Author's Note: With this chapter, we officially reach the Midpoint. I hope you all are warm and safe (particularly if any of my readers or their families happen to be in Florida, South Carolina, or Puerto Rico).

Chapter 18: A Devil's Bargain

In the wake of that evil voice, the Fëanorian lamp's shutter sprang up and flooded the whole of that underground lair.

The Orc cringed back into his unwholesome little corner with his face to the wall. Even if he had been armed or inclined to fight, a chain shackling him to the wall forestalled any sudden lunges or greater leverage than the space of a knee. He flung up a hand against the lamp's firework glare, but the act was more instinctive than efficient. The hand's outline was wrong: lacking the last two fingers and part of the outer bone. An old wound.

A wisp of memory fluttered at the edge of Elrohir's grasp.

The Orc lowered his reduced hand a fraction and blinked up at them though it made his over-large eyes contract, light-stung. The skin across his shoulders rippled like a horse's at the bite of a fly. "Hoi, Merlin. Your lot make an awful lot of noise and put the snufflers off their feed. My thanks."

Haldir, thus addressed, stood as if turned to stone. The Orc had spoken, quite plainly and rather more politely than usual for the enemy, in the Common speech: a tongue in which Haldir was well-versed. But he made the Orc no answer nor gave any sign he had understood. He only stared, flinty and forbidding.

"I tried to tell ole Raggy you'd be lurking about somewhere. He had hopes the Mangler got hold of you. Guess he had the wrong of it. Like usual."

As the silence grew loud, magnified rather than muted by Taereth's uneasy fidgeting above them, Elrohir cast his Captain a sidelong, searching glance.

"Come on now." Almost cajoling, "Not still sore over the Narrows, are you?"

Haldir shook off whatever strange mood had enspelled him. "You're on the wrong side of the river, Zuraz."

"I go where I please."

"Not anymore." Advancing, Haldir lifted the chain on the flat edge of his arsigil. "What happened here? You and Raguk have a falling-out did you?"

Zuraz. Raguk. The Narrows…in southern Mirkwood where the ranks of trees thinned and broke into a barren no-man's land a mere stone's throw beyond the boundary of Dol Guldur…

Lamplike eyes flashing towards his blind. Rocheryn's finger-bones crunching between teeth.

The patrol he had encountered in the dale. The ones who had taken Aragorn. This was their tracker—or had been. He was looking rather the worse for wear since the dale. There were cuts and abrasions on his hands and forearms, marks of teeth and claw. Bruises purpled the greenish flesh of his upper arms, and the wiry strength Elrohir had noted in him at their first meeting had been hollowed out.

"He's a short-sighted fool. Wish the Shrieker in the Tower had shriveled the flesh off him after what happened in the Narrows. This is all your fault. That business with you and that catamite tark of yours was what put the wind up him in the first place." Zuraz displayed a mouthful of fragmented teeth and thrust away the blade's glimmering edge. The name of Raguk seemed especially to enrage him. "Always sticking your nose in. Bothering in everybody's business. Good old Merlin. The White Bitch's dog. Better his enemy than his friend. At least then you see the knife as it cuts you."

Elrohir had not followed much of this, but 'that tark of yours' made him stiffen with attention. Aragorn.

The sudden movement drew the Orc's gaze. There were cavernous rooms behind those eyes: low lintels and high thresholds where the cries had dwindled away long ago. Elrohir forced himself to hold them without recoiling or bristling as they ran leisurely over his skin. The tip of a black tongue emerged and touched the center of his upper lip.

"So, this is the new boy. Well, he's more fetching, at least, than the last one."

A push-dagger of knapped flint, filed to a nasty hooking edge, slipped between Haldir's knuckles like a fin flicking above placid water. "Speak civil, or not at all. Preferably, the latter."

Zuraz rolled an eye aslant at the dagger then tilted his head back, adjudging Elrohir as if they stood together and alone. "I know you."

"We met—briefly—in the dale. At Mirrormere," Elrohir replied.

"No, that's not it." A frown as he puzzled over this—Elrohir did not know what Orcish name they gave to the pool and its standing stone—then his expression cleared. He bared his teeth in a terrible parody of a grin. "You put a hole in ole Raggy. A neat throw. Very neat."

"Your band killed a comrade of ours."

Zuraz jerked his chin in Elrohir's direction. "And that fine bit of steel you carry is for cutting your bread, is it? How many necks of my folk notched it? To say nothing of Merlin. He's up to his neck in red. Aren't you, Merlin?"

"And none would weep were I to add you to the count." Haldir nudged Elrohir's shoulder and turned away.

Zuraz's face fell. He scrambled to get his feet under him, but the chain checked him, and he slipped back onto his haunches. "Oy. I was only having fun. Don't leave us like this. There's a good fellow. Starving's no way for a man to die. Or worse. The things that make their way down here aren't particular—"

"You're no Man."

