Chapter 2: The Battle

Brush and twigs caught in Arrowlan's hair as she, her mother, and twin continued on their flight away from the Dunadain village. Both she and Aragorn were firmly secured onto their mother's hips by ropes lashed around Gilraen's back and pack, although it didn't keep the twins from getting jostled around during the adrenaline-induced run. In the distance, the sounds of swords crashing could be heard.

Gilraen suddenly veered sharply to the right, nearly tripping on a root. Recovering quickly, she dropped to the ground, using a few bushes and ferns as a refuge. From there, they could look out over a large meadow where Arrowlan and Aragorn often played.

Arrowlan opened her mouth to ask what was wrong, when rustling brush and stomping feet could be heard. Remembering her mother's earlier warning, Arrowlan shut her mouth with an audible snap and blindly reached out for her brother instead. As soon as her hand found contact with her brother's, she latched on to it tightly, fear causing her to tremble slightly.

The rustling slowly grew louder. Voices could be heard, speaking a language so horrible that a shudder slid down the spines of both twins.

"I smell more of those rangers, there is human flesh near!"

"Yes, but this one is afraid, maybe its not one of them rangers," the response slid out with a perverse amusement that could only be mastered by creatures that fed off of fear. A shadow fell over the brush that Gilraen and her children were taking refuge in. Arrowlan and Aragorn cowered as close together as the rope harness would allow them; bright silver eyes met cobalt blue, both wide with fear.

Gilraen stiffened, and Arrowlan glanced up to see why her mother was moving, for she had been completely still before. Looking up, Arrowlan could see between a few of the branches of the bush, just barely making out the first stars on the twilight horizon above the trees. However, blocking most of her view was the largest, ugliest creature she had ever seen. It was dressed in makeshift armor, a mockery of the fine leathers that her father wore; it was splattered with slowly drying splashes of blood: both the black of its companions and the red of the Dunedain. Its skin was green-brown, the color of dried mud. And its face, just glancing at its face caused Arrowlan to shudder, yellow crooked teeth and mean eyes, the seemed to glow slightly, like night animals that prowled around the encampment. Behind this one creature, Arrowlan could see and hear many more, the thought that there was more than one nearly made her sob. Her hand clenched tighter around Aragorn's, who in response stretched out his other hand out to carefully touch her shoulder, trying to calm her. Both twins' eyes were abruptly drawn back to the clearing as a war cry sounded nearby.

The forest around them suddenly seemed to erupt in rangers. At their head was Arathron, son of Arador, chieftain of the Dunedain. All three of the observers relaxed a little at the sight of the rangers. The orcs who had been standing closest to their hiding spot, moved away to engage the rangers.

Despite being valiant and skilled warriors, the Dunedain were sorely outnumbered. Blood soon covered all the foliage around the field. Gilraen did her best to protect her children from the sight and from the rain of blood, but a ranger and an orc would occasionally stray too close to their hiding place and blood would splatter her and the twins. Too soon, the blood turned redder and redder as the Dunedain slowly succumbed to the sheer numbers of the orcs.

Without warning, two dark haired figures burst into the field, firing a barrage of arrows faster than the eye could see. Elladan and Elrohir, twin sons of Elrond, often rode with the rangers. They had arrived that the camp to find it deserted and the sparse cabins looted. The stench of orc lay heavy across the encampment, and both twins knew that the orc band Arathorn and his rangers had been tracking had finally revealed themselves, and from the look of it, in much larger numbers than the Dunedain had expected. Fearing for their friends, both had whirled their horses and rode hard toward the sound of battle. What they found was atrocious.

Most of the rangers lay dead, those who still stood were tiring from nearly a full day in battle. Arathorn was the only one who still had a mount. What worried both elven twins was the fact that they had seen no sign of Gilraen and her children. Both children were too important to allow them to fall into the hands of Mordor, besides the fact that neither of them wanted to think about what orcs would do to such youngsters.

Slinging their bows back over their quivers, both twins vaulted over their horses heads,' drawing swords as they dropped to the forest floor. Black hair flowed behind them as they ducked and parried the orcs who had quickly moved to surround this new threat. The remaining rangers rallied around them, helping the twins as much as they could. Arathorn also dropped off his horses back to join the fray on foot. As Elladan ducked a scimitar, a glint of red in the brush caught his eye. Quickly finishing off his foe, he turned to look closer. There in the brush, he could just see Gilraen crouched down watching the battle fearfully. Elladan could tell she was holding something, but the brush obscured everything else.

