Chapter 3
Laine marched on, despite the ache in her legs, and hoisted the bandolier that carried her sword on her back a little bit higher. The band of elves had been marching for nearly three days now, only pausing to sleep for six hours and then pressing on at a grueling pace. None of the elves seemed to mind, but as the forest became more and more sinister, the girl became more and more tired.
She had ceased to notice the giant spiders that hung down from the thick boughs, spinning their huge webs just low enough so that if she did not pay attention to the road ahead of her, she could get a head full of the sticky material. She remembered when she had been through the forest during the hunt a few weeks ago, where she had been mortally afraid of the giant arachnids, but now, she had slept under them, walked under them, and breathed under them for more than two days, and they did not seem so imposing when traveling with a battalion of three thousand elves, all armed.
As she marched, Laine fell into her own thoughts, as Ranien seemed to be dutifully avoiding her and Melian had to travel with the rest of the servants and healers who came along. None of the other elves seemed very engaging, and under the dark eaves of Mirkwood forest, their fair hair and faces cast off eerie glows.
She could not forget her friends in the first faction, and hoped that Aragorn and Legolas were not yet in battle, or if they were, then for them to be safe from harm. There was talk of Orcs fluttering among the elves, saying that there were mixed groups of the large Urûks, small Moria Orcs, and Mordor ones that assembled as Isengard, Moria, and Barad-dûr were destroyed in turn. Laine had met each type, and did not wish to see any of them ever again.
Now, they had attacked Lórien, but the last time she had been there, she remembered that Haldir and his band of elves had slain a whole troop of Orcs that had followed the fellowship into the Golden Woods. There must be a lot more if Lothlórien could not deal with them. She hoped to God that Legolas and Aragorn were all right.
Thinking of Legolas, she remembered Ranien's reaction the night he first told her of war. He had accused her of loving the prince, when in truth, she thought of Legolas as a brother. She did not know what in all of Middle-Earth was going on in Ranien's head, but she believed that if she let him cool off for a few days, he would become back to normal. But when he had hit the wall, leaving a mark, she remembered seeing blood on his knuckles and on the wall. That jolt in her heart… all right, well, he was her friend after all.
Thinking this much, she shut Ranien out of her mind and stopped as the captain of her section called a halt. It must have been night, but she could not tell, as in these southern parts of Mirkwood, where it was untamed and unmanned, the trees had grown so thick that sunlight could not be seen regardless of the time of day.
This second battalion was split up into three separate small classes, and each of these split up finer until the smallest section only consisted of twenty elves. Laine did not know if it was fate or just the gods playing a trick on her, but Ranien just happened to be in her section.
"We shall stop and rest for the night!" the familiar elven voice of the section leader called to her group, and they broke away from the rest of the army. Two other sections came with them, but the rest marched on.
Confused, Laine asked the elf next to her what was going on.
"The army of Orcs is not to be very big," he spoke to her with a thick Elvish accent. She was use to this, as many of these elves never left Mirkwood and most did not bother to learn the Common Tongue. "They are expected to be grouped together and we shall raid them with small bands after the first faction attacks their main force."
The girl did not see the genius of these tactics as the others did, and raised an eyebrow at this explanation. Why not just attack them on the flanks and back like we planned before? She thought, and shrugged. After all, she was not the commander of this army. Thranduil probably had something planned.
* * * *
Of all the coincidences and ironies, Ranien had to share a tent with the human girl, though he desperately did not wish to ever speak to her or even see her again. Only by forgetting her, he could forget the pain in his heart, he reasoned, and Laine seemed to have been able to sense his hostility and stayed as far away as possible. But though she stayed out of his sight and did not speak to him, she was ever on his mind during the days and nights of the long march to Lórien.
