Chapter Twelve: Of What's There and What Isn't
For three days the orcs laid siege to the empty remnants of the elven war camp. It was very interesting to lay siege to an empty camp, because it involved a great deal of doing nothing.
"It's definitely a trap," muttered one of Mauhúr's useless underlings.
"We should just go in," another minion urged. "Kill 'em all!"
"Send some more scouts and see if they die?" suggested a third subordinate, who had more sense than the rest.
"Not me," shuddered Aurbu.
Affecting an air of deep thought, Mauhúr scratched his chin contemplatively, and resorted to tried and true tactics. "Aright. Send ten hobgoblins ahead to scout."
Most of the ones they sent didn't come back. The ones that did were more or less scared senseless.
"It's the golden-haired monster!" cried Aurbu.
Mauhúr's eye twitched. He had been hearing so much about this golden-haired elf that could kill by apparently shooting arrows out of his eyes that Mauhúr was almost ready to believe in higher beings.
"What do we do now, captain?" another lackey asked.
In a thoroughly bad mood, Mauhúr glared. "Are you volunteering to go scouting?"
"N-no, captain…"
"Then shut up."
So for three days the orcs milled like headless flies on the doorstep of the war camp, too scared to venture forwards, but even more terrified of retreating. Sauron did not take kindly to deserters.
As previously observed, laying siege to an empty camp made for some very interesting strategy.
Eventually, though, as a result of the continued orcish exodus from Dol Guldur, there gathered too many orcs in one place. The reason why it was a bad idea (in the long run) to mobilize an army of orcs was not because of anything so petty as supply chain issues, it was because they had ferociously bad tempers. If fifty orcs were locked in a room, after two days, only ten orcs would remain. Natural selection at its finest.
After two more incidents of orcish homicide, in which he himself almost lost an ear, Mauhúr could take it no longer.
"We're moving," he growled. "Take up arms!"
Eventually, it was a silent, slow-moving mass of thickly-armored orcs that proceeded cautiously into the war camp, each carrying at least two shields, and armed to the teeth. Like a giant, uncoordinated porcupine, they shuffled forwards, tripping over each other in their reluctance to advance. They passed into arrow range. And then into view of the first line of talans.
Absolutely nothing happened. There were no hidden traps, no ambushes lying in wait. The war camp had been well and truly emptied out, the elves long gone.
Once Mauhúr realized he was not going to die, he suddenly rediscovered his tongue and uttered a fluent stream of mixed prayers and curses.
"Well, what're you waiting for?" he yelled. "Charge!"
Cidin flew into the war tent with all the urgent velocity of a messenger eagle.
"They're coming!" he said, throwing up a quick salute. "We stalled them for three days with Your Highness' trick, but the orcs have realized that they have been played for fools. They are continuing to press north."
Legolas had been stooped over a low table, tending to a pot of tea. He looked up now, holding a spoonful of dried jasmine flowers.
"Thank you, Cidin. The cooks made some cookies with the leftover honey last night, and I asked that they keep some for you. Lithui should know where they are."
With a grin and a quick bow, Cidin threw himself back out of the tent. As he departed, Legolas returned his attention to the kettle. Gently, he shooed a small fly away from the spout, and began pouring out mugs of tea.
"Three days' delay is already more than we could have hoped for," Calemír said, his dark brow furrowing. "What will come will always come. Lord Riros, your soldiers are ready?"
"Certainly, my lord," the Lord Commander of the Infantry smiled. "We shall show them the hospitality of Greenwood the Great."
"Lady Hithuihil, remember not to engage head-on. We only wish to harry them."
Hithuihil tossed back her long warrior's braid, her one eye glinting with amusement. "General, rest assured. I have no death wish."
"I remember the routes," Teleglos volunteered, before Calemír could turn his piercing green gaze upon him. "We have practiced so much that I can find my way across the swamp with my eyes closed."
"Good," Calemír lapsed into silence. Then he said bluntly, "Be careful. I would hate to lose any of you."
