I borrow characters and settings from Tolkien, but they are his, not mine. I gain nothing other than the enriched imaginative life I assume he expected me to gain.

Thank you to Nilmandra for beta reading this.  The rest of you cannot imagine what a difference she makes.

*******

6. Courage

“You will have to help me get back to camp,” Ithilden said.

“How?” Legolas asked doubtfully.  He dragged the sleeve of his tunic across his runny nose.  “You are too big for me to carry or even drag.”

To his own surprise, Ithilden laughed.  The antidote had begun to move through his system, and while the dose he had taken had unfortunately unsettled his stomach, it had also left him able to move his legs again.  His mobility was temporary, he knew. The second spider bite would inevitably prove too much for him, and then he would simply have to wait while his body dealt with the venom, with healers close by to ease his discomfort if he were lucky.

“Too big,” he agreed and then drew a deep breath. “And I do not want to be dragged through the woods anyway.”  He was having trouble speaking and struggled to make himself clear to Legolas.  “Find a stick I can use to help me walk.”

Legolas’s face brightened with hope.  He plainly liked the idea of the two of them leaving this grove, with its web-strewn trees and its litter of spider bodies lying in grotesque attitudes all around them.  Ithilden would have to tell the Home Guard to send someone to burn the bodies.  The spiders were cannibals, and leaving the carcasses here would draw more of the creatures.

Legolas jumped to his feet and began to search, giving the dead spiders a wide berth.  “Stay close,” Ithilden said and then realized that the warning had been unnecessary. Legolas plainly had no intention of letting Ithilden out of his sight.  At least he has learned a little prudence, Ithilden thought.  For now, he added wryly.

Cautiously, he levered himself into a sitting position and then closed his eyes against the wave of nausea that threatened to undo him.  He drew a deep breath and then opened his eyes again to keep watch over Legolas, who was poking at some underbrush.  Legolas gave a cry of triumph and came running back with a sturdy looking branch that was longer than he was.

“Good,” approved Ithilden.  He grasped the branch with both hands and pulled himself up on his knees, all the while gulping air against the nausea.  He could feel that his right hand and arm were weaker than usual, and he knew that putting weight on his left leg was going to be difficult.  He eyed his little brother, who was hovering around him. “Can you hold the stick?” he panted.

Legolas nodded and darted forward to brace the stick with both hands.  Ithilden carefully drew his right knee up and then used that leg to push himself erect.  He stood for a second, gasping and leaning heavily on the stick while his head swam and his stomach roiled.  Pain spurted through his bitten right arm, for he had instinctively used it to pull on the stick when he rose.

“Are you all right?” Legolas asked, his face puckered in anxiety.  He was straining against the stick to keep it from sliding out from under Ithilden.

Ithilden drew a deep breath. “Yes,” he said grimly. He had to be.  He and Legolas certainly could not stay here in this spider-infested area of the forest.  He pulled himself up a little more, so that he was balanced on his good leg. Then he inched the stick forward and hopped along after it.  Legolas crept along beside him, his hands in readiness near the stick. Ithilden did not have the heart to tell him that if he began to fall, there was no way Legolas was going to be able to prevent it.

Their progress was agonizingly slow.  With every jolting step, pain flared in the two places he had been bitten, and within much too short a distance, he had to stop to vomit, leaning heavily on the stick and gasping for breath afterwards.

“Do you want some water?” