A Sea of Troubles

by Nili

Returning from the East, Aragorn and Legolas hope to get some peace at last. With one of Rivendell’s delegations missing and war looming on the horizon, however, peace becomes ever more unlikely as they must fight for their friends’ lives – and their own.

36. Come Hell Or High Water

Disclaimer: For full disclaimer, please see chapter 1.

A/N:

Okay, guys, here's the deal. I'm leaving for the airport right now; I'm going to Israel for a week. My Israeli flat mate somehow managed to apply for his visa in the wrong way and has now to go back to do it all again. So another flat mate and I decided we would go with him and visit him. I just hope we don't manage to get into any sort of trouble over there!

Because of this, I have very little time and have to make this short. I know, I know, your hearts bleed. I did, btw, pass all my exams, which is a miracle if I ever saw one. I don't have time to reply to reviews right now (sorry sorry sorry!), but I will as soon as I get back. I'll try FF-net's new system, just to see if it works. So, please be a bit patient; I thought you'd rather have a chapter before I left!

I just re-read the whole chapter (we got back from Israel all right, even though they managed to lose our luggage between Tel Aviv and Madrid, don't ask me how), so now it should be a little easier to read! Thank you for putting up with this version for so long!

So, here's the last part of the battle. Just a quick little thing, really, only 45 pages or so. I hope that will keep you happy for a while! Everybody makes an appearance, I think ... hmm, except for Celylith's bat - yes, and you're right, poor Erestor. But don't worry, both of them will be in the next chapter. I promise. •g•

Have fun and review, please!

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Chapter 36

He was getting annoyed. No, that was not it; he was getting very annoyed.

And he had every reason to be, Elladan concluded, his inner voice sounding more than just a little bit angry. He was surrounded by people who wanted to kill him, the same people also wanted to kill his warriors, he hadn't seen Celylith in ages, the same went for his father, he didn't know if Glorfindel had found Erestor or if either of them was even still alive, they didn't seem to be able to break through the men's lines, and, to top everything off nicely, he didn't know where Elrohir was.

Elladan's countenance grew even darker, something an objective observer would have though highly unlikely at the very least. Elrohir should know better than to disappear like this, shouldn't he? He was, after all, supposedly the more reasonable of the two of them, the one who always – well, almost always, he amended quickly – thought before acting, the one who was more diplomatic and careful and controlled. He should not just disappear into thin air, and in the middle of a battle at that!

'Just you wait until Glorfindel hears about this, little brother,' he thought, knowing full well what an irrational thought it really was. 'He will have your hide for this.'

If Glorfindel was still alive, of course, the dark-haired twin added scathingly, ducking under a blow one of the soldiers had aimed at his head with a deft movement no man would ever be able to imitate, no matter how long or hard he trained. Giving the human a look so icy that it should have frozen him on the spot, Elladan lashed out with his sword, his blade finding a weakness in his enemy's defences with an ease that looked almost effortless. The steel bit deeply into the man's side, and he was already beginning to collapse with a pained cry, his weapon falling from suddenly nerveless fingers, when the twin wrenched the sword back out, distantly aware of the fact that he shouldn't feel like this, so completely cold and utterly unaffected. These were humans, his brother's kin, his kin, for Elbereth's sake, not orcs or other minions of the Dark One! He should feel something, some swell of pity or mercy, no matter how small and faint, but he did not. With a small stab of shock he realised that he did not like this feeling, this cool, aloft ruthlessness that was directed at members of the Second People, at beings who were children of Ilúvatar just like him, but he couldn't help it anymore than he could stop himself from worrying about Estel and Legolas and Elrohir or from taking another breath.

He didn't even have to analyse his feelings to find out why he felt like this: These humans had hurt his family. They had killed his fellow warriors, they had hurt his brothers and his friends and his teacher, and that was something he did not forgive, ever. He had once been told that, of all of Elrond's children, he had inherited most of the Noldorin blood that both of his parents shared. The blood of Finwë's people ran in his father's veins, still strong and untamed after all these ages, and he, too, had inherited the sudden surges of feelings, of pride and vengeance and the inability to back down from anything. Princes of the Noldor they were, and there were things their blood would not let them forgive or forget.

That thought brought him back to Glorfindel, who fit that description almost perfectly even despite his obvious Vanyarin heritage. He knew that the golden-haired elf lord's heart was screaming for vengeance, for retribution for what had been done to all their people and especially to Erestor. And that was just the thing, the twin went on, not even noticing that he was automatically moving with the warriors that were flanking him left and right, trying to worm his way through the men's defences. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn't worry about Glorfindel. Why ever for? The elf had survived things no other being had – elf or mortal – including his own death, and he knew very well how to look after himself, return home and at the same time make sure that his adversaries didn't.

Under normal circumstances, of course, and there was the rub: These were no normal circumstances. There was an cast-iron, incontestable-so-Eru-help-you truth that Glorfindel had drummed into their heads time and again and until they'd choked on it: Never to allow their anger or hate or thirst for revenge to make their decisions for them, because, "that way, pin-nith, you will inevitably lose, in so many more ways than one."

Glorfindel was known for many things but only very rarely for his subtlety. Especially after they had come somewhat back to their senses, about a hundred years after their mother had set sail, and had stopped trying to get themselves killed on their crusade to kill every single orc ever spawned, Glorfindel had spent about a year telling them these few words over and over again, probably in an attempt to keep them from doing any more capitally stupid things. He'd had a point, too; it had been he who'd had to drag them back to their father after that small incident involving orcs, wargs, poisoned arrows, a cliff and the inevitable fall off said cliff that had finally impressed upon them the fact that what they were doing would help no one and that they would only die an ugly and thoroughly meaningless death.

Elladan almost smiled when he remembered that day when the Rangers had escorted them back to Rivendell – if Arahad, the son of Aravorn, the then-chieftain of the Dúnedain, hadn't found them, he was quite sure that neither he nor Elrohir would have survived that particular night. The chieftain's son had found them, though, and so they had met with a party sent from Imladris, consisting of a group of warriors, Glorfindel and Erestor who'd had his adventurous time of the yén. He could still clearly see the look of longsuffering, not so good-natured patience that had been visible on Glorfindel's face while he had listened to Erestor talk excitedly about one thing or other…

And that was the problem, Elladan concluded darkly, wrenching his thoughts away from another memory from these days, a memory of his twin lying pale, bloody and deathly still in his arms. Erestor was Glorfindel's friend, probably his best friend after his father. Even though they seemed to want to kill each other on three days out of four, they were old friends, and as devoted and loyal as they came. If something serious had happened to his father's chief advisor, if he … if he was dead or seriously injured, Glorfindel would rush off and deal out the vengeance these people here so richly deserved. He wouldn't care what happened to him in the process, wouldn't care whom he would have to kill to achieve his goals or if he himself was killed in the process.

Elladan couldn't bear that thought, almost as little as he could bear the thought of losing Elrohir in this stupid, basically unimportant battle. He couldn't bear losing yet another mentor, another member of his extended family that he'd known for all his life. And, almost more importantly, he knew that his father wouldn't be able to bear it. If he were to lose Glorfindel, the only close friend except for Círdan who still bound him to the world of his youth, the world of Beleriand and Elros and, to a lesser degree, Maglor, and later of Lindon and Gil-galad, when he had been but the High King's herald and friend and hadn't had to carry the burdens he was carrying now, if he were to lose Glorfindel who understood all this without him having to say a single word… Elladan stopped that train of thought right then and there. He wasn't ready to even contemplate the consequences of such an event, nor did he think he ever would be.

So, he concluded decidedly, his only option was to prevent all this. He would find his stupid, reckless, idiotic twin whom he would have a little talk with once all of this was over, and then he would find his father and Glorfindel and make sure that neither of them did anything stupid. They would probably resent his thoughts if they knew about them, but no matter what they kept telling him and his siblings, namely that they were millennia old elf lord and therefore long past a stage where one did anything unwise, he knew them. They were very capable of doing reckless or even stupid things when the situation called for it.

He very much hoped that it didn't call for it now. If one of them did something stupid, it should be him.

Elladan smirked openly, feeling very pleased indeed with his realisation. It looked rather worrying, especially if you asked the men he was facing. For a moment, they looked quite tempted to actually back away to gain some sort of protection and support from their comrades, but then they seemed to remember that they were the last line of defence and reluctantly stood their ground. The twin's annoyance flared up again, and he gripped the pommel of his sword more tightly. People should know when they were beaten, shouldn't they?

A moment later he was taught that one should never – ever! – say something like that, because Acalith's soldiers went on teaching him that they were, in fact, far from beaten. Even while Elladan was still contemplating how he should manage to break through the men's lines once and for all – he was getting thoroughly tired of this stand-off – and how he should manage that with the few warriors that he had, a tingly feeling was beginning to creep down his back, as if a host of tiny spiders were crawling up and down his spine.

He knew that feeling, knew it far too well, in fact. But even while was trying to force his suddenly inexplicably sluggish limbs into motion, he knew that he would be too late, just as he knew that he was in immediate danger. Still he was moving, unwilling to just stand there and allow himself to be killed/seriously wounded/maimed, when he felt himself being grabbed by the arm and pulled sideways. A swift, intense pain burned its way over his other upper arm, almost making him drop his sword, and he watched almost in slow motion how a knife flew past him, leaving nothing more than a broad red line on his arm in its wake. He was dimly wondering if it was the shock of knowing how close he had come to having that knife imbedded in his chest or his elven senses that allowed him to actually watch this, and was frantically preparing himself for facing this new opponent, when several things registered in his mind at once. One, he had been gripped from behind, meaning that it could only have been one of his men, and two, the person who had gripped him had pulled him out of harm's way.

The dark-haired elf sighed inwardly when he heard a good-humoured, somewhat derisive snort behind him, and if he hadn't been fighting a battle, he might have closed his eyes. The words he knew were coming could be heard a moment later, sounding dimly over the overwhelming noise of the fight.

"Really, Elrondion," a wry voice commented, managing to sound nonchalant, as if its owner was taking a stroll through sunlit meadows. "Must I always be there to save your and your brothers' lives?"

Elladan watched two of his warriors move past him in an attempt to shield him from the men's attacks, having apparently seen what had happened, and so he allowed himself the luxury of actually turning around and gave the person who had just saved him from grievous injury or death a dark look.
"Don't you have anything better to do than annoy me, wood-elf?" he asked, almost having to shout to make himself heard. "Where have you been?"

Celylith merely shrugged and wiped a strand of long, silver hair out of his face that stuck to his cheek with dried blood. Elladan scanned his friend's face for wounds that might be the origin of said blood, but the Silvan elf seemed thankfully uninjured, except for a small, bleeding cut to his left outer thigh, where he probably hadn't been quick enough to avoid a pike or spear.

"Oh, over there," Celylith replied and pointed over to the right, his blood-encrusted blade gleaming faintly in the flickering, unsteady light that illuminated the courtyard. Elladan's eyes followed his friend's sword and came to rest on a pile of dead or wounded humans that were littering the ground in front of the men's swiftly shrinking battle line. "And over there," the silver-haired elf went on, pointing into the opposite direction and at another pile of humans, "and also over there for a while."

Elladan turned back from yet another pile of still bodies and raised an eyebrow.
"You haven't had too much luck breaking through, have you?"

"About as much as you," Celylith retorted heatedly, giving the twin a look that could only be called arctic. "Namely none at all, the Valar curse these humans!"

"True," Elladan admitted, more or less good-naturedly. He understood Celylith's testiness. He shouldn't have provoked the other elf in the first place, but then again, he was not in a good mood. The same could be said about Celylith, he guessed. "The humans are not very co-operative, are they?"

"I can't blame them," Celylith hissed angrily. "If I get my hands on them, I will kill them."

"You already have."

"Not enough of them," the other shook his head sharply. "By the Valar, but not enough of them, not yet." Elladan refrained from asking just when it would be enough, and Celylith gave the wavering lines of the men a calculating look. "Why don't we try this again?"

"With pleasure," Elladan nodded amiably, already moving forward through the shifting lines. "The first one to find Legolas or Elrohir may lecture them on their idiocy and recklessness."

"Just watch me," Celylith retorted, following in Elladan's wake. "I don't really know whom I am angrier with, these people here or Legolas for getting himself into this kind of situation." He pushed one of the elven warriors to the side and lashed out with his sword, managing to find a hole in the human soldier's defences and exploit it, to his satisfaction and the human's profound displeasure that was quickly followed by unconsciousness. "Or for leaving me behind in the first place," the Silvan Elf went on, slashing at another soldier, "or for believing that he could go anywhere in that ranger's company without getting himself cut to pieces."

Elladan thought about chastising the other elf for talking about his little brother like this – he was a protective brother if nothing else and always ready to take offence for his siblings – but decided against it. He was rather busy fighting off a human who was very determined to try and cut his head off while simultaneously trying to direct a part of his warriors around the humans, trying to attack their flank, and besides, Celylith was right. He tried to imagine Aragorn going anywhere without being captured, wounded, tortured or maimed, but even his imagination – which was, as even he admitted freely, quite formidable – balked at that.

He was still thinking about that – he didn't think that anybody would ever be able to imagine that! – when the two human soldiers immediately in front of him parted (or were rather forced to part, one by a sword that got mysteriously stuck in his thigh and the other by the fact that an elf had taken a hold of his sleeve and was swinging him into a group of his colleagues who were crowding behind him), to reveal the figure of the chestnut-haired, middle-sized man whom Elladan had several long minutes ago identified as the leader of the soldiers. He was reasonably sure that he was not Gasur, which was the only reason why he hadn't already tried to send at least a dagger his way, if not a sword or maybe a stone that weighed a ton. Right now, the human was apparently trying to command his men, waving his sword around in wide, increasingly frustrated-looking circles.

Elladan's eyes darkened as he looked upon the man. He might not be Gasur, but he was apparently high enough in the chain of command to make this infinitely more personal. And, the elf added to himself almost maliciously, he was just alone enough for him to see if he couldn't … well, have a little chat with him, wasn't he? For example about his past deeds, whether or not he regretted them, his preferred method of dying, and so on.

Elladan frowned inwardly and revised his earlier statement. He didn't really care whether or not the man regretted what he'd done; it wouldn't change anything.

To get to the officer was actually a lot easier than he would have thought. Two quick steps forward and some rather fancy swordplay later, Elladan had pushed his way through the men, steadfastly ignoring the rather indignant calls of his fellow warriors. Judging by the inflection of their voices, it sounded a lot as if they were cursing him and his stubbornness, and the rather interesting Silvan oath he was sure was somehow connected to his heritage, a bunch of dwarves and never-ending pain had probably come from Celylith's lips. Elladan wasn't feeling overly affronted. At least that blasted wood-elf was staying in one spot and somewhere where he – or, in this case, his warriors – could keep an eye on him.

He knew Legolas, after all, long enough to say that he knew him very well, and he knew that the prince would have a fit if he found out that he, Elladan, had allowed his dearest childhood friend to be cut into pieces. Oh yes, he added darkly, even if half-dead and more than four-fifths unconscious, Legolas would still make a fuss about it, that much was sure.

That particular line of thought only served to intensify his already quite vivid homicidal urges, and with a snarl on his lips that seemed to be completely out of place on such fair features and at the same time terribly, unquestionably fitting he scattered the last remnants of resistance that the men around the officer tried to put up. The humans were surprised, not having anticipated anyone trying to break through on their own, and were no match for Elladan's superior elven strength, speed and agility that were only fuelled by his rage. Within seconds, the men closest to the chestnut-haired officer were dead or incapacitated, and the men to their right were far too busy trying to keep up the line that was crumbling ever faster to even try and come to their superior's aid.

It took the man actually some time to see the elf that had managed to push his way through his lines, but when he finally did, he was by no means surprised. Reod sighed softly and very, very wearily. He had expected someone to break through a long time ago – the soldiers and guards were fighting with the strength of men who had certain death in front of their eyes, but these thrice-damned elves were simply too fast and too resilient.

He had seen them move so quickly that he would have been able to swear that their forms blurred ever so slightly around the edges. He had witnessed with his own eyes how one of the elves had received a wound to his side, a wound that would have incapacitated a human or killed him outright, and how he had shrugged it off as if it had been nothing but a scratch, an inconvenience that was beneath his attention. Doom and death were closing in around him and his men, the circle tightening around them inexorably, and he knew that very well.

Reod gripped his sword more tightly as he whirled around to face the lone, dark-haired elf who was slowly walking up to him, always keeping an eye on his surroundings and wary for a possible ambush. This was all Gasur's fault, Gasur with the cold, empty look on his face and the soulless eyes. Reod tried to straighten his shoulders and not let the far too emotionless-looking elf see how deeply desperate and terrified he was. He had been able to do that, before Gasur and his menacing, insane presence that seemed to rob him of strength and courage, but now, when he was desperately fumbling to find these traits, it seemed that they had forever moved beyond his reach.

It was another thing for which he hated Gasur with a new, burning passion, and another reason for wanting to rip out his ruthless heart, something for which he would never have the courage.

That realisation hurt far more than he would have thought, no matter how used he'd got to the general thought over the past few weeks.

The elf in question was apparently not very interested in small talk or any other kind of talk, and before Reod had even had time to get his sword fully in a ready position, the dark-haired being was upon him, aforementioned death and doom radiating off him so clearly that the part of the chestnut-haired man that was still capable of reasonable though was actually surprised that he couldn't see it. Only a wild, desperate swing whose success was owned more to luck than to skill saved him from an immediate and rather messy death, and Reod managed to stumble back, out of the elf's immediate reach.

Elladan merely looked at him in that cold, unforgiving way that would have impressed even one of the Nine and slowly followed the human, pushing two more guards aside in the process. The two men gave the elf's face and especially the look on it a single glance before they collectively decided that Captain Reod was on his own and that they already had more than enough trouble on their hands, thank you very much.

The dark-haired elf and the man stared at each other for a second, cold indifference on the one and barely veiled fear on the other face.

