hello everyone!
Thank you so so much to all who are still with me on this, especially the kind reviewers 0 you guys definitely keep me going. I wish I was faster and better, but I am trying my best :) I have so much on my plate at the moment, but this story is a solace. Thank you for sharing your time with me. As always, C&C's are welcome and wildly appreciated, ajd I hope you enjoy the read as much as I enjoy the writing. Best wishes, all! Without further ado:
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18: Do Not Tell
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Mirkwood, T.A. 2851
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Glorfindel's first instinct was to run blindly in the direction of his recollection of where Legolas had gone. But Mirkwood, already lush and complex, was increasingly in tangles southbound. He suddenly felt dizzied, as if he couldn't tell left from right and up from down, much less determine where that uruk had gone, dragging Legolas with it.
He growled impatiently under his throat, but his years have ingrained in him considerable discipline and restraint too, enough that he knew it would be wiser to stand still and take stock first.
He paused, closed his eyes, and pressed a hand to the closest tree. It quickly sent him a jumble of images and sensations, nothing he could concretely understand.
You are not one of us, Silon had reminded him, You will lose Legolas in the woods...
Glorfindel's breath caught in disappointment and desperation. But clinging more tightly at the bark of a tree wasn't going to do much for him. He tried to calm himself, and found his fervent desire melting into an urgent prayer.
I pray for you...
I pray for you.
Glorfindel opened his eyes more centered, and with a better sense of direction. He did not know if it was gods-given, only that there was a sudden, empowering certainty in his heart and in his steps. He followed the smell of orc body and blood. He followed the disturbed ground. He reached out his fea to seek Legolas', and this he found like a beacon. Like a candle in the night, a light in the dark. Legolas was alive, and very much awake.
May the light of your life be a torch on the path of the lost...
They all led to the same place, and Glorfindel stalked through the forest in that direction, suddenly unmissable. Every step brought him closer until he was suddenly, almost simply there – where Legolas stood, now holding both the blade that had been previously against his neck and the curved knife that had just been extracted from his stomach. It was black-blood-stained now, and the uruk who once owned the weapons lay dead at his feet beside two others.
Before Legolas was a patrol of uruk-hai reinforcements in ready stances, growling and salivating and panting in anticipation of their vastly outnumbered elven prey, while they slowly formed into position to surround him.
Glorfindel reached out his fea to make sure Legolas knew it was him coming at his back and side; it would be too unfortunate to be skewered upon arrival by a hypervigilant ally. Legolas gave him a brief and barely discernable nod, but otherwise focused his attention on their foes.
The Woodland Prince adopted a ready fighting stance of his own. He looked savage, in Glorfindel's eye – sickly in pallor and wild-eyed, with torn and bloodied clothes and hastily-made, spotted bandages covering injury beneath. But in defiance of it all, his posture was in perfect form and coiled with power, unhampered by disability or pain. If anything, he looked more rabid and dangerous. He didn't just look ready for a fight, he looked as if he was spoiling for it, practically thrumming with anticipation for it.
Glorfindel shared that same appetite, at the moment. Maybe more – Legolas did not know yet, the loss that Glorfindel had left behind and the anger he now carried, moving forward. He would speak of it later, if they lived through this.
Glorfindel struck first. Even before the bloodthirsty orc. Even before the savage prince. He was not sure what it made him, only that he was angry, and he wanted this ridiculous exercise over with so that he could deal with all his other myriad problems.
Beside him, he could see flashes of Legolas' golden hair, striking against the darkness of their enemies and striking against their deep-hued blood. It danced and whipped in the winds with Legolas' almost impossible movements. He did not look hampered by the physical laws of the world, much less the bodily injury he carried.
Glorfindel kept one eye on him and another on one faceless foe after another after another. All too quickly, his rage melted away into the rhythm of experience and prowess. He simply cut them all down. Sometimes, sometimes, it was just too damned easy to kill.
Suddenly, the last face fell and none came after it.
Suddenly, there was time to take stock.
The forest floor was carpeted in the blood and bodies of their enemies. A sea of their askew limbs and anguished faces separated the two golden elven warriors left standing. Legolas had never looked so far, Glorfindel thought, their distance seemed insurmountable. To get to the other, he had to cross a hellish landscape.
The blue gaze of the other elf met Glorfindel's – it was so wide and wild it almost belonged to a stranger. Legolas had almost always held himself in close control, and Glorfindel knew this was Rossenith's potion at work.
