The Peoples of Middle-earth (76 page)

'They have come nearer.' He pointed. 'There you will see their wings, or their wind-cloths, call them what you will. But what is your counsel? And was it not a matter that the Master should see with his own eyes?'

Mogru stared, and he panted, now with fear as much as for the labour of walking uphill, for bluster as he might he had heard many dark tales of the Go-hilleg from old women in his youth. But his heart was cunning, and black with anger. Sidelong he looked first at Hazad, and then at his son; and he licked his lips, but he let not his smile be seen.

'You begged to be my messenger,' he said, 'and so shalt thou be. Go now swiftly and summon the men to the Moot-hill! But that will not end thy errand,' he added, as Tal-elmar made ready to run. 'Straight from the fields thou shalt go with all speed to the Strand. For there the ships, if ships they be, will halt, most likely, and set men ashore. Tidings thou must win there, and spy out well what is afoot. Come not back at all, unless it is with news that will help our counsels. Go and spare thyself not! I command thee. It is time of peril to the town.'

Hazad seemed about to speak in protest; but he bowed his head, and said naught, knowing it vain. Tal-elmar stood one moment, eyeing Mogru, as one might a snake in the path. But he saw well that the Master's cunning had been greater than his.

He had made his own trap, and Mogru had used it. He had declared a time of peril to the town, and he had the right to command any service. It was death to disobey him. And even if Tal-elmar had not named himself as messenger (desiring to prevent any secret word being passed to servants of the Master), all would say that the choice was just. A scout should be sent, and who better than a strong bold youth, swift on his feet? But there was malice, black malice, in the errand nonetheless. The defender of Hazad would be gone. There was no hope in his brothers: strong louts, but with no heart for defiance, save of their old father. And it was likely enough that he would not return. The peril was great.

Once more Tal-elmar looked at the Master, and then at his father, and then his glance passed to Mogru's staff. The flint-flash was in his eyes, and in his heart the desire to kill. Mogru saw it and quailed.

'Go, go!' he shouted. 'I have commanded thee. Thou art quicker to cry wolf than to start on the hunt. Go at once!'

'Go, my son!' said Hazad. 'Do not defy the Master. Not where he has the right. For then thou defiest all the town, beyond thy power. And were I the Master, I would choose thee, dear though thou be; for thou hast more heart and luck than any of this folk. But come again, and let not the Dark Ship have thee. Be not over-bold! For better would be ill tidings brought by thee living than the Sea-men without herald.'

Tal-elmar bowed and made the sign of submission, to his father and not to the Master, and strode away two paces. And then he turned. 'Listen, Mogru, whom a base folk in their folly have named their master,' he cried. 'Maybe I shall return, against thy hope. My father I leave in thy care. If I come, be it with word of peace, or with a foe on my heel, then thy master-ship will be at an end, and thy life also, if I find that he has suffered any evil or dishonour that thou couldst prevent. Thy knife-men and club-bearers will not help thee. I will wring thy fat neck with my bare hands, if needs be; or I will hunt thee through the wilds to the black pools.' Then a new thought struck him, and he strode back to the Master, and laid hands on his staff.

Mogru cringed, and flung up a fat arm, as if to ward off a blow. 'Thou art mad today,' he croaked. 'Do me no violence, or thou wilt pay for it with death. Heardest thou not the words of thy father?'

'I heard, and I obey,' said Tal-elmar. 'But first errand is to the men, and there is need now of haste. Little honour have I among them, for they know well thy scorn of us. What heed will they pay, if the Slave's bastards, as thou namest us when I am not by, comes (9) crying the summons to the Moot-hill in thy name without token. Thy staff will serve. It is well known. Nay, I will not beat thee with it yet!'

With that he wrested the staff from Mogru's hand and sped down the hill, his heart yet too hot with wrath to take thought for what lay before him. But when he had declared the summons to the startled men in the acres on the south slopes and had flung down the staff among them, bidding them hasten, he ran to the hill's foot, and out over the long grass-meads, and so came to the first thin straggle of the woods. Dark they lay before him in the valley between Agar and the downs by the shore.

It was still morning, and more than an hour ere the noon, but when he came under the trees he halted and took thought, and knew that he was shaken with fear. Seldom had he wandered far from the hills of his home, and never alone, nor deep into the wood. For all his folk dreaded the forest (10)

Here the typescript text breaks off, not at the foot of a page, and the manuscript 'Continuation of Tal-Elmar' (as the name is now written) begins (see p. 422).

It was swift for the eye to travel to the shore, but slow for feet; and the distance was greater than it seemed. The wood was dark and unwholesome, for there were stagnant waters between the hills of Agar and the hills of the shoreland; and many snakes lived there. It was silent too, for though it was spring few birds built there or even alighted as they sped on to the cleaner land by the sea. There dwelt in the wood also dark spirits that hated men, or so ran the tales of the people. Of snake and swamp and wood-demon Tal-Elmar thought as he stood within the shadow; but it needed short thought to come to the conclusion that all three were less peril than to return, with lying excuse or with none, to the town and its master.

So, helped a little perhaps by his pride, he went on. And the thought came to him under the shadow as he sought for a way through swamp and thicket: What do I know, or any of my people, even my father, of these Go-hilleg of the winged boats?

It might well be that I who am a stranger in my own people should find them more pleasing than Mogru and all others like him.

