Chapter 2: Into the Spider's Web

The eaves of Mirkwood, T.A. 2994

The hind lay a stone's throw off the path. Dappled by bracken-shadows and branches, her pelt still shone like pearled moonlight save where it had been rent and torn open all along the underbelly and flanks.

Elrohir crouched near the carcass, disturbing a clot of flies that had settled to their meal.

A wolf had been at the remains: gnawed the belly open, split the ribs, but the blood had not pooled. For such a mess, it was remarkably neat. No wolf was so fastidious. Nor did wolves' teeth shrivel a body—as if the deer had perished of thirst before the wolves found her. So, what had?

The gloaming crowded beneath the trees. Not for nothing had the Elvenking's realm earned its forbidding sobriquet, Mirkwood.

"Do not stray off the path." The Mirkwood sentinel appointed to accompany him had not even dared the road's verge as if the tree-shadows themselves might snatch him. "We should await the rest of the company. My prince and your brother will wish to bring our full strength to bear."

Elrohir unbent his knees. The man, drawn the short straw no doubt, had proved restive as a cat in rain all day. If irresolute as well, all the better for him to stay behind. "Such a clamor will send our enemy into hiding long before we come on its den. We have been charged with dispatching the creature killing the king's stock, and since I am a warrior not a wet nurse, that is what I will do. Wait here if it suits your courage better. One may serve for messenger as well as two."

"You should not go alone."

Temerity did not befit a soldier. Elrohir loosened his blade in its sheath and advanced into the green shadows. A soft curse followed him, but nothing more. No matter. If the enemy's stroke was meant for him today, it would find him.

The deer's desperate flight would have proved an easy feat for a blind moth, much less a seasoned tracker: a path of trampled undergrowth and broken branches traced its haphazard way as far as a patch of nettles spanning a shallow creek. Her pursuer, however…

Elrohir bent to the muddy bank on the far side of the creek. No footfalls. No prints. No bent leaves or sagging bracken. Whatever this creature was, it proved elusive as a phantom. A curious eagerness lifted his blood and breath like a tide, filling all his limbs. The clarity of the hunt. The simplicity of a sword in his hand and his own will. Would either falter today, at last? Would today see no tomorrow?

The green light beneath the canopy deepened into grey dusk. He'd brought neither light nor torch with him. Only his sword which, to his relief, gave forth no hungry gleam. No Orcs, at least. Small mercies.

Not far from the creek, he paused at a lip of stone that plunged into a hollow. The undergrowth and fallen leaves of centuries carpeted the ground in thick, undisturbed clumps. Silence pressed against his skin and made it itch as if some unimaginable devastation had visited itself on every living creature, leaving the trees bereft and desolate behind them. Not a breath stirred the branches. No rustle betrayed small creatures digging in the loam for insects or acorns. The thicket lay dormant as winter even as a late summer sun shone merrily above the canopy (though the old growth trees blotted it out so not even needles of light broke through). Fog hung amid the branches.

A faint, putrid stench wafted from the depths of the hollow below him. Old meat. Dried blood. Like a troll's lair, the more revolting for the suggestion of decay than outright evidence of it.

Easing himself over the stone lip, Elrohir put his hand out to a grey trunk to steady himself and snatched it away as if burnt. His hand peeled free, unpleasantly damp and sticky. He scrubbed his palm against his thigh with a grimace. It was not fog lining the hollow, but thin silvery strands, crisscrossed and woven together over and over and over until they met in great nets like a fisherman's. Here and there, the nets bellied: a hoof protruding from below a tree branch, a wing, meshed in silver like gossamer.

Rumors abounded, of course, round idle soldiers' fires. The urge to brazen out some witnessed horror by impressing one's fellows and terrifying greenlings with tales of cobs the size of wild boars proved too great a temptation for those delighting in a fortnight's leave and a wineskin too many. Such tales had only ever come from the South where the Necromancer's illusions held sway. Not here. Not this close to the road.

He swallowed against a throat gone dry, his self-possession faltering. He was no fool to charge headlong into the enemy's lair, bellowing challenge, but at the very least, he ought to return to the company with a scout's report of numbers and strength. Perhaps then his recklessness would be forgiven.

