Disclaimer: For full disclaimer, please see chapter 1.

A/N:

I won’t even try to make excuses. I passed my exam and am trying to forget that I have another one as soon as I get back home, but all the work was really worth it. I practically lived in the library for weeks, though. •grimaces• And ... well, let it suffice to say that Jerusalem can be a very weird place, especially if you live in the eastern part. I’ve had a few experiences I’d rather not repeat, even though it’s mostly really a lot of fun. My work is ... well, interesting for the most part, even though I have to catalogue a lot of old documents and photographs. It’s amazing what some people keep – it’s really like “Oh, a sheep.” “Look, another sheep.” “That sheep again, but from the left.” and so on. I am not kidding you. Oh, and I’ve got a new notebook, which I love with all my heart. Say hello, notebook! •notebook waves•

Ah, yes. So, I am keeping busy (with sheep and other things, like working at the local café, playing volleyball and seizing every opportunity to go to Tel Aviv). The future isn’t looking all that certain and organised yet either, since I am going on a dig in Portugal right after my stay here. The thing is that it’s rather likely that we’ll do another campaign in Rome, so I might go straight there from Portugal (about which my boss there wasn’t really happy, let me tell you). It’s all still being decided, but I really hope it works out. I would love to see everybody again, plus we might figure out how that fireplace got on top of the city wall. Besides, Rome in September – is there anything better? I don’t think so.

Be that as it may, here’s the next bit, namely chapter ... what is it, 24? Sounds about right. So, to make up for the ridiculously long delay, this chapter is extra-long and extra- ... well, let’s call it “interesting”, shall we? Aragorn gets into trouble, Lhanton realises a little too late that he really doesn’t have to listen to anything he says, and then Aragorn proceeds to REALLY get into trouble. The twins are unhappy, but Skagrosh is as close to giddy as an orc can get, so I guess that’s okay, then. Legolas is torn, Celylith is smug, and my alter ego is gleeful, since we have some really ... “interesting” whump coming up. Meaning: Yes, this fic is PG-13. Not my fault. Blame my alter ego. (Besides, I know you love it.)

Oh, and: No horses were harmed in the process of writing this chapter. Seriously. Scout’s honour.

Enjoy and review, please!

Chapter 24

He really had to stop being right all the time. It was – if you wanted to believe people like Legolas or the twins – annoying, and, if he was completely honest, also slightly inconvenient.

Especially if you found yourself surrounded by orcs. Then again, to connect “surrounded by orcs” to “this is going to hurt”, you didn’t have to display any common sense at all. It was a self-evident conclusion.

Besides, being surrounded by orcs seemed to happen to him rather regularly as of late. Now that he thought about it, it was positively disconcerting.

There were many, many more disconcerting things going on in his life at the moment, however, one of them being a scimitar that he only just managed to block before it could cut his left leg off below the knee. Still struggling to recover from the shock of being set upon by orcs – again –, Aragorn knocked the orc’s blade aside and lashed out with a booted foot, sending the creature stumbling backwards and into two of its companions. Under any other circumstances, the three of them tumbling backwards in a tangle of arms and legs and appropriate, outraged shrieks would have been amusing.

These circumstances, however, were most definitely not the ones he found himself facing right now.

Having gained a very temporary reprieve, Aragorn surveyed his surroundings, absently trying to calm Ráca who was stomping her hooves and snorting, her eyes rolling wildly in their sockets. And, just for a second, Aragorn was truly tempted to copy her behaviour, because it was the only truly appropriate reaction to … this. This, as it turned out, was a complete catastrophe, and, Morgoth take it all, he really didn’t know how he did it all the time.

They weren’t at the clearing’s edge anymore, trying to keep the orcs at bay, mainly because they had been backed into the clearing step by reluctant step. By now they were forming something that, with a lot of goodwill, you could probably call a “defensive circle”, but which was actually more a desperate cluster than anything else.

The maddening thing, Aragorn decided while he urged Ráca to the side in order to close the gap to Lhanton that was opening up while the other ranger prevented Serothlain from being skewered through the stomach with a pike, was that there weren’t even all that many orcs. There were maybe fifteen or so – not bad, considering that they had started with surely eighteen or more (yes, well, reading tracks was not an exact science). The problem, however, was that these orcs knew what they were doing, something that his brothers, Legolas, Celylith and the rangers who had fought the group on the road had already complained about.

It was not only inconvenient and possibly deadly, it was also wrong. Orcs were many things, but skilled fighters was not on that list. Lethal, cunning opponents who would cut you down through trickery, stealth and brute force, yes, but not skilled. They would swarm you and overwhelm you or, in the case of the larger, darker breeds coming up from the south, overpower you, but they did not outfight you.

This, Aragorn concluded for the second time in less than three minutes, was going to be very, very painful.

Something swished past his face, automatically making him duck, and for a second Aragorn thought that it had been an arrow. It hadn’t, though – one of the orcs swarming around him had tried to incapacitate him with a throwing knife and missed him by a good foot or so –, and Aragorn swiftly made sure that the orc in question didn’t have any more bright ideas. The creature went down, uttering something between a snarl and a gurgle, but another one took its place immediately.

The brief contact taught Aragorn three things that he had been suspecting for some moments already, and now he forced himself to acknowledge them. One, they couldn’t keep this up for much longer. These orcs worked almost as a unit, keeping to a battle plan, and that spelled ill for them. Against an organised foe, three against fifteen – no, make that fourteen now – were devastating odds. Two, they wanted to incapacitate them, and they all knew just what that meant. And three, if they got impatient and started using their bows, all of them were doomed.

He pulled his horse up and to the right, feeling an inordinate amount of satisfaction as Ráca’s hooves hit an orc straight in the chest and sent it careening backwards. Aiming a discouraging swipe at the nearest orc, he urged his mount to the side, closer to Lhanton who was by now sporting a thin cut running down the entire left side of his face. A pike would leave that kind of wound, a part of him informed him instantly, probably having been thrust straight up before Lhanton had had time to get out of the way.

Lhanton, in between manoeuvring his horse to the side and lashing out at a particularly adventurous orc, glanced at him, a spark of wry humour in his eyes amidst the fear and barely suppressed panic.

“We really,” he interrupted himself to block a blow aimed at his horse’s neck, “We really should have seen this coming, shouldn’t we?”

Aragorn could not deny it. They – or at least he, considering how often this kind of thing happened to him – should indeed have seen this coming. But he hadn’t, none of them had, and now they were here, up to their neck in orcs and about two inches away from almost certain doom.

Valar, if this wasn’t so utterly terrifying, it would be almost boring.

“So,” he yelled at Serothlain over the dim of battle, trying with all his might to cling to his hard-won composure, “do we have a plan?”

“You mean staying alive doesn’t count?” the older ranger retorted.

“Sooner or later they will get impatient,” Aragorn explained as calmly as he could, only to interrupt and throw himself to the side, both to avoid a scimitar and to grasp the reins of Lhanton’s horse to prevent him being skewered through the middle like a butterfly on a needle. Try as he might, he could not identify what kind of blade the orc was using, and considering that he had seen more weapons in his twenty-three years than most men saw in their lifetime, that meant quite a lot.

“And when they do,” he went on as if nothing had happened, “they will start using their bows.”

“And then,” Lhanton finished his thought, having regained his equilibrium after almost having been thrown off his horse, “we will be completely doomed.”

Aragorn was about to agree in no unclear terms when the orcs apparently decided that they had played enough with them. Without anybody giving them an order – yet another thing Aragorn added to his “Why these are no normal orcs and we’re really in a lot of trouble” list – they pressed forward, crowding them and causing their horses to rear up in fear and panic. All of the animals had been trained for combat, of course – it would be rather inconvenient to have a horse that panicked at the first sight of an orc, not to mention embarrassing –, but there were limits to everything. Aragorn very narrowly avoided being unseated and managed to stay on Ráca’s back more due to sheer luck than real horsemanship. Next to him, he could see Lhanton cling to his horse’s mane with a curse that would have made any sailor blush with mortification, barely able to control his sword’s downward swing and stop himself from cutting off his own foot.

Behind and to the right of them, Serothlain wasn’t so lucky. His horse reared up, panicking, and before any of them knew what was going on, the ranger was sailing through the air and hit the ground with a reverberating and very final thud.

For a second, it seemed as if the orcs, too, were rather surprised by the effectiveness of their manoeuvre. A moment later, that brief moment was over, and only Aragorn’s fast reflexes enabled him to get off his horse’s back and to Serothlain’s side a split second before the first orc reached him.

Aragorn honestly didn’t know how he survived the next few seconds, especially as it seemed that about three fifths of the orcs immediately turned towards them and tried to kill them. He was completely occupied with fighting off the myriads of orcs that swarmed around him. Admittedly, it couldn’t have been much more than maybe half a dozen, but all they seemed to do it back away for a moment or two before coming back.

He was losing here, he decided calmly as the first orc managed to slip through his defences and left him with a long, bloody cut to his left arm as a reminder. He was losing very badly, and Serothlain was not moving. Ráca was several feet away from them, lashing out at anything that moved, Serothlain’s horse was nowhere to be seen, and it was highly unlikely that Lhanton would manage to break through the orcs surrounding him and come to his aid.

This was not good at all.

Aragorn managed to deflect the next blow aimed at him and ducked under the one after that, side-stepping the orc and ramming his shoulder into the gap between the metal plates covering the orc’s shoulder and chest. The creature was lifted off its feet by the force and took down one of its companions as it was propelled backwards, thus giving the young ranger just enough time to whirl around and face his next opponent.

The next opponent turned out to be two large, snarling orcs. The first one swung a mace at him – a mace? Aragorn asked himself disbelievingly as he ducked under the swing –, which was really more menacing than practical. It took him only a few seconds to side-step the next, wild swing and bring his sword down in a quick, slashing arc before he ducked to the side again to meet the attack of the second orc who had nearly cut him to pieces twice already while he had been battling with the first one.

Due to luck and the deft application of a throwing knife, Aragorn managed to incapacitate his next adversary, but all feelings of elation were very short-lived as he heard a sudden shout. He looked up, shifting his feet for better traction on the blood-soaked ground. Just a few yards to the left of where he was standing protectively over Serothlain’s unmoving body, Lhanton was just being pulled off his horse that was rearing up and kicking at any orc it could reach, whinnying shrilly. Aragorn couldn’t help but stare as a wetly glistening spear tip appeared in the dark, gleaming coat of the horse’s neck, shining dully in the dim light. It took him a second to understand that one of the orcs had rammed its spear through the poor animal’s neck, just as much as it took the horse to collapse onto its rider. It gave two last, long shudders, weakly struggling to stand, before it lay still, blood slowly flowing from the deceptively small wound to its neck.

Aragorn tore his eyes away from the grisly sight and looked wildly about himself, aiming wide slashes at any orc not watching the spectacle. He had to help Lhanton, but as soon as he left Serothlain, one of them would ram a spear into his throat and…

…and then Lhanton was suddenly there, scrambling to his feet, his sword in his hand and murder in his eyes. With a Dwarvish curse that Aragorn absolutely refused to even try and translate, he threw himself at the nearest orc that looked quite stunned that the ranger had recovered from his fall so quickly, or at all. The look of surprise was still visible on its face as it fell, throat cut from ear to ear, and Aragorn returned his attention to his own attackers, a small glimmer of hope pulsing through him. Maybe, just maybe they stood a chance after all, and if they were really lucky they might make it out of this alive.

He was being prematurely optimistic, as it turned out a second later. Lhanton had managed to close the distance between them until they were almost standing shoulder to shoulder, only a single pair of orcs still standing between them, when the other ranger suddenly dropped to his knees with a cry of pain. Aragorn barely had time to connect this to “he is hurt” and “oh, Valar, we are doomed” before he had to lunge forward, desperately trying to intercept a blow aimed at the other ranger’s head. He managed to shove the orc’s blade aside just in time, but the second creature seemed to have realised what was going on and that its chances had just doubled.

