Chapter Eleven: Cold Sun
Árë,
Keep safe.
Adar
"Steady," Cidin said, pushing gently at an archer's upper arm. "How can you be still as a mountain and strong as a tree, when I can hear your muscles straining from all the way over here?"
"You aren't even an archer," the ellon protested weakly.
Shrugging, Cidin popped a lump of honeycomb into his mouth. "True, but see here, if you were to keep an eye on the prince, day in and day out, you would be Beleg Cúthalion after a couple centuries too."
The arrow left the bow with a powerful thrum, and Cidin winced.
"Ouch," he said conversationally, as the arrow streaked across the clearing. "That must have been at least a good quarter inch off target. Have you considered becoming a swordsman?"
Speechless, the archer goggled at him, and then shot a discrete glance at Legolas Thranduilion, who was seated on one of the uncovered platforms in the lower branches, quietly smiling down at a letter. Dejectedly, the archer shook his head, and reached for another arrow.
"How was that, Your Highness?" Cidin said brightly, hopping up the tree like a squirrel. "Don't I make a fine teacher?"
His prince looked up from the letter, his grey gaze sweeping over Cidin and the neat rows of archers practicing on the green below.
"Indeed," Legolas Thranduilion said warmly. "I will be sure to call upon you if ever the morale of our soldiers requires a thorough shattering."
"How about you help Lithui with the arrow sorting?" Teleglos coaxed, jumping down from the talan overhead. "We need a young, sharp set of eyes to help pick out the shafts no longer fit for battle."
Cidin's ears perked up. "They're back from collecting arrows?" he said, already darting away. He hurtled off the talan at a thoroughly questionable angle and an equally alarming speed. "Lithui!"
"Thank you, Yavanna, for sparing my soldiers," Teleglos grumbled. "That little monster."
"Do you know the statue of Elu Thingol, two corridors down from the Hall of Serenity?"
"The odd purplish one?"
"Well, it used be grey, you see. And then Cidin turned twenty-four."
"Well, he was able to keep himself happy," Teleglos mused. "That's not something most orphans who had to grow up in the King's Halls manage to achieve."
Legolas marked out a sentence on the Lord Chancellor's latest petition in bright red ink.
"Well considered," he said to a waiting scribe. "We will authorise the Lord Chancellor's proposal. The men from Esgaroth upon the Long Lake are honoured guests. How noble they are, to have come to our aid in the defense of the northern forests."
"Oh," Teleglos said, ears perking up. "Has our gracious prince been going around scaring poor defenseless Secondborn into submission?"
Legolas' answering smile had all the innocence of a cat who had accidentally tripped straight into a jug of cream.
Teleglos paused at the edge of the talan. "Are you sure you don't want to take a closer look at your archers?"
"They are your archers now, Teleglos," Legolas said patiently, his attention falling back to the open papers strewn across his lap.
"For all you know, I might have decided to adopt the Gondorrim approach to archery. Firing as fast as humanly possible and hoping at least some arrows manage to find their way into enemy flesh seems to have served them well so far."
There was an incensed crackle as Legolas slammed his papers down. A scribe jumped.
"You wouldn't dare."
"I wouldn't dare," Teleglos agreed easily. "I would be especially incentivized to train them well if my prince were ready to chew my ear off at a moment's notice if I did a poor job."
"No matter, I shall always be hale enough fling you off of the tallest ring of the White City. The Gondorrim approach to archery, what nonsense—"
"Honestly, Legolas, the trip to Emyn-nu-Fuin and back, and in your condition—"
"And what condition is that, Teleglos, I'm not with child—"
"—well, to fling me off any structures you first need to keep yourself alive—"
"—maybe if you spent as much effort helping Calemír with the rest of the preparations as you do on verbal gymnastics, we would have won the war by now—"
"—I mean, I can see the resemblance, but really, Legolas, I think you've mistaken me for Eru Ilúvatar—"
"—just don't let the forest burn down before I get back, surely you can manage eleven days—"
Across the clearing, Cidin threw down the arrow shaft he had been examining. "Do you think we could just send the two of them over to the enemy war camp and have them talk all the orcs to death?"