He circled the perimeter of the hollow, evading the drooping threads. Halfway round something grazed his shoulder. He flinched, whirling, blade uplifted.

A leaf, fallen against his cloak.

All the breath went out of him, and he shook his head. Fool, jumping at naught again. In the wake of his breath, a creak like wind in old branches. The stench thickened, pressed on him.

The cob, its bulk threaded among the sturdier boughs, snapped its suspending thread and hurtled down on him.

Only his reflexes saved him. He threw himself into the leaf litter, the spider's leg brushing his shoulder as he rolled aside. He came up, unhooking the fibula from his throat and letting his mantle fall to the leaf litter. His first stroke rang off its thorny hide and came away notched as if he'd struck stone; the shock ran all the way up his arms and tingled in his fingers. Against Orc mail and troll hides, his blade had mastered all. Now he wanted for a spear.

The spider skittered round and charged, pincers extended. At least it needed to sting him. Had it been venomous, it would have liquified his face by now. He hacked at the vulnerable joints even as it drove him back, foot by foot, herding him deeper into the hollow, towards the webs.

He side-stepped to regain ground. Too late. The spider barreled down on him like a rockfall. The back of his head cracked against something hard, root or stone. By the time his senses swam back, the thing had wrapped him to the knees in sticky strands that held like wire.

His sword, glimmering faintly, lay amidst the leaf litter. Too far to reach. Too long to wield in any case. The arsigil, his long knife, lay under him, twisted up in his belt. Flattened and half-suffocating under the spider's putrid bulk, he wrenched his knife free and hacked at the multitudes of eyes in reach. A few went dark. The spider-creature screeched. Flecks of froth and venom stung his cheeks and brow. He screwed up his eyes and drove the knife up to the hilt in the spider's vulnerable belly. Foul ichor drenched his hands. The burbling pinchers opened wide and snapped shut as the spider wrenched off him, limbs flailing and curling.

Elrohir cut his legs free and tried to get to his feet, but his head rebelled, and he sagged against the roots of a beech, bracing for another blow.

The spider was twisting and writhing, bubbling and frothing in a madness of pain. But not from Elrohir's knife.

A javelin was lodged in the spider's back. Clinging to the haft was the Mirkwood sentinel, straining to keep his grip steady. He had stolen up behind and speared her. Hurling his weight straight down, he pierced her right through the middle until the tip of the spear emerged from her belly and a gout of sludge stained the leaves. Other shadowy shapes appeared, thrusting and stabbing with spears and pikes. The spider gave a great heave and then its legs folded in on itself. It collapsed like a mountain sliding into ruin. The last of its eyes went dark.

A retreating rustle sounded on the other side of the hollow.

A hand fell on his shoulder. Trembling with exertion and nerves, Elrohir started, but Elladan took no notice. His brother's face, a mirror to his own, was currently possessed of that shrewish disapproval that reminded Elrohir more of their father than anything he had ever beheld in a mirror. His brother's fingers searched the tender knot on the back of Elrohir's skull where it had struck the stone. None-too-gently.

Elrohir fended him off. "I'm fine."

"By Elbereth's grace alone. What were you thinking going off alone like that? You should have waited for the rest of the patrol."

A regal hand with the calluses of an archer plucked his sword from the leaf litter, and Elrohir swallowed a biting retort.

Rare were the instances where the crowned prince—more prone to song than steel—displayed even a shred of his father's infamous temper and glacial hauteur, but Elrohir found both ice and steel leveled at him as Legolas held out Elrohir's sword, fortunately, pommel-first.

"You did not await my signal."

"Your men were slow to follow." Elrohir busied himself wiping and sheathing his blade to avoid the twin stares boring into him. "What would you have? The beast is dead. Your king's stock are spared. From Ungoliant's children at least."

"This wet nurse wouldn't sniff at thanks." The sentinel pried his spear from the carcass and plunged it, point-first, into the earth.

"I had hoped to take them swiftly and silently. Which I might have told you if you had awaited us." Legolas let that hang in the air though he cast an eye towards his subordinate in mild reprimand. "We cannot give thought for a day or a single victory. There is never only one of those creatures. Now the whole nest will be roused."

