Chapter Twelve - "Meetings In Mirkwood/Devil In Disguise"

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The next day, they passed over a quiet forest river, a branch of the Anduin that marked the unofficial southern boundary of the Woodsmen's besieged domain. They were now drawing nigh onto the Narrows of Mirkwood, and south of that lay Sauron's citadel of Dol Goldur. Giles would have chosen a safer path, and anything would have been safer than straying across the dark, be shadowed forest, but Buffy's life was at stake. They would have to risk it.

Soon enough, the character of the forest became darker, grimmer. Birds were heard less often, and then mainly the cawing of crows. The animals scurrying around in the shadows had too-bright eyes and too-dark fur, and seemed to be keeping pace with the trio. Worst of all, though, was the deepening shadows. It was as if the Sun above was loathe to even touch southern Mirkwood with her light, or perhaps as if something in the land was keeping the light at bay.

Xander and Willow felt the changed atmosphere and walked along behind Giles in wary silence. Behind them, the nameless border river slowly faded from view and hearing, and they were truly alone in the miserable forest.

For the rest of that day and most of the next, they continued on without encountering anything more suspicious than a rabid badger. Twice they came across wide stone roads, straight despite the contours of the ground, but Giles was vehement they stick to the woods and the others didn't argue. Who knew how often those roads were put to use by Sauron's soldiers?

Towards the evening of their second day in southern Mirkwood, they finally came across those soldiers.

It was Xander who first spotted them while Giles helped Willow across a treacherous gully. "Hey!" he hissed, frantically beckoning them over. The two hurried to his side atop a low hill, then stopped and stared in astonishment. In the little clearing below lay the corpses of some two-dozen Men, all shot full with long arrows. They were all garbed in black and red, and some had apparently had time to draw their curved swords. For what little good it had done them - there was no sign of their attackers beyond the arrows themselves.

"What happened?" Xander asked in a whisper.

"Shh," Giles cautioned him, but it was too late. An arrow landed in the moss between the two of them. "Don't move," Giles said, somewhat unnecessarily. Then, to Xander and Willow's surprise, he smiled and called out a greeting in what sounded a little bit like the Elvish they were used to hearing.

A second later, two Elves clad in green emerged from the shadows barely ten feet away, and a few more at the other side of the clearing. The Elves, who looked more akin to those of Lothlorien than Rivendell, stared warily at the three travelers, bows drawn and blades bared.

Giles held up both his hands and continued speaking in rapid-fire Elvish, once or twice gesturing back at Willow and Xander. Neither of them could make out a single word he said except for what sounded like their names.

Finally, he stopped and lowered his hands after a long reply from one of the Elves. The Elf, tall and with blond hair concealed under his hood, stepped forward.

"These are scouts from the Wood Elf kingdom," Giles explained. "Legolas' kin. They're on a... a long-range patrol, you could call it," he said. That wasn't the half of it, though: patrolling, hunting, scouting, spying, all in one, reckless and perhaps hopeless, but also suicidally brave.

Rather like our own situation, he mused with a resigned half-smile.

"You are not Men of Mordor, or you would lie dead even now," the Elf said, fixing his gaze upon Xander and Willow. "Why are you here?"

"We - " Giles began, but the Elf quickly cut him off with a few words in that strange Elf tongue. The former Watcher nodded in frustration.

Xander and Willow exchanged glances, and by unspoken agreement, Willow took on the role of spokesperson.

"We're heading south," Willow explained. "To..." and here she could not help but lower her voice "to the Black Land."

"Why?" The Elf's expression was grim, but Willow was undaunted.

"To rescue a friend. Buffy Summers, the Champion, the Varyarë. He has her prisoner there."

"Varyarë?" Xander wondered to himself as Willow continued.

"And we're going to find her."

The Elf stared at Willow for a few more seconds, and then smiled faintly. "Your friend said the same, and I do not doubt either of you. Word came from Imladris of your travels, too, but we did not think you would come this way. Do you know what you are marching towards?"

Xander stepped up. "Yeah. We don't care."

