Chapter XXVI: Cruel Duty

Mother halted almost as soon as she stepped into the early morning sunlight. She looked afraid to go farther, as if she felt that she had no place in the anxious crowd. Estel had no such compunctions: he was as much a member of the household as anyone else, and his father’s eldest child was grievously wounded. It was his right to be present, and his duty to help if he could.

‘Estel, no; stay out of the way—’ Mother admonished. He did not heed her. Estel wove nimbly between the well-meaning Elves who were gathering to aid in the dismounting of the man with the head wound. A quick glance told Estel that his right arm was broken. It had not been set, but lay at an awkward angle in a crude splint made of a split branch. The man was grinding his teeth against the pain as he slowly swung his leg over the horse’s back and slid down against the waiting hands.

His companion was lying semiconscious in the grass, wheezing shallowly and plucking with fretful fingers at a tear in the skirts of his tunic. Lindir, whom Estel had never known to do anything but while away his days in song and offer critiques (often rather scathing) of the works of the other minstrels, was kneeling beside him. Though the Elf had little use for mortals he was not without pity: he was singing consolingly as he felt the man’s skull, searching for signs of trauma.

Estel slipped around the first of the horses, stroking its flank consolingly. The poor thing seemed quite overwhelmed by the frenzied activity around it: it was pawing the ground and shifting uneasily from side to side. The other gelding was standing very still, nickering plaintively into the palm of the handler who was removing its bridle. Furtively, for he knew he would be viciously scolded if anyone caught him doing something so dangerous and foolhardy, Estel scrambled under its belly, coming up on the far side with a piece of Elven rope clinging to his shoulder: a piece of the bonds that had held the rider in place.

Unlike the others, Elladan’s horse seemed quite calm – perhaps cognizant of the desperate state of its burden and the need for gentle handling. Three of the kitchen staff were waiting on the healer’s command to remove the battered body slung over the saddle, but the unfortunate maiden did not seem quite certain how to proceed.

‘Hold his legs firmly against one another!’ she said adamantly. ‘Then we’ll lift him up and ease him to the left – no. No, give me a moment to think...’ Her brow knitted anxiously together, vacillation overcoming her. ‘Wait...’ she repeated helplessly. She was clearly loath to move him, and Estel could understand why. Standing so near, unnoticed by the distressed adults, he could see that the bruises stood out stiff and swollen, straining against the skin, and the torn cloak swathing the leg from ankle almost to hip was drenched right through with gore. There was a smell, too; a strange, sickly-sweet smell that seemed vaguely familiar.

Erestor came striding over, anxiety writ upon his usually impassive face. ‘What is the delay?’ he asked. ‘We must get him inside at once.’

‘I am afraid to touch him,’ the healer said. ‘I have never... I am a student of herb-lore, not of... of...’ She gestured helplessly at the battered body. ‘If only Lord Elrond were here!’

The faint note of hysteria in her voice brought a wave of panic down upon Estel. What would Atar say if he returned to the Valley to find his son dead? The prospect was too terrible to comprehend.

‘Lift him down as swiftly as you may,’ Erestor instructed the waiting Elves. ‘It hardly seems possible to do more damage. Has no one found a litter?’ This last was shouted at the rest of the household.

Estel took a halting step backward, bumping against the flank of the gelding behind him. With a swift count, the three Eldar lifted the body and lowered him to the ground. Estel saw with horror that the bruises extended onto the chest and abdomen, and if anything they were more dreadful-looking than any on the back. As they turned the limp form, the head fell backward, and Estel beheld with dismay the ruined face: eyes swollen so that they looked impossible to open, broken nose smashed against the left cheek, blood and vomit matted into the long dark hair and the coarse beginnings of a beard...

Beard? Tears of uncertainty were startled into his eyes. It was not Elladan, Estel realized in desolate bewilderment. It was another one of the Dúnedain, a comrade of the other two. ‘B-but he is on Elladan’s horse!’ he exclaimed, unaware that he spoke aloud.

Erestor turned in consternation. ‘Estel! You should not be here: go back inside at once!’

Estel could not obey. He took a halting step towards the mutilated Man. The healer, looking near to tears herself, was groping through grime and cruor to find his pulse. ‘Elladan,’ he repeated, shock rendering him almost incapable of speech. ‘Where is Elladan? What has happened to Elladan?’