Glorfindel moved around the bodies toward Legolas, while the other did the same. They would meet somewhere in between. In the meantime, they kept their gazes on each other. Legolas' was unreadable, and Glorfindel wondered if it meant Legolas still did not know what to think or feel about what Glorfindel had done.
Legolas broke the silence first. He was more restless.
"You and I," he said as he caught his breath, "We need to have a conversation about your concept of non-interference."
"I made no such promises," Glorfindel told him tightly.
Legolas narrowed his eyes and looked thoughtful at that, and he frowned upon his recollections of the night they had spoken about Legolas' preference for death over captivity. He had tried to extract a promise from Glorfindel not to interfere, but Glorfindel had been very careful not to give his word. Legolas sighed in defeat.
They stopped within an arm's length of each other. Glorfindel's eyes rove over the younger warrior's powerful form, wondering and at the same time apprehensive that Legolas' movements showed no disruption from injury at all.
"Maybe all's well that ends well," the prince said tentatively, making Glorfindel look up at his face again. He had a hesitant smile trembling at his lips. "Silon's harebrained scheme worked, after all. I will not let him hear the end of this – that he can communicate with the orc better than he could with all the rest of nature."
Glorfindel winced, and Legolas' gaze was drawn down to Glorfindel's hands.
"That is Silon's sword," the prince said in confusion.
Glorfindel looked down too; he had not bothered checking what and whose weapons he had picked up, in his blinding rage and rush to get here. He had picked up Silon's. He looked at Legolas' face, and at the crushing realizations dawning there.
Legolas' wild eyes hardened, and without a word he turned away from Glorfindel and started running back the way they came, back to where Silon's body was left.
Glorfindel followed, but a wood-elf running amongst the twists, turns and tangles of his forest was near impossible to catch up to, and the prince's figure became a smaller, more distant sight.
The closer they got to where Silon lay dead, the farther and farther Legolas became.
You will lose him in the woods...
Glorfindel persevered and stuck to Legolas. But by the time he had broken to the clearing past the tree line, the prince was already on his knees by Silon's body.
Tears streamed continuously and almost absently from his blue, blue eyes, but his face was set like stone. His adroit hands – the most capable on a warrior that Glorfindel had ever seen in all his lives combined – flailed and trembled now. They did not know where and how to touch the body before him. They hovered over the half-treated wound at Silon's still chest, hovered over the slack face with the empty gaze looking up at the heavens.
Glorfindel hadn't waited for Silon to die, when he left. But he was most certainly dead, now.
Legolas' hesitant hands settled for Silon's dark gold, almost coppery hair. He brushed at the smooth strands lovingly.
"What happened?" he asked hoarsely. "He was unharmed. I remember he was tending me..."
"The uruk that took you struck him before taking you away," Glorfindel answered. "He was unarmed and defenseless. I am sorry."
Legolas' hands squeezed at the tips of Silon's hair before he reached for Silon's face and closed his empty hazel eyes. Legolas' hands were uruk-bloodied, however, and he unintentionally stained Silon's cheeks.
"Damn it," he grunted, and he clumsily pulled his torn shirt forward to wipe the offensive stain off. "Damn it, Silon. Damn it all."
Glorfindel was biting his lips so hard he was drawing blood. Legolas was clearly anguished, and he did not even know the rest of this sordid tale.
Do not tell Legolas...
Do not tell Legolas...
Glorfindel lowered himself to his haunches, and placed Silon's sword by the poor Mirkwood soldier's dead, slack hand.
"You should have let me die," Legolas said bitterly, under his breath. Glorfindel looked up at him, but Legolas wouldn't do the same. He could have been speaking to either Silon or Glorfindel, for the parts they both played in saving him, for the parts they both played in Silon's ultimate death: Silon for bargaining with the uruk, and Glorfindel for depriving Legolas of his last resort.
"My lords!" Istor called out from behind them. He was still tending Rochanar's youngest son.
Legolas rose to his feet and walked in their direction. He stood over them, looking at the younger elf's situation with a cold gaze.
"He's ceased breathing," Istor reported.
Legolas moved quickly then, with vicious purpose. Glorfindel scrambled after. The elven prince started pounding at Rochanarion's chest, while Glorfindel arranged his head and neck to open up his airways, and started breathing into him.
"Come on," Legolas grunted at the effort of pushing at the younger elf's body. "You are not permitted to die, I've paid too much for you..."
Glorfindel listened with half an ear as he coaxed breath and life back into Rochanarion's battered hroa. He could also feel Legolas' increasing anger, and the mounting desperation of his efforts.
