"Well," Hofsa said.
"Well," Fili agreed.
"Oh come on," Kili said. "There aren't that many of them."
"It is, very literally, an army," Hofsa said.
"It's a small army. We're a small army."
"I will allow that they are a medium army," Hofsa retorted. "We are at best a raiding party. My lord, we can't win if we fight them."
"No," Fili agreed. "We're going to go around."
"Around by the north," Kili said flatly.
"We can't go around south," Fili said. "We'll just get smashed between them and the trees. I'm not going into Mirkwood again until they expect me."
Kili sighed, and didn't point out that Tauriel might have already made it to Morwinyon and Thranduil.
"North," Hofsa said firmly. "There are tunnels and caves for hiding."
"Fine," Kili muttered, and Fili clapped him on the back and turned to give orders.
"Does that qualify as small?" Kili whispered three days of tunnel-walking later.
Hofsa sighed as they watched a (small) group of orcs drag what appeared to be a number of elves through a newly excavated tunnel. A ways back, the other dwarves waited, weapons at the ready.
"I'd still rather avoid them," she said.
"Do you know what orcs like to do with elves?" Fili asked, the conversation with Tauriel all too clear in his memory.
"Eat them?"
"They make more orcs," Kili said, and Hofsa fell silent for a long moment before she left them.
Fili grimaced.
"Two people are not enough for a rescue," Kili pointed out.
"Assuming any of them are still alive," Fili said., which Kili grimly acknowledged. Still, the idea that these people might be made into something else, dead or alive, to hurt their loved ones -
Fili remembered the fear that he might face Morwinyon as a pawn of the enemy. He wouldn't wish it on anyone.
A quiet sound made him glance behind, and there was Hofsa, standing with Argo and Magae and the others, all with weapons drawn.
"Nobody wants more orcs," Hofsa said. "Let's get the ones we can."
"You're good people, you know," Fili told them all.
"They're getting away," Hofsa snapped, so he drew his swords and Kili nocked an arrow to his bowstring, and off they went.
The orcs, after the first few fell, didn't stop to fight as Fili had expected them to. Instead a few waited to guard the others, who fled with the elf bodies. The dwarves made short work of the defenders - orcs could see in the dark, but so could dwarves, and Fili and his people were not taken by surprise - and pursued, heedless that the tunnel spiralled deeper into the earth.
They caught them later, still without running into reinforcements, and Fili realized as he ducked a snarling orc's blade that the tunnel here was older than the one they had chased the orcs through. It was wider too, more cavelike than tunnel-like now. He couldn't see the walls.
When the fight was done, they stood panting, carefully peering through the dark to make sure nothing was waiting there.
"Did we lose anyone?" Fili asked.
"Two," Hofsa said grimly. "And the elves are all dead."
Fili grimaced again. "Gather anything that can burn. We can't carry them, but we're not going to leave them here for other orcs to use either."
"All of them?" Magae asked. "Even the others?"
"Others?" Fili asked, and strode to where Magae stood pointing at the edge of the group. They all did, and he heard someone gag behind him. Hofsa began swearing under her breath and didn't stop
The walls were lined with manacled elves, and a table near them had a pile of bodies next to it. He hoped all of them were dead. Some were in pieces, or had things attached to them, and most had begun to rot. He wasn't sure how he had missed the smell at first, except that orcs always smelled.
The table, he realized after a moment, had actually been made of the same pale stone as the rest of the cave. It just looked darker because it was covered in old blood.
.Kili said, grimly, "Yes. Burn them all."
"Would they want us to?" another dwarf asked, voice strained.
"We probably wouldn't be their first choices," Fili acknowledged. "I can only think they would appreciate that I - that we did our duty."
Kili gave him a sharp look, but he went to scavenge through everyone's packs for anything to help burn corpses.
Fili went to start removing shackles, and his people followed him.
Elves weren't heavy in the best of circumstances, but these were paper-light. None had dried as the dwarves of Erebor had, and so everyone had cloths tied around their noses and mouths to try to block the smell, and everyone was glad to be wearing gloves. It would be difficult to clean bits of elf off of them later, but nobody wanted to touch them with bare hands.
Fili knew a little about elf culture after running around for sixty years with Tauriel, and he knew that hair color was important to them - Tauriel had been almost embarrassed to talk about her red hair - but the importance didn't seem to carry over to orcs. What hair was left on their heads came in all colors, and he stopped even feeling a jolt when he saw hair as dark as Morwinyon's.
"I don't think we even can burn all of them," Hofsa said. "Not at once."
Fili stopped to look over the whole operation.
There were too many bodies to be sad about them all, but something about a room full of dead elves who might have otherwise expected to live forever struck him as a waste.
"Maybe we could collapse the entrances," Hofsa continued doubtfully. "We could return when all of this is over, or simply mark it and tell the elves where to find their people."
"We might have to," Fili agreed. "We can at least get the shackles off."
