This is getting too long again so this seems a good place to break it. More retrospective in this I'm afraid – sorry.
To those who were kind enough to comment on the last chapter - thank you and apologies for not replying as yet but I've been having serious problems with both my email and this site.
P
Uneasy choice
Afternoon had slid towards evening, the sky had darkened and Gandalf had refilled his pipe twice in the time he sat thinking about his meeting with the elf Tauriel and what he could deduce from it.
A haze of smoke had settled around him and the frown had never left his brow since she had departed so heavy were his thoughts. Her leaving had been quiet and dignified, the spurt of angry defiance apparently spent, and she was once again the elf who had first stepped through the door. Yet he felt no satisfaction at the conversation or the manner of its ending, for he had promised Thranduil an answer as to her allegiance and now, after all the words they had traded, all the grief they had revisited, he found that he had no answer to give.
For he knew he needed to be sure, had expected to be sure, and found that he wasn't.
There was no doubt what the Elvenking must do if he reported that the darkness had taken her; for the sake of all he would have no choice but to act, and, at the very least reckoning, her future from that time onwards would lie behind a locked door in the most secure part of the kings Halls. Gandalf did not underestimate what that action would cost and he was loath to cause the king so much grief without being sure. But nor did he doubt the risks that would come from leaving her free if she was so tainted. Though she was but one, and a lowly one in the scheme of things, if she was in Sauron's service then she was also a dangerous one. She knew too many of the secrets of the Elvenking's careful security for comfort, and, darkness or no, she had already shown herself willing to put the needs of her people aside in the furtherance of her own desires. If it came to war, as he feared it would eventually, when Sauron had grown in strength, her knowledge might prove the rock on which the Woodland realm foundered. If it fell then there would be no other defence against Sauron's dark forces, or the easterlings, between here and Imladris, or even as far as the Shire.
Yet, though the consequences of allowing her to remain free by his error could be great, if he were honest was he willing to make such a claim without far greater certainty than he currently felt?
He would not again push aside the responsibility for unpalatable action, he had spoken nothing more than the truth when he had told her had sworn that to himself in Dale, but to condemn her to so harsh a fate without much more reason than he had would be more than cruelty, however great her past transgressions.
His pipe was growing cold again and he took a moment to fumble in his robe for his pouch of pipeweed sighing as he refilled the bowl and drew hard to coax a flame. His mind drifted back and forth as he did so roving over all he had heard of the things he had not seen that day, and he had gone to some effort to discover them, yet the picture remained incomplete, and often the gaps in those reports involved Tauriel. He sighed again, and as a consequence of that they also involved Legolas. But he had a strong feeling that it was in that time that he would find the answer he needed.
Gandalf puffed on the pipe again feeling the bowl warm within his hand as he let the memory of that day of battle wash over him like the fog of pipe smoke.
Thranduil had led his forces out of Dale without a word to him after that last conversation about Ravenhill. He saw the Elvenking speak briefly to Bard before gathering his Elf Lords beneath his banner and leading them out through the broken walls of the city towards the bridge. At their captains command his companies followed him rejoining the battle on the plain as the word of the new enemy began to spread. The king had not so much as given a backward glance and the wizards last view of the Thranduil had been a shaft of sun glinting on his golden head and silver crown as he stepped out to face the enemy once more. Gandalf had followed more slowly with Bard and the remaining men at arms from Laketown but Bard had said nothing of his conversation with the king. By the time they reached the bridge the quick footed elvish companies had crossed it and were out of sight and already in the thick of the battle.
If the earlier fight had been horrible this new conflict was terrible.
The first wave of the enemy newcomers had overrun even the remnants of their own in their hurry for blood. The bats that came with them had turned the sky above the battle plain black as night as they wheeled like drifting thunder clouds looking for injured and dying to feed upon. The king's companies had moved to reinforce the elves still fighting on the plain and shore up the dwarf defence that was, in truth, almost spent; had the elves not returned when they did then Dain and his warriors would have been slaughtered. Both Thranduil and Dain had fought as if possessed, each of them understandimg that more than just the fate of the mountain hung in the balance. The Elvenking had come to the mountain knowing how much grief an unsecured hoard of gold might bring to his lands only to see that grief materialise before him, he and the dwarf lord would have no doubt that should they lose here then their people would have no hope of survival. To lose this battle was to lose all.