"Peace, Calemír," Legolas said, handing him a mug of tea. The soft fragrance of jasmine spiraled up with the rising steam. "If all goes poorly, Mandos' Halls will be a lively place, no?"
From his sleeve, he retrieved two bronze pieces. With a soft click, two halves slotted into place, and Legolas lifted the Wolf Seal, now whole, in both hands. The bronze wolf looked out over the room, proud and imperious.
"You are the Greenwood's beloved children," Legolas said simply, his tone unembellished. "My brave warriors. It is my greatest honor to serve alongside you all."
Because Mauhúr was a clever orc, he never led any sort of advance himself. He cocooned himself safely within the bulk of the advancing army, which was just as well because the one-eyed she-elf, who had given them so much grief, had made a reappearance.
They never stayed stay long enough to engage in outright combat, just skimmed along the flanks of the orcish army, lunging out of the shadows on horseback to swipe at exposed flesh and pick off any stragglers. For a time, a spear through the knee became every orc's greatest nightmare. They would be marching north, as good orcs were wont to do, when a spear stabbed out from the undergrowth, neatly severing tendons and collapsing their legs.
An orc that could not walk was a useless orc, and Mauhúr thought hard about what to do for many minutes. In the end, he decided to add them to the menu. An orc that could not walk was still a meaty orc.
Chasing after the elves proved useless, as they would simply retreat into the forest and dissipate like smoke. It was like fighting a very intelligent, very angry swarm of bees. Mauhúr had considered clearing the forest, but Mirkwood grew so dense and dark that he suspected that would be a task without end.
Burning down the trees was another option, but the direction of the wind was against them. If he lit the wrong fire, it would probably be the quickest way to charbroil the entire orcish army.
He settled for sending his most idiotic subordinates to pad the army's flanks.
On the fifth day of their northward march, they caught the elves off guard. A company of elves swept in for their customary ambush, but they had grown arrogant, lingered overlong, and the orcs managed to bog them down.
Intrigued by this unexpected success, Mauhúr pushed his way through the hordes to watch the struggle. Maintaining a safe distance from the flying projectiles, he reached the frontlines just in time to see an elf wearing a crown get clipped by something. This must be their so-called prince! As he watched the elf stumble backwards, clutching his head, Mauhúr's eyes grew hungry, like a wolf who had caught sight of an injured deer.
In a lilting voice that hurt Mauhúr's ears, the prince called out some command, and with what even Mauhúr had to admit was an incredible degree of discipline, the elves fell back as one. They put some distance between themselves and the orcs, and instantly a hail of elven arrows fell from the trees, cutting off any pursuit. The bedraggled elven company slipped away into the woods, evaporating like steam. The elven prince brought up the rear, his diadem gleaming even in the muted light down by the forest floor. As they retreated, he cast a glance behind him, looking harried. There was blood sheeting down half his face.
"Chase them, I want his head!" Mauhúr bellowed at Aurbu. "And if you do not kill him, I will kill you!"
Aurbu jumped to attention, saluting messily, and urgently waved down a few of the nearest orcish battalions. As the rain of arrows petered out, Aurbu and his orcs trampled into the undergrowth after the elves.
Not too long into the chase, Aurbu decided that, regardless of whether he caught the elven prince, he was going to die. He grunted, pushing himself to his bodily limits as he hefted his bulk along as quickly as he could. No orc could keep pace with an elf on flat ground, let alone in the woods. At this point, he was so tired he wasn't even sure he still owned a pair of lungs.
He would almost have given up, except for an acute sense of self-preservation and the smell of sweet, coppery blood. The blood trail dribbled over the leaves, splotchy and sporadic, as if the elves had stopped to try and stem the bleeding. But he remembered the way the elven prince had looked. He remembered the bright red of lots of blood.
Aurbu was a heavy creature, and he was used to creating miniature craters with every pounding step. But when he sank a good foot more than usual, Aurbu was jolted out of his bloodstained daydream.
A frog burped at him and plopped away into a cluster of reeds. The elves had escaped straight into swamp lands.
