A sight for sore eyes!” Galdor’s smile is wide and bright as he puts a fatherly arm around Elrohir’s shoulders. A firm hand steers him away and up to the quarterdeck. “Come,” Glorfindel will not let him linger there. He rushes to the railing to watch white-knuckled how the Black Eye billows in the stiff east wind. Umbar is coming.įear leaps snarling at his throat. Out there, where sea and sky meet, a red sail looms. Their hands are a blur to the rhythm of their song, bundles of white-fletched arrows stacked all around them.Įlrohir means to greet them but the smile withers on his face. A circle of fletchers are sat on the deck. They pass a weaponsmith bent over his grindstone, drawing across one sleek Elvish blade after another until the edges gleam keen and hungry in the sun. Glorfindel leads him past clusters of Elves in shirtsleeves, busy painting, caulking or scrubbing the already spotless deck. Even higher up, at the dizzying top of the main mast, flies a bright pennant, a white swan-ship sailing waves of blue. Elrohir leans his back against the railing and tips his head back to watch them flit between the white expanses of the sails.

They dive from the yards into the water and dart up once more with writhing silver in their beaks. High overhead snowy gulls and gold-dusted gannets perch on the ship’s yardarms. A desert indeed, and the Nemir a tiny swell-tossed haven amidst the vast and lifeless beauty of waves and clouds. Up on deck, the open ocean is an ever-shifting dune-sea of azure and indigo, strewn with diamonds where the morning sun sparkles off the wave-crests and the Nemir’s foam-white wake.Įlrohir breathes deeply, filling his lungs with the strange scents of salt and spray. Glorfindel does not answer, but steps closer, and tugs the collar of Elrohir’s undershirt until it sits flat and even underneath the tunic. “You need no weapons.”Īt that, Elrohir raises an eyebrow. Glorfindel watches these proceedings with something like sadness. He has a knife in his sleeve, but now he takes out a second one and slips it into his boot. The weapon’s familiar weight is a small solace. He unwraps the sheath from his stained and battered sword belt and girds it over the silver-studded Elvish one so the sword hangs on his hip in easy reach. He tamps down the sharp sting of grief - where is Ot now? - and digs for his scimitar. “Wait,” Elrohir says, and turns to his saddlebags, lying in a messy heap in the corner. It really is very good, and after a few bites his stomach settles. And so Elrohir forces down the wine and some bread.

Let us put some flesh on your ribs before Elladan takes fright at the sight of you.”Ī low blow, but it hits home. “The Nemir is well-supplied, and you look so gaunt.

“Tonight you will have a hot meal.” Glorfindel sets a cup of wine down on the chest before Elohir with a soft click. The Elvish bread smells delightful, but where Elrohir’s stomach used to sit a tangle of raw nerves writhes all the way up his throat. Glorfindel looks stern, but his eyes still hold mirth - a hollow threat then, merely a new tactic in his ceaseless struggle to get food into Elrohir. “You will answer to him if you send it back untouched.” A fine cook, but a temper like a dragon.” Glorfindel breaks off some of the honeyed flatbread, and presses it into Elrohir’s hands.

Obsidian sword swg