"So," Elladan finally began calmly, even though he was anything but. He knew very well that he was cut off and was already beginning to curse his impulsiveness. "What are you, a lieutenant, or a commander maybe?" He cocked his head to the side to scrutinise the man's torn, bloody uniform. "Or even a captain?"

Reod swallowed almost painfully and tried not to react, only to see the satisfied sparkle in the elf's eyes a moment later. He ground his teeth, knowing that he had fallen right into the trap, and forced himself to concentrate. The elf would want to distract him, to keep him off balance for the inevitable attack. Dark Ones, it was what he would have done, if he hadn't been so completely and utterly paralysed with fear.

"Does it matter to you, elf?" he asked tightly, working hard to keep a tremor out of his voice.

Elladan smiled at that, a thin, cold smile that made him look even more dangerous.
"No," he shook his head while he took a careful step to the left. "No, it doesn't. It makes no difference in the end, does it?"

Reod swallowed again, wishing unrealistically for the ground to open up and swallow him whole. Anything was better than waiting for his death, for waiting for this elf to make up his mind, tire of this game and kill him.

"I knew that you would come. I told them; I counselled caution." He fell silent, realising that that wasn't really true. He had been too afraid of Acalith and Gasur and even Salir to protest or make his thoughts known. He shook his head inwardly and continued; there was no reason to let the elf know that, now was there? "No one listened to me. I knew that your twice- and thrice-cursed kind would come for the councillor." He shook his head, this time openly, and spat out in a gesture of disgust and frustration. "One shouldn't go around getting involved with you elves. You get nothing but trouble for it."

Elladan's thin smile widened a little, becoming even more fearsome, if such a thing was even possible.
"So you do, human," he retorted coldly. "So you do. Tell me, though, where is your fellow captain, Gasur? We have a score to settle, he and I."

The chestnut-haired man's face twisted into a contemptuous grimace that looked almost as disgusted and full of loathing as Elladan's.
"I have no idea." He shook his head sharply. "Probably close to the gates, trying to escape." He fell silent for half a second, and then added, a part of him feeling startled at his audacity after so many months of being afraid of his colleague, "It would be so like him."

Elladan shrugged and moved in on the man, quite effectively trapping him against the wooden construction of the scaffold. For a moment he was surprised by that; he hadn't realised that the battle line had already shifted that far.
"It is of no consequence. We will find him, and not even the Valar will be able to help him then." He turned his head slightly to give the man in front of him an assessing look. "Or you, for that matter."

The small gesture, nothing more than a slight inclination of the dark head, was enough to send Reod into something very closely resembling a panic.
"I … I didn't to anything, to any of them!" he cried out, vainly trying to back away further. He didn't even know why he'd been so afraid of Gasur; the younger man had nothing, but nothing, on this elf. "It wasn't me, it was Gasur!"

The twin's eyes narrowed at that, and the merciless light shining in them became even darker and more threatening.
"You saw it; you helped him," he told the captain emotionlessly, as coldly and composedly as if they were discussing nothing but the weather. "You are as dead as he is."

Reod's mouth opened and closed while he struggled for words that just wouldn't come, making him look more than a little bit like big, frightened fish out of water. He had nothing to retort to that and knew that, in some strange, in his eyes altogether unfair way, he did probably deserve this. It was as his mother had told him so many years ago: Elves were not of this world, at least not in the same way that men, dwarves or even orcs were, and the Gods didn't look kindly on people who killed them. This was their revenge, their justice, and wasn't it (in an equally strange, unfair way) oddly fitting that it would be meted out by one of their kind?

He didn't have any more time to think about this, for suddenly the elf's sword was there, long and gleaming and oh-so-deadly. He managed to dodge or block the first few blows, but knew very well that it was a state of being that couldn't – or wouldn't – last long. Sure enough, after ten seconds, the elf's sword found a hole in his defences and sliced into his ribcage. The pain was so intense that he let go of his sword without a second thought, paralysing him in its intensity, and by the time he had managed to fight his way through the strange, dark mists that had come out of nowhere and were threatening to envelop him, he found himself on his knees in front of the dark-haired elf, looking up into the grey eyes that looked at him so coldly that they might as well have been dark, polished pebbles.

"Nothing but trouble," he repeated softly to himself, feeling how the fear that had been tearing at his insides was slowly fading. Fear was only a body's way of warning you of danger and threats, and his fear had probably decided to give up in face of overwhelming odds. "The whole lot of you."

There were words forming on his tongue, a plea for the elf to spare his life, but Reod bit them back resolutely. He might have lost any kind of personal honour at the very latest when he had allowed himself to be cowed by that ruthless, insane sparkle in Gasur's eyes, but he would not add to his shame by begging an elf – an elf! – for his life.

"Finish it, elf," he said hoarsely, staring up at the tall being with tired eyes. "Don't play with me, Great Ones above, and finish it."

Elladan looked down on the defeated man, too many emotions fighting within him to be able to identify all of them. His fingers were slowly curling around the hilt of the blade he held high above his head, tightening reflexively as hatred and anger and pain were threatening to blot out everything else, but before he could do anything, a wordless shout behind him made him turn his head around sharply. He turned just in time to see the humans' line crumble and his men surge forward, at the front Isál who was looking decidedly worried under all that blood that clung to his face (none of it his own) and Celylith, who looked angry and annoyed more than anything else.

The first men were beginning to crowd around him, but none of them made a threatening move. All of them were far too intent on reaching the safety of the house or, in the case of the braver souls, of their comrades who were moving in to close the gap that had been torn into their lines. Elladan turned back around with an expression on his face that was almost as annoyed as Celylith's, seeing that the chestnut-haired officer hadn't moved an inch. He looked almost as if he thought that he deserved his fate, which would have been a rare display of reasonability for an inhabitant of this town.

"Oh, for crying out loud," the twin muttered under his breath and brought his sword down, the pommel connecting with the man's skull with a very satisfactory thump. He watched the man collapse where he was kneeling and whirled around, pushing his way through the fleeing humans to rejoin his men. "You're getting soft," he told himself quietly, only to shake his head a second later in paradoxical near-outrage. "Did he really think I would cut down an unarmed man?"

The thought that it had been a near, a very near thing flittered through his head, but Elladan pushed it aside, deciding that now was not the time to deal with the moral implications of all this. He would have time for that later, when and if he got out of this alive. There was also, he added silently to himself, the very real chance that he would die by some sort of friendly fire, if being strangled by an ally qualified as that. When he drew closer to his men, Celylith's hand shot out and the wood-elf grabbed him by the arm, almost spinning him around. Isál looked more than willing to do the same, but the captain seemed to remember his position, Elladan's and the fact that one should never manhandle a son of Elrond when the elf lord was anywhere close by.

"What in the name of Oromë himself do you think you're doing, Elladan?" the silver-haired elf hissed at him, stepping to the side to let some of the elven warriors pass. "Are you trying to get yourself killed? How would I ever explain his to your father? Or to your brothers, or to Legolas? Tell me, how?"

Elladan shrugged off the other's hand, scowling.

"Coming from an elf who single-handedly tried to break through their lines – without a single person to help him! – that does sound hilarious, doesn't it?" He turned to Isál, looking for support. "Doesn't it?" Isál merely made a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat and shrugged elaborately, apparently unwilling to get involved in this. It was definitely an intelligent choice. Elladan turned back to the fair-haired elf. "Well, it does."

Celylith merely made a sound that was somewhere between a snort and a growl, but apparently decided to let matters rest, which was quite a testimony to his intelligence.
"You let him live?" was all the wood-elf wanted to know in the end, giving the fallen human captain a malevolent look.

Elladan turned around to focus on the man who was lying on the ground where he'd fallen, blood still seeping slowly from his wound.
"If he survives until all this is over, then yes." He turned back to look at Celylith. "I have killed enough of them already; I will not start killing the helpless."

"Even if they deserve it?"

"Even then."

Elladan's answer was very quick and very firm, and Celylith's dark grimace slowly faded and he nodded his head.
"Very well."

The silver-haired elf was about to say something else, but before he could formulate a single word, Elladan had thrown himself forward, barrelling into him and almost knocking him off his feet. An indignant remark was already on Celylith's lips when a swishing sound could be heard, and a long blur passed by his head, only inches away from his face. Celylith was a wood-elf, after all, and needed only half a second to figure out that an arrow had just passed through the exact space his head had occupied a mere second ago.

If Elladan hadn't pushed him out of the way, he would be very, very dead right now.

The elven twin in question seemed to know that as well, for he let go of his friend, shouted a few orders at his men and turned around, an expression on his face that even an objective person would have called smug at the very least. "Really, Celythramirion," he said mildly, repeating Celylith's earlier words, "must I always be there to save your life?"

Celylith didn't answer, having whirled around to face the new threat. Elladan's opinion, however, was that he simply didn't want to acknowledge that he had needed to be saved by a Noldo – and from an arrow of all things! Wood-elves were funny like that. A moment later, however, Celylith turned around, and the look of barely controlled panic and horror on his face was enough to let Elladan's grin fade into nothing.

"The archers." Celylith's voice was emotionless, cold, and tinged with a slight hint of fear that could seldom be heard in the wood-elf's voice.

Elladan quirked an eyebrow at the Silvan elf's words. It had been a stray arrow, probably sent their way by one of the few archers that had managed to survive their initial assault unscathed, so what about it? He shrugged inwardly and was already half-turning back to the battle. They had pushed their way through the men's lines and had managed to get to the scaffold, but the humans had reinforced their lines and were throwing all they had at them – which was, admittedly, not too much. They were close to ending this, especially now that he could see his father's warriors press in on the soldiers from the flank, and he had to force himself not to run off to find his wayward twin. In short, he was not in the mood to deal with a cryptic wood-elf.

"If you would but move, mellon nín, they would find it much harder to target you."

Celylith shook his head, an almost wild gleam in his eyes, and grasped his arm, his other hand pointing up, at the roofs of the buildings that surrounded them.
"No, Elladan! The archers!"

Elladan's eyes followed his friend's fingers, and it took him only a moment to realise what the other elf was talking about. Another moment later, the cold, icy fingers of fear that he knew so well reached into his chest and wrapped themselves around his heart, and he had to remind himself to breathe, momentarily too shocked for such a mundane action.

There were archers on the roofs, to both sides of the main house. Elladan could have hit himself. That was why the men had tried to keep them busy with such blind, narrow-minded persistence; they had been buying their comrades time to reach the roofs. The arrow that had almost killed Celylith must have been an accident, a case of a young recruit or an overly nervous soldier releasing his projectile before he had been authorised. The men were kneeling on the flat parts of the roofs that had probably deliberately constructed for just such a case, and were taking aim carefully.

Elladan needed only a second to take this all in, and even less to start moving. Whirling back around to his men, he shouted an order, open, undisguised fear making his voice harsh.
"Archers! Find cover, now! Archers, on the roof!"

The elven warriors didn't have to be told twice. Elladan's warning had come just in time, and by the time the first arrows were being released, most elves had dashed for cover, most of them behind the scaffold. One or two, however, weren't quite fast enough, and they fell as the arrows found their marks. Elladan, who had dropped to the ground even while he had been shouting his warning, gritted his teeth as he heard their muffled exclamations of pain, guilt worming its way into his heart. If he hadn't been so busy walking the path of vengeance, if he hadn't been so concerned about Elrohir, he would have noticed that something was wrong!

Keeping his head down and only raising it to give his surroundings a quick look, he nodded at Celylith, who was lying on the ground next to him, white fingers already wrapped around the polished wood of his bow.

"Take them out!" he called, his voice rising strong and clear about the noises of the battle. He rose to his knees, looking around for the part of his men that had brought their bows. "Take them out! Clear the roofs!"

Celylith was already on his feet, standing tall and proud and without even a hint of cover, as if daring the men to take a shot at him. He was notching and releasing arrows almost faster than Elladan's eyes could follow – even though he would never admit that, especially not to him – which, as far as the twin could see, all found their marks. Very well, he amended a moment later, of course all of them found their marks. There were many things that could be said about the Wood-elves of Mirkwood, but none had ever suggested that they were anything but excellent archers. Not as good as the Noldor, maybe, but not bad either.

For a moment, Elladan had to fight the very strong urge to take a hold of the silver-haired elf and yank him backwards. Just what was he thinking, exposing himself like this? He was more than half-tempted to actually reach out and do it, but then he decided somewhat wearily that Celylith was an adult and more than capable of making his own decisions, even if they were liable to get him killed. Besides, if he hadn't lost his bow in the initial chaos, he was quite sure that he would be right there as well, standing next to the other elf.

He cursed himself under his breath for allowing that one man to knock his strung bow from his shoulder; that was actually the problem in a fight, that a strung bow was very, very unhandy and unwieldy. There were times in hand-to-hand combat, especially in one as chaotic as this one, when your only chance of survival was to drop your bow and rely on your blades. Elladan hated doing it, hated it with a passion since it both robbed him of a definitive advantage and also put his bow at risk, but he hated dying a good deal more.

Still grumbling and keeping low, he made his way over to the relative safety of the scaffold, hissing at Celylith to stop playing the hero and to get under cover, for Manwë's sake. He was about to turn around to see if the silver-haired elf had heeded his command – he very much doubted it – when Isál's voice reached him, sounding hollow and horrified.

"My lord!"

Elladan didn't even have to ask what had alarmed the captain, and with some weariness he turned back around, ducking just in time to avoid an arrow that just might have taken his eye out. It took him a few seconds to realise what was going on, but when he did he jumped to his feet, all concerns for his safety forgotten.

"Elbereth Gilthoniel."

The whispered words were enough to tear Celylith out of his spell, and he turned around, trying to determine what Elladan had seen and what had distressed him so. When he did, the anger that had taken up permanent residence in the pit of his stomach turned into cold, paralysing fear, and for a moment he forgot how to breathe.

The archers on the roofs hadn't been aiming at them, or not exclusively so. They had apparently had the orders to eliminate another threat to the humans: The small, defiant group of Elrohir's warriors that had drawn a circle around Legolas' motionless body, defending the fallen prince and themselves with a ferocity that caused most of the men to think twice before attacking them. The part of Celylith that was trained in tactics and warfare even had to approve of their tactic; the warriors were a thorn in the men's flank, a threat behind their lines. If they were eliminated, the men could move much more easily, without fear of being attacked from behind, and could actually bring in reinforcements without having to split them up between this group of elves and the ones who were threatening to bring down their outer defences.

The part of him that wasn't trained in such things and was only a horrified friend did not approve but rather began to make quite long, elaborate plans of how he could best kill the person responsible for this.

Celylith could only watch in stunned horror as an arrow hit its mark, burrowing itself in the side of one of the dark-haired Noldor who was standing at the edges of the tightly-drawn circle and spinning him around in the sickening parody of a dance. Another warrior was hit a moment later, he, too, falling to the ground, and the men surrounding the elves surged forward, sensing their chance to eliminate this little nest of resistance once and for all.

A sudden clarity manifested itself in Celylith's mind, as firm and irrefutable as if it had been whispered to him by the Valar themselves: If nothing was done in the next thirty seconds, Elrohir's warriors would be overrun and killed. Legolas would be killed, if he wasn't dead already.

Celylith lifted his gaze and looked at Elladan who looked back at him, the same horrible realisation in his eyes. They didn't even need to say anything to convey their thoughts. Elladan turned to his archers, yelling at them to keep firing and clear the roofs, no matter how long it took and what exactly they would have to do.

Then the dark-haired twin whirled around and started running, followed by Isál and those of his men who weren't busy picking off the enemy archers one by one. Celylith dropped his bow without another thought and followed, weaving his way around elven warriors and humans locked in fierce combat.

There was no way he would allow Legolas to die, not like this and certainly not now.

He absolutely refused having to bring his king this kind of news.




Someone had veiled the sky.

He didn't really know how, why or even when exactly, but he was in far too much pain to actually care. All he knew was that it had become dark and strangely silent, even though sometimes sounds did reach his ears, but sounding strangely muted and as if coming from very far away. In his more lucent moments he wondered about it, but every time he managed to wrap his jumbled thoughts around the subject, another wave of pain would slam into him, rendering him incapable of drawing breath, let alone reasonable thought.

In his very, very lucent moments he knew almost for certain that it was connected to him dying.

The thought had stopped scaring him a long time ago. He was his father's son and had therefore never backed down from a fight – sometimes he thought that he was physically unable to do so – but there was a first time for everything. He had lost this particular fight and he knew it. And besides, there was no shame in surrendering in face of insurmountable odds, even for a son of Thranduil and a prince of Mirkwood.

There was a vague memory of him clinging to consciousness in order to do something, something important like … like making sure someone did something? … but he couldn't remember any details. All he knew was that someone had veiled the sky, and that he was dying.

Right now, it was enough.

He had stopped fighting the inevitable, and by now, after what felt like hours of mind-numbing, all-consuming pain, the dark, silent nothingness of death even began to sound decidedly attractive. The Halls of Mandos simply had to be more comfortable and, most importantly, more pain-free than this. Valar, even having to listen to old warriors drone on and on about their past battles and achievements would be better than this!

Well, maybe not if he had to listen to that one warrior, one of his father's captains who had died in a skirmish a few hundred years back. He knew that one should not speak ill of the dead – or the dying like himself, he added with an inward, ghostly chuckle – but that elf had been firmly convinced that he had saved Mirkwood, single-handedly, of course, on at least three or four dozen occasions. No, having to deal with him for an age or two would just be too much to ask.

Legolas was already dreamily planning his speech to Námo in which he would tell the Vala in no uncertain terms that he did not intend to spend even a second in that elf's company and that there was nothing he could do to change his mind. He was vaguely aware of the fact that the thought was morbid at the very least and dangerous at worst, but he couldn't bring himself to care. He was dying, in Elbereth's name, so what could possibly make the situation any worse?

If he'd been more aware of his situation and not so busy with the … well, the dying, he might have realised that to ask such a question – whether it was meant rhetorically or not – was nothing but stupidity. After so many months of knowing Aragorn anybody with even a single working brain cell left knew better than to say anything that the Valar might construe as a challenge – they tended to take you seriously and show you that yes, a lot of things could be and/or get worse.

