Thranduil steps around a briar patch, his eyes searching the ground for the smoothest path to take so that Tauriel will have no trouble following him.
After weeks of her pacing around his throne room, tense and on edge, he had agreed to accompany her into the forest on a brief hunting trip to work off some of her restlessness. She had been practically bounding along at his heels since they left the palace half an hour ago, and he has so far managed to keep her relatively clean, unscathed, and on her feet despite the natural hazards of the forest, which in and of itself is something of a miracle.
He pauses when he hears Tauriel stop up short behind him, and turns to see her standing with her hands on the trunk of a tree. Her head is tilted back to face the canopy, and Thranduil knows what she is thinking even before she opens her mouth.
"Will you yell at me if I-"
"Yes," he interrupts, doubling back for her before she can think to try it anyway. "You are not to do any climbing. Maybe some other time I will let you, but I am not ready to let you leave the ground just yet."
She makes a small noise in protest, but allows him to lead her away without a fight. Her mood is far from dampened by his refusal, however, and she has a bright smile on as she grabs hold of his sleeve and follows in his footsteps.
"Where will we be hunting?"
"Probably down by the river," he replies smoothly, weaving between two large trees.
"Will you be telling me which ones to take?"
"I will tell you what you are aiming at, and allow you to decide whether or not to shoot."
"How much do you think we can carry back?"
"At most, a large deer or boar. If you go for smaller prey then perhaps a brace or two, split between the both of us. I would not suggest trying to go for too much, as it will make the return trip difficult."
"How much further until we can look for game?"
"Far, if you continue to talk," he scolds gently. "They will hear us coming."
Tauriel's responding smile is sheepish but entirely unrepentant, and she runs her fingers through the fletching of the arrows in her quiver in anticipation. Thranduil bites back a chuckle, pushing a branch out of the way and holding it for her to pass.
They could have taken the direct route to the river, of course - simply cut straight from the palace and followed the forest path to where the two intersected. However, he'd wanted to give her time to spend outdoors. What would normally be a ten minute walk had stretched past half an hour, and they were still a fair distance off, but Tauriel was smiling as she all but skipped along at his heels, and so he didn't bother to worry himself with timing. They would get there when they got there, hunt until Tauriel ran out of either arrows or patience, and then head back. Although he'd told her it would be a brief trip, he'd already planned and took the day for it, just to ensure that they would not feel rushed.
He is glad for that now, as he finds a clearing with some fallen logs and calls a brief stop. Tauriel pouts at the delay, but only for a second, and then she is darting about the open area excitedly while Thranduil digs out the bundle of bread and salted meats that had been sent with them as lunch.
"Tauriel, come sit," he calls with a laugh as she whirls about too fast and trips over a root, tumbling through the tall grass. She is on her feet again in a second, tucking her arrows back into her quiver and brushing imagined dust from her tunic as she crosses to sit beside him. He finds himself looking down into her smiling face, and cannot keep the corners of his lips from twitching up as well.
"What did you need, My Lord?"
"You to stop bounding around for long enough to eat something," he says with a gentle smile, placing a piece of meat on one of the slices of bread and taking hold of her hand to set it in her open palm. Tauriel blinks down at her hand with her brows pinched.
"It is not yet lunch time, why did we stop for food so early?" she protests, but she accepts the bread from him regardless, biting into it.
"Never hunt on an empty stomach, you should know that," he scolds lightly.
He prepares a slice for himself, biting into it and holding it with his teeth so he can put a second one together for Tauriel, who has eaten her first and is already groping about for the food. There is enough packed for them each to have three slices of bread, and Thranduil is only on his second by the time Tauriel has scarfed down her third and is practically bouncing in place, waiting for him.
"Patience," he mutters around a mouth full of crumbs. "We will be on our way soon enough."
