Chapter 6

Annoyance and Horror

Pippin lay on his back, staring upwards through the canopy of leaves. The light of the dying sun played through them, gentle rays kissing the hobbit's face.

He had lain like this many times with Merry back in the peaceful days of the Shire, usually after having eaten the day's usual plunder. There had always been something be it apples that had just happened to be fall of the Hornblowers' trees as they passed, or mushrooms which they had stumbled across, quite by accident of course, in Farmer Maggot's fields.

Pippin grinned, as memories of all their hunting trips through their land came back to him. The search for the best blackberry pie in Tuckborough had been a particularly successful one and, as he recalled, he had gained at least half a stone that summer.

He felt much better now than he had immediately after coming round from his bout with the river. True, it would be sometime before his arm didn't throb every time he tried to move it and before his breathing wasn't a little laboured and painful, but, as Legolas said, it was nothing time wouldn't heal.

He was feeling far more hopeful as well. It shouldn't be long now before Legolas came back and Pippin fervently hoped that he would have Merry with him. The state his cousin would be in was hardly to be doubted. When they had last been together they had both been exhausted, dehydrated, starving and on the point of despair. He could only presume Merry's situation had worsened.

It didn't appear that Merry had been trying to make life easy for himself either. A little further back along the boarders of Fangorn they had found the bodies of a few Uruk-hai and the limbs of several more. Lying on the ground, in the middle of the carnage, had been a small knife Pippin had immediately recognised as the same one he had seen Merry secretly slip into his jacket before they had left Crickhollow. Undoubtedly, his stupidly brave cousin had taken the liberty upon himself to avenge Pippin's supposed death. The poor fool of a Brandybuck! How was he to know that his Pip was still alive and as well as could be expected after a tussle with a river. How he wished he could tell him now.

He was roused from these thoughts by Legolas' horse Arod. The animal had been grazing a short distance away, but it suddenly seemed to have taken a great interest in Pippin's hair.

"Hoy, none of that thank you! I know my hair can't look that amazing after the last few days, but that is no reason to eat it!" He sat up and turned to face the horse, trying to put an annoyed expression on his face, albeit not very well since a grin slipped onto his lips.

Again, Arod nudged him. The creature seemed agitated for some reason and it took hold of Pippin's scarf gently in its mouth, apparently trying to pull him to his feet.

He scrambled up, trying to calm the horse with difficulty, given their respective sizes. "What is it, Arod? What's the matter?"

Of course, Arod would not and could not answer. He merely continued to pull at Pippin's scarf.

"What are you doing you mad horse? Where are you taking me? Legolas told us to wait here for him, quietly. You are not helping with either factor! He'll be back soon with Merry and he'll lynch me if I'm not here. STOP! Woe! For goodness sake this ridiculous, Arod!"

Considering it belonged to an elf, the horse seemed to have extraordinarily bad manners. Desperate, Pippin wriggled out of his scarf to leave it dangling from Arod's mouth. Unperturbed, the creature continued walking due south without dropping the scarf.

"Oh, no you don't!" Pippin hurried after the increasingly annoying horse. "Stop it, Arod, you cretinous animal! Come back!"

They continued in this fashion for some time, the horse always a few feet ahead of the running hobbit whose language was becoming less and less savoury.

Pippin stopped for a moment, hands on knees gasping for breath. He was in the middle of Fangorn, with no clue as to where they were and no guide back to where he had been other than this insane animal, which seemed to take a vindictive pleasure in taunting him. Making a metal note to suggest to Legolas later that he should get a new horse, Pippin ran on.

As they continued, the trees grew further apart and the leaves above less dense. The hobbit supposed they must be drawing close to the eaves of forest.

Suddenly Pippin tripped and fell flat on his face. Cursing, he turned to see what had caused this undignified action and quickly threw himself away in horror. A dead Uruk lay where he had been sprinting a moment before. A green feathered arrow, he recognised as Legolas', protruded from its eye.

He looked up and saw Arod staring fixedly at something in a clearing ahead. Scrambling up, he rushed silently to where the horse was standing. He about to grab the bridle when he froze stock still, petrified as he saw what it was gazing at.

ooo

Legolas' knife fell from his hand. He could feel the poison spreading though his veins, into every part of his body. A steady increase of pain was following not far behind it. The ground was covered in carnage. Dead Orcs lay tangled in the twisted positions they had fallen in. Legolas' own clothes were soaked in their blood as well as his own.

Agony was building unbearably now. It was everywhere, snaking like a viper into every corner of his being. His face contorted into a silent scream and his arms wrapped around his chest trying to stem the bleeding. It was cold... So cold.

His muscles gave up and he fell forward; grasping his chest harder still. He lay twitching in torment, unable to govern his own body any more. He could feel his breathing slowing. He didn't want to die. Not here, not now. He had lived for tens of thousands of years and still there was still so much to do and see. He didn't want to leave yet. His kind never should.

ooo

Uglúk arrived just in time to see the elf collapse to its knees. A barbed arrow stuck though its chest and it seemed to be suffering no small degree of pain. A smirk slid across his face. He turned Merry so he could see the dying prince. A muffled scream came from the hobbit's gagged mouth and it seemed to go limp with shock as it witnessed the elf fall forward, unable to support its own weight anymore.

All of his men lay dead, stuck full of arrows and knife wounds; it was of small importance now. They were within a day's journey of Isengard now and all the land between them was allied to Saruman. It should be the easiest leg of this infernal mission. Plus, the fewer men who came home with him meant less he had to share the credit of the hobbit's capture with.

"Your friend will die here alone, defeated and it will be your fault entirely. You are the cause of yet another death." That, combined with the elf's demise, should kill any spirit left in the hobbit.

With that, he threw Merry back over his shoulder and began to run again, heading straight towards the pinnacle of Orthanc; now so near.

ooo

Merry's eyes never left Legolas. They remained fixed on the elf's feebly twitching body; hardly noticing the blur tears made on his vision. Suddenly, they were stretched wide as a figure burst into the clearing, paled by moon and star light and somehow very ghostly and ethereal. He seemed so familiar, but Merry's brain either couldn't or didn't want to place him. For a moment he caught a glimpse of the apparition's eyes and realization shot through him.

"Pip?" The word escaped his lips in a half sob as he lost sight of the ghost of his cousin. Soon, they were out of the forest and running across the hills that lined the way to Isengard.