Erestor’s jaw worked helplessly, moving around words that he could not find. Either he did not know the answer, or the truth was too terrible to be spoken.

‘We left him on the ascending slope at the root of the path,’ a ragged voice interjected. The Dúnadan with the broken arm was shuffling toward them on trembling legs. Erestor moved swiftly to offer support to the man’s left side. ‘He could walk no further. I told him... I begged him to take my horse. I still have two good legs, though they quiver,’ he added ruefully, looking down at his mud-crusted boots and his shaking knees.

‘And Elladan has not?’ Erestor said shrewdly, his eyes calculating.

The man shook his bandaged head. The motion seemed to dizzy him. ‘His right foot. He says it is not serious, and I half believed him, but he could not go on. If one of the horses failed, he said, someone would have to lead the other two and my legs would be needed. Beldir was nearly lost to the pain by that time and Halion...’ He looked down at his broken comrade and shuddered convulsively. ‘Elladan said if we could reach the house before the poisons rose too far, he might yet live.’ There was a question or a plea in his voice.

‘I do not know,’ Erestor said sadly. ‘We will do all that we can.’

‘I thought that Master Elrond might have the skill to save the leg... but Elladan says he is gone from the Valley.’

A bier had been found at last, and for a moment attention was drawn away from the coherent man as his compatriot was rolled gently onto it. ‘He is burning with fever,’ the healer hissed, looking fearfully up at Erestor. ‘I have never treated such injuries!’ she said. ‘I know little of mortal physiology. You must fetch the Elrondion. I have need of his counsel, wounded or no.’

‘Yes, we must go!’ Estel exclaimed, breaking suddenly free of the numbing dismay and tearing his eyes from the mangled body on the stretcher. ‘We must find him at once!’

‘Go,’ the Dúnadan urged, pulling away from Erestor and swaying only slightly as he found and held his own balance. ‘On the ascending slope, above the path. If you brought a horse, I think he could ride.’

Erestor moved to take the reins of Elladan’s horse. ‘Can you bear me to your master, hardy one?’ he asked. The animal butted its nose against his arm. Erestor moved to mount.

‘I am coming with you!’ Estel said, hurrying forward.

‘You cannot,’ the lore-master decreed. ‘Stay with your mother and keep out of the way.’

‘If Elladan cannot ride after all, you will need someone to come back here to fetch aid,’ Estel argued obstinately. ‘I can be most easily spared.’

‘And will you run through the Valley clad as you are, unshod and ready for slumber?’ Erestor countered, nodding pointedly at the boy.

Estel looked down and flushed a little. He had run from his room in such haste that he had forgotten he was wearing his nightclothes. Bare feet poked out from beneath his long white smock. ‘I can run swiftly, even unshod,’ he said stoutly. ‘Glorfindel has taught me well.’ His bravado failed. ‘Please,’ he said quietly. ‘Please, I need to see Elladan.’

He realized that if Erestor asked him, he would not be able to name a single reason why he needed to see Elladan: he merely knew that he did. He felt he had to have some proof that what the man said was true, and the fearless Peredhil who had helped him take his first steps after his sickness, and who had been so kind during his recovery, was not seriously injured after all. But he realized sadly that he had done little running since his illness and likely lacked his former stamina. He would be little use, it was true, and Erestor was looking at him now, pensive, considering his answer carefully.

‘I am sorry, Estel. It is folly to take you. Go to your mother and stay with her.’

As if in response to Erestor’s words, a sharp cry of horror tore through the air. Estel whirled about like a hound scenting death on the wind. The sound had come from his mother’s lips. She was standing by the door, as white as death, clawing at her throat with one hand and staring at the broken man on the litter. Estel had no choice. Erestor would take care of Elladan, but there was no one to comfort his mother but he. He ran back towards the house, weaving agilely around those who stood in his way.

lar

Elladan sat with his back to the boulder for a long time, trying to collect himself. It had been many years since he had taken any debilitating hurt in the field, and he supposed that now that his luck had run out he ought to be grateful for a dislocated shoulder, an ankle certainly sprained but most likely broken, and a right flank rasped bloody beneath shredded garments. In two or three weeks he would be almost as good as new. The others had not been so fortunate.