Unperturbed, Lithui quietly passed him another arrow shaft, but she was smiling all the same.
"The prisoners, my lord," Caun said, saluting crisply. Then with careful neutrality, "Highness."
Lord Elrohir nodded as he dismounted, dark eyes sharp and assessing. Grey cloak swirling behind him, Elrohir Elrondion strode towards his soldiers, moving with a panther's lean, purposeful grace. By his side, the woodland prince kept pace.
Alone, Caun decided, the prince might not have stood out very much. But in the shadow of Emyn-nu-Fuin, beside his own lord, almost a full head shorter and a great deal less substantial, the son of Thranduil looked like a watercolour someone had started, only to forget most of the paint.
This was the last Sindarin prince? Little wonder they could only scrounge and hide in the darkened wings of a decaying forest.
A brown-haired elleth, ranging behind the prince like a tawny cat, leveled a long look at Caun. It was not a particularly antagonistic glare. It was completely blank, and for that reason equally unsettling, and it was broken only when a young, spindly-looking elf tugged at her sleeve, whispering softly.
"I have heard that they will not speak, Elrohir," the prince said, as they stopped before the row of prisoners.
Even for goblins, the prisoners made for a particularly disagreeable sight. Sporting bruised faces, missing limbs—and in one individual's case, a dented head—they knelt in a straggly line beneath the shadow of the mountains they had spent lifetimes riddling out.
The prince tilted his head. "What shall we do?"
"As you like." Lord Elrohir said, sweeping a brief glance over the kneeling goblins. Caun had seen songbirds take more interest in their morning worms.
"I ain't tellin' you nuffink," snarled the goblin with the dented head. "Disgustin', maggoty elves, ruinin' our hidey-holes!"
"Yours?" the prince said companionably.
As the rest of the goblins shuffled in their restraints, muttering snatches of bawdy song that grated like broken teeth on crumbling shale, the prince went down on one knee next to the first goblin. Lightly, he rested a hand on the dent where a sword hilt had caved in half the goblin's skull.
Legolas Thranduilion had fine eyes. Clear and expressive, they swept upwards at the outer corners, like the curve of a dragon's tail. Now, as he smiled, they crinkled into crescent moons, sweet and alluring, as if he were gazing upon a lover.
Promptly, the goblin tried to eat his hand.
Caun was too well-trained to let his jaw drop in disbelief, but in the face of this lunacy he directed another beseeching look at Lord Elrohir, who not only appeared completely unconcerned, but had, in fact, wandered a few steps further away to listen to another report.
If they did not intervene soon, the Greenwood was going find herself short a prince.
"Yea," the goblin spat. "We was 'ere first!"
"Oh," the prince patted the goblin's head almost benevolently. "Quite the contrary, I think you will find—"
Above the sudden screeching of shrill goblin voices and the singing of elven steel, Legolas Thranduilion's voice was mild.
"—these woods were first ours."
A dented head bounced across the stones; dark blood, thick and viscous, dripped down the faces of the next five goblins, which were unanimously twisted in fear. This time, all the training in the world could not stop Caun's mouth from falling open.
"Each of you will name as many tunnels as you can," Legolas Thranduilion said, rising fluidly to his feet. "And perhaps I will find it too wearisome to kill you. Understand?"
"Now, wait," squeaked the goblin next in line. "I don'—"
With stately grace, his head came sailing off. It smacked straight into the unfortunate goblin behind him, who promptly lost a tooth.
"But—"
His throat sprang a scarlet leak.
"Behind there bramble bushes! Three turns left 'n two turns right from the Big Cavern!" the fourth goblin screamed. "The white tree wit the twisted neck—"
As the goblin rambled, Lord Elrohir lifted a hand. Six Ñoldorin warriors bowed, and when the goblin's recital concluded, they vanished promptly into the caverns.
"If your words are at all untruthful," Lord Elrohir said, tossing the words over his shoulder. "You will find that you have bought yourself a most unpleasant death."
The prince stalked down the line of goblins, white knives glimmering.
