22: The Harvest Hunt

The crossing to Riavod was accompanied by feelings more bittersweet than Tauriel had anticipated. They had not been on the island of Nurtha for very long, and yet the days spent as reluctant members of Gansukh's household would forever be imprinted on her memory. For the most part, this was due to the final barriers between her and Kíli coming down, leaving them joined not merely in body, but also in heart and mind. However, as she looked back across the waves towards the jagged silhouette of the island, not only those who were coming with her were in her thoughts, but also those she was leaving behind.

Nesrin, while very headstrong about her vastly different opinions, had become a friend to her during the days they had lived and worked side by side, and she regretted not having had the opportunity to say farewell. It was likely that she would see neither Nesrin nor any of the others again.

The beach where they had spent their mornings was located on the other side of the island, invisible from Tauriel's current position. Still, she sent a silent goodbye to those who were in all likelihood already gathered there.

Be safe, my friends. And may the paths you choose be the right ones for you.

A sound from the direction of the mainland drew her attention away from places and people left behind. A horn or trumpet, it seemed. Whatever it was they were headed for, was already in full swing.

And indeed, the first minutes after their arrival in Riavod were a reverse reenactment of their departure—the pier at the harbor was overflowing with people, as were the narrow streets through which their party made its way. Aside from Gansukh himself and the three combatants, their group was made up of a handful of the men and women who had sat with their master the night before as well as a group of eight guards, four walking at the front of the group, and four at the back.

As on the day of their arrival, Tauriel felt disoriented by the sheer number of people pressing in upon them, barely leaving space to breathe. All the while, though, she kept an eye out for a familiar shock of red hair, a pair of dark eyes glinting underneath a headscarf, a burly, fair-haired presence among the shorter, dark‐haired Easterlings.

If Suri, Ruari, or Ingolf were there, however, they either could not or would not reveal themselves to her. Only once she thought she caught a glimpse of bushy, ginger curls bob though the sea of people, but that might just have been wishful thinking on her part.

Beside her, Kíli was a rigid presence. He had worn a scowl on his face all day, and since setting foot on the mainland, the hard lines around his eyes and mouth had only deepened.

By now, Tauriel had spent enough time in the company of Dwarves to not be offended by their occasionally foul mood and was therefore able to ascribe it to a lack of external comforts—food, drink, or, as in this case, sleep—rather than to a deficiency in her own person. Also, she knew that if she were to press the matter, he would not voice a single word of regret over having foregone proper rest in favor of. . . alternative activities the night before.

She might not always have an overly large amount of self-confidence in that area, but. . . well. His satisfaction with said activities had been sufficiently expressed in both words and actions, to say the least.

Still, not even the handsome bow he had been presented with just before they got on the boat had managed to elicit a smile from him and now, as they navigated through the foreign maze of the streets of Riavod, his face remained set in stone.

A few minutes into their slow journey, it became clear that they were not headed in the direction of the beach where they had disembarked from their horrid mode of transport several days hence. They were headed east instead, if Tauriel was not mistaken, towards where hills dusted with green were rising above the city. If that was where the hunt was going to take place, the new uniforms they had been issued this morning—moss green tunics over brown, skin-tight leggings and soft leather boots—made a certain amount of sense. Wearing these kinds of colors would make them that much harder to detect in forested terrain.

And indeed—the houses soon grew smaller and sat further apart, leaving open the view unto a gently sloping ridge of mountains. On the outskirts of the city, a fairground had been set up, and was already populated by yet another astonishing amount of people. To think that so many of them lived in the small, squat buildings they had just passed, made Tauriel experience a bout of dizziness.

The day had dawned gray and damp, the promise of rain hanging heavy in the air, and Kíli's hand was cool when it slipped into hers for the briefest of moments. "All right?", he asked, his voice laced with concern, his stony mask crumbling to reveal a worried frown beneath.