While he was parrying blows aimed at the two of them, Aragorn sneaked a quick look at the other man who was still on his knees, left hand clasped around left collarbone. Just below the bone a long wooden shaft protruded from the torn flesh, completely impaling the shoulder. There was blood trickling down between his shaking fingers, staining the arrow and the front of his shirt a dark red colour. The fingers still wrapped around the hilt of his black-stained sword were white and clasped so tightly around the leather-wrapped metal that Aragorn had to wince in sympathetic pain.

Aragorn sighed wearily as he shouldered yet another orc aside. Well, they had known that, sooner or later, the orcs would become impatient.

He barely managed to duck under the next attack, yet another shallow cut joining the injuries adorning his body, and the panic that had been bubbling just beneath the surface ever since they had entered the clearing reared up and refused to be quieted. Not taking his eyes off the next orcs pushing to get closer to them, he reached out blindly and found the other man’s uninjured shoulder. Giving a strong heave, he pulled Lhanton to his feet, steadying him when he stumbled.

“Stay with me,” he said almost brutally, fingers digging into the other man’s arm. “Don’t you dare lose consciousness now!”

“I am not about to,” Lhanton said through clenched teeth, regaining his bearings just in time to drive back an orc that had managed to sneak up on them. “Morgoth’s hammer, but they killed my horse!”

“I know, Lhanton,” was all Aragorn could think to say, but he released his arm. “Can you fight?”

Behind him, Aragorn heard a snort, and for a short second he had to smile even despite the orcs crowding around them, hissing and promising them death and pain and despair, both in Westron and in their own hideous tongue.

“Yes,” the other ranger simply said. “It is just my left arm.”

“Good,” Aragorn said, no matter how little he believed him, and shifted his weight onto his other foot as he had to pivot slightly to escape a blow aimed at his side. He retaliated quickly, doing his best not to move too much, but the slight movement was enough to upset Lhanton’s hard-won equilibrium, and the other ranger needed a few seconds to compose himself. Aragorn pressed his lips together, looking from one snarling face to the next, and made a decision he had truly hoped not to have to make.

“Can you ride?” he asked in Sindarin, ignoring the unwilling hiss that rushed through the orc horde like wind rustling the leaves of a tree.

For a few seconds, neither of them had time to say anything as they had to fight off the next few orcs that became too adventurous, stepping over Serothlain’s still body again and again as they moved in a rough circle, back to back.

“Yes, I can still ride,” Lhanton finally said when they had a moment to breathe, the accent tingeing his Elvish made more audible by stress and terror and adrenaline. “Why?”

“Because we will get only one shot at this, only one possibility to make it work,” Aragorn quickly explained. “I don’t have time to explain, Lhanton. Just be ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“This,” Aragorn said calmly and threw his sword at the nearest orc.

The creature was almost close enough to touch, and at this distance, the long blade worked just like a spear, no matter how ill-balanced it was for such a use. The orc collapsed with a gurgle, the still-trembling sword sticking out of its ribcage like a particularly gruesome flagpole.

For a second or two, the rest of the orcs simply stood still and stared. It had, admittedly, been a rather stupid thing to do – just who quite literally threw his only truly effective weapon away in a fight that had been developing so nicely? –, but these short moments of distraction was all Aragorn needed. Almost before the weapon had connected with his foe, he had raised a hand to his mouth and gave a loud, shrill whistle.

The thing that most surprised him, if he was honest, was that his stupid, foolish, desperate plan actually worked. Distracted as they were by the sight of their comrade lying on the ground with a trembling sword sticking out of its ribcage, the orcs noticed Ráca far too late. Any elven war horse knew what to do when faced with orcs, and so the first two were already rolling on the ground, moaning, before the rest of them caught on. Lhanton, Aragorn noticed while he hauled a still unconscious Serothlain up, had barely batted an eye, even though he was reasonably sure that even he had not seen this coming. The other ranger was keeping the orcs busy that were still only slowly realising what was going on.

He had no time to spare at all, and so Aragon simply heaved with all his strength and threw the other man over the horse’s back. Ráca danced to the side as the weight was suddenly placed on her back, deftly brushing aside two more orcs, but Aragorn was hardly paying attention. Sweeping an abandoned orc scimitar off the ground, he slashed at one of the few orcs that had kept their wits about them. Having driven the dark creature back for the moment, he grasped the back of Lhanton’s shirt and pulled him backwards, removing him from the immediate danger of having his head cut off by an orc that had been sneaking up on him from the left and pushing him towards Ráca.

“Up!” he simply commanded, turning his back to him to cover him as long as possible. The orcs were hissing at him, anger darkening their faces, and he bared his teeth at them in hatred and loathing.

Lhanton complied, even despite the arrow still impaling his shoulder, the smooth movements speaking of the fact that he was acting automatically, unconsciously replying to the firm tone of command that Aragorn had used. Aragorn would almost have smiled. One would never guess it by just looking at him, but there was really no one who could teach you to bark orders quite like Glorfindel. He had the rare gift of making even Quenya sound positively vicious and full of a clearly audible threat to assign the first person who questioned his authority to kitchen duty for a few decades.

He had never done it, at least not to Aragorn’s knowledge, but that didn’t seem to change the fact that, if Glorfindel barked an order, you jumped. He had even seen his father start to obey once or twice. Elrond always caught himself before he could, of course, and would then glare at the golden-haired elf for a few days, but even he responded to Glorfindel’s orders.

Lhanton, perched on top of Ráca’s back in a rather wobbly fashion, seemed to realise what he had done. Serothlain was deposited in front of him, lying across the horse’s back like a very unconscious and unmoving sack of grain.

“What…”

“No time,” Aragorn cut him off, his eyes widening as the orcs began to press forward once more, clearly intent on stopping them once and for all. He still didn’t know where that archer was, but he fervently hoped that it or they would remain occupied for a little while longer yet. “Get him to safety; warn the others. Even Ráca cannot outrun them bearing three of us.”

“No.” Lhanton shook his head, weakly kicking at an orc who looked as if it was about to reach for him. “I will not…”

“You will go,” Aragorn interrupted him, briefly tearing his attention away from the advancing orcs to give him the fiercest, firmest version of the look that he could manage right now. “I will buy you what time I can. You are both injured. I will last longer. Go!”

Lhanton paled, and Aragorn winced inwardly. But they had no time for niceties, no time to pretend that they didn’t all know what orcs did to their prisoners, and Aragorn did not wait for the other man to realise that he was right – or, possibly, that he wasn’t. Ducking under a blow aimed at his sword arm and barely avoiding another, he ducked under Ráca’s neck and emerged on the other side of the prancing horse, slashing at an orc who was caught completely off-balance by his sudden appearance.

“Noro, bereth nín,” he said in a low tone of voice, so low that no one but the horse would be able to hear him over the screeching of the orcs, and quickly petted her neck with a blood-covered hand. “Mabo i maethyr nín na dhôr veriannen.”

Ráca did not like this order, that much was clear, but Aragorn had no doubt that, this time, she would obey. He whirled back around, prepared to face the orcs once more, when a blood-stained sword suddenly appeared in front of his eyes, being thrust at him hilt first. Without even thinking about it, he grasped it and brought it down in a wide arc, scattering the orcs once again for precious seconds.

Having bought them a little time, he chanced a quick look at the now sword-less Lhanton, who nodded at him with forced calm.

“I will want this back. It was my father’s.”

Aragorn couldn’t help but grin a grin that was somewhere between real, surreal mirth and stark terror.

“Then come and find me, and you can.”

“We shall. We shall, Estel.”

“Good.” Aragorn smiled, more brittle than he would have liked. Seeing that they were finally out of time, he turned away, towards the seething mass of armoured bodies and sneering, hate-filled faces. “Go!”

Ráca snorted and tossed her head, moving left while Aragorn ducked right. Half of the orcs went after her and the burden she carried, but it was only half of them, Aragorn rejoiced, and they didn’t stand a chance in between flailing hooves, sharp teeth and the occasional kick that Lhanton managed to contribute. Coupled with the fact that he did his very best to make a nuisance of himself and throw his enemies into confusion, the dark horse was quickly gone, leaving him alone in the clearing with a handful of angry orcs and no way out.

He didn’t waste any time looking for one anyway. He had known what he was doing and had known how this had to end, and his heart was a little lighter for it, no matter what. He just hoped that Lhanton and Serothlain would manage to escape, that they could reach the village and tell his brothers and Daervagor what had happened here, and that they would find him before he could start praying for death rather than rescue.

And all in all, he managed to hold them off longer than he would have thought. In the end, it was the rest of the orcs rejoining their comrades after having abandoned the pursuit that tipped the balance, and not even two blades being wielded with anger and desperation could stop them from overrunning him. White-hot pain stabbed through his right arm, making him release the scimitar no matter how hard he tried to hold onto it, and the pain coupled with a sudden weight crashing into him from behind sent him to the ground. Lhanton’s sword went flying, and then there were a few minutes of confused, desperate fighting that ended just as it had to, namely with him being pinned to the ground by three or four hissing orcs.

Aragorn bucked and squirmed, trying to throw them off him, but they held on as tenaciously like an octopus holding on to its prey. He stilled instinctively when an orc walked up to them, stopping for a second to spit out a mouthful of black blood from where Aragorn had kicked it in the face. It looked like the rest of them, he thought, with ill-fitting armour and long, lanky black hair half-hanging into its maliciously glinting eyes.

There was a scar running down the side of the dark creature’s face that curled into a gruesome parody of a smile when it hissed at him, the sound low and threatening as a snake’s.

“You, little rat,” the orc said in accented but understandable Westron, drawing back slightly, “are far more trouble than you’re worth.”

The kick he had been anticipating ever since he had seen the orc amble up to him connected with the side of his head, snapping it to the side. His vision greyed out and the gleeful sound of the orcs’ laughter grew dimmer, and Aragorn had just enough time left for the thought that the orc had no idea how very, very right it was.

“You left him?”

Only Elrohir’s reflexes – quick even for an elf’s – enabled him to get between his twin and his intended victim, and he only just managed to throw up an arm across his brother’s chest and stop his forward momentum. Elladan could have pushed past him without too much trouble, but to Elrohir’s relief he stopped, glaring first at the arm barring his way and then again at the object of his wrath.

Said object lifted his chin – an action of defiance that no one really thought to be anything but desperation – and squared his shoulders, face pale and pinched.

“Serothlain ordered me to leave them.”

“And you actually obeyed?” Elladan asked incredulously with that dark, thoroughly devastating sarcasm that was nigh impossible to counter. Ereneth was almost as tall as an elf, but he seemed to shrink at least an inch on the spot.

“As a general rule,” Daervagor said with deceptive, forced mildness, “I do not encourage my men to mutiny and disobedience, Elladan.”

“They found a trail, an orc trail, and thought it best to split up?” Elladan pushed harder against the arm restraining him, and Elrohir jerked him back without conscious thought. “You left your comrades to an orc ambush?”

Now that wasn’t exactly fair, and all of them knew it. Ereneth hadn’t left the others to an orc ambush; he – like them – hadn’t even known about the ambush until Ráca had all but stumbled into the village, bearing two bloody and bruised and not very lucid rangers. Serothlain had never regained consciousness, and Lhanton had managed to cling to awareness only long enough to tell them what had happened before he had fainted from blood loss and sheer exhaustion. He had mumbled something about a body, but none of them had been able to make sense of his words. None wanted to draw the obvious conclusion, namely that one of the missing men was already dead.