The elves were skilled fighters, disciplined, resilient and with a deep and abiding hatred of all the works of Sauron, and orc especially, and they gave no quarter holding off impossible odds. Dain's dwarfs were his most skilled warriors each one a veteran of the goblin wars and they too fought as if each knew what depended upon it, ignoring injury and weariness to keep their lines intact and the fight alive. Yet as Gandalf had followed Bard into the fray he had known that there was little hope of victory. Bard chose to reinforce one of the elvish flanks and Gandalf had joined him, sparing a moment to wonder at the fate of the hobbit before the fight drove all such thoughts away, from that point his only concern being staying alive. As the battle raged and still the enemy kept coming he had no time to think of Thorin other than to briefly admit the truth of Thranduil's words, Thorin and his companions were almost certainly safer on Ravenhill than those who fought at the foot of the mountain.
They would have lost, been overwhelmed despite the skill of the warriors, had the eagles not arrived when they did. He could admit that to himself now, though it had taken some time for him to face it.
Thranduil had eventually called his companies to him and left the plain leading much of his host into the foothills of the mountain for they were agile and quick even in armour and their enemy were not, it slowed the rate of the assault and gave the elvish force more chance to capitalise upon their skills. It also gave their king sight of the battle plain and forewarning of the direction from which his enemy might attack. But that position meant that it was to his forces that the eagles first gave aid, scattering the war bats and sweeping down to catch the climbing orcs, carrying them high and then dropping them onto their advancing own. Once the orc stopped climbing to meet the elves then the eagles began long sweeping forays on the enemy flanks, beak and talons spearing throat and eye. Thranduil gave the order for his remaining archers on the mountain to pick off orc bowmen, providing some protection for the Windlords kin from orc arrows, whilst he and his sword and spearmen descended once more to reinforce the now wavering dwarf lines.
But they would have lost had the windlord not entered the fray when he did. The knowledge of that never left some part of Gandalf's mind; and he was resolved that he would not be caught so poorly prepared and unaware again. Only the thought of what might have been the outcome had Smaug been seduced to assist the growing army of orc eventually reconciled him to his part in the matter. But he knew even then that some part of the guilt he earned that day would never leave him until he returned across the Sea
However the Windlord, who was better informed than wizards it seemed about the comings and going in the mountains, and who shared the elf view of orc, did come and they were not overtaken, but of the three thousand that had numbered the elven host that marched here nigh on seven hundred were dead or seriously injured and there were few at all who escaped unscathed. Not even their king who had proved so skilled at defeating orc swords, he had left the battlefield with a nasty warg bite to his hip and thigh got whilst dispatching its rider, though Gandalf had not found that out until they left Dale. As for the dwarfs, of the five hundred or so warriors who had come into the valley with Dain close on three hundred never returned to the Iron hills, and like the elven force there were few who were uninjured. Dain himself had a deep and bloody gash in his head. The men of the lake fared no better, Bard survived but many of those who stood with him did not.
They prevailed, none would use the word won for such a calamity. What little comfort there was lay strangely enough in the size of the enemy force, for having seen it both Thranduil and Dain knew that the death of Smaug had only hurried the confrontation, that it would have come to them soon enough, and the outcome then might have been yet more terrible still. For a while now their lands and kin would be safe, for despite its great size the orc army had been poorly trained and far from disciplined and it suffered even greater losses, both in the battle and in the pursuit of them that followed. Few of the dark lords' creatures survived that day and Sauron would have to wait for his war a little longer.
But throughout that terrible day and into the evening afterwards he had seen nothing of Tauriel or Legolas and, as far as he knew, neither of them had played any part in the fight. He had little leisure to wonder at it, but as the battle faltered and as the scattered forces of the enemy were pursued by the elves, dwarfs and eagles Gandalf wondered at their absence. Everything he knew of the prince said Legolas would fight at his father's side, leading some of the companies himself rather than allowing the whole burden of managing the battle to fall upon his sire. Yet it seemed that he had been wrong in that assumption for as the melee thinned and banners could once more be seen flapping in the wind there had been no sign of him. Gandalf had sat down upon a rock and watched Thranduil from a distance looking on in sadness as the Elvenking had surveyed the battlefield alone, knowing what grief soaked memories were being added to those he already carried. As he watched the king's silent progress from one dead elf to the next he almost wished that he had never sought Thorin out, wished that he had come to Thranduil for help in the first place. The king of the wood might have driven a hard bargain on the matter but once convinced of the need to act his care for the consequences, and his sanity, could have been relied upon.