"Eru above you foolish, thoughtless child!" the prince exclaimed, his own breaths coming short now, "I will not countenance your death. If this is how it goes I would have spared us all the bother and slit your throat when we met..."
Legolas was rapidly tiring though, and the frustrated ranting petered away. After a long moment, their efforts were rewarded by a small gasp from the body beneath them.
Rochanarion shuddered back to life, and started coughing to expel away the foul air from his lungs. Legolas wearily sank to his rump on the ground, while Glorfindel held the younger elf still, at the chest.
After the painful – bloody - hacking eased, Rochanarion's glazed eyes drifted to Glorfindel's, and he shakily raised a finger upwards, pointing vaguely up at something in the sky.
Glorfindel, confused, reached for the hand to console him. But Rochanarion was insistent, and shooed the comfort away. He took a careful breath, and pointed again.
"Up," he whispered weakly. "In...the...trees."
Glorfindel turned his head to look, then. And he found, hidden in the branches and the thick foliage, were faces.
Grimed, fearful faces of human children of various ages, in various states of harm and health, looking down at him apprehensively.
A story rapidly unfolded in Glorfindel's mind.
Rochanar's sons, in their ill-conceived efforts to get to Dol Guldur, had by incident thwarted an uruk raiding party's capture and slavery of human children. It was a common activity for the uruks, and it was why there was a camp here. It was also why there were so many soiled ropes lying around.
Rochanar's sons' failed undertaking had resulted in the death of one Mirkwood soldier from the northern outpost; the death of loyal Silon; and ultimately, the death of each other. But by some skewed arithmetic or humor of the gods, the brothers' rash actions had saved the lives of many children.
Glorfindel looked down at the final, living Rochanarion in surprise and disbelief. Their eyes met for one final moment of shared understanding. Then the younger elf's body shuddered, and his eyes rolled back to empty whites. His struggling chest rose and stuttered, then stilled.
There would be no more calling him back.
Even Legolas knew it. He looked up at Glorfindel with weary, haunted eyes.
# # #
Istor and Glorfindel coaxed the children down from the tree's canopy. They were hesitant and very afraid, but they already had some trust of the elves, and Glorfindel supplemented it by reaching for their souls and imparting them with a sense of warmth and assurance. One by one, they came down.
Glorfindel could not help himself. He counted them – as if every life saved could account for the loss of others. Rochanar, taken. Three sons dead. One Mirkwood soldier dead. Silon dead. Heck, even the horse the brothers had ridden to the ground was dead, and two of the horses they brought into battle.
One by one the children came down, enough to numerically account for all the losses and more – the boon to come from all the foolishness and folly of Rochanar's sons.
You can be selfish and stupid and still do some good in the world, Glorfindel thought. It was ironically reassuring, but he could not help his own bitterness. He knew it was a mean thought, especially of the dead, but did not disown it.
I am allowed. I am no god. I have neither their benevolence, nor their caprices.
Istor would reach up for each child and help them to the ground, while Glorfindel ushered them to stand on a clear spot, away from the carnage. He could not shield their eyes from the mess, nor, he found, did he have any compelling desire to.
This is the way of the world, until we can make it better.
But the older of the captives were not immune to hardship, and knew to distract the youngest among them. One of these, a young girl who protectively held the little ones, caught Glorfindel's attention. The ancient warlord knelt before her, so that they could look each other in the eye.
"Are there any more of you hiding elsewhere, my lady?" Glorfindel asked her gently.
Her eyes roved about her companions, counting as Glorfindel had but for different reasons. She shook her head and cleared her throat. "Th-th-this is all of us, m-m-my lord."
He gave her an approving nod, before continuing with his questions. "Were all of you taken from the same place and time?"
She licked at her dry lips, and Glorfindel offered her his water skin to drink from. She did not partake, but passed it on to the younger children.
"Yes, my lord," she answered. "We are p-people of the woods. We were taken from our village home, just south of the old road."
G;orfindel hesitated. He knew arrangements would have to be made to re-patriate the children, but did they even have anything to return to?
"What happened to your home?" he asked her gently, "to your families?"
"The orcs raid and p-p-pillage," she replied, "almost always they end up k-k-killing somebody. But they d-d-do not destroy everything. They like c-coming back every few years or so..." She glanced uncertainly at Legolas behind Glorfindel. "We are known to the folk of the Elvenking. We used t-to have more c-commerce with them, in better times."
