A.N: Hello, dearest readers, I have no excuses for this late update but that my life has gone crazy with three teens locked in for over two months. I imagine some of you can relate, and hope you are all safe and at home until this plague ends.
Child of Dreams, thank you so much for warning me about the formatting, I don't know how it happened, but thanks to you I was able to fix it fast.
Welcome on board, Mary Beth Darcy, and have a nice ride!
More notes at the end of the chapter, especially for my cherished reviewers!
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What a Horse has to SayDunwine finished his report, and Bard was not happy.
Not at all.
How could he?
An angry shout was followed by a succession of arrows aimed at a poor hollow in an oak tree. All of them true, obviously.
When all his arrows were spent, Bard knelt, bow loosely held in his hands, target of his sad stare.
It could be a fellow king to come to his side.
It could be a mother who lost a child to the same fate.
It would be expected.
But no!
It had to be a hobbit bachelor to confound his wits.
"Bard."
"Go away."
"No, I won't. You know this."
"What. Do. You. Have. To. Say?"
Every word was punctuated by an arrow retrieved from the guiltless oak tree hollow.
"Nothing. Nothing at all. Actually, I'd have something to ask. Or, better saying, something I'd like you to ask yourself." The hobbit turned his head like and owl before completing. "If I may be so bold, of course."
Bard surrendered at the apparent innocence of the Halfling, daring to approach him when he was obviously upset. But then, if he and his dwarven companions didn't shy form his bad mood after all that happened ten years ago, nothing would move them to reason. Ever.
"Ask away."
Bilbo observed the man reserve his arrows for future use, glad it looked like the future use seemed far enough to not include his own person into the intended targets. Pursing his lips and sticking has hands in his pockets (you never know when it might be useful…), he asked at last.
"Are you really sure Dunwine is right? I mean, it is not as if a horse can really talk to someone, is it?"
Bard sighed and concluded the halfling was actually innocent, at least with regards to Rohirrim and their horses.
"Bilbo." The bowman deigned to look at the hobbit. "If someone on this blessed Middle-earth is able to understand what a horse has to say, it is a person from Rohan. Besides, it was not exactly something the horse said. It's the things. The saddle, the camp kitchen, the rations, even the saddlebags, for Ilúvatar's sake, where right the ones pertaining to Sigrid's horse! If it was stolen, it was stolen from inside my house. Under my nose. And Dunwine's, by the way. By my younger daughter. Most probably with the help of her sister, Dunwine's wife and my daughter too. The one always accounted for as the responsible one, by the way. Should I not be upset? I wonder how Dunwine isn't as upset as me, considering Sigrid's part in the act."
"I still don't know how can you be so sure. Any kidnapper could steal those things, couldn't they? If those things were stored close to each other, I mean. "
"Really? Exactly Broda's saddle and saddlebags? With Tilda's clothes folded neatly as only a healer obsessed with orderliness would do, with Tilda's healer satchel furnished to the brim?"
"Well…"
Bard stuck the last arrow in the quiver, resolute, while the hobbit dandled on the balls of his large feet, considering the obvious was a hard candy to chew. He liked the human girl. Obviously, he only had memories of her from ten years ago, a smart and curious lassie holding a doll with red woollen hair and a green dress.
Then Bilbo asked the question that hit the mark.
"What terrified her away?"
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Tilda swallowed dry, but tried to find a way to reason with the unreasonable. The elf told her the orcs planned to take them to Dol Guldur as soon as she was caught, but this development was even worse.
"Well… Does it mean they got a wrong person, here? I'm supposed to be a princess, not a prince, at least by what I checked last time…"
Her hope was drown in a minute by Legolas' explanation.
"Sorry, but it does not. Their language is crude, besides foul, and most nouns make no distinction between male and female. What they want is royal blood, period."
The woman withered under the weight of the information. She knew she was doomed when they first caught her, with that talk about prizes, and anyway there would be no means for her to try to get away without both her companions in captivity. Kíli, for the obvious reasons, and Legolas, because not only was he a friend, but also a patient, and she would never leave a patient to die, would she?
"Then we must deny them what they want." Tilda muttered, determined.
"You can bet my beard, darling mine." Kíli squeezed her hand, lightly so as not to hurt her already bruised skin. "Legolas, what more can you tell us about… our surroundings, and the place they want to take us? Anything can be useful."
"I don't have knowledge about it personally." The elf looked down, concealing his hurt. "After my grandfather died, my father left Amon Lanc and established our realm northwards, where you know it to be. I know about our former fortress from books and records. How much it might be changed is unknown to me."
"I recall Gandalf talking about the Necromancer, after the retake of our homeland. Actually, he was talking to someone else; everybody deemed me to be completely knocked out and nobody pays attention to comatose persons."