Finally, when the Elvenking had ceased his perambulations and returned to his Lords, Gandalf had stirred himself and made his way slowly down toward the king's banner. There he stood in unusual silence and watched as the king conferred on the help needed by the injured and the removal of the dead, and then again as he met with Dain and Bard to discuss the plight of the helpless in the city. The elves ignored his presence on the fringes of the group, attending to their sad business as if he was not there. Then as the sun sank towards the edge of the horizon, and without a word to any, the king had turned away and gone out onto the battlefield to a point where too many of his spearmen had fallen; here he fell to his knees, raised his eyes towards the early stars of evening and began the first lament for the dead, his lone voice somehow filling the air with such beautiful sound that Gandalf felt the tears pricking at his eyes. Across the battle plain the elves fell silent for a moment before also kneeling and taking up the song, it seemed but moments later that the dwarfs began their own lament, the two songs so different and yet so similar as the valley filled with the sound of grief. Bard and his men had stood in silence beside the Elvenking's banner listening to the song with red rimmed eyes and pain filled faces.
It had been as the last echoes of the elvish lament had echoed around the valley that Gandalf realised there was still no sign of Legolas, and not long after that he had seen Thranduil riding at breakneck speed towards Ravenhill.
With no sign of Bilbo Baggins on the plain Gandalf returned to the city to look for him, and it was here that he first learned of the fate of Thorin and his nephews. His grief at the news had been great and the only consolation that both Bolg and Asog had also perished on Ravenhill, 'let us hope they both remain dead this time' he found himself thinking bitterly. It was not long after that he heard the first word of Bilbo, that the hobbit was alive and unharmed, but his relief was short lived for it was then that he heard the first reports of Legolas. They made little sense to him, for they placed the prince on Ravenhill and he could not see how that could be. As the rumours grew more certain so did his unease for it seemed that while both Legolas and Tauriel had played their parts in the death of Bolg their participation had ended there and they had taken no part in the battle on the plain or in the city at all. That was the moment when Gandalf had first realised that more might have been broken that day than he had known, for he could think of nothing good that would have taken the prince from his people's side at such a time.
Yet it had been many hours later that he had discovered just how much damage had been done, and for so little.
While the elves, men and eagles were still hunting down the fleeing enemy he had gone about the town seeking out information on those things he had not witnessed. Most of all he wanted to know the fate of his burglar, for there was still no sign of him and no further word had come to explain his continued absence. He would have set off for Ravenhill himself but the muttering amongst the elvish warriors in the city were growing louder and more belligerent and as the name of both Legolas and Tauriel were being mentioned he remained in Dale seeking more news.
It had taken some time and a visit to a healers' tent to discover the reasons for the mutterings. There he had found an elf of the Kings Guard, one who had been at Thranduils back when Tauriel confronted him, having an orc arrow removed from her leg. She had known the wizard was in the king's confidence and that, coupled with her pain and the medications already given, loosened her tongue a little more than might otherwise have been the case. She had known nothing of the hobbit when he asked but she had known of the confrontation in the alley and why Legolas had gone to Ravenhill. As he had waited for the healers' attentions she had spoken long and bitterly to him, her voice low but the tone of it cold and angry. Her report of the matter was clear enough, it did not allow for Tauriels action to be anything other than deliberate. Nor did she hide how the prince had responded, which, if more widely known, explained much of the simmering anger in the elvish camp.
"We should have shot her where she stood, and would have done so had it been a man or dwarf who held that bow. But she was one of our own and to kill another elf is hard even under such circumstances, and at first I at least did not quite believe what I was seeing. She said something strange too, something that made no sense, about 'turning away' and that distracted me, for the king has never turned away from her, or from any other that I know of, and I wondered at her babble. It was not that long I hesitated but it was too long had the king had been in real danger, and I feel some shame at that.
She shook her head at the memory, a momentary pain crossing her face.
"Still I do not understand it. Neither her nor the prince. How could she threaten her king, one who had been her protector all her life and how could the prince support her after it? Though few know of it the king even tried to rescue her from the consequences of her own foolish actions by allowing his son to seek her out at her desertion. Yet she spoke to him with such hatred and I was unable to believe at first that she was truly doing what she seemed to be."
She looked away as if seeing those events again, moments that would never leave her.