Even when smelling the infrequent cool breezes that got through the lush canopies, he was reminded of the flowery scent of her hair and the warmth of her breath upon his skin when she was near. Seeing the exotic leaves and flowers of the trees, he was reminded of her smile, equally exotic and beautiful. The dewdrops on the undergrowth in the mornings reminded him of her eyes, sparkling and brilliant, forever laughing. She only gave him looks of confusion now, as he was sure she did not understand his anger, but even these were rare, as she always turned quickly away when his fierce gaze fell on hers.
The three other elves that shared the tent with them trudged in, bringing in the human girl, who seemed more exhausted than Ranien had ever seen her. She yawned, and the other elves looked disgusted; Ranien only thought she was adorable. This action, along with passing wind, belching, and some other functions such as bum scratching belonged strictly to other races, and most elves found it appalling when humans, dwarves, or hobbits did them in front of them.
Whereas the three other elves gathered to speak in low voices in their own tongue, Laine yawned a second time, unclasped her sword from her back, walked out of her boots so that they were left in a heap on the side of her bedroll, threw her armor over her head, and laid down. Before she even completed a third yawn, she was in dreamland.
Watching the content expression on the human girl's face, Ranien's heart ached to have been so horrible to her over the past days, but he could not do a thing. She loves Legolas, he reminded himself, and sat back on his own blankets, thinking. And the prince deserves her. He needs someone like her to mend his heart.
* * * *
Laine woke in the middle of the night to darkness. At first, she did not know what had awoken her, but when she heard the first cry of pain and the second, she was out of bed and pulling on her boots. Before she even got her sword bandolier on, one of the elves had sprinted out of the tent already. She only knew because of the gust of wind that blew past. Struggling with her armor, then deciding to damn it all, Laine kicked aside the breastplate and pounded out of the tent, unsheathing her sword as she went. Her mother's voice popped into her head, saying, Never run with sharp objects! She wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.
However, the scene before her stopped any emotion that was about to come through. She had never seen so much light in Mirkwood before, and blinked, thinking her eyes were deceiving her. But the red and orange silhouettes did not disappear and danced madly through the illuminated trees and reflecting off of the dark greens of the elvish tents. The flames crackled and licked to their own tune, and the guttural cries and laughter of Orcs filled the forest with a macabre and death-filled soundtrack.
An elf darted past her, bow in hand, and a long shaft whizzed by her head before she fully realized what was happening. An eerie scream rose as the arrow found its mark, and the girl gasped and surged forward, sword in her right hand, pointed to the ground. A raid, she knew, and had no time to think more. So intent was she upon her unseen quarry, that she did not see directly in front of her, and suddenly, her foot caught, and she was heading face first for the ground. Dropping her sword somewhere along the way down, she caught herself with stinging palms and scrambled to flip around and see what she had tripped over.
Staring back at her was the headless form of an elf. The logical part of her screamed, It's just the night watch!, but the impractical half of her screamed literally. Very unceremoniously, she kicked the headless corpse away from her, ignoring the dark liquid staining the undergrowth, and began to clumsily crawl forward. She ran head first into the sturdy and stinking leg of a seven-foot tall Urûk-Hai that had been waiting for her.
The blood rushed through her ears and she gasped, as she knew she was trapped. The mad glee in the fetid creature's eyes was enhanced by the wildfire that was quickly eating away the forest's canopies. It howled in triumph and raised its curved blade for the kill.
Rule one of survival in battle: never lose your weapon. Broke that one, she thought bitterly, and I haven't even been in battle for five minutes.
Sword! her mind urged her frantically. Where the hell is my sword?! Like lightning, the rusted blade made for her throat, and acting on instinct, she dropped to her belly and rolled back towards the body of the elf. Sword! Where is my sword?! But her rolling body felt neither the biting pain of the scimitar nor the cool metal of her weapon, just the prickling of the small vegetation on the ground.
Laine stopped rolling, and came up on one knee, and looked up. The Urûk was not as stupid or as slow as she thought it was, and it was still standing over her, blade ready, having followed her rolling form. It showed its blackened teeth, and the girl could only watch in horror, as he got ready for the swing. Her sword was still nowhere to be found! She was going to die like this!