Tauriel nodded, once, her eyes fixed on the sprawling structures ahead. The vague sense of dread she had been trying her best to suppress for the hours since she had learned of the Hunt and her own involvement in it had returned with full force. Was it only her imagination or was there a particular edge to the anticipatory excitement of those gathered here? Almost as if they knew that what was coming would be rather horrid, but could not help thirsting for it.

At the edge of an empty field, more than half their party broke away, heading for a row of stands that had been set up to overlook the space below. With Tauriel, Kíli, and Timon remained two guards carrying a banner—a black lizard on pungent green—between them. And Gansukh, of course, his head held high and shoulders pulled back as he led them into the center of the field, where a group of people was beginning to gather.

Those who had been brought here to participate in the Harvest Hunt were easily distinguished from the leaders of their houses—tribes, Gansukh had called them, once. All of them had been dressed in similar fashion as Gansukh's three favorites had, their bodies swathed in layers of cloth in various earthen tones. Tauriel quickly scanned the group, looking for familiar features, but finding none. Should she be relieved that neither of their friends were forced to participate in this latest madness or disappointed that they weren't here, within easy reach? The next few minutes would tell, perhaps.

Gansukh smiled unpleasantly at the five men and one woman who, like him, were dressed in fine silks in the colors of their respective banners. Seven leaders, each of them nominating three favorites to participate in the Hunt. That added up to twenty-one hunters, a number small enough to keep track of and large enough to get lost in, should the opportunity for an escape arise, Tauriel noted with grim satisfaction.

True to Gansukh's prediction from the previous day, the majority of the other hunters were large men packed with muscles who carried long, inelegant swords and heavy axes strapped to their backs. A handful were of slighter stature, though, and as Tauriel took notice of at least one more bow and several crossbows distributed among their number, she wondered if Gansukh had not been a little hasty in thinking his strategy so very superior to that of his rivals.

While a few pleasantries—or unpleasantries, judging by their predatory smiles—were exchanged between the tribal leaders in their own tongue, more and more people made their way over from the stalls set up on the fairground, those dressed in finer fabrics ascending to the rows on the stands while the rest of them lined the edge of the field, jostling each other for a spot in the front.

A cool breeze from the north tugged on the strands of Tauriel's hair and she felt the first stray droplets of rain against her cheeks. A ripple went through the audience. At first, she thought the low rumble which had caused it had been thunder, but as she lifted her gaze to the heavens, no storm clouds were in sight and no lighting illuminated the sky. The rumbling sounded again, closer now, and this time, Tauriel recognized it for what it was. Drums, beating a slow, but unforgiving rhythm.

She looked at Kíli, searching for a confirmation that he, too, was hearing those drums and that they were not just a figment of her strained imagination. He did not meet her gaze, though, but was staring straight past her with narrowed eyes. She whipped her head around to follow his line of sight, and discovered a series of shapes looming on the horizon, growing larger as they approached. They were wooden carts, each of them drawn by no less than eight of the sturdiest horses Tauriel had ever seen, their black coats gleaming with sweat.

Slowly, the carts made their way across the field and past the group gathered in its middle. The guards carrying the banners now stood in single file, the colors of their houses held high above their heads.

At Gansukh's pointed look, Tauriel followed Kíli and Timon when they took up their stance behind the lizard banner, as the other hunters had done by now. She did not care much about following the commands of her self-proclaimed master, not here, on the edge of some great shift. Mostly, she just wanted to get out of the way of the carts. Those wheels did not look like something she wanted to be caught between.

The carts themselves were towering structures, the wooden planks they had been built from painted black and making it impossible to see what was inside. Only at the very top, a narrow row of bars suggested that whatever was inside those carts, needed air to breathe.

"What's in there, d'you reckon?" Kíli muttered beside her, his sleeve brushing against hers to get her attention.

"Not foxes or rabbits, I'm afraid," she replied. She wasn't particularly keen on hunting animals just for sport, but in this case, all the alternatives she could come up with in her mind for what might be inside those carts were infinitely worse than killing an innocent fox or two.

