Cottoncrow's Cry - Chapter 15
The sun had finally rose high enough to chase some of the darkness of the night away.
Despite everyone's insistence for him to take some rest, Gimli had been unable to close his eyes for long enough to allow sleep to come. Every time his lids would close, his mind would rebel and insist on filling him with bubbling and chaotic images and thoughts, making his insides feel like boiling water.
Different scenarios and explanations for the healer's actions challenged him to pick the right one, but none seemed reasonable enough to justify the man's intents.
For the sake of his sanity, Gimli had promised himself that if, no… when he found them and Samuel's neck lay between his hands, he would peel the truth out of that weasel's skin, right before he peeled the flesh off his bones.
When he at last gave up on any pretence of rest and joined the others, Gimli could see that their night had been every bit as troubled as his.
Old Bomieth had dark circles of fatigue under his bloodshot eyes and every single year of his age seemed etched deeply in the curves of his face. Even the rebellious hair, that Gimli had come to associate with the man, had lost its battle, resting flat against the man' skull.
"I believe we've managed to talk with everyone," the old man said as a way of greeting. "They find it hard to believe that the monster painted by Samuel is naught but spoiled water."
Alumna agreed, her looks not much better than the old man. The unnatural pallor in her face made her eyes stand out like a bright beacon on a pasty landscape.
"We've lost three more during the night," she confided in a voice that spoke of the harshness of the battle. "It makes it hard for those who want to believe that a single poisoned well could have caused this, not when their family and friends still perish without aid."
Gimli nodded. He knew it would not be easy and that a long path still lay ahead of every soul in that village, but the first step, the most important step, had already been accomplished. His gaze fell over the sealed well and a sight of relief escaped his lips. That battle, at least, had been won.
"I've arranged for a group of willingly soldiers to accompany you," Bomieth said, running a hand through his hair. "There ain't many, but they're all good lads."
The group of five young men that Bomieth pointed at looked anything but willing. Gimli could recognize some of the faces, soldiers that not so long ago had stood guard over him and Legolas. It troubled him to think that, what to him was a rescue quest could be seen by these guards as a hunt.
He just hoped that when they reached his friend, the rescue could overpower the hunt.
Looking around for their guide, he found her already at the end of the street, apparently eager to get their journey to a start.
"Alright," he said, grabbing his axe. "Let us be off then!"
The strange group of two dwarfs, a woman and five men made their way out of Cottoncrow under the watchful eyes of the villagers, aware that all knew what their purpose was, but few believe that they would be returning with the missing men and elf. Some of the rest could bet that they wouldn't be returning at all.
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Though the sun was up in the sky, none of the warmth of its presence reached the party of eight travelling through the forest.
Gimli pulled the edge of his cloak closer to his neck, trying to chase away some of the chill from his bones, his gaze never wandering from the stony path beneath his feet.
The group had travelled a fair amount of path since leaving at dawn, but still all that they could see were trees and moss. The she-dwarf had assured Gimli that the path that the cart had been travelling could lead to no other place but the caves that stood at the bottom of the mountains. He had little choice but to hope that her words and her sense of direction were true.
But, even with her certainty about their final destination, Gimli would leave naught for chance, continually searching for signs of their passage.
Every so often one of the guards would call out that a cart's wheel mark had been found, but soon the ground became too rocky to allow for any track to be found. The tracks, however few and scattered, still offered some sense of relief that the she-dwarf wasn't leading them on some fool's errant.
By some unspoken agreement all knew that Gimli was leader of their small group, and as midday came and went and no stop to rest was called for, the dwarf could feel the eyes of everyone burrowing in to his back. For his part, he would not stop so soon, not when the mountains still looked so far away in the horizon.
The whispers and subdue annoyance of the guards at being forced to walk for so long reminded him of the hobbits and for an instant Gimli whished that those brave little guys were with him now, and not some bigger, complaining humans.
Finally giving in to common sense and the onslaught of their collective plea, Gimli called an alt for rest and some food.
A collection of relieved sighs echoed through the small clearing, quickly followed by soft grunts and solid thuds as bottoms and packs collided with the hard ground with little grace.
"Don't let yourselves become too comfortable," he warned, easing his body to rest against the bark of a sturdy tree. "We won't be h…"
No one managed to understand the rest of the dwarf' sentence as it died in his lips when he found them surrounded by sharp arrows aimed at their throats. The green clad elves holding the bows had appeared out of nowhere and not one member of their small group doubt how deadly they were.
"I advice all to hold very still," a deep voice filled the clearing, sounding like dry thunder. It seemed to held as much power as the thunder would. "Do so much as blink and my guards will bestow you ere you stand!"
