COTTOMCROW'S CRY
Chapter four
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The group of men had laboured until late that day, trying to save as much of the crops as they could. Some of the fields should have been harvested at least three moons ago, but few of those not affected by the Bruisenbite could be spared to that task. Finding the village' supplies drastically diminishing, the men had worked hard to assure that, at least, they would not starve.
The evil disease had given them no slack, having already claimed half of the villagers. Some had tried to leave, but it wasn't safe outside either. Of the three families that had parted, two men had returned, terrified and in shock, telling of the attack that they had suffered at the hands of a stray group of Orcs. No one had left after that.
David, the carpenter, called for a halt and dropped his side of the wagon that they were pulling. He passed a hand through his forehead, to clean the sweat that had gathered there. His gaze fixed in a distant point and he squinted to better see.
"What is that?" He asked, pointing at the edge of the forest.
The setting sun had dressed the woods in dark colours. The heat that had scourged the land during the day was now released from the ground to meet the cold night, forming a mist that rose in soft wisps and cast everything around in a dream like mist.
The other men looked to where David's finger pointed, forcing their eyes to see what moved ahead.
A tall figure walked at a good pace, along the lines of the distant trees. Like a ghost, it appeared and vanished behind the tree trunks, as if made of no solid matter. The men looked carefully, trying to see if it were perhaps someone from the village, looking for them. As the figure moved on to a less dense part of the woods, the men gasped in fear and surprise, as they realize that this was no villager. This was no man.
The deformed figure had one short arm and a long one, both carrying weapons. The long legs seemed too thin for its bulky constitution, built like a hunchback, with straight forms in front and hunched behind. And two heads, one in front of the other, stood so close together that, at first, they had mistaken one for a hood.
In front of their eyes, the strange creature leaped off of the ground with the same ease as they would jump over a small rock in their path, and disappeared.
Their limbs trembling in fright, the men sought whatever refuge they could find, afraid that the monster had seen them as well and now moved to attack.
"Tis the creature Tom warned us about!" One of the men whispered when he recovered his voice.
"The two headed beast!" Another hissed, grasping the handle of the scythe he carried.
"This is our chance!" David put in with fervour, one hand over the shoulder of his son, a boy still young, but already doing his part to help. "If we manage to capture this evil creature and take it to Samuel, our village stands a chance of being saved!"
The other men looked around at their poor group. Most were not as young as David and his son and they carried no weapons with then, other than their working tools.
"We're too few..." one pointed out, "... We are nothing but farmers... How can we hope to win over such beast?"
"Aye! We all heard what Tom said... Samuel saw that this creature was in allegiance with the Dark Lord himself!" The man said, touching his groin, as it was custom, to keep that evil away.
David looked each of them in the eyes.
"So we are to turn our backs without even trying?" He asked in earnest. The men refused to meet his eyes.
They knew what was right to do, but they were scared.
"Look, luck is on our side!" He added, excited.
The group of men shift their gaze from the ground back to the strange beast. It had returned to the ground.
"It camps near the castle ruins! The old tunnel is still open, is it not?"
Brouk, one of the oldest farmers, nodded.
"Aye, the opening is but a few yards away."
"We can catch it unawares then! What do you say?" David asked them, praying that they would realize that fate would not provide them with a chance like this a second time.
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"Should we join them?" Gimli asked, silently enjoying his higher point of view up on Legolas' back. For him, the group was nothing but shadows moving between the tree trunks, but the dwarf trusted the elf's word, saying them to be a group of men, farmers he had told. "Or do your legs trouble you so, that you can't make it there?" Gimli teased.
Legolas laughed.
"My legs trouble me no more than the dirt is troubled by our passing, my friend," he answered enigmatically, his head turning left and right, searching for something in the trees.
Gimli frowned at the strange answer, looking at the back of his friend's head for an explanation. As he got none, Gimli shift his body to look back. Sure enough, there were faint footprints on the ground.
"Well, now, there's a thing unheard of..." He began laughing, but ended up gasping, as Legolas jumped from the ground and climbed with ease a nearby tree.
"Have you lost all that's left of your sense?!" Gimli stressed out between clenched teeth, grasping the elf's shoulders with all of his strength, as solid ground was left behind at an unhealthy distance. He dared one look down, seeing his axe where it had landed, and quickly closed his eyes.
"Nay," the elf explained, his arms opened wide to help balance the additional weight. "I merely thought of easing the ground of our burden," he finished with a bemused smile.
Legolas knew how much Gimli hated high places, having heard his complains and curses on more than one occasion. For now, though, he felt that a walk through the tall trees was just the right way to teach the dwarf to never again trust his choice of path to an elf. Particularly a wood-elf.