Sensing no further quarter that way, Zuraz addressed himself to Elrohir.

"Boy. You might run with the likes of Merlin, but you're not that sort, are you? You won't let him just leave me here like this. Better you lend me your dagger than that. Or…" He craned his neck around Elrohir's leg at the others, waiting, behind. "There aren't a lot of ways out of this place. At least, not ones that aren't blocked up, flooded out, or full of bad air. And other, hungrier things. Might be helpful, mightn't it, to have someone at your side who knows the roads in a blind night, eh?"

Wheeling on his heel, Haldir kicked him in the ribs. A hard, vicious chop one might deliver a frothing dog that lunged in too close. He checked it at the last—probably more out of caution for his foot than the Orc's bones.

"You talk too much, toleg." Deceptively calm.

Elrohir frowned.

Enemy threats and insults Haldir enjoyed, as a matter of course; and though quick-tongued, as a captain and officer, he held his temper on a hard rein. When annoyed, he was witty. When angered, icy. Now he stood like a man before a locked door with a fire licking at his heels.

He's afraid.

"You needn't be so rough," Elrohir said. "He is bound."

"He has a tongue doesn't he? That is danger enough. And our time too short to waste. Let's go."

Elrohir allowed himself to be drawn off a few paces, though hesitantly. He lowered his voice and spoke in their own tongue to thwart the only ears near enough to listen. "He's seen Estel."

"That might be anything or nothing."

"But he's known to you. Mirkwood?"

Haldir took longer than necessary to tuck away the push-dagger from whichever hiding-place in his sleeve it lay. "He has long been Dol Guldur's creature. These little snaga have their uses for Mordor."

"Perhaps not Mordor, alone," Elrohir said, half-wondering aloud.

Haldir lifted his head, his eyes boring into Elrohir, frank with refusal. "No."

"I haven't asked a question."

"You need not."

"We have swayed others to our cause before for less: a deserter, disaffected. Begrudging his officer. High in the council of Dol Guldur itself. What better asset could you hope for?"

"Only with Men," Haldir said. "Not Orcs. Never Orcs. And certainly not this one. Think you, you have enough in your purse to satisfy a plunderer of the Dwarves' halls? I do not."

"We strike a bargain then. We free him if he takes us to the Gate and to Estel."

"There is nothing to be gained from devils' bargains. He would tell you he has lived a life beyond reproach feeding the orphaned and widowed if it suited him."

"We cannot leave him," Elrohir said. "If any of his fellows return, he knows we're here and our numbers and, at the very least, who you are. We cannot outrun Dol Guldur with Calen hurt. Our only hope is in surprise."

"They won't return."

"Will you take that chance?"

Out of the lamplight, Haldir's face held all shadows. "I did not say we need leave him as we found him. It will not be the first time I have had to sort one left behind on a march."

'Sort.' As if the matter were as simple as tidying up laundry.

"That is not the Law," Elrohir said. "He's…helpless."

Haldir laughed. "I did not think I would need to debate with you, of all men, over an Orc's life nor remind you what they're capable is the least he has earned."

"I have never known one to chafe you so. What has he done?"

Haldir dropped his gaze to his fingertips, touched them together, one by one. "It's what I did."

"Danwedh."

The croak, badly accented and hardly intelligible, brought them both up short. The Orc had managed to drag himself upright, wheezing.

Elrohir stared at him. "What did you say?"

"That's the word isn't it?" Zuraz grated out, coughing and clutching his side. "When you've got a fellow down in a corner, but you don't finish him off because he's got something you want."

"Orcs don't ask for mercy," Elrohir said.

"Well. I'm asking, aren't I? Do me a good turn, and I'll do you one."

"Your sort isn't best known for keeping faith."

"And I'm the best you've got."

Elrohir glanced back towards the alcove where the others waited, Rammas' face was dusty and wan in the lamplight. Beneath the crook of Angren's arm, Calen lay still, the bandage pressed to his brow rusty with blood. Sparing one life—even a wicked one—might spare all of them; peril could be smoothed with precautions.

"If you think the risk too great, tell me where the East Gate lies and how far. Tell me where Estel is. You cannot. He may," he said to Haldir. "We cannot afford any more false roads."

"And how do you think he came by that word?"

"That is not for me to determine, happily. Or you, for that matter," Elrohir said. "I will not slay him for what he might have done. At least let us put it to the rest of the company before we make any rash decisions on life or death."

"Elrohir is right," Angren said at once after the matter had been put to those members of the company who could answer. "The Law is very clear on this matter. Even in war, even at a sacrifice, Orcs are to be dealt with fairly. By the sound of it, he is hardly a threat as he is now. Besides, how would you manage it? Would you have us all stick our fingers in our ears and turn round while you slide the knife in?"