Kíli, when she tore her eyes away to look down at him, was chewing on his lower lip. "I wonder if this is when we find out that we're not the hunters, but the hunted after all."

At that, Timon shifted uneasily on his feet, his spear clutched tightly in his fist. Tauriel leaned across Kíli to be able to speak to him without Gansukh, whose attention appeared to be riveted on the procession of carts, listening in.

"If we work together, we can watch each other's backs. Stay with us, and we shall try our best to keep you safe."

This was the first exchange of words between them after the morning before, in Gansukh's garden. Ever since, Timon had avoided both her and Kíli like the plague. Now, his skin grew a little paler still at Tauriel's offer and she watched him war with his own doubts. Then his eyes flicked towards the sea, where the sprawling city obstructed their view of Gansukh's island, and his features hardened.

"I'll be fine on my own," he said, not meeting Tauriel's gaze.

She straightened, cautioning Kíli with a raised eyebrow when he made to argue. They could do no more than offer their help, their friendship, to Timon. If he did not trust them and would rather fight on his own in the hope that this would enable him to get back to the island, back to Nesrin, then that was his choice. She wasn't sure if they could have helped him with that anyway, seeing that they had no intention of going back there themselves.

The carts were now in position, forming one line a couple hundred yards further down the field. The drumming stopped, and a silence so heavy that you could have cut it with a knife fell over the thousands of people gathered there. They seemed to know what was coming and Tauriel half wished she did, too, and was half grateful she did not. Her gaze swept over the crowd once more, looking for she did not quite know what. She found it anyways, her heart giving a jolt when she saw a pair of familiar dark eyes stare back at her from underneath a headscarf. Suri.

She was sitting with the spectators in the stands, holding a plate of fruit up to a middle-aged, brightly-clad woman to take her pick from. Her gaze, however, was fixed on Tauriel and Kíli in the field below, those almost black eyes as earnest as Tauriel had ever seen them. No knowing twinkle or impending eye-roll, today.

There were about a hundred of things Tauriel wished she could silently communicate to her friend, who stared at her with such rigor. However, before she could do so much as blink, the blare of a horn sliced through the air.

Tauriel's first thought when she had seen the carts and realized that they were essentially cages on wheels, had been of monsters. Wargs, giant spiders, trolls, or who knew what else their captors—not exactly known for their reticence when it came to using those foulest of creatures Middle-earth had to offer for their own, sadistic purposes—had managed to procure. The reality, when the ramps at the backs of the carts dropped down at the sound of the horn, proved to be so much worse.

Inside the carts were not monsters, but people, huddled together like herds of frightened cattle. Unlike the twenty-one hunters facing them across the expanse of the field, they were not dressed for battle, nor did any of them appear to be carrying any sort of weapons. With a sharp twist inside her gut, Tauriel finally realized what this whole hunt was to be about.

"They mean for us to–ah, fuck, no," Kíli gulped beside her, horrified.

Tauriel bit the inside of her cheek hard enough for the coppery taste of blood to flood her tongue. Going up against others in the arena had been one thing, but hunting those obviously weaker than them with weapons they had been given by their captors for precisely that purpose. . . She cast her eyes around furtively, fearing for a moment that she would vomit on Gansukh's fine shoes. Not that he did not deserve just that.

The horn sounded again, longer this time. An excited tremor went through the audience as the prisoners were driven towards where the mountains sloped gently towards the sky, the guards threatening them with sharp spears leaving them not much choice but to run. Tauriel saw women, children, as well as individuals with graying hair and curved backs among the group and felt like hitting something. The ringing in her ears had grown so loud that she almost did not hear it when Gansukh turned to address her, Kíli, and Timon.

"This is your moment to shine. Make me proud and your rewards will be plentiful. Disappoint me and. . . Well. Let's not allow it to come to that, right?"