It wasa somewhat annoying fact of life, but one you could learn to live with if you developed an appropriately cynical and paranoid character.

Legolas felt himself drifting, not really knowing from where or whereto. The pain was still there, stabbing through his very being with a steady, numbing intensity that was impossible to ignore or disregard. Sometimes the mist that was surrounding him became thinner and somewhat more translucent, but most of the time it changed back just as quickly, transforming into an impregnable wall that might just as well have been made of solid mithril. At odd intervals, however, some sounds did get through the blanketing nothingness around him, and he found himself hard-pressed to identify them – not that he tried very hard, of course. He was in so much pain and dying, after all, and dying people merited some sort of consideration, and doubly so when they were dying such a painful death.

He dimly wondered if there actually was such a thing as a truly painless death, and came to the conclusion that he seriously doubted it.

He had just reached that particular decision when the sounds suddenly intensified once again, and he sighed inwardly as he waited for them to dim again. It took him some moments to realise that they did in fact not, and even longer to figure out what that actually meant. The pain that was burning in his midsection intensified with every strange, clanking sound that stabbed through his head like a knife, and he fuzzily decided that he had liked the mist and the darkness a lot better than this.

Then the sky was suddenly back, the veil having been lifted from one moment to the next, and Legolas found himself staring up at a cloudy firmament and the few, blinking stars that managed to penetrate the thick grey clouds. Their appearance startled him, badly so – there were no stars in Mandos' Halls, were there? – and Legolas gritted his teeth as the churning, mind-numbing pain in his stomach grew even worse. The sky and the stars were suddenly unimportant, and all that mattered was trying to draw air into his lungs that were almost paralysed by the sheer agony that tinted every breath.

It took him a few heartbeats to actually manage to breathe, but in the end he did so, effectively cleaning some of the mist that had apparently seeped into his brain. He slowly began to take notice of his surroundings, and after an amount of time that would probably have embarrassed an averagely intelligent five-year-old child, he realised that he was lying on his back on something hard and wet, feeling colder than he could remember feeling in all his life. There was something tucked around him, a blanket or a coat maybe, and he was definitely fully clothed – thank Eru for small mercies! – but it didn't seem to help at all. He felt as if he had awoken on the peak of Caradhras in the middle of a blizzard, stark naked.

Through the pain that was throbbing through him with an intensity that was quite incredible he noticed that his hearing was still definitely off – sounds seemed to swim in and out of focus, one moment sounding very, very dim and at the next sounding as if they were coming from no more than a foot or two away. There was a lot of screaming going on, he decided calmly, screaming and cursing in various languages that was so foul that it would have brought a blush to his cheeks if he'd had any blood to spare. But he did not, he knew that; it was all flowing out of him, as steadily and inescapably like sand that was running through an hourglass. Soon his sand would have run out and nothing would remain, he knew that as well, and now that he was no longer caught in the dark weightlessness that had surrounded him for Valar-knew-how-long he felt the stab of pain-fear-panic-defiance-anger he should have felt a long time ago.

It was something he had been missing almost desperately without even noticing it, and suddenly dying didn't sound all that comforting and preferable anymore. On the contrary, it sounded utterly unacceptable, and the relief that came in the wake of that realisation was enough to make him slowly turn his head in order to find out what was going on here. His memory wasn't the best or even reliable at the moment, he was quite aware of that, but the last thing he remembered had been convincing Elrohir's warrior … Ferdhôl? … that there was no reason for all of them to die heroically and that he and his comrades should leave him behind when they tried to escape. That was the problem with the Noldor, actually; they were too blinded by their own noble (or, in his opinion, only overly dramatic) ancestors and their equally noble deeds, and were far too ready and willing to lay down their lives for a noble cause.

There was a time and place for that, of course, but one could overdo everything.

Feeling strangely heartened by that thought, Legolas turned his head fully and concentrated on the flowing shapes that surrounded him, frowning in confusion when he succeeded. He did remember Ferdhôl and the others glaring at the humans in a way that had been quite murderous, but he did not remember a battle going on. He wasn't entirely sure about it since he could hardly concentrate enough to actually make out separate figures, but it very much looked as if the human guards and the rest of the soldiers of this town were involved in a full-blown battle with more elves than he could remember having been present. A lot more.

Legolas watched the events with a curiously detached interest, a feeling that was probably aided by the fact that he was just too cold, too tired and in too much pain to truly concentrate. All he could do was lie on his back, feel the cold, wet ground beneath him and something solid at his back he suspected was a wall and observe the battle. It was far too fast for him to follow or understand, but a part of him that wasn't yet completely numbed by the cold and the pain told him quite soothingly that things were going quite well. Elrohir's warriors stood around him in a tight circle, their backs to him, and any human who tried to break through their lines was quickly shown that there were better things he could be doing with his time. Elrohir himself was not present, at least he didn't think so, something that was a bad thing, he knew that much. He didn't really know why, but a gnawing worry that almost rivalled the pain in his midsection took up residence in his heart and refused to go away with a persistency that was quite impressive.

It was right, too, something he found out soon enough. It wasn't about Lord Elrond's son – this time, a small, almost malevolent voice inside his head noted – that much became obvious quite quickly, but he needed several moments to actually comprehend what was going on. One of the elves to his left, a dark-haired warrior who was slightly smaller than the rest of his companions and who had defended himself without any kind of problem until now, suddenly stumbled back several feet. He turned around his own axis, looking as if something big, malicious and invisible had taken a hold of him and moved him around, and finally fell to the ground. The somewhat crudely forged blade – clearly of human make – that he had been holding fell from white, limp fingers to join its owner on the ground, making no sound as it impacted with the damp earth and skittered over the ground until it came to a halt no more than ten inches from Legolas' left side. The elven prince stared at it as if he'd never before seen a sword of any kind, which even might have been true. He wasn't very sure about a lot of things at the moment, after all.

Even while Legolas was still trying to decide what was happening – try as he might, he could not think of anything that would explain these extraordinary happenings – another warrior fell, something long, slim and slightly shivering sticking out of his chest. Blood was slowly flowing from the injury, but it was only a little and soon stopped, staining the dark shaft of wood an even darker colour. It took the elven prince several long moments to identify said object as an arrow, and even longer to actually figure out where it had come from and what it meant.

The final conclusion he reached was anything but favourable, and the sudden adrenaline that accompanied it was enough to give him enough strength to concentrate on what was going on. He didn't know where all the elves had come from or even who they were – even though he could fathom a rather hazy guess – but that didn't really matter. His senses had not abandoned him completely yet, and he had still a firm enough grasp on the situation to see that the battle lines had solidified some distance away from their position. Elrohir's warriors had no cover and nowhere to hide from the barrage of arrows that was beginning to rain down on them, and the others wouldn't able to come to their aid soon enough if…

Legolas' thought trailed off into nothing when another elf went down with a cry of pain, bringing the number of uninjured warriors down to two, Ferdhôl and another elf whose name he did not know. Even the most naïve and inexperienced recruit would have been able to see that that would not be enough to stop the humans that were pressing in on them – Valar, even a hobbit child would have seen it. The two did their best, that much was clear, and they even managed to push back the soldiers for a moment or two, but Legolas had seen enough lost battles to know that it would only be a matter of time. They were outnumbered and outmanoeuvred and generally out of options.

A moment later, the other elf fell before the onslaught – Legolas was fervently hoping that he was only unconscious and not dead – and Ferdhôl stood alone. It was a testimony to his training that there was no sign of fear or dread on his pale face, and only a slight twist of his mouth betrayed how desperate he really was. The men were closing in on him now, their swords drawn and ready, cutting off any way of escape that might have remained open to him.

Just whom was he trying to fool, the lieutenant asked himself a second later, almost openly amused even in the face of the death that was staring back at him from a dozen faces. He would never have left Prince Legolas behind alone and undefended, not like this. He would have done as he'd promised the wood-elf earlier and would have left him behind – however regretfully – if he'd thought that there was a chance to save his men, but now…

Now his men were dead or incapacitated, and he would rather thrust his sword into his own chest before he'd abandon his young lord's friend like this. There was a dark chapter in his people's history – one of too many – when his ancestors had abandoned their own during the Flight from Valinor, and he, like so many others, had sworn to himself that he would never let it happen again. The Noldor did not abandon their allies and would do so never again, and if that meant that he would sit in Mandos' Halls with his men tonight, so be it.

There were fates far worse than that, after all.

One of the men, an officer by the looks of it, stepped forward, apparently sufficiently emboldened by the presence of his men at his back. Ferdhôl was very sure that he had seen him before, and needed only half a second to remember where: Two steps behind Gasur, following the captain like a shadow. He even looked somewhat like a shadow, with his light blond hair and pale face, and Ferdhôl would hardly have been surprised if he'd floated instead of walked.

The fight – if you wanted to call it that – was over quickly. Ferdhôl was exhausted, anxiety having settled over him and seeped into his bones. Still, the human lieutenant was no match for him, or rather would have been no match for him even if one of his hands had been tied behind his back, which was why the man's soldiers decided to interfere. The numbers were simply overwhelmingly against the dark-haired elf, and in the end he didn't stand a chance. Robbed of any and all space to manoeuvre and effectively trapped, it surprised no one (not even Ferdhôl himself) when the blond lieutenant managed to find a hole in his defences – no wonder with almost a dozen humans surrounding him on all sides.

Something surprisingly solid sliced into his chest, sharp metal cutting through flesh and finally coming to a stop when it cut into the solid hardness of a rib. It took a second for the pain to register in his mind, but finally it did, washing over his entire being like a tidal wave he couldn't have stopped even if he'd been able to concentrate. Legolas could only watch while Gasur's lieutenant pulled his blade out with a malicious, sadistic smile that looked very much like one Acalith's captain would have worn.

Ferdhôl collapsed, still conscious but entirely too weak and too paralysed by pain and shock to resist any further. The blond lieutenant's men hung back slightly, allowing their officer to take care of this himself, and … Fosul, was that his name, Legolas wondered detachedly … stepped closer to the wounded elf who was lying on the ground, his hands clamped over the large, gaping wound in his side. It was clear that he was already more than half on his way into unconsciousness, something that, under any other circumstances, would have been a blessing.

Now, however, it just meant that Ferdhôl would die all the easier, with no strength and no defiance left in his exhausted body. Legolas realised with sudden, startling certainty that Elrohir's lieutenant would die in the next ten seconds if nothing was done, that he would die because he and his men had refused to abandon him, and, without even thinking about it, did something that would have caused any heroic, noble, overly dramatic Noldo of old to pale in envy. Fingolfin himself would have been impressed, if not downright jealous.

Feeling with numb, uncooperative fingers for the smaller warrior's sword that had skittered over to him earlier, Legolas pushed his equally numb, uncooperative body up, managing to get onto his knees. Agony so fierce and blinding that it did take his breath away shot through the wound in his stomach, and if his hand hadn't closed around the sword's hilt in this very moment, enabling him to keep himself upright with the blade's help, he would have fallen backwards immediately. He tried to breathe deeply in order to get it under control as he'd been taught when he had been younger, but that logically didn't work too well when you were in too much pain to even draw breath.

In the end, pure adrenaline enabled him to stay upright, and anger and urgency gave him enough strength to push himself to his feet. There was only so much a body could handle, however, especially a body that was so battered and on the verge of failing completely. Only a supreme amount of willpower allowed him to actually stay on his feet and fight his body's immediate and probably rather intelligent urge to simply collapse on the spot.

The blond lieutenant was far too busy looking maliciously at Ferdhôl and, in a strange and somewhat rather deranged looking way, raising his sword slowly and dramatically to impress upon the wounded elf the fact that he was going to kill him, and therefore never even noticed that Legolas had struggled to his feet. The elven prince couldn't really fault him for that; he supposed that he looked dreadful and that not even an exceptionally positive person would have expected him to go anywhere.

He tried to take a stealthy step forward, but any minute movement was enough to bring forth new, breathtaking stabs of agony, and he felt how not-so-small rivulets of blood began to saturate the hastily applied bandage Elrohir had wrapped around his middle. Before he could stop himself, a soft, agonised moan of pain escaped his lips even though he was pressing them together so tightly that he could barely breathe through the pain that clouded his brain. Fosul stopped in mid-motion and whirled around, fixing pale, almost colourless eyes on the swaying, blood-covered elven prince.

Ah well, Legolas tried to console himself while he tried to fight back the weakness, nausea and the apparently uncontrollable tremors that shook his body. There were about ten men standing behind the human lieutenant; there would have been absolutely no way he would have been able to surprise Gasur's crony.

Said crony looked him over with that same cold look he had used to assess his condition when he had been chained to a wall in the cellars, and Legolas felt how fear joined the anger and urgency that were keeping him upright. He was not afraid of this man, he tried to tell himself angrily, by the Valar, but he was not! It was an echo of the fear he felt of Acalith's mad-eyed captain, a fear of what the man could and would do to him and his friends should he ever get his hands on them again, and no matter how much he tried to push it away, it would not be suppressed.

"So," the human said matter-of-factly, turning his attention from Ferdhôl to Legolas so smoothly and quickly that it almost made Legolas' already aching head spin. "The little elf has awoken. And here I thought you to be dead, or to be well on your way, at least."

Legolas resisted the urge to shake his head to clear his jumbled thoughts, deeply suspicious that it might seize the opportunity to fall off and roll away, and sent a quick prayer to Ilúvatar that he wouldn't sound like he felt. If he did, he seriously doubted that he would get any further than to monosyllabic sounds.

"The 'little elf' isn't chained to a wall this time," he announced, trying to cover up the fact that he was about thirty or maybe thirty-five seconds from passing out and, probably, dying. He was quite good at that; he was his father's son, after all, and had always been able to hide almost anything behind an arrogant façade. "Why don't you come over here and see for yourself just how awake I am?"

Fosul arched an eyebrow, and Legolas realised that his covering-up had probably not been all that successful.
"I think I'll just wait here and watch you fall over again, elf," the man announced, looking unbearably smug. "Why bother?"

Legolas desperately tried to think of something intelligent and scathing to say, but soon realised that his brains must have seized his moment of distraction and must have sneaked out of his skull via his ears. He couldn't think of anything at all that would keep the lieutenant busy – and that was all he wanted to do, stall him. He was not so blinded as to actually think that he might be able to fight Gasur's lieutenant, no matter how dearly he'd have liked to. All he wanted was keep him occupied long enough so that the other elves could get here. It wouldn't matter for him, he was sure about that, but it would matter for Ferdhôl and his men.

"And here I thought that you weren't a coward like Gasur," he finally said, throwing subtlety and wittiness out of the window and going for directness. "Whatever could have possessed me to think that?"

Staying upright was getting harder and harder, and the pain in his stomach became increasingly more paralysing, but all that soon became unimportant when the lieutenant's face began to take on the colour of sun-ripened, dark grapes. For someone as naturally pale as Fosul it was a disconcerting sight indeed, and Legolas stared at him with wide, pain-brightened eyes, completely missing the commotion that had broken out behind Gasur's lieutenant's back. A group of elves had pushed their way up to the spot right behind Fosul and were right now throwing themselves against the men's lines with a ferocity and wild anger that was very impressive and more than just a bit scary.

Fosul, however, noticed as little of it as Legolas. The elven prince had never really seen the man as brave or even memorable – he had mostly been the person who had followed Gasur around, had handed him the torture implements he wanted and had cheerfully hit chained prisoners when he was ordered – but it seemed that his courage was directly proportional to the amount of men he knew to be at his back. He stared at the swaying elven prince with narrowed eyes, not even realising that a part of his men turned around to join the men behind him and help them strengthen the lines that were crumbling even faster now.

"You are dead, you know that, don't you, elf?" the man asked coldly, eyeing the fair-haired being with disdain. "The captain should have finished you and that ranger whelp off when he had the chance, so he should have."

To his surprise, the elf smiled at that. The smile looked more like a pained grimace that distorted the pale, blood-smeared features of the elf, and not for the first time the man asked himself wherefrom the blond being got the strength to keep upright and stay more or less lucid. A man would already have been dead with a wound like this, or at the very least have been well on his way and delirious.

"Aye," he agreed softly, a word that was almost drowned out by the sound of the battle. "So he should have. It would appear that that is a mistake that is about to break his back." He glanced around himself meaningfully. "And not only his."

Legolas looked at the man steadily, detachedly noticing that his strength would give out in twenty seconds. Another tremble ran through his body, reigniting the fiery pain in his middle and causing cold sweat to break out on his forehead, and Legolas calmly amended the figure downwards, closer to fifteen seconds.

"And I am not the only one who is dead, Fosul. One of the many, many differences between you and me is that I do not deny it." He looked at the man once again, cold contempt in his too bright eyes. "I am not surprised, however. It is a coward's reaction, after all."

That finally did it. Legolas was almost relieved when the blond lieutenant turned yet another deeper shade of purple and stepped forward, making his way around the bodies of the fallen warriors in order to reach the elven prince. The man kicked the limp, motionless hand of one of the elves out of the way when he stepped over him – that of the slightly smaller warrior whose sword Legolas held in his trembling hands right now – and the wood-elf felt how his anger went up another notch, which was probably a good thing. Even adrenaline and sheer bloody-mindedness and unwillingness to give up could only get you so far, and Legolas knew that as soon as his body truly realised what he was putting it through he would collapse where he stood – or rather swayed.

To Legolas it seemed that a lot more people than just Fosul were moving suddenly in the background, even people who looked suspiciously like elves that should even be here in the first place, but he ignored all that and used what little strength he still possessed to fight off the lieutenant's attack. Within two seconds he realised that he had in fact no strength left, none at all. The first few blows he escaped by sheer good luck, and if Fosul hadn't been such a bad swordsman, not even that would have saved him. Legolas simply didn't possess the strength to block the strokes the man was aiming at him or even stumble to the side to avoid them, and when, about ten seconds after Fosul had started moving, a fist came apparently out of nowhere, connected with his ribs and sent him to the ground, it came as no surprise to him.

