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Okay, so, warning. This chapter contains rather unpleasant scenes with orcs which are a bit graphic.
Thranduil put down the trade agreement he had been trying to read and stood up, heading to the balcony of his study. Legolas had been gone for over a month. The mission was predicted to last three weeks, and if they were returning injured, he understood the delay. But even that delay could not take this long. The sense of unease that had stolen his sleep these past days was screaming at him to do something. The vastness of the Greenwood laid before him, how he wished he could see through the canopy to find his son.
Something was wrong, the trees were calling the elves for help, his own heart knew it. The warriors from Legolas' contingent who had been found unconscious on the Elf Path two days ago were all but proof. Thranduil rarely listened to his heart, it was not his place as a King to heed his own wishes, but there were times when he could not ignore them.
"Galion!" he shouted.
In less than five seconds the other elf was there. "Yes, my King?"
"Find out if any of the returned warriors have awoken. Then find the Lady Idhthrael, bring her here. Now."
Perhaps Erthor was right. Well, he never looked for trouble on purpose, but when he was tied to a stake, his back ripped apart, and surrounded by orcs, Legolas wondered if the world was simply against him. He wondered where Erthor was. Really, his second in command was lucky that he was not blond. There were only two blond elves in Legolas' contingent, himself and a young warrior, Orthenion, and the orcs had only cared to capture them.
It became apparent before the fighting had even begun. They were being drawn into a trap, and while they had also managed to trap most of the orcs into spider territory – it was a satisfying thing to hear their screeches – the orcs cornered them into that same territory. They were sorely outnumbered, but the leader of the orcs had commanded them in the dark tongue, which Legolas had picked up fragments of during his previous encounters with the orcs, to capture the blond ones.
The last Legolas had seen of Erthor was when his second had been trying to fight off an extremely large orc in an attempt to get to him, and then an orc had managed to slam an axe into his right arm, twice, before another orc clubbed him in the head. Then he had woken up to agony quite far away from their battleground, his body slung over an orc's shoulders.
It had been eight days since their capture, and the orcs were getting more and more frustrated. They had tried to figure out if either Legolas or Orthenion was the Prince, they had tried to ask for the elves' names, they had tried to wheedle out the King's plans, they had tried to know the defences of the Greenwood. But no answers came from the two elves.
Legolas knew though, that regardless of what the orcs decided to do, they had unwittingly already blown a hole through the kingdom's defences. His right arm was shattered. It was too late to successfully fix the muscles of the arm, to put together the fragments of bone. He laughed bitterly in his head. Perhaps Idhthrael would cut it off and give him a new one like Celegorm's. Or perhaps they would die in the orc's grasp without having to worry about what would happen afterwards.
Detachedly, Legolas watched as the orcs tied Orthenion to a tree. They had both been beaten up cruelly today. Orthenion, though, he was both beaten and burned. His chest was black and red and utterly horrible to look upon. Legolas knew that he was going to suffer the same fate tomorrow, he remembered Orthenion's screams, he remembered the scars on his father's face. The thought of fire nearing his skin was enough to make him freeze in fear.
But he prayed that when tomorrow came, he would remember his loyalty to his people.
Idhthrael stared at the King, unbelieving. "Forgive me, your highness, but you would have me do what?"
"You heard me perfectly fine," Thranduil growled, standing up from behind his table. He could not sit still, not now when he had just finished seeing a warrior from Legolas' contingent who had awoken and confirmed his fears. Erthor had taken it upon him to send the critically injured back while he lead a small group of elves to free the two captive elves, the Prince was captured, and it was a hopeless rescue mission. There were too many orcs.
"You know the dangers of that design," Idhthrael told the King, staring up at him.
"I just had a soldier wake up to report that my son is being held by over a hundred orcs," he told her, gripping the edges of his table until his knuckles turned white. "There is supposed to be a council meeting within the hour to decide what must be done. You know how entirely useless that is. Even if I send a contingent of elves there, they would all die."
"The design isn't even ready yet!" she protested, running her hand through her hair in thought. "There has to be another way. Besides, the other half of the Prince's contingent is looking for him."
It was quite good, really, that they were far away from the guards. Galion had grown used to their arguments, because Idhthrael simply refused to be forced to do anything, and sometimes what she thought was a wonderful invention did not fit well with the King's mind. She also seemed to resist forms of authority, so clashes were inevitable and the guards usually deemed such clashes a hazard to the King's wellbeing.