Uncertainly, Aurbu looked back at the direction from which they had come, and saw only the gleaming black bulk of the orcish battalions, still pouring after him. He wasn't sure he could turn them back even if he tried. More likely, if he slowed down, he would be instantly trampled.
Mauhúr's threat echoed in his ears. Holding his breath, Aurbu took a hesitant step into the bog. The ground was cold, and squelchy, but not as soft as he expected, and as Aurbu took another step, and another, he regained some confidence. Besides, he could see trees and green things growing all around him. As long as he kept to the vegetation, he was sure he would be fine.
As he rounded a clump of dead trees, he stumbled almost right on top of an elf. The elf had been nursing an injured leg, and now he startled, sending up a ring of muddy ripples as he fled, too quick for Aurbu to do more than blink stupidly. Aurbu's nostrils flared at the scent of the red-tinged water.
The elves must have scattered. The blood trail stretched out like the branching arms of a tree.
"Spread out!" Aurbu called to his soldiers.
The battalions fanned out, each following a different trail. A thick fog curled over the swamp and made everything indistinct, but even the hazy, lumbering silhouettes of his fellows made Aurbu feel safer.
As dusk fell, the last of the daylight took on an eerie green cast, as if they were underwater. Faint lights began winking in and out, sometimes far away in the distance, sometimes so close it seemed he could reach out and catch one.
With a sudden roar of triumph, an orc to Aurbu's right splashed towards a light bobbing like the glow of an elvish lantern. But the orc must have misstepped, because with a loud splash, he fell face first into the bog.
"Stupid," the orc snarled, attempting to climb to his feet. But the bog sucked at his skin and refused to let go, and the more he struggled, the more he sank. The rest of the orcs stood frozen, until at last, with a pathetic sounding burble, the orc disappeared into the murky silt.
After that, no one dared follow the ghostly lights.
There was another problem. As he ventured out into the swamp, Aurbu had been steadily sinking all this while. By now, the mud was up to his thighs. The mists were rising, with a smell like rotten eggs, muffling even the cry of the carrion birds that had followed the orcish army. He could barely see anyone now. Pale green light, reeds, lifeless trees. The same in all directions.
It was up to his waist. He stopped dead, but he could not tell which direction was forward and which direction led backwards, and the moment he stopped walking, the sinking accelerated. In a heartbeat, the swamp had swallowed his upper arms.
Aurbu was strong, strong enough to snap the spine of a scrawny elf mutt in half with his bare hands. But for the first time, he had a glimmering that no matter how strong he was, in the end, it was the forest that would take all.
"Hello," said a soft, lilting voice.
Trembling, Aurbu lifted his gaze.
Wreathed in mist, having appeared as silently as a breath of wind, the golden-haired elven prince who had haunted his nightmares was smiling amiably at him. In the twilight, his skin glowed with a soft luminescence, as if he were merely one of the ghost lights that Aurbu's comrade had followed to his death.
His long robes hung loosely from his slender frame. Aurbu could encircle his waist with both hands, could rip his head from his shoulders with about as much effort as it took to tear paper, but he could not reach him.
Just beyond his grasp, the elf crouched lightly on a charred ash stump, balancing easily on soft-booted feet. Some reddish liquid was indeed splattered across his face, but this close, Aurbu's nose told him it was not blood.
The elven prince leapt from the tree stump to a dense thicket of razor grass, following some hidden path that Aurbu could not see, fluid as a cat.
"It's you," the prince said, with a note of pleasant surprise, as though he were glad to see Aurbu. "This time, don't scream. We wouldn't want to cause panic, would we?"
Trembling uncontrollably, Aurbu opened his mouth to do just that, but the elf moved like smoke. There was a pale flash, followed by a gurgle and a splatter of blood, and Aurbu's tongue fell to the marshy ground, twitching like a grotesque worm.
The elven prince placed a slender forefinger under Aurbu's bloodstained chin and tipped his face up, as if to examine his handiwork. He was smiling, but here in the marsh, alone with a petrified orc, his silvery eyes burned like cold steel.
"Sleep well," the prince murmured, patting Aurbu's cheek.
Dispassionately flicking Aurbu's blood from his fingertips, the prince padded out over the soft ground and faded into the mists.
