The dusk gathered outside Yuai's kitchen window. Hyrondal sighed as he wiped the last juices off his plate with a piece of bread. His meeting in the garden had seemed empty, with only Jailil and Nimrethil to congregate with. Thranduil was gone and Ailunai walking through glades somewhere in a green cloak and white dress, singing to the ground.

Hyrondal looked up out of his thoughts as Yuai pushed his plate back and rose from the table. Yuai looked at Hyrondal and said, "I ride out tomorrow with a company of young warriors. It is time you joined us."

"I mean no offense," Hyrondal answered. "But, if this is another one of those tiresome hunting trips, I would rather stay home."

"This is a hunting trip," Yuai answered. He slapped a scroll into Hyrondal's hand. "But this time we are not hunting deer. We are hunting orcs; scouts report signs of a pack of them near the village of Earlsley."

Hyrondal pinched his fingers on the scroll. "Is our company enough to take on a pack of orcs?"

Yuai raised his eyebrows. "I should think so! Do you doubt your own ability?"

Hyrondal raised his chin. "I have trained for this moment for three years."

"Indeed," Yuai said. He folded his arms. "We will be meeting up with the guard of Earlsley to aid us in our hunt. We leave tomorrow at dawn; might I suggest you go pack?"

"I intend to," Hyrondal replied. "After we eat this killer cheesecake Nimrethil brought down this morning!"

With barely enough time to say goodbye to Nimrethil and Jailil the next day, Hyrondal rode out with Yuai on the wide road north toward the village of Earlsley. In addition to a handful of warriors, a dozen of the eldest youths from the training fields rode with them. Hyrondal knew their names and skills, for he had spent the past three years matching swords with them.

Two days later the elves reached Earlsley. A vast clustering of log cabins around a cobblestone town square made the village, centered in the middle of fields of golden grain. There were few trees except those oaks which grew alongside the roads. Riding into the town square, the elves passed carts rattling with apples and women hurrying home from the market with ingredients for dinner.

Yuai saluted the armed warriors waiting in the square outside the guardhouse at the western end and dismounted to shake hands with Rual, Captain of Earlsley.

Hyrondal glanced about the square; four wide roads led out of the area between the stone houses walling off the square. One end of the square held the carts and booths of farmers selling fresh vegetables and meat while flags and banners rippled off the rooftops around the square. Signs of a coming celebration were hinted at in a pit piled high with logs.

Naecil, apprentice to a commander under Yuai, leaned over and cupped a hand around his mouth to whisper, "It is the Earlsley festival of plenty, to bring in a bountiful harvest come fall. It begins in two days."

"If we are lucky, we will be back from hunting by then and can share in the celebration," Hyrondal remarked. He sat to attention as Yuai mounted his horse and Captain Rual and his companions took to their horses.

"We will leave the horses at the far northern end of the village, once we hit the tree line," Yuai said. He clicked to his mount. "We can better hunt orcs on foot."

Hyrondal nodded and followed Yuai as the horses rode out of the town square behind Rual. As the sun continued to rise, the cabins and cottages dwindled, and the ground began to incline at the sudden uprising of the trees beyond the last field. The elves dismounted and left their horses at the last stable on the hills before the forest took over the land completely. When purple dusk settled, the elves set up camp under the trees.

Hyrondal lay awake after dinner, thinking of Ailunai somewhere in Mirkwood learning to speak to the trees. He fell asleep and dreamed of Thranduil, forever aware of Yuai and Rual's murmuring voices.

Dawn broke. Hyrondal followed eagerly as Rual led the push forward up gradual hills until Rual stopped and gestured to a thin streak of broken twigs winding into the forest. Here the underbrush was tangled, the tree branches low. No space for horses, Hyrondal saw.

"The scouts reported the orcs are moving westward," Rual said. "Be prepared to move fast."

Hyrondal frowned at the tracks in the earth. "I thought there would surely be more than ten orcs?"

Rual's black eyebrows laced together. "Ten orcs are as dangerous as thirty. Do you question the eyes of the scouts?"

Hyrondal closed his mouth as Yuai shot him a look. The elves took to the trees, moving swiftly between the branches, following the faint trail in the broken branches and trampled bushes below. Sometimes it seemed there were ten orcs, sometimes more. As he stretched his body, constantly moving from jump to leap, Hyrondal could not deny a shallow trickle of doubt in his gut.

Something was wrong.

The trail faded at times only to resume ten feet later. Passing over the ground bare of orcs traces, Hyrondal frowned. His fingers and knees were in constant contact with the trees and, listening to the roughness of the bark he grasped when he swung between branches, Hyrondal heard the trees talking. He fell behind his fellows to listen, seeing brief glimpses of the orcs when the forest faded before him and he saw only his prey.