When Legolas thought his revenge was satisfying enough, he left the tree branches, the movement so smooth that Gimli, with his eyes closed tightly, didn't realize it until his feet touched the earthy floor once again.
"That... was far from entertaining!" Gimli complained, quickly regaining his composure, but losing his temper when he saw how this amused his friend. "Dwarves are two legged creatures who like their feet on the ground, not elven-monkeys that are use to spend their days swinging from tree-branches!"
Legolas raised one fine eyebrow.
"Then, perhaps, elven-monkeys are not the most suitable ride for a dwarf," he offered with no contempt.
Gimli grumbled, grabbing his axe from the ground and inspecting its condition.
"Now, if I'm forgiven," Legolas paused and smile, seeing that Gimli needed no apologies, "and answering your question, I would prefer spending one last night amongst the trees, before dwelling in another city of Men. What say you?"
Gimli sighed. He longed to sleep in a bed again, even if the admission of such longing would never pass through his lips. That group of men had held the sweet promise of a soft bed and warm ale too close, and his body was growing tired and sore of sleeping in the hard ground.
But by now he knew his companion well enough, and what had begun as a mere suspicion, was now a bright certainty. Legolas held little love for the cities of Men, less even than what he held for dark caves.
And Gimli recognized that, to a certain point, he agreed with the elf. He didn't feel the pressure of the heavy stone structures like his friend from the woods did, but he had felt a bit uneasy during the time they remained in both Edoras and Minas Tirith. Men were ever suspicious of those different from them, and quick to pass judgement to those they did not know. For some reason that he could not comprehend, an elf and a dwarf had seemed to stand out the most in those places, and bring out the curiosity and fear to the heart of Men.
To be true to himself, Gimli had to admit he too wasn't above those feelings of unrest and suspicion when he was faced with different races and cultures. For long the sight of any long legged creature had been a little stressful for him. How could they walk properly with shanks of that size? It seemed likely to him that any stronger gush of wind would lift them off their feet and send them flying like a dry straw. But he had grown accustomed to that, the same way he had grown accustomed to many other strange and foreign things.
It was the odd looks and whispered comments, whenever they walked by, that had really annoyed him. Strange believes, born out of lack of knowledge or simple superstitions towards Dwarven kind, often led to even stranger attitudes and behaviours towards him. And while, sometimes, these situations amused him, there were other times when they wounded his pride so deeply that he found it hard to control his ill temper.
Thought not once had they been mistreated on either place, Gimli knew that, like him, the elf's patience had been many times tested by the ways of Men and some of their habits, or lack of them. He had been more than glad to leave those cities, and Gimli was sure that the only reason for him to ever return there was the bond of friendship, that held him so strongly. And in the name of that same friendship, the dwarf decided that his body could do with another night in a hard bed of earth and leaves.
"Aye, the night looks pleasant enough for us to partake it with your trees and branches!"
Legolas smiled in appreciation.
"Those ruins," Gimli pointed out, "look like a good enough place."
Gathering some long dead and dry branches on their way, the two companions soon had a warm fire going. A comfort not only for the body, for the nights were still chilly, but for the soul as well, replacing the light of the hiding sun.
From what had once been a small but sturdy castle, only two walls and a half collapsed tower remained. The wooden gate and the metal work had long since rotted or disappeared and now, the only beings that took residence there were the forest and its creatures.
"Elves lived here once," Legolas whispered as they neared the eerie stones. "A very long time ago."
"They didn't do a very good job of building it, I can tell you that!" Gimli said, his critical eye analysing the uneven way in which the large stones had been laid one upon the other.
"They didn't build it... just used it," the elf said, his voice mirroring his confusion. Much pleasure did the elves in Mirkwood took from weaving their own dwellings, growing and carving them with the same patience and care that one raised and educate a son. The same had he observed in both Imladris and Lothlorien, places where the constructions' beauty merely reflected the beauty of those who lived there.
Why had these elves let others build such crude surroundings for them escaped Legolas' understanding and even his knowledge of history. Mayhap it was that they took residence there as a necessity. Whatever motives those elves might have had, they were beyond Legolas' grasp, for he could not know who had inhabited those woods in the prime days of the trees, when he was not yet born.
Gimli did not discuss Legolas' claims about the history of these stones, for his friend was like a living book, who could tell of ancient times not as he had read them, but as he had lived them. But, built by elves or not, what was left of the stone walls provided good refuge against the elements and so, in their shadow, they camped.