The ninth goblin tried to be clever. "Pale tree, gnarly trunk—"
"I have heard this before," Legolas Thranduilion said thoughtfully. Before the goblin could draw another breath, his eyeball burst like an egg, pierced straight through by gleaming white steel.
Caun resisted the urge to cover his eyes.
By the time the prince reached the eleventh goblin (his predecessors were finding themselves increasingly verbose), the first Ñoldorin unit had returned.
"We did not find the entrance behind the bramble bushes, my lord," the captain said.
"No!" the first goblin wailed, as Legolas Thranduilion padded back towards him, a malevolent wraith. "You got it wrong—"
A coil of steaming intestine spilled out into the open air. For a heartbeat, as if baffled by how that much blood could have possibly leaked out of him, the goblin stared. Then, he began screaming.
By the time Legolas Thranduilion reached the fortieth goblin, the creatures were desperately squirming backwards as he neared, as if trying to burrow deep into the mountainside to return to long-gone homes.
"I don' know nuffin'!" the fortieth goblin shrieked. "There's nuffin' else! They've gone an' said everything!"
"Then I advise you think harder."
"Nuffin'!" the goblin cried, as the white knives caressed his cheek. "Nuffin', nuffin', nuffin'—"
A wide smile split his face, from ear to glistening ear.
Stepping lightly around a spreading pool of blood, Legolas Thranduilion drifted towards the last two goblins in line. Slowly, he lowered his gaze. His long eyelashes cast faint shadows over the fine mist of blood that had settled over his left cheek, the deep crimson vivid against the pallor of his skin.
How he had ever thought that this lunatic looked fragile, like a shard of fine porcelain, Caun had no idea.
"And you?" Legolas Thranduilion said softly, to the fifty-seventh goblin. "Have you anything to say?"
"Yes!" the goblin wheezed. His eyes spun crazily from earth to mountain peak and back again. "Oh, yes! I know every tunnel, all of 'em! I'll show ya, jus' trust me, trust me!"
"Ah, but I do not," the prince said, gently patting its cheek. He nodded at the last goblin, who seemed to have been leeched dry by the dying cries of his companions. Stock still, it stared vacantly at the bodies strewn haphazardly across the shale and the survivors who knelt amidst them, sobbing.
"We shall keep both of you. For every one of his lies that you identify, you will live another day," the prince smiled at the last goblin. "And for every lie you give, you will lose one more organ before you die. Come, show us the way."
"Where is he?" Lord Elrohir asked, as he strode back towards their horses. Again, Caun attempted to keep up without looking like he was trotting along, and quickly gave up.
"He said—," Caun said. Lord Elrohir's gaze flickered briefly and very pointedly over him, and Caun stiffened bravely. "His Highness said he would wait for you by the river while you visited the war camp, my lord."
This time, his lord's sharp gaze speared him straight through. "Alone?"
"His soldiers are with him, I believe. I apologise for my oversight, my lord. I will send guards along now—?"
Privately, Caun thought any elf capable of doing what the prince had just done had greater need for a fast ship to the West, followed by divine intervention, but he also valued his physical integrity, and so kept this insight to himself.
"Never mind," the son of Elrond said, already disappearing around the last row of tents. The scraggily shadows of spring branches, just beginning to bud, swayed overhead. "You could not have kept an eye on him, in any case."
Robes puddling around him, Legolas knelt in the shallows, squinting at a grey, goose-egg pebble that had been claimed by a determined patch of fuzzy moss. It sported little bright orange globules which waved happily in the rushing stream, and which were in the process of being rapidly decimated by a very thorough snail.
The current peeled away another curl of red from his knuckles. With a faint frown, Legolas inspected it, and then went back to turning over stones in the riverbed.
A skipping pebble skimmed the surface like a darting dragonfly, plopping down between his hands in a neat halt that flicked water at his cheek.
Legolas looked up. "Are you done?"
"Are you done?" Elrohir said, amused. He was waiting patiently by the riverbank, hands clasped behind his back, relaxed and causal, as if they were just out for a walk, and would return home very soon. "Interesting, I hope?"