"So be it. I think your errand doomed, but it is noble too. Which way will you turn now, though? All Mirkwood will be ablaze soon. The Enemy marches on our lands to the north and aims to conquer all the lands around the Anduin. These stragglers are not even the smallest part of his army. You will not long evade the others, even if you have somehow so far."

"We had hoped to leave the forest and strike out across the plains, and then enter the Black Land from the East," Giles said.

The Elf shook his head. "Speed will not save you. He has watchers in the skies and in the earth. You would never cross all those long leagues without being hunted and caught."

"There must be a way."

"There is!" Xander exclaimed. "You said it yourself, Giles. Back in Rivendell." He pointed at the fallen Mordor soldiers. "We dress up like them and fake our way in."

"It may work," Giles conceded, even if the plan had seemed infinitely more plausible back in the safety of Rivendell. "We don't have any other real choices, at any rate."

"Perhaps." The Elf shrugged and then pointed at two of the dead soldiers. Both had arrows protruding from their foreheads. "They have the least blood, and no damage to their garb. The fit may be wrong, but we can do nothing for it."

"What about Willow? I don't think even the dumbest Orc would buy her as a grunt," Xander pointed out.

"No, but..." The Wood Elf pointed at a small, still form, unmistakably a woman, lying half-hidden under a gray, dead bush. There was an arrow in the back of her head. "One of their witches, a Variag hag, full of black magic and poison. Her curses failed her in the end, though."

Willow paled and gulped, but nodded weakly. "I guess it'll do," she murmured glumly as one of the Elves hauled the dead witch over.

A short while later, all three were ready. Giles and Xander looked passably like Variag warriors, even if they had little idea how to truly wield those long curved blades, and Willow had transformed herself into a near copy of the dead witch - luckily, they were of the same height and build, if not age. She gingerly held the black wooden staff, its brass Eye at the top shorn off, and tried not to think about the fact she was wearing a dead woman's - a very recently dead - woman's clothes.

"Good luck to you three," the lead Elf said as his men began to fade back into the trees. "May the Kindler watch you in the night, and the Heart of Flame in the day." He raised his blade in salute and then he too was gone, vanishing almost instantly.

After a few seconds, Giles cleared his throat. "Onward, then. Daylight is dying."

"Do you really think this is gonna work?" Xander asked a few minutes later, when he was sure, or reasonably so, that the Elves were miles away.

Giles could only shrug. "I speak some Variag, and a little of the Black Speech. Orcs aren't very clever, it should be enough to get us past them."

"Orcs, maybe, but what if we run into some other Variags?" Willow asked, bringing up a point Giles had foolishly hoped she wouldn't notice.

"I don't know, Willow. We have to trust in fate."

"Giles..." Willow rolled her eyes. Trust in fate? That wasn't the Watcher she knew talking. "I can help. I know some speaking glamours. And I can make my face look all old and stuff, too."

"Are you sure it will work?" Giles asked her. He remembered Willow had been quite a talented witch, but the last ten years had soured him on sorcery - the only ones who used it here were all filthy and foul, slaves to the will of Sauron.

"If it doesn't work, are we any worse off?"

To that, Giles had no answer. When they finally made camp for the night, Willow cast her spells. One quite obviously worked, as she suddenly took on the guise of a wizened old hag with two pale, blind eyes.

"Gyah!" Xander exclaimed when he saw what Willow had turned into. "Turn it off."

"Hang on..." She murmured an incantation under her breath and Xander sighed in relief when her usual face shone through the illusion. "Only you and Giles will see me like this now," Willow explained.

"How long will it last?" Giles wondered, a bit of his old professional curiosity resurfacing.

"A lunar month. We should be in - you know - by then, right?"

Giles poked at their tiny campfire for a few seconds before answering. They'd debated it in whispers for much of the afternoon. Xander and Willow were adamant they take the direct route to Mordor now that they were in disguise. Giles, though, had argued it was far wiser to stick to the original plan. It had seemed logical enough in the light of day, such as it was in this shadowy land, but now, with darkness all around them, he couldn't help but think of what Buffy was going through.

"You know we don't have much chance of getting through unnoticed if we try for the Black Gates," he finally told the two teenagers.