"Less than half. Many died during the fight, and even so, Erthor leads a group of injured elves," Thranduil countered.
"Well then we must hope in them, because there is no time for us to reach them." She was running scenarios in her head. They were simply too far North, and yet she had no desire to tell this worried King, this worried father that it was frankly hopeless.
"You had better think of a way very soon, Lady Idhthrael, because I cannot afford the lives of a hundred elves for the life of one, and yet I will not be able to survive the loss of my son." His voice was low, dangerous. He had to hold onto the hope that Legolas could be saved because he feared the madness he could descend into otherwise.
"My lord, with all due respect – " Idhthrael began, rising from her seat so that she could talk to the King eye to eye.
Thranduil resisted the urge to hurl something at the wall. This elleth was his hope at doing something impossible, his hope of getting his son back without compromising the safety of the kingdom. "You can calculate the movement of an arrow in less than a second, you can very well find a way to save my son."
"You can't expect me to – "
"I am your King," he nearly shouted. "I can expect anything of you."
"My lord the only way you can do this is if all those hundred orcs suddenly drop dead on the ground. Otherwise it is nigh on impossible unless Legolas finds a way on his own from the inside! You can't expect me to be able to think of an idea to make all the orcs just stop moving suddenly so I can drag two possibly dead elves out of an area possibly surrounded with spiders! That would just be – OH!"
"What else do you have to say?" Thranduil hissed.
She frowned at him, her face asking him how he could be so dense as to not understand. "There is a way!" she exclaimed, waving her hands about. "Just make them all drop dead!"
"And how are you going to achieve that?" he asked, sarcasm filling every word. Thranduil forced himself to see logic, to disregard emotion and think as a King must, logic ruling his mind, not his emotions.
Idhthrael threw her hands in the air, nearly hitting a pile of unfinished paperwork on the King's desk. "The smelling drug, you know? The one that makes you faint if you smell too much of it? We could – we could somehow trap it in my design and we just throw it into the orc camp and they all fall dead. Oh, my lord, I'm sorry but I've got to go – bye!" and she dashed off, leaving Thranduil alone and in need of very much wine.
"Yes, because that's just very original," Legolas muttered under his breath as the orcs dragged him to a pole in the centre of the clearing. He really was tired of having his wrists tied up above him, and his body was beginning to shut down. He could not find it in him to fight back against the orcs, so he did not fight back.
"The pretty thing can talk, boys," the orc leader who was carrying a torch said. "I bet he has a scream as pretty as the other scum's."
The orcs were cheering now, and Legolas could see one of them holding Orthenion up, forcing him to watch. Discretely, the prince met the young warrior's eyes, shaking his head ever so slightly, a plea not to look. The warrior was haunted enough by his own experience, he did not need dreams of his prince being tortured, of his prince screaming – because Legolas knew that he would scream.
They were nearly out of Greenwood today, Legolas thought detachedly, trying to think of something else. They were near the Brown Lands, if they went even more South, then they would reach Mordor. Well, that was not what Legolas wanted to think of when he tried this little distraction. He thought instead of his father who would be mad with worry now, and unbidden, his thoughts went to Idhthrael. She would be clever enough to not be in his position now. She would not have fallen into this trap and would probably have told the orcs to go kill themselves before she set them on fire with something of her design.
Legolas would have laughed if he could. He didn't know what he was holding onto anymore. Orthenion and he had tried to escape but found it impossible. They would be lucky if his father knew already that they had been captured, and by the time a rescue party reached the scene of battle, both of them would be too far gone. And who was to say that the orcs would not forget their orders and have a little bit too much fun?
The orc leader grabbed Legolas' tangled hair, forcing the elf to look into his eyes. "Are you scared, little elf?" When the prince only sent him an icy glare, the orc went on, bringing the torch nearer to his face. "You should be."
Legolas prayed to the Valar that his father would never find his body. That the King would never have to see his son's broken body, his son's unrecognisable face.
"I think if you didn't look so pretty, you would respect your betters more, pretty boy."
He hoped Idhthrael would be there to somehow order Thranduil back to life when they found out he was dead. If there was anyone except himself who could win against his father, who could force the stubborn Elvenking to do something, it was that girl, Legolas thought as he turned his face away from the fire nearing it, hoping to minimise the damage.
"Scream for me, elf," the orc sneered.
The fire licked at his skin, and for a moment, he felt nothing. He gritted his teeth, not wanting to give the orc pleasure. But then the pain came, and as he smelled his own burning flesh, Legolas screamed.
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