Tauriel takes the waterskin from her belt, pulling the stopper before offering it to him. He accepts it and drinks, unable to stop his nose from wrinkling when he finds the water to be on the tepid side of cool, and wonders if perhaps he is getting too used to his luxuries in the palace if a little thing like warm water is enough to make him turn up his nose. He re-caps the waterskin, closing her hands around it so that she can fasten it to her belt again as he dusts crumbs off of himself and stands.
Thranduil is about to resume their trip to the river when he sees Tauriel perk up, looking off into the forest, and a second later hears the light sound of running feet. He stands, his muscles tensing on reflex even though he knows the sound of one of his own, and turns to watch the trees.
A dark-haired elf joins them in the clearing a few heartbeats later, breathing a bit more heavily than normal, and Thranduil allows himself to relax.
"Feren," Thranduil greets, but his smile doesn't last long when he sees the other elf's serious expression.
"My Lord, there are orc packs in the woods," Feren reports, offering a quick nod of the head in place of a bow. Thranduil raises and eyebrow, mouthing "how many" to Feren, who shakes his head in reply, mouthing the words "great many" before speaking again. "My patrol spotted them splitting up at the border. It would be best if you and Tauriel went back to the palace."
Tauriel looks like she wants to argue, but wisely keeps her mouth shut. She knows that she will be all but helpless out here, and the sting of needing to be whisked away to safety like a child is a blow to her pride that she will have to take. He will take her hunting some other time.
Feren lets out a small sigh of relief when Tauriel gives in without a fight, dipping her head in submission despite her frown.
Thranduil nods, taking her by the hand as Feren darts back into the trees, and he turns back toward the palace. From where they are, he can make it back to the main gate in fifteen minutes' time, even with Tauriel struggling along at his side. Hopefully that will be fast enough.
He feels Tauriel grab his wrist in turn, linking them together firmly as he sets off at a brisk walk, doing his best to chose the path that will cause her the least amount of trouble.
"My Lord," she asks, and he can hear the undertone of tense worry in her voice. "How many orcs are there, if there were enough to split into groups?"
And damn, if she hadn't always been sharp...
"It is nothing to worry about," he soothes her, but Tauriel scoffs.
"Then why do you sound so worried?"
"Because I would much rather that you and I encounter none of them."
Thankfully that seems believable enough a reason for her, and she hurries her steps to close the distance between them.
They haven't made it more than a few hundred yards, however, when the sound of an orcish horn has him quickening his pace with a curse, Tauriel muttering a curse of her own as she finds herself pulled into a sprint. She stumbles along behind him as best she can, one hand up to shield her face from branches. Thranduil tightens his hold on her wrist as she trips over a root, her hand nearly yanked from his grasp, but does not dare slow his pace. He has to get her out of here, he will worry about scrapes and bruises later. He is not going to risk her in a skirmish.
He ducks beneath a large, low-hanging branch, catching a hand around the back of Tauriel's head to pull her beneath it safely as well. They are far from the palace yet, with no clear paths that they can take save for the main road through the forest, but that is nearly as far off as the palace itself, and he does not trust either the open ground or the additional time that they will have to spend in the woods. He will have to make do with leading her through the trees as quickly as he can.
She is struggling, he can feel it. She keeps tripping, her hair and clothes getting caught on branches. The pace he has set forces her into a stumbling run, and he knows that she can barely keep up, despite the fact that she does not complain. He is sure that she can feel his urgency to get somewhere safe.
He steps one foot over a fallen log that blocks their path, grabbing Tauriel and lifting her over it instead of slowing his pace for her to do it herself. The sounds of the horns are still a good ways out, but nerves are itching at the back of his neck, telling him that something is wrong.
His forest has always been connected to him, more deeply than the other elves, and he can feel the evil creeping through the trees like poison in his bloodstream, edging closer.
Tauriel suddenly goes stiff beside him, and Thranduil has barely turned around to see what is the matter when the war cry of an orc splits the calm.
