Hello anyone still interested. I am sorry for the loooooong wait, so i will upload two chapters at once. However, this story does take time and i am working more on revision and my CSI:NY fic (Run, for your life) at the moment, so I WILL NOT UPDATE THIS STORY UNLESS I GET REVIEWS. Pretty please? Review? Please?
Chapter Fourteen
Ello crossed her arms and her legs and sat in a small crevice in one of the caves. All she could hear from above were battle cries, and screams of pain. Part of her insisted that she would not have lasted long in this bloodbath, but most of her soul wished to know what was going on, and to help. It was soon unbearable, and Ello grasped with the insides of her head to see around the fear, to see a vision.
Just as she thought she could manage a giant explosion was heard overhead, and it all went silent for a moment until the men's cries came even through the caves.
"The wall is breached!"
"Pull back, pull back to the keep!"
The cries were extremely muffled, and Ello could tell that she was she was amongst the few that had been able to deduce the words, but the people of Rohan were not stupid.
"They're breaking in!"
More crying and screams rang through the caves, and Ello watched as families clutched at each other. It only made her feel worse, and then and unexpected vision filled her mind. A young boy, she thought it was Haleth, was going to be struck down by an orc in little over a minute, and heartbroken at the pain in the boy's face Ello looked for what would happen if she were there. She saw her body, broken, still, but the boy walking around alive and she knew what she must do.
"Éowyn, I'm going up!" She called. All faces stared at her
"Ello! No! You cannot open the door!" Éowyn cried
"I will not have to! I swear to you, Éowyn, no orc shall get through the way I shall."
"Ello, please!"
"Éowyn, please, tell Aragorn I am sorry. Tell them all, I'm sorry."
"Ello-"
Ello took a deep breath and her eyes glowed. A small creak echoed in the cave and a hole too small for even an overweight hobbit appeared. One woman pointed and screamed, but Ello scrambled nimbly through the fracture and it slammed shut behind her.
Ello almost vomited at the sight. Men and boys lay in pools of their own blood, and orcs too were dead on the floor. Screams of terror and agony ricocheted around and blood spewed everywhere. Ello took a deep breath and pulled a long knife from the arm of a dead soldier; it was a good as a sword for her.
"Sorry." She whispered, and then she scampered towards a set of enormous stairs. She knew the boy was up there, possibly with her doom, but she had only thirty seconds left. There was no way she could climb that fast.
With a cry of desperation she threw her hands down onto the stairs and ran, using her hands and feet to give her momentum.
7…6…5…4…3…2…
"Ah!" she yelled as she flew over the last stair and ploughed straight into the boy, Haleth, as she had thought, and knocked him out of the way as an arrow splintered at the column where his head had been. He looked at the remains of the arrow and blanched.
"Huh, Th-thank you!"
"You're welcome!" Ello responded lightly. "You okay?"
Haleth nodded, then his mouth dropped open as he took in the appearance of his rescuer. "But, you should be with the other children and girls, shouldn't you?"
"I don't know, I'm fifteen…And where I come from women fight all the time."
"What are- you're the leiveia!" Haleth's eyes looked like they were going to fall out of his head.
Ello inclined her head. "I have to go. See you later."
Haleth shrugged and got back up to fight and Ello wove through the endless sea of orcs She had to see one of her friends before it was too late…
Suddenly she tripped over a corpse and she fell heavily to the floor, landing on top of an orc. Winded, she flinched as an uruk-hai stormed towards her; spearing anyone still breathing.
She shuffled forward and hauled herself up. An orc hand fastened around her neck, lifting her into the air, but she leaned in as if she were going to kiss him, and bit deeply into his neck. With a gurgle it died, but another uruk-hai had seen her.
"It's venomous! Bite it, make it suffer!" he yelled, and Ello remembered Gandalf telling her why she of all people should be careful among orcs; she was venomous to them, but they were venomous to her.
She sprinted through the armies, biting as many orcs as possible on the way. Frodo's face swam into her mind in a vision; he was blindfolded, being led roughly by a group of young men. She had to help him, she had to escape, what use was she dead. Suddenly she rounded a corner and was hit by déjà vu, so strong she almost vomited. It was the place her body had lain in her vision. She had to get away, but when she turned an orc leader stood before her.
