[piosenniel]

Osse's post - Carthor


For ten days they had headed northward, following the crisp bite of the wind. The snow had deepened under the hooves of their mounts with every stride they had taken. Their food bags began to empty, despite their best efforts to ensure their stores lasted. At nightfall on the tenth day, the first of the horses had perished. Slipping on a patch of unseen ice, the stout bay mare had lost her footing and come crashing down in a whirl of limbs. Her rider had fallen under her, his cold brown eyes staring up into Carthor’s own as he kneeled beside him. There had been no time to properly bury the young man. Instead, they had laid him out proudly by a deep snow drift, the tattered banner on his ash spear still bearing the device of the king fluttering in the bitter wind.

Carthor had shuddered to feel the weight of the horsemeat in his cloth bag. It was a poor way to repay such a fine beast for years of faithful service, a beast whose only mistake had been to blindly trust in the guidance of her master’s hand. Better to live with the guilt than to die without it. Death, even then, would have been a sweet relief to Carthor, son of Harathor. Honour drove him; as long as his king drew breath, so would he.

Within a week of the first, all twelve horses had fallen, their frozen corpses lying as grim reminders of the group’s passage. The Dunedain had continued on foot, trudging through the snow, which often rose deeper than the knees of their tallest man, sharing the lead in shifts. Two men walked in front and behind of Arvedui, their eyes guarding their lord’s back, guarding it from the despair they all felt. On the third day, the last of the horsemeat was eaten.

For six more days, the Men of the North trudged on through the thick snows, the snows that seemed to be forever clinging, like dead, cold hands at every limb and every cloak. The men were all soaked as the snow tunnelled in through their clothing; no cloak could halt its wandering fingers. Slowly, but surely, the men would fall to the back of the column, unable to hold onto the slow, plodding pace. Their footfalls would become clumsy and their strides shorter, as if invisible hands held them by the shoulders, slowly pulling them back. One by one, they fell down into the snow, unseen and unheeded by their comrades. For those who turned to give aid were soon consumed by the same deadly foe, the only aid they would give would be company with which to enjoy Eru’s Gift.

Then, on the ninth day since the last of the horses had perished, the seven survivors of the group of fifteen reached the cold, grey expanse of the icy sea. Great towers of white rose out of the water, their great bastions and towers mirrored below them. The men stood dumbfounded at the edge of the great water, watching the ice towers collide on the glassy surface, listening to the call of cracking ice, feeling the whip of the icy wind in their lank hair.

As they stood, the Forochel’s white splendour lying eerily around them, the Lossoth espied them, and walking on the surface of the ice on basket-shoes, they had led them to their camp.