"And…?
"Shh…"
Legolas hushed his friends as soon as he noticed movement on the orcs' part. Feigning to be asleep was not hard, not with how much they all were tired, anyway. The sentry passed them without a second look, leaving them to their misery. When the sound of his steps faded, the elf stirred his friends with a movement of his wrists. They were all tied together, rusted chains complicating any kind of individual act. Most embarrassing, counting a female amongst them, but Khorz (at least, it was what they understood the orc leader was called) cared little to nothing about their wellbeing or modesty.
Kíli stirred from his fake sleep in no time at all.
"There is a concealing magic at work. Gandalf knew some magic to disrupt it, but we don't, so we can't count on our senses to know if there's someone or not. When he was held in a dangling cage, he saw the fortress had many levels, turrets and pinnacles, but not all of them were used, I can't tell why."
"I recall some drawings of the fortress." Legolas conceded, avoiding to mention he spent a significant amount of hours (more precisely describable as days; or years, to be precise) studying his grandfather's fortress. "It was even more labyrinthine than our current palace. It has levels only reachable from certain other levels, and many secret passages. From what you say, I believe some of them haven't been found out by the Necromancer and his servants. If we can't escape before the orcs take us there, it might be our hope."
"So…" The dwarf was doubtful. "We should count on your memory of some drawings of a place you've never been before to escape an enemy even Gandalf the wizard had trouble with?"
"Exactly."
Legolas' matter-of-factly answer, without even the blink of an eye, would have Kíli throwing his hands up in the air, if by the chains connecting their shackles together. The rattle of chains is quite not welcome when you're trying to hide your activities and talks from orcs, goblins, Necromancers or any kind of captor ever bred in Middle-earth. Given the circumstances, the archer settled for rolling his eyes in an ineffective attempt to unscrew them from their sockets.
"This is madness. We must escape before Dol Guldur."
"That's why I said we must escape soon, or not escape at all."
"The why are we discussing the fortress at all?"
Sensing the males were a hair string apart from strangling each other, Tilda intervened.
"Lads. Stop. This is taking us nowhere."
"He started it!"
"What? It was you gossiping about Gandalf's misadventures!"
"Me? And who was rambling about secret passages in a palace he never visited?"
"Lads!" Tilda hushed down the whispered quarrel again, recalling with shame how unaware of the surroundings she and Kíli had been some days before because of such irrational bicker, resulting in their current imbroglio. "Let's play adults for a while and focus on a solution, shall we?
Ashamed for being called to reason by a human woman barely come to adulthood when the younger of them was more than four times her age, and the older one had already forgotten a dwarf's lifetime without damage to any substantial knowledge, both males obediently shut up.
"Thank you. Now… What is feasible? We have no hairpin anymore, they took everything from your hair and… from any other place too… so…what can be used to unlock our shackles? I can try any kind of wire, if we can find some, thanks master Nori, so, we keep our eyes open. Legolas, can you tell us how far are we from the fortress? I don't care about miles or kilometres, just how long we have, in days, at the rate we're been dragged around." Tilda turned to her beloved one, albeit her words showed nothing about her feelings. "Kíli, do you see any kind of weapon we can put our hands on, when we have them free? I doubt orc's bows are very balanced, but in your hands I'm sure something can be done. As well as in yours, Legolas, of course. Their scimitars look too heavy for me to make a good stand, but I can handle a dagger, or a short knife. What do you say?"
Dwarf and elf princes stared at each other, ashamed is was someone else – a human, and a woman, notwithstanding the high regard of females their races maintained – who called them to reason and to fight. Not to mention she wasn't even a warrior.
"I say… we fight." Legolas stated, proud as his father could ever hope. "By the stance of the trees, we may have a sennight yet. Time enough to…"
What it was time enough for was lost to his companions in captivity, who stared in despair to yet another seizure. Worse than the first they witnessed in the forest, days before.
And now they had enemies to take advantage of the situation.
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More Notes:
Mizz Alec Volturi, thank you so much, I hope this one is up to your expectations.
Celebrisilweth, they'll do their best, but they don't know yet how bad things are.
Jullina Baade, Salwin77, they'll have to work together if they are to have a chance at all. Now, about living happily ever after… have faith!
The Other Writer Girl, Black Speech has a hard time or a disgusting disregard with nouns, as explained to Legolas. Now, about living happy endings… have faith!
Mustard Lady, Thranduil might be snobbish all he wants, as I believe (he must be very uncomfortable that none of the Three Rings is his when he is the only actual elven king remaining in Middle-earth.), it won't keep him from being worried about his only son. I don't believe him to be actually bad, just simply biased. Now, about Tilda, Kíli and Legolas not being actually killed… just have faith!