"You cannot beat me, little leiveia." He cackled, and for the second time that hour she was lifted into the air by an orc grasping her neck, but this time he did not underestimate her strength, and he held her a safe distance from his body. "You see, the slaves we have in Mordor used to taunt me, call me weak, and I crushed them. I was punished severely, much more than I deserved for only killing 1000 slaves. So I have a certain hate for your kind. And I will kill you in the worst way possible for you, and leave your broken body for your friends to find, as a token of the wrath of Ufguh!"
Terror gripped at Ello's heart, but she tried to keep Ufguh talking; praying that someone would find her before she had suffered too much. "How... d'you know…they'll…find…" she broke off as the orc squeezed her neck harder.
"Because my personal slave saw it. She has the gift of foresight, and so I know that we will lose this battle, but it will have little impact. Goodbye, little leiveia." Ufguh's head lunged at her and he gnawed deep into the flesh of her arm, releasing his poison into her system. She screamed piercingly in pain and fear. She managed in the midst of things to chomp down on his overlong nose, and he fell to the ground. The last thing she remembered was the fierce, deathly pain surging from her arm, and struggling to breathe with Ufguh's hand around her neck before it finally went black.
The battle raged on as Aragorn hacked his way through countless orcs. He battle was bloodthirsty, and neither side was winning, Aragorn had thought before the bomb. He bitterly remembered the uruk-hai filling the drain with large spiked balls, and the suicidal uruk whom had lit them. The wall had partially exploded, and he had been thrown off his feet as the enemy surged towards him. Gimli had saved him, then he had saved Gimli, but now they were trying to break through the other gate.
"Brace the gates!" Aragorn yelled, and two dozen brave men ran forward with huge planks of wood, which they barred across the doors.
Still, the orcs began to break through.
"Aragorn!" Théoden cried. "Can you buy us some time?"
Aragorn nodded. "How much time do you need?"
"As long as you can give me."
Aragorn and Gimli crept around the edge of a turret, until they were in line with the orcs breaking in.
"C'mon, Aragorn we can take 'em!" Gimli enthused
Aragorn looked at Gimli. "It's a long way."
Gimli looked at the floor. "Toss me."
"What?"
"If I can't jump you'll have to toss me!"
Aragorn raised his eyebrows.
"Ah!" cried Gimli. "Don't tell the elf?"
Aragorn nodded and threw Gimli across to the bridge, jumping after him with a cry. They tried to keep the orcs away from the door and for a few minutes, before they began to get overrun.
"Aragorn, get out of there!" Théoden cried, as Gimli and Aragorn got grabbed by an orc.
"Aragorn!" Legolas cried, throwing down a length of rope.
Aragorn and Gimli stabbed the orc and grabbed the rope, and Legolas pulled them up.
"Pull back, pull back to the keep!" Théoden cried.
The soldiers of rushed in a flood to escape the mayhem.
"Haldir!" Aragorn cried. "Pull back to the keep!"
Haldir nodded once and signalled to his elves to pull back. As they did, Haldir felt a chill down the back of his spine. He felt a sudden pain as an orc axe sliced down his back.
"Haldir!" Aragorn cried as he tore up the stairs towards Haldir. Aragorn cradled Haldir in his arms, but Haldir's head lolled back and with a small sigh he died. Aragorn sighed himself, and continued to pull back.
They barred the doors to the keep.
"Is this the way it ends?" Théoden chanted
"Your men have defended it; they still defend it, they've died defending it!" Aragorn cried.
"So much death. What can men do against such reckless hate?" Théoden recited.
Aragorn watched as the sun rose in the east; the fifth day had dawned. Aragorn walked up to Théoden. "Fight with me. Lead them out. Let this be the hour that we draw swords together."
All the soldiers mounted their horses and as the orcs broke through two dozen brave men rode through the sea of orcs, hacking as they went, and soon the bridge was clear, as the riders of Rohan surged into the midst of the orcs.
On top of the steep hill above the battle, Gandalf looked down upon the chaos and murmured softly. "King Théoden stands alone."