In reality, it had been him who had left Aragorn behind, even though Elrohir didn’t really blame him for it. Well, no, that was not true; he did blame him for it, but he also knew that the poor ranger hadn’t stood a chance against Aragorn. When his little brother wanted something, he rarely stopped before he achieved it. Estel did not know it yet, at least not fully, but he instinctively knew how to command people. Lhanton had probably been on top of the horse and half-way to the village before he had realised what was going on, and most likely already at the gates when he realised that Estel had, in fact, no right to give him any kind of orders.

If anyone was to blame for that, it was Erestor and Glorfindel.

Still, the fact remained that Estel could be dead or dying right now, could be – would be – in the hands of orcs who would enjoy breaking him bit by bit until there was nothing left of the man they called their brother, and Elladan needed to yell at someone. Lhanton was the most likely candidate, but he was not exactly up to receiving visitors right now. Losing consciousness had been an act of quite impressive forethought if one thought about it, really. And since it was not nearly as satisfying yelling at someone who couldn’t even hear you, Elladan had rounded on the next person he could think of: Ereneth, who looked about as wretched as Elrohir had ever seen him looking.

“Elladan,” he began, shooting Ereneth a look that was somewhere between anger and pity, “let us not…”

“No.” Ereneth shook his head and side-stepped his brother, who had put himself between his younger sibling and the irate elves almost as soon as Ereneth and he had entered Daervagor’s room. He was only two or three feet away from Elladan now, who was glaring at him for all he was worth. “He is right, my lord. Yes, I left them.”

“Then you will understand that I am not glad about your actions.”

While Elladan’s words were politely phrased, his tone of voice was positively arctic, and promising death and pain and doom in the very near future. Elrohir, who knew his twin as well as anybody could know another person, realised that this might very well end very badly. When Elladan was frightened, he lashed out, and while he, too, felt almost paralysed by dread and terror and a deep-seated feeling of ‘Oh, Elbereth, let this be a nightmare’, he also realised that it would help no one if he let his brother kill Ereneth – or any other ranger, for that matter.

Hírgaer, too, realised the danger his little brother was in and quickly stepped around him, once again placing himself between the younger man and Elladan. He placed a firm hand on his brother’s chest and shoved him backwards before he turned to look at the older twin, appearing almost entirely unimpressed as the look was centred on him in all its glory. There was a hint of fear in those calm green eyes, though, even though Elrohir somehow did not think it was fear of them, and his body was tense, as if he expected having to move soon and very quickly at that.

“This is not helping,” the fair-haired man voiced Elrohir’s thoughts, some of that old arrogance of his bleeding through and awakening even in Elrohir the vivid urge to strangle him. “Ereneth, be quiet,” he added, when his brother made as if to speak, not taking his eyes off Elladan even for a second. “None of this was his fault, and you know it.”

“Oh, do I?” Elladan retorted. Elrohir absent-mindedly decided that he really did feel sorry for the poor words that were smothered in so much sarcasm that even non-breathing entities would have to suffocate on the spot. “Then why don't you enlighten me, Master Ranger, as to what I do and do not know.”

Hírgaer set his jaw, refusing to back down. Elrohir had to admit one thing to himself: A coward the man was not. Slightly stupid or even suicidal, but not cowardly. It would do him no good – Elladan had dealt with far more dangerous creatures in his time –, but it was very brave.

Well, he was a ranger, wasn't he? Showing bravery when faced with impossible odds was almost part of the job description.

“I would not be so presumptuous,” Hírgaer told Elladan coolly. “It is not my place to tell you what to do or think.”

Elrohir wasn’t the only one to notice that the ranger omitted all kinds of honorifics, and he rather doubted that it had been an accident. Elladan, it seemed, agreed with him.

“Oh?” the older twin repeated. “By all means, don’t let me stop you, Hírgaer.”

Something seemed to shift in the fair-haired man, almost as if something had come to the fore that was rarely – if ever – allowed to appear.

“Very well,” Hírgaer said, inclining his head. How he managed to manage that without taking his eyes off Elladan or looking stupid in the process, Elrohir didn’t quite understand. Then again, he was too busy figuring out how to stop this from descending into bloodshed to pay too much attention to anything but pressing his forearm more strongly against his brother’s chest and praying that he wouldn’t try to break free.

“My brother did what he had to do, what he was ordered to do,” the ranger began. “Anybody with half a mind would have done the same, at least anybody with a smidgen of respect for the chain of command. I would have done the same had I been in his position, and I wouldn’t even have tried to talk Serothlain out of it like he did.”

“Now what does that say about you, I wonder?” Elladan asked softly.

“That I am the one who will survive to rescue his companions,” Hírgaer retorted, his voice completely blank. There was suddenly a wry grimace on his face, like a shadow flickering over a still pool, there one second and gone the next, and if not for the man’s next words, Elrohir would have sworn that it had never been there at all. “I can see how this might confuse you.”

Elrohir pressed his forearm down harder, and added his second hand to jerk Elladan back, even though he was more and more coming to see his brother’s point. Maybe it really would do Hírgaer some good if someone knocked his head against something hard. Repeatedly, if possible. Then again, maybe he should do the reasonable thing and poke them both with one of the candles to see if that couldn’t make them stop behaving like a pair of idiots.

“You want to be careful with what you say to my brother right now,” Elrohir advised the man, knowing that Elladan was actually too angry to utter a clearly articulated sentence. Judging by the deadly looks his brother was shooting the man, that might actually be a good thing.

If Hírgaer had been a cat, he would have flattened his ears and hissed, green eyes narrowing in anger.

“And you want to be careful with what you say to mine.”

“Hírgaer, stop it.” Ereneth finally managed to get a word in, using his superior height and longer reach to push his brother to the side. “It was my decision to obey Serothlain’s order. Mine. Stay out of this.”

“Indeed,” Elladan managed to get out between gritted teeth. “Because I would very much like to...”

“Enough!”

Elrohir blinked, perplexed. He had wanted to say the exact same thing, so it wasn't that he was surprised that someone was tired of this, but ... well. He hadn't Daervagor expected to be the Voice of Reason. Then again, maybe it wasn't so strange after all. If Legolas could be the reasonable one, his old friend could be, too.

He wondered about whom exactly that said more, Legolas or Daervagor, and instantly decided that he would never share this contemplation with either of them.

Both Elladan and Hírgaer blinked at the captain, suddenly united in momentary confusion as their staring match was so suddenly and rudely interrupted. Unsurprisingly enough, it was a very short moment of harmony, and they soon went back to glaring at each other. This time, however, Daervagor joined this little stare-at-each-other-hatefully circle, and while he wasn’t as good as Elladan at glaring at people – he was but human, after all –, he was still a force to be reckoned with.

“This will avail nothing!” Daervagor went on, pushing between the fair-haired ranger and Elladan. Elrohir eased the pressure against his brother’s chest a little, but did not release him. “Every minute, every second we argue is one second more that Strider is in the hands of those creatures and one second more we do not use to track them. It is seconds we – and Commander Cemendur and Halbarad – do not have.”

“Sir, I...” Ereneth began.

“No,” Daervagor said with that calm, uncompromising air of his that had always set him apart from most of the men around him, ever since Elrohir had met him so many years ago. “You did what you had to, Ereneth, and no one contests that. You could not have known what would happen, and even if that was not so, you followed orders. You did the right thing.”

“But you,” he went on, turning to Hírgaer, “are far, far out of line, Hírgaer. Nerves are frayed and tempers short, I understand that, but rest assured that we will speak of this once all this is over. And you, my lord,” he glanced at Elladan while Hírgaer bowed his head, chastened, “I would thank for not threatening my men.”

Elladan pressed his lips together.

“Elves don’t threaten. We inform.”

“Then I would thank you to let them remain ignorant,” Daervagor amended. “This is folly, and I will not have it. Ereneth, Hírgaer, join Haldar’s troop. We will need your eyes, keen as they are.”

“Yes, sir,” the two of them chorused obediently, clearly doing their best not to show how happy they were about getting the opportunity to leave the room. There was a short, silent exchange between the two of them about who went first – in the end, Hírgaer gave in with a soft snort of disgust –, but then they were at the door. Just before he followed his brother outside, Ereneth halted and turned back, completely ignoring the two of them and looking at Daervagor with dark, completely unreadable eyes.

“I am sorry, sir.”

“I know, Ereneth,” Daervagor said in a tone of voice that rivalled Ereneth’s expression in blankness. “So am I. Go find Haldar, and when you do, tell him to have the men ready in ten minutes.”

The young ranger nodded his shaggy head and stepped over the threshold, softly closing the door behind him. Elrohir could hear him walk down the corridor after his brother, even though he walked very softly for a man his size, and when he was sure that the two of them were out of earshot, he turned to Daervagor, who hadn’t moved a single inch since stepping between Elladan and Hírgaer. The captain was still wearing that blank, slightly shocked look that he hadn’t lost even while telling the two of them essentially to stop and be quiet.

“I apologise for my brother, and for me also,” he said, meaning every word of it. This had hardly been appropriate or even honourable behaviour. “But, as you can most likely imagine, this is...”

“A nightmare,” Daervagor finished his sentence for him, shaking his head as if coming out of a deep and very unpleasant dream. “Valar, but what a nightmare.”

There were a dozen of possible answers flittering through his mind, among them many an empty reassurance, but Daervagor would not believe any of them. Besides, he deserved more.

“Yes,” he admitted, dropping his hand from Elladan’s chest and suddenly finding that he hardly had the strength to remain on his feet. “It is a nightmare, and one we could have prevented.”

“By disarming him and chaining him to a tree, yes.” Daervagor’s voice was tired, but quite serious. He hadn’t known Aragorn for that long a time, not really known him, at least, but he had apparently come to realise one or two things about his character.

“He would have gnawed his way through the trunk,” Elladan said. He only now seemed to realise that Elrohir had released him, and immediately started pacing.

“Most likely, yes,” Elrohir admitted. “We have to go. Now.”

“We can’t yet,” Daervagor said very, very tonelessly. “There’s no use rushing off without proper preparation. We are not going to help anybody if we walk into an ambush.”

“They won’t be ambushing anybody for a while. They have what they want. Now they will want to get back to their hiding place to...”

“Enjoy their sport,” Elladan finished his sentence. Elrohir had rarely thought it before, but right now he wished that his twin couldn’t read his thoughts as easily as that.

“Yes,” he echoed Elladan’s sentiment. “They will do that, and we all know what that means.”

“We do.” Daervagor nodded his head, that utterly shocked expression not having faded at all. “But I will not risk the lives of my men in this fashion. They will have their allotted time to prepare and gather the things we need. In exactly eight and a half minutes, I will walk out of this house and lead my warriors as best as I am able, but not a single moment earlier.”

Elladan looked at the man as if he had said something utterly obscene.

“This is Estel we are talking about. Aragorn.”

“Yes.” Daervagor turned with an abrupt motion and looked at them. “This is my chieftain we are talking about, and my cousin’s son. A long time ago I promised Arathorn that I would do whatever I could – whatever it took – to protect his child. No matter what may have happened between us, no matter what you may think of me now, but to that oath I hold. If it were only my life, I would not hesitate a second. But it isn’t. I am a captain of the Rangers, and I took another oath, an oath to protect and lead my men to the very best of my abilities. I cannot – and will not – risk their lives in such a manner. They know their duties and the dangers, but to force them to ride out head over heels and in a panic is foolish and irresponsible. I would not do it for any other of my men, I would not do it for either of you, and I cannot do it for him. I could not even do it for my son, no matter how badly I wished to.”