They had picked their way through the High Pass with good speed, though the four northern horses often needed careful leading on the heights. No signs had they seen of Gandalf or the dwarves, save a small singed cave. It looked to have been struck by lightning, and Beldir had indeed made that assessment, but Elladan could taste the lingering power in the air, and the signs were written as clearly as could be: Mithrandir was here. No more than that had they found, and so they had pressed on down the slopes of the Hithaiglir, hoping to pick up some trail on the far side.

It should have been a warning when they found the pawings of warg-claws around the ruins of five burned firs. But Elladan had been bewildered beyond telling by the tale told in that strange place. Orcs had gathered, and with them the wild and wicked wolves. Fourteen pairs of booted feet, one unmistakably wizard-sized, and the bare toes of a hobbit had all left their marks in the rain-softened ground and the carpet of pine-needles. Many tracks led to the trees. None led away. Nor were there any signs of charred or despoiled corpses, nor of captives borne off back to the mountains. Even the unslakable appetites of a combined force of wargs and goblins could not have disposed of fifteen victims without leaving a trace. It was as if Gandalf and his cohorts had sprouted wings and flown off into the night.

Unable to find any further trail within several miles of the bonfire-site, the four of them had despaired and turned back towards Eriador. On their fourth night in the Pass, just as they began their westward descent, they had met up with some of the wargs – who had likely been stalking them since they left the Wilderland.

The Dúnedain had fought valiantly, but Halion had lost his footing in his dismount and the warg-captain had sprung upon him, calling curses to the sky. The cruel, noxious jaws had seized the young Ranger by the leg, shaking him like a rat against the stony ground. Though with his bow Elladan had managed to fell the beast he did so too late to spare Halion. Bereft of their leader pack had dispersed, howling to the heavens as they vanished. Whether it was the howling that had caused the mountains to rain down upon them then, or whether the falling stones were the work of some unearthly malice or merely the product of unhappy chance, the four travellers had found themselves bombarded by crushing granite.

Ondoher, who was nearly too old to be wandering the Wild any longer, had suffered a head wound that brought with it vomiting and blurred vision, and the bones of his arm had been snapped in twain. Slow would be the healing of that hurt to his aged body. Beldir, a hardy man well into his fifth decade of life, had suffered several cracked and broken ribs, and before nightfall he was passing blood. By the time Elladan and Ondoher, with two good hands between them, had dug Halion from the rubble, the young man’s heart was pounding with the force of the poisons released by his crushed organs, and the warg-wounds on his leg were already raging with infection. As to how much blood he had lost then and in the intervening days, Elladan could not make an accurate guess. He dreaded to try.

Their horses had wisely fled the rockslide, but not all swiftly enough. Elladan’s steed had returned first, and at her master’s behest had departed again and brought back Halion’s gelding and Ondoher’s. Beldir’s horse they found when daylight came at last: lying at the bottom of a steep but shallow ravine with its skull beaten in by a large oblong stone.

With three horses and four wounded soldiers, it had made the most sense for the Peredhil to walk. Elladan possessed greater stamina than the hardiest Second-born, and his injuries were less severe than those of the others. He had taken it upon himself to lead the horse bearing Halion. This had served a dual purpose. If led and comforted his mare was more likely to obey and to carry her burden gently wherever she was pressed to roam. And in leading her he could also lean upon her, for he was hobbled by his inflamed foot.

The first day he had fared well enough, and though the going was treacherous it seemed that if the need were desperate enough horses could navigate the high places after all. On the second day, pressing on without sleep out of fear for Halion’s life, the pain had been far more intense and the progress more slow though by then they were well into their descent. Through the night he had stumbled on until he could not stumble anymore, and then he had been obliged to send the others on and remain here to wait for help. The exhausted horses, each already overburdened with one rider, could not be trusted with two.

With two reliable arms he might have fared better. He could have fashioned a stave out of... what? Something. Then he could have... or perhaps...

His thoughts were muddled with pain and weariness. Greater stamina had he than his mortal brethren, but there was Man-blood in his veins, and the burden of his mixed heritage was a somewhat lessened resistance to the hurts and sufferings of the body than others of the Firstborn possessed. He had laboured as best he could in the face of unbearable odds, and he had brought his small band to the very marches of a safe haven. He could go no further.