"Get behind me," he snaps, whirling around and drawing double blades as Tauriel scrambles for an arrow. He hears her draw her bow as the first of the orcs come into his view. There are half a dozen that he can see, more rustling out of view in the bushes, and he curses as he takes a second to better settle his feet.
"My Lord?" Tauriel questions in rising panic, her shot aiming up into the trees.
"I am at your side. If you hear something approaching, just shoot," he orders, and the snap of her bowstring is followed by a pained shriek somewhere in the canopy. An orc falls to the ground with a loud thud, her arrow through its chest, and Tauriel sends a second arrow into the corpse on reflex.
Thranduil turns from her in time to meet the first group of orcs head on, cutting them down as fast as he can whirl his swords through them. The only thought in his mind is that he needs to keep them from getting to Tauriel. She cannot see, he will have to be her eyes.
Farther out in the forest he can hear more cries, and figures that Feren must have stumbled across another group. He can only hope that they have found all of the intruders.
Tauriel is hesitant with her shots, her aim darting between a few sources of noise before settling on what she believes to be a good target and letting her arrow fly. Her aim is true, cutting down an orc, but it is not nearly enough to keep them at bay and she quickly scrambles for another arrow as she hears their continued approach.
Thranduil is ruthless, and the first group of orcs falls quickly to his attack, however he doesn't have time to recover. The noise of their fight has drawn another handful of stragglers to their patch of the forest, and Thranduil has to trust Tauriel to have his back as five more orcs burst from the undergrowth and try to rush them, another wave close behind. Tauriel's arrows take two of them to the ground, one through the face and the other through the gut, before they get near. His swords quickly cut down the first two that reach them, and the third only manages a single swing at him before it joins its companions in death.
The jarring blast of an orcish horn makes the two elves jump, and Thranduil locates the source of the noise just as Tauriel looses an arrow to sink into the orc's throat. It goes down with a gurgle, but the damage is done and he can hear returning horn blasts echoing through the forest.
Tauriel cries out from behind him before he can think too much on what they are signaling to one another, and he whirls around to see an orc with two fistfuls of her hair trying to drag her away from his side. His blade slices the orc's arms clean off, and Tauriel stumbles forward at the sudden freedom. Thranduil has barely a second to steady her before he feels the air current shift behind his head and has to shove both of them into a dodge to avoid the rusted blade of a cleaver. The wielder dies as soon as Thranduil manages to get his footing, his blades humming through the air with the speed of his swing, and he can hear Tauriel scrambling to get another arrow to the string behind him.
Thranduil brings his blades up crossed to catch the downswing of a war axe, the force of the strike sending a shock through his arms and into his shoulders. He kicks the orc in the chest, sending it stumbling back into its companion, before running the pair of them through.
A screech from his left is the only warning he gets before an orc charges him with a chipped broadsword, and Thranduil easily deflects the clumsy blow into another orc's chest. The two orcs blink for a second in shock, staring down at the sword that runs through one's chest, before Thranduil decapitates the sword's bearer and leaves the impaled one to fall dead at his feet.
Tauriel's bow is now a steady beat behind him - the creak of bending wood as she draws it, followed by the snap of its release, and then the rattle of her snatching another arrow from her quiver. A few of her shots go wide, thudding into trees or flying off into the canopy, but most of her arrows fly true and send orcs to the ground, howling in pain if not dead.
Thranduil's urgency lends him speed, clearing the last few orcs in sight as Tauriel picks stragglers from the canopy. As soon as the last falls dead, however, Thranduil sheathes one sword and whirls to grab her arm. Tauriel yelps in surprise, but a quick word from him hushes her and he turns to escape into the forest, pulling her after him as he leads the way at nearly a run.
They need to leave, before reinforcements arrive.
Tauriel is trembling, he can feel it where his hand is wrapped about her upper arm, serving to both guide and steady her. He uses the blade he kept unsheathed to cut stray branches from their path so that she will not get caught on them, but it is not nearly enough. They have barely made it a hundred yards when Tauriel's ankle gets snared in a briar. She is yanked from his grasp with a small cry, falling hard to the forest floor with her arrows scattering halfway out of her quiver.