The pain that washed over him half a second later did surprise him, however, for he had thought himself to be too far gone to be able to feel that kind of agony. Breathing became impossible and unimportant, and the only thing that prevented him from falling into the beckoning unconsciousness that offered relief and silence was the fact that he still was the Prince of Mirkwood, no matter what. He would die with his eyes open and his head held high, and not whimpering on the ground like a helpless child.

Pain-clouded silver-blue eyes opened again, and Gasur's lieutenant watched with malicious amusement how the blond elf tried to push himself up once more, his snow-white face set in a grimace of fury, pain and determination. A new kick to the already blood-soaked bandage around his middle convinced him otherwise, and the elf fell back with a small cry of agony, the pale face turning even whiter.

Fosul kicked the elf's weapon out of the way and stepped closer until the blade of his own sword was hovering over the fair-haired being's fallen form. He slowly lowered the tip until it rested against the base of the elf's throat that was moving up and down rapidly as the elf vainly tried to draw enough air into his lungs.

"This will please the captain, I think," he remarked thoughtfully, pressing down his sword a little and watching how the long cut on the elf's throat reopened and started to bleed again. "Oh yes, this will please him very much indeed."

"And I," a calm voice announced, sounding far too cold and unemotional to be either, "would be very pleased if you would step away from my friend." There was a short, even colder and more threatening pause. "Then again, I think I would be even more pleased if you wouldn't and would give me an excuse to run you through."

Fosul whirled around, the tip of his blade moving over the blond elf's throat and leaving yet another red line in its wake. In front of him, no more than seven or eight feet away, stood a motionless elf who was watching him out of dark-blue eyes that were so cold and angry that he would almost have taken a step backwards. The bodies of the three men that had stayed with him and hadn't left to strengthen their comrades' line were lying behind him, even more motionless, and the human lieutenant didn't even have to look at them more closely to know that they were dead. It seemed that he was the only elf that had managed to break through; there were more pressing against the men's lines, but they hadn't got through just yet.

The elf's eyes were following his every movement, and if the emotions in the midnight-blue depths hadn't been enough, his face would have been dark enough to send a cold shiver of fear down Fosul's back. A part of the elf's long, silver hair was stuck to one of his cheeks by drying blood, and his features were so still that they might have been carved out of white marble.

This one, Gasur's lieutenant realised, would be no weakened, easy victim who was in too much pain to fight back.

"And what do you want?" he asked, trying to hide his growing fear and inexplicable panic.

Celylith smiled at that, a smile that looked more than a little bit like the grimace of a predator that was preparing to jump at you and try to tear out your throat.
"Justice. Revenge. Call it what you want." The smile faded as his eyes came to rest on the far too still figure of his prince. "And, more than anything else, blood. Your blood, adan."

"Revenge?" Fosul repeated spitefully, kicking Legolas nonchalantly in the ribs and eliciting another moan of pain from the half-conscious elf and a deathly glare from his friend. "For him? You're a bit late, elf. He's already dead as it is."

"Maybe," the silver-haired elf nodded. "But then again, so are you."

There was no more warning before the silver-haired elf lunged at him, the deceiving stillness suddenly transforming itself into violent action. The sword that had been dangling from his hand was suddenly raised high and brought down in a wicked swing that would almost have taken Fosul's head off, and all the man could do was jump back and try to avoid the elf as best as he could. Before he could even gather his wits, the elf had compensated for his movements and was pressing in on him, his sword moving seemingly faster than the human eye could follow.

A sharp pain stabbed through his forearm as the elf's blade cut into him, and Fosul amended his statement. The sword was moving than the human eye could follow. Any and all thoughts of that kind were quickly driven out of his head when the silver-haired elf began to move again, the blade slipping through the man's defences again and again. Fosul tried to draw back, to put some more space between himself and the elf, but no matter what he did, no matter what kind of manoeuvre he came up with, the silver-haired being was already there, blocking his every attack. It took him almost a whole minute to understand what was going on here: The elf was playing with him. He could have killed him already if his mind had been set on it. Fosul gritted his teeth and threw himself to the side, trying to avoid the elf's blade again. He would not just stand here and allow himself to be killed!

Legolas was watching the fight out of wide, glazed eyes, barely knowing what was going on. Even though he was reasonably sure that his eyes were, indeed, open, he couldn't see much more than blurry, dark shapes. Any and all strength he'd had left was seeping out of him with the blood that was once again flowing from his wound at an alarming rate, and no amount of anger or adrenaline or fear would change anything now. There was no way he would be getting up again, neither in order to save anybody else nor in order to save himself. He would, he decided dreamily, most likely never get up again.

The elven prince narrowed his eyes, trying to figure out whom Fosul was fighting or who of the two shapes was in fact the human lieutenant, but his eyes stubbornly refused to co-operate. It didn't surprise him overly much – they were his eyes, after all – but it was definitely annoying. In the end, however, the two quickly moving forms coalesced into two more or less solid shapes, a feat for which he was embarrassingly enough not responsible at all. He very much doubted that he would be able to lift his head right now.

Legolas squinted and tried to get the two combatants into focus, noticing to his great surprise that the pain in his abdomen was slowly fading. His weakness and the cold that was seeping into his very being were not diminishing, however, and some small part of him was screaming and rallying against that. The bigger part of him, however, did not care overly much. The wary acceptance from before was back, even stronger this time. He had tried, the Valar knew that he had, and he had nothing more to give.

The person who had prevented Fosul from cutting his throat – or at least he suspected that someone must have, since he couldn't remember much of that moment except white-hot agony and a towering darkness that had been pressing in on him – was turning right now, swiftly moving his sword from one hand to the other and thrusting his now freed shoulder into the man's side. Fosul stumbled back, badly unbalanced, and only a wild swing of his sword saved him from a messy and immediate death.

Somehow, the lieutenant managed to regain his equilibrium to commence the fight, but while Legolas' ability to focus on anything that was further away than an inch or two might have diminished, he still could see when someone was losing a fight. The elf Fosul was fighting was winning – and without any serious problem at that – and the man knew that, too, at least judging by his quick, increasingly panicked movements. Then, with sudden, rather stunning clarity Legolas could see how the man's hand travelled down his left leg, finally closing around something small and round.

Legolas didn't know who the elf was, but he was reasonably sure that he owed him his life – for what it was worth right now, granted. The other elf wouldn't be able to see what Fosul was doing, not in the position the two of them were in, so he should warn him, shouldn't he? But what sounded like a good idea in general was not that easy in reality. His body had already shut down all systems and functions it deemed unnecessary for survival, and talking (let alone shouting) apparently fell right into that category.

Knowing that he had no time at all to spare, Legolas gathered all his remaining strength and felt around with his right hand, not even knowing what he was looking for. After a second or two his weak, uncooperative fingers closed around something, and, not at all caring what it was, Legolas threw the object into the direction of the two fighters with all his strength. The human dagger that had fallen from one of the elven warriors' hands earlier sailed through the air, describing a rather neat little arc, and hit the man's knee with its flat side. It didn't do any damage at all, but it was enough to break Fosul's concentration and make him jerk slightly, the movement causing the previously hidden dagger glint slightly in the sparse light.

The elf growled something low in his throat that Legolas couldn't understand and ensured with a quick movement of his sword that the man's dagger went flying, landing somewhere to the right of them with a soft, clanking noise. Fosul dived to the side of avoid the next attack, and before he turned hastily back around to parry the next stab that was aimed at his heart, he gave Legolas a look so cold and full of hate that it would probably have affected him in some sort if he hadn't been so far gone already. Things being as they were, however, Legolas merely stared at the man's furious face, noticing that his figure was beginning to lose integrity once more and that he was beginning to blur around the edges.

Fosul suddenly felt the very burning, very urgent wish to kill the fair-haired elf, finally understanding what Captain Gasur had always spoken about: This one was incredibly annoying, and just when you thought that he was beaten, he found a way to do something else that foiled your plans. If it hadn't been for him, he would already have disposed of this troublesome, silver-haired creature and would be well on his way to safety!

Said troublesome creature seemed to be disinclined to play any longer, however; the man's almost successful treacherous attack and his friend's sudden stillness were enough to convince him otherwise. Blow upon blow rained down on Gasur's lieutenant, making it almost impossible for him to block all of them. Yet another one hit the man, this time delivered by the elf's fist, and he stumbled backwards, slamming into the wall of the building behind him. Before Fosul could even blink, still stunned by the shock of the impact, the elf had moved in front of him, but he was doing nothing more than stare at him out of angry, cold blue eyes. That was definitely strange, and so Fosul tried to think of a reason why the elf would do that, fighting against the confusion that was beginning to grow inside of him.

The man looked around him, sagging against the stone wall at his back, and finally looked down his own body, his eyes widening in astonishment at what he found there. A sword – the elf's sword, his failing brain informed him – was sticking out of his chest, a sight that Fosul found most peculiar. There was a strange, flowing sensation inside of him that he couldn't really place, and the blond man tried to decide what it could be. A moment later, however, thinking became far too difficult and problematic to be worth it. A darkness he was at a loss to explain – shouldn't it be getting lighter instead of darker at this time of night? – began to close in on him, and when his body touched the ground, slowly having slid down the wall, Gasur's lieutenant was already dead.

Celylith kept staring at the dead man at his feet, his eyes dark and his chest heaving with anger and the exertion of the fight. Removing his sword from the man's chest, he did not even bother to try and find anything resembling regret in his heart – he knew that it wouldn't be there. This man had been leading these soldiers, he had personally seen how he had almost cut Legolas' throat, and that was all the reason he could possibly need to kill him without regret or doubt or remorse. No one hurt his prince and got away with it, no one, and if he had anything to say about it, no one ever would.

He hadn't even completed the thought when the whole gravity of the situation came crashing down on him, and for a moment he remained where he was, rooted to the spot by fear and panic and dread while his eyes sought out the motionless, blood-stained figure of his best friend. Then, however, time sped up again as reality reasserted itself, and with a curse that was almost inaudible for having been muttered through gritted teeth Celylith thrust his bloody sword into its sheath and rushed over to Legolas' side, falling to his knees next to him.

The first thing he noticed was that Legolas' eyes were open, looking dark and glazed and so full of pain that Celylith immediately felt sick. The other elf didn't seem to see him, though, and was simply staring straight ahead, giving the silver-haired elf no attention at all. The second thing he noticed was almost enough to send him into a state of mindless panic and reduce him to nothing more than a quivering heap on the ground. The wound he hadn't been able to see clearly before now, the wound he'd known had to be bad to incapacitate his prince like this, was on full display, the blood-soaked bandages that were wound around Legolas' middle contrasting sharply against his once white shirt and pale skin.

Celylith was the son of a master healer and a warrior and had therefore seen a lot of gruesome wounds from a very early age, but nothing in the world could have prepared him for the sight of this kind of wound, not when it was Legolas who was suffering from it. He had been in so many battles and skirmishes that he had thought he would be prepared for anything and that nothing could shock him anymore, but this did. The bloody hole in his friend's body shocked him more than he had ever thought possible, and the memory of the way his mother's lips had always thinned in fear and dread when a warrior with such a wound had been brought to her was enough to cause his hands to start shaking.

Legolas' face was deathly still and very, very white, as white and cold as his hand was when he grasped one of them, unconsciously trying to let his friend know that he was no longer alone. Reacting completely automatically, Celylith shrugged out of his cloak, folded it up and pressed it over the wound, applying as much pressure as he dared. The blood – Valar, there was so much blood! – still kept on flowing, welling up even despite his best efforts, but the thing that scared him most was that Legolas didn't even react to something that should have had him screaming in agony.

Celylith felt how his own hands grew cold and how dread formed a hard knot in the pit of his stomach. He hadn't felt this afraid and close to panic since he had found his sister's fiancé under that broad tree, dying from the wound an orc scimitar had struck.

"Legolas?" he whispered, finding that his voice wouldn't co-operate and resolutely refusing to think about Amaran's death any further, or anything else it had entailed. "Manwë Súlimo above, just what were you two doing?" He shot the dead man and the blood that was pooling underneath him a quick look. "A competition to see who could bleed the most?"

Legolas' eyes slowly focussed on his face, even though no one could have said that he looked as if he recognised him.
"W-Who…?"

Celylith closed his eyes for a second, unwilling to let his prince see the pain and fear in his eyes. He would probably not have noticed it if he'd written the words on a sign and hung it around his neck, though, something that only intensified the panic that was beginning to push any and all calm and composure to the side.

"It is me, mellon nín," he told the fair-haired elf, swallowing hard against the lump in his throat. "Me, Celylith. I am sorry it took me so long to get here. I was as quick as I could."

Legolas convulsed slightly when he increased the pressure, getting desperate now. He had to stop the bleeding, right now, or he would be talking to a corpse in less than a minute. Celylith threw a desperate, frantic look over his shoulder, his eyes searching for Elladan or, better yet, Lord Elrond. Legolas needed a healer – a real healer, not someone like him who had only been half-trained by his long-departed mother – and he needed him now. The elf lord, however, was nowhere to be seen, and Elladan and his warriors were still occupied with the late lieutenant's men. It did not surprise him; it had been nothing but sheer, dumb luck that he had managed to break through.

"Celylith?" Legolas whispered, confusion evident in his voice. "What … how…?"

"Shh," the silver-haired elf shook his head, turning back to his friend. "Don't worry about that now, Legolas. Don't worry about anything. Just stay awake, do you hear me? Everything will be all right, as long as you stay awake!"

The elven prince's brow furrowed at that, as if he'd only half understood what his friend was talking about. Considering that he was only a few moments away from losing consciousness, it would have been a miracle indeed if he had.
"Com-competition?"

It took Celylith a moment or two to understand what the other elf was referring to, but then he did and promptly smiled, doing his best to look calm.

"You won it, mellon nín, not a doubt about that," he told him, still pressing both of his hands against the slightly older elf's abdomen. They were covered in blood – Legolas' blood, he realised with a shudder – up to the wrists, and he didn't dare lessen the pressure to see if the blood flow was decreasing. "You never could lose at anything."

"Not … true."

"Come now, my prince," Celylith retorted, smiling shakily at his best friend. There was a tired, weary look in Legolas' eyes that he didn't like at all. "It is true, and, right now, I couldn't care less. What did I tell you about getting yourself into trouble when I wasn't around to look after you?"

Legolas felt strangely removed from this very strange conversation, as if he was floating somewhere next to his body and only listening to someone else's words. It wasn't that Celylith's words weren't making any sense – they were for once – but somehow he had a hard time figuring out why they should matter to him in any way.
"I'm … sorry…"

"No!" Celylith exclaimed forcefully, shaking his head. "No, Legolas! There is nothing to feel sorry for, nothing at all. Do not say such things!"

"But I have to," Legolas protested, finding that his voice sounded stronger all of the sudden. The small part of him noticed it as well and promptly stopped its own protests, sensing defeat and the end drawing near. For some reason, that failed to alarm him at all. "If I … don't say it now, then … when … will I?"

"Don't," Celylith shook his head again, his voice barely more than a broken whisper. "Don't, Legolas." He turned half around, his blood-stained hands still pressed firmly onto the wound. His midnight-blue eyes that were almost black with fear and worry and real panic looked for Elladan's tall, dark-haired figure, fastening on the twin with the intensity of a drowning man who had spied a piece of wood. "Elladan!"

He didn't say more; there was nothing to say, nothing he could have put into words. The twin's head jerked up, momentarily distracted, and for a moment their eyes met over the chaos of the battle. Celylith knew that the other elf could see everything in his eyes, all his fear and panic, but he couldn't have looked away even if his life had depended on it. A moment later, the connexion was broken, and Elladan turned back to his battle, shouting orders at his warriors with renewed urgency. The lines of the men couldn't resist this kind of attack any longer and began to crumble, but Celylith had already turned away and was hardly interested in it anyway.

"You … were always a good friend, Celylith," Legolas went on, seemingly not having heard his friend's earlier protests. "The best anybody could have wished for. The … the best I could have wished for. Thank you."

"Stop that," the silver-haired elf bit out roughly. "Stop talking like that, Legolas. I will not listen."

"Course … you will," the prince smiled weakly. "You always have, just like … like Aragorn." A sudden thought seemed to strike him, and he stared at the blurry face above him, sudden fear in his eyes. "Aragorn … he is still in Aberon!"

"Yes, my friend, we know," Celylith tried to soothe him. "We know what is going on."

Legolas knew that that wasn't true, that Celylith didn't know what Acalith was planning, that he couldn't know, but he didn't have enough strength left to protest. He hardly knew what Acalith had told them earlier, and he was reasonably sure that it wouldn't make any more sense if he tried to say it out loud.

"You will … take care of him for … for me?" was all he asked in the end.

"Of course, mellon nín," Celylith nodded, giving up on trying and holding back his tears; Legolas wouldn't see them anyway. He couldn't have stopped them either; his best friend, his prince whom he had sworn to protect with his life, was slipping away in front of his eyes, and there was nothing he could do, nothing at all. "You know that I will. And now stop talking like that!" He turned back again, tear-blinded eyes unable to see more than blurry shapes. "Elladan!" he called again, panic tingeing his voice.

"Nothing … nothing more to say," Legolas retorted with something that might have been a shrug if he hadn't been lying down and had been in better shape, in a different world. "Tell my father that … that I am so sorry, for so many things. And that I love him."

The dread that had been forming a lump in the pit of Celylith's stomach increased in size until it was almost choking him, and his hands started to shake. He was not hearing this, he told himself firmly. None of this was real, it could not be real.

"I will not," he told his blond friend decisively, firmly keeping the tremor of fear and panic out of his voice. "Do you hear me, Legolas? I will not tell the king; you will have to do that yourself. Don't you dare die on me now! How long have we been friends, you and I? Where you go, I go; it has always been like that and always will be so. I will not let you go without a fight, just like that."

