Disclaimer: I own nothing recognisable.
Yrch!
Two days later, Rílglín, acting as scout, rode back to the group in haste. "Yrch!" he called, wheeling his horse around to face the threat. As yet, there was no sign of them, but the scout was very seriously scanning the hills immediately before them.
Thranduil immediately began barking orders. The craftsmen were at the back of the group, and those with bows were in front of them. Everyone with a sword was at the front of the group, and they continued onwards, all on the alert for the enemy.
They rode on for five minutes, and then suddenly arrows rained down on them from left and right. With a great war cry, the group split down the middle, and Legolas' bow was singing as he shot down Orcs that cowered behind the ridges and bushes on the hills.
Once the Orcish archers were taken care of, Legolas drew his knives as entered the fray only metres before him. With quick strikes, Legolas put holes in the orcs through gaps in their armour, until suddenly the road was quiet. There were no more living orcs.
"Get a torch, pile the bodies," Thranduil ordered, and all the orcs were piled in the road. "A warning to others," Thranduil shrugged when Lothellon wondered if they should burn the foul bodies in the hills.
The number of orcs had been relatively small, only two or three to each Elf in the group. Aldariel insisted on checking every scratch and bruise for poison before allowing the party to move on.
As soon as his mother let him free, Legolas collected his arrows from the three orcs he had shot, and noticed with disgust that one of them had been bent and broken by the heavy orc's fall. It was unusable. Beside him, Hîmdol threw a blunt arrow to the ground, cursing the orc's leaden bones for ruining a good arrow.
As Legolas remounted, he took inventory of the group. Eighteen Elves still stood, but though they had been victorious with no loss of life, it seemed that Míruial had been scared out of her mind. The elleth was quickly bundled up in front of Aldariel, who wrapped her in a blanket and held her before her on her horse.
"We have to leave before more yrch arrive," Thranduil announced as he swung into his saddle. "Rílglín, scout ahead," he ordered. "Find a place to camp an hour before night falls. Forward!" The group moved off at a trot, and Rílglín cantered off ahead of them.
They did not meet any more orcs that day, and Míruial was soon cured of her shock.
Two days later, as they made camp in the foothills of the Misty Mountains, Thranduil set three Elves to watch at a time. Legolas, Tathar and Aldanna had the first watch, as it was deemed the least likely time for an attack, the company having only just reached the very edge of orc territory.
Tathar, Legolas and Aldanna formed a triangle, each standing as far away from the other watchers as they could. Aldanna listened carefully, while Legolas placed more attention on his eyes as he peered into the gloom of the starless night.
It was Tathar who first mentioned the smell. "What do you think it is?" he asked, and suddenly Aldanna heard heavy shuffling over the grass.
"Yrch!" The call went up in the night, and suddenly sixteen Elves were ready to fight. Míruial and Eregalen had only just managed to grasp their weapons before the orcs were upon them.
This group had many archers, and a score of arrows were the first they saw of the orcs. One arrow hit Aldanna's shoulder, glancing off her armour, and Tathar batted another away from his chest with his sword. The orcs crept up through the darkness, and the archers in the Elves' company picked off almost half their number before the orcs crossed into the light of the embers of the cookfire.
Legolas stood near the edge of the camp, having no desire to be protected in the centre with the craftsmen, and so he drew his knives very early into the battle. He soon got lost in the rhythm of swiping at the orcs, and a flash of golden hair was all that told him his father fought nearby.
The orcs stopped coming after ten minutes, and the Elves piled the carcasses before picking up their belongings and moving on. Thranduil declared that they would ride by night, and camp during the day, which would be safer, as the mountain-dwelling orcs would not face sunlight.
Legolas was dead tired as they made camp, the sun rising at their backs. The sleepless night, while not something that would bother an older Elf, was wearing heavily on him, and he, Tathar and Aldanna had barely unrolled their blankets before they were fast asleep.