His sharp-toothed smile sent another wave of nausea through Tauriel's stomach. He turned away then, and headed for the front row of the stands together with the six other tribal leaders. Tauriel stared blankly at them, wondering what would happen if she shot each of them through the heart with an arrow right now. Would that change anything, or would others simply take their place, possibly even more cruel, more bloodthirsty?

Another blare of the horn, this one accompanied by the deafening roar of the audience, aborted Tauriel's thoughts before she could make up her mind. The other hunters were moving, beginning their pursuit of the poor souls who had, by now, dispersed and sought cover among the trees scattered along the slope of the mountains.

Kíli gave a forceful tug on her elbow, and she blinked disorientedly as she stumbled into motion beside him. He, too, was heading for the hillside. Ahead of them, Timon's long-limbed form was already growing smaller by degrees as he hurried to keep up with the other hunters.

She dug her heels in, nearly causing both herself and Kíli to take a tumble on the damp grass. Still, Kíli did not let go of her, giving another yank to get her moving again instead.

"Come on. We need to move, now!"

"Kíli, we can't," she cried and gestured towards where their supposed prey had disappeared amongst the foliage. "You have seen those people, they're helpless. We cannot—we can't hurt them."

He gave an impatient growl. "And we won't. Even if it might be the last thing we ever do, we are going to save as many of them as we can. But to do so, we need to bloody move!"

This time, she did not resist when he pulled her along with him, shaking off her temporary, shock-induced stupor. He was right. They might not be able to put a stop to this whole thing, it was too late for that already. But they might still do everything in their power to manipulate its outcome. Even if, as Kíli had already predicted, it might as well cost them their own lives.

Anything to not give anyone a reason to look at her as Suri had just minutes ago, her disdain for the role Tauriel was about to play in the upcoming spectacle so very obvious on her face. It was no wonder, really. Suri, along with everyone else, had most likely known what was about to happen, and as Tauriel rushed towards the wilderness beginning at the edge of the field, she felt quite foolish for not having seen through the true nature of the highly anticipated Harvest Hunt sooner.

Well, it did not make a difference now. She was here and was going to see this through, one way or the other.

xXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

Two hours later found her wiggling her toes in the rain-soaked, flimsy boots she had been given that same morning, her back pressed flat against the scratchy stem of a fir tree while she listened for the tell-tale sound of approaching, heavy footsteps. Beside her, a middle-aged man and an adolescent boy—father and son, if she had to guess, but she hadn't asked—were crouched low, their eyes wide with fear as they did their best to keep their breathing slow, and steady, and quiet.

Kíli was somewhere across from them, hiding beneath yet another tree together with a group of three scrawny boys. Right now, Tauriel couldn't see either of them, which was good, since they were meant to stay out of sight, but also driving her positively insane with worry. She resented having to split up, but seeing that by doing so they were able to help a larger number of people at the same time, it had become their chosen tactic ever since they had dived into the woods behind the other hunters with the intention of sabotaging their success wherever they could. And so far, they had fared reasonably well.

Some of the poor individuals they had encountered on their search through the forest had been so frightened that they had bolted immediately upon seeing the armed Elf and her Dwarven companion approach, no matter how quickly they had put down their weapons or how ready words of assurance had been on their tongues. Those who had been prepared to listen, however, they had managed to secure at least temporary safety for. After finding them a proper place to hide—beneath hollow trees, in small caverns, or even up in large trees—they had taken some time fitting the immediate vicinity with a few simple traps and had left their charges with sharp rocks and pointed branches to defend themselves before moving on to search for the next group of people.

It did not guarantee their survival, but it definitely improved their chances. With a bit of luck, they would be able to stay undisturbed in their hiding places until the hunt was over and then be able to attempt a proper escape and leave Riavod, Rhûn, and this whole mess behind them.

