Fall of the North RPG

[Osse]

The sickle moon’s pearl-light fell on Lissi’s cheek, casting soft shadows on the cold clear tears as they silently fled across her fair skin, before losing them to the dark as they dropped, caught in the wind.

Carthor raised his hand softly, slowly to caress his wife’s shapely face. Lissi turned away, staring, unseeing, at the snow below her, hiding her sorrow behind flowing tendrils of raven hair.

‘My darling…’ Carthor pulled Lissi’s sobbing figure into an embrace, trying to hold onto what he knew was fast slipping away.

Firmly but gently her white hands pushed him away, and turning she strode off into the grey of the night, her bowed head letting her tears fall onto the fur of her mantle, lost like a faun in the night. As lost as her husband’s heart.

The old man stood alone, his grey-blue eyes firmly closed, weeping silent, dry tears.

Why? Why had it come to this, this torment? Why had he lived when so many others had died around him, just to come to this end… just to see all that he had loved fall around him. The white walls of his home defiled and scorched, littered with the corpses of his kindred…His son, whose keen ears would hear no more, lying cold far from his home…A duty, crushing in its weight, crippling in its metallic grip… And Lissi…

Carthor reached for the dagger in his boot, unsheathing it. The metal seemed hideous in this grey world, its brightness staring mockingly into the old man’s eyes. In that metal, Carthor saw the faces of the dead, staring at him accusingly. He shuddered. The vision fled and he was left staring at his own face in its cold length…

Silently, Carthor’s gnarled old hand guided the blade towards his chest, the point, almost relieving as it stood poised against the scarred skin. Carthor took a breath… his own face would be added to those of the dead.

‘Lord Carthor!’ Belegorn’s strong, even voice came whistling through the eddying snow behind the old soldier.

Carthor turned.

His dagger fell silently groundwards, its stag-horn hilt barely discernable as it law enshrined in the soft, billowing snow. Even Belegorn’s eyes, so accustomed to discerning shapes shrouded by the night failed to see it as it fell, and not even elven eyes would have seen it as the snow blew and settled over it.

‘Lord Carthor,’ The Lieutenant spoke again. ‘I have searched for you high and low my old friend!’

Solemnly Carthor looked into the face of his comrade, and the gaze Belegorn was subject to froze the blood seething through his veins. Here was a man, who had finally been defeated, whose face, usually resolute and strong finally showed the scars of its past; not the physical scars, which had always been there as a stout reminder, but scars that had been hidden.

Carthor said nothing, merely stared, dazed, into the eyes of the man opposite. Recognition of any of his friend’s words failed to wander in the crisp halls of his old blue eyes, which had acquired thick mantles of emptiness. Belegorn shuddered. Looking into those once proud eyes was like looking at death itself, as if all the horror they had seen had finally broken its levies and surged outwards into the night. Belegorn had seen such eyes before, but only in those who had been broken by the forces of Angmar, though not in body.

The words stripped from his tongue, Belegorn reached out to place his hand on the shoulder of the older man. Beneath the fur of his great cloak, Carthor was shaking, as if every sinuous inch of his frame was overcome with a spring-like tension. Springs can only be tensed so far before they shoot back. Obviously, the spring that was Carthor son of the Dunedain had reached that limit.

‘Carthor old friend…’ Started Belegorn, suddenly finding his tongue again, ‘I have spoken to our Lord… please friend, tarry a moment to think first of what you do! Stay! You have no further allegiance to this man. The kingdom he rules is dead my friend, as is any bond it once held you in! I beseech you Carthor, think of your family, this is no time to throw your life away in grief, for death is all that awaits you in the North Ice!’

For the first time since Belegorn’s voice had landed on his scarred ears, Carthor spoke:
‘I must go.’

Belegorn’s hand fell to his side, as the old soldier’s bulk strode forward past him. Quickly, he turned, continuing his plea.

‘Carthor, our kingdom as it was is dead, and now lives on only in one place; those who have lived! These folk Carthor, who have faced fire, cold and death and endured are all that lives of our home… and as they still draw breath, so shall our land my friend. I plead with thee Carthor, do not leave those who need aid now, do not let our home die, forgotten, burnt out like a wick...’

Carthor walked on, his hunched shoulders soon becoming almost indiscernible in the foray of ice.

‘Carthor!!’ Belegorn pleaded to his receding shape, ‘Carthor! Dying alone, far from those you love shall not bring him back! This is no way to grieve for Brander!’

Belegorn’s words were swept away in the wind, ripped ragged by the falling blades, utterly destroyed in the maelstrom.

*****************

The sentry outside the King’s tent was amazed at the speed and silence with which the old soldier tightened the girth strap of his grey charger. He was even more intrigued by the grace with which the man swung into the saddle, and with a deft blow to his mount's flanks, rode off into the night with the king’s company. For long after they had left, the man peered into the swirling gloom watching his Lord, whom he had served many long years, ride off into a bitter, lonely night, far from the rubble of his once fair city. Silently, the man asked the Valar to protect him and those who rode with him.

On rode Carthor, son of Harathor, leaving behind him the cold grave of his blind son, leaving behind him the living remnants of his once proud race, leaving behind him his newfound self, who, overcome by the horrors of the past had spent its last breath in the cold wastes of the Blue Mountains. Carthor closed his eyes, but the images that haunted him were still there when he opened them. Taron's great hooves churned the snow as he ran, onwards, northwards…