Legolas smiled at him, a gentle smile that scared him more than anything else he had seen tonight.
"You … might have no choice … in that … matter…"

It took Celylith several moments to understand what the other was saying, and only when Legolas' eyes were slowly closing did the full realisation hit him, leaving him with a feeling as if a cave troll had just hit him between the eyes with a hammer.
"No! Legolas, no! Listen to my voice; stay awake!"

That was a command Legolas couldn't have heeded even if he had wanted to. The beckoning darkness was just too enticing, promising peace and painlessness, and besides, there was only so much a body could take, elven or not. The world grew dimmer and dimmer until even the feeling of Celylith's hands that were holding him faded. When the darkness washed over him and swallowed him whole, he stopped fighting, knowing that, no matter what happened, he would be in good hands.

Celylith saw his friend's body relax and his head fall to the side, and panic so bright that it physically hurt him stabbed through his very core. He kept calling to the other elf, begging him to listen to him and open his eyes, but he knew deep in his heart that Legolas was far beyond hearing him. There was something going on behind them, at least judging by the noise of the battle that suddenly spiked, but he couldn't have cared less.

He didn't know how long he was kneeling there, his hands pressed against the gaping wound in his friend's stomach. It could have been anything between a few seconds and a few years, and when a hand touched him on the shoulder, grasping his trembling form tightly, he literally jumped. A voice was talking to him, sounding torn between urgency and worry, but try as he might, he couldn't understand what it was saying. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered except keeping up the pressure against his best friend's middle.

Another set of hands grasped him suddenly, all but hauling him to his feet, and for a second, Celylith struggled, trying to escape their grasp. He couldn't leave Legolas, not like this! The wound would start bleeding again, and then…

"We have him, Celylith," the voice told him in what was probably meant to be a comforting way. "Let go of him. Let me have a look." The speaker paused for a second, apparently giving him a chance to react, and when he didn't, he added, "Isál, get him out of the way."

The hands tightened on his upper arms, dragging him away, and Celylith blinked and suddenly once again became aware of what was going on. There were elven warriors all around them, moving past them in a constant stream. Some of them stayed behind and establed a loose circle around them, but most of them kept moving, following the men who had finally abandoned their post and were retreating in a not very orderly manner.

Elladan had taken over the spot the silver-haired elf had occupied moments ago and was checking his friend's wound, his grey eyes dark and serious. He quickly peeled back the bandage Elrohir had applied earlier, gave the wound a single glance and rapidly covered it again, his lips thinning into a single thin line of displeasure and worry.

The twin looked up, his eyes wandering over Celylith's figure and the shell-shocked look on his face. Isál was standing behind him, his hands on the wood-elf's arms, forcefully keeping him from rushing back to his prince's side. He looked at the brown-haired captain, realising that Celylith probably hardly realised that any of them were here.
"Keep him out of the way, please," he told Isál. "Knock him out if you have to."

Isál nodded solemnly, but Elladan hardly noticed it, his eyes sweeping over the elven bodies that were surrounding them. A terrible guilt was threatening to choke him; he had seen them fall one by one, Ferdhôl and the others, and there had been nothing he had been able to do to help them. His men had – obviously – cleared the roofs, but it had been too late. Elrohir's little troop had suffered horribly because of their tardiness.

Lifting his gaze, he let his eyes wander over the elves that surrounded him, finally fixing on a familiar face. "Thalar!" he called, addressing Elvynd's surviving commander who had, of course, accompanied them. "Find my father; be as fast as you can. Send any other healer you should encounter here. Quickly!"

The elf inclined his head and turned, already nodding at several of his men to come with him. Elladan hardly noticed it, all his attention fixed on Legolas. His friend looked terrible, so pale that he might have been mistaken for a wraith, and his eyes were closed. More frightening even than that was the amount of blood he could see that was staining the prince's clothes and the hastily applied bandage. There were limits to everything, and not even an elf could afford to lose that much blood without getting some serious problems.

He took one of his unconscious friend's hands in his, his other hand still pressing firmly against his abdomen in order to keep the blood loss under control. Reaching deep into himself, he tried to tap into what little healing power he had inherited from his father; he knew that it wouldn't be enough to save Legolas, let alone heal him, but it might be just enough to keep him from slipping further away until his father could reach them. He only wished Elrohir was here; his twin was far more adept at these things than he was!

Next to him, Celylith was watching the scene with wide, dark-blue eyes, having stopped fighting against Isál restraining hands. They were the only thing that kept him upright, now that reality had fully set in and he understood what was going on.

The shaking that had started a while ago intensified once again, and while Elladan started working on the fair-haired elf, frantically trying to stem the blood flow, Celylith closed his eyes and started to pray to any Vala that might be listening.

Glorfindel had, over the last ten or fifteen minutes, lost the rest of his men, and he didn't even know how or where. Under normal circumstances, it would probably have alarmed him, at least to a certain degree, but right now he hardly even noticed.

There were quite a few things he wasn't noticing, among them the fact that there were panicking humans all around him. Most of them were servants of some sort, at least judging by their clothing, but there were some guards, too, who conveniently seemed to have forgotten about their oath to protect their town and were fleeing like everybody else.

Glorfindel couldn't even blame them. He had always been opposed to waste of any kind, and to die in a fight like this was just that: A waste of lives and resources. The humans couldn't win, not in a thousand years and especially not when their warriors were in this kind of mood, and he couldn't blame them for wanting to escape from a battle in which they would die, for someone and something they probably did not believe in and for which held little love.

Most of them didn't even seem to notice him. The corridors through which he was walking were dark, most of them not even having a single candle or torch to illuminate them. Most of them had probably been dark to begin with, but the few lamps and torches that had been there had disappeared in the chaos. Considering the humans' inferior eyesight and the fact that most of them were only interested in getting out of Acalith's mansion and not in giving their surroundings any more attention than absolutely necessary, most of the fleeing people didn't even spare him an extra look, and those who did only avoided his gaze and quickened their pace. They didn't bother him and he didn't bother them – it was an arrangement that worked for both sides.

Only half an hour ago, Glorfindel would hardly have been satisfied with said arrangement. While he had never wanted or had even thought about killing members of the serving staff, he had been more than willing to kill any and all soldiers and guards he could get his hands on. He was an objective enough elf to admit that anger and fear made him somewhat indiscriminating, and he had not been in the mood to consider carefully which man had or had not played a major part in all this. Now, however, things were different, and he didn't give the humans more attention than they deserved, namely no more than the somewhat fleeting but still careful watchfulness he would display in the vicinity of a few skinny wolves. Wolves were actually rather shy, timid animals and only came close to or attacked humans or elves when they were cornered, hungry or surprised, but you could never be too careful.

This change of attitude surprised even himself. He was not someone who was prone to flying into sudden fits of fury like, for example, the dear King Thranduil (who doubtlessly owed that lamentable character flaw to all his hot Sindarin blood), but once incensed, it took him a long time to calm himself again. His temper was slow to build and equally slow to dissipate, and he could hold a justifiable grudge for a long, long time.

Now, however, his anger and hate had a worthier outlet than indiscriminatingly killing people who only deserved it to a certain degree. He was very, oh so very sure that all of the soldiers here were guilty, some more, some less, but he was willing to spare their lives – if they didn't attack him, that was. If they did that, he refused to be held accountable for his actions. He didn't worry about that, though; the soldiers he had encountered until now seemed rather uninterested in him or at least in attacking him.

Glorfindel smiled grimly, dodging a pair of servants who were running right at him. It would be so much more satisfying to kill Gasur than to kill a few soldiers who only bore some of the responsibility. He had given Erestor his word that he would kill Acalith's captain, and that was just what he was going to do, with a smile on his lips and no regrets in his heart. And it would make him feel a tiny bit better, too, he guessed. It wouldn't be enough to free himself of the self-loathing, anger, pain and guilt that was threatening to choke him, but it would be a step into the right direction.

That thought brought back the memory of how Erestor had looked when they had found him, how he had sounded… Glorfindel ended that particular line of thought right then. Erestor never sounded like that, so helpless and hopeless and uninterested in what was going on around him (not even in the barely veiled insults and threats he had thrown at him as a last, desperate resort), and for that alone he would have killed Gasur. Erestor had fought in the wars like most of the male elves his age, but he had never been a warrior. He was a scholar who should never have had to deal with something like this, not after all these long years of relative peace and quiet.

This man, this ... creature, whatever he was, had put his friend into a position he had no business being in. If anybody should have been in that cell, it should have been him. It was his duty to protect his lord, his home and every single one of its inhabitants, and it was a duty he took very seriously, or "too seriously, you stupid Vanya; just try to get it into that rock-hard head of yours that you are not indestructible!", if one believed Elrond's chief advisor. Erestor should have been at home where he belonged, and if he had been more careful and had paid more attention to what his instinct had been telling him, that's where the arrogant Noldo would have been. So, yes, it might have been his fault as well, but he hadn't been the one to chain Erestor to a wall and torture him within an inch of his life.

Oh no, Glorfindel resumed grimly, the anger that was simmering in his heart growing even hotter. He hadn't done that. It had been Gasur, and for that the man would pay – if he could find him.

Glorfindel shook himself out of his musings and forced himself to concentrate, telling himself that he had no time to spare. He knew that Annorathil and the others would do their best to locate Elrond and bring him to Erestor as quickly as possible, but, well, he himself had always been particularly good at finding the half-elf. The sooner he got this over with, the sooner he would be able to get help for Erestor.

Satisfied with that particular reasoning, Glorfindel hastened his steps, avoiding another group of panicking humans. If his calculations were correct, he should be close to the western section of the walls now, and should reach the large door leading to the western part of the courtyard any second. The guard who had rather willingly shared this piece of information with him – the man had taken one look at his face and had needed little prompting after that – had insisted that Gasur's quarters were in this part of the house, and that the armouries and the officers' stables were also located in this area. If there was one place where one could hope to make one's escape unnoticed, it was here.

That was at least what Glorfindel hoped the man would do. If he did not and if he was still somewhere in the main courtyard or if he had been faster than he'd thought and had already made his escape, it would take a lot longer to find him. The golden-haired elf sped up his walk. That would not do.

He rounded a corner, gave a male servant who actually looked as if he was thinking about challenging him a dark look that obviously quelled any thoughts of resistance, and smiled slightly as he saw the wide-open, ornately carved doors that the terrified soldier had described to him earlier. A steady stream of humans were rushing out of it and hurrying down the stone steps, clearly only intending to escape. Even though he could clearly hear the battle in the background, it hadn't reached this part of the courtyard yet; all he could see were humans running from one end of the yard to the other in mindless panic.

In less than five seconds he had reached the door and was outside, unconsciously tightening the grip on his sword's pommel. He was badly outnumbered here, and didn't really know what he would do if the guards he could see came to their senses and realised that, too. He very much doubted that they would – they didn't look as if they possessed the intelligence or even the calmness of mind for something like that – but if they did, he would be in rather deep trouble.

Shrugging that thought off like a cloak on a warm spring day, Glorfindel steadily made his way down the stone stairs. There was a large gate he could easily see from here; it had been forced open and its guards – if there ever had been guards – had abandoned it long ago. Men and women were hurrying into its direction even though it was evidently already almost completely jammed; there were simply too many people who wanted nothing more than flee the fight that was inevitably drawing closer.

Glorfindel found it quite remarkable that there wasn't a single man who was trying to enter the compound from without. It seemed that his earlier assessment of the city's inhabitants had been correct: They didn't really care what happened here, at least not enough to actually risk their lives to help their lady. They would surely have cared if she had been able to carry out her plans and had "restored them to their rightful place" and so on and so forth. Glorfindel had heard these words too many times in too many places, and he had seen them work their magic too often. He didn't have any illusions about the effect they could have on the Second People.

Deciding to take all this as the favour it was, Glorfindel turned slightly, trying to figure out where Gasur would have gone. The main gate was too obvious and far too crowded. The man wouldn't hide in his rooms or anywhere in the house or on the grounds either; he must know that someone would be coming for him. Judging by what Isál and Annorathil had told them, it seemed that Gasur was insane, but not completely stupid. He would try to get away while he still could and while the chaos was still aiding him. If he wanted to escape, he had to do it here and he had to do it now. There was no other way of here that promised some sort of success, and Gasur had to know it.

Glorfindel was about to turn to the right, into the directions of the stables, when a movement very close to him made him stop dead in his tracks, and before it had even fully registered in his mind, he had whirled around, his sword up and ready. His eyes widened slightly when he came face-to-face with a rather small, elderly human who was staring at him like a rabbit might stare at a serpent about to strike. For a moment, he thought that he was no more than another servant trying to escape – the Valar knew that there were enough of them around! – but then he took a second look and decided instantly that this human was anything but. The man's long, grey hair was bound back neatly, and his clothing was costly and richly adorned. He looked like your stereotypical councilman or advisor, and as much out of place as a fish out of water.

Glorfindel was in no mood to mince words or exchange pleasantries. He took two steps forward until he was no more than four or five feet away, and turned his sword slightly so the tip pointed directly at the councilman's throat. The small movement only served to call attention to the dried blood that covered the blade, but Glorfindel didn't even notice it. The man, however, definitely did.

"Who are you?" was all the golden-haired elf lord asked, his tone of voice very clearly stating that he would have no patience or understanding for excuses or subterfuges.

The man looked from the sword to him and back at the blade again, his face expressionless and almost blank, even though there was a small glitter of fear in his eyes that was accompanied by something that just might have been calculation. Oh yes, Glorfindel thought almost amusedly, this one definitely was a politician.

"I am Salir," the man finally answered quietly, but his voice was calm and did not betray the fear he obviously felt. "Lady Acalith's seneschal."

"Her seneschal," Glorfindel repeated coldly, looking at the man in new disdain. "What a coincidence." The man looked at him, faint confusion on his face, but Glorfindel was quite obviously not planning to elaborate. "And I assume you wish to assure me that you were opposed to her plans, tried everything to stop her and even pleaded for my men's lives?"

Salir looked at the tall,blond elf, his intuition that had been honed and sharpened over the many years in his lord's and then his lady's service failing him for once. He couldn't figure out what the elf was thinking or feeling – well, apart from fury and disdain, of course – and that was making him far more nervous than he wanted to admit. He had come here to try and escape like everybody else; he might have served his lord and lady faithfully and loyally, but that didn't mean that he was willing to effectively commit suicide. He had given the battle in the main courtyard only one look to know that it was already lost and that nothing but certain death would be gained from further resistance. What he hadn't counted on had been encountering this elf with his blood-encrusted sword, who glared at him so coldly that the look would have frozen the ears off a mountain hare.

Even so, he very much doubted that this strange being would be interested in lies. The elf was a warrior, that much was clear, and, judging by his words, an officer, probably a higher-ranking one. That was not good; not good at all. He had said "my men" – he must have been talking about the guards that had been killed when the elf lord's advisor had been taken, then. He was quite clearly here for revenge, and Salir had the very bad feeling that he would know when he was being lied to.

"No," the man admitted, not feeling certain at all that that was the right answer. "No, I did not. I am her seneschal. It is not my place to question my lady's decisions."

Glorfindel's eyebrows rose until they almost touched his hairline. In all his years in Elrond's service, it hadn't once occurred to him to describe his duties thus.

"Isn't it?" he asked lightly, his mind obviously not on the conversation. "I happen to disagree." He paused and gave the elderly man a long look that made Salir feel as if he was made out of crystal. "If nothing else, I do appreciate an honest answer. Still, why shouldn't I just kill you right here and now?"

"Because I am not the one who is responsible for all this," Salir answered readily, his mind working so quickly that he was actually surprised that no one could see steam coming out of his ears. "Because I only followed orders, because I am unarmed and, more important yet, because I am not the one you seek."

"You followed orders without thinking, therefore you are as responsible as the one who issued them," Glorfindel retorted, his eyes darkening even further. "I have neither the time nor the patience for this. Whom do I seek, then?"

"Gasur," Salir retorted promptly. "Do you not, Master Elf? I would, if I were you. And if I were him," he went on, gesturing at the wall to his left, "I would be over there. There is a small gate in the wall, not known to many people. It is old and has been unused for many years, but it is a way out of here. Gasur will know it, of that I am sure."

Glorfindel narrowed his eyes at him.
"And you were on your way to it, I would say."

"As it so happens, yes, I was," the grey-haired man inclined his head minutely. "I am no warrior, and I detest violence."

"Oh, but I am sure you do," the elf said, irony almost literally dripping off his words. He stared hard at Acalith's seneschal, urgency and distrust warring inside of him. He didn't believe this man, wouldn't believe him if he told him that rain was wet, but there was … something … in his eyes that suggested that, just about this one thing, he could be trusted. "Why should I believe what you tell me about this gate, seneschal? Why would you be willing to betray Gasur to me?"

Salir smiled at that, a smile that was cold and triumphant at the same time.
"Because, Master Elf," he replied enigmatically and paused for half a second, "what goes up must come down."

Glorfindel looked at him, cocking his head slightly to the side. He had stumbled into some sort of personal vendetta here, or so it seemed. He didn't know what the man was talking about, and he didn't care, either. He wasn't about to insult the Valar by questioning this unexpected gift.

"I hope you are not lying or trying to deceive me, human, for your sake," he finally said very calmly, taking a step forward until the tip of his sword rested on Salir's elaborately decorated robe, right above his heart. "If he gets away because of you, I will come back and find you, you can be sure about that. And then," he gave the grey-haired man a cold, tight, utterly serious smile, "I will not care at all if you are armed or not."

"Oh, I do hope that you find him, Master Elf," Salir retorted, the triumphant air still radiating off him in waves. "I do so hope that you find him."

Glorfindel gave him another look, not even trying to disguise the distaste and loathing he felt, and turned on his heel without another word. By the time he had reached the wall and begun to follow its course to the left, he had already half-forgotten Acalith's seneschal, his thoughts occupied by far more important things, for example by just how he would kill Gasur when he found him. Even though that had been a question he had been pondering for quite a while now, it hadn't got boring yet, and he was distracted from a particularly attractive mental image a few minutes later, when he stepped around a tree that had partly grown onto the ill-kept path he was following.