"But the look on her face left no doubt of her intent, she was willing to kill him, and as the disbelief left me I reached for an arrow to bring her down. But the king acted first and the danger, the need for us to act, was past. All who stood behind him then are more grateful for his quickness than I can say, for had he not been the warrior that he is then one of us would have had to shoot her and live with that killing of another elf for ever."
"What of Legolas?"
The Elf Lord shook her head.
"I do not know what he was thinking of. But it was clear that he would take her part despite the threats and taunts, and when he turned away it was not to join our beleaguered ranks but to go with her to the watchtower to warn the dwarf."
Gandalf recalled that he had been silent for a moment turning matters over in his mind, for it went against all he knew of elves who valued family and considered loyalty amongst the highest of virtues.
"Why did she risk it then," he had asked eventually, "for she must have known that you were there, could she not see you behind the king?"
The lady had shrugged and pain flashed across her face again, though at what he could not be sure.
"She must have done so, and yet she behaved as if she did not. Perhaps she thought that we would not act against another elf unless the king ordered us to do so. Perhaps she knew that the prince was near and would defend her."
"But did she not fear the kings own actions? Or was it that she wanted him to act against her for some reason of her own?"
"I think not. It was as if despite her taunts, the contempt she spat at him, she was sure of his unwillingness to kill her, or have her killed, from the start. From the shock on her face when her bow was splintered it seemed that she had not expected him to act against her in any way at all."
"That is strange. For why would she think that he would stand there and let her kill him?"
"I do not know but having seen her face and heard her voice I think she had passed beyond what any elf could explain and that in that moment there was no elf in her at all." She gave a small smile. "Nor could she have known the king as well as she presumed to think she did, certainly not his martial ability, for it was clear she had underestimated the ease with which he could disarm her if he chose to."
"Yet surely she would have known better?
The lady shook her head.
"No. She was a guard but not a warrior, she defended the Halls against the spiders but that was all, she had never trained beside him, and she had never seen true battle and what it takes to survive it."
Gandalf recalled that he had smiled back at her and reached for his pipe only to have a healer take it from his hand with a look of reproof.
"You have then?" he had asked gently.
The elf lady had nodded with a sad look.
"That I have. More than I would wish to be the case. I stood behind King Oropher at that terrible charge when our king was prince and we faced Mordor beside an army of men. I heard the trumpets of Gil-galahad sound across Dagorlad and saw the pennants of the elvish host fly beneath a cloud of war bats and carrion crows. I was one of the too few who survived that first charge, not least because I was in the rear of the company and Prince Thranduil came to aid our retreat. He did not fail us then, even though he had just seen his own father fall, and I cannot think of a time when he has failed us since. He would have given up the crown when he brought the remnants of his father's army home but the people of the Woodland Realm willed that it be otherwise, and we have never had cause to regret it. They say he is the greatest of all the Elvenkings not of the west and though I am not a master of the Lore fitted to pronounce on such matters I cannot think of any reason to dispute the claim. Perhaps that was why I felt such disbelief when she accosted him in that manner, for I could not believe that such as she, who has only ever seen a Realm protected by his wisdom, who knows so little of matters other than the bow and who has never truly seen war, would threaten his life, the Realm, for a dwarf she had known only through the grille of a locked door."
Gandalf had reflected on that for a moment before nodding.
"It is strange I grant you."
"Strange, aye, that and more my lord."
What else she considered it to be he didn't hear for their conversation ended there as a healer came to tend to his hurt and had taken him away to wash the wound. But it occurred to him then that something other than a sudden and inexplicable fancy for a very young dwarf might have been behind her actions.
Yet now he found that he was not sure if that was the case at all.
It was true that he had no more understanding of why her fancy had settled upon the dwarf, if it had, now than when he started. He remained convinced that the differences of temper and the weight of history between the two involved were so great that something more than a pretty face would have been needed to inspire any real feeling, on her part at least. Time had been against the development of such a feeling even if Kili's oath to his uncle, a surly and belligerent intruder in the Realm she guarded, had not been. As for why she had deserted her post and followed him, on that she had said nothing to anyone as far as he could see. Thranduil had told him that the only conclusion he could draw from that time was her belief that the dwarf was injured and his dismissal of that possibility, and yet there had been some slight hesitation in the king's voice when he spoke of it that made the wizard wonder if that was truly the only conclusion the king could draw on the matter.