The few times that Tauriel and Kíli had encountered one of the other hunters, they had not hesitated. Without exception, their rivals' weapons had already been dripping with innocent blood. The arrows Tauriel had released unto them had felt like a powerful vindication for everything that was wrong with this hunt and, so far, she had been quite successful at not permitting any feelings of guilt to rise within her. The souvenirs from their accomplished kills the hunters had carried strapped to their belts—strands of hair, bloodied articles of clothing, and, in one sickening instance, a cut-off ear—had made that endeavor so much easier.

Five hunters they had already eliminated in this manner, leaving fourteen still on the loose somewhere in the densely forested terrain. No, make that thirteen, Tauriel amended when Kíli darted out from his own hiding place to strike down the hunter who had been noisily making his way down the hill. When no other hunter appeared to follow in the fallen one's immediate wake, Kíli made eye-contact with Tauriel through the foliage hanging in front of her and jerked his head downhill. Before they had found their current group of protégés, they had discovered a reasonably sized cave at the bottom of the hill, its entrance entirely obscured by large boulders and thick vines of ivy. It would not only make an excellent hiding place, but also be large enough to fit all five of them inside.

Tauriel gave a sharp nod, gesturing for Kíli to go ahead. It was less risky if they moved in smaller groups—three or four people traipsing through the undergrowth at once made much less noise than seven all at once. And so she waited until Kíli and his three charges had disappeared from view, holding her breath while she listened for signs that any of the remaining hunters might have picked up their trail in the meantime. A few minutes passed before she turned to the man and his son still crouched behind her, shivering from both fear and the chill in the autumn air.

"Come now, but be as quiet as you can. I will take you to a spot much safer than this one—and much dryer, you will find."

Slowly, they made their way out from under the tree, bow and arrow ready in Tauriel's hands should she need to act quickly. Without the protection of the drooping limbs of the fir tree, the rain pelted down more heavily than before they had gone into hiding, no longer a mere drizzle. Perhaps it was the noise of the rain and the general disorientation that came with it, perhaps it was her hurry to join Kíli at the bottom of the hill—either way, Tauriel must have allowed herself a moment of distraction, for the voice which cut through the air caught her entirely off guard.

"Stop right there."

Whipping her head around, Tauriel squinted through the rain to find Timon emerging from behind a tree further uphill, his spear clutched firmly in his right hand. In the gray light he looked unnaturally pale, deep hollows underneath his sharp cheekbones lending his face a skull-like impression.

Tauriel's first impulse at seeing a familiar face was to relax her stance, but the way Timon's eyes darted restlessly from side to side made her tighten her grip on her weapon instead.

"Timon," she called, projecting more familiar warmth into her voice than she actually felt. "Come help me get these two here to safety. We can discuss how we'll get ourselves out of this whole mess afterward."

"I cannot let you do that." His voice sounded rough, as though he had been crying. The red around his irises reinforced that notion.

Stepping forward, Tauriel lowered her bow, even if it made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up straight. "Yes, you can. I know you have been forced into this against your will, but the decisions you make now are still your own. And I do not believe for one second that Nesrin would want you to go around hurting innocent lives, not if you can help it."

Timon's lower lip quivered, even as his hold onto his spear tightened. Glancing at his white-knuckled grip, Tauriel noticed dark red bloodstains on his fingers. "It is too late for that already."

Her heart sank, but she tried not to let her shock show when she next spoke. "It is never too late to make the right choice. Come with us—Kíli and I can still help you."

She had pulled herself up to her full height during their exchange, attempting to shield the man and boy behind her with her body as best she could. Now, as she watched Timon's feelings flit across his face in a tug of war, she slowly inched towards her charges, prepared to throw herself into the path of Timon's spear should he still decide to launch it.

But then the grip onto his weapon slackened and his shoulders slumped. He gave a small, defeated nod. "Alrigh–"

Timon's words were cut off as a bolt from a crossbow embedded itself deeply in the side of his throat. Even as his eyes bulged in shock, his knees gave out from under him and he fell to the ground, clutching his bleeding neck. Tauriel's bow was back in her hands within the blink of an eye, her arrow nocked while she scanned the undergrowth for Timon's assailant. Her heart hammered in her chest, every nerve inside her body preparing her for a fight.