Gimli couldn't contain one surprised blink, as his eyes went from elf to elf, desperately trying to determine which had spoken. The elf guard nearest to him gave him a sharp look, warning him that the spoken order was to be taken very seriously.
As far as the dwarf could tell, none of them had opened their mouths, and yet that voice was still vibrating thought the closed leafs.
He remembered feeling like this one single time before, in the presence of the lady Galadriel, but wears her voice had been smoothing inside his head, this one was menacing. If she was a peaceful lake, this elf was an angry sea.
When he was beginning to think that maybe they had all imagined the words, the speaking elf moved away from the shadows, allowing the prisoners to see him.
His figure was nothing short of impressing.
Dressed in fine robes of silver and green, the elf sat regally on top of a magnificent black horse. The animal's head kept turning from side to side, as if assessing and judging the ones his master held prisoner. Something in its gaze made Gimli feel that they had been found lacking.
The age of the elf was impossible to determine, as it always was with their kind, but the strong, defined lines of his fair face reminded Gimli of Glorfindel, whom he had briefly met in Rivendell. Like him, this elf too had golden hair, only his was adorned with a crown of ruby flowers and emerald leafs.
'Royalty' Gimli thought with disgust, 'exactly what we needed'.
The 'royalty' elf had, meanwhile, jumped graciously to the ground, keeping a hand on the neck of his horse. The animal gently nudged him in the side as the elf made his way towards the guarded group. He stopped in front of the dwarf, sniffing the air with a sour face.
"I should have guessed that the hand of the naugrim could be found at play in these foul deeds!"
"What a terrible burden it must be to be all-knowing and master of the truth," Gimli said, his voice dripping with ill hidden sarcasm.
The elven arrow tips surrounding Gimli pressed closer, supported by stone-faced warriors whose grim expressions told of a painful near future for the offending dwarf.
"Were it be anything of worth between your ears, dwarf, and you would have by now understand that your life is in our hands," the leading elf said, "it would be healthier for you all not to aggravate our sore moods."
While his actions were both gentle and pleasant, the menacing tone of his voice brought involuntary shivers to the whole group of prisoners.
With Gimli, however, the elf's menaces managed to produce the exact opposite effect. The more the elf talk, the more the dwarf felt compelled to 'aggravate' him. Something in his voice and manner of speak brought deep annoyance and irritation to every pore of Gimli's body, in such a way as he had not felt in a long time.
In fact, the last time he remembered feeling such an urge to snap an arrogant elven neck was at Elrond's council, back in Rivendell, when Legolas had spoken to defend Aragorn.
Gimli's brain did a mental double take. His head tilted at a slight angle, trying to catch a different perspective of the elf's face. He blinked. It couldn't be, could it?
He made an effort to look discretely at the elven warriors surrounding them. Things, like the colouring of their clothes and their stance, things that had been dismissed at first hand, now brought sense to his theory.
Wood elves, bearing the same colours that Legolas seemed to favour. This meant that the 'royalty' elf that had been so greatly grating on his nerves was somewhat related with Legolas. Could he be Thranduil?
Gimli could not deny that there was a certain resemblance between this elf and his friend, but the same could be said between Legolas and Glorfindel… or any fair haired elf that he had ever seen, for that matter. They all looked alike to him, even if Legolas managed to be 'less-elven' about his manners than most of his kind that the dwarf had met.
The eyes, however, left room for no doubt. How many other times had he seen that same look in his friend's gaze? The same hard and yet caring look that Legolas had so often supported when one of their fellowship was in trouble or pain, was plain to see in this elf's eyes. Gimli was sure.
This was Thranduil. Legolas' father.
"You will tell me where Legolas is, or none of you will leave this forest alive!" The king said, oblivious of the newest findings inside Gimli's mind. And because of that, the dwarf's next words were anything but what he had expected.
"King Thranduil, we must place our divergences aside and work together on this matter," Gimli said, printing in to those two words all the urgency and seriousness of his request. "Your son's life depends on it."
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Unlike Galadriel, the king of Eryn Lasgalen, the Mirkwood of dark days, was not blessed with the sight of days to come. Usually.
The dream had set itself apart from any other he had ever had in his life because of two simple facts: that he could not control his actions in it, as it normally would happen in elven dreaming; and that he would never willingly dream of such hideous things upon his own son.
In the dream, he could not see exactly what had befallen Legolas, but the feeling of pain and betrayal had been enough to make his heart bleed. Even after waking up, Thranduil could not chase away the feeling that his son was in danger.
For more than one year, when he had last seen Legolas, the king had managed to go through his days not knowing if his son, in journey to the very heart of evil in Middle-Earth, was alive and well. His own struggle for survival and protection of Mirkwood and the knowledge that his youngest son was a powerful warrior had made those days manageable, if only barely.