The twins exchanged a look, and Elrohir exhaled, knowing that the man was right. Leaving in a panic and not thinking beforehand would be the worst thing they could do right now, and it would help neither them nor those they sought. There was nothing to be said against Daervagor’s logic, not a single word, but somehow Elrohir still found himself opening his mouth, not really knowing if he wished to impress the full extent of the situation on someone who knew it perfectly well or because the dark images in his head became too persistent.

Maybe it was even because he wanted to give an excuse, an explanation. Elbereth knew they owed the man one.

“You know what happened to our mother.”

It was not a question. Daervagor had not yet been born when their mother had been captured in the Redhorn Pass, nor his father or grandfather, but every ranger knew why the sons of Elrond pursued the orcs of Eriador with such relentless hatred. One should never confuse the Rangers’ naturally respectful and restrained manner with ignorance or dullness. It was a mistake many adversaries had paid for with more than their prides.

Daervagor, while maybe a difficult man, was no coward, and did not back away from unpleasant conversations.

“I do.”

“Then you know why she left,” Elladan went on, fixing the man with an intense stare. “Why she could not stay with us, with her own family, and had to leave Middle-earth behind.”

“I know,” Daervagor said quietly, the empty misery in his eyes making way for a rare, visible flicker of compassion. “And I honestly cannot remember if I ever told you how very sorry I am for your loss.”

“We will see her again, on the other side of the Sundering Seas,” Elrohir said with a small, rather wobbly smile. “One day, we shall be reunited.”

“And until then, we hunt her tormentors,” Elladan went on, a cold light shining in his eyes. “And all other creatures of the Dark One.”

“But what we understood a long time ago,” Elrohir interrupted his twin, fighting against the old, dark mixture of pain-hatred-grief that welled up inside of him, “is that it is not going to bring her back, nor ease our pain. It is like a finger pressed into a hole in a dike – barely enough to keep the entire thing from dissolving. There is a small measure of peace to be gained by meting out justice, but it does not help you heal, or help deal with the pain and grief.” He raised his head, looking at Daervagor. “I will not go through that again, Daervagor. I am not sure if I can.”

The ranger stared at them, looking as if he wasn’t entirely sure what he had just heard.

“Valar, you think I want to put you through this?” he exclaimed. For a second, Elrohir was quite sure that his old friend wanted to hit them. “You think I want to be responsible for the death of my best friend’s son, and my friend, and my son? For all we know, Cemendur and Halbarad are long dead! If there was a way to save them, just one of them, I would gladly sacrifice whatever I possess, whatever I can give. But there isn’t, and I...”

He broke off and shook his head, turning away. For just a second, Elrohir glimpsed an expression of such heartbroken despair on his face that he reached out and placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder.

“We will find them,” he said, grasping for the old, comforting words he had so often spoken and so rarely believed. “We know what we are looking for, and we have Ereneth to guide us. They cannot hide forever. We will find them, Eru help me.”

“Oh, undoubtedly.” The words were bitter and hollow, and Daervagor very deliberately did not look at them. “And we will be too late again, I will be too late again. I will have failed them, and you, and your father. And, worst of all, I will have broken the most important promise I ever made to Arathorn. I will be the one responsible for breaking the line of the Kings.”

“The Dark Lord has been working towards that goal for millennia,” Elladan said in a very similar tone of voice. “He has never needed any help.”

“What my charming brother means to say,” Elrohir interrupted his twin, “is that, no matter what happens, it is not going to be your fault, and no one is going to blame you, neither us nor our father. And I am sure that Arathorn would not, either, were he here to see this.”

“I blame myself,” Daervagor said, in a tone of voice that suggested that this should be self-evident. “I lost my best friend’s son to our enemy, and I never even...” He broke off, shaking his head. “It hardly matters now.”

“Estel is not dead yet,” Elladan said sharply. “We do not know what happened to him. And even if you are willing to give up on him and Halbarad and the commander just like that, we are not.”

Daervagor seemed to freeze before he slowly raised his head and gave Elladan a look that was almost Erestorish in its dark and absolute disapproval. Considering that he wasn’t an elf and had never spent more than a few weeks in Imladris or any other kind of elvish settlement, it was all the more impressive.

“Maybe you wish to repeat that to my face, my lord.”

With an exasperated sigh, Elrohir pushed between the two of them, asking himself just which Vala he had insulted to be stuck as the peacemaker in a village full of aggressive maniacs. All things considered, it was something that would amuse Tulkas, that much was certain.

“No one is going to repeat anything to anyone,” he said in a voice that brooked no argument. “We are all weary and afraid, but we must not take it out on one another. Estel is strong and stubborn, and he knows that we will come for him. He will hold on until we can reach him.”

Daervagor averted his eyes, too polite to say what he really thought, and Elladan only gave him that look of his, the one that said that, no matter how naïve his little brother was, he still loved him. Elrohir couldn’t remember if he had ever loathed that look more than in this very moment. Something inside of him broke at that moment, and instead of screaming as he so very much wanted to, he turned away, giving both the man and his brother a last, none-too-gentle shove.

“Those ten minutes of yours are almost up, Captain,” he said, closing his eyes for a moment and taking a deep breath in an attempt to get that swirling, choking fear inside of him under control. “We need to get ready, and I am sure you will want to have some words with the men that are to be left behind.”

“Indeed,” Daervagor agreed, that blank mask once again firmly affixed to his features. “We will be waiting for you, my lords.”

With a quick look at the two of them, Daervagor left the room, deftly snatching up his pack and coat that had been sitting on the rather wobbly-looking folding chair next to the door. Elrohir watched him go, focussing his eyes on the edge of one of the maps that Daervagor had crammed into the bag haphazardly in his haste. Even when the door swung shut behind the ranger’s retreating back, he could still see the crumpled parchment and the faded lines upon it, and he was glad for it. Anything was better than the images dancing through his head, images of Estel’s bloody face distorted by fear and suffering.

“I am sorry, gwanûr,” Elladan said behind him, and Elrohir could feel him hovering on the edge of his personal space. “I should not have spoken to him thus.”

“Leave it be, Elladan,” he said, still not turning around. He was clinging to the fading impression of that map with all his strength, sensing that this act of concentration was the only thing separating him from utter panic. “It is over.”

“I will not.” Elladan’s voice was calm and serious, and so much like their father’s that Elrohir’s breath hitched for a second. When did one stop wishing for the presence and comfort of one’s parents when the world was coming crashing down around one? Probably never. “What you said was true, Elrohir. We will find him. You know that, don’t you?”

“No, I do not know that,” Elrohir retorted, angrily realising that the image of the map was gone, having been replaced by glimpses of pain and blood and fire. “And neither do you. They took him, Elladan, just like her.”

“Don’t say that.” Elladan’s voice was half-choked and as close to breaking as Elrohir had heard it in a long time. “Don’t say that, Elrohir.”

Elrohir only shook his head, unable to say anything at all. There was nothing to say, nothing that would not be a well-meaning lie and would not make him a hypocrite. There were tears of dread and grief and anger pricking at the insides of his eyelids, and he fought to keep them back. If he started to cry now, he would not be able to stop again, and most certainly not within the next two or three minutes until they would have to step out of this house to join the others.

As it was, he didn’t have to say anything. He never had, not with Elladan. A moment later he felt his brother’s hand on his shoulder, and did not resist as he was pulled into an embrace. But not even that could chase away the horrifying images swirling in front of his eyes or the faint, remembered screams of their mother, cutting through his very being with terrible precision, and Elrohir closed his eyes as tightly as he could and buried his face in his twin’s shoulder.

Aragorn stumbled, almost falling flat on his face. He was completely unable to catch his balance, fettered as he was. At the last second he managed to catch himself, half going down on one knee as he did it, wincing as he jarred his arm that seized this opportunity to once again let its discomfort at being treated thus be known. As quickly as he could, he scrambled back to his feet, already hunching his shoulders in anticipation of the blow to come.

The last twenty-odd times it had come, after all, so why should this time be any different?

It wasn’t, which was a small consolation amidst the pain blossoming between his shoulder blades. If he had learned one thing concerning captivities of any kind in the past, it was that any deviation from the rule – no matter how terrible and painful a rule it might be – was a very, very bad thing. It usually heralded things turning from worse to worst.

Even though he had been expecting the whip cutting through what was left of his shirt, he was still thrown off-balance by the sudden impact which sent him stumbling forward once more. The leash that had been thrown around his neck in those confused, pain-filled minutes after he had been shaken back to consciousness tightened and cut off his breath as he had known it would, and he stumbled again, thus once more setting off the vicious cycle. This time, however, the orc holding the coarse rope looped around his neck simply dug its boots into the ground and yanked him back, nearly snapping his neck in the process. Aragorn was pulled to his feet once more, gasping for breath and seriously considering staying down this time. Pride was all nice and good, but he was fast approaching the point where he didn’t care about appearances.

The orc grunted in annoyance and pulled harder, and Aragorn hurried to try and keep up, and be it only to avoid being choked to death. Then again, he admitted to himself as he was being dragged along, maybe being choked wasn’t all that bad a way to go. He was a realistic enough man to know what was waiting for him once they reached their destination, and had seen enough of what orcs could do to know that choking to death was better by far than anything that would await him.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t being given a choice. When he had regained consciousness, he had already been bound and dangling over one of the bigger orcs’ shoulder. It had been the singular most terrifying situation he had ever woken up to, and in hindsight he was very glad that he had been too confused and in too much pain to do what he had wanted so badly when he had woken up: Scream very, very loudly.

This way all that had happened had been him being dumped to the ground. Before he had regained his breath, one of the orcs had pulled him to his feet and thrown a coil of rope around his neck, amongst the jeers and taunts of its companions. The rope had snapped taut and they had been off, and now, seemingly an eternity but probably only a few hours later, he thought he had reached about the end of his endurance. His head felt as if his brain was about two sizes too big for his skull, and his arm ... well, he couldn’t see it since it had been quite brutally been twisted behind his back and secured with what felt like about a hundred yards of rope, but he was rather sure that it didn’t look too good. Even if one discounted the bruises and cuts that grew more numerous by the minute, his side that he had thought healed had started hurting with a vengeance.

In his opinion, it was adding insult to injury.

His thoughts were wandering, he knew that, but it was actually better than paying attention to the dusty ground beneath his boots or the way the sparse moonlight caught on the orcs’ metal armour. This way, he could bear the pain a little better, and the terrifying, choking knowledge of what they were most likely going to do to him – or, worse, what they were going to do if they found out who he was – was a little further away. Not much, because, really, no matter how you tried to rationalise it, you were rather doomed when you...

“Daydreamin’ again, tark?”

And then there was that. If Aragorn hadn’t been exactly one inch away from losing his composure and descending into panic – the gibbering kind, too –, he would have been annoyed. Not even orcs were exempt from gloating and giving bad speeches. In another world, it would have made them less terrifying.

Aragorn did not answer. Answering made everything worse, that was another thing he had learned early on.

It did not please the orc that had posed the question. Considering that there seemed to be little that pleased the creature, Aragorn didn’t feel overly bad about it. What he felt bad about was the orc grasping his leash from the other one holding it and pulling him towards it, especially since it almost sent him into unconsciousness.

“What, nothing to say, pretty boy?” the creature sneered at him, thankfully and cheerfully oblivious to the fact that Aragorn could barely hear it over the loud rushing of blood in his ears. “You were so happy to talk earlier, weren’t you?”

That wasn’t entirely true, Aragorn thought fuzzily while he struggled for breath. Yes, maybe he had made one or two completely innocent remarks, but that had been about it. It hadn’t been the best of ideas either and had brought him nothing but a cracked rib and a very nice, soon-to-be-black eye.

“Let him be, Grashók,” the orc who had been dragging him around for the past few hours all but whined. Aragorn, close to passing out as he was, found it immensely funny that orcs actually whined. “Accursed sun’s gonna come up soon. If we don’t hurry, we won’t get to the cave in time.”