"Only if you're squeamish."

"We have one man sorely wounded. Our supplies run short. We are nowhere nearer to finding our road to say nothing of our original quest. And you would slay the only one who might amend that. A fine reflection of leadership. If the proper protocols had ever been observed, we would have gone down the Stair as I wished and evaded this mess. At least Lord Elrohir has the presence of mind to take counsel from others."

Haldir threw his shoulders back and sighted Angren down like a man bracing himself against a wall. "Yes. I know precisely what manner of counsel you provided, Angren. You set great store by the opinion of Lord Elrohir. Forgetting, rather, the fate of his last command."

A careless and petulant swiping of claws borne of thwarted will, but the words still raked a tender place. Elrohir lifted his chin, forced himself to take and hold his Captain's eye.

Haldir kneaded his brow as if beset by a sudden, savage pain. "What say the rest? What about you, old girl?"

Rammas plucked at a loose strand of her cuff. "I—"

"What a kinslayer has to say is not worth accounting," Angren said with a curl of his lip. "Of course, she would think little of murder and take the part of her paramour."

A peculiar deafness fell over Elrohir's ears. His companions' voices receded, their volleys drifting at a distance from him the way a fog bank creeps up and muffles the tumult of an embattled army. He stood in their midst, rooted through his boots to the floor, but he was not of them.

Zuraz sat where they had left him. Watching. He met Elrohir's eye, and one side of his mouth curled up.

Elrohir strode back to him. "You spoke of a tark. You've seen him?"

Zuraz shot him a crafty look from under lowered lids. "What's Merlin's tark to do with you?"

"Never you mind—let's say I'm looking for him."

"I've seen him."

Hanging from his belt was a leather wallet: much-handled, too delicately stitched for Orc-work. A familiar thing…given to a young man before his first ranging…

"Where did you get that?"

"Found it."

"Where?"

"How long am I going to live once I tell you?"

Elrohir straightened. Elladan would have decried the very suggestion of what he was contemplating as reckless in the extreme. But Elladan was not here. Why not take on an enemy as an ally? At least an enemy could be relied upon to act according to their worst instincts. At least the hurt they could inflict would only wound his body. He had yielded over and over and over again. And for what? Haldir might have speared Elrohir through the heart with his dagger and caused less damage. If the price of brokered peace between them was the trampling of his dignity and debasement of his knighthood, then by the stars, he would rather have Haldir's enmity than his approval.

He drew his sword. "Hold very still."

Misconstruing the gesture, Zuraz flung himself headlong, but the chain jerked him up short, and he fell flat, curling against the wall.

The mithril blade arced down with the full force of Elrohir's shoulders and back behind it. It severed the chain fastening the Orc to the wall and scattered fragments of iron across the floor. The chain's severance felt like his own invisible fetters loosing their grip on him—though the violence of his movement tore his stitches open. Wet warmth blossomed under his shirt, but the pain did not reach him yet. It would, eventually. All bargains came due in the end. All choices must be answered for, and some roads suffer no retreat. He'd either saved them all or damned them, and only time would tell which. He had made his choice.

But in making such a choice, he had overstepped all bounds of his authority, and for all his earned and righteous anger, he did not dare meet Haldir's eyes again.

"I will kill if I must in defense of my home, my life, or those of my fellows. I will not slay one, unarmed and unprovoked," he said over his shoulder. "We will take him with us. If any wish to challenge, I will meet you on any field with any weapon you wish."

Rammas stirred first. She broke the thread off her cuff and pushed herself to her feet. "I was going to say, Elrohir is right. Others guilty of worse than being an Orc have done some good."

Haldir's jaw twitched as if stung. "So be it."

The others turned to Elrohir, expectant. Awaiting his order. Elbereth, help him.

Taereth, still holding the rope in the corridor above, crouched gingerly at the lip of the hole. "What's happening down there?"

Canon References

"That is not the Law...

"The Wise in the Elder Days taught always that the Orcs were not 'made' by Melkor, and therefore were not, in their origin, evil. They might have become irredeemable (at least by Elves and Men), but they remained within the Law. That is, that though by necessity, being the fingers of the hand of Morgoth, they must be fought with the utmost severity, they must not be dealt with in their own terms of cruelty and treachery. Captives must not be tormented, not even to discover information for the defense of the homes of Elves and Men. If any Orcs surrendered and asked for mercy, they must be granted it, even at a cost. This was the teaching of the Wise, though in the horror of the War, it was not always heeded."

Source: "Myths Transformed," Morgoth's Ring

Next Update

Gearing up for National Novel Writing Month this November! I'll be neck-deep in revisions over the course of the month. Next chapter will come in December! Thank you, as always, for reading.