Hyrondal saw orcs feet; too few orcs feet. He shook his head as the image faded and hurried to catch up to his party. No time to talk; every elf was too focused on their movements to be distracted until they paused at noon for food and drink.

Hyrondal gulped water from his waterskin before he wiped his mouth and spoke. "Something is not right. We need to turn back."

Rual choked on his drink. "Pardon me?" he sputtered, almost laughing.

"It does not make sense," Hyrondal insisted. "Why would orcs venture out into unsettled territory instead of hitting Earlsley; prime raiding ground?"

"You overestimate the intelligence of orcs," Rual said. "The creatures might as well be beasts."

"Beasts do not flee from their prey unless they know they are being hunted," Hyrondal insisted. "What if this is a deception meant to lure us away from Earlsley? What if—"

Hyrondal cringed as he realized the eyes of his fellows all centered on him. He flushed as Yuai's hand landed on his arm.

"Are you questioning the intelligence of the scouts?" Rual demanded.

"No, sir!" Hyrondal replied. "But the trees have shown me things that do not make sense."

Rual's eyes grew wide and he choked on his breath. "The trees! Quite frankly, I am disappointed in you. I expected an apprentice of Yuai, Captain of the Royal Guard, to have some smattering of respect for his superiors!"

Yuai jerked Hyrondal aside and shoved him against a tree behind the resting elves. He leaned over Hyrondal and hissed, "What idiocy has possessed you to ramble about trees?"

"No idiocy," Hyrondal answered. "Something is not right. How can you not feel it?"

"You have no right to question authority when you have nothing to base your defiance on!" Yuai snapped.

"You have experience!" Hyrondal cried. "How can you keep walking without stopping to question what you are seeing with your own eyes!"

"I," said Yuai, "Know what I saw on paper and I know how to follow orders. What you no doubt feel is nervousness."

Hyrondal growled, but Rual called a halt to the rest and cut off his chance to reply. The elves took to the trees again and, as his breath sounded in his throat, Hyrondal seethed. The ground told him things Yuai would not help him understand as they moved further away from Earlsley. Worry and anger knotted in his gut.

At night in a small camp hidden behind a stand of trees, Hyrondal dreamed. Roots dug into his side and seeped the things they had felt and seen into his dreams.

Hyrondal saw orcs; dozens of orcs. As a leaf hanging from a branch high above, he watched the orcs split into two groups. And, as suddenly as the leaf fell, he was the orcs, chuckling as he tramped toward Earlsley, his hands curled around the hilts of his jagged blades, hunger for blood in his throat.

Hyrondal bolted upright to the smell of breakfast frying over the campfire; thyme and wild rabbit, definitely coffee. He leapt to his feet.

"Someone slept in," Naecil teased. He sat on a log near the fire.

"We need to turn around," Hyrondal insisted. "We are being lured away from Earlsley by a small group of orcs while the rest of them—"

"Silence!" Yuai commanded. His eyes blazed as he looked over the fire at Hyrondal. Beside him, Rual folded his arms.

"But elves will die!" Hyrondal cried.

"What did the trees tell you this time?" Rual sneered.

Hyrondal's neck burned as the gathered elves chuckled. "I know I do not know as much as you, but—"

"But," Yuai said. "I never thought I would say this, Hyrondal, but you are clearly not ready for a mission of this caliber. It is clear path back to Earlsley; go home."

Hyrondal clenched his hands at his side; the inevitable had happened. He turned and walked back the way he had come until he could no longer see the camp or smell the smoke when he looked over his shoulder. Then he ran and ground his teeth, muttering his frustration to the trees, who listened and guided his feet on the quickest path back to Earlsley.

There was little time to rest; Hyrondal jogged and walked, drawing upon every grain of strength he had built upon for the past three years until he dripped with sweat in the settling night air. At noon the next day he reached the stable where his horse was housed; he staggered astride and dozed as his horse followed the road back to the village.

Before he reached Earlsley in the gathering dusk, he knew he was too late. He smelt the smoke of burned cookies and heard the screams before he saw the fires raging among the houses and saw the dark shadows of the orcs pillaging. Crazy creatures with blood on their hands.

There was no time to think; Hyrondal's horse leapt into a gallop and his sword slipped into his hands. Elves fled the town square, unable to seek solace in their houses as smoke thickened the air. Orcs were swift in pursuit and the chaos erupted fiercer as Hyrondal's horse barged into the fray and scattered elves and orcs alike. Hyrondal had barely time to jump to the ground before the panicked animal fled the square.

