Being Good doesn't mean joining a doomed fight! It means surviving to help someone else another day!

...

...those halflings really have no idea what's coming for them. The wraiths are toying with them, herding them, and maybe now that Gord bloodied them they'll be angry enough to strike. And he'll run away safely to, what, fix his sword and his drained-ness and prepare the right spells for undead, all alone in an unfamiliar wilderness without allies, and wait for the wraiths to go after him seeking revenge, possibly using an unknown artifact this time?

Maybe they know something useful, something they didn't think or didn't want to tell him, that he can get out of them. Some weakness of the wraiths that they didn't think of as such, something they have that keeps the wraiths at a distance.

Maybe he can send this Gandalf of theirs and have an actually useful ally next time.

Oh yeah, there was something magic left in the cloak of the one wraith that left its cloak behind. Why did it do that when the others fled with their cloaks? (How is the cloak itself not magic if a wraith can wear it?) 

Gord tries to get a closer look at that. Carefully, because he's had his fill of touching wraith-related items. (Does the hilt of the knife he was stabbed with show detect as magic?)

Yes, the surviving knife hilt is very magical.  It's also covered in some runes.

And if he carefully looks inside the other wraith's cloak, he finds a very similar knife, with a blade that glints in the last rays of the setting sun.

Gord doesn't really fancy the idea of trying to stab one of the wraiths with their own magic knife, but he's all out of magical weapons. Maybe he can... throw it? Whatever, best not to leave it lying around, he can deal with the mysterious evil loot later. He wraps both the knife and the hilt in the cloak, ties it with a bit of string, and chucks it in his bag.

Next: getting back to the others. He doesn't feel like he can outrun a horse right now, and there's no real point in trying to be stealthy on the way back up the hill. Will the black horse let him mount it? He promises not to use the bit as long as it doesn't bolt in the wrong direction!

It trembles, but it's well-trained, and lets him mount it.

This new rider feels much more comfortable than its usual riders... and he's acting much more kindly than anyone the horse can remember.  It'll gladly walk, or even trot, up the hill for him.

He'd really rather it ran, he can heal it if it breaks a leg, but he'll take what he can get.

Are the others still in that hollow?

Yes they are... well, Merry and Frodo and Strider are.  They look worried to hear his horse's hoofbeats - Frodo and Merry have their daggers in hand, and Strider his hand on his sword-hilt - but they instantly relax when they see Gord himself.

"Gord!" Frodo exclaims in the Common Speech (which Gord can't understand anymore.)  "You're back!  Did you find the Black Riders?  What'd you do?"

"Yes!" Merry seconds in the Common Speech.  "What happened -"  He only then switches to Hallit.  "Did you find them?  What'd you do - what happened to your sword?"

His Comprehend ran out a while ago and now he needs to convey desperate urgency through the sole channel of 'I picked up a magic dagger because I was afraid' Merry the halfling. He'd hoped they might have seen something of the fight below, but apparently they sensibly hid out of sight while he charged a bunch of wraiths like a madman. Well, at least they're not celebrating a fake victory.

"The wraiths are stronger than I expected. By the time I got there there were only four, I don't know where the other two went - where are the other two halflings? - you should get them to come back here."

"I hurt them with magic but not enough to destroy any of them; I'm not sure if I could destroy one, definitely not tonight. Any weapon that hit them shriveled up after one strike, even my magic sword, look" - he gets the sad remains out of his bag. (They are still far too large to fit in the bag, and his hand went suspiciously deep inside it before he pulled it out.) "They also have magic daggers they can parry and hit back with, one of them got me and it's definitely drained me some, so they're very dangerous even in daylight. They got away, one's still got its horse, another horse is dead and the last one's wounded. And they can be completely invisible if they remove their cloaks."

"Which is to say that if any of them find any of us during the night, and they want us dead, we'll be dead. I don't know what game they were playing with you before now but I'm not going to rely on it continuing."

"Pippin and Sam?  They went off to look for the pony; someone didn't tie him right and he wandered off -"

Merry stares in fear at the shriveled and twisted sword, glances timidly down at his own dagger, and then translates.

"They went that way -" Frodo says, jumping up.

Strider puts his hand on Frodo's shoulder.  "No, don't you go."  He glances around.  Unfortunately, if Merry's the only one who can understand Gord, none of them can be spared at the moment...

But one other even more urgent matter first.  "The dagger that hit you.  What happened?  What was it?  Do you still have the dagger?"

(Merry stares in confusion, not remembering that Gord's language-understanding spell expired)

"Merry, you need to keep translating. I can't understand the rest of you anymore, that spell wore off and I can't cast it again tonight."

Merry blinks in confusion.  "It works that - why not tonight?  But - Strider's really worried about the dagger that hit you for some reason.  He wants to know what happened, and if you still have it?"

Oh good, maybe he was justified in coming back after all? Gord pulls out the cloak with the dagger-and-a-half. "It shriveled away after hitting me. Looked like what happened to my sword, but more thorough - this is the hilt. This one was left by another wraith, and its cloak too, I don't know why. I could see that wraith wasn't destroyed, it was still magic, but maybe it didn't know I could see that. It went away, though, or at least out of my range."

"I need another quarter-hour to prepare a spell, the last spell I can prepare tonight, which will hopefully make us undetectable by undead. And then we're going to run away as far as we can while their horses hopefully can't follow our tracks during the night. And then tomorrow morning I can prepare more spells. If you have any questions be quick, we don't know when they'll attack." 

Strider looks at the hilt gravely, and then up at Gord with surprise.  "An evil weapon; I can help mend its wound - but if that pierced you, how are you still walking around!?"

(Merry translates.)

"Badly. I cured the wound and eased the drain a bit but there's a reason you see me riding up the hill, not sprinting up it. Any more urgent questions before I start preparing the spell?"

Strider looks at Gord for a moment.  If Gord can heal himself, at least for the moment - that might be just as much as he could do for Gord even if he hadn't already used all his kingsfoil.

He nods.  "Keep the hilt safe.  The Elves might be able to read more of the runes, when we reach Rivendell."  And then he straightens.  "I will go look for Sam and Pippin, if they can be safely found."

Unless Gord has a response once Merry translates, he'll be rushing out of the dell into the growing dark.

Merry (and Frodo) are looking at Gord with growing awe as he translates.

"How do you 'prepare your spell'?  Can we watch?"

"You saw me do it earlier - I pray over my sword quietly over a while, you can watch but you mustn't disturb me or I have to start over." Ugh, he's going to have to pray with his backup backup holy symbol now. And tomorrow morning, that's going to suck.

If they have no further questions he'll dismount and find a nice stone to rest his back against and concentrate, for a while, on getting a spell and totally not on any wraiths that might pop up out of the ground at any moment or that might be standing invisibly right next to him while he's not detecting magic, waiting to drain him at the last moment just when he thinks he's made it.

...at least he doesn't have to look at the miniature sun in Frodo's pocket.

"Oh, that's all?"  Merry's face falls.

Frodo wishes his magic was so nice and ready to his invitation.

He'll happily sit back and try to remember the rest of the poem about Gil-Galad that Sam was quoting on the way down from the hilltop.  He'd read the original Bilbo was translating, which had several parts that weren't so full of images of Mordor, but it was a while ago...

While Gord is most of the way through his spell, there's a fearsome shriek from the north.  Is he still immune to fear?

Not like a spell does it, no!

He's not frightened enough to bolt randomly into the night where the wraiths are waiting instead of finishing preparing the spell that will let him do that safely but if any of the halflings are going to run he's not exactly in a position to stop them.