For all that Legolas was their junior by nigh a century, Elrohir felt like an errant child rebuked by his elder.

Elladan's boot pressing, hard, on Elrohir's quashed any words he might have spoken in his defense.

"Thank you, your highness, not the least for your and your men's timely aid. I hope we have at least done some small good with our presence." In softer, more deadly tones, Elladan added to Elrohir, "And I'll thank you not to alienate our hosts ere we come to the edge of their domain. Thranduil has long been our ally. If a reluctant one."

"All the more reason for us to be quit of it soonest," Elrohir muttered back and walked out of the hollow.

The horses, on familiar terrain and anticipating oats for their day's pains, quickened their pace. Dusk was falling fast. Elrohir scanned the line of low-slung hills before them with increasing diligence, searching for the telltale curve and angle that would betray the cave entrance. Concealed against animals and other intruders, their night's shelter was best approached with the sun behind them; even elvish eyes in broad daylight might mistake it. Though they had met no other creature in the land between the Woodland Realm and the Carrock of the Beornings they had traveled through it often enough to resist the temptation to bivouac in the open.

At last Elladan stretched out his hand to the bare wall, and what appeared, from a distance, like a facet of the stony hills rippled and came away in his hands. He bundled the tattered grey curtain aside, revealing the narrow tunnel behind it.

"Home at last." Elrohir dropped their saddle bags with a thump.

A rough haven, this, but more than most travelers benefited from in the wild. When last they had stayed here, they had restocked it with fuel and freshened the jutes on the torches. The ledges along the scalloped walls were heaped with furs and blankets. A barrel of rain water stood near the entrance. And in the center, the black fire pit with its little hole in the roof.

Once they had hobbled the horses and unloaded their gear, Elrohir drew the grey curtain across the cave mouth. Woven in Lórien, it was the only reminder of his former life Elrohir would allow—and then only because it served a purpose most practical.

Elrohir set about preparing the evening meal—nothing had passed his lips since that morning when they had taken their leave of their hosts under the eaves. Though a mood of gracious courtesy oversaw their farewells, Elrohir had wished to put distance between them and the Wood. Its fastness had lost its charm.

Elladan, unfurling his bedroll on the opposite side of the fire, merely grunted. Silence had clung to him like a burr all day long. Their chosen refuge for the night was not his preferred camp—nor anything of close confines. Even a low-ceiling shed sped his breath and made him sweat like a horse tucked between the traces for the first time.

Elrohir fed the fire into life, swung the kettle over the open flames, and laid bannocks on a pair of flat stones to warm. "A hot meal will be a welcome change. I was trying to think when our last one was. The night after we left the Elvenking's hall, I would guess. Let us hope we've left the bats and moths behind us."

Elladan's silence lingered like a slow-moving storm, and his lack of effort towards his share of the camp duties chafed against Elrohir's nerves.

"We will have to hunt tomorrow if we wish to keep ourselves fed. Though we must have a care not to venture too near the Carrock. The Beornings exact a high toll for use of their waterways. Perhaps we might even stay a day or two here. Replenish our supplies, rest the horses. Then, perhaps, we venture south. Thranduil's folk spun a convincing tale of a troll wreaking havoc among the hillmen. We might do some good there."

"Another muster at dawn, no doubt." Elladan scrubbed at his face with the heel of one hand.

"Ah, he speaks!"

Elladan eyed him sullenly. "Heavens forbid we take our ease! Why you insist on rising as if our old serjeant might barge in—"

"We might stay—"

"—a day or two. As always."

"If you had your way, we would have idled the better part of the season in Thranduil's halls."

"I thought they provided well for us, and it was a welcome change not to keep watch for a night." Elladan unlaced his boots with a savagery that suggested his footwear had done him some great and unforgivable wrong. "Despite your graceless refusal of their hospitality and rank abuse of their vintages."

"Say what you will of the Elvenking, his cellars suffer no rival this side of the river. What's amiss with you tonight?"

"You ask me that after today?"

So that was it. "A life of errantry is full of risk."

