Siege Mentality

Chapter Seventeen

Thanks to Nemis for betaing this.

Sorry that it's been such a long wait.

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Elrond slapped his riding gloves impatiently against one thigh. The snapping noise they made on impact was, despite the accompanying stinging sensation, immensely satisfying - but not, he reflected ruefully, as satisfying as it would be to throw them at someone's head. Possibly his own. The line of fangirls simpered and fluttered in front of him, seemingly blithely unaware of his increasingly wrathful presence. Angel turned to the very unchaste Chastity to check her lively makeup. Five girls were simultaneously throwing themselves at Legolas, who was more than a little pleased by this turn of events. All were wearing outfits that would have provided decent courage for an anemic ant, and were certainly going to leave them with an interesting selection of cuts and nettle-stings after ten minutes on the trail. For a minute, Elrond let his attention drift to his own wife, clad in sturdily practical breeches and tunic, her silver hair caught back in a simple queue. His eyes softened a little and a smile touched the corners of his mouth as she met his gaze, one small hand holding the edges of her cloak together. But that brought his thoughts back to where they started from. He cast a suspicious eye over the milling crowd, and cleared his throat. They paid him not one blithe bit of notice. Celebrían rolled her eyes at him, and, stepping closer, prodded him in the small of the back. He raised his voice, shifting his grip on the hilt of his sword. "Ladies." They looked a little surprised at being addressed thus, although that could have had something to do with the rather excessively stringent use of eyebrow tweezers. The previous night, Imladris had rung with the melodious sound of fangirls screaming in self-inflicted pain.

"Ladies." He persevered, more through hereditary stubbornness than any inkling of hope. However, over the last several thousand years, between the tutelage of a sailor, a kinslaying minstrel and an extraordinarily stiff-necked High King, and, when push came to shove, the desperate school of the battlefield, had endowed him with a fine speaking voice. Now, all those years of experience had reached their apogee. The Valaroma would have seemed like a tin whistle beside this. "Will one of you tell me which of your gaudily painted number has stolen my wife's horse?"

The fangirls, like a many-headed, hormone-driven and technicolour monster, shook their heads in unison. Elrond sighed impatiently, feeling the now-familiar headache gathering behind his eyes. "Who. Has. Stolen. My. Wife's. Horse?" He took a step closer to the throng, his sword clinking ominously in its sheath. "Do not forget that I am under no obligation to you, and I shall feel no compunction at all not to leave you behind."

They gasped. No threat of death or dismemberment could have been worse than the promise to separate them from their precious Leggy-kins. They turned on each other with their customary moral generosity, and several hair-pulling spats broke out, punctuated with highly improbable and inappropriate lyrics garnered from a century mercifully far in the future. Maglor had stood among the ruins of Alqualondë with the blood of his kin slicking his sword-blistered hands; he had watched in horror as his beloved older brother threw himself to a fiery death. But even that had not inured him to this; he clamped his scarred hands over his ears and wailed in true despair at this musical torture. There were more flat notes here than in the Orcs' annual Yuletide musical. Even the one where Morgoth had performed live in a frilly pink tutu.

Elrond, not feeling much better himself, was sorely tempted to bury his head in the crook of his wife's neck and leave it there until all the rest of the world gave up and decided to leave him alone.

"I don't have it."

"Of course you bloody do. I saw what you were doing to Legolas the other day…"

A sudden silence fell, and Elrond opened his eyes cautiously. Celebrían, however, closed hers, shielding them with one delicate hand. Her expression could be closely compared to that of Námo when he realised that, yes, he would be lumbered with Fëanor's infinitely demented company until the ending of Arda. In other words, mental excruciation verging on physical pain.

"I got lots of lovely provisions, just like I said I would, Mister Frodo. I said I would, did I not?" Samwise Gamgee staggered into the courtyard dragging a sack behind him. The sack was at least twice his size and thumped heavily across the flagstones, taking chips out of the marble. Erestor moaned unhappily at this wanton damage, and looked not much cheered up when Glorfindel slung one arm around his shaking shoulders. The Ringbearer's face, however, cleared miraculously. His dinner plate sized eyes were suddenly as bright as a neurotic nebula.

"Oh, whatever would I do without you, Sam?" He smiled. "What did you find?"

"Oh, some nice carrots, and two pounds of sugared walnuts, and…" He paused dramatically and Celebrían's worst fears were confirmed. "…Well, there was this horse, and it looked like it would be much more cheerful if it was a nice pot of stew, so I obliged it." He hefted an enormous sealed cauldron from the sack and presented it to his master. Frodo grinned. Merry and Pippin bounced up and down like a pair of over-caffeinated bumblebees. An apoplectic storm clouded the Master of Imladris' noble face. With a noise like an enthusiastic elfling tearing silk draperies, he unsheathed his sword. Although the peredhil twins ducked for cover, the Hobbits merely looked confused. What could anyone possibly have against the use of a useless horse to make a very useful stew?

"Tell me." The elf-lord's tone was measured, his words even and flowing. With an effort, he mastered his anger so that not a trace of anything out of the ordinary showed in his bearing and demeanour. Maglor, who had seen this only once before, after the Sack of Sirion, and had found it absolutely terrifying in an elfling counting less than ten summers, tried to sneak away. When the Lord Celeborn's outstretched arm barred his way, he sank to the ground in a huddle and began to curse his father methodically. Without those damn jewels, he would be warm and safe in Tirion beyond the seas, but now…

"Tell me," Elrond continued, and Celebrían rested a calming hand on the nape of his neck, "was this horse perchance a black palfrey?"