Legolas would usually hunt some game for their meal, but on that night, he felt uneasy to do so. Something in these woods was calling out to him, trying to pass a message that he could not understand, or maybe it was that the trees were not awoken enough to make it understandable. They ate from their supplies of dried meat and sat by the fire, the flames casting strange shapes and figures in the stones around them.
The days had grown longer, but night came as always, a moonless sky draping its cloak filled with stars over the two travellers.
Legolas leaned against one of the trees that had peacefully invaded the ancient ruins, lost in the words of a sad song and let his melodious voice run free through the forest. He looked up, searching the sky through the tall trees, the shining stars above playing an eternal game of hide and seek with the rustling leaves. His thoughts wandered far, carried upon the wings of the seabirds, in to the unknown.
Gimli sat nearer to the fire, carefully cleaning his axe while watching his friend from the corner of his eye.
It wasn't the first time that he saw the elf with that expression on his face, isolated in a part of himself where he let no one in. The sea longing, as Gimli had understood it, was like an itch that wouldn't go away until scratched.
One day, when Gimli had felt particularly frustrated with Legolas unwillingness to talk about the matter, the dwarf had sought his answers from Aragorn, the only he knew to have sufficient knowledge about Elves and more sense then them, to give him a straight answer. But the ranger turned king had little knowledge to share, mainly because it was a matter around which all elves were very tight lipped. It was a call to return home, he had explained, but a call that wasn't heard by all, and a home that many had never seen before.
Legolas was an elf born in Middle-Earth, so the only memories he held of Valinor were those that came from the tales he had been told by the older elves of Mirkwood... and yet he had heard its calling.
Aragorn had warned Gimli that, eventually, all elves were bound to answer such call, even if some took longer than others. Each had hoped that many generations of Men passed before Legolas answered his. Still, it remained as a dark cloud over the three friends. And every time Gimli saw his friend in these moods, he feared that the storm was getting nearer.
Gimli rose and stretched, laying his, now cleaned and shinny, axe near the remains of the stone bench where he had sat.
"Time to water these lovely trees," he said with a smirk.
Legolas' gaze lazily left the stars and focused on his friend.
"Your skills as gardener leave much to be desired," he replied to Gimli's back, as the dwarf moved further away, in to the woods, laughing.
The elf occasionally wondered how would his friend manage when he returned to his mountain dwellings, now that he had developed such a fondness for using trees as a target when his bladder needed emptying. Except for Fangorn, Legolas remembered with a smile, his eyes returning to the starlight.
In that particular forest, there had been Ents to consider. If the dwarf had indulged in such actions amongst them, mistaking them for innocent, unmoving trees, the Ents might have shown him their disapproval at being 'watered' in such manner, in ways that the dwarf would probably never forget.
Legolas took a deep breath, filling his lungs to the full. Different woods had different smells; much in the same way as they had different songs. Fangorn had a scent of old oak and moss and its song was ancient and elaborate, like a spider's web. These woods were much younger and innocent, barely touched by the evil of Mordor, smelling of pine trees and fern.
He felt refreshed amongst these trees, his siblings in age and spirit, feeling their existence course through him like sap, leaving him light hearted and hopeful, as hopeful as he could feel in these days.
The further he got away, the stronger the pull became.
He had dreamt of it again last night. The sea. And in his dreams, he was as happy as an elfling. Before Dol Guldur, before the Ring, before Mordor... before the gulls.
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Of the whole group, only two had ever ventured inside the old tunnels before and, even so, they had been children then. It took them a while to find the right exit as the tunnel, instead of running straight, had many twists and turns, as if the ones that had built it had circled every tree root they had encountered in their path. By the time they met fresh air again, the only sounds they could hear in the silent night were the rustling of leaves and the singing of crickets.
The creature sat with its back to them, leaning against a tree trunk, sleeping. The men congratulated themselves for their good fortune so far, reading these as signs that fate was on their side. As silently as they could, they moved to attack.
Legolas was roused from his wandering thoughts by a change in the air, the feeling of a new presence in the forest. And suddenly the trees' whisperings made sense to him. Danger approached.
Jumping to his feet, he turned to face a group of six men. The men looked at him with a mix of fear and shock. A moment of confusion and hesitation passed between the men, and when it passed, they were charging.
At first glance, Legolas reasoned that these were not lost wanderers or common burglars. They carried nothing but farming tools and, if not for the crawling feeling upon his skin, the elf would have thought them harmless.
