The war-elephant, the tendons in the backs of its legs slashed and bleeding, finally listed, tossed its great tusked head and, with a bellow of agony, crashed into the dust of Pelennor fields.

  Spilling from its back and thumping onto the ground came its cargo of heavily armed orcs. Legolas – ordinarily as self-contained as any of his ancient race -- allowed himself a thin smile as he heard necks and ribs snapping, and the few orc riders who had not been slain by his arrows wheezing and moaning in the dust.

  He thumbed, faster than a man could see, his bowstring into the nock of another arrow and hopped, sprightly as a grasshopper, onto one leg of the fallen war-elephant. The beast's fall had brought a gauze of brown dust into the air, filming his golden hair, and he was momentarily unable to make out Gimli. He knew his dwarven friend was fighting nearby, however. He could hear not far away the crunching impacts of Gimli's ancient iron warhammer on orc bonce, and a flow of the thickly consonantal curses which characterised the speech of the Dwellers-Under-The-Mountain.

  "Ho! Take that, you rancid cheese-eating Sauron-sucker! Aye! Your ****** head don't look so well now it's on back to front, do it? Oy! Oy! Poke me with that pike one more time, Lofty, and I'm sticking it right up your secret passageway to Mordor!"

  A clatter, a sanguinary squishing noise, and the anguished shout of an Uruk-Hai – most feared of the footsoldiers in Sauron's dark legion – followed soon after. Gimli of the stout beard, son of Gumlit, grandson of Thoreson and bearer of the Mithril hammer, had made good on his promise.

  As the dust drifted aside, the foul wind bringing to Legolas's nostrils a fresh gust of orcish sweat and the sweet metal tang of men's blood, he surveyed the slaughter. Downed men of Rohan lay dead with their beloved horses; orc and troll lay battered and entangled. Great were the groans that came to the elvish one's ears.

  But the field was won. The orcs, Legolas noted with his heart leaping, were in retreat, and the war-drums of Mordor grew distant and irregular. And he saw, his heart leaping yet further, his friend – his beard all besmattered with orcish gore, but his little eyes bright with delight – waddling towards him.

  Legolas sheathed his last arrow and let his bow fall. Gimli huffed and broke into a run, casting his warhammer aside. One foot trod on the head of an orc, and then, suddenly, he was at Legolas's feet, his beard nuzzling the elvish bowman's thigh, ticklish through his Mithril chainmail. Leaning down, Legolas reached under the little warrior's arms, and hoisted him to his face, smothering his beard with kisses.

  "Ho, stupid elf, stop that!" grumbled Gimli, who was sensitive about being picked up. "Stop it, you hear?"

  But then Legolas, ignoring the stubble-burn abrading his delicate cheeks, planted his soft lips on Gimli's chapped mouth and stopped his objections with a kiss. The dwarf's body went limp in his arms, and his tiny carnival hands closed on the elf's shoulders in bliss….