They would send someone from the house to fetch him, and the sooner that was done the better. Halion’s torn and infected leg would almost certainly have to come off, and Elladan doubted that any healer who could be spared from marching with Glorfindel’s army – he realized in mildly absurd annoyance that the golden-haired warrior had almost certainly departed for Lórien without him! – would have the necessary skills to amputate a limb. It was not a procedure for which the Firstborn had much need: all but the most grievous of deficits could be resolved with time and patience. Elladan had learned it himself only through his close association with the remnant of Arnor.

Fortunately, amputation did not require the use of his feet, and once someone with two strong arms set his dislocated shoulder he would have the use of his hand again. His hurts were not serious, and without the removal of the poisoned limb Halion would surely die. Fighting back the panic borne of desperation and guilt, Elladan closed his eyes and drew in deep, calming breaths. The others would have reached the house by now, or at least they would have been seen by some of the wood-elves. Ondoher was lucid enough to tell them where he was. Someone must be coming already. He would be back in the Valley by noon.

He only hoped that he was not too late.

lar

She knew him. Even shattered and bloodied as he was, his bruised and swollen face all but unrecognizable, she knew him. They had suckled together, played together, worked and laughed and wept together. Until the night she had been whisked away by twin Elven warriors they had been near as any siblings, their shared blood only a small part of the bond between them.

Gilraen could not help the exclamation of anguish as she recognized the wounded Ranger. At her cry, the bearers hesitated, unsure of what to do. For a moment Gilraen was unable to move. She stood there, frozen as though smitten by a bolt of lightning. Then she ran forward, careless of those around her, and seized one cold and purpled hand.

‘Halion!’ she cried. ‘Halion, what devilry is this?’

‘You must release him, lady,’ said one of the Elves carrying the bier. ‘We must bring him into the house. If he is not soon tended he will die.’

Gilraen could not answer. Tears were pouring from her eyes and she felt as though her heart would break. The son of her father’s sister, her beloved cousin, dearest of all her childhood friends, lay beneath her fingers. In her mind he was still a young man of five and twenty, breaking in his first pair of boots in the hills around the village and talking with pride of his intentions to serve with honour and valour now that he was finally of age. She remembered the rainy night when he had risen from his supper and gone out into the night to find wild strawberries to satiate her gravid hankering. She could hear his laughter as he picked up little Aragorn and hoisted the baby – then not yet a year of age – high above his head.

‘My lady, please...’ someone else urged. Someone touched her shoulder, and Gilraen cast the intruding arm violently aside, refusing to relinquish her hold. The well-meaning elf-maid stepped back, startled by the vitriolic reaction.

‘We must bear him inside,’ another voice pleaded. ‘Lady Gilraen, I beg you...’

A slender hand grasped her own, gently prising her fingers away from their grip on the wounded man. Gilraen tried to protest, but the sound came out as a strangulated sob.

‘They must take him inside, Mother,’ a meek voice reasoned. ‘He is sorely wounded and the healer must tend him.’

The bearers waited no longer to hurry their burden away. Gilraen tried to run after them, but a half-grown body blocked her path. Arms twined around her ribs and refused to allow her to move. For a moment she saw only blazing light, and then her knees grew weak. Overcome by this living nightmare, latest in her unrelenting miseries, she swooned.

Elven hands caught her, but she was beyond their feeling. In the muddled moments before she slipped into oblivion, she could see Halion seated high in the chestnut tree, laughing and calling to her to hitch up her kirtle and follow. He was ten years old, and his face was Estel’s...

lar

Mother had been put to bed with a cup of valerian root tea, and once he was certain that she slept, Estel slipped from her room.

It was drawing on to midmorning – well past his bedtime – and yet he no longer felt able to sleep. His mind was filled with a cacophony of questions. How did his mother know the dying Dúnadan? Estel could not be certain, with the swollen and damaged face, but he did not think he had ever met one named Halion before. Yet obviously Mother knew him, and well. His pitiable state had so distressed her that it had driven her – his strong-stomached mother who never grew faint at the sight of a slaughtered animal or a broken limb or a festering orc-wound – to swoon away. And the way she had called his name; plaintive, desperate. Estel had only faint, fever-riddled memories of his mother using such a tone of voice, as she had called out to him while he lay ill. So she not only knew this person, but loved him, and Mother had never loved anyone but Estel. Estel and—

No.

No. Mother had said that his father was dead. Atar had said that his father was dead! The sons of Elrond, and Erestor and Glorfindel: everyone whom he loved and respected had always been adamant that his father was dead. They would not lie to him. It was inconceivable that Halion was his father.