She had not spoken of that in their discussion now he came to think of it, and in his anger at what she had said he had forgone asking. But looking back over her words it seemed to him that there had been very little warmth in her when she mentioned the dwarf. Perhaps her comment about not being able to recall his face explained that, but what explained that lack of memory in an elf?
No, he could not consider the matter of the dwarf explained.
As to the matter of the battle and the confrontation with the king well there her own testimony was not so very different to that given by Thranduils' guard, or what Ferran had told him later; or the king himself later still. Yet none of the reports, not even her own, explained why she did what she did.
He drew a deep breath and looked up at the ceiling pulling together all the impressions of Tauriel that he had gained together. There was something not as it should be with the elf of that he was certain, but then he had known that before he had returned to Dale. Having now spoken to her alone, something he had never done before this day, the extent of that wrongness seemed greater than he had hoped for when had asked King Thranduil's permission to speak with her. He had to admit that he had found the conversation with her frustrating and painful, and not only because of how it had stirred his own memories. Now he realised that it had left him with a sour taste and a lingering sense of unease. Even as she had left the room with the aura of loss and grief once more hanging around her like a heavy cloak he could not forget the anger towards her king that surfaced so readily and with such force. She might regret her actions but that didn't mean that she repented of the intent, and after her last outburst the wizard was no longer sure how much of that regret was for what she did and how much was for the consequences of it. She clearly retained a considerable belief in the virtue of her own actions and he found that he could not judge how she would respond if chance should put another opportunity to harm the king in her path. He didn't think that she would take such a chance, nor even that she would want to, but with given the shadow lurking within her he could not be sure of it. His frown deepened, her words to him were somewhat reminiscent of a child who, when reproved for some transgression, hang their head and said 'I'm sorry' only to finish the sentence with a sigh of perceived injustice and a 'but'.
A flicker on the edge of his mind at the thought suggested to him that he was close to something important but the impression skittered away again like a forest animal suddenly scared by a shift in the wind almost before he realised it was there.
No he could not in all honesty say that he was sure about her, not sure enough given what hung upon his judgement; but nothing he had sensed from her, and nothing she had said, proved that she was a servant of the dark one, only that she harboured some grudge against the king. There was indeed some hint of darkness within her but was it the darkness born of Sauron's influence or some lesser one born only of her? For the moment he thought that he tended towards the latter view, for it did not have the feeling of the dark lord's taint, being smaller in some way and far more specific and personal. Somehow, and he wasn't sure when or why, he had gained the impression that her anger at Thranduil's refusal to send his company to Ravenhill had as much to with him refusing her wish as it had to do with the fate of her dwarf.
He narrowed his eyes in thought. What, then, should he do, what should he report to the king? Here in Dale she was not a risk, at least not for the moment, and perhaps time would shed more light upon the matter. In that time Thranduil would continue to advance the securing of his Realm and eventually her knowledge would be of no use to his enemies whatever her allegiance. Gandalf knew that Thranduil had allowed for this when he permitted her to remain in Dale, just as he knew that such a programme of preparation was already underway within Mirkwood. If Thranduil was willing for both king and prince to visit Dale this summer then those plans must be advanced, and if that were the case perhaps the risk of leaving her here and free to serve her people as she could was not so great.
He looked towards the window and the deepening blue of the sky and sighed again. Time had slipped past more quickly than he had thought and he did not wish to keep the Lord of Dale waiting, he would think no more on the matter until he returned from dinner. He could spare one more day here before he took the road to Erebor and the next difficult conversation, another day to give the matter more thought, and then he would have to make a decision and compose the message to Thranduil. But whatever the outcome he knew that neither of them would, or could, consider the matter of Tauriel finished.
For a moment he wondered if he should delay his other plans and remain here in the north for the summer festival. If he could see her about her duties when the king was in this house perhaps he would be more certain, more comfortable in his choice. But that would mean postponing other matters still further and he feared that he might have already delayed them too long. No, he would leave as planned and trust to the kings' good sense and vigilance.
With that he rose and shook out his robe looking down at himself with a sad smile, he did not doubt that the elves would have found him another robe more in keeping with the evenings entertainment and for once he would sit down with a lord without looking like a vagabond. The smile became fond as he gathered his cloak around him; he did not mind the trouble for this was Thranduil's house after all it would not do at all to come to Lord Bard looking as if the Elvenking could or would not provide for the occasion.
.