"Risk, yes, not hot-blooded recklessness. I had hoped some time away after…I hoped new places and fresh deeds might blunt the old ones and restore some of your peace. But if anything, your malcontent has only grown. You take too many chances of late. You chase the enemy rashly, without care for yourself or others that follow you. I fear for you, Elrohir. I feel as if you are slipping away from me even as I follow you."

"I have never compelled you to follow me. You are free to go whenever and whithersoever you like."

The air between them stank with the same, acrid argument that had followed them along all the leagues of their errantry. Too long in close quarters. Every nettling habit of the other, harmless enough in and of itself, had waxed in irritation, league by league, magnifying the discomforts of an endless road and tainting their rare moments of peace.

"That's not all." With an effort Elladan mastered himself. Apparently, these words had been eating at him all day. It was unlike him to be both so verbose and so childish. "Winter is coming on. We cannot sustain the horses on briar alone. Nor ourselves for that matter. It does not make a man lesser to desire some comforts: a meal more satisfying than waybread or a wash in other than a cold stream. Or even another face to talk with."

Of the two of them Elladan's had always been the more mobile countenance: the expression it bore now, dangerously close to surliness, set Elrohir's hackles prickling.

"If a life of indolence was what you wished, you might have stayed at home."

"You know very well I couldn't. Though I might have been better served. For certes I would sleep better. Twice I woke to you, yelling. Thank goodness the Elvenking's walls are thick."

Elrohir kept his attention on the fire, hot on his face, beating back the ghost of a cold wind. "I did not mean to disturb you."

Elladan softened his tone, contrite. "I only meant…We could use a reprieve. I could."

"So. What reprieve would you have?"

"I had news of Legolas: he has been troubled by all this stirring. Something's afoot. Apparently, we were not the only visitors to the Wood. Aragorn has made his way back to this part of the world. He crossed the Anduin near the Narrows not a fortnight past."

"What was he doing there?"

"Thranduil's get can be cagey as a dwarf hiding gold when he has a mind. He only assured me Aragorn was well and not alone. They departed by boat. By all accounts, they'd been harrowing orcs around Dol Guldur more than a month without so much as a by-your-leave. Better forgiveness than permission always was Laurë's way."

"He never asked for either, as I recall," Elrohir said. "And I think we're a little old for childhood names, Elladan."

"He would have come with us. Aragorn," Elladan ventured after a heavy silence and not for the first time. "I suppose he found other recourse."

"I wanted him safe. I thought he would make his way back to the Dúnedain to keep watch over that quiet little land under Mithrandir's keeping."

"That unruly spirit won't be quelled by a stern word from us."

"Not when he's enabled so neatly by one who knows better."

"That, too." Elladan flung back a half-charred fragment that had leaped from the fire. "So. What would you say?"

"You wish to follow them to Lothlórien." The leaves had steeped too long, but Elrohir drank the bitterness down. There was no other safe haven on that side of the River for many long miles north or south. Some ninety leagues from where they now stood. "That would be no short distance for us."

"We have traveled farther this season alone," Elladan coaxed. "I would be lying if I denied the thought has crossed my mind more than once since we took the Old Forest Road. I miss Aragorn. And our sister. Our old haunts and companions of our youth. Three yéni have come and gone, and if we chance near there, you scarcely set foot beyond the eaves—and only long enough to replenish provisions and offer the most perfunctory of greetings—before haring off again. I know it is hard for you, but…"

Rare and far between were the moments when their little family came together under one roof, and Elrohir felt a tug in spite of himself. Before the Redhorn had sullied everything, he would have been the first to suggest a season's ramble in the Golden Wood where they roved beside one who loomed as large in legend on the north marches there as Beleg Cúthalion once had on Doriath's.

Now, though…

Grief had poisoned his joy. And if not for that squalid little room in Archet where Elladan had found him, he would have refused, no matter the cost.

Instead, he dashed the bitter dregs of his tea into the fire and rose. "I'll take the watch tonight. I pray you have coin enough for the Beorning's tolls."

Footnotes
yéni (Sindarin) - roughly 144 years.
Source: Parf Edhellen: an elvish dictionary, .com