"M-my hands……." Legolas was horrified, his voice shaking uncontrollably. Not able to bear the sound of his own voice, he fell silent and then fell to his knees.
I must have t-touched something terribly poisonous in the f-forest…
Struggling for answers, he looked around, unable to think of what he should do next.
A-aragorn…. Oh dear creature, please forgive me.
And he decided then and there that he could do nothing more for the creature which he had so regretfully and irrevocably damaged. He needed to get to Aragorn and that was that.
Now, all of the horses were rearing and squealing, trying to get away from him. But he was oblivious to their antics. He got to his feet and moved quickly to a cupboard where he pilfered a pair of leather gloves. There was no time to try and decontaminate himself, whatever the toxin.
He moved quickly to the gray stallion, which backed away from him into the wall, tossing his head angrily. Legolas took the saddle and its pad from where it lay limply over the black dusty pile of rib bones shaped like the frame of a steeple. He had not time for words of comfort, but smoothed the saddle as gently as he could onto the frightened animal. The stallion made the tacking up as difficult as possible with obstinate jostling. Finally, all was ready and, after stealing a cloak with a large hood, the elf mounted. The gray showed all signs of preparing to buck him off.
"Tariël. Tariël!" Legolas spoke the name written on his stall door. He spoke softly to him and then begged him for his help. Before waiting for a physical answer, the elf squeezed him into a desperate canter out of the stables and down the path leading towards the bridge. He pulled his hood tight down over his head to avoid being recognized by the blur of elves he raced by on his way out. The sun came over the edge of the mountains and cut the sky with a gold blade.
As he flew over the bridge, he noticed a large plume of dust lingering in the air over the path that he had used to travel to Rivendell a short time before. As he passed over the trail at the crossroads heading east, he saw a large gaggle of elves and a great blackness where the noise of explosion had come from. A large number of random trees had fallen all along the path, creating a great black scar amidst the green of the living.
What in Middle Earth?
But as with so many things at the moment, he did not have time to worry about them. He was of one mind.
He found as he left the outskirts of Rivendell that he was having to fight Tariël less and less over the bit and that the creature was beginning to spend less time running erratically all over the path, trying to avoid his leg. He told the horse how wonderfully he was doing, hoping that encouragement would lead to more good behaviour and carried on. He knew where Aragorn would have gone. He would have gone to seek revenge on his murderers and he knew that he would be tracking them. The only problem was that he knew nothing about locating the strange forest of his death. It had to be east. That seemed obvious. But where and how far?
Several hours later, horse and rider were exhausted and had been walking for some time. Legolas knew that they were nearly at the edge of the forest bordering the boundaries of Rivendell and would soon enter the plains riddled with random boulders. A daft side of him imagined being able to see Aragorn in all of those open spaces and his heart leapt with the hope of it. But in his head, he knew that the odds that his quest would be over so soon were small. Abruptly something caught his attention. The stallion jumped to the side, pawed the ground and snorted nervously.
"I've heard it too." Legolas told him. " There are orcs nearby… They are behind us, disguised in the trees…" The horse danced slowly on the spot while the Prince thought, weighing his options. "I guess we'll have to beat them to the clearing where it's bright then, won't we?" The horse tensed his muscles further, prancing, awaiting the command. "Ok, Táriël, right-"
An arrow whizzed by his head, grazing his hair, nearly taking his head off and jammed into a branch behind.
"-now!" Legolas squeezed the stallion into a gallop with all his might as arrows zinged past his head on every side.
What are they doing here, so close to Elven territory? I swear that this whole world has gone mad!
He cursed as he dodged arrows, riding hard, swerving every direction. He kept looking back. He couldn't get a clear idea of how many of them there were but they were still within range of their crossbows.
We're almost there! Almost in the bright sunlight, where they cannot hope to be a threat to us! He looked back to the front, to judge how much farther the clearing was and the last thing the Prince saw was the brown of a low-slung branch as it came into contact with his face. Then, he saw stars, heard a thud, then dark. Tariël carried on, running terrified of no one specific evil. Legolas remained unconscious amongst the leaves of the path floor, his white lips seeped blood, his hair and cape splayed around him.
TBC