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It took quite a while for Caranthir to remember that Amras would want to know and send a messenger. Thus, Caranthir’s terse letter and rumours about the fate of the Haladin picked up by Amras's Laiquendi friends reached Amras more or less at the same time, and some time after the fact.
There seemed to be no way to piece together a full account from these, but one thing was clear enough: the settlers on the Ascar had fared far worse than Amras had feared, back when he had visited them to negotiate an agreement of mutual non-interference between the Haladin and his brother. There had, of course, always been a risk that the determination of Haldad and his peers to remain independent carried with it. Amras had been aware of it; he thought they had known it, too, even without his hints and warnings. Amras had not expected such a large troop of orcs to penetrate so far east and south as the Ascar, however, not while the Siege held. Caranthir had apparently been distracted by a skirmish farther north, but was clearly angry and humiliated that those orcs had got past him.
If Haleth was now their Chieftain, as it seemed, then it was likely that both Haldad and her brother Haldar were dead—and how many others of the Haladin? Amras had not seen any of them for more than twenty years but he still remembered, as if it was yesterday, the dreamy-eyed, thoughtful boy that Haldar had been and his no-nonsense twin sister.
Before Amras had received a response to the questions he sent in reply to Caranthir—who had apparently been still at the Ascar, but seemed likely to be back at Helevorn by now, with or without the Haladin—Haleth took him by surprise, appearing in his and Amrod’s own territory with a large following of Haladin, apparently on the way to Estolad. His scouts reported that many of Haleth’s following were women or children, old or recently wounded. Did that mean that these were all of the Haladin that survived? Why had they left Thargelion so soon, in a state that like this?
Amras changed his plans accordingly and went to Estolad, not to Thargelion. He and his companions and their horses carried provisions, including packets of cram, food familiar to Men that would keep, and medical supplies. Not many Men now remained in Estolad and Amras was not sure how well those who remained would be prepared to receive the Haladin.
Haleth confronted him a little way out of Estolad, wearing leather armour, spear in hand, with a small troop of similarly equipped women behind her. It seemed she was determined to defend not only her Haladin but Estolad, too, against any threat he might represent. It was doubly shocking, remembering the determined but happy girl she had been, back then in her father’s house, to see how the years and the recent events had told on her: a strong grown woman, firm and upright as her own spear, but evidently still wracked with grief. He thought at first Haleth did not recognize him. Then he realized that she did—but for her, it seemed that only made things worse.
*
Haleth had left the ruined homesteads and scenes of devastation well behind her, bent on starting again, only to be confronted here, visibly, with a memory of her lost golden childhood in the person of this elf in brown and green, this son of Feanor with chestnut hair. His brother Caranthir had been so much easier to talk to for her—precisely because he had never come to the Ascar before, strictly following the terms agreed!
But Amras! Appearing suddenly out of the forest of East Beleriand before her as he had once appeared like some kind of vision at the bottom of her father’s garden. How Haldar had loved and admired him, in that long-ago summer, when they were children and together and had no inkling of the horrors the world might inflict…
Haleth could hardly even hear what he said to her. Nobody had warned her, she thought, stupidly. After all, why would it have occurred to anyone to warn her that Estolad was near to the abode of the youngest sons of Feanor?
‘Haldar rushed out of the stockade to rescue our father’s body from the orcs; they hewed him as he lay,’ she said bluntly, interrupting whatever he was saying—offers of help?
Amras’s grey eyes widened. Were those tears, for Haldar and for her? Haleth could not bear it and turned abruptly away.
It was her second-in-command that Amras negotiated with about the distribution of the supplies. One of Amras’s companions had skills in healing and conferred with their own young leech and the single healer left in Estolad about the state of recovery of the Haladin wounded. Amras made one more attempt to speak to her, but she turned her back on him and put even more distance with them. He did not try again, after that.
He faded back into the woods, eventually, swift and lithe as a deer, he and his people, the way he had faded back into the woods all those years ago after saying goodbye to Haldar and her. When he was already gone for a day, she found he had left his bow and quiver of arrows behind as gifts for her nephew Haldan.