With this thought growing in him, so that at length he felt rather as a man who goes to greet friends and kinsmen than as one who creeps out to spy on dangerous foes, he passed unhurt through the shadow-wood, and came to the shore-hills, and began to climb. One hill he chose, because bushes clambered up its slope and it was crowned with a dense knot of low trees. To this cover he came, and creeping to the further brink he looked down. It had taken him long, for his way had been slow, and now the sun had fallen from noon and was going down away on his right towards the Sea. He was hungry, but this he hardly heeded, for he was used to hunger, and could endure toil day-long without eating when he must. The hill was low, but ran down steeply to the water. Before its feet were green lands ending in gravels, beyond which the waters of the estuary gleamed in the westering sun. Out in the midst of the stream beyond the shoals three great ships - though Tal-Elmar had no such word in his language to name them with - were lying motionless.

They were anchored and the sails down. Of the fourth, the black ship, there was no sign. But on the green near the shingles there were tents, and small boats drawn up near. Tall men were standing or walking among them. Away on the 'big boats' Tal-Elmar could see [?others] on watch; every now and then he caught a flash as some weapon or arms moved in the sun. He trembled, for the tales of the 'blades' of the Cruel Men were familiar to his childhood.

Tal-Elmar looked long, and slowly it came to him how hopeless was his mission. He might look until daylight failed, but he could not count accurately enough for any use the number of men there were; nor could he discover their purpose or their plans. Even if he had either the courage or the fortune to come past their guards he could do nothing useful, for he would not understand a word of their language.

He remembered suddenly - another of Mogru's schemes to be rid of him, as he now saw, though at the time he had thought it an honour - how only a year ago, when the waning town of Agar was threatened by marauders from the village of Udul far inland,(11) all men feared that an assault would come, for Agar was a drier, healthier, and more defensible site (or so its towns-men believed). Then Tal-Elmar had been chosen to go and spy out the land of Udul, as 'being young, bold, and better versed in the country round'. So said Mogru, truly enough, for the townsfolk of Agar were timid and seldom went far afield, never daring to be caught by dark outside their homes. Whereas Tal-Elmar often, if he had chance and no labour called (or if it did, sometimes), would walk far afield, and though (being so taught from babyhood) he feared the dark, he had more than once been benighted far from the town, and was even known to go out to the watch-hill alone under the stars.

But to creep into the unfriendly fields of Udul by night was another and far worse thing. Yet he had dared to do it. And he had come so close to one of the huts of watchmen that he could hear the men inside speaking - in vain. He could not understand the purport of their speech. The tones seemed mournful and full of fear (12) (as men's voices were at night in the world as he knew it), and a few words he seemed to recognize, but not enough for understanding. And yet the Udul-folk were their near neighbours - indeed though Tal-Elmar and his people had forgotten it, as they had forgotten so much, their near kin, part of the same people in past and better years. What hope then was there that he would recognize any single word, or even interpret rightly the tones, of the tongue of men alien from his own since the beginning of the world? Alien from his own? My own? But they are not my people. Only my father. And again he had that strange feeling, coming from where he knew not to this young lad, born and bred in a decaying half-savage people: the feeling that he was not going to meet aliens but kinsmen from afar and friends.

And yet he was also a boy of his village. He was afraid, and it was long before he moved. At last he looked up. The sun on his right was now going down. Between two tree-stems he caught a glimpse of the sea, as the great round fire, red with the light sea-mist, sank level with his eye, and the water was kindled to fiery gold.

He had seen the sun sink into the sea before, yet never before had he seen it so. He knew in a flash (as if it came from that fire itself) that he had seen it so, [? he was called,](13) that it meant something more than the approach of the 'King's time', the dark.(14) He rose and as if led or driven walked openly down the hill and across the long sward to the shingles and the tents.

Could he have seen himself he would have been struck with wonder no less than those who saw him now from the shore.

His naked skin - for he wore only a loin-cloth, and little cloak of ... fur cast back and caught by a thong to his shoulder -

glowed golden in the [? sunset] light, his fair hair too was kindled, and his step was light and free.

'Look! ' cried one of the watchmen to his companion. 'Do you

- see what I see? Is it not one of the Eldar of the woods that comes to speak with us?'

'I see indeed,' said the other, 'but if not some phantom from the edge of the [? coming] dark [? in this land accursed] it cannot be one of the Fair. We are far to the south, and none dwell here. Would indeed we were [? north away near to (the) Havens].'

'Who knows all the ways of the Eldar?' said the watchman.

'Silence now! He approaches. Let him speak first.'

So they stood still, and made no sign as Tal-Elmar drew near.

When he was some twenty paces away his fear returned, and he halted, letting his arms fall before him and opening his palms outwards to the strangers in a gesture which all men could understand.

Then, as they did not move, nor put hand to any weapon so far as he could see, he took courage again and spoke, saying:

'Hail, Men of the sea and the wings! Why do you come here? Is it in peace? I am Tal-Elmar uHazad of the folk of Agar. Who are you?'

His voice was clear and fair, but the language that he used was but a form of the half-savage language of the Men of the Dark, as the Shipmen called them. The watchman stirred.

'Elda!' he said. 'The Eldar do not use such a tongue.' He called aloud, and at once men tumbled out of the tents. He himself drew forth a sword, while his companion put arrow to bow-string. Before Tal-Elmar had time even to feel terror, still less to turn and run - happily, for he knew nothing of bows and would have fallen long before he was out of bowshot - he was surrounded by armed men. They seized him, but not with harsh handling, when they found he was weaponless and submissive, and led him to a tent where sat one in authority.

Tal-Elmar feels the language to be known and only veiled from him.

The captain says Tal-Elmar must be of Numenorean race, or of the people akin to them. He must be kindly treated. He guesses that he had been made captive as a babe, or born of captives. 'He is trying to escape to us,' he says.