AN: Just an FYI, this story has 47 chapters and an epilogue, so it is really just beginning! Enjoy!
Why will they not leave me alone? Legolas could not seem to open his eyes. Their lids lay heavy, his long dark eyelashes seemingly glued to his cheeks. Did I not escape Ramlin? Urgency at the sensation of hands rubbing over his immobile body drove the Prince to immeasurable levels of apprehension; the nightmarish possibility that he had not evaded Ramlin, or that he was being molested again, inspired a primal instinct in Legolas to rise and tear the throat of whoever dared to touch him. He could not move his arms, his legs were tied, he believed, though his wounded leg may well have been on fire.
"Leave me be," Legolas whispered, his voice a mere suggestion of the force with which he tried to bolster his command.
"Tauron, it is Strider. I am sorry, my friend, I am only trying to treat your injuries."
Hearing the kind, worried voice of the human relieved the Elf's worst fear, although any hope his muddled mind had that he had escaped the clutches of the band of humans deserted him. Weakened as he was, it took a great effort to open his eyes to see the human. The Elf's spirits fell in acceptance, his countenance illustrating his resignation.
"Tauron? Do you understand me?"
The sand that seemed to coat his tongue and throat forfended his attempts to alleviate the man's concern with a reply; instead, he only managed a gravelly moan that increased the healer's fretting over him. If the Elf hadn't been tied, he would have batted at the man's hands in frustration. Water.
"Do you need water?"
Regardless of his current condition and dismal circumstances, Legolas smiled, his face brightening in mirth at the perceptiveness of the human. Perhaps he is just a good healer. Thank the Valar. I think I need a good healer.
Strider raised the flaxen head of his charge tenderly; Legolas drank from the proffered flask greedily, relishing in the simple pleasure of soothing his dried throat and mouth with the tepid water. "Hannon le."
"You are welcome." Strider carefully laid the Elf's head on the ground. Legolas could feel his arms regaining circulation when Strider had lifted him, though they soon became numb again as the Elf waited for the healer to re-bandage the injury on his leg. "He ripped the wound open," Strider answered, noticing the Elf's questioning gaze.
"I felt as much." Legolas could not suppress a wince when the human tied the bandage tightly around his calf.
The human winced in return. "I'm sorry."
"You didn't hurt me." The Elf's pride forced him to lie, when in fact his leg burned as though it were being roasted over the campfire.
"No, I am sorry," the healer paused, worrying his lip as he considered his words carefully, "I am sorry that I was not more help earlier." Strider glanced down, unwilling to meet the Elf's eyes.
Legolas was speechless at the depths of guilt to which the man appeared to be subjecting himself. I still do not know this human's true intentions but if naught else, he is truly concerned with my well-being. He has to be, if he would let me go free to face Ramlin alone.
"It's complicated right?" Legolas smiled weakly. The healer did not see him, and taking the reply as a reprimand, Strider grimaced, the guilt on his face growing. The Elf quickly assured him, "This is not your fault." Legolas suddenly realized he didn't know the extent to which the man was involved with Ament's depraved tactics, and so did not continue comforting the healer.
The Elf's sensitive ears detected the approach of Ament, a fact to which Legolas alerted the healer with a barely noticeable flick of his eyes.
"We will speak later, Tauron," Strider promised in a tone more subdued than the quiet one with which they had both been using to converse. The Elf only blinked in response, switching his attention to the leader of the motley band of men who had abducted him.
"Strider, follow me." Ament offered no room for argument, and the healer only rose from where he sat and trailed the mercenary across the campsite, albeit somewhat reservedly. Ament halted when they had reached the fringe of trees that surrounded the elliptical clearing in which they had chosen to stay the night. Pointedly directing his command at Ramlin, the leader demanded, "Do not touch the Elf."