Glorfindel glanced Legolas' way too, and realized why the child found the sight so strange. Legolas was still on the ground, but this time, inexplicably crawling on all fours around Silon's body.
Glorfindel gripped the young girl reassuringly by the shoulder. "Arrangements will be made for your safe return, I swear it. But for now - excuse me."
Glorfindel walked quickly to get to Legolas, and squatted beside him.
"Legolas," he called out softly.
The prince, as his colleagues have once said, had more cause for nightmares than most. Glorfindel knew firsthand too, of the occasional torments that plagued his battle-scarred mind. But has Silon's death damaged him irreparably?
Legolas, however, was moving with a purpose. He was scrambling for something on the ground, Glorfindel realized. Something important that had fallen there... Glorfindel's hands turned cold.
"The poisoned seed," Legolas grunted at the ancient warlord, without bothering to look up. "The one that fell when you defied me. Help me find it. I would retrieve if I could. If it were left here and consumed by an animal or some unknowing, wandering child, death would be swift."
Do not tell Legolas.
Do not tell Legolas.
Do not tell Legolas.
But how couldn't he? Glorfindel stayed where he was, wondering if he should lie, or pretend to look for the thing until the unlikely event that Legolas decided to give up on it. He had to do or say something, anything. But Glorfindel was at a loss.
"Help me look," Legolas snapped, looking up at Glorfindel, then. "It is your fault it is lost, the least you could do is help me look. All these deaths will draw out foul creatures, and I need to bring us to safety while my strength holds - I only have hours. We need to leave. Even - even proper burial of our d-dead will have to wait. Will you help me in this, at least?"
Glorfindel's mouth was dry, and in his ears again he heard the plea of Silon, one of the final words he would ever say.
Do not tell Legolas.
"You won't find it," Glorfindel told him softly.
"What?" Legolas asked in impatient confusion.
"You won't find it," Glorfindel repeated, more firmly.
"But-" Legolas looked from Glorfindel to Silon's body, nearby. "I don't understand."
Neither did Glorfindel. The world was a mess, and all the encroaching dark of this place was catching, virulent, corrosive.
Do not tell Legolas.
And yet Glorfindel had no other answers to give, and didn't Silon deserve to be known for his generous sacrifice? But the ancient warlord briefly imagined how that conversation would go.
Silon was grievously wounded. It was a survivable wound, given prompt and proper attention. I was stabilizing him. He was urging me to leave and come after you instead. I knew if I left he would die, and I refused to do it. He found the poison seed and ingested it, to force my hand. He made the choice that I could not – to save you, at the cost of his life. He saved both of us – you your life, and me my sanity.
But Glorfindel did not have the stomach to burden Legolas - already shaky with injury, stimulant, and mourning - with it. At least, not yet. He couldn't think of a better reason to bite his tongue.
"Silon was badly wounded," Glorfindel said. "He found the pill on the ground and took it, to expedite his own passing."
None of it were lies; he just omitted a few things in between. But were half-truths in effect whole-lies as the saying goes, if they formed an entirely different picture?
You know the answer to that, he berated himself. And Legolas sensed it too.
The Mirkwood prince shook his head in absolute disbelief. "He wouldn't do that. He would fight until he couldn't – especially because I was taken. He would fight until the end. He wouldn't have gone that way."
"I don't know what else to tell you," Glorfindel said quietly – also, not a lie. "But for now – your search is a fruitless one, and just as you said, we need to leave."
Legolas looked at Glorfindel with furrowed brows. His gaze was still wild, but he was blinking and blinking, trying to regain some equilibrium perhaps, trying to think better.
"Silon would have fought until he couldn't," Legolas insisted. "Especially because I was taken."
The prince stared at Glorfindel closely, almost – invasively. Glorfindel wished very much for his face and his eyes and his soul to close, to reveal nothing. But Legolas had other means of finding out the truth. Because they were near the tree line, there were sporadic outcroppings of roots on the ground. Legolas reached for a red blood-spattered one, and found in the song of this tree, a tree that Silon had bled over, the answers Glorfindel was loathe to give.
Legolas took his hand away from the root as if burnt, and closed his eyes in abject misery.
"You should have let me die," he whispered, and Glorfindel knew this condemnation was solely for him, this time. If he had just left Legolas to his final recourse, Silon would almost certainly be alive.