"I don't know nothing about palfreys, Mister Elrond sir, but it was a black horse." He grinned, and the elf-lord … well, we would say that he grinned back, but it would be more accurate to say that he bared his teeth. "I saved some of the fur, if you'd like a belt."

"Fool! That was the Lady Celebrían's horse which you so callously disposed of." He started forward, brandishing his sword before him, only to find himself restrained by an iron grip. The elf-maiden in question flexed her fingers around his wrist pointedly. "I should never have taught you to do that," he grumbled.

"But thank you for doing so." She traced the veins in his wrist with one finger, and despite himself he felt his rage replaced with a rather different emotion. "You cannot. You must not. It would be wrong for you to kill the Perian over such a thing. Save your blade for what is to come."

"True," he conceded grudgingly, "but what are we to do? I will not go without you, and there is no horse for you. This frippery flock of fools are all decently mounted, while you, hervess- nín, are summarily unhorsed."

"Fear not," she said calmly. "I shall share."

"Share?"

Lord Celeborn proved to be in this instance rather more quick-witted than his son-in-law, lore-master or no. The Sindar lord ground his teeth and reached for his own sword. Fortunately, he had been deprived of his weapons by his grandchildren, who were leaving nothing to chance.

"Share a horse."

"With whom?"

"With me, of course. I offer my services freely to this charming lady." Legolas stepped forward and swept a florid bow. "I shall share my horse willingly with the Lady Celebrían."

A pulse started in the back of the peredhel's neck, as imperious as the drumbeats of war. He hurriedly retrieved his sword from where it had lain by his feet, almost stabbing himself in the toe as he did so. But there was worse to come. Far, far worse.

Celebrían raised one hand in protest. "Nay, Prince Legolas. I would not have it so. I have shared a mount with my husband before, and it is my intention to do so now."

"But." The princeling smiled dazzlingly, absolutely confident of his ability to charm anything female within a seventy league radius. "'Twould not be proper for so great a lord to be thus deprived of half of his horse. That would be the task of his standard bearer, and thus I offer myself for both tasks." The expression of unctuous insincerity remained plastered across his face. He had planned to nobble the lady's horse himself, but this just made his task easier.

Elrond's gaze flickered from the arms of his house fluttering in the wind to the delicate royal features of the Prince of Mirkwood. He panicked, absolutely deprived of speech. Not even the confrontation with Sauron himself before the barred gates of Lindon had left him with this abject sensation of stark fear and loathing. He weighed his sword in his hands, running the tips of his fingers along the battle-worn grip, and contemplated various uses for the curved blade, none of them particularly pleasant. A despairing groan escaped his lips as he realised that none of them were really options unless he wished to live out the rest of his days with the accompaniment of Fëanor's cheering for another member of the House of Finwë suborned into kinslaying. There was no way he could turn down that ostensibly courteous offer either.

Celebrían opened her mouth at least to worm her way out of this horse-share. Even had she wished to, which indeed she did not, she would not have wished to risk the deadly looks that the fangirls were shooting towards her. However, she was pre-empted. Aragorn smiled sweetly, although his hand rested challengingly on Anduril's hilt, and turned to the princeling. "Nay, mellon-iaur. I cannot allow it to be so. It is my place to bear the standard of my father, and this I shall do gladly." He knelt in seeming obeisance before the elf-lord. "Are you all right, Adar?"

"I am now, ion- nín." He took the standard from Glorfindel's hands and smiled down at his foster-son. "Here is the standard of my house. I charge Aragorn, son of Arathorn, to bear it with honour."

"I take up this charge. May it be a beacon against the darkness, and in the night may it shine brighter than all the stars in the heavens. May…"

But he never finished. Absinthia was balanced precariously on a small stone ledge high above the courtyard. Her black chiffon half-cloak whipped in the wind generated by the ferocious batting of her mascara-clogged eyelashes, and her heavy boots did not appear to be very practical for clinging on.

"I want to die!" she declared in a fulsome voice. "I wish that I had never been born. No one will ever love me. I don't want to be loved. I hate myself and I'm better than all of you boring idiots. I'll jump. I'll…aaaaaaaarrrrrrrrghhhhhhhhhhh…" Lindir, pushed beyond all endurance, had sneaked up behind her and poked her with a broom handle. She plummeted towards the courtyard, brandishing her black skateboard in one hand like a demented seagull. She landed headfirst in a picnic basket, and came up spluttering, a cheese sandwich stuck to her hair. It was an improvement although she did not seem to think so. "Why did you do that you poncy freak? I was just getting to the good part and then Leggy … I mean, that other poncy bastard, was going to catch me." She tried to stand up to strike one final melodramatic pose before fainting from despair. Alas for her thespian tendencies, her bangles had caught on the meshwork of the basket and she was stuck. As she fumbled to disentangle half a ton of scrap metal, the assorted denizens of Middle-earth exchanged a mirth-filled look.

Elrond shook his head in bafflement. "Just take the wretched thing, Estel." Swinging up onto his horse, he settled Celebrían in front of him, his arms wrapped around her waist, her hands resting over his on the reins.

"See." She leaned her head back on his shoulder. "Is this not better than two horses?"

He would have answered, but he was rather busy kissing her contentedly. The morning, he thought muzzily, had just taken a turn for the better.

TBC.

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Reviews are good *nods seriously*