Legolas watched the two humans walk off into the surrounding forest. His forest. Eryn Galen. Though the woods seem known to me, I am sure I have never been this far south. The Wood-Elf studied the awning of trees and leaves above him, gauging by the tainted lifesong of the elms and maples how far south the humans had taken him. We cannot be below Dol Guldur. I am closer to home than I could have hoped. The thought of home, of his father, and of his life there reawakened the homesickness that had plagued him during his foiled undertaking for freedom. Legolas distracted himself with listening to the conversation around him, watching the spent thunderclouds obscure the moon, wishing he could hear of what Ament and Strider were talking.
The healer continued to befuddle the Elf. I must trust him if I want to live to see another day. I have no choice. However, the Elf's faith in the healer lay not just in his lack of other options, but his realization that the man had risked his life to keep the Wood-Elf from harm. I can only wonder what Strider has told the others about how he reacted to Ramlin's actions. Reminding himself of Ramlin stole Legolas' temporary sense of calm, and as if he had known the Elf was thinking of him, the mercenary appeared beside the Prince, startling the fair Elda from his abstraction.
Ramlin towered over the Elf, his face a stony mask of suppressed desire and rage. He cocked an eyebrow, examining every inch of the Prince's body leisurely. With the tatters of his tunic barely covering his chest and his leggings still not laced properly, Legolas had to defy his impulse to avoid the man's eyes, choosing to return the lust filled leer with his own hostile glare.
"Just admiring my work, Elfling," the mercenary said as he leant down, his greasy locks of reddish black hair hanging over his face. Ramlin's work, with the help of Ament, consisted of the Elf's entire stomach, torso, and back to be blackened with contusions, his fair features marred with a bruised eye, split lip, and bloodied nose, a seeping knife wound to his upper arm, and his egregiously tormented leg wound to exude rolling waves of nausea inducing pain, not to mention a variety of other injuries.
Unsheathing his boot dagger, the mercenary held the blade in the firelight, inspecting it. "It's sharp, pretty one," Ramlin commented conversationally, moving the dagger's tip until it rested over the Elf's abused lips. The brute grinned, running the flat of the blade languorously down Legolas' lips, over his chin, and down his neck, stopping at the base of the Elf's throat where his fast beating heart moved the flesh. Legolas dared not budge; he only glared contemptuously at the human. "I am sure Ament will not mind gifting me with you when he has from you what he needs." The mercenary flipped the blade over, tracing down the Elf's body, its polished edge slicing the topmost skin. A thin line of moonlit blood glistened in the wake of the dagger. When Ramlin had reached Legolas' pelvis, he flipped the blade again, slipping the knife under the loose lacings of the Elf's leggings.
"Ramlin! Leave the Elf be! Ament is in a foul mood this night."
Doran's call from beside the fire caused Ramlin to roll his eyes, removing his dagger carelessly from Legolas' breeches as he bent further down to whisper conspiratorially to the Elf, "We will finish what we started, pretty one. We will just have to bide our time." To Doran, the mercenary called back, "Ament said not to touch him. I've not laid a hand on him!"
Ramlin guffawed in his pleasure of outsmarting his older brother: he stood, and with a final gaze at the Elf, returned to his companions, laughing and jesting with them about his new predilection for Elf flesh. Legolas only lay mutely on the wet, cold ground, disturbed by his yearning to have the healer return. I am not so weak that I need him to watch over me. The Elf sighed, anxious despite himself for Strider's arrival. Fearing for the healer's safety and his own, the Prince added, Please return, Strider. Soon.
The night sounds of Mirkwood's forest became an eerie backdrop for the mercenary's reticence as he picked a path between the gnarled tree roots. Valar, I don't think that Ramlin and he have spoken, so I do not know if Ament now knows what occurred earlier, but if this is Ament's idea of telling me I have become a liability, I could not think of a creepier atmosphere in which to do so. By the fire, the eyes that stared everywhere from the boughs of the trees were bearable; here, in the darkness beyond the comforting light of the blaze, the yellow eyes deepened Aragorn's unease.
Ament stopped, turning on heel to face the Ranger and without pretense asking, "What happened this afternoon?"
Aragorn had expected this line of questioning but had not yet thought of how to explain to the mercenary what had occurred. I have lied thus far, I cannot see how anymore falsehood would hurt. I will only need to stretch the truth.