Legolas' shoulders slumped, bearing the weight of Silon's sacrifice and Glorfindel's part in it, bearing the weight of his brutal personal history, bearing the weight of all this accursed place. When he opened his eyes, he looked extraordinarily weary – for even as he carried all of these burdens, he had one more to bear.
As the only Mirkwood soldier left of their party, he was grieving and badly injured, but he still had to lead them to safety. He let his blue gaze shift from Glorfindel to Istor, to all the frightened human children that were now their responsibility.
"We need to leave," he said dully.
"We will," said Glorfindel, "but a moment taken now to check your injury-"
"You have forfeited any right to concern yourself with my well-being," Legolas told him in a low, suddenly dangerous voice. Anger was giving him renewed strength. "You will not touch me. You are a lord of unparalleled standing but you are in my kingdom, and you will suffer it now, to be led by me. Your defiance has already cost me much. You will listen to me, now. And when this is all over – you and your soldiers will leave my home."
He is hurting, Glorfindel reminded himself, when his own hurt and indignation were helplessly stirred by the realization that blame for Silon's untimely passing was now being unfairly levied on him. But then again, who else was left alive to blame? Glorfindel appealed to the other's reason and sense of duty.
"A small amount of time invested now," said Glorfindel, "will be invaluable later, if what I do helps you last longer."
Legolas huffed impatiently, but acquiesced with a brief nod. He rose and swayed slightly, and he looked surprised by his weakness. Glorfindel ached to help, but Legolas shook his head determinedly and steadied quickly on his own. He walked to the nearest tree, and slid down to sit leaning against it.
"You should lie down," Glorfindel told him.
Legolas dismissed the suggestion at once and said, plainly, "Rising again will be harder."
Glorfindel, pained, closed his eyes briefly with this admission, before setting to work. He parted away the remnants of Legolas' shirts and inspected the wound. Silon had done a decent field job, considering the little time and supplies he had, and all the pressure he was under. But the tight bandages about Legolas' middle was already spotted with blood, no doubt from his recent exertions. Legolas glanced down at it.
"I barely feel it," he said in breathy surprise, touching at the edges of the wrappings tentatively.
"You are either still bleeding," Glorfindel told him. "Or bleeding anew. I think more the latter, else..."
Else you'd have bled out by now.
"I will add to the wrappings," Glorfindel said instead. "I will not dare re-open them here and now, if we will not have time for proper care. Besides, I do not know what damage you have inside, nor would I have the expertise to treat it. Stabbed in this location and given your functionality though, the injury appears to have missed or perhaps only nicked your most essential functions, and the uruk said there was no poison."
Thus, if you are dying, at least you are dying slowly...
"Either way," Glorfindel exhaled, "given our situation, I can really only treat the blood loss." He started busying his hands with the said task, but spoke as he worked. "What exactly does this stimulant of Rossenith's do, and have you had it before?"
"It gives tremendous reserves of energy for a few hours," Legolas answered. "It is commonly used, and I am no stranger to it. I feel no pain – that is as expected."
"But sometimes pain is good," Glorfindel pointed out, "It is an indicator of your condition. It tells you what is wrong where, and will tell you when to stop pushing yourself."
"Well we cannot stop, can we?" Legolas snapped. "I would just as well do without it - Are we done?"
"No," Glorfindel said, reaching for Legolas' neck. The Mirkwood elf swatted at his hand, but he pushed on until he reached the pulse point. It was hard, and racing, and his skin was clammy.
"Have you proven I'm alive?"
Glorfindel was worried, and so he devolved to sarcasm. "Not for long, with that foul temperament of yours."
Legolas shook his head in dismay, both at Glorfindel and perhaps, also himself. He silently looked away.
"You do not look well, Legolas," Glorfindel told him softly, "Your heart, the sound of your breathing... everything is wrong, or going in that direction."
Legolas shook his head. "There is nothing to be done, and as I said I've had this before. We have a few hours."
"If this potion of Rossenith's works by stimulating strength and blocking out pain," Glorfindel said carefully, "Is it fair to say a mortally injured soldier on it can simply continue to function until he falls dead?"
"That has been known to happen," Legolas replied grimly. "When a soldier's functionality masks unchecked blood loss, internal injury, and severe concussion. They really can just drop dead - but do not worry yourself about that for me, my lord."
"Have I forfeited that right too?"
Legolas' eyes drifted to where Istor and the children stood – the people whose lives he was now charged with preserving.
"I won't die now," he said quietly. "I don't have that luxury."