Aurbu could not stop sinking.
Hiding behind a row of ten hobgoblins, his massive bulk barely concealed by the scrawny frames of his unfortunate minions, Mauhúr peered up at the dark shapes of talans, nestled in the trees.
Another empty elven camp, abandoned in a hurry.
Mauhúr took a moment to seriously evaluate whether the best strategy was to press forwards or wait for reinforcements. But they had done this before, and the only thing waiting had gotten him was a strongly worded reprimand from his superiors. In fact, it had not been sufficiently strongly worded, and to fully express their displeasure they had relieved one of his fingers with the edge of a rusty spoon.
They had lost over two thousand soldiers in the span of two days. The swamps had eaten at least three battalions. It was a stupid thing to wait, his superiors had told him. Cunning though the elves might be, they only had so many warriors. As long as the orcs kept up the onslaught, even if they killed only a single elf every day, the elves would eventually run out of defenders.
This seemed like a reasonable assessment to Mauhúr. Besides, the last time they marched on an abandoned elven camp, nothing had happened.
"Charge," Mauhúr bellowed.
But this time, something happened. Many things happened, actually. Arrows started flying, orcish feet plunged right into waiting pits, and spears dipped out of trees to neatly relieve orcs of their eyeballs.
"Wait!" Mauhúr shouted, trying to backpedal, but he had released the floodgates. If he didn't keep moving forwards, he would be mowed down by the subordinates trampling after him.
He glanced into one of the hunting pits that had been dug into the forest floor. A thick layer of orcish bodies lined the bottom, impaled on stakes.
Mauhúr shrugged, and jumped into the hunting pit, landing with a wet squelch. Someone's intestine wrapped itself around his foot, still warm and steaming, but that was of little consequence. After all, he was still alive.
That is, until he looked up.
The last thing he saw was the silvery tip of an arrowhead.
Sunset limned the Vale of Bright Clouds in gentle gold. Ascending Emyn-nu-fuin from this road afforded travellers a view of the tip of the permanent bank of clouds to the north, the whole way up.
Hooves thudded against damp soil as a returning battalion cantered around the last bend in the mountaintop road. They were led by an archer astride a tall stallion, its white coat marred by mud and burrs and streaks of red.
The archer's quiver was completely empty, and his sodden right sleeve was in the process of being dyed scarlet as blood soaked leisurely through a hasty bandage. He touched a cold hand to his forehead, where the dot of cinnabar red pulsed, unusually vivid.
Legolas' eyes fluttered shut, and he began to list to one side.
Unbidden, Faensul adjusted his stride to match his rider's shifting weight, sharply arresting his fall. The jolt shook Legolas back into consciousness, and he shivered, pulling himself upright with a wince as they crossed the gateway to the encampment at the crest of the mountain.
As the stallion slowed to a halt, Legolas peered blankly out at the sea of blurry faces, suddenly aware of the heavy silence. His hands quivered uncontrollably on the reins.
He thought he could see Elrohir, but he wasn't sure. He was so dizzy that everything around him seemed to be at the other end of a very long tunnel, so when the first fair voice lifted in song, slipping nimbly in between the harmonies of the wind, he almost missed it. More and more voices joined the first, weaving behind the metallic clatter of weapons and the rustling tent fabric, threading the soughing leaves and even an errant eagle's cry into an eerie, wistful melody that arched over the war camp like a second firmament.
In a last burst of color, the ebbing dusk flickered over the tree tops and across the bewildered face of a young elf, turned up towards the emerging moon. His golden hair caught the last rays of sunlight, gleaming as though aflame.
"Isilmë ilcalassë. Árë, ancalima imbi eleni!"
In the moon gleaming. The warmth of the sun, brightest among stars!
The proud, fierce cry of a thousand joined voices bounded through every hidden copse and forgotten vale.
"Sun-prince!"
Author's Note:
Back to give this story a little watering and some fertilizer.
Translations:
Árë - sunlight, warmth (especially of the sun), day. Quenya. In this story, this is Legolas' father-name.