Grashók was apparently able to do two things simultaneously without too much trouble. Without letting go of Aragorn’s leash, he lashed out with his other fist, hitting the other orc right in the face. It screeched quite satisfyingly as it flew backwards, crashing into another one, but Aragorn was too busy gasping for breath to care overly much.

“I’ll do whatever I damned well please!” Grashók roared, shaking Aragorn for emphasis. It wasn’t exactly fair, the young ranger thought, since he had hardly been in the position or condition to question his authority. “And now get movin’, worms!”

There were some muffled grumbles of discontent amongst the others, but they obeyed, and Aragorn found himself grasped by the scruff of his neck and dragged along. It was a rather nice change from almost choking.

“Now, let’s have a little chat,” the orc went on, effortlessly pulling him forward. “‘M feeling a mite unloved here, little rat. You were so talkative earlier.”

“Could it be ... connected to the fact that ... you are an ugly ... stupid ... evil creature of darkness?”

Grashók gave a great bellow of laughter, yellowish eyes glittering in the darkness. This was not, in no world possible, going to end well, Aragorn realised belatedly.

“There we are, tark,” he said, patting Aragorn’s cheek with his free hand. “I like it when they still got a little fight left in them.” He grinned cheerfully. “Like that other one we just got rid of. He was a fighter! Don’t rightly know why we did get rid of him – there are better things to do with them once they’ve stopped squirming –, but...”

Aragorn forgot for one second that he was being dragged towards an orc cave and certain doom, and gulped in a deep breath, doing his best to glare at the creature. He wasn’t sure if it had worked, but judging by the orc’s unimpressed expression, he rather doubted it.

“Where is the other one you captured? What did you do to him?”

Grashók didn’t answer immediately and only pushed him forward, easing up on the leash. It wasn’t an act of kindness, that much was sure; the orc most likely only didn’t want to have to keep carrying him around. His injuries responded with predictable shrieks of agony, and Aragorn gritted his teeth and tried to pretend that he was somewhere else. Unsurprisingly enough, it didn’t work.

“Why, nothing special.” The orc leered at him, almost licking his lips. “Nothing you won’t find out fer yourself.” He pushed Aragorn forward, a brutal push that reopened half of the cuts he had received over the past hours. “And now walk, pretty boy, ‘cause otherwise I’d have to do somethin’ I’d regret doing this early on.”

There was a comment on the tip of his tongue, connected to just what he thought about being called ‘pretty boy’, but another push sent him stumbling into the back of the orc walking in front of him. The creature snarled and pushed him back, thus once again setting off the vicious cycle of stumbling, falling and almost-suffocating. When he had regained his footing and breath after several long minutes, Grashók was gone, yelling at another orc at the back of the column.

The rest of the journey was spent in a nightmarish stupor of pain and exhaustion and ever-mounting terror. The other orcs snarled at him and used their whips whenever he slowed down (which, especially towards the end, happened a lot), but did nothing else. It was enough. When, after stumbling down one twisting path through the forest after the other, the entrance to a cave loomed in front of them, almost completely overgrown by a thick carpet of hanging ivy, he was too exhausted to feel as afraid as he knew he should.

It may have been a blessing in disguise, because suddenly Grashók was next to him, grinning from one ear to the other. There were more gaps than teeth in that smile, and Aragorn found himself strangely fascinated by the sight. Still, if he hadn’t been so exhausted, he might very well have shown the orc the fear and dread he so obviously craved to see.

“Ready, little rat?” Grashók asked, transferring his grasp from the leash to Aragorn’s hair. He yanked his head back hard, but Aragorn hardly noticed. “Wouldn’t want you to start squirming now, would we?”

Grashók might have a point there, Aragorn had to admit that much. He was exhausted and terrified and a hundred things in between, but he was still far from beaten. If they gave him even the slightest opportunity, he would seize it. Later. After he had slept for about a year and found some pain medication, or, lacking that, something with which to kill himself.

“You really do have ... a vocabulary of two hundred words, haven’t you?”

For a moment, Aragorn was very pleased by his words. His family kept telling him that he was an idiot to keep antagonising his captors, but he had always found it supremely satisfying. That feeling usually lasted until he was hit for his presumptuousness, of course, which was the most common reaction.

It wasn’t any different today. Grashók’s amused grin disappeared immediately, and Aragorn was sure that the orc would have slammed his head against a wall if one had been close-by. Things being as they were, the creature merely tightened his hold and began dragging him over to the entrance to the cave. Pain exploded across Aragorn’s vision, but it was far away, somehow removed from him and from what really mattered.

“Funny, pushdug,” the orc growled. Aragorn dizzily decided that Orcish didn’t count as part of any kind of vocabulary. “Your kind are always funny in the beginning. Not gonna last long, though.”

“I ... might surprise you,” Aragorn gasped out, clinging to the dying shreds of his defiance with all the strength he still possessed. “Just you ... wait.”

“Oh, I’m gonna wait,” the orc promised him with a thoroughly disconcerting smile. “We have all the time in the world, tark, only you’re not gonna enjoy it as much as me.”

There was a comment just waiting to be said, right there in front of him, but Aragorn did not get the chance to say it. He was dragged into the cave, desperately trying to get his uncooperative feet under him. The tunnel described a sharp turn to the left almost immediately, and Aragorn only just managed to turn his head and catch a last glimpse of the fading stars before he was pulled around the corner. The darkness of the cave closed around him like a living, breathing creature enveloping its prey, and he had to work hard not to lose his composure right then and there.

The next few minutes passed like a blur, something for which he was very thankful. There were orcs seemingly pouring out of every tunnel adjacent to the one he was being dragged down, jeering and staring and leering at him, and no matter how much he tried to ignore them, he couldn’t. A small voice inside of him laughed uproariously. ‘You are being dragged by orcs through a cave, injured and bound, and want to ignore them?’

In the beginning there was only a lot of jeers and what he supposed were creative suggestions as to what to do with him both in Common and the Black Speech, but as they progressed down the pitch-black corridor, the orcs became bolder. His guards and especially Grashók, who was still dragging him along more or less by the hair, were disinterestedly trying to stop the others from doing anything too permanent, but by the time they reached a larger cave lit by two makeshift torches, Aragorn had acquired a dozen more cuts and at least twice that in bruises and abrasions. He was almost thankful to be yanked around the corner and into the larger space.

Because this was him and he had just that kind of luck, his stint with relief was very short-lived. Grashók growled at one of the bolder orcs that had been reaching for Aragorn, yanking him fully into the cave, and Aragorn was still thinking that the fact that the others didn’t even think about crossing the threshold to follow them could only mean something very, very bad, when he was pulled to a stop. Almost against his better judgement, he raised his head, and found himself almost literally face to face with the orc that had captured Amlaith and him, half an age ago.

The orc took the time to give Grashók a flat stare before he turned to look at him, and very slowly a smile spread over the hideous face. Aragorn couldn’t help but stare, fascinated against his will.

“Well, well, well,” the orc drawled, reaching out with a clawed finger and trailing a sharp nail down the side of Aragorn’s face, skimming over the bruises and abrasions there. “Look who we’ve got here. It’s the pretty little ranger, all right.”

As close to complete exasperation as possible under the circumstances, Aragorn wished furiously that everybody would stop calling him ‘pretty’, ‘little’, or a combination of the two. He didn’t know what infuriated him more – he most certainly was not pretty and was at almost a head taller than most of the orcs present!

He didn’t get the chance to voice his displeasure, since the tall, darker-skinned orc turned to Grashók, something darker amidst all the glee.

“Now where did you find this little worm, Grashók?”

Aragorn had never seen an orc preen, but this was exactly what the smaller orc did.

“Just walked right in our hands, he did, sir.”

“Did he now?” the other asked, interested, and turned back to him. “Now isn’t that a curious stroke of luck?”

Personally, Aragorn considered it bad luck, of the kind that only seemed to happen to him and people who associated with him, but he wasn’t about to share that opinion with those two. Curiously enough, Grashók didn’t seem to agree, either.

“Wasn’t luck, Skagrosh,” he grumbled, jerking Aragorn back as is wishing to remove his trophy from the other orc’s sphere of influence. “We had a hard enough time catching him.”

“Oh?” Skagrosh asked, shifting his attention from Aragorn to the other orc. Even under different circumstances – say, when he wasn’t paralysed with pain and fear – Aragorn would have been impressed by how an orc managed to look so much like Erestor. This, he concluded, was yet another thing he would never, ever, share with anybody else. “Ain’t that interesting. Think we should talk about that, Grashók. How did’cha find him?”

This was beginning to become really, really, wonderful, Aragorn thought with as much sarcasm as he still possessed while Grashók launched into a hugely embellished account of how he had captured him (apparently almost single-handedly). He had not only been dragged into an orc cave, he had been dragged into an orc cave and was now forced to listen to these two prowling around each other like two rivalling dogs. He had seen enough of this kind of posturing to last him a lifetime; the last thing he needed right now was to add to his list of experiences one of the orcish kind.

Because, really, those usually didn’t work out so well.

Grashók was just telling an increasingly unimpressed-looking Skagrosh how he personally had fought off half a dozen rangers while holding down his newly-acquired captive with one hand. Aragorn, awash in pain that seemed to mount with every shake meant to underline the orc’s heroic deeds, vaguely decided that he couldn’t remember that particular part of his capture. He was almost glad when Skagrosh seemingly decided that he, too, thought that the tale was a little bit over the top. The resulting blow sent the smaller orc quite literally flying backwards until he hit the wall of the cave. While Aragorn wasn’t feeling particularly sympathetic, he, too, was thrown backwards, even though Grashók had thankfully let go of his hair. He collapsed onto the floor, too exhausted and in too much pain to try and get up immediately. He would stay right here, and if those two creatures wanted to hit themselves, they were welcome to it.

Unfortunately enough, they didn’t. Skagrosh merely stalked over to the weakly moving Grashók, picked him up and shook him like a dog might shake a rat.

“I gave you a very simple task, snaga,” the taller orc said, in that same, almost silky voice that still featured prominently in Aragorn’s nightmares. “‘Take what’s left of the tark and dump him somewhere’, I said. I remember saying it very clearly. Don’t you?”

Grashók didn’t answer due to having his throat crushed, but Skagrosh seemed to take his silence for agreement.

“There I am now, waitin’ for you an’ your boys to do what you’re told, and what happens? You come back almost ten short. Now what happened there?”

The other orc made some strangled, choking sounds, which Aragorn found particularly satisfying. Apparently, Skagrosh did, too, for he only squeezed harder.

“I’ll tell you what happened,” the taller orc went on. “You ruined everything, that’s what happened. You were stupid, and greedy, and arrogant, and I really don’t like like that. More importantly, the master won’t like it.”

“Did nothing ... wrong...” Grashók ground out.

“Yes, you did,” Skagrosh said in that reasonable, bone-chilling manner of his. “Did a lot of things wrong, didn’t you? But you brought us that pretty little thing to play with, which is the only reason why you aren’t dead yet. Yet,” he stressed, shaking the smaller orc once more, “‘cause if the master finds out what you did, you’ll have a whole lot of different problems.”

“I...”

Skagrosh interrupted the other orc by all but throwing him out of the cave. Grashók hit the floor outside with a shriek, accompanied by the guffawing laughter of the other orcs. Aragorn could only assume that he seized this chance to escape, but he didn’t get a chance to check for himself. Skagrosh was suddenly looming above him, looking ridiculously like a cat about to eat a canary.

Aragorn had never felt so unhappy about being likened to a bird.

“Now to you, little ranger,” the orc drawled, reaching out with a paw-like hand to grasp him by one of his upper arms and drag him to his feet. “It’s so nice to see you again.”