"Yes," Legolas said. Gently, he slipped a wriggling tadpole back into the cold, clear waters, and straightened. "I have decided what to do about the four miles of forest to the west."
Elrohir studied him for a heartbeat. "You want them cut down."
Pine branches shivered and stretched as the clouds shifted, leaving them in the chill of a land that was cold outside the reach of the sun.
"Yes."
"That is ancient woodland, Legolas," Elrohir said, his brow knitting tightly. "You will anger your people."
"Then let them find a way to field enough elves to seal off those four miles," Legolas said. His voice was still calm, but there was a glimmer of wrathful feverishness rising in his eyes. "If we cut down a swathe of forest, a mile wide, from the westernmost point of Emyn-nu-Fuin to the Carrock, it will be a mile of exposed territory that the black host will be forced to traverse in order to cross to the northern forests. We can loosen the earth beneath their feet, claim the air above their heads with our arrows, and await any unfortunate survivors in the north. It is not an ideal plan, Elrohir, but it is not a bad one."
"I agree," Elrohir said simply.
"Oh," Legolas said, and in an instant the heat in his gaze had drained away. "I was hoping you might have a better idea."
"We cannot summon elves out of thin air, Legolas, I reached much the same conclusion. And because doubtless you will not wait to secure the unanimous support of your people before we embark on this endeavor, I will have orders sent out to begin clearing the trees once you discuss this with Calemír and the Lord and Lady Commanders. Consult Calemír, Legolas," Elrohir said, as Legolas arched an eyebrow, "so you will not be on your own when your people call out for blood."
"Blood," Legolas said, a strained, overly bright note in his tone. Suddenly, he stood, rearing up out of the shallows in a flurry of droplets, and flung the same pebble Elrohir had skipped with all his strength. It sank with a sullen, graceless plop on the far side of the river.
"Legolas," Elrohir's voice was quiet. "This is no longer our Age."
"Take heart." Legolas said, suddenly sounding very tired. "You have known more of the world that once belonged to us than I ever will."
Caun was in the middle of pacing out yet another anxious circle when the two young lords stepped out from a copse of pine trees, their footfalls silent over mossy rock. Two shadows melted out of the woods behind them.
"My lord, Your Highness," Caun said, as he and his warriors saluted sharply.
"We go now to survey the palisades. You have my orders, Caun," Elrohir said, swinging astride his horse in a single smooth motion. "Know these mountains well."
"Yes, my lord," Caun said, bowing. "And what shall we do with the remaining prisoners?"
As his mare pranced in place, the Lord Elrohir leaned forward to adjust his reins. On that foul-tempered stallion of his, the son of Thranduil lifted his golden head. Turning in a neat circle, he directed a small, private smile at Caun, and in that instant Caun had no doubt that the woodland prince knew exactly what he thought of him.
Legolas Thranduilion tapped Faensul into a canter, his mild words hanging in the mountain dust that swirled in his wake.
"Kill the rest."
"Hurry up," the uruk-hai captain growled, prodding a kneeling foot-soldier with his foot.
When the sniveling hob-goblin made no move to leave the overhang, rooted by legs that clearly did not want to obey, Mauhúr snorted, full of contempt.
"Toss him out."
Two burly orc-soldiers clamp a hand each on the hob-goblin's shoulders, plucking him bodily off the ground like a sack of burlap. As they hurled him out into the open, immediately snatching their hands back, as if the air itself could burn, the hob-goblin gave a desolate yowl.
Expectantly, Mauhúr took a step back.
Nothing happened. The hob-goblin, who had curled up into a shivering ball, opened one astonished eye to inspect the sky.
"Oh?" Mauhúr lifted an eyebrow. "Another one."
Promptly, another hob-goblin sailed out from the overhang, smacking solidly into the first. The two of them huddled together among the messy bodies of their predecessors, so small against the wall of trees that stood behind them.
Still, no arrows came in search of blood.
"Hm. That's interesting."
"The elves seem to be gone," an orc-soldier observed helpfully. "Sir."
"I have eyes," Mauhúr snarled, twisting the unfortunate soldier's ears. "Try again."