"Not alone." Éomer cried. "Rohirrim!"
Faramir led the hobbits through Osgiliath and shoved Frodo gently against the wall.
"Stay here, stay low!" He ordered, and ran to help.
Frodo walked to the middle of a derelict stone bridge, and stared as a Nazgúl and rider leered up towards him. Something took over him and he held his open palm out; with the ring in the middle.
"No!" Sam yelled, and charged toward Frodo. He knocked Frodo out the way, and Faramir looked up and shot the Nazgúl in the neck, and it screeched with pain.
Frodo and Sam tumbled down a ledge and Frodo attacked Sam. They wrestled until Frodo's sword was at Sam's neck.
"It's me." Sam whispered. "It's your Sam. Don't you recognise your Sam?"
Frodo looked down in horror and began breathing heavily. He rolled of Sam and dropped his sword; the clanging ring of its fall rang in the sudden darkness.
"I can't do this, Sam." Frodo gasped.
"I know, Mr. Frodo. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the old stories; the ones that really mattered. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of going back only they didn't. They kept on going. Because they were holding on to something."
"What are we holding onto Sam?" Frodo moaned wearily
A strong cavalry of two thousand charged down the hill and stormed the orc army, as the sun light blinded the orcs.
They fought with a grace, a fierce, angry, protective grace.
"Victory!" Théoden cried. "We have victory!"
Ents hurled boulders the size of a hobbit's house at the uruk-hai, and then they broke the dam, sending all remaining uruk-hai there to their doom.
"But there is some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for." Sam murmured softly, unaware of Gollum and Faramir listening in quietly.
Aragorn, Gandalf, Legolas and Gimli were laughing with an old man named Galas.
"I survived against all odds!" Galas chuckled. "An' I only saw one little one fall. Got bitten by an orc, the poor little thing. Though he was an odd looking boy. Had really long red 'air, and looked leagues too small to be fightn' anyway. I didn't see his face as a whole, but from everything I saw of him I would have said that he was a little girl, had I known better!"
Gandalf grasped the man's arm. "Where did she fall?"
Scared at the sudden change of mood, Galas pointed up the stairs, and watched confused as the strangers hurled up the stairs two at a time.
Legolas groaned as he saw Ello's body still and broken on the floor, a look of pain consorting her features, even in unconsciousness. "She must have seen something, and opened her way into the battle. Stupid, stupid child" He sighed as his voice broke and his eyes brimmed with tears.
Aragorn and Gandalf knelt at her head. "She is still alive." Gandalf muttered. "Although healing her will be tricky if possible; waking her up would be necessary, but the pain could kill her anyway, if she is not strong enough. Yet, the irony of the matter is that now is the time which we need her the most."
"What do you mean?" Gimli choked; struggling to hold off the tears that threatened to overflow.
"I shall see what I can do." Gandalf murmured, before muttering incomprehensible words under his breath. Ello's eyes snapped open and she screamed in pain, and she writhed on the floor before her friends' hapless eyes.
"Gandalf," Legolas began, but Gandalf silenced him with a wave of the hand.
Gandalf continued to mutter, and in slow retreat, Ello's screams receded sluggishly, and her writhes turned into small twitches and her screams reduced to small sobs as she slowly seeped into a state of consciousness. Of the faces peering anxiously over her, Legolas was the first face to focus, and others followed.
"L-L-Legolas?" She gasped jerkily. "Aragorn, Gimli...Gandalf? I'm...so sorry..."
"You had better heal- we told you not to- Ellora you are in heaps of-"
"Gimli!" Gandalf warned as Legolas pinched his arm hard, and Aragorn said "There is nothing to be sorry for."
"Gandalf..." Ello's fearful whimper was scarcely more than a whisper. "Gandalf...it hurts..."
"I know, I know. Gimli, Aragorn, get the King; ask for a healer of some kind. Legolas, bring me Ellora's first aid kit." Gandalf ordered
"Gandalf, I mean...it really...really- spreading-" Ello fainted and her eyes rolled up into the top of the head.
Legolas returned first, and he stopped at the expression on Gandalf's face.
"Is-is she gone?"