Deeply believing that this was some sort of misunderstanding, Legolas was almost surprised when they attacked. He was reluctant to use his weapons on them, even if he could, for they stayed out of his reach, near Gimli's axe, on the other side of the fire. He had fought Orcs and other evil creatures almost all of his life, but few had been the times when he had been forced to raise his weapons against Men, and, even then, Men that had levelled themselves with the likes of Orcs. Murderers and corsairs.
The men attacked in group, determined to give their prey no chance, now that they had recognized him as an elf. But their prey, even without weapons, was far from defenceless.
Two came armed with nothing but sturdy-looking branches, weapons that Legolas could easily dodge. His attention, however, was on the ones carrying a pitchfork, a long handle scythe and an axe.
The two men swung their branches in a direct path to the creature's midriff but, in the blink of an eye, he was gone. They looked back, searching for him. A speeding fist in the face send one sprawling to the ground, dazzled. The other, pushed by fear and surprise over the creature's velocity, risked a second swing, faster this time.
Unable to escape or change position as he had done before, on pain of leaving himself unprotected against the other four, Legolas deflected the branch with his left arm. The blow left his arm smarting, but he had no time to pay it any heed. Twisting his arm, the elf grabbed the branch from the surprised man's hands and, in a quick move, hit his face with it.
The one carrying the scythe nervously aimed his weapon low, Legolas noticed. They were not trying to kill, but rather subdue him. For what purpose, he could not guess.
The man holding the sharp tool gasped as the creature, taking advantage of his forward momentum, side stepped him and took the weapon from his hands. The man could not stop himself as the creature pushed him forward and sent him colliding with a tree.
Legolas turned around, in time to block the axe that was coming down on him, held by a young boy. The elf looked in to his eyes and saw only fear. No anger, no blood thirst, no greed... just fear, of him.
"Why are they acting thus?" The elf asked the frightened boy, who still tried to push his axe forward, even after realizing that the other was stronger than him.
The boy, David's son, was startled to hear the creature speaking to him, in the tongue of Men none the less. He had thought it a beast, unable of wording its thoughts in an understandable tongue. He had seen two heads before and could only one now. He had been told that elves were evil creatures, and to him, all that was evil was foul to look at. The creature in front of him was a thing of beauty.
Legolas sensed another attacker coming from behind and, acting on a long developed instinct, shifted his body away from harm. In the same splinting second, the elf realized with growing horror what would be the consequences of his actions.
The boy in front of him, still surprised by what had happened, was too slow. His brown eyes widened in shock, quickly followed by blinding pain, as the pitchfork's teeth bit deeply in to his stomach.
"Brenn!!" The man holding the weapon screamed, dropping to his knees, white faced. Trembling fingers grabbed handfuls of black hair, in despair and pain.
Gimli arrived out of breath, his belt still unbuckled, having raced back as fast as he could when he heard the commotion. The scene lightened by the amber tones of the fire was, in the very least, bizarre.
Two men, apparently unconscious, laid by the farthest trees, while another sat on the ground, holding a bleeding nose. The elf looked like frozen in ice, a scythe forgotten in his hands, as he stared at the two men in front of him. Gimli followed his gaze to the ground, where a man howled in pain, crying as he held a boy. The pool of blood gathering around his body and the vacant look in the child's eyes told Gimli the boy was dead.
That the elf had managed to stand his own against the group of attackers was of no surprise to the dwarf. It was the silence that had overcome all, and the look in Legolas' eyes that gave Gimli a worrisome feeling in the pit of his stomach.
On the opposite side of them, another man also had an absent look in his eyes, tears running down his face like rivers of sorrow. But, instead of pain or death, his face registered anger.
"This is your fault, beast!" He yelled, grabbing the boy's fallen axe and charging forward.
The motion of raising the scythe in his hands to block the first attack came unbinding to Legolas. His mind was lost in grief over what had passed, but his body was much too used to defend itself without the need of thought or planning.
The man stroke again, tears blinding his eyes, raw wrath adding strength to his arms. His blows were blunt of danger but fiery, and his frustration grew with the realization that the creature defended all of his attacks without even striking back. The man felt like a toy, a plaything in the paws of a cat, being made to look like a fool by the killer of his kindred's son.
Legolas wanted for the man to spend his strength and give up, so that he could just leave this place. He knew now what the trees had been whispering about. It had been a mistake to stop there.
Seeing that the two unconscious men were beginning to stir, Gimli moved to retrieve his axe and guard them. The dwarf tried to keep a sharp eye on all of them at the same time, but with the men all scattered around the place, Gimli found that hard to achieve. When a pained gasp reached his ears, the dwarf knew he had left one unchecked.