“I ... wish I could ... say the same,” Aragorn answered, choking.

Skagrosh grinned.

“Hadn’t thought you would. Now, what are you doing here, tark?”

“Being the victim of the worst kind of luck ever?”

Skagrosh only grinned more broadly, something that awoke in Aragorn the very vivid urge to scramble away. There was nowhere to go, though, especially not with his arms bound behind him, and so Aragorn gave up after a short struggle and concentrated on breathing.

“Ah, that was the wrong answer,” the orc said, shaking his head. The sight of the lanky, dark hair moving from side to side was almost hypnotic, and Aragorn forced himself not to look too closely. “Do you really expect me to think that you just stumbled over us twice?”

If he had been breathing a bit more easily, Aragorn would have tried to smile.

“Hard to ... believe, isn’t ... it?”

Skagrosh seemed to agree, at least judging by the frown creasing his face. It was a look that, under different circumstances, would have been fascinating, at least from a scientific point of view.

“Shouldn’t have been sneaking around, boy,” the orc told him, turning his head slightly from side to side to study him more closely. “But now that you’re here ... we’re short one ... guest. You’ll fill that space quite nicely, I’d say.”

Even though Aragorn had been dreading something like this, it still chilled his blood to hear it. He tried not to show just how scared he really was, but apparently failed spectacularly since Skagrosh’s grin only widened. Any second now his teeth would drop out of his skull, Aragorn decided.

“Don’t you think so, boys?” Skagrosh called out, and as if on cue a row of faces appeared in the doorway, hideous and forbidding in the light that the flickering torches cast. “Not so brave now, are you?” he went on, leering. “There’s no one to save you now, tark. No rangers, and no elves. You’re all alone.”

Any comment Aragorn would have liked to make died in his throat. There was nothing worse than being throttled by a gloating orc who also happened to be right.

“I wonder if your blood is as tasty as your friend’s,” Skagrosh crooned, and Aragorn stopped listening right then and there. “I bet it’s even sweeter.”

Aragorn barely felt sharp claws rake down his chest, tearing through the remnants of his shirt and opening a row of shallow gashes. Suddenly the orc’s face was right in front of him, sharp teeth smeared with red, and that was when he started praying for unconsciousness.

He wasn’t that lucky, of course. The tall orc grinned at him, licking his lips with exaggerated slowness, before he turned around and gestured at the others who were looking on, looking decidedly hungry.

“Get him into position, lads.”

Aragorn was still asking himself just what position that might be – even though he was fairly certain that he would not like it – when the orcs surged forward, took a hold of him and dragged him forward, into the middle of the cave. It was a testament to his condition that he only now noticed the stake that had been driven into the cave floor. With practiced movements that made the dread pressing down on him weigh even more heavily, the orcs exchanged his bonds for metal shackles, and within a minute he had been secured to the pole, the short chain connecting the manacles encircling his wrists forcing him to remain on his knees.

This was not how he had expected this evening to end. Or then again, considering his kind of luck, maybe he had, just a little.

The orcs’ leader waited until the others had drawn back once more amongst hissed curses and threats, an almost lazy smile on his face. He began to circle the kneeling ranger, cocking his head to the side in contemplation.

“Now that’s better,” Skagrosh finally declared. “Much better. Now, pay attention, scum. How did you know where we’d be?”

Aragorn shortly considered telling the truth, namely that he was just having the worst luck of the century. The orc would never believe it, of course, but at least the truth would be where it belonged. Then again, the truth was quite clearly overrated, at least when it involved orcs and almost certain doom.

“You wouldn’t know what to do with what I told you,” he finally said instead. Riling one’s captors was always vaguely entertaining, after all. “You wouldn’t know what is important and what is not. You are just the footmen. The muscle. Your master wants to know this; not you.”

The blow came out of nowhere, snapping his already aching head to the side and into the hardened wooden stake. Bright pinpricks of light exploded across his vision, but no matter how fervently Aragorn willed them to, they did not expand and the darkness lurking at the edges of his vision did not swallow him. It was frustrating, not to mention typical.

“Brave, hmm?” Skagrosh smiled at him, and only now Aragorn noticed that he was being held up by his hair, again. The pain that the orc’s brutal grip caused registered only very belatedly, his mind informing the rest of him that this was really the least of his problems right now. “The others were brave, too. In the beginning, that is. In the end, not so much. Now,” the orc went on, tilting his head back even further with a sharp tug at his scalp, “let me make one thing perfectly clear: The master is going to ask you the questions, yes, but until he’s here to do it, you do what I ask or say, when I say it. And, right now, I ask how you knew that me boys were dumpin’ what was left of the tark where they did.”

Aragorn squinted at him, having great difficulty making out the creature’s face. Come to think about it, that might have been a good thing. There was nothing to say, nothing that the orc would believe, and nothing he wanted to say. Worse than that, he didn’t know if he would ever be able to stop once he started speaking.

Skagrosh might have been many things, but slow on the uptake was not one of them. Taking the young ranger’s silence for what it was, he grinned and let go of his hair. Before Aragorn could react, the orc’s metal-plated fist connected with his wounded arm, re-igniting the fiery agony consuming the wound. Aragorn tried to curl up to protect the injury, but his chains would not let him, and a second blow hit the same spot with just as much force. This time, he could not hold back the choked cry that the impact wrenched from his lips, and the orcs’ gleeful laughter filtered even through the haze that filled his mind.

Another blow followed and another, bringing that elusive, beckoning darkness ever closer, much to Aragorn’s relief. Just when he thought that he might finally manage to do the sensible thing and pass out, the blows stopped, leaving him a gasping, shivering heap on the cold rock floor. He was only one step away from whimpering, the entirety of his body hurting with a fierce, throbbing vengeance, and he clamped his teeth together and pressed his lips into a firm line. That was not a sound he was going to make, Elbereth help him.

If only he could believe that himself, he would feel a lot better. Granted, that wouldn’t be too hard at the moment, but the principle still applied.

Clinging to the desperate resolve that he would not show these creatures just how terrified he really was, he opened his eyes. The blurry shape in front of him coalesced into a metal-plated boot, and he was already trying to draw back to get away from it when he realised that it wasn’t making any move to kick him.

“...sure about this?” the owner of the boot asked. “The master’s not gonna be happy about this, Skagrosh.”

“Skai!” Skagrosh growled, and another boot appeared in his line of vision. It looked decidedly pointy, and Aragorn shivered. “We’re just playin’ a little, is all. It’s not as if it ain’t gonna happen anyway.”

What a lovely sentiment. In a slightly demented way, it was even kind of logical.

“But...”

There was a dull thud, and one of the boots disappeared from his field of vision. There was a scuffle of steps and shouts, but Aragorn had stopped paying attention. Skagrosh was going to do exactly what he wanted, when he wanted, and none of the horde would stop him or seriously oppose him.

This would end so very, very badly.

“Now,” Skagrosh’s voice drawled, and Aragorn suddenly found himself pulled up by the scruff of his neck. The sudden shift in position caused the room to spin around him in soft circles, but Aragorn hardly noticed. All he could see was the gleeful grin on the orc’s face, the one that caused the blood to freeze in his veins. He had seen this kind of anticipation too many times, on the faces of people who wanted to – and had – hurt him. “Let’s continue this, little rat. D’you still remember what we talked about?”

Aragorn didn’t bother answering. His brain might be rattling around in his skull like poppy seeds in their capsules, but he still knew a rhetorical question when he heard one. Skagrosh held him upright until just before he could regain his equilibrium, and he needed some moments to fight against gravity’s apparently irresistible pull to remain upright when he was suddenly released. He immediately asked himself why he had bothered, since Skagrosh was suddenly right in front of him again, grinning like a fiend. Aragorn’s eyes travelled from the orc’s smiling face to the knife he held in his hand, the blade gleaming in the sparse light. It was lightly curved and had a gently tapered tip, and looked very much like something no orc would ever have manufactured.

The sight shocked him less than he would have thought, and in some strange sense, he was even relieved. He had known this would be coming ever since he had opened his eyes to the sight of an orc grinning down on him.

“I’ll just assume you do,” Skagrosh went on, fixing Aragorn with a look that was not unlike that of a snake spying a juicy mouse. “Now, do I have to use this or...”

“Stop wasting my time, orch,” Aragorn ground out, trying to edge away from the knife without appearing to do so. “You are going to use it anyway.”

A hiss rose all around the room at the Sindarin word, and Skagrosh bared his teeth at him before regaining his composure.

“Right you are, tark,” he said, grinning with more teeth than Aragorn would have thought anybody possessed. “How could I not, with blood this sweet? All right, ready, lads?”

Aragorn tried to jerk away as hands reached for him, pinning him in place, but it was useless. Even if he had been in better shape, he would have been unable to move with his hands chained together and to the pole and half a dozen orcs holding onto his arms. Things being as they were, he managed to move maybe an inch before the hands holding him jerked him back into place. He had barely enough time to look up before a clawed hand grasped his chin and forced it up. The knife was right in front of his eyes, then, gleaming and sparkling in the dim light. The orcs around him tightened their hold even more, angling his left arm up, and Aragorn could only watch with sick, fatalistic horror as Skagrosh brought the knife down onto his bared forearm.

The blade cut into his flesh, sharp enough for the pain to register only several moments later. It wasn’t a deep cut, he realised, almost shocked, and ... and then, the bottom of his world fell away as pain shot through him with an intensity that was quite hard to grasp or understand. He was awash in it, completely unable to do anything but try and continue breathing. There was a strange, strangled sound filling his ears, sounding very much like someone trying not to scream and not doing a very good job, and he realised hazily many, many pain-filled seconds later that it was him. By then he didn’t care, didn’t care about anything but make it stop, but it didn’t, not until he had bitten through his lip and had thoroughly exhausted himself fighting against the hands restraining him.

The sudden decrease of pain was, for one brief, confused moment, almost worse than what had come before, and Aragorn slumped in his captors’ grasp, gasping for breath. Blood trickled down his chin and neck from where he had bitten his lip, and only when a strong hand took hold of his hair once more and pulled him upright in a single motion did he open his eyes. Strange, he thought dazedly, he couldn’t remember closing them in the first place.

It had been a good idea, though, as he found out as soon as he looked at his arm. First, he could hardly see anything for the blood that covered his entire forearm, staining the orcs’ hands that grabbed both the chain connected to the manacle and his upper arm just above the elbow to keep him still. It dripped onto the ground in a steady stream and pooled next to him, the dripping sound overly loud in his ears. Once he knew what he was looking for, however, not even the blood could obscure the rough, darker rectangle where the skin had been stripped away from his forearm, leaving behind raw flesh that oozed blood at an alarming rate.

Skinned, a shocked voice echoed inside his head. He had been skinned, like a dead animal. Or, the voice added, almost giggling now, a soon-to-be-dead animal.

He was distracted by the sudden reappearance of the knife, now blood-stained and not nearly as gleaming. His addled mind couldn’t follow its course as quickly as necessary, and so he cried out in shock and pain when it opened up another cut, this one running diagonally across the skinned flesh. If he had thought the wound had hurt before, he was quickly proven that this was far, far worse. He didn’t remember much of the next few minutes except the very vivid urge to find something to hit himself over the head with to escape the agony for even a second.

Aragorn came back to himself very reluctantly an undetermined amount of time later, sluggishly trying to claw his way back to the surface of the mind-numbing pain filling every fibre of his being. A cold finger was suddenly placed under his chin and lifted it up, almost gently and with care. It felt strangely wet against his over-sensitive skin, and Aragorn realised that it was covered in blood – his blood – in the exact moment that his eyes found Skagrosh’s, which were positively gleaming with satisfaction.