"Go after Kíli," she threw over her shoulder at the man and his son. "I will be right behind you and watch your back. Quickly, now!"

Out of the periphery of her vision, she saw the man nod shakily and reach for the boy's arm, tugging him along as he began to stumble downhill, trying to get away from the gruesome sight of Timon's limp body as swiftly as possible.

She kept her bow up as she edged towards where Timon had fallen, not wanting to risk getting hit, too, because she let down her guard. Only once she was right beside his body, did she risk a glance down at Timon's face and found her worst suspicions confirmed. He was already gone, his eyes milky as they stared up at what little of the gray sky was visible through the treetops.

A sob tried to punch its way out of her throat, but she swallowed it down quickly. She had to get back to Kíli, had to make sure that he and their charges were safe, before they, too—

Her thoughts were interrupted by a loud crashing in the undergrowth behind her. With her nerves strung as high as they currently were, it was too late to stop herself from releasing her arrow. She did, however, manage to pull up her bow at the last second when she recognized the face of the person who had just stumbled out of the woods. The thunk of her arrow embedding itself in a tree trunk echoed loudly in the silence while she stared at the young man in front of her.

"You."

She had not seen the tall stranger since the day she had been tasked with fighting both him and the boy she suspected was his brother. To be honest, she had assumed that neither of them had made it off the vessel alive. And yet here he was, his dark eyes wide and his stance defensive as he stared at her. Well, she could not entirely fault him for his distrust of her this time—after all, she had just shot an arrow at him and missed his head by a mere few inches.

He did not carry a weapon, which meant that he could not have been the one to shoot Timon. Torn between letting him know that she was no threat and remaining on the lookout for whoever had been hiding in the bushes before, Tauiel plucked another arrow from the quiver on her back and aimed her weapon away from the young man, scanning the forest opposite instead.

"You should take cover," she tossed over her shoulder. "There is someone else out here. Once I've found them, I can show you to a safe place." When he remained frozen in place, she added, "You remember me from the arena, don't you? I had no intention of hurting you then, and I have none to do so now."

His rigid stance loosened somewhat, but before he could do as Tauriel had suggested and hide, another loud crash brought the boy he had been protecting back on the vessel stumbling from amid the foliage. The boy took one look at Tauriel and bolted.

"Arun!"

The young man's cry cut through the air but remained unheeded. The boy–Arun–was heading deeper into the forest with impressive speed, like a wild animal running for its life from a deadly predator.

Tauriel was not surprised when her acquaintance turned on the spot and started after the boy, but still she let out a muttered curse. Torn between searching for Timon's assailant, finding Kíli, and going after the boy and his brother, she dithered on the spot for an indecisive moment. Then she remembered what sort of terrain lay in the direction Arun was headed. She gave another, more explicit curse, and set off after the two of them.

Arun was fast, but no match for Tauriel's speed. Still, the headstart he'd had gave him an advantage as he dashed through the trees, his brother and Tauriel hard on his heels.

"Arun! No!"

The increasing desperation in the young man's voice suggested that he, too, had an idea of what all three of them were headed for. Together with Kíli, Tauriel had scouted as much of the area as they could within the short span of time they had been here, looking for suitable hiding places. Which was why she knew that, a little further to the east, the sloping mountainside ended abruptly, the ground plunging away almost vertically into a deep ravine. Only a hundred more yards or so, and Arun would find himself on the edge of that ravine, with no time to slow down before he plummeted into its depths.

Tauriel quickened her step even further, the muscles in her calves burning under the strain. All caution to keep a low profile and not alert any of the other hunters to her presence forgotten, she cried out at the top of her lungs. "Arun! Stop! I'm not going to hurt you!"

It was to no avail. The boy raced towards the danger ahead like someone possessed, not even the pleas of his brother getting through to him. But Tauriel would not watch another poor soul meet their undeserved end within just a few minutes. For Timon, all help had come too late. This, she might still turn around.