The thought was not so easily put from his mind, but it was too terrible to contemplate. Instead, Estel reasoned with himself. His father could not have been one of the Dúnedain, or else there would be nothing to explain, no secrets to hide. The Rangers often died, usually in nameless battles in the hills but sometimes of disease or privation or exposure. Had his sire been one of them, the tale of his life would have been no different from that of any other Dúnadan. No different, perhaps, than the tale of the crushed man would be.

Comforted by the logic of this, Estel entered his own room and moved to look out the window at the now-empty greensward below. The grass was crushed and trampled, and would not look the same for weeks to come. There were bloodstains on the ground, and a deep rut where the restive horse had pawed the sod away. He looked up towards the mountains, his eyes tracing the path that Erestor would take as he returned with Elladan. There, sure enough, he saw the sturdy mare, toiling stolidly through the beeches. A figure sat awkwardly in the saddle, and another clad in a long surcoat walked alongside. They were perhaps twenty minutes from the house.

This time Estel did not run. If Elladan was well enough to ride that was a very promising sign, and if Erestor saw him wandering in his nightclothes again he would only send him back upstairs to change; or worse, order him to bed. Estel removed his smock and dressed himself in his oldest cote and hose, lest they should be fouled or spoiled by contact with the wounded knight. He even took the time to tie his shoestrings properly, twining them twice about his ankle and tucking in the ends with care. Then he went downstairs, and though still determined not to run he moved swiftly, taking long, sure strides.

He reached the main entryway just as the door opened and Erestor came shuffling in. He had Elladan’s left arm around the back of his neck, and he was supporting the younger Elf. Elladan was hobbling on one foot, his right leg bent. The boot seemed to be stuffed with something at the ankle, but Estel knew that this meant the limb within was swollen. Elladan’s right arm was twisted grotesquely at the shoulder, and he had tucked his hand into his belt, evidently unable to hold up his forearm. Estel flinched in sympathy as he saw the shredded remains of the right side of Elladan’s garments, and the ragged, bloodied flesh beneath.

Elladan spied him and forced a taut smile through his discomfort. ‘Why, it’s my dear young friend the eavesdropper,’ he said. ‘Erestor has been telling me how you overheard his counsels with Glorfindel. If you are going to make a habit of this, then you and I should sit down together and talk about strategies to avoid being caught.’

He sounded so much like the Elladan whom Estel knew that the boy began to weep. ‘You are alive!’ he cried, running forward. He wanted to embrace the warrior, but he stopped short, partly in awe of one whom he still rather idolized, and in part because he feared touch him lest by doing so he should cause more pain.

With a quiet grunt, Elladan hauled his arm off of Erestor and took a shuffling step forward. ‘You’ve borne me far enough, my friend,’ he said. ‘Perhaps Estel will consent to be my crutch for the remainder of my journey.’

Estel nodded vehemently, unspeakably grateful for the opportunity to be of some use. Elladan put his good arm around the boy’s shoulders and Estel placed his hands on the half-Elf’s waist, careful to avoid the injured side of his body. Elladan did not lean very heavily upon him, using him chiefly for balance when he hopped, and they moved quickly down the corridor, Erestor following behind.

‘What befell you?’ Estel asked.

‘We ran afoul of wargs,’ said Elladan. ‘All but Halion would have escaped unscathed, save that their yowling brought half the mountain down upon us. Oh, how wretchedly Elrohir will tease me!’ he added, smirking tiredly.

‘My mother knows him,’ Estel said abruptly as they turned the corner and passed the door to the apothecary workshop. ‘She knows the one called Halion.’

‘And you find this remarkable,’ Elladan observed. ‘Do you suppose you are the only man-child in Eriador with whom your mother is acquainted?’ At Estel’s long look, he sighed heavily and said, ‘She did not see him, did she?’

Estel nodded. Elladan closed his eyes, looking suddenly very haggard and worn. He looked about to say more, but at that moment the sombre infirmarian came to usher them into one of the work-rooms, and for a time Elladan had little breath for speech.

lar

‘If you instruct me I can do it,’ the healer was saying, clutching one hand to her blood-soaked apron. ‘It can surely be no more difficult th-than sawing a rail in two.’

‘It is often more difficult by far,’ Elladan told her grimly.