"I know."

Giles nodded. They didn't even have to say the 'but...' aloud. All the same, though, he had the sudden irrational fear that taking the direct route would only add to their misery - their misery and, especially irrational now, Elenya's. If he died, how would she -

Slowly, reluctantly, Giles nodded. "You're right. We have no choice."

Willow and Xander smiled, not noticing Giles discomfort. Giles sighed inaudibly and turned his eyes up to the heavens above. The sun had long since set, of course, but the dim gray moon was high in the sky. He finally cracked a smile, remembering the tale Elenya had told him long ago. Tilion and Arien - the Little Boy and the Patient Maiden, as she called them.

"But Tilion was wayward and uncertain in speed, and held not to his appointed path..." Giles stared up at the full moon - the scarred moon as many Rangers and Elves called it - and, even after all these years, found himself amazed that the Man in the Moon was one of the few things to survive the great gap between Middle-earth and modern Earth.

It was, he decided, rather typical that the modern world had lost the heart of the story though. The truth of it, Elenya would say, and could he really argue with that? He'd met those who had dwelt alongside the Powers themselves - Lord Círdan in the Grey Havens, and the Lady Galadriel. Was it so hard to believe the Moon really was the chariot of a god? Perhaps not made from the last dying flower of the great silver Tree, but still the chariot and home of Tilion the Little Boy.

"What's so funny?" Willow asked, cutting into Giles' thoughts.

"Oh, it's nothing. Just a story Elenya once told me," he answered, wrenching his gaze away from the moon.

"What story?"

Giles smiled at the young redhead. "Why don't we sit down? I'll tell you. Might do us all some good."

So he and Willow joined Xander by the fire, and he began with "It is told that after the flight of - he who must not be named."

... and, naturally, was interrupted at that point. "Who's that?"

"Xander, please," Giles said, trying not to lose his patience. It wasn't the young man's fault - he had no idea who the Dark One was. "That is definitely something we can discuss later. When the Sun is shining and we're far away from here."

"But - " Xander began, but he subsided with a single look from Giles. "Okay."

It was only when Giles reached the part of the tale that concerned Melkor's assault upon Tilion that Xander and Willow understood a little of Giles' reluctance.

"So he was the one who smashed up the Moon?" Xander asked. "But you said that Tilion - "

Giles shook his head. "No, the Dark One's attack did little but scar the surface a little. Tilion was the one who... er..."

"Scratched the paint job trying to impress his sweetie?" Xander supplied.

"Ah yes, wonderful metaphor, Xander," Giles said, but with a slight smile. Then he continued long into the night and finally, after many more interruptions, questions, and exclamations, ended with "... and of the many messengers that in after days sailed in the West none came ever to Valinor - save one only: the mightiest mariner of song," long after the moon had vanished along his wayward track.

"Rather fascinating how 'Apollo' is actually a beautiful and valiant virgin-mystic, and 'Diana' is merely a poet who can't keep his mind on the job," Giles noted, and then sighed. Willow and Xander had gone to sleep the instant he'd finished the tale. Perhaps for the best, though. They had a long, long road ahead of them. Or possibly a short road and a violent end ahead...

-

Morning came eventually, a pale sun shining feebly through dark clouds that hung low over the ground, as if trying to deny those below even a glimpse of the heavens above. They set out quietly, somewhat cheered by the faint glimpses of the sun, but the true peril ahead was on all their minds. Until now they had been in, at worst, the borderlands, but now they were marching straight into the heart of Sauron's empire.

Of the three of them, Giles alone had the faintest inkling of what Mordor was like. Willow knew what Sauron was like, and that was perhaps worse, and Xander had an excellent imagination. But against that was their love for Buffy, and that was far stronger than their fear, and carried them through the remaining leagues of Mirkwood.

For a fortnight, they eluded any further contact with Sauron's soldiers, if one didn't count the skittering and chittering beasts as soldiers. The sun became fainter with each passing day, and the mountains of Mordor came into view through the growing gaps between the gray trees.