For a moment, he was actually surprised to see a group of four men stand in front of a small, open gate, next to six horses. Four of them were quite obviously their mounts, but the other two were laden with smaller boxes and rather heavy-looking bags. One of the humans, a middle-sized man with unbound, shoulder-long dark-brown hair, was holding the two pack horses' reins, and was right now trying to pull them through the narrow opening in the wall. The rest of the men were standing to his right, in front of the open wooden door, and were watching him as if he was accomplishing some great feat.

Glorfindel felt how the hot anger inside of him solidified into some sort of strange, icy rage. So this was Gasur, the man who had killed his guards, had imprisoned and tortured Erestor, Elrond's youngest and the prince and had tried to do the same with Elrohir and his men. The man looked rather normal and definitely not like a psychopathic madman, with his ordinary features and the dark leather bracers that were encircling his wrists. Since the disaster with Annatar, however, Glorfindel and every single elf still residing in Arda knew oh-so-very-well just how deceiving appearances could be.

The men hadn't noticed his appearance, and so Glorfindel cleared his throat meaningfully, making all of them whirl around so quickly that he could almost hear their spines protest.
"It would go a lot quicker if you were to lead them through the gate one at a time."

The four men simply stared at him as if he was an apparition out of the deep, something that probably wasn't all that farfetched. He guessed that he didn't really look like an epitome of kindness and forgiveness right now.

He took a step forward, using the men's momentary paralysis to manoeuvre himself closer to them. Gasur seemed to shake off the shock first, letting go of the reins he was holding and carefully taking a step to the side so that he was shielded by one of his men. Glorfindel had thought it highly unlikely, but the loathing and hate he felt for this man went up yet another notch.

"What do you want, elf?" Gasur asked, outwardly showing no sign of fear or nervousness. He couldn't fool the senses of an elf, however; Glorfindel could almost smell his nervousness. "A bit far away from your friends, aren't you?"

"Oh, but so are you, Gasur," Glorfindel retorted emotionlessly. He smiled openly at the surprise and dread that was beginning to spread over the man's face at his words. "Yes, I know who you are. Gasur, the 'Fox', murderer, coward – your name does not matter to me. I knew I would find you here, trying to run away like a frightened dog."

The man's face slowly began to redden, and he stared at the elf hard, his light brown eyes alight with mad, irrational anger.
"Careful, elf. Be very careful."

"Why?" Glorfindel asked disdainfully. "Why should I be careful? Things are different this time, Captain." The golden-haired elf pronounced the man's title with at least as much hate and disgust in his voice as Gasur when he said 'elf'. "I am not a helpless, bound prisoner. I am not at your mercy, and I do not have to shake before your wrath." He gave the three soldiers who were staring at him with wide, very frightened eyes a quick look before he turned back to Gasur. "Send the three of them away. We settle this now, right here, the two of us, without outside interference. Don't make me kill them, adan."

The dark-haired man gave him a cold, taxing look and took another step to the side with ostentation.
"Do you honestly think that I would care?"

Glorfindel looked back at him, no emotions visible on his face. His features might have been cut out of stone, blank and cold and utterly expressionless.
"No," he replied softly. "But, then again, neither do I."

His hand was already on his belt even while he was speaking the words. Before any of the three humans could even move, his fingers had closed around the hilt of one of his knives. Barely two seconds later, two of the men were already sinking to the ground as his blades found their targets, and the third joined them mere moments later, blood from a deep wound in his side slowly dripping onto the muddy ground. Glorfindel stepped over the bodies with the cool air of someone who had just taken a stroll in the garden, paying no attention to the fresh, bright red blood that clung to the blade of his sword.

Gasur stared at the blond elf and, for the first time in long years, a bright pang of real fear went through him, stabbing through his heart like the keen blade of a knife. There was nothing on the elf's face but determination and a terrible fury, and he found himself backing away without even thinking about it.

"Who are you?" he asked gruffly, giving his three soldiers an unbelieving look. There was no pity or anger in it, only a stunned surprise that the elf had managed to eliminate them this quickly and effortlessly.

Glorfindel actually stopped for a second at this question, a hoarse, cold laugh making its way past his lips. "Who am I?" he repeated, looking at the man almost a little bit wonderingly. "And here I thought that was obvious. I am Glorfindel, seneschal of Lord Elrond of Rivendell and captain of his warriors. You killed my men; you abducted and tortured my lord's advisor, his guests and his son. You abducted and tortured my friends. I am here in their stead."

"You are here for them?" Gasur spat, anger once again laying itself over his features. "For that blond one who deserved everything he got, for that whelp of a ranger, for the helpless little scholar who begged so prettily in the end? For the elves who fell like cattle before my men's swords? For them?" He shook his head disdainfully. "You know what I did to them, don't you? You know how your friends cried and begged me to stop, how the blond one writhed in agony when I rammed my knife into his stomach? You know about that?"

For a moment, Glorfindel literally saw red. The man's words reverberated in his head, growing louder and louder by the second, and only with an exceptional amount of willpower he managed to push them back and keep a firm grip on his control.

"Oh yes, I know," he told the man in a voice he barely recognised as his own. He quickly took a step to the side, putting himself between Gasur and the open gate. "This ends now. No more waiting. No more words, no more reasoning, no more stalling. No mercy and no quarter. Draw your sword, human. It is just you and me."

"And what makes you think that this will end any differently than the little 'conversations' I've had with your friends?" Gasur asked derogatorily. He did draw his sword though, most likely prompted by the truly murderous sparkle in Glorfindel's eyes. "The last elf who challenged me should be choking on his own blood right now."

Glorfindel's eyes darkened even further, the bright blue irises looking almost black now. He told himself very firmly that this … creature … was lying, that nothing he said was true, but he had a hard time convincing himself of that. And if he was telling the truth… Glorfindel's thoughts trailed off, and he felt how anxiety joined the cold rage that had taken up residence in the pit of his stomach. He had seen enough stomach wounds to know how small the chances of survival were, even for an elf. If Gasur was telling the truth, then Prince Legolas might be in serious trouble.

He turned his head slightly to the side and fixed Gasur with a cold, emotionless stare. Well, that was simply yet another reason why he should end this quickly, wasn't it?

"I know who you are, 'Fox'," he told the man nonetheless, taking half a step forward. He wasn't above a little bit of misdirecting if it got him what he wanted, and if the man was too distracted by his words to notice what he was doing, then that was his problem. "I know what you are concealing under those leather bracers; I know how desperate you are to hide your former identity. I know how you begged for your life in Lake-town no more than half a year ago. I know how you pleaded with the prince to spare your life, so spare me all this empty bravado."

Gasur stared at him, clearly surprised, and Glorfindel gave him a frigid smile.

"Oh, you didn't know that? The 'blond one' is Prince Legolas of Mirkwood, the son and heir of King Thranduil." Gasur paled somewhat at that, and Glorfindel's smile became even more frigid. The man would know who the elven king was and also of his (probably slightly exaggerated) reputation, just as everybody in Esgaroth did. "Even if – by some sort of miracle that I couldn't possibly fathom – you should manage to escape today, you are dead. There is no place in Middle-earth where you could hide from the king's wrath. Lord Thranduil is not the most understanding and forgiving of elves, and if you injured his son, he will hunt you down like a rabid dog." He shrugged carelessly. "But you know that, don't you?"

Gasur continued staring at him, backing away from him until his back hit the smooth stones of the wall. The fear inside of him turned into something else that just couldn't be panic, and he smirked nervously, something that looked more like a grimace.

"So why would he keep his identity a secret?" he sneered, trying to ignore the sweat that had broken out on his forehead. "Is he afraid of telling people who he really is? Mind you, it should make little difference now, considering that he's as good as dead, but still, why tell me now? Aren't you afraid that I might tell someone?"

Glorfindel only looked at him, cold and calm and composed like a carved statue.
"No," he replied, shaking his head softly. "No, I am not. Because, by Elbereth Gilthoniel, you won't get any chance to do so."

Even to Gasur it didn't have to be explained just what that particular tone of voice meant, and so he was able to block the first, lightning-fast attack relatively effortlessly. The elf was a lot stronger than he looked, though, a lot stronger than any other opponent he had ever faced in battle. Before he even knew what was happening, his back was touching the wall once again, and he was hard-pressed to find enough space to manoeuvre. The blond elf didn't give him any chance to get his bearings, either, and all he could do was block the blows that were raining down on him as best as he could.

This fight was going ill, that was something the man realised after less than a minute of desperate blocks and fruitless counterattacks. The elf was seemingly everywhere, and if he didn't possess the ability to read his mind (something that began to sound ever more likely with every blow he blocked with ease), he was at least exceedingly good at reading him. It was a frightening and thoroughly disconcerting combination, and Gasur was beginning to believe that this strange, stirring emotion he felt just might be panic. He had to do something, and he had to do it soon, or it would be too late. He disliked fair fights – just who would choose to fight fairly if you could so easily ensure that the odds were in your favour? – but he had seen enough of them to know that he wouldn't last longer than another minute or two.

The golden-haired elf blocked another one of his attacks, one of the trickier ones that had surprised a lot of people in the past, looking as if he was nothing more than humouring a child who was learning to wield a blade. Gasur felt how the ever-present anger in his heart flared to life once again, pushing back the fear and filling his limbs with new strength. He would not be beaten by an elf, not even by this one!

Gasur lashed out with his sword, the all-consuming anger making the movement smooth and fast. For a mortal, it would have been hard to block the blow, but Glorfindel merely stepped slightly to the side and brought his own sword up with a movement that could almost have been called lazy. The two blades met with a clash, and even though Gasur pushed with all his strength, the elf's sword didn't budge even a single inch. He didn't look as if he was doing anything strenuous either, and merely gazed at him with those cold, blue eyes that could as well have been painted pebbles. There was nothing in those eyes, nothing but a faint curiosity and something else he could not identify, but if Gasur had been of the superstitious kind, he would have said that it was his death that was visible there, waiting for him.

Acalith's captain was not a superstitious man, however, unlike his hopefully already deceased colleague Reod. He was a realist, though, and therefore allowed the elf to push him backwards, into the direction of the wall. In the last moment, he twisted to the side, determined not to let himself be cornered like this, and even while he was moving, his left hand went to the back of his belt, to the hidden sheathes in which he carried his knives in battle. He had always preferred his knives to a sword – they were so much more handy and also made everything a lot more personal – and had, in addition to that, also found that most men didn't expect to be confronted with them in a sword fight, naïve fools that they were.

The man was already grinning in anticipation when he brought down the dagger, aiming for the elf's unprotected left side. The grin vanished in an instant when his blade hit nothing but air, but he wasn't given long to ponder this. A kick to his own left side sent him flying forward, and he impacted headfirst with the stone wall. Only the fact that he fell to his knees for a second saved his life, for he could feel the breeze of a blade that was cutting through the air right above his head. Desperation and panic lending him strength, Gasur pushed himself back to his feet and whirled back around to the elf, only to see that he needn't have worried. The elf was standing a few feet away, watching him out of darkened, merciless eyes in the same way in which a warg would have watched a helpless fawn.

"I am disappointed, adan," Glorfindel told the captain in a lenient tone of voice, shaking his head slightly in disapproval. "That trick was already old when I was young, and that means something. I had expected something more original from you."

"Your friends weren't disappointed," Gasur spat, averting his eyes against his will. There was nothing but the promise of death and revenge in the other's eyes, and he wouldn't look at it a second longer than he absolutely had to.

"So I have seen," the elf lord retorted in a calm tone of voice that was belied by the angry fire in his eyes. "Come now," he went on, gesturing with his free hand, "is that all you have? Is there nothing more? An elfling could beat you, with his eyes closed and his hands tied behind his back."

The man looked at him with wide, too bright eyes that clearly spoke of the ever-growing panic that was growing inside of him.
"Your friend couldn't, though," he told him spitefully, carefully edging away from the golden-haired elf. "He didn't put up much of a fight while we were slaughtering his men!"

Even the most imperceptive person would have noticed that that had been the wrong thing to say. The darkened eyes became even blacker and more merciless, and finally, after all these years, the 'Fox' could understand why people talked about the Elves the way they did. There was something on the elf's face – or rather behind it, as if it was hiding behind a mask that was firmly affixed to his features. Now, however, the mask had weakened or slipped, and for only a second the man could glimpse something so mighty and terrible that it made his breath hitch in his throat. There was something there that was as old as the hill on which Donrag was built, something old and ruthless and pitiless that made the elf look even more terrifying.

"My friend," Glorfindel began in a very, very soft tone of voice, not moving a muscle, "is a scholar. An advisor, a teacher, a councillor – not a warrior. It is not his duty to fight; it is his duty to make sure that all others possibilities are tried so that we don't have to fight and kill. He has ten times the courage you could ever have, móradan." He looked at Gasur, his head cocked slightly to the side, and gave him a look full of all the hate and loathing and guilt that was building inside of him. "It is my duty to protect those who are members of my lord's household, and all those he names guests and friends. I have failed that duty, but I am more than willing to make up for it."

Before he had even spoken the last word, Glorfindel was moving, so quickly that Gasur barely saw more than a fast-moving blur. He hadn't survived as long as he had by being a bad fighter, though, and so he dodged instinctively, ducking to the side. The movement had been meant to move him out of harm's way, but just the opposite happened. While the captain was still contemplating just how the elf had figured out into which direction he would be moving, a steely hand took a fistful of his shirt and slammed him against the wall once again, this time even harder than the first.

For a moment, the man was stunned, and he came to a second or two later, blood dripping down his forehead. The hand that had banged him against the tall stone wall was still gripping his clothing, and the knowledge that it must the elf's hand was enough to make Gasur open his eyes again. He immediately wished that he hadn't, for he looked into the coldest, most pitiless eyes he had ever seen attached to any breathing creature.

"Do you feel it now, adan?" the blond elf asked softly, his blue eyes boring into Gasur's light brown ones. "The fear, the paralysing dread that makes it impossible to move or think or breathe? I know it well; too well, really. Erestor should never have known it. Now he does, and all because of you, because of your narrow-minded hatred and pathetic anger. Do you feel it, Gasur? Mark it well, for it will be the last thing you ever feel."

Gasur looked back at the death that the elf's eyes promised him, and it actually took him some moments to realise that he still held his sword in his hand that was dangling at his side. The elf was standing in front of him, one of his fists bunched in the material of his shirt, but he didn't seem to notice or care.

Twisting to the side, the man brought the blade up, intending to slice open the elf's side. Glorfindel was already gone, though, having seen the attack coming a long time ago. He side-stepped the attack, moving lazily to the side, and raised his own sword. While Gasur was moving past him, unable to stop his own momentum, the blade moved through the air and neatly cut his throat from one ear to the other.

Acalith's captain fell to the ground as abruptly as a puppet whose strings have just been cut, blood gushing out of the gaping cut. There was a horrible, gurgling sound to be heard that would have stirred pity in Glorfindel's breast if it had been coming from anyone but this man, and Gasur's hands were futilely reaching up, as if he was trying to stem the flood flow with nothing but his fingers.

Glorfindel paid all this almost no attention at all and merely sheathed his sword with a slow and very deliberate movement, not even deigning to look at the man. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes for a moment and finally turned to Gasur, staring into the man's failing, disconcerting brown eyes. There was neither satisfaction nor regret on his face and only a cold, unreadable look in his eyes, as if the whole episode had been nothing but a troublesome formality.

"Thank Eru for this, adan," he told the dying man in a completely unemotional tone of voice. "Thank him that I am in a hurry; thank him that I do not have the time to make this last as long as you deserve. Thank him that I do not get the chance to do what I had planned."

There was nothing Gasur could have said to that, with his throat neatly slit from one side to the other, and so all that could be heard were the gurgling noises that grew weaker by the second. The sounds of the battle drew closer still, but Glorfindel ignored them and kept staring at the fading man in front of him.

He had kept his promise to Erestor, the elf lord told himself when the gurgling finally stopped completely. He had not failed his friend in this at least. It didn't really matter, not when one considered how badly he had already let him down, but it was better than nothing. In some dark way it would help the other elf, that he knew, and even despite everything that had happened and everything this man had done to Erestor, he was relieved that all he felt at his death was a deep satisfaction and no real joy.

This … creature hadn't merited more, and he was glad about it.

Glorfindel gave the dead captain a last, long look and decided that satisfaction was more than enough before he turned back to the house to fulfil his other promise and find Elrond.

There were some things you never forgot, Elrond decided, like swimming or riding a horse. No matter how much time passed since you'd last done it – and considering that elves were immortal, that could be quite a long time indeed – you always remembered how to do it without even having to make an effort.

Fighting was another one of these things, and so was killing.

Since the horrible, tragic days that his former advisor Cornallar had brought upon them, when Aragorn had suddenly disappeared, he hadn't fought against men. And even then he had been too busy with Cornallar himself to concern himself too much with the mercenaries the other elf had hired, and too busy keeping himself and his adopted son alive. Before that, he hadn't taken up a sword against the Second People in anger and wrath for thousands of years, not since the War of the Last Alliance.

This was different, though, horribly different in a way he did not even want to think about. The men he was fighting, the men he was killing, weren't thralls of Sauron who were doing his bidding willingly. They were normal humans who, under more fortuitous circumstances, would have become farmers, or smiths or innkeepers. One false decision, one wrong turn was all it took, and now they were facing him and his men, completely without any chance at all of beating them or even escaping unscathed. He was relatively certain that few of them actually believed in what they were doing or even knew why they were doing it and that they were only following orders.

That didn't excuse their actions, of course. Elrond was enough his father's son to look dimly and decidedly disinclined to mercy upon those who hurt his guests, his people and especially his family, and he was in no mood to look for excuses for the men he was fighting. They were adults, after all, and made their own decisions. Every decision had consequences, and if these soldiers hadn't been able to realise that … well, then it was high time that someone demonstrated it to them.

The thing that was bothering the half-elf, however, was that he had indeed not forgotten how to fight. He still knew how to – there was, after all, little difference between fighting an orc and fighting a man – but there was something else he hadn't felt in a long time, longer than he actually cared to remember: The fierce joy that could consume you, the feeling of invincibility that a battle could give you.

