Chapter Nine – The Hunt Begins
Aragorn ran towards the sound of the horn of Gondor. Legolas was at his heels with Gimli not far behind. Aragorn's mind was whirling, he had sent Arlannis in search of Boromir and now he prayed that she had not found him. The horn had been silent for the last few minutes, which meant its owner was unable to wind it for one reason or another.
Aragorn quickened his pace but the sight that met him in the glade nearly froze his heart. All was quiet, the fighting was over and Boromir lay unmoving on the forest floor, riddled with Orc arrows and surrounded by his lifeless enemies.
Aragorn rushed to him but Legolas hung back, uneasy as his kind were with mortality. Boromir's eyes opened slightly as Aragorn cradled him in his arms.
'Boromir! What happened?' asked Aragorn as he quickly took stock of the injuries to the warrior's body. Even a hurried glance told him that Boromir would die of his wounds. He was beyond even the healing powers of Elrond.
'Aragorn,' gasped Boromir, 'did you find Frodo? I tried to find him but he would not come to me, I tried to take the ring from him, Aragorn, I failed, I could not resist its call,' he broke off as a coughing fit racked his weakened frame.
'Rest easy, Boromir,' said Aragorn, 'Frodo is well, I spoke with him and the quest has not failed, my friend.'
Boromir's eyes closed briefly in relief, but abruptly they flared open again and fixed Aragorn with a look of mingled pity and horror. 'Arlannis,' he whispered, 'the Orcs took her and Merry and Pippin too.' Aragorn blanched but he could see that Boromir's spirit was swiftly fading. Though he burned to know more of his sister's fate and that of the hobbits, he questioned Boromir no further but instead offered words of comfort to the dying man.
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Legolas' head snapped up, his elven ears had caught Boromir's last words. He turned to Gimli, 'The Orcs have taken Arlannis and the hobbits,' he cried. Gimli's eyes widened in pity. The thought of the helpless halflings and a Ranger in the hands of Orcs was not a pleasant one. 'The poor little ones and the lass too, she's a brave one but no one can survive the tortures of Orcs,' he said sadly. Legolas' eyes burned, 'That will not be allowed to happen,' he stated tersely. Gimli just stared sadly at him.
Aragorn left the lifeless Boromir and he and Legolas stared mutely at each other. Moving as one, they gathered the remains of the brave warrior who had failed to master the Ring but had ultimately redeemed himself in death. They placed him in one of the Lorien boats and arranged his body in a fitting manner. The waters of the Anduin would take Boromir to his final home.
Legolas could see Sam and Frodo tracking into the forest on the opposite shore. His mind was filled with doubt for their safety, but his heart would allow no other choice than to follow Arlannis. Looking to Aragorn he could see the Ranger had made the same choice, 'We will not abandon my sister and our friends to torment and death,' he stated, 'we hunt the Orcs!'
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It was night. Memories returned, Boromir's arrow-riddled body, the cries of the hobbits and the stench of the Orcs as they carried them off. Arlannis was on the hard ground, hands bound behind her back and her feet similarly tied. The hobbits lay close by, also bound hand and foot. Pippin's bright eyes softened in relief as he saw her return to life. Merry still lay unmoving beside him, with blood oozing in a slow trickle from his forehead. Arlannis tasted her own dried blood on her lips and bit by bit moved about to get a better view of their surroundings. It was not encouraging. On one side they were close to Fangorn forest and the trees that stood there were said to harbour a darkness of a different nature than that found in Mordor, but no less fearful for that. On the other, they had Orcs. Fast moving Orcs at that. A lot of ground had been covered since the desperate fight at Amon Hen.
'Arlannis,' hissed Pippin, 'are you alright?'
Arlannis nodded once. Pippin continued, 'Merry won't wake up, he was bashed on the noggin just like you.'
Arlannis was now aware of the individual Orcs as their voices came clearly to her. An argument was in full flow. She was grateful that Pippin did not seem to be following it though it was conducted in a mixture of common speech and Orc tongue.
'Don't worry,' she said to Pippin, 'Aragorn will come for us.'
Abruptly, Arlannis found herself the object of attention. Merry and Pippin were unceremoniously booted aside and she was at the centre of a ring of grinning Orc faces.
'The Ranger's awake!'