NO!
The Orc stopped in mid-swing and froze, giving a squeal of pain. Its eyes glazed, and suddenly, it fell back as the stern but comforting face of Ranien appeared behind it. The elf had a bow in one hand and his hunting knife in the other, the blade dark with blood nearly to the hilt. Laine realized she was panting in fear and tried to calm her breathing. She gave him a nod of thanks that he did not acknowledge and recovered her sword, which was under the stiffening body of the dead watch. Ranien helped her to her feet, but she noticed that his eyes were still hard with coldness and anger.
Both running forward, they entered the worst part of the raid, where nearly five tents had caught fire and bodies of both Orcs and elves littered the ground. Despite the unexpectedness of this attack, some of the elves had managed to pull together a defense in the unburned, northern area of the camp, having climbed the trees and were now aiming their arrows at the Orcs on the ground. It was a miracle as how they got up there, as the north was where the Orcs were coming in to attack them. However, the Orcs had been smart enough to not let the elves run amok and all sides of the encampment were up in flames except, curiously, the north, where the onslaught of Orcs came through.
Few now made it to the rim of the camp, as the elves were loosing arrows so fast and thickly that it seemed impossible for any Orc to even run through the deadly shower. Ranien's knife was sheathed and an arrow had left his bow before Laine even selected her target.
However, what she lacked in speed, she made up for in skill, as she swung her blade expertly and hewed the head off an unfortunate Moria Orc. She did not stop to see it fall, for her action had drawn a gabble of thug-like Urûks towards her. Two fell dead from elven arrows, but three more remained, all of them over seven-feet tall and at least three times her weight.
She parried a blow from one, and forgetting the strength of these creatures, she nearly had her sword wrenched from her hands. Screaming with equal fear and fury, she drove her blade into one of the Urûk's necks, her arms already aching with effort. Drenched in cold sweat, and fighting the deadly heat from the roaring flames, she backed away from the two other Orcs, the blood on her blade running down the hilt and warming her hands, making them slicker than ever.
She fought on, oblivious to all else, until another Mordor Orc joined the fray and the point of his blade glanced off the side of her upper arm. She gave a cry of pain and nearly lost her weapon for a third time. The other Orcs took this chance of weakness to increase their attack, and soon, six Orcs surrounded her, circling closer and closer. One made a poorly coordinated swipe at her abdomen and paid for it with its sword arm.
Snarling as savagely as her foes, Laine took this chance to leap out of the circle, only to just miss a black-feathered shaft aimed at her head. So the Orcs had archers as well. At the moment, she did not contemplate how large the attacking forces were, and did not think for a second that the elves could possibly be losing. However, one thing did catch her attention: the Orcs were coming from the north.
Dol Guldur was to the south and Lothlórien to the west, so why would Orcs come from the north? In fact, straight from the road they had come from? Thinking this, she jumped away from another oncoming enemy and slashed viciously back. She was too fatigued to do more, and knowing that she had never been professionally trained as a warrior, Laine began to move back to the outskirts, where the forest fire was now spreading in all directions.
"Ranien!" she gasped, as an elf seized her by the shoulder. At the same time, a clear, ringing blast filled the forest. Both looked in the direction of the horn, for they knew what that meant. "No!" she cried, and tried to go back into the fight, hoping to reverse their fate.
"Laine!" the elf held her shoulder with an iron-grip so she could not move. "It is an order!" he told her despite her protests. "And fighting in this army, you are to obey all orders. Now run!" He dragged her northward, but she gaped, open-mouthed at the losing battle.
The clear elf horn sounded again and was suddenly cut short. Their leader was dead. The horn… it was the last resort, only used in desperation. Only used in a battle that was sure to be lost. They had surrendered, and all living were to flee.