It was late afternoon before the three trainees stirred, to find Sílívren heating some supper over the fire for them. Sílívren explained that the day's watch had been quiet, and handed the reheating of the stew over to her daughter before rejoining the watch. When Aldariel and Lothelleth awoke, they checked their sons carefully for any signs of injury or illness, having been worried about them after sleeping the whole day away.
An hour before sundown, the Elves packed up and mounted their horses, and were well on the way before the sun disappeared behind the mountains.
It was only a matter of time, Thranduil told the company, until they were attacked again. Lothellon agreed, and sent Sílívren off as a second scout, though she, at Thranduil's request, stayed within sight of the main group, so that the two scouts were at different distances from the main company. Rílglín, for once not acting as a scout, constantly glanced around, taking in every detail of their surroundings.
Kalhíth, the huge Silvan warrior, rode back to the company, Sílívren a few metres behind. "Goblins and yrch fight in the next valley," he reported. "Almost four hundred all up. I would not risk them turning upon a common enemy - us."
"We go around," Thranduil declared. "It will be longer and more difficult, but we cannot risk a fight against a hundred. Keep below the tops of the hills, so they do not see us."
As one, the company all nodded. They adjusted their course to go around a hill, rather than down the path. Legolas and Brethilril rode at the rear, side by side, while Kalhíth and Lothellon took point. Rílglín, in his element, cantered off in front to scout the path.
They made it almost to the path without incident. Rílglín waited for them there, reporting that they could not enter the pass through the mountains without risking being sighted by the orcs.
"It is a two-day journey through the pass," Aldariel stated grimly. "We have already travelled for much of the night, and our horses - and our young ones - cannot go indefinitely."
"We cannot risk being chased up the pass," Thranduil agreed. "But perhaps we can create a diversion, to keep the yrch fixed upon their own."
"The only thing which would keep their attention wholly would be a prisoner," Rílglín disagreed. "We cannot risk such an endeavour."
"That is not quite true," Kalhíth placed a big hand on Rilgin's slight shoulder. "We don't really need to give them a prisoner. All we need is to tantalisingly promise them of finding one."
A light appeared in Rílglín's eyes. "That's brilliant," he whispered.
Hidden from the fighting orcs and goblins by a high hill, the Elves set about constructing a diversion for the orcs. A single blanket and pack, emptied of all its contents and torn to barely functional shreds were prepared, along with a ruined cloak that Ladlaurë promised she would replace. Legolas and Tathar jumped on the blanket, getting it all muddy, while the Brethils set their daggers to the pack, tearing it to shreds. Aldanna efficiently ruined the cloak.
While the young ones worked, the older Elves set about the task of muffling their horses' hooves with rags, so they could pass silently.
Rílglín, being the fastest rider, took the bundled up cloak, pack, and blanket and cantered off around the hills to the other end of the path, where he let out a loud swear to the Valar, throwing the bundles down the slope.
The sound of Rílglín galloping back was lost in the shrieks of the orcs and goblins as they abandoned their feud to attack the Elf they thought was at the entrance to the valley. Thranduil's company slunk past and up the entrance to the pass without a sound, and not a single goblin or orc caught sight of them.
The passage up the mountain was surprisingly uneventful, and Kalhíth explained that the goblins normally in this area were probably at the bottom of the pass, searching for the hapless Elf they thought was down there.
Legolas and Sílívren drew first watch when dawn broke, and the rest of the company settled down to sleep - right in the middle of the pass. The morning was frankly boring, and Legolas discussed with his honorary aunt some of their childhood escapades. Sílívren's tinkling laughter filled the pass when Legolas jokingly insisted that the sojourn to Laketown by barrels had been entirely Rílglín's fault, for he had been the adolescent who'd pushed the barrels into the river. Legolas laughed when Sílívren insisted that it was he, Tathar and her daughter who had climbed into barrels at the water-gate while playing hide and seek, making it their own fault.