"My lord!" another dwarf - Ingre, Fili reminded himself - called, sounding alarmed.
Fili hurried over with Hofsa and two others, all with weapons to hand, to join him.
"I think something moved," Ingre said.
"You think?" Hofsa demanded, and Fili shifted forward to look harder at the elves around the table.
One was chained to the side facing the wall, and Ingre was right.
Fili leapt over the other bodies, going for the chains before he realized it might not be a good idea. What if the elf was an orc? He didn't know the process involved.
But the elf only looked at him, saying something in a voice so cracked that Fili couldn't tell what language they were speaking.
"I cannot understand you," Fili said in his careful Sindarin, and the elf jerked and stared. Fili called for water, and when a waterskin was duly delivered held it carefully for the elf.
They drank only three mouthfuls, and slowly, before pushing it away, which was when Fili realized they were missing a hand. They struggled to sit up straight, elbow slipping against the table, and Fili winced and supported them. The tatters of shirt and trousers they wore were barely recognizable as such, and it was easy to see why no one had thought they might be alive: beneath the scraps of cloth were countable ribs and disturbingly fleshless arms and legs. Their face was hardly visible through matted black hair, and Fili couldn't tell how much of the stuff smeared all over them was blood and how much was other things.
"The Greenwood," they said.
How long had they been here? Fili decided not to correct them.
"Uruk-hai," they continued. "Worse than orcs. Warn Thranduil."
"He is being warned as we speak."
"Oh," they said, slumping back. "Good."
"Let's get you out of here," Fili said, trying to pull them up. He could only reach the severed wrist - the one on the elf's right - and that made the whole thing even more difficult. When the elf finally staggered to their feet, leaning heavily on Fili, he realized they might be as tall or taller than Morwinyon. "I don't think I can carry you. Can you walk?"
"I would walk if it was my feet I was missing," the elf said in Sindarin, accent more rolling than Tauriel's, and stepped away from Fili's support to stand wavering on their own feet. "How many others?"
"Living or dead?" Hofsa asked bluntly, which was when Kili joined them.
"Be nice," Kili told Hofsa in Khuzdul. In Sindarin much better than Fili's he said to the elf, "How long have you been here?"
When they stared blankly he said something else, slowly, in a different language. Fili blinked at his brother - it sounded similar to Sindarin, maybe, but it wasn't the Sindarin Tauriel had taught him.
The elf said something more rapid-fire in the same language, and Kili swapped back to Sindarin.
"I do not know much," he told them. "If you will not tell us how long, what of your name?"
"What year is it?" the elf asked.
"Thirty nineteen," Kili replied.
The elf swayed again but stopped, and said, "Then I have been here more than a century. My name is... "
They coughed, staggering, and this time would have fallen if Fili hadn't caught them.
"Lairë," they finally managed. "I am Lairë."
The stretcher arrived almost immediately after Ríndir sent someone after Bruinith, after Laeriel proved that Thranduil did still live.
Bruinith took the front half of the stretcher, shamefaced, and Inwiel took the back with repeated awed glances at Laeriel. Laeriel ignored them in favor of laying Thranduil down.
He stirred when she did, protesting weakly, but she took his uninjured hand and leaned over him to assure him of her presence. He subsided.
Their arrival at the Halls was greeted with more silence, even as the scouts dispersed, save for a young woman who asked her caregiver, "But he is all right?"
The elf shook his head, which she seemed to take for denial. "But Legolas-"
Laeriel stopped the procession by halting. Everyone was watching her so intently that they stopped almost in the same breath, and those watching seemed to hold that breath.
"Tauriel," she said, holding out the hand not clutched by Thranduil. The girl stepped forward and took it with a somewhat unsteady bow. "You are my son's friend."
"Yes, Lady," Tauriel said, no hesitation whatever in her voice. "Is the king all right?"
"He lives," Laeriel replied.
"And the dragon?" Tauriel asked, relaxing a little and looking up at Laeriel with an expression similar to the one Legolas used, as if Laeriel could do no wrong and would always do what was needed.
Laeriel tried a smile on the girl, who smiled back easily. "The dragon does not live."
"We knew he would not," Tauriel said. "And we knew you would come back, and bring King Thranduil with you."
"Did you?" Laeriel asked, looking over the rows of standing elves.
"I did," Tauriel said, lifting her chin. "And so did Legolas."
"You are a good friend, Tauriel," Laeriel said. "Would you do something for me?"
Tauriel smiled again, a little more shyly. "Anything, Lady."
"One of our scouts carries my sword, for I forgot to fetch it. Would you find out who, and take care of it for me?"
Tauriel nodded eagerly, and Laeriel let go of her hand to pat her hair. "My thanks."
The girl turned to dart back into the crowd. Laeriel looked at the caregiver, who had taken a half-step forward as if to hold his ward back. He retreated.
"Come, Bruinith, Inwiel. I would like to get him to his bed," Laeriel said, turning to smooth her husband's hair back from his brow. "He cannot be very comfortable."