The battlefield still shook with the roar of killing when the Orcs who had forced their way into Nargothrond finally dared to look back.
What they saw turned their howls into panicked shrieks.
They had broken the walls before them, true—but now the rear of their host was cut off, crushed between three converging tides: Eowenría's cavalry, the iron phalanxes of Khazad-dûm, and the returning Noldorin host. There was nowhere left to run.
Caught in that triple hammer-blow, the Orc formations held for less than a heartbeat before they shattered.
The brutes who had seemed so fearless moments ago finally showed their true nature. Discipline dissolved into chaos as they clawed over one another, scrambling to flee toward the Misty Mountains like vermin exposed to the light.
Anrod pushed himself upright on the stump of his broken blade, just in time to see Dáin's war-hammer crush the skull of the last war-beast into a spray of black pulp.
The king of Nargothrond actually laughed—short, stunned—and then let himself slump down onto the blood-slick stones.
Aragorn slid down with his back to the Tree, the bark cool against his shoulders. Sunlight filtered through its blue-gold leaves, pouring over him like warm water. The pain of his wounds ebbed away as if washed from his flesh.
He turned his head eastward. The sky there was being painted in soft orange by the rising sun, clouds edged in crimson and gold.
Gandalf sat on a collapsed section of wall, relighting his new pipe. The smoke mingled with the fading stench of powder and blood, curling before his eyes as he looked toward the distant line of the Misty Mountains and slowly breathed out a ring of smoke.
The battle for Nargothrond was over.
This had been the first full-scale war since the returning Exiles of the West set foot again in Middle-earth.
They had won—but only just.
Seven thousand Noldor lay dead.
Seven thousand, out of a people barely fifty hundred thousand strong.
Every Elf of light, in that moment, felt in their bones what the wars of Middle-earth truly meant.
In Anrod's mind, one sentence of Kaen's echoed with terrible clarity:
Peace in Middle-earth is a flower watered with blood.
…
By the third day after the battle, a fragile order had begun to return to Nargothrond.
Elven smiths and masons used star-iron frames to brace the broken walls, patching rent stone and scorched battlements so the city would not collapse before it could be rebuilt.
Scholars huddled over tables, recording every detail of the struggle. Soon the battle had a name: The Blood-Red Night.
Bards began to weave new lays, songs heavy with sorrow and pride, to mourn the dead and hail the reborn.
Stone monuments were raised; names were carved in glittering runes. Many stood before those fresh-cut epitaphs in silence, letting their grief flow out in the hush between verses.
…
Night.
In the square beneath the Sacred Tree, the survivors gathered. Elves, Dwarves, and Eowenrían soldiers sat in rough circles. The Elves brought out bread, fresh fruit, and honeyed wine to share.
Dáin, in his usual booming voice, was halfway through his third retelling of the march from Khazad-dûm.
"When the plea for aid came," he said, "that rascal Thorin was in the forge, hammering out a new war-hammer. I told him, 'If the Elves of Nargothrond all die, who will polish our sapphires, eh?'
"And then what does he do? Drops the hammer, shouts for every Dwarf who can still lift an axe, and we're on the road before the metal cools!"
Gimli clanked his mug against his cousin's, ale foaming into both their beards.
"If I'd known you were coming that fast," he grumbled fondly, "I wouldn't have had to hold off quite so many trolls by myself!"
The Dwarves' rough laughter lifted some of the heaviness from the air.
Zakri sat beside Aragorn and handed him a bowl of crystal-clear spring water.
"This is dew from the Golden Tree," he said. "It will draw out the last of the dark taint from your blood."
"Thank you." Aragorn drained the bowl in one swallow. A gentle warmth spread through his body; the throbbing in his wounds faded, then settled into a clean, dull ache.
Zakri's gaze swept the square, lingering on the long lines of wounded lying beneath the Tree's light. His voice dropped.
"Our lord has already led the host south," he said. "By my count, he should reach the port of Lond Daer in five days."
Denethor's head snapped up, ears pricking like a hound's.
"Lond Daer—has something happened there?"
Zakri shook his head.
"We do not know," he admitted. "No reports have reached us from the south. But if the battle there were small, the king would not have ridden in person.
"If it rivals what we faced here… or exceeds it…"
He let the thought trail off.