Legolas fondly remembered that day, when he and his friends had been playing hide and seek in the lower levels of the palace. They had originally planned to use the upper halls, as was their wont when ordered to stay inside the caves, but Thranduil and his advisors had been involved in meetings with Elves from Caras Galadhon, and so the preadolescent elflings had retreated downwards to play their game in peace. He remembered the days after with a lot less fondness, for they'd been spent in the cold, wet, dark of the inside of a barrel bouncing down the Celduin.
Brethilríl had been the seeker, when Aldanna had spotted the conveniently sized barrels in a room at the end of the corridor. Legolas and Tathar had immediately followed their friend into barrels, and Brethildil had helpfully replaced the lids before hiding herself behind some other barrels.
When the half-opened door had been pushed open, Brethildil had giggled to herself, thinking that it was her brother come to seek them. Unfortunately, it had been some adolescent Elves serving punishment duty in the King's halls after an ill-fated attempt to drug their teacher with water from the Enchanted River. It had been years later that Legolas discovered those Elves were Rílglín, Tauriel (now Captain of the Guard) and Lassiel, the wine-maker's daughter.
Legolas had kept quiet as his barrel was pushed over, assuming it was Brethilríl come to seek him out, and had not shouted in fear until his barrel began to fill with water.
It had been a dark, wet, miserable two days before the young Elf was rescued, his father pulling the sodden, miserable, hungry and tired Elflings out of the barrels to the shock of a number of Men of Laketown.
"They rode down to Laketown like a dragon was on their tails," Sílívren laughed, "and Neldororn and I went with them, as Brethildíl and Brethilríl were so scared for you all, and Neldororn wasn't going to let anyone else find his son. They rode straight through Laketown, murderous looks on their faces, and the Men jumped out of their way without even attempting to question their presence. Thranduil rode straight to the point where the barrels are received, Neldororn behind him, and myself as well, and they started hacking at the barrels. "
Legolas smiled wistfully, remembering how fearful he had been when he'd heard the wrenching at the lid of his barrel. He'd thought it was some sort of lake monster, come to eat him, or maybe even the dragon, as his imagination had fired wildly. He had been so innocent back then - before meeting the monstrous spiders, and orcs which roamed the Greenwood.
Sílívren continued her tale as they both kept an eye on the pass and surrounding rocks. "The Mayor himself came up then, he'd been summoned by furious traders, and he told Thranduil that whatever they'd accidentally sent was now the property of Laketown. And he laughed, would you believe it! 'You don't want these,' he told the Men of Laketown, before getting the lid off one of the barrels. I upended it and lo! there was Aldanna, all soggy, bleary-eyed, and she cried when she saw us all. 'I'm sorry!' she sniffled, over and over. I held her then, and the Men of Laketown backed away, for they had never known that we in the Greenwood had children and they were rather surprised."
Legolas chuckled, remembering the tales he had once, later, heard from his sister after she visited Laketown about the one time Men had come into contact with the elusive Elvish children.
"And then Neldororn's barrel opened, and out fell Tathar! The Men were so shocked, and a few even shouted in surprise. 'Imagine that,' someone said, 'two Elf-children here!' It was then that Brethildil flung herself down to hug Aldanna, for she had finally calmed down in her father's arms. And then Thranduil got the last barrel opened, and there you were, all tangled limbs, big scared eyes and half drowned." Sílívren paused in her tale, inspecting a dark shape on a distant rock, but it soon flew away, revealing itself as only a bird.
"Oh, the lakemen had imagined that Greenwood must secret away an elfling or two, but to find three of them in barrels was just too much. A good number of them went away from the dock, shaking their heads as if to clear them, and Thranduil accepted the Master's offer of beds to sleep in for the night, and blankets to warm the children. Brethildíl was so glad to see you had all survived. And Aldanna laughed the whole thing off only a day later."