“Delicious,” the orc purred, bringing the knife to his lips and licking off the viscous fluid that slowly dripped down the blade, running in little rivulets from tip to hilt and creating random, interlocking patterns. “I could do this all night, boy. Drain you of it all, drop by drop, and make you watch while I drink it, right from your veins. What would ya think about that, tark?”

If not for the orc’s grip on his chin, Aragorn’s head would have dropped onto his chest, all his strength suddenly spent. But there was still some fight left in him even despite the pain and terror, and he swallowed and looked straight at Skagrosh, putting all his loathing and hatred and what he still possessed of hope and pride into his gaze.

“Tôl acharn, a tolar muindyr nín. Gwannathach pain.”

His words came out soft and hoarse, a result of screaming in pain which he barely remembered doing. The orc’s fingers tightened around his jaw, digging into the soft flesh of his throat, but he did not look overly angry, even though the orcs around them muttered angrily and their claws left shallow cuts in his arms and back, so strongly did they tighten their grip. Skagrosh, in turn, looked anticipatory, if anything, as if he had received something to which he had been looking forward for some time now.

“You know what, little tark?” the orc asked, leaning forward so that Aragorn could smell his foetid breath. “You don’t have to speak in that accursed Elvish tongue of yours for me to know what you are. You’re like that friend of yours we just got rid of, or that blond worm that helped you escape earlier. You’re like them, like them elves that have no business poking their noses into things that don’t concern them. I can see it in your eyes, those pretty, pretty eyes of yours. It’s in there, that glimmerin’, deep down so that you can only see it and can’t never, ever, touch it.”

He grinned almost lazily, fingers slowly stroking down the side of the young ranger’s face in a sick parody of a caress.

“But I’m gonna touch it, boy. I’m gonna crush it, and you, and will leave you for them to find. The master’s not gonna care, not after you’ve told him what he wants to know. And you will. But if I have anything to say about the whole matter, that’s gonna take a very, very long time.”

Aragorn looked at him, trying to lift his chin in defiance in spite of the claws wrapped around his throat and jaw, but all thoughts and words of defiance drained out of him like water draining through a sieve as Skagrosh brought up his other hand, long, scaly-looking fingers wrapped around the hilt of the knife.

It moved over to his chest, skimming down over his shoulder and collarbone to his sternum, and when it was pressed down, the agony rushed back to envelop him whole, blacking out the sights and sounds of the cave and thankfully taking Skagrosh’s grinning face with it.

Legolas had learned many things in his life. Granted, from an Elda’s point of view it hadn’t been all that long yet – not even three thousand years –, but he was no youngling and had seen more dangers than most elves his age.

One of those things was that it was never, ever, a good sign when a messenger arrived at the camp (or city, or palace, or village), his mount sweat-covered, and looking as if the hounds of Mordor were on his trail. Sometimes, they really were, and the situation explained itself. Most of the time, however, the news he carried was of the kind that you really did not want to hear, especially when you had already been pricked by a healer with what most sane people would most likely consider torture implements and hadn’t even had breakfast yet.

He had honestly never thought he would say this, but he had come to like the nut tarts that the ranger currently on kitchen duty did every morning.

The ultimate proof that something very, very Bad (and yes, the capitalisation was deliberate) had happened was that said messenger had not only arrived at the camp, he was now about to enter the tent he was occupying. The arrival of the ranger had been hard to miss – no matter how stealthy the Dúnedain were, it was hard to deceive the ears of an elf – but Legolas had ignored it, trusting Eldacar to take care of it. He had no position in the camp after all, and it would be almost an affront to the ranger Daervagor had left in charge to barge in and demand that he be included in strategic discussions. Eldacar was a level-headed and able leader, and he would see this as what it was – worry, plain and simple –, but he would not be pleased.

If there was anything important or if there was any news, Eldacar would share it with him. It was common courtesy, after all, not to mention politically wise. Eldacar was not only level-headed, he was also intelligent, and he knew just what keeping the Elvenking’s son in the dark would mean.

So, the fact that he was now hearing the sounds of footsteps hurrying towards the tent was not a good thing. Legolas was not a dim elf, and he could very well imagine of what kind these news were. Aragorn had got himself mauled, or maimed, or hit over the head with something heavy. Especially the latter seemed to be happening with increasing frequency.

To the left of him, Celylith stirred, but did not wake, which Legolas found both relieving and unsurprising. The silver-haired elf was healing, but it was a slow process. He was still spending the majority of the day sleeping, and the rest in a drugged stupor. Even though Legolas would have preferred his friend to be awake and aware, he was glad that Celylith could rest and heal without feeling what had to be excruciating pain. Not that the other elf would ever admit to that; he was quite like Aragorn in that regard, especially if he thought that Legolas needed to hear that he was all right. He would still insist on being fine and perfectly healthy if missing a few limbs.

Loudly, too.

Legolas got up, mindful of his right side. His shoulder was feeling less like a pit of molten lava now, but it was still far from healed. His hand was another matter entirely, and he was very careful not to jostle it. He took a few steps towards the entrance of the tent, squinting slightly against the sunlight painting patterns of light and shadow onto the floor directly in front of the slightly open tent flap. His black eye had lost some of its spectacular appearance, but it was still dark enough to make him look decidedly colourful. Under normal circumstances, it would have faded to a light green by now, but his body was so busy trying to heal his injuries that black eyes had to be rather far down on its list of concerns.

The footsteps stopped, and Legolas took a deep breath and stepped out of the tent. The sunlight almost blinded him for a moment, making him feel decidedly self-conscious, and he blinked, orienting himself. Eldacar was standing in front of him, looking rather unsurprised by his sudden emergence from the tent. Next to him, two more rangers blinked up at him, looking slightly startled. Of course, Legolas thought. Daervagor wouldn’t send only one man, not after what had happened. He was rather sure that he had not seen them before, even though the left one looked slightly familiar.

“My lord,” Eldacar said, inclining his head. “I am sorry to disturb you, but...”

“Do not worry, Eldacar.” Legolas smiled at the man, but the smile faded when Eldacar only looked solemn and slightly ill at ease. “You did not disturb me. I have been doing nothing but rest for the past few days and am feeling much stronger.”

“I am glad,” Eldacar retorted, looking as if gladness was the very last thing on his mind right now. “The resilience of the Elves is not exaggerated.”

“There are limits to what we can recover from, I am afraid,” Legolas said, throwing a quick glance over his shoulder to where he knew Celylith was still sleeping. “But my injuries were not as serious as they first appeared.”

Eldacar didn’t look openly sceptical, which Legolas took as a good sign. He had said this repeatedly over the past days; the last thing he wanted was for people – even if they were rangers – to start asking themselves how he could recover this quickly from the wounds they had seen back in the orc cave.

Aragorn had risked his life for him and Celylith, and he would do what he could do minimise the damage. In his heart, Legolas knew very well that the damage might very well be irreversible, but that wouldn’t stop him from trying.

“That is good to hear,” Eldacar assured him, his face serious. “How is your companion doing, my lord? We feared greatly for him, and now that he has woken up, we all hope that he will recover swiftly.”

“As well as can be expected, I would say,” Legolas retorted, shooting another look over his shoulder and not caring how over-protective he appeared. “He very nearly died, make no mistake. But he is strong and, Oromë be my witness, stubborn. Nestir has assured me that, barring any unforeseen complications, he should recover, hopefully completely. It will take time and patience, but he will be well, Eru willing.”

Eldacar’s expression didn’t change noticeably, even though his voice was sincere.

“That is good news, my lord.”

“It is indeed,” Legolas said, shading the eye he still couldn’t open completely to squint at the smaller man. “But, not meaning to imply any kind of disrespect, you – the three of you – did not come here to inquire after mine or Lord Celylith’s health.”

“No, my lord,” Eldacar admitted. “I am afraid that we have not. These,” he gestured at the two rangers next to him, “are Belvathor and Torthagyl, my lord. The captain sent them with news.”

“I see,” Legolas said, acknowledging the sketched bows that the two rangers gave him. He was beginning to feel very uneasy indeed. Eldacar was reasonably cheerful for a dúnadan, who, as a general rule, weren’t the most optimistic of people, and to see him this dour couldn’t be good. “And, I take it, this news concern me?”

“They do indeed, my lord. I suggest we find somewhere more private to talk. You would not wish this to be discussed in public, I believe.”

There was a cold knot in the pit of his stomach that was steadily growing and expanding. Legolas did his best to push it away and present a calm façade to his surroundings. He knew that Eldacar, at least, was not fooled, but there were other rangers milling about, doing whatever it was that rangers did a couple of hours after sunrise. A large percentage of it seemed to involve sharpening weapons and glaring seriously at innocent woodland creatures. Still, by now he had stopped believing in things like Rangers Do Not Eavesdrop, and so he knew better than to assume that no one would hear what they said.

“Very well,” he said, inclining his head. “Lead the way. Could you have...”

“Nestir will be here in a second,” Eldacar assured him. “He will look after Lord Celylith.”

“Thank you,” Legolas said with a small, somewhat rueful smile. He was becoming horribly predictable, it seemed.

Nestir did arrive a few moments later. The man nodded at Eldacar and the other rangers, gave Legolas a suspicious look and a look that promised a more thorough examination in the future, and disappeared inside the tent. Legolas waited until he heard the tell-tale sounds of the healer rearranging the items on the small, wooden nightstand next to Celylith’s bedroll before he nodded at the three rangers and gestured at them to precede him. It didn’t take them long to reach what Legolas assumed was Eldacar’s tent. Only when they entered he noticed how soothing the dim light actually was, and how badly his head was hurting. Only recently the sun had started to exarcabate his headaches, which Legolas considered an added insult heaped upon a situation that was less than favourable to begin with.

The wood-elf surveyed the small room, which took roughly half a second. There was a bed roll – only one, a concession to Eldacar’s position, he thought – a chair and a table that had to be at least a hundred years old and was piled high with what looked like half of the entire paperwork of western Eriador. Various piles of clothes and equipment were strewn about the room, but no matter how irregular their placement, they were stacked neatly and in a way that would have made even the sternest drill sergeant proud.

Legolas returned his attention to the three men standing in front of him. The two messengers were hanging back and keeping closer to the entrance, if instinctively or on purpose Legolas could not say. Under different circumstances, Legolas would have found their clear reluctance to having to face him (or, possibly, this situation) amusing, but right now it only helped to convince him that he would not enjoy this conversation.

“Well?” he finally asked and arched an eyebrow at Eldacar. “What news do you have for me, westman?”

Eldacar looked at him in a way that reminded Legolas strangely of a mouse that had found itself cornered by a particularly blood-thirsty cat and had decided to try and fight anyway, by using its tail to poke out its adversary’s eyes if necessary. He had not said a word yet, and was fingering the edges of what looked like a map with the obsessive dexterity of a man who had been doing little else for far too long.

“The captain has sent no written word, and neither have Lord Elrond’s sons,” the man finally began. “I can only tell you what I in turn have been told.”

Legolas waited for something more, but there was nothing forthcoming. He suppressed a tired sigh and surprised himself by wishing for his bedroll and a nap. This was getting tiresome, and if Eldacar didn’t come out with whatever ‘it’ was, he was going to say something he would regret.

“Yes?”

Eldacar actually shifted from foot to foot. Legolas, who knew by now how hard it was to make a ranger actually shift, stared. The cold knot inside of him turned into solid ice and made it hard for him to draw breath, even though, to be fair, that could also have been because of his bruised ribs.

“Commander Cemendur is dead,” Eldacar said, his voice wavering the tiniest bit. “The captain and the others found him yesterday afternoon. The orcs ... they killed him.”

Legolas silently bowed his head and closed his eyes for a second. It didn’t come as a shock, not really, and for a second all he felt was relief that it was not Aragorn’s cousin who had lost his life in so terrible a fashion.

