The pirates sensed something had changed.
The stone barrages suddenly ceased.
A pirate chieftain, thick-necked and brutish, stepped forward astride a snarling war-warg. A pair of bull horns jutted from his helm. He shouted in mangled Sindarin:
"Listen up, Elves! Drop your weapons and surrender, and we'll let you live!
Resist, and when we breach that valley, we'll butcher every last one of you!"
Swish!
His answer was a single silver arrow.
It punched straight through his throat.
The warg beneath him reared in panic, flinging his corpse into the dirt. For a heartbeat, the valley fell silent.
Then eighty thousand pirates erupted into a frenzy of rage.
"Kill them!"
The order exploded across the line, and black waves of corsairs crashed toward the gorge entrance.
The Teleri formed a living wall.
Spears locked, shields braced, shoulder to shoulder they held the narrow defile, turning it into an iron gate of flesh and steel.
Elured fought at the very front. In his hands, the sword seemed alive, every slash carving out a sheet of scarlet spray.
The Elves fought.
They hacked and stabbed and screamed, until their arms were numb, until enemy blades punched through armor and flesh.
A pirate's war–axe split open Elured's left arm; blood drenched his silver mail. He did not retreat. He stepped in, driving his blade through the pirate's heart with all the merciless precision of a noble execution.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a young Elf dragged down by three pirates at once. Elured pivoted immediately to aid him..
….and a black-fletched arrow slammed into his shoulder from behind.
"Your Highness!"
A warrior hurled himself forward, trying to shield him with his own body, but Elured shoved him aside.
He saw too clearly what was happening.
All across the gorge's mouth, Elven warriors were falling one after another, cut down not by superior skill, but by exhaustion, hunger, and thirst. They were being harvested like withered grain.
Elured's heart twisted.
He thought of the thousands of souls waiting deeper in the gorge.
Of the children, the elders, the frightened faces pressed together in the dark.
A wild, terrible resolve flared in his gaze.
He drove his sword point-down into the earth, spread his arms, and began to chant.
In an instant, the elements themselves surged toward him like a rising tide.
Elured's shout cracked like thunder:
"Let rock collapse—let the earth tremble—bury the darkness!"
Rumble.
The gorge entrance heaved.
Both cliff faces shuddered, and then the rock began to fall….first in chunks, then in entire slopes, a stone avalanche roaring down on the pirate ranks like the wrath of the mountains themselves.
"Fall back! Fall back!"
The battlefield was cleaved apart.
The spell had carved a wall of shattered stone between the Elves and their enemies, buying them a precious span of time.
But the price was brutal.
Spent of strength, Prince Elured's tall figure toppled like a felled tree. Warriors rushed to him, lifting him carefully and carrying him back into the gorge.
…..
Night.
Deep within Eagle's Beak Gorge, faint torchlight flickered along the cave walls.
Elured woke, breath shallow but steadier than before. Some color had returned to his face.
He immediately ordered all the Elven nobles still able to stand to gather before him. When they arrived, he spoke in a low voice:
"Do you still remember the oath we swore when we left Aman?"
"We remember," they answered as one, voices thick with grief.
"To restore the honor of the Doriath."
"Good." Elured nodded, then raised a hand, pointing toward the place at the gorge where he'd unleashed his spell earlier that day.
"There," he said. "I opened a passage in the rock. A way to climb up the cliff.
"I want some of you to lead our people, these civilians—up that path, and away from this place. Take them to my brother, Elurin, King of Doriath."
He paused, then went on, each word heavier than stone:
"I'll buy you the time you need.
I require five thousand warriors, brave and battle-tested. In truth, however many are willing to stand is enough. I won't force anyone to stay… because this is a battle from which there is almost certainly no return."
"No, Your Highness! We won't go!"
"If we go, we go together!"
Elured shook his head, eyes gentle but utterly unyielding.
"I am your prince."
"It is my duty to remain here.
Protecting our people is the burden of the royal house."
He looked around at the faces before him….friends, kin, comrades who had followed him across the sea.
"I may well leave my bones in this valley," he said softly. "I may never see the day when the kingdom of Doriath is reborn.
Tell Elurin… that Lond Daer will always burn for Doriath."
He drew a breath, voice growing quieter but somehow even more resolute:
"And if one day you meet that great king, the one leading this age's stand against the Shadow, convey him my respect.
Because now I finally understand…
Some things are greater than life itself.
And I am willing to stake my life upon them."