Elrond stopped for a moment to get his bearings, his eyes following the elven warriors that had finally managed to break through the men's lines. His lips thinned as he realised that that was just it: He was enjoying this, far more than he should have. His Noldorin blood was strong, and the sweet call of vengeance was something that was not easily ignored. All he could do was hold on to his control and self-restrained and force himself not to let himself be carried away with it. He didn't want to kill these men, after all, not really, anyway. They might deserve it in some way, but he still had a firm enough grasp on the situation to know that it would be wholly, undeniably wrong. Nothing good would come of it but sorrow and grief, and it wouldn't help anybody.

Besides, the humans had fought bravely, and that was something he had to honour. They had been desperate, granted, but the defences that brown-haired officer had thrown up in all haste had held far longer than he had thought possible. Elrond frowned while he waved his long, blood-encrusted sword to the left, shouting and gesturing at Meneldir to take his men further to the left and close the gap in their lines. He didn't know what had happened to the man, but the last time he had looked into his direction Elladan had been there, facing the human with his blade drawn and ready.

Elrond wouldn't have wanted to bet much on the officer's chances of survival. If there was one thing that was not to be contested, it was that the twins could be stirred to a rather impressive wrath, and that they took any attack on each other or their siblings very, very personal indeed. That thought was enough to send a cold shiver down his back, and Elrond gripped his sword more tightly and strode forward. His youngest son was missing somewhere in Aberon, his second youngest son was missing somewhere here, and his oldest son was apparently right now going on a killing spree. He wasn't completely sure about it, of course, but he was rather certain that he should do something about that.

He gave the courtyard a quick glance, and with open glee that was rather unbecoming an elf lord he realised that it was going quite well. Over to the right, close to the main stairway and the scaffold, Elladan's warriors had broken through the men's lines. Elladan himself was nowhere to be seen, but there were simply so many warriors crowding around the scaffold that that wasn't particularly surprising. On the left side, everything was going well enough, too; Isál's commanders, Meneldir and Dólion, were doing a fine job directing their warriors.

Essentially, everything was going according to plan. It was the thing that probably frightened him the most – if he had learned one thing over the past few millennia, it was that anything that looked too good to be true usually was, too. The last thing everything had been going according to plan during a battle, Sauron had appeared and had slain his friend and king. Even though he doubted that something like that would happen again, it was a rather disconcerting realisation.

Deciding to ignore said realisation, Elrond pushed his way through his warriors who had reached the main building by now. There was a door visible to the right, clearly a service entrance of some sort, and even while he was watching, the first elven warrior reached it and disappeared inside the mansion. The soldiers had already been in more or less full retreat by the time their line had collapsed, and were now chaotically fleeing from the advancing elves. The warriors let them go; they were angry, yes, but none of them would sink so low as to strike down a fleeing enemy.

Confident that everything was as much under control as it probably would be in the next few hours, Elrond made his way over to Meneldir, Isál senior captain. During the battle the blond elf had acquired a cut to his left arm and another bruise to his face that went quite nicely with the one that was already decorating his left cheek, but otherwise he seemed unharmed. He was in the process of separating his men into two groups, a larger one that would sweep the courtyard and a smaller one that would follow the fleeing men into the house, and seemed to be enjoying himself. If his brief captivity in the salt-mines had affected him in any way, he certainly did not show it.

The commander paused when his lord joined his men and him, still looking calm and regal even despite the blood that was coating his drawn sword and covering his clothing.
"My lord?"

Elrond waved the unspoken question aside and gave the younger elf a quick smile.
"Do not worry, Commander. I am quite all right." Meneldir looked somewhat dubious at that, but was apparently too polite to disagree. "I will have to borrow your men," Elrond went on, looking at the smaller group of elves. "There is something of which someone has to take care. Try to find my son or Lord Glorfindel; if you can find Lord Glorfindel, he is in charge, if not, Elladan is."

The blond elf inclined his head smoothly, looking very much as if he was forcibly restraining his curiosity.
"Of course, my lord. We will find them."

"A good thing it will be, too," Elrond returned the smile that was at odds with his dishevelled, blood-spattered appearance. "They are bound to be in some sort of trouble. Don't let Lord Glorfindel's manner fool you, pen-neth. He is very capable of finding a lot of trouble on his own."

Meneldir was clearly trying to figure out what to say to that – to disagree would seem disrespectful, and to agree was a very bad idea since Lord Glorfindel heard about everything – but Elrond had already turned and begun to hurry over to the mansion, the young commander's warriors at his heels. A few moments later, their little group had crossed the threshold and made its way up the simple stone steps that led up to the first level of the building. As soon as he had stepped off the landing, Elrond looked about himself and moved forward, spying a small man who looked like a servant, standing no more than ten yards away and staring at them with wide eyes.

Less than a second later, the man's back was pressed against the stone wall of the corridor and he was staring at one of the grimmest faces he had ever seen in his life. The dark-haired elf in front of him was resting the tip of his bloody sword against the wall next to his cheek, and the man had to drag his eyes away from the blood-encrusted blade to look at the elf who was holding it. Behind him, there was a small group of elven warriors, spread out in the narrow corridor, and to say that they looked unfriendly would have been the understatement of the century.

"Where is she?" was all that the elf asked, his voice sounding almost friendly.

"S-she?" the man stammered. Later he would be able to swear that his heart froze under the glare that hit him then, a glare full of carefully controlled anger that was as terrible and dark as a moonless night in Mordor.

"Yes, she," Elrond repeated, his voice not so friendly anymore. "Your lady. Acalith. Where can I find her? Where are her personal quarters?"

The man had been one of Lady Acalith's servants since she had married their lord, and he considered himself faithful and loyal. Now, however, when faced with this stony-faced elf and his equally stony-faced companions, all thoughts of misdirection or deception fled from his mind as if they had never existed. Nobody in their right state of mind would seriously have thought about lying to this dark-haired elf.

"Up … up a level," the human replied, fear almost choking him. "Then down the corridor … the third door on the right."

For a moment, Elrond merely looked at him, but then the blade next to the terrified man's head was removed and the elf lord smiled at him. "Thank you."

The man was staring at him as if he had just stated that he was in reality a particularly humourous orc in disguise. He didn't even try to run away when Elrond stepped away from him, nodded at his men and turned on the heel, walking back the way he had come. The half-elf had already forgotten the small man when he reached the second floor and turned right, counting the doors as he passed them.

Faint surprise went through him when he realised that there were neither guards here nor anybody else. The servants and inhabitants of this level must have abandoned it a while ago when it had become clear that the battle was decided. The corridor was dark and deserted, and the only thing that could be heard was the almost inaudible sound of their footsteps. Elrond's suspicions were roused immediately. He didn't know anything about Acalith, he had in fact never met her, but he was reasonably certain that she wasn't all that different from all the other human leaders he had met in his years. That there were no guards or handmaidens or anything of the sort could only be a bad sign.

Elrond was torn out of his musings when they reached the third door on the right, and he stopped in front of it, looking blankly at the beautifully carved wooden surface. He did not fight women and children nor would he ever – that was something he had sworn himself as an elfling on that horrible day when his childhood home had been destroyed by the sons of Fëanor – but he would see to it that Acalith was punished for her crimes. She was the one who had planned Erestor's ambush, who had ordered his warriors to be killed, his sons and friend to be tortured and perhaps killed and on whose orders Elrohir had almost been executed, and he would be damned if he would let her escape.

For a moment, memories resurfaced of how he had rounded the corner of one of the storage buildings and had come face-to-face with a scene that might have come right out of his worst nightmares, causing a cold shiver to run down his back. The sight of Elrohir being pushed up that scaffold had been enough to almost make him lose control, and if it hadn't been for the half-worried, half-scared looks that Meneldir, Dólion and the other officers had shot him, he might have done just that. He didn't know how Elladan had managed to restrain himself; he guessed it had been connected to a number of threats and the liberal use of force.

The half-elf shook himself inwardly. Elrohir had not died, he was sure he had not. He had lost sight of his son during the battle – of both of them, actually – but he was sure that Elrohir was still alive; he would have felt it had one of the twins had died. What he wouldn't have felt was if Aragorn had died – and perhaps he already had. He wouldn't know until it was already too late, and this sudden realisation that he had been ignoring ever since they had left Aberon suddenly took a hold of him and almost choked him.

With a supreme amount of willpower, Elrond forced it back down, refusing to allow himself to be overwhelmed by it. There was nothing he could do to help his human son; he would have to trust Tibron to do what he could. Aragorn was with Tibron's own son and nephew, so the man would do everything in his power to find the three young men. It was a small consolation, but definitely better than nothing.

Squaring his shoulders, Elrond reached out with his left hand and pushed the door open. He crossed the threshold, his long grey cloak trailing after him, his left hand still gripping the pommel of his sword. He tensed unconsciously as his still sharp warrior instincts told him that there might be danger looming; if there was a good place for an ambush, it would be here, when you had to walk down a narrow corridor to reach the main room. Nothing happened, however, something that surprised him very much. No one tried to stab, strangle, shoot at or attack him in any way, and Elrond stepped unhindered into the main room, his warriors following close behind.

It was the room of a lady, that much was clear at a single glance. The walls were covered from floor to ceiling with finely woven tapestries, and colourful rugs covered the cold stone tiles. The room they had entered was a sitting room of some sort, with some armchairs, a large fireplace and a large wooden table. To the right, there was a door that stood slightly ajar and seemed to lead to a large bedroom; the corner of a large four-poster bed could just be seen through the crack.

At first, Elrond thought that they were too late and that Acalith had already fled. It wouldn't have surprised him overly much; they had given her ample time to realise that her soldiers would lose this particular battle, after all, and therefore ample time to make her escape. A moment later, however, a small movement caught his eye and he turned to the left, his hand automatically tightening on his sword. It took him a moment to realise what had alarmed him, but then he saw that what he had thought to be yet another tapestry was in fact a curtain that hid a large picture window. Right now, it also hid the figure of a young woman, who turned around to face them, pushing back the curtain in the process.

The first thing Elrond noticed was how young she looked; she could not be much older than Aragorn. She was beautiful as well, he thought, with long, dark, curly hair, dark-blue eyes and white skin. The dark gown she was wearing was of the finest quality, accentuating her pale skin and flowing around her slender figure. She would have been truly beautiful if it hadn't been for the merciless, cold, haughty sparkle in her eyes that no amount of trying would ever be able to hide.

The young woman raised an eyebrow and gave the half-elf a condescending look, managing to infuse such a simple action with almost incredible arrogance. Elrond noticed that there was only a low railing in front of the open window, a railing that looked completely insufficient and caused the father of four children in him to start worrying immediately.

"So," the woman began in a tone of voice that clearly stated that she was only marginally interested in this conversation. "You must be Lord Elrond. It is a pleasure."

The half-elf looked back at her, not even wondering how she had known who he was. He hadn't expected her to have got to where she was now by being stupid, careless or badly informed.
"And you must be Acalith. I knew your husband; he was a reasonable man. A strict man and prone to sudden fits of fury, maybe, but a fair one as well." Elrond paused for a second and then added, sounding mildly curious, "Did you kill him?"

To his surprise, Acalith did not try to deny it and merely smiled at him broadly, something that would have looked enchanting on someone else.

"He was a tedious old fool who liked his women silent, pliant and obedient. He slept with every servant girl he could his hands on, and expected me to accept it quietly and with good grace. I married him for his position, he married me for my looks, and if he had ever realised that I was more intelligent than him, he would have cast me out without thinking twice. And to answer your question: Yes, I did." She smiled again, this time so darkly that it almost caused Elrond to shiver openly. "Poison is a wife's best friend, wouldn't you agree?"

"I am trying to work out how it is possible that you are so young and your soul is already dead," Elrond answered, ignoring her question and not even trying to keep the loathing out of his voice. He didn't have an answer anyway; he was reasonably sure that Celebrían's 'best friend' wasn't poison. If his wife ever wanted to kill him, she wouldn't resort to something as unsatisfactory as that. She would take a knife and ram it between his ribs.

"Spoken like a true elf," Acalith sneered, the beautiful mask slipping for a moment. "What do you want? Kill me for my 'crimes'? Very well then, go ahead. I am unarmed."

"Neither I nor my men will harm you," Elrond retorted coolly. "We will take you to Aberon, where you and your supporters will stand trial and answer for your deeds."

For a moment, Acalith merely stared at him, looking almost amused, and finally started laughing loudly and deprecatively.
"I? Stand trial in Aberon?" she asked when she had regained control over herself. "Allow myself to be judged by their council and their worthless citizens?" A cold, deathly certainty laid itself over her features. "Never."

"You have no choice in that matter," Elrond told her uncompromisingly and took a step forward that was mirrored by his men. "You can either leave this room on your own or you will be carried."

"Don't I now?" Acalith asked softly, turning back to look down onto the silent garden below her window. "I wonder where it all went wrong," she said quietly, as if to herself. "What was the point when it all got out of control? I should never have trusted Hurag. Never trust a man from Aberon, never." She turned back to Elrond, curious interest on her face. "What are you doing here? Everybody, every single person who was asked, said that you wouldn't risk attacking us, that you wouldn't risk your precious warriors for that. They all said that you wouldn't fight, that you don't like to fight."

The elf lord looked back at her, his face emotionless and cold.
"Just because I do not like to fight does not mean that I cannot."

"No, it wouldn't," Acalith agreed with an irrational smile. "And just because you give me two options – to leave this room voluntarily or to be carried – does not mean that I will choose one of them."

Her smile widened as she took a step backwards and then another until the back of her knees hit the metal railing, her eyes not leaving the dark-haired elf's face. Elrond began to move forward, but stopped as soon as he realised that he would only alarm her further and would never reach her in time.

"I will not be judged by them," the young woman went on. "You are too late, though. They are going to the deepest pits of the underworld, just as they deserve, and there is nothing you can do about that." She gave Elrond a last, erratic smile. "Tell your advisor – if you find him alive – that I will miss our little conversations. They were infuriating, but also very entertaining."

Before Elrond or one of the warriors could move a single muscle, Acalith had turned around, her long hair flying wildly about her head. With a single step she had climbed over the railing, and another step sent her over the edge of the windowsill. There was a long silence and then a soft thump as her body hit the ground far below.

Elrond took a deep breath, automatically sheathed the sword he was still gripping and slowly walked up to the window. Even though he did not want to, he leaned forward, his eyes wandering over the dark garden until he found the twisted, still figure of the young woman who was lying half on the ground and half on a stone bench. She was quite clearly very dead.

Another elf stepped up to him, peered over his shoulder, and turned back to his companions, shrugging and shaking his head.

"Good riddance," one of the warriors mumbled under his breath, something that Elrond studiously ignored. He couldn't disagree, after all.

The way back to the courtyard took a lot longer. The fighting had finally shifted here into the house, and even though there were few soldiers who were still willing to resist, there were panicking humans everywhere who were desperately trying to get out of the house and to safety or who were simply taking advantage of the chaos to grab whatever valuables they could find. In the end, the small group of elven warriors simply ignored the humans around them and pushed their way through the crowds, having figured out that it took far too long to go around them.

Elrond was just side-stepping an elderly woman who was running down the corridor, a large golden plate in her arms, when a shout drew his attention.
"Ada! Over here!"

The half-elf's head whipped up and around, and before one of his warriors could even blink, he had moved forward with a speed that was quite impressive. A moment later he was fiercely hugging the tall, dark-haired figure of his younger twin son, gripping the younger elf so tightly that any objective observer would have got a little bit worried.

"Elrohir," the elf lord breathed softly, gripping his son's forearms while stepped back and surveying his wayward child closely. "Never do that again, do you hear me? Never! Whatever were you thinking?"

"Yes, ada," Elrohir answered obediently, a broad grin of pure relief on his face. "I will try not to. Getting almost executed gets rather tedious with time."

"I can imagine," Elrond smiled back. The smile disappeared quickly enough, though, and he added, worriedly, "Are you all right, ion nín? Are you hurt?"

"No, I am fine," Elrohir tried to comfort his father. "I have to admit that it was a close thing, though. I was very relieved about Elladan's spectacular entrance."

"Yes, he is good at that," his father agreed wryly.

"Very," Elrohir nodded, giving their surroundings a quick, wry look. "So the house is not quite under control yet?"

"No," Elrond admitted. "Their lines just crumbled. We managed to push our way through in the end, but they fought harder than I would have thought."

"They were desperate," the younger elf shrugged. "And who can blame them?" He paused when a thought seemed to strike him. "What are you doing here then, father? Why have you separated from the rest of the warriors? Has it something to do with Elladan? Did you lose him?"

Elrond almost smiled at his son's open worry.
"No, it hasn't. Elladan is outside and should be just fine. Young Celylith and Captain Isál are with him; they should take care of him."

"Good," Elrohir nodded. "I know how much he likes to gloat, and I would hate to see him robbed of such an opportunity." He looked up at his father, eyes dark and calm. "I met Hurag."

Elrond only nodded slowly, not having to ask just what his son was telling him.
"And I Acalith. She jumped out of a window."

"Yes, she would have," Elrohir replied, unaffected.

The news clearly didn't surprise the twin. He was about to say more, but suddenly he stiffened as he remembered Legolas' pale, blood-smeared face that had looked so dead and lifeless when he had last seen him, when he had been pushed up the stairs to the scaffold. There was something else, a horrible knowledge connected to something Acalith had told him, but all he could remember in his panic was his blond friend's white face.

"Ada!" he exclaimed, his eyes widening suddenly. He unceremoniously grasped his father's hand and began to drag him to the left, into the direction of the courtyard. "Legolas!"

Elrond allowed himself to be dragged, worry beginning to gnaw at him like a voracious predator. It wasn't like Elrohir to lose his head like this.
"Calm yourself, Elrohir. What happened to Legolas?"