“I am sorry,” he said, opening his eyes again. To his surprise, he found that he truly meant it, no matter how hostile the man had behaved towards them. “I did not know him well, but he was a good leader and always stood up for his convictions.”

There was more he could have said, but it would have sounded false and empty of meaning, and so he didn’t. Eldacar inclined his head at his words, grief visible in his grey eyes.

“Thank you, my lord. He will be missed, by all of us.”

For the second time in less than a minute, Legolas waited for him to continue. Again, he did not, but this time, Legolas only felt pity for him for having to inform his men about this worst possible news. Cemendur had been respected, if not liked, and his death would hit the already floundering camp hard.

“Again, I am sorry, Eldacar,” he finally said, his voice soft. “I...”

“That is not all, my lord,” the ranger interrupted him, looking up at him. “We ... that is not all that happened.”

“It isn’t?” Legolas asked in a deceptively mild tone of voice.

“No,” Eldacar confirmed. He was silent for a while before he took a deep breath, and clearly decided to throw his companions to the wolves. “I will let Torthagyl explain the matter to you.”

The ranger in question, a man of roughly Daervagor’s age and with the pinched look of someone who knew that he was being dangled in front of the troll as bait, was too polite or obedient to glare at his superior. He simply took a deep breath, clearly resisted the urge to gulp, and looked at Legolas, eyes dark and vaguely sympathetic.

“There was an ... incident, my lord,” he began. “Yesterday, while searching for clues about Halbarad’s and Commander Cemendur’s whereabouts, Serothlain and his troop were ambushed. Lhanton and Serothlain barely made it back alive. The captain and the others are still searching as we speak.”

Legolas’ arched eyebrow rose to dizzying heights. If there ever had been a case of selective recounting of the truth, this was it. Lord Erestor would have been proud.

“And what is it you are not telling me, dúnadan?”

Torthagyl exchanged a quick look with his companion, a young man with a slightly wild look in his eyes that Legolas could understand only too well, and squared his shoulders.

“Strider was ... taken. He held them off long enough for Serothlain and Lhanton to escape, but he did not.”

“Oh.”

It was all that Legolas could say, all anyone could have said. He had expected some sort of catastrophe, but there were different levels, weren’t there? Maiming, yes. Being hit over the head, yes. Being taken captive by orcs? That was something else entirely.

Elbereth Gilthoniel. Aragorn had been taken captive by orcs. Aragorn had been taken captive by orcs who were looking for him.

Giving silent thanks to the Valar that he was standing in front of the tent pole, Legolas slowly leaned back against it and closed his eyes. This was not happening. This could not be happening.

“My lord?” Eldacar’s voice pulled him back to awareness, and Legolas reluctantly looked up. Judging by the look on the man’s face, he had been trying to get his attention for some time now.

“Yes,” Legolas said, trying to gather his scattered thoughts. “I ... I am sorry, Master Ranger. But did you just say that Estel has been captured by orcs?”

“Yes, my lord,” Torthagyl repeated reluctantly. “Lhanton managed to get Serothlain back to the village, even though he was injured himself. The captain and the others were still looking for Strider and his captors when we left, shortly before daybreak.”

“And if they had found something, you would already have told me.”

“I would, my lord,” the ranger affirmed. “I am sorry, but as of now, we have no idea where they took him. There are trails, yes, but they were hidden carefully. These orcs possess an uncharacteristically good idea of how to mask their tracks and hide the signs of their passage. All we found was the commander’s body.”

Legolas had to take a hold of all his remaining strength of will and self-control and managed not to slump back against the pole. This was ... Valar, this was a disaster.

“I ... I just wanted to inform you, my lord,” Eldacar said, in the tone of voice of someone who was aware of the fact that he had to talk very slowly and carefully in order not to wake the proverbial sleeping warg. “The captain has ordered us to stay where we are. There is nothing we can do at the moment.”

Disjointed images of pain and darkness and Aragorn’s face, twisted in agony and fear, flittered through Legolas’ mind, and he thought that it was almost amusing that Eldacar spoke to him in the tone of voice that had to be universally known as “Let’s not upset the crazy people”. It was strangely appropriate.

“What is Daervagor planning to do?” he asked, voice calm and carefully controlled.

Eldacar looked at him carefully, while the other two rangers exchanged a quick look of disapproval at his omission of Daervagor’s rank.

“Considering what is happening at the moment, I was not told,” Eldacar told him. “I do not need to know.”

The “and neither do you” went unspoken, and usually Legolas would not have cared for it. As it was, he was too busy trying not to panic to care for innuendos and reading between the lines.

“As I said, they were still looking when we left, my lord,” the younger ranger said, clearly trying to take pity on him. “The Lords Elladan and Elrohir both took their own groups to search. There are tracks, but it’s been slow work.”

“I see,” Legolas said slowly and carefully, feeling as though he had to think about every single word very carefully lest he say something he did not wish to divulge, least of all to a group of rangers. “Thank you for informing me, Eldacar.”

“He is your friend,” Eldacar said with a small shrug, and that really said everything. “I would want to know, no matter what.” He broke off, tilting his head to the side, before he looked back up. “Torthagyl and Belvathor will return to the village in a few hours’ time. I am going to send several reports and dispatches with them. If you would like to add something, like a letter to Lord Elrond’s sons...?”

“Thank you,” Legolas said, as firmly as he could and pushed off the pole. “I ... I will let you know.”

Before any of them could say anything, Legolas turned and fled, only it was more of a tactical retreat (because Wood-elves did not flee) and he couldn’t walk very fast at all, not with his side and shoulder hurting as much as they did. His headache once again remembered what it was supposed to be doing, namely torment him, and joined the concert of discomfort that clamoured for his attention. He managed to make it back to their tent without losing his composure, even though his self-control was severely strained by the sympathetic and pitying looks he received from almost every ranger he passed. World travelled fast, it appeared, and the Rangers still hadn’t perfected the art of Giving Someone Sympathetic Looks Without That Person Noticing.

When he entered the tent, he sighed with relief at the relative darkness of his surroundings. Now, this was enough, he told himself firmly. This headache was getting debilitating, and he would not have it. Especially not now. This stopped right now.

Nestir, sitting next to Celylith’s bedroll in a cross-legged position that looked oddly comfortable, looked up at his entrance, setting aside a mortar and pestle in the process. Legolas could smell the clean, fresh scent of crushed herbs, and for a moment it helped soothe his chaotically rolling mind. Then the reality of the situation came rushing back, and the sight of Nestir picking up his tools and gently depositing them on one of the nearby tables was yet another reminder of Aragorn and the thought that he probably wouldn’t have been as conscientious and would have left the mortar where it was when he leapt to his feet.

The healer picked up the rest of the utensils he had brought before he took up the mortar and gave Legolas a searching look.

“I take it that offering you a potion to help with the pain would be pointless?”

“What pain?” Legolas retorted with a wry smile whose effect just might have been ruined by the fact that he would have liked to bash his head against a wall to make the pain and terrifying images go away.

“Exactly,” Nestir replied with a tight, displeased smile. “He woke up a few minutes ago,” he said softly, turning back to nod into Celylith’s direction. Under normal circumstances, him whispering wouldn’t have mattered terribly much, but right now Legolas doubted that Celylith would notice a herd of oliphaunts stamping through the tent unless one of them stepped on him. And even then, the odds were rather even in his opinion. “I haven’t given him his next dose yet. I thought you...”

“I will take care of it,” Legolas assured him. “Thank you, Nestir.”

Nestir looked up at the intensity in his voice and gave him a small nod and what might have been the hint of a smile.

“Do not mention it, my lord. It was my pleasure.”

A moment later he was gone, and Legolas once again decided that Nestir wasn’t that bad after all. He might be a power-hungry monster – sometimes, at least –, but he knew when to give his patients space and the time to be alone. In his opinion, that made up for his worrying inclination to torture people with medical instruments.

His mind was still reeling when he sat down next to Celylith, feeling the sudden urge to run or scream or hit somebody. His body let him know what it thought of that and his brain let him know how helpful it would be, and so he just sat there, watching his friend’s face and trying to ignore the fact that his eyes were closed, and tried to decide what to do. There was nothing he could do, just like Eldacar had said, not from here, at least. And even if he managed to convince the rangers to allow him to accompany them – and he did not doubt that he would manage it, because he was his father’s son and could be very, very persuasive –, he was reasonably sure that the twins would not be amused. Then again, he had never been overly concerned with keeping the twins happy, so he was not terribly worried about that, but...

“Good ... evening.”

Legolas tore himself away from his unpleasant thoughts and focused on his friend, automatically starting to smile from ear to ear. Even after two days, he found himself hard-pressed not to start grinning like a maniac whenever Celylith was awake.

“Rather ‘Good Morning’, my friend. It is barely past the tenth hour.”

Celylith frowned, a little crease appearing between his eyebrow and the edge of the bandage covering one side of his face.

“Already?”

“Yes, already,” Legolas replied. “You’ve slept for a long time.”

“I seem to ... do that a lot ... lately.”

“Indeed,” Legolas agreed solemnly. “And I am glad about it. So don’t try to convince me not to give you your next dose; it will not work. I know you are in pain.”

“I am ... not,” Celylith told him with the kind of earnest truthfulness that Legolas had never thought particularly convincing.

“Yes, you are,” Legolas insisted. “You need to rest in order to heal, mellon nín, and you know it as well as I do.”

Celylith’s frown deepened, even though the pallor of his face and the pinched look around his eye belied the truth of his words.

“I would really ... like to stay conscious for longer ... than five minutes.”

“And I would like to live in peace and quiet,” Legolas countered, unimpressed. “We can’t always get what we want.”

“We could if you would ... refrain from associating ... with Rivendell Elves.”

Legolas laughed, no matter how terrible their situation. Because ... well, it was true, wasn’t it?

“Yes, maybe. You are still getting your medicine. So, if you would open your mouth like a good little elf...?”

“Never was ... a good little elf.”

“How true,” Legolas said, remembering all the times he had got into trouble because of one of Celylith’s ‘fail-safe plans’. “And still you never knew when to quit while you were ahead.”

“I never am ahead,” Celylith told him seriously.

“You should stop betting against me,” Legolas said with forced cheerfulness that, as he suspected, probably made him appear like a lunatic. “Now, don’t misunderstand me, because you know that I love you like a brother. But if you do not open your mouth in the next twelve seconds, I will have to force-feed this lovely ... what colour is this, grey? – well, this lovely grey potion to you.”

“Legolas. Stop.”

Legolas reluctantly looked back down at his friend, seeing Celylith’s open eye study him closely. There was pain in it, but also determination, the kind that he knew well and knew far better than to try and disregard. If Celylith looked at you like that, you did what he wanted, because the alternative just wasn’t worth it.

Celylith did something that was probably in some way connected to arching an eyebrow. Right now, it looked vaguely like a very weak nervous tick.

“What is ... wrong?”

“What do you mean?” Legolas asked, even though he knew that it would make no difference. But Celylith was not well, and the last thing he needed was worrying about something he could not change, and so he would at least try. “You are being stubborn, as usual, but...”

“Legolas.”

Legolas fell silent. Injured or not, trying to argue with Celylith when he was in this kind of mood really was nothing but an exercise in complete and utter futility.

“Estel is in trouble,” he finally said. “Daervagor just sent word that his troop was ambushed by orcs. They ... they took him. The rangers are looking for him, but as of right now, they don’t have any promising leads or tracks. And Commander Cemendur is dead. They found his body yesterday afternoon.”

Celylith didn’t say anything, and for a second, Legolas thought he had fallen asleep. That didn’t make any sense, of course, since Celylith was unwell enough to sleep with his eyes closed, and so the other elf finally blinked, looking tired and in