But now he knew that that danger had passed and, thank Ilúvatar, Legolas had lived to tell the tale. This new sense of dread and this heavy weight upon his chest were not welcome by the king of the forest, for it clashed with the joyful feelings that had enveloped the forest after the defeat of Mordor.
Not knowing if his dream had showed him images of what might come to pass or of something that had already happen, Thranduil decided that he'd been apart from his son long enough and, telling no one of his dream, had left the sunny caves of his palace to met Legolas on the way.
The group of elven warriors that went with him had travel for three days when they encountered the two human boys. And the message they had for him had placed an ice grip around his heart.
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The sun could no longer be seen behind the mountain tops, but there was still enough day-light to see the dark clouds looming in the near horizon. The charged air of thunder and the humid smell that often arrived before the actual rain had started to descend over the forest.
Large and small animals, by nature used to read even the faintest of signs of a weather change, wasted no time in search of a save heaven from the downpour that they were sure to follow soon.
The trees and the rest of plant life rejoiced in the prospect that, even though the season of the rains was still a long way to come, tonight their roots would feast on abundant water, that both stilled their thirst and stirred the food in the quiet earth.
Samuel, not familiar with the signs around him, could not tell if the darkness that soon surrounded him was due to the late of the hour or a change in the weather. Nor did he cared, for that matter, for the caves were already at seeing distance and he was glad to have made it there before the night had fallen.
The bottom of the tall mountains was teeming with small holes, some giving entrance to large caverns, others so small that a man could barely stand inside them. Guiding the horse alongside the steep mountain face, Samuel soon found the cave he was looking for.
From the outside it looked no different from any of the others thousand more. The man smiled, once more marvelled at the ingenuity of the plan.
Halting the horse, Samuel was not surprise when the animal, on his own accord, gently lowered his front legs, allowing both man and elf to dismount at the same time.
Soon at the beginning of their journey he had discovered that he barely had the need to guide the animal at all, for the horse seemed to know the path better than him, choosing such smooth trails that the journey had been almost pleasant. And now this.
He had often heard tales of ancient men who, curse by this or that matter, had been turned in to beings that were neither animal nor sentient. More and more he suspected that this horse was one of those beings. It was the only reasonable explanation.
Putting those theories behind, Samuel focussed on what he now needed to do, for he could not tell how long he would have before his prey arrived. Making sure that the elf was still unconscious, the man took a flint from his robes. Soon, the strategically placed torches inside the cave were all lit.
Samuel had just finished dragging the elf's body inside the cave when the first drops of rains started to fall outside.
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Legolas could not bear the touch of that man any longer. How tortuous it had been the entire journey there, even with the gentle horses' help.
Being forced to lay still and lean over Samuel's chest, the elf could not remember a more unpleasant moment in his entire life. The man's evil intentions poured out of his body like a bad smell, and it had taken all of Legolas self determination not to gag each time the horse walked faster and the man wrapped his arms around him and pressed him harder against his chest. To feel the killer's heart beating strong against his back and remember all the lives that he had stolen, the lives he could still be planning to steal.
Like most men, Samuel could not bear the pressing silence around him for long, needing the sound of his own voice to ground himself and believe that the ominous trees would not swallow him out of existence.
For the elves, a forest was anything but silent, filled with the chatter of leaves and animals, so Legolas could understand the man's need for sound and he welcomed such need , for it had been on those rare moments of self indulgency that he had started to learn of the plan that Samuel was about to execute. Piecing together the random sentences that occasionally escaped the man's lips, Legolas had come to understand that Samuel was expecting someone to join him at the caves. Who it might be he could not tell, but the tone of the man's voice assured him that his intentions were not the best. The fact that his presence there was also crucial for the man's plan only added to the feeling of unease in Legolas' heart.
He allowed himself to be pulled inside the lit cave, praying to Ilúvatar that these caverns were shallow and he wouldn't be dragged too deep inside.
As it turned out, Ilúvatar had decided that the fates had punished this elf enough and when Legolas felt Samuel stop and push him against a wall, he could still feel the cold, wet breeze from outside.
Sensing that the man was once again busy with something inside the cave, Legolas risked opening a small slit of his eyes. Patiently waiting for them to adjust to the feeble light, soon the elf could see the man pushing something heavy that stood at the far end of the cave.
The cave, in itself, wasn't very big, but Legolas could see a darker area, opposite of where Samuel stood, that could well be a passage way to the following gallery. Gimli had once told him of such caves, the 'beehives' he had called them, because like the bees' constructions, these sort of caverns were all linked to one another by small passageways, making them perfect to hide. The dwarves, however, didn't like to use them because, due to their structure, the danger of a cave-in was almost certain.
Legolas wandered if Samuel was even aware of that fact, as he rolled a heavy round stone that covered a large hole in the wall.
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