On the afternoon of the day they finally left the southern eaves of Mirkwood, traveling along a grim gray road lined with broken bones and the unburied filth of Sauron's armies, the three companions finally came face to face with the servants of the Eye. It was just past noon, as best any of them could tell, when sudden cries shattered the eerie silence of the broken plains.

"Wait," Giles said when Willow and Xander turned back towards the still-near trees. Those were the screams of Orcs, not Men or Elves. Another ambush? No, he decided, not here in the open. Not unless all of Sauron's might was a lie.

As soon became apparent, it *was* an ambush in fact. But those being hunted down were Orcs, and so were those pursuing them - Orcs and four tall Trolls in black armor. All of them were drawing closer to the woods along the raised road.

"Maybe now we hide?" Xander suggested after a few seconds. Four Trolls, armed and armored, were not something he wanted to fight with. Even if Buffy had been there with them.

"Too late, they'll have seen us," Giles pointed out. "We may have an opportunity here."

Both groups drew nearer, and now Giles and the others could see that the smaller, fleeing group of Orcs was unlike their pursuers. The prey were short and squat, and their skin was a chalky gray, but those after them were tall and black, like the Orcs of the Misty Mountains, and armed with great steel bows. And in the rear of that group were tall creatures, gray and slablike (although none of the three could tell if it was armor or hide), carrying mauls easily as large as Giles. One blow could snap a man in half, or shatter the spine of a warhorse.

But it was the bows that settled the issue. Even as the gray Orcs came within a few dozen yards of the shelter of the trees, the sky was suddenly black with arrows and all but a handful of the little Orcs fell dead. A few stray arrows landed close by the three travelers, stray or perhaps a warning of sorts.

The few Orcs who survived the first volley let out shrieks of terror, barely above the level of startled beasts, and broke in all directions. None made it far, and the one that tried to stick to the road nearly ran into Giles. Before it could recover, he ran it through with his sword.

"Giles!"

"Quiet!" Giles hissed at Willow without taking his eyes off the Trolls that were now approaching them, their Orcs off to the sides. And now that the Trolls had parted, he could see a figure on a horse behind them, a figure clad in black and crimson robes much like the ones Willow was wearing.

"I do hope your language spell is still working," Giles murmured as he kicked the dead Orc off his sword. The rider, flanked by the four Trolls and the score or so Orcs, slowly approached the small group. Now they could see that a black veil with the red Eye painted upon it, and that his hid his face shield also bore the Eye.

"Hail, old mother!" the rider called out after stopping at a presumably respectful distance from the trio. The Trolls and Orc foot soldiers stayed back a bit farther, but Giles noticed they had moved into a line, ready to sweep in from both sides if need be.

"Hail, young one," Willow replied, a strange rasp in her voice. Another part of the spell, Giles guessed. "You are far from your home," she added, and Giles almost breathed a sigh of relief. She was turning the conversation towards him, just like he'd coached her and Xander.

"As are we all, old mother," the rider pointed out. "These Maggot-Orcs ran fast and far, from the Black Gates to here."

Willow nodded slowly, pretending to consider that bit of information. In truth, she didn't really care what the Orcs were up to; she was only annoyed (and alarmed) they'd crossed paths at all. "They won't run any more," she said after a few seconds, and grinned wickedly.

The mounted Khandling grinned right back at her and caressed the hilt of his sword. "Are you for Mordor?" he asked.

"We are," Willow confirmed, again sticking to the plan they'd agreed upon. "Would you escort us?"

[Willow, no!] Giles thought, resisting the impulse to turn and gape at her. Xander, though, wasn't quite as collected, and gave her a startled look for a second. Luckily, the man from Khand missed it.

"Of course, old mother. Are all your soldiers dead, then?"

"Yes... Elves," Willow said, sneering as she did. "Spies in the woods."

"For all the good it will do them! Their days are numbered." The rider smiled grimly, perhaps imagining a world with no Elves in it. "I am called Yalanci," he informed them when he finally came out of his twisted little reverie. "There's nothing left here. Shall we leave, then, old mother?"

Willow nodded without giving Xander and Giles even a glance.

-

End Chapter 12