Gilraen relaxed slightly after she saw Elladan glance her way. She trusted the sons of Elrond to protect her family, no matter what. Her wariness eased slightly, succumbing to her achy muscles after the mad dash through the forest. She slouched back, causing both children to be jostled slightly. Arrowlan glanced up from where her head had been buried in her mother's neck, trying to see why her mother had moved. Her bright blue eyes glanced around what little she could see, and was just in time to catch a movement out of the corner of her eye. Craning her neck, Arrowlan watched as one of the "dead" orcs stretched out both gnarled hands and drug itself slowly across the field, right toward the brush where the family sat. Arrowlan tugged on her mother's loose shirt, trying to get her attention. The orc looked mean, and in Arrowlan's opinion that probably meant it was mean, and she didn't want to find out what it would do if it found them there.

When Gilraen just brushed Arrowlan's hand away, the younger twin quickly turned her face toward Aragorn, to show him the ugly creature that was now much closer to their hiding place. Aragorn's chubby face registered fear when he saw what his sister was pointing at. By now the lined and dirty face was as visible as it could be through the brush, and its yellow eyes gleamed with malice. In its right hand, it clutched a dirty scimitar. With blackness almost fully around them, the scimitar glinted evilly it the pale moonlight.

"I know one of you ranger's is hiding in there. Come out, little ranger, let us have a little fun."

Arrowlan and Aragorn glanced at each other, hands clenching around the other, eyes wide, for they recognized the voice as being the same one that had spoken earlier. Gilraen was also pulled out of her weariness at the sound of the gritty voice, her arms instinctively going around both children. She had no weapons, for her small dagger had been in the main room of the cabin and she had not thought to grab it before fleeing to the bedroom, and had never returned to the main room to retrieve it.

Gilraen tried to move slowly backwards, but the creature was too close. It could hear every sound from its close proximity. Giving up all pretense of hiding, Gilraen, whipped around and began crawling deeper in the woods, both children hanging awkwardly off her hips, nearly brushing the ground. Her only hope was that the remaining orcs in the field wouldn't notice her flight and also pursue her.

"Ah, my pretty, you couldn't hide from me." There, towering over Gilraen was the orc that had pursued them this far. It still clutched the scimitar, and it was raised for the killing blow. Arrowlan screamed in terror as the orc leered at them, obviously intending to kill Gilraen. The scream was cut off abruptly as Aragorn slammed is hand over her mouth, trying to remind her about her mother's rule of silence.

However, the damage was done. In the field, Arathorn heard the scream and stopped fighting as soon as he heard the noise. His moment of inaction was all one of the orcs needed to fire an arrow from across the field and bury itself in Arathorn's eye. The Chieftain of the Dunedain crashed to the ground, never to rise.

The elves had also noticed the scream, Elladan whipped around, braids flying behind him; he saw the orc that stood where Gilraen had been hiding. Without a thought, he pulled his bow off his back and fired his last arrow. Even as his brother fired the arrow, Elrohir saw Arathorn crash to the forest floor, and swiftly he dispatched the final orcs surrounding him, and rushed to his friend's aid.

Gilraen froze when she saw her husband fall, sitting on her hands and knees; her husband's inert body was the last thing she saw as the orc buried his scimitar deep in her body. Cutting all the way through Gilraen's back, it continued through skimming Arrowlan's arm. Gilraen hardly noticed, as the pain overwhelmed her, steel grating on bone, and she fell the rest of the way to the ground, where even in death, her body was wrapped protectively over the twins. Not a moment later, the orc also fell, an elvish arrow piecing its back and protruding through its heart, the weight of it hit Gilraen's back and forced both twins to be painfully crushed beneath both. Aragorn's head fell forward, connecting with a rock, gashing his forehead, causing a stream of blood to instantly start running down his face, while his baby teeth, which had been worrying his lip from fear, were jarred painfully, forcing two of them through his upper lip. Arrowlan fared little better. She was caught almost completely under the bodies, the weight and the pain from her arm made it difficult to breathe. She tried to take a breath to scream for the elven twins, but she remembered her mother had told her silence, and when she had broken it before, her mother had died. Not wanting to attract any more orcs, Arrowlan allowed the final din of battle fade away and her body succumbed to unconsciousness just as the night fully overtook the last remnants of twilight.

TBC

Thank you to those who reviewed. I'm going to try to make my posts every other day or so, and hopefully they will get longer! I hate short chapters, which I know these have been, but they were too good of stopping points. Hang around for the next chapter.