- the bolts stop flying. The mages keep jogging forward, uncertain - someone says something aloud in a language he doesn't speak - 

- presumably they're jogging to get close enough to place a compulsion not to use his magic and he'll need to Final Strike before they're close enough for that -

And then there is, again, the unmistakeable feel of a Gate, this time from ahead, and bodies pouring through it, attacks flying over his head but carefully avoiding risking hitting him. 

Someone flings up a shield over his body. :Leareth. Do you remember me?: Someone with strong enough Mindspeech to ram through a link even though he's not Gifted, apparently; she feels kind of familiar but he doesn't specifically remember her. :Nayoki. Please hold still - we are coming for you–:

The other side of this fight is not at all going out of their way to avoid hitting him and is in fact aiming for him in particular now!

Another fireball gets through the shield, scorches his side and right thigh, and then Nayoki is shouting out a Mindspeech apology and several additional layers of shielding are over him in particular. 

Telumë is in a lot of pain, it's getting hard to think, but he can vaguely sense his own side, which has substantially more people than the attackers, now, not all mages but all armed and shielded and more are still coming through the Gate. They're putting all their effort into keeping barriers and shields in between him and the mages trying to hit him, and they're getting closer to where he's sprawled in the snow. 

He's very cold. That's the most unfair thing about being attacked constantly, he thinks dully, he keeps almost freezing. 

The mages from Iftel, outnumbered and without reinforcements pushing through a Gate right here, fall back, though slowly, and doing a lot of damage as they go.

The last thing Telumë remembers is someone's arms picking him up from the snow. :We have you. You can rest now: 

"...And shortly after the claim of surrender, another Gate was raised," Sunpriest Ulrich finishes, still kneeling on the flagstones and not meeting Maitimo's eyes at all. "He must have made a call for help. Our mages fought very hard, and killed at least a dozen of his mages, but - his organization is very skilled and they had more fighters. They pulled him out, unconscious and badly injured but he will likely survive." 

"I see." 

- Leareth - 

"I am disappointed and would like to speak to them once they have had time to recover. At sunrise, perhaps?"

"Y-yes, of course, sir." Ulrich's voice falters very slightly, he's obviously terrified to be the bearer of bad news, but he recovers. "They are too tired to Gate out and have many injuries and half a dozen dead, but we can raise a Gate to their location and retrieve them." 

"Thank you. - our disappointment is not with you, your job is to learn things and tell them to me and if our mages were similarly competent at theirs Leareth would be dead another two times over."

Ulrich rises and bobs his head, looking slightly reassured. "Thank you. Any other questions or orders?" 

"Not at this time."

Ulrich bows and leaves. 

"I'm proud of him," he says to Sauron, later. "I wish we'd had him, of course, but - and he's so close, now. I could maybe talk to him from Iftel, next time we're there."

PERHAPS YOU SHOULD.

"I really shouldn't. It advances none of your goals. It is not obvious to me that my loving him advances any of your goals, really."

IT BRINGS ME JOY.

"Because you think I will have the chance to kill him, someday, and it'll be good for me. But he's made it to the north, now, and I don't see how I will." Unless they succeed at the plan that they don't speak of, even in osanwë, the plan whose very existence Maitimo had to derive for himself because Sauron has never in word or gesture hinted at it. Except now with this, with leaving Maitimo this way. He can't argue the point more without mentioning it. 

"I should have told the mages more about him."

YOU TOLD THEM EVERYTHING THEY NEEDED TO KNOW. THEY WERE STUPID. MOST PEOPLE ARE.

"Right, it's precisely in the context of most people being stupid that I am observing I didn't train them well enough or something. We should've run through - scenarios - the kind you like - reward the behavior you want until it's instinct -"

I DO NOT YET HAVE THE RESOURCES TO DO THAT AT ANY SORT OF SCALE. FOR YOU IT IS EASIER BECAUSE I AM MORE ACCUSTOMED TO INTERACTING WITH QUENDI SENSORY INPUT. 

"Well. Now there'll be a war with Leareth's people." Which is arguably in their interests; it mostly weakens Vkandis, assuming that Leareth can't actually take Haven, and Maitimo does not expect him to. And it will leave both Iftel and the north defenseless for the thing that he has derived comes next. 

IT SHOULD BE CLOSE, says Sauron, in a tone that makes it a mere strategic observation instead of communication about the same point that Maitimo has just reasoned out.