewen fought. The only sound from her was that of her sword and dagger as they cut the air, and the occasional hiss of her quickly depleting arrows when the Orcish throng grew too thin or distant to keep her blades occupied.
Another Orc charged at Harry, close upon the heels of the last, who was already dead upon the ground, his head cleft from his shoulders by the midnight blade in Harry's hand. Harry stretched out his other hand, and from his outstretched staff a searing beam of light issued. He felt the warmth of it beneath his hand as the captured light of stars was channelled through the spiderweb mithril that ran along its length. The light cut through the encroaching attacker, like morning sunlight through lingering fog. The Orc fell to the ground beside the remains of those who had come before, lifeless and scorched with a hole the size of Harry's palm in his torso.
"How goes the battle?" Harry did not need to shout over the sounds of the battle to be heard by Daewen, but it was a habit that was hard to break. Surrounded by so much clamour and cry that he could barely hear his own words, it was still hard to believe that Daewen could hear him just as surely as if they were standing in a quiet room.
"King Haleth and his riders are driving the Orcs into the flames," she called back, her eyes tracking the thousands of figures dimly illuminated by Harry's flames. They fought, they ran, they died by the hundred, the earth becoming thick with their bodies.
The foul stench of burning flesh assaulted Harry's senses, and he knew that she spoke true. "What of the Dwarves?" he asked. Another Orc threw themselves at him as he spoke, but their pig-iron blade, vicious and spiked though it was, could not gainsay his own, and even before Daewen was able to respond, another Orc corpse joined their fallen brethren.
"I know not," she said, and Harry could hear that she sounded troubled. "More than half of the Orcs were on the other side of the fire, I fear, along with most of their leaders. I cannot see what is unfolding beyond your veil of flames, but I can hear that the battle there is not the same slaughter we see on this side."
"Then we should see what we can do to help," said Harry. He was already moving, running as quickly as he could manage across the field so strewn with the dead.
Daewen took mere moments to catch him, her own steps light and sure across the battlefield, no more slowed in her sprint than she would have been upon the smoothest of the old roads of Arnor fallen.
A larger group of Orcs was before them, their backs to a larger rock. In the middle of the group, a great Orc, much larger than all the others, was bellowing commands to those around them, and even as Harry and Daewen crossed the ground between them, more Orcs were gathering to him. Among their numbers were a few of the Orcs who'd come with the foresight to bear spears, and Harry spied at least four horses of the Riddermark, felled by their hands, their riders cast into the dirt to be pounced upon by the other Orcs in the group.
Upon seeing Harry and Daewen charging towards them, the huge Orc leading them roared a wordless challenge to the sky, and they rushed forward to meet them in battle.
At Harry's side, Daewen slowed, and drew her bow once more from where she had slung it across her back. For a Man, it would surely have been nearly impossible to draw with such ease, and yet even before Harry had truly noticed her absence, her arrows were flying true, and with each one that found its mark in the gaps and holes in their armour, another enemy perished.
Harry knew that she had few arrows remaining, but what few she did have, she made count. The charge of his enemy faltered in the face of her careful shots. Every Orc that fell took another one or two with it to the dirt as they tripped those closest to them, arms and legs flailing wildly.
When he was just feet from the nearest of his enemies, Harry stopped, and in the same motion, plunged his staff into the ground before him. The earth cracked open, and a blinding white light issued from the fissure. Many of the Orcs fell then into unknowable depths, before Harry raised his staff once more, and the cleft lurched closed with the terrible implacability of continents, crushing the unfortunate Orcs with the cold embrace of the earth.
The power Harry had found in that battlefield was almost unlike anything he had felt before. Where he had long ago learned of the memory and will of earth and stone, he had never seen a hatred so true. The Orcs had warped the landscape around Gundabad, poisoned it in a way that would surely take many years to mend, and it did not love them for it. It remembered the love of its first father, and the children that had come after him, and it yearned to fight for them.
Harry merely gave it that opportunity. He reached deeper, to the very bones of the earth themselves and he felt them begin to respond.
Before stones could erupt from the ground to kill the last few Orcs, they were run-down by a group of horsemen who charged from out of the darkness and trampled the ill-prepared Orcs with ease. Harry felt the slaking of the earth's rage, as Orcish blood seeped into the barren soil.
