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It had all happened so quickly in the confusion of battle. One moment Kāthaanī had been mounted on her Karibor fighting and the next she lay sprawled out on the ground, badly wounded. He tried to ride over to help, but a group of soldiers stood in the way blocking his path. Before plowing his way through to Kāthaanī, Azarmanō heard Abārpānarś call for the retreat. There had been too many guards to defeat, he lamented, simply too many soldiers and not enough Faithful. Over the course of his service, he had become accustomed to being outnumbered in battle, sometimes being forced to retreat. He hated fleeing from combat, running from the enemy, then as now, but there was no choice. Time slipped through their fingers like fine grains of sand. The island was sinking and every moment the ground trembled with a greater ferocity.
Azarmanō had never ridden a horse at such speeds in his life. The Kariborim were truly extraordinary creatures gifted with blazing speed that enabled the group to stay just ahead of their pursuers. The creatures endurance lasted much longer than that of ordinary beasts, never waning as the group rode on. He had never been particularly fond of horses before, but now he was extremely glad to be riding these fleet footed equines. We need only keep up this pace to reach Romenna and board the ships to safety, he thought.
As he passed the landscape, he felt as if he was saying goodbye, a final farewell to the land of Numenor, soon to be under water. Yet even as he did so, he felt that Numenor, although destroyed, would always live in his heart as he remembered it, not as the land of corrupt, greedy kings, or the foul Lord Sauron, but as the home for a once noble people who had once befriended the elves. He could never forget Numenor, his Numenor, as long as he lived. When Abārpānarś pronounced the tongue of Numenor to be cursed, tainted, unusable, it pained Azarmanō greatly. Adunaic was the language of his ancestors, the language of the great Numenorian sea captains of old from whom he derived his lineage. Adunaic still held a deer place in his heart as something connected with home, something he could keep after the island sunk. Despite Abārpānarśs rejection of the language as corrupt, Azarmanō could not find the will within him to do the same. He could speak Sindarin, but the tongue nearest to his heart would always be the language of Numenor.
After the party stopped for a brief respite, Azarmanō went over to check on Kāthaanī. She was still bleeding slightly, so Azarmanō ripped off a piece of his cloak and tied it as a bandage on her shoulder. There was no time to treat her wounds properly here, but they could ensure that she not lose any more blood. As he looked at her body wavering on top of a Karibor, he silently willed her to stay stable until they reached the ships. Off in the distance Azarmanō could see a cluster of a dozen soldiers on horseback riding towards them with alarming alacrity. Quickly, he mounted his horse, checked to see that Kāthaanī sat safely on top of her Karibor supported by her mother, and followed his companions, galloping toward the harbor.
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