Soon there were ten shivering hob-goblins cowering beneath the vastness of the tree crown. All ten of them were still hob-goblins, as opposed to bloody pincushions, but that was the crux of the issue. Rather than being cheered by this development, the uruk-hai captain frowned very deeply indeed.
"Let's go!" one of his underlings piped up, eyes filling with greed. "I wanna eat 'em. I'm so hungry, I could eat all of 'em!"
Mauhúr continued to frown. By rights, considering the yawning gap in numbers, the black host should have been able to sweep through the elves before them like wind through dead leaves. The trouble was, of course, that elves seem to have devoted all of their long lives to being singularly annoying.
Day by day, the orcs drove them north, but in turn the elves forced them to fight tooth and nail for each northwards step. For the last two days, the one-eyed she-elf had pinned them in a gully, sniping off any who were foolish to stray from the rock shelf. Now, their abrupt departure made his pocked skin crawl.
And his idiot lackeys weren't entirely wrong. He was hungry.
"Move out," Mauhúr barked, at last. "Stay close."
"What does it look like?"
"Hmmm?" Cidin had been craning his head out of the window of the prince's talan, inspecting the dismantling war camp with interest. "Like we are losing. Very much so."
In Year 2938 of the Third Age, on the third day of tuilë, the black host had crossed the shallows of the River Lissë, twenty miles north of the Narrows of the Forest, for the first time in a century. A few beleaguered elven battalions, led by Teleglos, Lord Commander of the Archers, had tried to slow their advance.
For three days and nights, the air had hummed with arrows, but the orcish strategy of gaining ground by throwing body after body in front of their advance was undeniably effective.
"You don't seem very troubled by this," the prince said, sounding amused. He was at his desk, gathering the last of his papers, still looking distinctly windswept. It had been not been a particularly leisurely ride back from Emyn-nu-Fuin.
"You don't seem very troubled by this," Cidin pointed out cheerfully. "I'll start worrying when you start worrying."
With that, he bounced out of the window, making a beeline for the archery range to help the archers load their practice targets onto the back of patient horse.
"He has too much faith," Legolas commented to Lithui, who was helping him pack up the talan.
Aside from the one or two books he had swept into a pack, and the veritable mountain of arrows they were taking with them, the rest of the room would be left fairly untouched.
"Faith can be blind," Lithui said, as she knotted a rucksack shut. "His is not."
"Hmm."
"He is just not very perceptive," Lithui glanced at him. "You are always worried."
"And that is why I thank the Valar we only have one of you," Legolas sighed. "I shall send a last message to Lady Galadriel before we leave. Will you see to stowing away the packs?"
As she collected the rucksacks, she heard her prince appeal to the sky at large, "Lady Galadriel!"
He stood by the open window, unfurling a missive and presenting it to the heavens. "You were right, Mithrandir did in fact misplace Narya after that Yuletide feast three hundred years ago! But he was fairly inebriated, and it was only for five minutes."
After giving it a minute or two, he called out another shameless kernel of information, as if just make sure the Lady really was listening. "My father did once consider marrying me to the Lady Arwen, but to be fair, Lord Celeborn did not think the idea half bad."
Shaking her head, Lithui headed for the door, leaving the prince to his one-sided conversation with the sky. On the threshold, she paused. After a moment's thought, she turned back and retrieved the little straw-woven fox from the prince's sleeping pallet, tucking it into his pack.
Near the tail end of his meeting with Calemír (whereupon they went over some of the finer details of the ongoing retreat), Legolas said, "I need to be the last to leave."
Calemír looked at him as though he had just suggested marrying Arwen Undómiel in order to join their realms in strategic alliance and secure an early death via Elrond Half-elven.
"Are you possibly still concussed," he said, reaching a hand out for the prince's golden head.
"It's for strategic reasons."
"Ah, strategy," Calemír's voice was dry as the sands of Harad. "And you have noticed that a near mutiny was the result of your last strategic performance?"
"But you see, Lord Commander, that it was a near mutiny and not a full blown one clearly speaks to the effectiveness of my methods," Legolas coaxed.