Arrows sliced down from the archers along the rooftops and buried themselves in orcs flesh. A handful of the town guard retaliated against the attack, slowly driven apart as the orcs swarmed them. Hyrondal provided a brief distraction, giving the warriors time to regroup, and then the orcs were on him.

Hyrondal caught up a fallen sword as he found himself along and unafraid in the midst of bodies smelling of stagnant water. He moved forward, the swords extensions of his arms, and doused the cobblestones with green black orc blood

Hyrondal felt alive, moving on the tips of his toes to the balls of his feet, living gloriously as he took practice from the training fields and made it real, moving past duels that never ended in death to finish sword slices banned from friendly fights.

But gradually Hyrondal's arms ached and his heart grew heavy and it seemed he could not do enough to thin out the orcs tramping around him. He grew aware thin stings and sharp cuts on his arms and legs and realized, of all the blood splattered across him, some of it was his own.

Hyrondal's lips pinched at the thought of Yuai until his irritation was broken by the scream of an elfling. He glimpsed the girl clutching a purple and red doll as she scrambled back from an orc that had broken past the line of straggling elf defenders.

No one could help; he was on his own.

Hyrondal ducked the orcs blade in front of him and dropped to his hands as he used his legs to knock the orcs off balance. He came to his feet and plunged one sword into the creature's neck, pulling it free as he turned to slip sideways between two orcs. He left their bellies slashed open as he sprinted across the open courtyard.

Hyrondal thrust the elfling onto her feet and pushed her back, grunting as he blocked the orcs's blade with his own. His arm shuddered to hold the position while his second sword swept in to gut the creature underneath their locked blades.

At the same time, Yuai and Rual arrived. Their horses blundered into the square and, instead of elves fleeing, the orcs turned and ran onto elven spears and into a hail of arrows.

Elves were left staring at the sky with dead eyes amidst burned timber and ash. The fires blazing over the rooftops were doused with well water and panic.

Hyrondal leaned against the corner of a building under the eaves. His hands were slick with blood and clenched the hilts of his swords; he could not let them go.

Yuai found him and put a hand on his arm. "Are you alright?"

Hyrondal flinched as Yuai's hand agitated a cut. He nodded. "Yes."

Yuai's hand curled on Hyrondal's wrist. "You can let go of the swords now."

Hyrondal shook his head. "No. I need to clean mine and find the owner of the second blade."

Yuai steered him toward the guardhouse at the western end of the square. They passed the elves clearing the orcs bodies away. Once inside the building, Yuai sat Hyrondal on a bench beside the trestle table down the middle of the room and filled a bowl with cold water.

Hyrondal stared at his swords on the table as Yuai aggressively cleaned his cuts with a damp cloth

"I take it you now understand battle does leech away a part of you," Yuai said.

"No," Hyrondal answered. "I find it is more linked to help than ever."

"Then what is bothering you?"

Hyrondal hesitated before he blurted, "I failed, Yuai! I could have done better; instead elves died."

Yuai sat down beside him and put his cloth on the table. "You cannot save everyone, Hyrondal."

Hyrondal looked into the far corner of the room, near the door leading into the barracks. "I . . . I was also a little angry at you."

"A little?" Yuai said.

"Maybe a lot," Hyrondal admitted. "I felt—I felt like you gagged me."

"I . . . I did refuse to hear your voice and I am sorry."

Hyrondal fidgeted. "Perhaps I could have explained myself better."

"Yes," Yuai said. "But I could have listened better."

"I will do better next time," Hyrondal said. "If you will do the same."

"Agreed," Yuai said. "Now, come, we have work to do if we do not want any of your cuts to become infected."

Captain Raul entered the guardhouse as Hyrondal, in a fresh tunic, was polishing the sword he had picked up off the ground. Rual looked at the sword. "That belonged to Dia."

"Belonged?" Hyrondal said.

Rual nodded slowly. "He—did not survive today's battle."

Hyrondal looked down at the blade in his lap. "Does his family know?"

"He did not have family." Rual raised his hand and hesitated before he patted Hyrondal's shoulder. "You did well today, Hyrondal. I think Dia would be proud for you to carry his blade."

"Thank you," Hyrondal said quietly. He snapped his yellow eyes at Rual's back as the elf strode past him.

That night Hyrondal lay in his bunk and listened to the music in the town square. Somber music; music grieving the loss of loved ones, as well as music raised to the sky. He was too tired to join the festivities, but he took comfort knowing he had helped make the festival possible.

I do apologize for the late update. Some of you may understand and know the call of Thanksgiving!

I am forever grateful to you for your thoughtful comments and inspiring reviews. Please do share your thoughts!

Next Chapter: A short chapter exploring reality in the healing ward. Enter Jailil.