'We had orders to bring the Halflings!' said one, 'No one said anything about any others. What are we carting her bony body for? '
'She's a Ranger, fool. I've come across her kind before. Thought it might be fun to torment her a bit!'
Arlannis quickly scanned the faces, there was a mixture of Orcs here, the ones that had taken her and the smaller Mordor kind as well.
Orcs hated the Dunedain and all of her kind knew that death was preferable to capture. Arlannis shuddered as one came close enough to pick her up and roughly turn her head to one side.
'And look! Pretty elvish ears to boot!' he crowed before throwing her to the ground again.
'I'd rather carry her in my belly than on my back!'
There was a chorus of growls and hoots and the ring converged on her. Arlannis could hear Pippin crying aloud in protest but to no avail.
She was hoisted to her feet and tried to keep her balance. She did not have to balance for long as the Orcs quickly raised her up on their shoulders so that she faced the ground.
'That's right! Bleed the bitch!'
Arlannis' vision was filled with twisted Orc blades and the pain was sharp as they made several cuts through her leather jerkin and scored her skin with shallow wounds. Blood began to flow and Arlannis watched in revulsion as half a dozen of the creatures ducked under their comrades' arms to catch the rain of blood on their tongues before it fell to earth.
She struggled but that only served to increase the flow so she stopped and let herself go limp in their arms. She could hear Pippin's cries of horror at what must have been a savage sight.
'I fancy her pretty little ears!' cried one and an answering cry of glee went up.
Arlannis was dropped roughly back to earth and one of the Orcs knelt on her back, grabbed her head and gave her a good view of his curved black dagger as he brought it to her cheek and scored a thin line across it to her ear. The blade was filthy and the smell of the Orc almost made Arlannis gag, but her stomach was forgotten as he pulled the pointed tip of her ear towards him and then slowly sliced it off. The pain was excruciating and worse was the sight of him holding the severed tip aloft before cramming it into his mouth, setting up a howl of mingled greed and hunger from the others.
He had hardly finished chewing his morsel when the others, crazed from bloodlust and ready to tear her apart, surrounded Arlannis. Knowing she was about to be butchered, she managed to turn her head and shout to Pippin, 'Run! Get away! They will do the same to you when they're finished with me!' Pippin's face was pale as death but he nodded and started to shake Merry for all he was worth.
Arlannis took a deep breath and prepared to face death. Raising her bound legs she lashed out and was rewarded with a howl of pain and a wet, crunching noise that told her she had broken an Orc's face. She could no longer see the hobbits through the forest of Orc blades and hoped they had managed to make their escape. Fangorn could surely hold nothing worse than what a pack of blood crazed Orcs would do them if they stayed. Her head was in a grip of iron and she cried out as her intact ear was yanked hard and then…the tone of the Orcs' cries changed. From lust to surprise and then fear.
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Aragorn and Legolas ran as quickly as the wind with Gimli struggling to keep up at the rear. Aragorn stopped dead as a bright glint in the flattened grass caught his eye.
'It is her sword,' he said, picking it up carefully. It was black to the hilt with Orc blood and the hilt itself was stained a dark red. Aragorn cleaned the blade swiftly and pushed it through a loop on his belt.
'I pray she will wield it again,' he said quietly. Gimli panted up to them, chest heaving.
'Found her sword, have you?' he gasped, looking troubled, 'Nothing but death would have loosed her grip on that blade, Aragorn,' he said in the matter of fact way he had of speaking.
Legolas turned swiftly, 'Save your breath for the chase, master dwarf,' he snapped.
And on they ran, at a pace that would have killed any beings less hardy than they. The next day, a Lorien brooch nearly completely obscured by muddy Orc prints, was their prize. 'The hobbits are alive,' said Aragorn as they ran on in the wake of the trail.
Legolas found his breath would fail him if he allowed himself to think about Arlannis in the hands of Orcs, so he pushed the thought from his mind when it came. But the despair he felt could not be pushed away so easily. He knew that Aragorn was frantic with worry for Arlannis, for who knew better than he what Orcs did to their kind? Rangers who had been captured were rarely found except as piles of remains with the clear marks of teeth upon their bones.
Legolas shook his head to wipe the image from his mind. But he carried the certainty that his heart would darken forever if he did not see Arlannis again. And that he could not bear.
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