“Here,” said the crow. “Here, here!”
The stag’s head snapped up, long strands of autumn grass still hanging from it’s mouth, but much too late. Celegorm had already loosed his shot and the arrow took it in the ribs, just behind the foreleg. It fell kicking, sharp hooves scuffing at the drifts of damp, dead leaves, but the shot had been a good one and it had stilled by the time Celegorm and Huan reached it.
He field dressed it there in the clearing, the bright stink of fresh blood and offal mingling with the flat scent of wet earth and vegetation.
The bird watched him from the canopy, bright eyes following every flash of his hunting knife. “For me,” it said, flapping down to alight upon the heap of discarded viscera. “For me, for me, for me.”
“For you,” Celegorm agreed, hefting the carcass.
“Here,” said the crow. “Here, here!”
To an archer as skilled as Celegorm, orcs died as easily as deer. So do elves, added a treacherous, tickling voice at the back of his mind, but he paid it little heed. He wasn’t Maglor to write ballads or Maedhros to flagellate himself. He was a hunter and he’d known as long as he could hold a blade that all things died much the same.
“For me,” said the crow, when the battle was done and all was gone to stillness. “For me, for me.”
Celegorm let it have its due.
“Here,” said the crow. “Here! For me! For me! For me!” It alighted upon the corpse’s foot only to flap away again when it groaned and twitched.
“Not for you,” Celegorm snapped as he drew close enough to recognise the crest upon the armour, and then the figure’s waxen features. Caranthir’s ruddy face was corpse-pale, his eyes blown black from side to side with shock and pain, but he still lived. Enough to fumble weakly for his own weapon as Celegorm knelt over him and drew his knife to cut away his breastplate. “Be still,” he said.
“The battle?” Caranthir rasped.
“Lost.”
“Our brothers?”
“All far better off than you. Be still, I said,” he added as Caranthir tried to rise.
“For me,” the crow repeated sullenly.
“There’s a whole mountain of corpses for you to pick over,” Celegorm snarled over his shoulder. “Get gone before I use you for fletchings.”
“Here,” the crow croaked, somewhere high above.
Celegorm could not bring it into focus, saw only a blur of flat grey sky and clawed black branches. The snow had leeched the pain out of his wounds and would leech all else away soon enough.
“Here,” said the crow, again. “For me?”
“Why not,” Celegorm rasped. It was hard to speak, harder still to laugh but he did both anyway. “For you.”
Skip to content
MisbehavingMaiar: Tumblr Archive 