Thranduil doubles back, whirling his blade up and bringing it down sharply to cleave the thorned tendril from its roots. He sweeps her arrows back into place and hauls Tauriel to her feet, barely giving her a second to steady herself before pushing on again without so much as stopping to unwind the thorn from her leg.
There is no time.
"My Lord," she gasps, pleading. Thranduil slows his pace the slightest fraction to adjust his hold on her arm, but does not stop his relentless push toward the palace.
This was no skirmish. There will be more, and they cannot afford to get surrounded.
They don't make it far before she nearly falls again, her ankle rolling on the uneven ground and almost pulling her from his grip, but this time he does not let her go, taking her weight until she gets her feet beneath her once more. The trees thin out ahead, and Thranduil takes advantage of the clearer forest floor to gain them some ground where Tauriel will not fall, but there is something moving in his peripherals.
He pulls up short, sending Tauriel crashing into his back as he spots a cluster of orcs loping through the forest a ways off.
"Hush," he hisses, pulling her to a crouch beside him. If they are lucky, the plants will camouflage them from the orcs' sight. While they wait, Thranduil cuts the brambles from her ankle, tossing them away and checking her briefly for injuries as she leans her forehead to his shoulder and gasps for breath.
A shout goes up from the orcs, and Thranduil spits a curse as he hears the crashing of trampled underbrush coming in their direction. Tauriel scrambles to her feet with her bow at the ready, and Thranduil allows her one shot into the clustered enemy before he catches her arm and pulls her away.
Tauriel is blind, yes, but she is still an elf, with all the agility and grace that such a thing gifts her. The orcs are slow and clumsy as they stumble through the trees, smashing their way through the plants more than dodging around them. Perhaps they can still outrun them.
Tauriel has both hands locked around his arm in a death grip, her head ducked to protect her face from branches and her bow slung over an arm to ensure that she does not lose it. Thranduil does his best to lead her where she will not fall, but that is hard to do at a run. Instead he focuses on keeping her upright and moving, hauling her back to her feet when she stumbles and pulling her along when she slows down. He can no longer hear Feren and the guard, and can only assume that they will be too far out of range for him to be heard if he calls for backup.
The orcs are loud behind them, shouting to one another in their foul tongue and trampling through the underbrush as they howl for blood. They are all on foot, and for this he is grateful. Wargs are fearsome creatures, and Tauriel's haphazard shots are not likely to take one down before it would tear her to pieces.
Tauriel suddenly jerks to a stop, and Thranduil turns to see what the problem is when she lets go of him. Her quiver is caught, a branch threaded through the belt loop, and she is scrabbling desperately to find what has trapped her.
"Hands out of the way," he orders, and as soon as she has tucked her arms up close he lops the branch from the tree. It is easy to pull it free from there, but it is too late. They have lost their lead.
The orcs are catching up, he can hear their shouts rise in excitement as they near their prey. There is going to be another fight, but at the very least he will pick where it takes place. Thranduil veers off to the side, pulling Tauriel into a small clearing where she will not have to fight the plants as well as the orcs around her, and draws his other sword. Tauriel takes a second to get her bearings, but as soon as she does she is back up and shooting, taking down three of the orcs before they are within striking range for him.
A large orc leads this pack, taller almost than he is, with human skulls decorating its belt and shoulders, and Thranduil feels a thrill of rage when he spots a chunk of silky elven hair tied around the pommel of the monster's sword. The creature's face splits in a yellow-toothed grin, and it draws itself up, pointing a finger at Thranduil.
"Lat mat, golog glob. Gore golog durub! Ulog kalus!"
The burly orc raises its sword as it shouts the last words, and the smaller ones rush in with a screech, frenzied by them.
Thranduil lets out a curse.
Author's Note: Orcish roughly translates to "You die, elf filth. Kill elf ruler! Cripple archer!"