"Gasur stabbed him," Elrohir replied, hastening his steps until he was almost running. Any man or woman who saw him coming only took one look at his face and took a step to the side in order to avoid him. "In the stomach, ada. He stabbed him, about half an hour before the attack, and twisted the knife. I bound the wound as best as I could, but he was dying when I last saw him." His grip on his father's hand tightened. "You must help him, father. He was in so much pain … Elbereth, in so much pain…"

Elrohir's voice trailed off and he swallowed convulsively. He quickened his pace once again and Elrond let him, the worry transforming into a cold knot of dread that threatened to choke him. A stomach wound. A bad stomach wound that was about an hour old and had basically been left untreated…

The Valar help them, and the prince most of all.

Whether it was oxygen deprivation, the severity of his wounds or pure and simple exhaustion, Aragorn would never know, but his brain decided that it had put up with more than enough and that there were limits to everything.

Aragorn frowned inwardly, trying to decide whether or not it was normal that it felt as if his brain had departed once and for all. Probably not, but he was by no means certain about that. Right now he wouldn't have been able to tell anybody what colour his own eyes were. Blue probably, he decided fuzzily. Or maybe green; he was reasonably sure that they weren't brown, at least.

The young ranger was brought out of his musings when he was suddenly dropped to the ground, the fingers that had been gripping his throat loosening suddenly and without warning. He hit the ground hard with his wounded left shoulder, and the pain that went through him at the contact was so fierce that it literally robbed him of the ability to breathe. It also helped him clear his head, though, and that was something he desperately needed. He somehow had to make up for the fact that his brain had abandoned him, hadn't he?

When the red haze that had laid itself over his eyes had receded sufficiently for him to see, Aragorn shook his head again, unwittingly causing it to start spinning once again. By now he was so used to it that he hardly even noticed. Ignoring the way the world was swaying not-so-gently, he looked about himself, sudden fear and hope surging through him all at once.

He was lying on the ground next to Addric, the mercenaries' leader, who was directing his men with his drawn sword. The blade was waving from side to side in an increasingly agitated manner, something that Aragorn found highly pleasing. The brown-haired man was looking none too happy either, his eyes wide and angry and his face twisted into a dark grimace. Only the fact that he was lying no more than three feet away, bound and helpless, prevented Aragorn from starting to laugh loudly. It was so very satisfactory to see the man thus.

Addric's men were in the process of fending off their attackers who had stepped out of their hiding places and were attacking them openly now. There were far more men who were attacking their position than defenders, but the mercenaries were quite clearly desperate. They knew that the men of Aberon would show little mercy if they were captured, and that knowledge gave them strength and speed their attackers found hard to match.

Aragorn decided to be optimistic, though, mostly because he simply didn't have the strength to keep pondering this situation any longer. The men of Aberon were outnumbering them almost two to one, and it was only a matter of time until the mercenaries' position would be overrun. They only had to wait a little more and everything would be over.

Under normal circumstances, Aragorn would have been highly unwilling to let others risk their lives for his sake while he lay on the ground and did nothing, but right now it sounded decidedly attractive. He was simply in no shape to be a help to anybody, and he was rather sure that he would be a threat to Tibron's men as well as to Addric's. He was having a hard time concentrating, and try as he might, the shapes of the fighting men would not stop blurring together into a formless mass. In the condition he was in at the moment, it was entirely possible that he would confuse one of his rescuers with one of Addric's men.

Valar, right now he wouldn't be able to tell apart a hobbit child and a Nazgûl.

The young ranger gave up on trying and lifting his head and had to fight hard to keep his eyes open. There was a fight going on, a fight that was loud enough to wake the dead, but sleep or unconsciousness had never sounded better. To simply relax and allow himself to float off into that dark sea of nothingness would be so wonderful…

Just when Aragorn was about to give in to that particular temptation – if his brain had already decided to abandon him, then why should he stay awake? – when a sound reached his ears, a sound he identified as voice that was calling his name. Or rather, one of his names. He couldn't remember any others, but he was sure he had more.

"Strider! Are you all right? Look at me!"

The sounds of the fighting were too loud for him to make out who was talking to him, and so he slowly and wearily turned his head to the right, frowning until his eyes reluctantly focussed on a face that was no more than two or three yards away. It was a face he knew, he realised that after a heartbeat or two.

Aragorn frowned again while he tried to make sense of what he was seeing. Torel was crawling towards him, his hands free and a knife grasped tightly in one of them. The young man's face was very white and tense, and Aragorn didn't even have to ask himself why. The blade of the knife was bloodstained up to the hilt, and even from his position the ranger could see the motionless body of one of the younger man's guards. The other seemed to have joined the fight, apparently sure that his companion could handle a bound boy who was barely old enough to shave.

He had apparently been wrong, something that pleased Aragorn immensely.

Torel finally reached him and, without any warning, grasped one of his bound arms and turned him over. Aragorn had been sure that the pain he was in simply couldn't increase, but he was swiftly proven wrong as white-hot agony shot through his wounded body. Only the fact that he didn't have enough strength to breathe stopped him from crying out in pain, but a soft, agonised moan made its way past his lips nonetheless.

"I am sorry, Strider," the young man told him immediately while he started to cut the ranger's bonds. "See? I'm already done."

Aragorn had known that even before Torel had spoken the words, for the sensation of blood that was rushing back into his formerly bound, numb hands was enough to bring tears to his eyes. Slowly he pulled his arms in front of him, feeling as if the appendages weren't even connected to his body and had merely been sewn on while he had been numbed by pain. They looked like his arms, though, and one of the fingers of his left hand was bearing the Ring of Barahir, so he was willing to accept – just for now – that they were indeed his.

"Thank you," he told the younger man, his voice rough with pain and exhaustion. He gave Addric a quick look, feeling very relieved when he realised that the brown-haired man had moved away from them and was far too busy with the fight to pay them any attention. There was something he knew they should be trying to do, and he finally could remember what. "Are you ready to get out of here?"

"I thought you would never ask," Torel smiled at him, grasping another knife he had shoved into his belt and pressing it into Aragorn's hands. "Which way?"

Aragorn wrapped his fingers around the dagger's hilt, deciding that that was a very good question indeed. Behind them, there was the dam, the wooden, battering ram-like construction still standing in front of it. The hole the men had dug was widening in front of their eyes as water trickled though the weakened dam, and Aragorn was reasonably certain that it wouldn't take too much to bring the entire construction down. On the other three sides, they were surrounded by fighting men who were entirely too concentrated on trying to kill each other to even notice their existence. The men of Aberon were winning, slowly but surely; they had begun to use their numbers to their advantage and press in on the mercenaries in a manner that barely left them space to move.

"Your uncle really overdid it here a little," he mumbled, not even noticing that he was speaking the words out loud. "He must have gathered half the town."

"Great Ones, and I have never loved him more," Torel replied fervently. "The more, the merrier, isn't that what they say?"

"Indeed," Aragorn replied, the ghost of one of his old grins dancing over his bruised features. "Very well, then. I think…"

He trailed off as his instincts suddenly screamed at him in warning. Not even fully realising what he was doing, he grasped Torel's sleeve and threw both of them to the side. This time, there was too much adrenaline pumping through his veins for him to fully notice the impact, and he had the opportunity to look at the bright, gleaming blade of a sword that cut through the air right where their heads had been just a moment earlier. The dark-haired ranger was already moving, forcing sluggish, uncooperative limbs to obey him, and he pushed himself to his feet, swaying unsteadily once he managed it.

Aragorn's eyes widened in surprise when he saw who had just almost beheaded him and Torel. He had thought that Addric had finally realised what was going on behind him and had decided to deal with them once and for all, or that maybe his own guards had remembered their duty and had returned. What he hadn't even remotely considered was that he would come face-to-face with Damil, the young man who had been one of Torel's friends when both of them had been younger.

Torel had pushed himself to his feet as well, and was now staring at his former friend with a mixture of surprise and loathing on his face.
"You?"

The young man sneered at them, looking remarkably like his father Neran for a moment.
"Yes, me! What is the matter, Torel? Are you surprised to see me?"

The curly-haired youth narrowed his eyes at the other, deciding that his father had been right for once. Damil was becoming more and more like his father, and if nothing happened, he would have turned into a washed-out copy of Hurag's supporter in less than a year.

"Yes, Damil, I am. I had thought that, no matter what your opinions are, you had a bit of your wits left." He paused, apparently realising that insulting the other would not endear himself to him, and took a deep breath to calm himself. "Throw down your weapon, Damil. I am sure I can convince my uncle that you weren't here on your own free will and did Hurag bidding only because you were afraid for your family's safety. Neither you nor your father have to be involved in this."

Damil snorted, his fingers tightening convulsively around the pommel of his sword. He was turning slightly to the side to face his former friend fully, barely even looking at Aragorn.
"Throw down my weapon?" he asked incredulously. "Why would I do that? You are the one who will do so, if you do not wish to die by my hands!"

Torel rolled his eyes openly.
"Look around you, Damil," he told the other man patiently. "Addric will be overrun. Hurag's plans have failed, and nothing you or anybody else do can change that. It is over."

"It is not over!" Damil insisted, sounding quite a bit like a spoiled child. "It is…"

Before he could finish the sentence, the pommel of a knife hit him right behind his right ear. Without warning, the brown-haired youth's eyes rolled back into his head and he collapsed where he stood, unconsciousness claiming him long before he even hit the ground. Aragorn calmly caught the sword that fell from his hands and shook his head before he looked up and met Torel's half-surprised, half-accusatory look.

"I am sorry," Aragorn told the younger man, sounding completely unapologetic. "I just couldn't stand it anymore."

Torel was starting to say something, looking almost amused, but then he froze suddenly, his wide eyes focussed on something behind Aragorn's shoulder. The ranger whirled around, adrenaline once again surging inside of him, and what he saw was almost enough to make his heart stop. The red haze once again laid itself over his vision, but Aragorn ignored it, all his thoughts concentrated on not giving in to the panic that was growing inside of him.

Addric was calmly turning around, turning his back on the fight his men were involved in. There were many things that were to be said about this man, but he wasn't stupid or blind. The lines of his men were crumbling; there were simply too many attackers who fought too viciously. His position would be overrun in less than a minute – no, make that less than half a minute. He and his men would be captured, and would probably die on the scaffold once the inevitable trial was over.

Whether Addric acted out of a warped sense of duty or because he wanted to take as many of his enemies with him as possible, Aragorn would never know, but the brown-haired man started running into the direction of the dam. The young ranger could only watch, wide-eyed, as the man skidded to a halt next to the battering ram, his face hard and cold and full of determination.

Before Aragorn even knew what was going on, he was moving, flying over the wet, muddy ground. Torel had started running in the same moment he had, the same desperation and fear on his face, but the young man reached Hurag's helper just a second before him, probably because his body was co-operating with him and his brain hadn't snuck out through his ears. Addric heard them coming, however, and turned just in time to meet Torel's attack.

Even with the element of surprise on his side, Torel was no match for a professional soldier like Addric. The brown-haired man merely stepped to the side and brought his own sword down, his superior strength and skill making it easy for him to push the younger man back. With a twist of his sword, he managed to free his blade of Torel's and lashed out with a leg, catching the young man squarely in the chest. Torel flew backwards and fell to the ground, winded and unable to move.

Addric was about to turn back to the battering ram-like construction when Aragorn reached him, his injuries screaming at him and slowing him down considerately. Addric grinned at him when their blades met with a crash and shouted something that was lost in the noise of the battle, but Aragorn had a fair idea of what the man had said. The only thing that was keeping him upright right now was adrenaline – lots and lots of it, in fact – and so Aragorn could do nothing more than grit his teeth and concentrate on not letting the man push him back. He was quite sure that he wouldn't withstand a kick such as Torel had received just a moment ago.

In the end, willpower and stubbornness were not enough, and Aragorn's arm wobbled under the strain, his strength finally spent. Addric sensed his adversary's weakness and pushed forward, forcing the ranger to give way. Their blades separated with a grinding noise, and even though Aragorn saw the manoeuvre coming long before Addric started to execute it, he didn't have any strength left to get out of the way. The brown-haired man's fist hit him squarely in the jaw, snapping his head backwards and causing stars to appear in his vision. Aragorn stumbled back, his cut back hitting the hard, cold earth of the dam, and for a few moments nothing mattered but the pain in his head and the fact that the little part of his brain that was still left was rattling loudly in his skull.

Finally, when the nausea and dizziness had abated somewhat, Aragorn opened his eyes again, dimly realising that he had lost the sword he had taken from Damil. He was still holding onto the dagger but could barely feel the smooth handle in his hand. It took his eyes a moment to focus on the scene in front of him, but when they did, his heart skipped a beat and cold panic filled his very being. The noise of the fighting behind him seemed to fade, as if it was suddenly very far away. Addric was standing behind the battering ram, both of his hands gripping the smooth wood. He was pulling the wooden block backwards as far as it would go, preparing to let go of it and allow it to smash into the dam.

Aragorn was moving before he even knew what he was doing. He was only four or five steps away from Addric, but they turned out to be three steps too many. He had barely began moving when Addric pushed with all his strength, letting the wooden battering ram impact with the weakened dam. Aragorn reached his side a moment later, his knife held high and about to strike, but he let it sink down again with a weary gesture. It was too late.

While he was thinking the words, the dam disintegrated. There were simply no other words to describe it. One second, there was a big hole in the dam that was oozing water, the next it was gone, replaced by a gaping opening that was widening by the second. The water that had been pressing against the structure shot through the opening with a roaring, deafening sound, hitting both of them with the force of a charging oliphaunt.

From one moment to the next, Aragorn was smashed against the side of the dam, unable to breathe or see or think. Icy water was everywhere, and the ranger's tired brain could hardly figure out where was up and where was down. He had been standing close enough to the dam to be caught in the less strong current that was going sideways, the current that wasn't pulling one with it through the hole but rather to the side, downstream. The dam itself was deflecting the main current sufficiently to create complete chaos where you could never predict in what direction you would be pulled next, and even if the young ranger had been in a less weakened condition, he was sure that he wouldn't have been able to resist it.

Before he knew what was happening, he was being pulled with it, out through the crumbling remnants of the earthen dam. Reaching about himself desperately, his fingers closed around something hard and solid. Realising that it was a part of the scaffold that Addric's men had put up here in order to hide their work, Aragorn's uninjured left hand grasped the wooden beam with all his strength. Something shot past him, looking a lot like Addric, and even though he was suffocating and weak and unable to see, Aragorn had to smile. If this wasn't poetic justice, then what was?

All mirth fled from his mind when his fingers began to slip, though, and Aragorn reinforced his hold, pouring all his remaining strength into the simple action of grasping the wooden beam and not letting go. He just had to hold on a little while longer, just a little while longer…

He was rudely torn out of his mantra when, even over the roaring sound of the water, he heard a choked cry of pain and fear. Blinking water out of his eyes, Aragorn saw something move towards him, a large shape that was waving its arms and legs frantically, the hands grasping futilely at the water in an attempt to stop its momentum. A part of Aragorn had already identified the shape while the larger part of him was still staring at it blankly, and his right hand shot out, grasping the edge of the figure's shirt.

The pain in his broken hand was almost enough to make him pass out, but Aragorn ignored it as best as he could, his eyes fixing on the pale features of Torel. The young man was staring at the swollen, bandaged hand that was firmly wrapped around the material of his shirt, his eyes wide and panicky in his face. He said something, too soft for Aragorn's ears to understand it over the deafening roaring of the water, but the pleading expression on his face was impossible to overlook or misinterpret.

Aragorn looked back at the younger man, trying to tell him without words that there was no way, no way at all, that he would let go of him. Torel began to try and bring his arms above his head to grasp Aragorn's hand, but he never made it farther than to the height of his shoulders. There was no way he could have heard Aragorn's shouted warning over the cacophony of sounds that was filling the air, and so there was a look of pure, unadulterated surprise on his face when the remains of the wooden battering ram impacted with his shoulder. The young man's body jerked violently, and even over the roaring of the water Aragorn could hear the tearing of cloth. Torel's head snapped up, his frightened eyes fixing on Aragorn's face, and then he was gone, carried away by the current so swiftly that Aragorn was still staring at the space he had occupied when he had long disappeared from view.

A sudden numbness began to spread inside of the young ranger that had nothing to do with the water's freezing temperature and that was only interrupted by the sharp, stabbing pain in his hands. Aragorn slowly and wearily raised his head, fighting against the current, and looked at his left hand, watching detachedly as one finger after the next slipped, his strength finally spent.

The last finger lost its grip and he was swept away, the current pushing him under the surface of the river as effortlessly as a troll trampled a flower. He had no strength left to fight or to resist, and all he could think of was how stupid it was to die like this, after everything he'd been through in these Valar-forsaken towns. Water began to fill his mouth and nose as he was pulled deeper under the surface, and when his head connected with something hard and unyielding a moment later, he was already well on his way into unconsciousness

The last thing he saw before the beckoning darkness swallowed him whole was the bright light of Eärendil's star that was shining down on him in all its cool, soothing glory.

But he knew that it could not be real, because no stars shone tonight, and the sky was covered with dark, grey clouds.

TBC...

pin-nith (pl.) - young ones
Dúnedain - 'Men of the West', rangers
yén (Q.) - elvish unit of time, equivalent to 144 solar years
mellon nín - my friend
adan - human, man
móradan - 'Man of darkness', a rather unfriendly name for the Second People
pen-neth (sg.) - young one
ada - father (daddy)
ion nín - my son

So, that's basically it. All the bad guys are dead - the only problem is, who else is? Erestor, Legolas, Aragorn, Aberon in general - they really are in trouble, aren't they? So, stay tuned for the next chapter, in which we see who survives what and in what way. Oh, and: Sorry about Torel. My alter ego was demanding some sort of sacrifice, and who am I to refuse her? •evil grin• So, sorry. And, as always: Reviews? Yes, please!

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Additional A/N:

The review responses will be coming next weekend, when I'm back from Israel. I humbly beg your forgiveness for this delay - this stupid chapter turned out to be far longer than I'd thought! Blame the characters, not me! Till next weekend, then - and thanks SO MUCH for all your support! •huggles readers•