Whatever guided their feet, the trio made Edoras in good time, under clear skies. Late summer was inexorably turning to autumn, but the trees were still no less verdant and the heat of midday had become oppressive to the dwarves. Rhavanielle briskly walked along in her homespun dress and cheered her companions by singing. The dwarves taught her many of their own songs and were delighted when she could parrot them in their own secret tongue, though she knew not what she sang. This provided much delight to the stout Naugrim and they laughed uproariously at several junctures, apparently at her delivery of certain lines wherein inflection changed the meaning of the line to something absurd or scurrilous.
Edoras was a thing of beauty which they beheld as they wound past the barrows of ancient kings of the eorlingas which rose like great grassy pimples astride the old road. They found the inhabitants of the most cosmopolitan settlement of the Rohirrim to be nearly as suspicious of outsiders as tiny Stoke. They paid a tavern keeper a pair of silver coins bearing the likeness of Durin VI for a room in a boarding house that was well appointed if stuffy. They encountered no delays and were on their way the next morning.
Quite naturally, Rhavanielle detected the first hint of trouble. As they sat two days later taking a break under a willow by the banks of the Glanhír, the elf sat bolt upright. Immediately, a murder of crows wheeled north-northeast toward the soft country of the Entwash delta, singing their gutteral crow song.
The dwarves had a kinship with birds as well and quite quickly Sfeithi drew on his mail shirt and readjusted his kit for battle, Gorm following suit. “Someone is anticipating a feast!” said the elder dwarf.
Rhavanielle was ill dressed for a fight, but drew a bulky mail shirt over her dress and wished she'd kept her old leather tunic. Her sword felt good at her side and she gripped her old staff, which so close to the place of its birth throbbed in her hand as though sharing her excitement.
Sfeithi climbed up the willow, looking like an armored monkey from the southern continent. His eyes were not nearly as quick as Rhavanielle's but he spotted the trouble quick enough. “A fight going on away north a bit...Big one!” he shouted down.
“Can you make out who it may be?” called up Rhavanielle. A long pause, punctuated by the passage overhead of a good many more crows.
“Horsemen...they are hemmed in in the marshland. Having ado with a small army..Too many trees to see very clearly. They are a little beyond a league away.”
Rhavanielle became impatient and clambered up the tree, annoyed at the inconvenience of climbing in such garb. Gorm grumbled and looked toward the north, gripping his long knife and wishing he'd had sense enough to procure a shield in Rohan.
The elf at last found a stout limb that she deemed high enough and what she saw took her breath away. “Yrch!” she shouted.