He told the mercenary, "Ramlin wanted me to leave him with the Elf. When I reasoned with him that we were hurried, he tried to take the Elf against his will anyway."
"And you did not try to stop him?"
"Of course I did," Strider replied indignantly, but when he realized he sounded too troubled by the captive's plight, Estel continued in a rush, "but, Ramlin was not easily persuaded. His lust overcame his intelligence, and he throttled me unto unconsciousness. Ramlin almost had his way with the Elf, and if I hadn't woken, he would have."
"I see." Ament stared, troubled, out into the woods. "We have a problem, have we not?"
Believing the query to be rhetorical, Aragorn did not answer, but offered, "Elves can die from the grief that such abuse causes. We need the Elf. I only sought to preserve him."
"I did not know this." Ament smiled sincerely, surprising the Ranger with the trust and friendship the smile displayed. "I do not doubt you, Strider. No, it is Ramlin who is the problem." The mercenary ruminated briefly ere he proceeded in a serious tone. "My brother will not tolerate your interference with his possession of the Elf, and he will seek to have it any way he can. His lust does not drive him; it is his need for destruction. He has not had the chance to purge this perverse want for some time now, which is why I need your help, Strider."
Aragorn did not hesitate to comply because he did not want the trust that Ament offered to be rescinded. "Of course, Ament. Anything that abets our mission I will gladly undertake."
"Good, Strider. I knew you would prove your worth. The others have their uses but none would dare to stand up to Ramlin." The mercenary laid his hand on the Ranger's broad shoulder, his smile brilliant even in the somber forest. "If my brother so much as touches the Elf, kill him."
My good fortune, it seems, because if Ramlin had touched the Elf again I would have killed him in any case.
The Ranger frowned as Ament removed his hand from his shoulder, acting as though he were bothered though he was truly relieved that the most troublesome worry he had was now given a solution. "He is your brother, Ament. You would have me kill him?"
Sneering, the mercenary explained, "As I told him, this is too significant a chance to seek my own revenge, and I will not pass it up to cater to his disgusting lust for inflicting pain." Ament glanced towards the campsite as if he were watching for eavesdroppers. "Jalian lost much to the Elves. He's run into several in the slave trade, which, of course, left him with a useless eye and disfigured for the remainder of his pitiful life."
Ament shrugged his shoulders, wrapped up in his own line of thought. "Doran, I do not think, has suffered at the hands of the Elves, but his hatred runs deep. His desire to rid Middle Earth of the foul animals runs deeper than even Jalian, I think. Meika, well, he doesn't hate the Elves at all, he only wants the riches. And you, Strider, want your revenge, and perhaps the riches, too." The mercenary grinned obligingly. "We all have our desires, friend, and we all struggle to obtain them, though what means we are willing to employ to obtain the ends we desire is a line each man draws for himself." Ament leant forward, staring straight into the Ranger's eyes. "Some may call that morality, the line one draws for himself, but I have drawn no line. Nothing will stop me, not even my brother."
The Ranger longed to argue but could only nod his acquiescence; however, his curiosity got the best of him and he asked without thinking, "Why do you seek your revenge against the Elves?" Aragorn regretted his question instantly but the leader only grinned wider, scowling even so.
"King Thranduil killed my father."
Aragorn was utterly thrown by the straightforward justification. Grinning intensely, Ament's dark eyes glinted sanguinely in the pale moonlight, his face lit with a sinister glee that the Ranger was sure had loosened the mercenary's usually tight lips. "King Thranduil?"
Ament ignored the Ranger's echoing question, explicating moodily, "A party of Elves drove a band of Orcs out of the Mirkwood forest and into the fringes of Laketown, where my family lived. My father, Ramlin, and I were tending the fields when the Orcs overcame us. My father died fighting so that Ramlin and I could live. The Orcs tore his flesh with their claws while Ramlin and I watched from the trees. Not until they were finished did the Elves come out of the forest to slay the Orcs. My mother died soon after. Sorrow, I think. She just gave in to it."
"How was Thranduil involved?"