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The man fighting him was growing tired, Legolas could tell. The blows were not as strong as before, and half of then didn't meet their target. The elf made one single attack motion, as he circled the man and, pressing two fingers against his jaw, send him unconscious to the ground.
Legolas could see Gimli standing guard over the rest of the strangers, but his eyes avoided the dead boy. The look in the child's eyes as he had met death would haunt him forever. But grieved as he was, he knew that they could not linger. These men had some dark propose behind their attack, and he would not linger long enough to learn of it.
A movement far at the edge of the forest caught his troubled attention. Even with his elven sight, he could barely tell who the figure was, as it restarted to move, in and out of view, treading behind the trees. A woman, he guessed by the clothes she wore, even if a hood covered her head. She moved against the black night like a wraith and even from that distance, he could feel the sadness that poured from her like waves on a violent sea. It had been the glint of stars on her necklace that had caught his eyes, for he knew no other matter that would glitter like that except for mithrill, and the presence of that metal so far from the dwarven mines intrigued him.
A cold chill ran up his arms, alerting him to danger. But his distraction had cost him dearly, as a smoking piece of wood hit the side of his head, bringing him to his knees. A faint surprised gasp escaped his lips and he felt his head being pulled back and cold steel pressed against his neck.
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Sending one last menacing look to the dazzled men he had been guarding, Gimli raced to the other end of the encampment. The dead boy's body lay now abandoned, and the man that had been holding it had was now holding Legolas.
"Take no further step, dwarf!" the man said without looking up.
Gimli stopped, his mind franticly searching for a course of action. The weapon that Legolas had been holding lay on the ground, abandoned. The dwarf could see a small knife trembling in the man's hand. Legolas' face looked pained, and his eyes were slightly unfocused. The man had a firm grasp on the elf's hair, pulling it back, and Gimli could hear his faltering voice speaking close to his prisoner's pointed ear.
"This is your fault..." he mumbled, "... my only boy...your fault my child died... I would never... damn you, creature!"
More than his deadly hold on his friend, the man's words stopped Gimli from attacking, stunned by their meaning. His eyes went unbidden to the abandoned body once again. The flames of the burning fire gave the pale face a mocking life-like colour, but Gimli knew it for the illusion it was.
With sickening realization, both the dwarf and the elf understood who this man was and how twisted fate had been, to make him accidentally kill his own son.
Over his aching head, Legolas could feel the man's feeble control over his emotions slipping, just as he could feel the blade of the small knife biting deeper into his neck. A drop of blood prickled his flesh as it ran down his neck, a mirror image of what the man's words were doing to his heart.
If he tried to explain that it had been an unfortunate accident, the trapped warrior feared that the man would simply slit his throat, just to stop the sound of his voice. He could sense Gimli nearby, reading himself to charge. If the man sensed Gimli was ready to attack, the result would be the same.
The man's mumbling words were cut by a pleading voice.
"David, for the Mother's sake!" One of the men, on the other side of the fire, was trying to reach them. "Still your hand David, or you'll condemn us all!"
But David was listening to no one. All he could see, all he could hear, was his son's face and the pain that had fled his mouth as quickly as life had fled his body.
He could not bring himself to see his hand as the one that had ended his child's existence. It had been the creature's fault. He had meant to strike it when his back was turned, when the creature could have never guessed that he was nearing. But the creature had guessed it and pushed his son to meet his end.
This creature, an elf he could see, would meet his end here too. Samuel had often told them about the elves, of their cruel ways and of how their evilness could last forever. They did not die, Samuel had told, and they envied mortals for their mortality. David was ready to make sure this one had cause for envy no more.
A hand on his shoulder startled him.
"Give me that knife." The older man begged, a dark bruise already forming in his face. "We'll see that he is brought to Samuel... your son's death will not go wasted!"
David had known this man all of his life. He had been there when his son was born. He had shared his joy then. New tears rushed to his eyes, and the grieving father eased his grip on the weapon. The older man placed his steady hands over David's trembling fingers and gripped the knife, pressing the blade harder and preventing the elf from making any movement. David just moved away, head downcast, kneeling to hold his son again.
"You will come with us without a fuss!" The older man snarled in to the elf's ears, his gentleness while talking to David now replaced by an angered tone. "And you will drop your weapon and come quietly as well," he said to the dwarf.
Gimli's grip on his weapon was tight. His eyes looked around, seeing that all others were starting to recover and make their way there. He was surrounded and he needed no further explanation to know the fate of the elf if he failed to comply. These men seemed to want Legolas alive, but they would risk no more lives to achieve that.
Cursing their bad luck, Gimli dropped his axe to the ground and surrendered.
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