Harry started running again, with Daewen once more on his heels. Without so much as pausing, he charged straight through the flames, and felt them tease at him, questing, investigating him, before allowing him to pass through unharmed. Despite his confidence in the concoction, Harry felt relief well up within him as he burst out the other side.
Where the battle outside the fires was nothing less than a slaughter, the Orcs within the flaming boundary had rallied to their commanders, and were making probing assaults upon the Dwarven positions. They had not left any rear-guard to defend against enemies emerging from the impassable flames, for why would they need to?
A moment after his own arrival, Daewen joined him, emerging from the flames surrounded by curling smoke.
"An altogether strange sensation," she said as she stepped up beside him, as the final wisps faded into the night.
"What can you see?" Harry asked as he peered into the darkness and tried to make sense of the dark mass of figures moving through the night beyond the reach of the light of his fires.
"The camp's defences still hold," said Daewen, her eyes picking details out of the darkness that were far beyond Harry's ability to see. The bright light of the fire behind them filled the battlefield beyond with an impenetrable inky blackness. "The Orcs are pressing the west much harder than the east, and have formed up a company of archers towards their rear there."
"Then that is where we will go first," said Harry. By his reckoning, it would be some time before the slaughter beyond the flames was concluded, but he hoped that Haleth might soon be able to send some small portion of his forces through the flames to relieve their allies.
As Harry and Daewen moved away from the flames, they both made sure to keep low as they moved so that they were not silhouetted against the light. Harry's eyes were once again able to adapt to the darkness. In the distance he could hear the shouts of command coming from the Dwarvish encampment, though they were almost lost among the sounds of battle that filled the night.
Then, they heard a cry coming from their left, towards the battle between the Dwarves and Orcs. Harry turned, and in the darkness he was able to make out particularly tall and gangly Orc wielding a sword in each hand. It wasted no time in charging them, crossing the space between them with unnatural speed, borne across the ground upon freakishly long legs.
Harry readied himself for the charge, and beside him he felt Daewen do the same. She had used the last of her arrows in their last confrontation, he realised.
The Orc met them in a whirlwind of flailing limbs and blades. In an action that Harry did not expect, he threw one of his swords through the air at Daewen just as he was covering the last few feet, and it forced her to jump out of the way. Despite the unexpected attack, Harry kept his eye on the Orc, who swung his other sword in a wild overhead arc that had enough power behind it to drive Harry to his knees as he blocked it. He was then forced to roll backwards as the Orc's other hand, which he had thought empty, slashed across where his chest would have been, a dagger having materialised in its clawed fingers.
The backwards roll meant he had to leave his staff, but as the orc stepped over it, looking gleeful, Harry summoned it back to his hand. The Orc was taken by surprise as the flying staff knocked its legs from beneath it, and fell backwards to the ground. A moment later, a recovered Daewen was upon the prone Orc, and her two daggers plunged into his chest.
Except they didn't. The blades were stopped dead by something. Harry realised then that beneath the disgusting rotten leather often worn by Orcs, something glimmered in the darkness. Somehow, the creature had been able to attach scraps of mithril chain to his gambeson, and it was more than enough to stop even Daewen's Elvish blades.
Her eyes went wide when she realised what had happened, and it was only by Harry's quick thinking that she was not gutted then and there by the rusty dagger held in the Orcs off-hand. Harry called upon the winds to rescue his friend, and from his outstretched staff a powerful shockwave of air and sound passed between them, throwing Daewen back, away from danger.
Harry immediately followed his attack up, and struck at the Orc's head with Anguirel, it was the one place he could be sure was not protected by mithril. The Orc raised its sword, but it did not help, for Anguirel could cleave such weak iron with ease, and it did so. The black blade cut deep into the Orc's skull, and into the rocky earth below it, sending harsh vibrations up Harry's arm.
Even as he completed his swing, he felt a sharp pain in his calf, and looked down to find that the Orc's final act had been to plunge his knife into Harry's leg. Harry stared at it a moment, wondering at how little pain there was from the wound, before he knelt down to pull it out, casting it upon the body of the Orc that was next to him.
