Brother's Keeper

Note: The Elvish written here is in Quenya. By all rights, it should be Sindarin, but I don't know Sindarin. I may change it at some future date, but until then it's Quenya. Translations are at the bottom of the story.

Part 5

By the time I woke, Sam already had sausages sizzling on a pan with bacon and some vegetables. Our elven hosts had given us a basket of bread and several pitchers of juice to add to our breakfast. Once that was finished, Legolas and Aragorn took me aside to teach me a few medieval skills.

Since I used the analogy of a gun being like a bow and arrow, they decided I should try my hand at archery. The Lothlorien elves had a practice area with much-used targets that were shot at from great distances. Some elves were even aiming from tree branches too high for me to see the individuals shooting.

Legolas lent me his bow and gave me a few pointers before letting me try on my own. I carefully picked up an arrow and notched it into the string with my first two fingers, just as he'd shown me. As I was pulling back on the string, the arrow fell out of my fingers' grip and fell at my feet.

The elves that were practicing (even ones in the trees where I couldn't see) chuckled at the pitiful archer I was. I glowered, picked the arrow back up, and tried again. This time I got the string pulled back and Legolas was giving me instructions on proper posture before the arrow fell out of my hand. Another round of laughter. Not to be humiliated again, I picked it up and notched it using my thumb and index finger.

"That is not how--" Legolas began.

"Well at least I won't drop it this way!" I interrupted him with a furious whisper.

Legolas frowned but was silent. I pulled back the string for the third time - I could already hear chuckles around me - aimed as best I could, and let go. The arrow completely missed the target, glanced off a rock, ricocheted across one of the stairwells, and embedded itself in a tree trunk off to my left.

Dead silence surrounded me for all of two seconds before the entire forest erupted into peals of laughter. I swear, the trees themselves would have been giggling if they could.

My face was burning in humiliation, but I refused to give up. I got another arrow and tried again. I went back to Legolas's two-finger method, but the arrow didn't fall out this time. I missed again, and gained another round of laughs. I closed my eyes and tried to shut out the sound. I knew that they just wanted to get a rise out of me, and I'd be damned before I let them have it.

"You know, Legs," I commented as I pulled back another arrow, "if I don't get the hang of this archery stuff, I could just become a comedian." I let go, another miss, another laugh.

"'Comedian'?"

I thought for a moment. "Jester," I clarified.

He smiled and seemed to catch on that I wasn't going to let them get to me...It wasn't going to keep them from trying, though.

"Cundu[1] Legolas," someone called from a branch. I looked up in the direction of the voice and saw Haldir. "Cundu Legolas...toronalya nessima eressë polë horta sardi."[2]

"Do I want to know what he just said?" I asked.

"Likely not," Aragorn answered, frowning up at Haldir.

We spent the next couple of hours at the target range. After a while, most of the elves got tired of watching the poor pathetic human consistently miss the targets, but Haldir hung on to the end. He seemed to derive some perverse pleasure from shouting insults in a language I couldn't understand.

As much as I didn't want him to get to me, I'd had enough. I turned to Legolas and asked loudly enough for Haldir to hear, "What's elfish for 'Your mother is a dirty orc'?"

Haldir stiffened and then bounded down the nearest stairwell. Aragorn took up a defensive position in front of me, and Legolas went to intercept Haldir.

I guess 'dirty orc' is a pretty bad insult, I thought. Have to remember that. Haldir looked ready to kill me. He might have already if Legolas wasn't holding him back.

"Umël harya i téra quetë tar quettar![3]" Haldir yelled at me.

Legolas gave him a shove and yelled back. "Sina ná hínave![4]" Haldir stopped advancing, but he was still glaring daggers through my skull. "Todd Blackburn ná taura ohtar ar nildo mi hossëmma. Elyë vor nuvar failë quétalye anas.[5]"

I had no idea what was being said, but Legolas spoke with enough authority to make a four-star general stand at attention. Haldir grudgingly gave Legolas a small bow, then turned and stalked off.

When Haldir was out of sight, Legolas turned on me. "Never compare an Elf to an orc, Todd. It is an insult beyond measure."

"Then maybe he should find something better to do than annoy the shit out of me."

Legolas stared hard at me for a moment, then took back his bow and stalked off after Haldir.

Aragorn put an arm around my shoulders, firmly steering me away from the archery range. "Come, my friend," he said. "Let us work on your sword skills."

We sparred for an hour or so. Aragorn seemed impressed with how quickly I caught on to basic sword skills. "And yet, your archery needs much improvement," he quipped.

"Yeah well, automatic guns don't require much accuracy." I parried a blow, but fell for a feint when Aragorn struck again. He nearly knocked the sword out of my hand. I decided to be naughty and tried some martial arts on him. From what I saw of their fighting styles in the caves, my newfound friends' combat was pretty much limited to archery, swords, and fisticuffs. I'd taken karate since I was a gangly preteen, and I was now a black-belt.

At Aragorn's next move, I parried with one hand while the other grabbed his wrist. I managed a quick turn and tossed him over my shoulder.