He was sitting on a bench in the corridor outside of the room in which Halion lay with a tourniquet around his thigh to prevent the further spread of infection. The Peredhil was exhausted, and sat with his head against the wall and his aching right arm cradled in his left. His abrasions had been cleaned and dressed, and his ruined garb replaced with a soft linen robe. If his ankle was broken it was only a crack, undetectable upon palpation. The foot was immobilized in a carved beech-wood brace. In two weeks he would be walking normally again – unlike Halion. The young Ranger’s limb was gangrenous, the poisons of the warg’s teeth bringing death to muscle, blood and bone.

The maiden looked half-sick and Elladan’s heart ached with pity. In five centuries of practice she had never troubled to learn battlefield medicine, but had focused upon the gentler arts of herb-lore, the cultivation of healing plants and the mixing of medicines. Such a brutal procedure as this was outside of her experience and beyond her ken. There had been little need for her to be involved in such things, for it was against her nature – a fact that had always amused Elrohir, for her sister was a huntress and an archer of no small skill. Such were the necessities of war: had any other healer been present in the Valley she could have been spared this ordeal. Had he the full use of his dominant arm he might have spared her this ordeal, but it was not possible that he could work the bone-saw today.

‘Do not fear,’ he said, trying to comfort her. ‘It will swiftly be done. At least the patient is beyond pain, and he cannot plead with you to spare the limb.’ They often begged thus, the prospect of life as a cripple seeming more terrible even than death. It was a hard thing to hear such pleas, to be the agent of that final blow that robbed a man of his ability to aid his people in their ceaseless struggle. A one-armed Ranger might still wield a sword, or mount a patrol, or at least run messages between camps, but a man without a leg was useless to his folk. And Halion was so young…

‘There is no other way?’ the healer asked.

‘There is no other way,’ said Elladan, berating himself as much as he was assuring her. ‘If you cannot bring yourself to do it I can find someone who is skilled with a saw: it is not a task requiring a healer’s gentle touch.’

‘I could find someone,’ a soft voice said. Both Eldar turned sharply towards the thin child seated further up the hall, his back to the wall. They had forgotten this unassuming witness to their conference.

‘You should not be down here at all,’ Elladan said sternly. At the expression of hurt that appeared on Estel’s earnest face he repented. The boy admired him greatly and had not stirred from his side even when Erestor had wrenched his arm back into its socket. More kindly he said, ‘I understand that you want to help, and I am thankful, but you are too young to hear us discussing such matters. Why do you not go and read to your mother? It might keep her mind occupied if you chose a fair tale.’

‘Mother sleeps,’ Estel said. ‘We should know at once if she did not, for she would be here. He is dear to her, though I know not why. How do they know one another? Was my mother guilty of unseemly conduct? Was she estranged from my sire even before his death?’

‘What a vivid imagination you have,’ Elladan said dryly. ‘Have you been reading the tale of Túrin?’

‘Aldarion and Erendis,’ Estel muttered, flushing a little.

‘Atarinya allowed you to read Aldarion and Erendis?’ Elladan was incredulous.

‘In Adúnaic. I did not understand all of it,’ admitted Estel.

‘Nor should you, whatever the language. Perhaps it would be a mistake to have you read to your mother after all. And the answer to both of your shocking questions is no. Your mother has always been an honourable woman and a most noble lady. She and Halion were children together, I think. He is six years short of two score… yes, they would have been very close in age.’ Elladan allowed his eyes to drift closed. It felt as if the effort of ciphering had sapped the last of his strength.

‘Th-there is little time,’ the healer said miserably, recalling him to the sad task at hand. ‘If you instruct me I can do it.’

With the barest of sighs, Elladan nodded and tried to rise. Instantly Estel was at his side, offering his arm and a sturdy young shoulder on which to lean. Elladan let the boy shore him up as he hobbled to the door. Then he stopped and ran a hand along the side of Estel’s face. ‘This far and no farther,’ he said firmly. ‘Why do you not go down to the stables? My poor mare would be glad of your company, for she has had a wretched journey, and I cannot comfort her today.’

‘I will do that,’ Estel said firmly. He looked grimly glad that he was not useless. ‘I promise.’

Elladan waited until the boy was out of sight before he opened the door. The healer came to his side, offering her arm as they shuffled forward together into the arena of death and decay.