"Are you injured?" said Daewen urgently. It had not taken her long to recover from being thrown by Harry's magic, and she moved quickly to his side. She was quickly able to pick out his injury. "You must be careful. You know how quickly the wounds from Orcish weapons can turn."
He did, of course. He reached into one a pouch secured firmly to his belt and pulled out a small vial of potion. With practiced motions, he soaked a strip of thick cotton in the potion, and dabbed it around the wound carefully, it came away marred by some kind of ugly black substance, which surely confirmed Daewen's worry, the Orc had poisoned the dagger in some way, and if left untreated, the wound would surely fester.
There was another shout, and he looked up to see that more Orcs had become aware of them. He shared a glance with Daewen, who spun her twin blades, and turned to meet them, intending to give Harry the time he needed.
Working quickly, Harry folded the patch over so that a clean part of it was revealed, then he held it firmly against the wound, before he tied it in place with a thin strip of leather. He'd have to make sure to change it often, but as long as he did so, the wound would be clean within the day. It wasn't the first time he'd seen infected Orc wounds, and he had learned to be prepared for them. Attempting to concoct the necessary potion to deal with the infection while suffering the fever and shaking their poisons could quickly induce was no small feat, and one he did not wish to have to reproduce.
Even the time taken for that brief ministration meant that Daewen was fighting a frantic and losing battle against more than two-dozen Orcs. He watched as she was forced to take a deep gash in one side, so that she could block another stroke that would have removed her head from her shoulders. He was too distant to make an immediate impact with his sword, and calling the earth, or air to fight them would surely see Daewen caught up in the attack too. Instead, he sheathed his sword, and he removed his wand from his staff, an idea he'd taken from Gandalf who kept his pipe in a little nook near the top of his own staff.
"Anarvëa Alca!" he cried, as he thrust the wand towards the Orcs. A beam of light, as bright as the sun, and even more painful upon the skin of the creatures of Morgoth burst from his wand, and the Orcs cried out in fear and pain. Though they hated the sun, and hid from it where they could, it did not harm them. The light from Harry's wand was not that of the sun alone, for the power of Scatha was tied into the fiery brilliance.
Those who'd been facing towards Harry were blinded by it, and those who were not were still burned by its brilliance. Daewen was surely dazzled, but she reacted quickly, and leapt back, away from the Orcs who'd been assailing her, and towards the safety that Harry represented. She hissed in pain when she landed, and fell to a knee, clutching her injured side.
The Orcs fled in the face of Harry's scorching light, fearing it as they feared the first rays of dawn as the sun bestrode the eastern horizon. It had been the only way he could drive them off, but necessary though it had been, it also served to draw much unwelcome attention to them. The night was filled with red gimlet eyes, and they soon found the source of the light. The Orcs had surely made little progress against the immovable Dwarves, but a Man and an Elf, injured and alone upon the battlefield, were a tempting prize.
"Perhaps you were right," Harry admitted, when he realised that they would soon be facing a great many more Orcs coming their way with single-minded malice. "I really should have stayed quiet upon that rock."
Daewen chucked, and the usual brightness of that sound was strained by the pain she was in. "Perhaps," she said simply, as they readied themselves for the inevitable charge "If we get out of this, I must remember to remind you of this."
Harry threw his vial of curative potion across to Daewen so that she could minister to her wound. Elves did not need to fear any diseases, but the poisons occasionally used by the Orcs could cause them great hurt. Then, he stepped forward, prepared to bring the world, earth, wind and fire, to bear upon their attackers.
But the charge never came. Instead, a thunder of hooves filled the night, and drowned out the shouts and battle-cries of the Orcs before them, and the riders of Haleth charged through the flames, their spears and shields aloft, and accompanied by the proud blaring of horns. Their horses glistened with sweat, and each heavy breath exhaled warm clouds that quickly condensed in the cold night air. Harry saw Haleth, and beside him rode his banner-bearer. Each looked as bloodied and tired as Harry felt, but it did not blunt the fury of their charge.
The horses of the Éothéod streamed past them both, and continued on to break over the massed ranks of the Orcs. Soon, they, like their kin beyond the flame-wall, were lost to panic, and fled blindly whichever way they could.
The battle was not over, their bloody business not concluded, but the night was won.