Arun was almost within arm's reach now, the branches he knocked aside with his body as he plunged through the undergrowth snapping back to pelt against Tauriel's cheeks. A few more steps and she would be able to yank him back from the edge. Not a second too early, too. Arun might not be able to see it through the dense branches hanging down around them, but Tauriel could now tell exactly where the ground was about to fall away right in front of them.

Praying that she had not miscalculated and wasn't about to throw herself down a ravine, she leapt and encircled the boy within her arms, wrestling him to the ground. They landed on a bed of dry needles and rotten pine cones, their sharp edges digging into Tauriel's shoulder blades as she ground to a halt with the boy still thrashing on top of her. If she angled her head to the right, she was looking down into an abyss at least thirty yards deep, and she kept her arms locked around Arun, still afraid that one of them would fall if she let go now.

Apparently oblivious to their precarious situation, the boy fought against her with everything he had, clawing at her forearms and once even managing to sink his teeth into her wrist. Tauriel let out a strangled cry and held on. "If you think that I have just risked my life only for you to throw yourself over a cliff, let me tell you that you are quite mistaken."

Thankfully, Arun's other pursuer had caught up to them by now and was pulling the boy off an increasingly frustrated Tauriel. He crushed him against his chest in a tight embrace, and finally the boy appeared to calm down a little.

"I'm sorry," the young man said over Arun's shoulder. "My brother, he–he's not well, not after everything, and he saw you as a threat. . ."

"It's fine," Tauriel returned, brushing dried pine needles off her backside as she rose. A pine cone had somehow gotten lodged inside her clothes, and she shook out her tunic trying to get rid of it. "The forest is full of threats today, after all, so it is only understandable that he was frightened. I wouldn't have been able to forgive myself if he had gotten hurt because of me."

Arun had buried his face in his brother's shoulder by now and was no longer struggling against his hold. He wasn't a child anymore, fourteen or fifteen, Tauriel estimated, but clinging to his taller brother like that, he seemed much younger, much more fragile. Tauriel experienced a surge of pity.

"Listen–" She broke off, realizing that while she had learned the younger brother's name, she still did not know what the older one was called.

He smiled tentatively, the resemblance to Arun becoming more obvious as he did. "Malik."

She nodded, returning his smile. "Listen, Malik, I meant what I said before. I can help you get to a hiding place. There are others there, who can help you defend yourselves. You have fought together with Kíli before, I believe, and if we all stick together, we might still stand a chance to come out on the other side of this mostly intact."

The young man looked at her over the top of his brother's head. "I feel like this would be almost too much to ask after the trouble we have already caused you."

Tauriel shook her head. "Not at all." She scanned the forest around them. "Let me just get my bearings and we shall be on our way."

The snap of a twig was the only warning she got before a sharp pain erupted in her shoulder, followed by a similar sensation in her right calf.

"Get down," she managed to hiss at Malik and Arun, grateful that this time they obeyed her without hesitation. Ignoring the urge to reach for the bolts embedded in her flesh, she tore her bow off her back. The arrow nearly slipped from her fingers before she managed to draw back the string only to realize that she would not be able to hold her aim for very long, not with an injured shoulder. Still, she scanned the treeline for an invisible opponent. If she could at least impair them somehow, then Malik and Arun might still have a chance. . .

Focusing on the task at hand became harder and harder with each passing second. She couldn't be losing enough blood to explain why her head was beginning to feel all fuzzy, her thoughts disjointed and her vision hazy, could she? The bolts were lodged deep, yes, but nowhere near any vital organs. Yet still her senses appeared intent on abandoning her, so much so that the world suddenly tilted on its side, the smell of pine needles filling her nose.

The last thing she saw was a familiar figure stumbling out of the undergrowth, his soft brown eyes widening in horror as he saw her lying on the ground (ah, now that was where she was, wasn't she?).

After that, everything went black.