"Careful," Calemír jabbed a finger in the prince's general direction. "The only reason I haven't put you on a fast horse back to the Halls is because you are currently less damaged than your father."
"This is the best way to draw the Ringwraith from Dol Guldur," the prince said, furrowing his brow as he pondered this course of action. "I am reasonably sure it is interested in killing me."
"It is reasonably interested in killing a lot of elves," Calemír pointed out. "It does not strike me as immediately obvious why Your Highness' participation in this scheme is especially necessary."
For a heartbeat, Calemír thought he saw the prince's gaze flicker, growing unfocused, as if his thoughts had drifted to a time far away. But in another blink, those silver eyes settled firmly on Calemír, unrelenting.
"You know why," the prince said quietly. "It will want to revisit an old battlefield."
A copse strewn with bodies. Limp fingers still closed around hilts. The rainwater that day, puddles tinged red. Suddenly struck by a curious curl of shame, Calemír bowed his head. "My apologies, Your Highness."
"I will stay just long enough for the advance scouts to arrive. You have my word that I shall not take unnecessary risks, but you and I both know we cannot sustain the current parity of things. Eventually the scales will tip. I choose to preemptively tip them in our favor."
It was too subtle of a change for Calemír to pinpoint when exactly in the conversation Legolas had stopped wearing the face of the archer and slipped on that of a king. But whatever that point had been, that was the point when it had largely stopped mattering that Legolas Thranduilion, for all intends and purposes, only held one half of the Wolf Seal.
He nodded. "Then Your Highness shall have as many soldiers as you require. But, if I may, how are you so sure you will have their attention?'
And then Legolas was the archer again.
"I've told them a lot of things, you see," Legolas said brightly. "A couple southbound ravens, easily intercepted, carrying missives clearly intended for the Lady of Lórien! I've made sure to include fairly incendiary language too. I may have alluded to myself as the 'savior of the elven race' and that the Ringwraith was certainly 'no match for the scion of such an old and honorable House'."
Calemír put his head in his hands.
"It could also be good for troop morale. I am sure it is very inspiring to see the regent of the realm bringing up the rear, ensuring that all his troops have safely withdrawn before he himself retreats."
"Don't push it, Your Highness."
From a healthy distance away, the scouts stared up at the husks of empty flets that dotted the boughs ahead. All of the structures seemed spectacularly well-kept, especially by orcish standards, and all of them seemed spectacularly deserted. They had been in this specific spot in the underbrush for close to three hours now, and had seen precisely no elves walk the treetops.
"By old Shelob's maggoty breath, they really have gone," Ugbu muttered.
"Should we keep going?" Aurbu whispered. "I don't want to keep going."
The leaves of their bush trembled as the two goblins wavered with indecision. As if finally tired of their dilly-dallying, a bird pooped unceremoniously on Ugbu's shoulder. As he swatted at it, cursing, an arrow split his eyeball, neat as could be.
As he watched the body that once was Ugbu topple to the forest floor, Aurbu's face drained of blood.
Trembling, he raised his eyes, following the direction of the arrow's flight. Though he could have sworn the trees had been empty just moments before, there was now an elf standing on a slender bough fifty yards away, seventy feet high. The branch swayed in the wind, and the elf swayed easily with it, but the head of his notched arrow was as unmoving as the bedrock of mountains. The diadem he wore on his golden hair glittered, catching the morning light.
Aurbu had never in his life seen something so ugly.
"My mistake," the elf called, lowering the bow. He clasped his hands together, proffering them in a gesture of apology, as if he and Aurbu were just old friends meeting for tea. "I was expecting someone else. Pity about your friend, but he was getting a little tiresome, don't you agree?"
The scream that had been building in Aurbu all this while finally burst, but before he could gather enough wits to run, the elf smiled once, warm and conspiratorial, and vanished.
Author's Note:
I guess stories are like children you'd like to see grow up. If so, this one is long overdue for a growth spurt.
Translations:
Árë - sunlight, warmth (especially of the sun), day. In this story, this is Legolas' father-name.