The leader answered testily, "He would have ordered the Orcs driven from the forest. Why did they drive them into the area around Laketown? He offered no apology or recompense when his decision turned Ramlin and me into landless, penniless orphans. I've raised Ramlin these many years, stealing and conniving for us to survive, while Thranduil has suffered nothing for the pain he has caused."
Reluctant to agree to Thranduil's culpability, the Ranger only commented, "No one in Laketown would take you in?"
"You must not know much of Laketown, Strider. King Thranduil lords over the people there by withholding and giving his aid in times of need, by his strict stipulations on how and what we may use from the forest, and his tyranny over the wine trading of the merchants. He is a murderer and a thief. His greed threatens Laketown, as the Elves threaten all of humanity. No one would take us in because we were but farmer's orphans, not benefactors from the rich trade of wine or goods to Thranduil."
Aragorn still could not reconcile Ament's logic. He is mad, more so than Ramlin, though his wits make him all the more dangerous than Ramlin's brawn. I may as well keep him talking, if he is willing to reveal so much.
"So you seek the goblet to gain his wealth?"
"And do you know how I will get my revenge?" Ament continued as though he had not heard Aragorn. He was not conscious of his audience, his tirade more to himself than to the Ranger. "I will kill his family, and I will live the rest of Thranduil's long life to enjoy his suffering." Suddenly remembering Aragorn's presence, Ament confessed, "Luck is on my side, it seems, for Jalian and Meika managed to not catch just any Elf, but Prince Legolas Thranduilion, the King's only son and family left in Middle Earth." Sniggering heinously, the mercenary rubbed his chin in thoughtful deviance, looking much the ne'er-do-well that Aragorn had first thought him to be.
Tauron is the crown Prince of Eryn Galen? Several choice Dwarven curses tried to escape the Ranger's mouth, causing him to bite down on his lip violently to stifle them. Sweet Eru.
Ament placed a hand on each of the Ranger's shoulders, inciting Aragorn to face the mercenary frankly, schooling his emotions so the mercenary wouldn't see his distress. "Strider, no one must know that the Elf is the King's brat." The leader craned his neck forward until his maniacal face was only inches from the perturbed Ranger's visage. "Ramlin will tear the Elf apart if he finds out. He desires the same revenge that I do but his lack of brains grants him no faculties to plan a revenge that we will both savor for all eternity. I need the Elf, you as well, for we share in the same quest for our revenge." Tightening his hold on Aragorn's shoulders, the mercenary added, "And you and I are not so unalike, Strider. We both have no qualms about how we obtain our desires. We both draw no line." Ament released the Ranger and then turned, heading back to the camp and leaving a guilt-ridden Ranger behind as he called over his shoulder, "Keep the Elf alive – whatever it takes."
Estel's first inclination was to oppose Ament's conclusion about his character. I am nothing like you; you are mad, you would use the innocent out of spite, a spite that is based on your mind's insane machinations. However, as he pursued the leader back to camp, Aragorn realized the hypocrisy of his thoughts. Sighing, he berated himself, You have kept Tauron... nay, Legolas... here against his will for your own purposes. He sighed again. I have no time to dwell on these things.
The Ranger instead contemplated the parts of the unknown plot that Ament had given him, pushing his shame away so that he could find a way out of his and Legolas' situation. The goblet makes mortals immortal... Ament desires to make Thranduil suffer, so that he may enjoy his immortality with Thranduil's pain. Surely, that is not all that Ament desires. He, too, must want the wealth hidden in Eryn Galen's palace. There is just too much I do not know. Aragorn wished that his Ada or even his brothers were here to help him suss out the dilemma. If we ever get out of this, they may well kill me, as will Thranduil, for my part in Legolas' captivity. I must talk with the Prince about this. How much of all this does he know?
His musing was interrupted when he noted Ament had stopped several feet in front of him, the mercenary's head cocked to the side. The hiss of a sword striking rock reached the men's ears before a voice bellowed, "Grab the Elf!"
Glancing back at Strider agitatedly, Ament ran impetuously through the forest with the Ranger on his heels.