Aragorn lay flat on his back, astonished that I'd taken him down. "How did you do that?"

My sword lesson quickly turned into Aragorn's martial arts lesson. Curious as to what we were doing, Boromir, Gimli and the rest came to watch, and soon they were all participating in some basic throwing techniques, with the notable exception of Legolas.

A few interested elves even asked to join in. My first reaction to that was to think, Kiss my ass, laughing boys, but then I thought maybe I should try to be nice. After all, I'm the guest in their home. Plus, I was hoping it would somewhat make up for my behavior to Celeborn and Haldir and especially Legolas. After my orc argument with Haldir, Legs didn't come back. Probably up a tree somewhere, bonding with Hal about the lousy human, I thought. I gave the elves a tight but civil smile and took great pleasure in tossing them onto their backs for the next hour.

After a long stretching session, came lunch, then a long cool bath in the river, and still no sign of Legolas. I was saddened that he hadn't come back yet. I felt perhaps I had chased him away somehow. Being each other's doppelganger, I had hoped we could be friends…Maybe not blood brothers, but at least we could be on some level of civility.

I decided to take a stroll through the area. I figured I might as well get a good look at an elven realm while I could. There was no telling when I might get kicked out by the angry king or the angrier Haldir.

I found a relatively secluded spot by the river. Slipping off my boots, I let my feet soak in the cool water. The smooth, flat stones under my feet were inviting. I picked a few of them up and skipped them across the river. Some only skipped twice before plunking into the water. A few made four or five skips.

"So you do toss stones, Todd."

I looked up the tree behind me and saw Legolas reclining in the lower branches. I was glad to see him, but his tone wasn't exactly enthusiastic.

"Actually, I'm skipping stones at the moment."

He raised an eyebrow. "Indeed."

"What? Elves don't skip?" I asked as I let another stone fly. It was my best skipper yet. Unfortunately, I didn't look where I was throwing, and the stone skipped its way to a boat and smacked into the hull. The elf in the boat flinched at the sharp noise and glared at me. "Sorry!" I called out to him.

Legolas jumped down from his perch. "You are not very tactful, Todd."

"What? I apologized, didn't I?"

"Apology should not have been needed. When tossing stones, it is best to open one's eyes first."

"I didn't come out here for a lecture, Legs." I dropped my last few stones into the water at my feet and stalked back up the bank.

"Nor did I come here to lecture you. I only wished some solitude, so that I may contemplate my circumstances."

I sat down and put on my boots. "And what circumstances are you in?"

He paused for a moment. "War."

"War? What war? Things seem pretty peaceful around here."

He raised an eyebrow at me again. "How soon you forget. Only days ago you fought by our side against the servants of the Enemy."

"Those orc things? Hell, just stay away from the mountains. I would."

"Ah," he said as he sat next to me and stared out over the river. "And you would simply let the Enemy proliferate its forces until the mountains could no longer contain them? You would let the Enemy grow to such numbers that they would wash over the Free Peoples of Middle Earth as a river washes over the stones in its bed?"

I was more than a little angry at his questions. I'm a Ranger after all, and the implication that I was cowardly or stupid was like telling me I had no right to wear my own uniform.

"Actually, Legs," I said as I got up. "Actually, I would wait for backup before going into what was clearly hostile territory, instead of trotting along merrily with nine pals, four of whom are the size of children, one of whom is older than my grandfather, and only four of whom actually look like they could handle real combat. Furthermore, the only reason any of us are alive right now is because that walking pile of napalm scared off your orcs. So don't fucking tell me you and your little band of merry men were in there to 'fight the enemy.' More likely, you were in there for same reason I was: You were fucking lost!"

With that I turned to stomp back to camp, but Legolas grabbed my arm and forced me back around to face him. "We were not lost…but we had no alternative route for our travels. Moria was not the goal of our journey, but merely a dangerous path to it, and our path only promises to become more dangerous as we go on. We know our chances of survival reduce with each step we take, but if we are successful, our lives will be well worth the effort." He released me and went back to sitting on the riverbank.

"So what is this journey of yours?" I asked. "What's this war about?"

He looked at me. "You truly come from very distant lands if you do not know of the Dark Lord."

"Well, I don't. Enlighten me."

"The tale is….a long one. It would suffice to say that the Enemy's power grows with every moment. His desire to conquer and enslave the whole of Middle Earth intensifies even as we seek his destruction."

"Why does he want to 'conquer and enslave' everybody?"

Legolas sighed and looked up into the canopy far overhead. "The tale is a long one," he repeated. "I believe the simplest answer would be…because it is within his power to do so."

[1] Prince

[2] Your little brother can only toss pebbles. (Lit. 'Your youthful brother is only able to send flying small stones.')

[3] You don't have the right to say such things! (Lit. 'You do not have the right(?) to speak those words!')

[4] This is childish! (Lit. 'This is child-like!')

[5] Todd Blackburn is a mighty warrior and a friend within our company. You will always be respectful when speaking to him. (Lit. 'Todd Blackburn is a mighty warrior and a friend within our troop. You continually will be fair-minded [when] you speak to him.')