# # #
Wild horses were fast, but they were still unreliable in a tight spot. Panicked at the fighting, they had dashed away where the tame ones had not. This left the three elves and the eleven human children with them fewer horses than they needed: the two that Silon and Istor had ridden into battle, and one surviving out of the three brought by Rochanar's now-dead sons.
Legolas sighed as he contemplated his options. Glorfindel for his part, tactically understood that they had two routes to safety. They could go back the way they came, across the plains with some on horses and some on foot, toward the northern outpost. The flaw in this plan was that they would be very slow going, on top of being exposed to further raiding orcs or other aggressors. It was a trip that would last days, days he knew Legolas did not have on the wound he was nursing.
The other route they could take was to go into the forest and work their way northwards as much as they were able. A Mirkwood patrol was bound to find them sooner, especially if more soldiers were dispatched southwards with the messages they had sent out and if Tauriel and Renior had achieved their goal of gathering a patrol. But the flaw here was that while they would be on their own for a shorter time, the woods were tangled and twisted and extremely dangerous. Three elves protecting eleven human children in this setting was already wildly risky, even if two of them weren't foreign and the third wasn't struggling with a gut wound and walking on his last legs. Furthermore, when said legs inevitably gave out, the entire party would be lost in the forest without his guidance.
The forest was more dangerous, but faster to get to help. The plains were safer, but would take too long. The forest no one but Legolas could navigate, but the plains, if – when – he fell, Glorfindel and Istor could manage.
Legolas worked his lip as he made his own assessments. His solution surprised Glorfindel.
"Three children to a horse," he declared, "We elves, and the most able of the remaining little ones, will walk alongside. We go south, to the Woodmen settlement where these children were taken from. It is close enough, provisioned, and reasonably defensible. And the settlers will know how to reach the closest Eryn Galen patrols to say where we are."
"You should take one of the horses for yourself," Glorfindel pointed out.
A flash of annoyance streaked across Legolas' gaze, but he tempered it, and shook his head objectively at the suggestion. "A traveling party is only as fast as its slowest member. On my current strength I will be faster than the children if they were made to walk on my behalf. If the situation changes and I falter – maybe. But not until then."
"Is the settlement close enough to get you there on the borrowed strength from Rossenith's brew?" Glorfindel asked.
Legolas winced, and did not answer directly. "At least this way, you and the children will know where to go and what to do, when it fails me."
TO BE CONTINUED... T'il the next post!
MEDICAL NOTES, 2:
I usually place notes at the end of fics, but in this case I think this will be interesting to readers now rather than later :)
Legolas' Injury and Rossenith's Potion. Gut wounds are extremely complex, and it won't be the same for everyone. As I mentioned before I am not a doctor, I am a writer / researcher, so the things that appear on my fic tend to have some real world grounding but a whole lot of creative license. In this case, I felt I needed a serious wound that also allows the sufferer to last for a while. Was something like that possible in the stomach? In my research, I found one Japanese officer from World War II who did seppuku – ritual suicide with a grievous abdomen wound – and he took 15 hours to die.
As for Rossenith's infamous potion... "Mirkwood soldiers on drugs!" sounds off in concept, but some of the greatest fighting forces of the world in all of human history, are widely believed or are documented to have used drugs to aid in the fighting.
There were drugs for masking pain, increasing energy, lowering inhibitions and overcoming doubts, among many others (for further reading: Shooting Up: A History of Drugs and Warfare by Lukasz Kamienski).
Here are some examples. Vikings Berserkers, known for their wild ferocity, may have been powered by mushrooms (particularly the Amanita muscaria fungus, a hallucinogenic drug). In World War II, Nazi officials and soldiers used morphine, cocaine, and particularly widescale, Pervitin, a type of crystal meth that rightly acquired the nickname, "assault pill." For Vietnam, many American soldiers had access and later became addicted to heroin.
For a specific case, Google "Aimo Koivunen." This Finnish soldier is famous for accidentally ODing on speed via Pervitin while fighting in World War II. He became delirious, lost consciousness at some point and found himself alone. He was injured by a landmine, lay in a ditch for almost a week, then carried on alone eating nothing but a raw bird and some buds of pine in -20 weather until he reached help. His heart rate doubled, his weight was down to less than a hundred, but he traveled 250 miles and still lived past not only the war but until the late-1980s!
Legolas' precise internal injury and Rossenith's potion will remain unnamed, but you can approximate the practical effects with these examples. As you can see the inspirations for this angle of the story has some grounding on real life. Sometimes, truth is really stranger than fiction!
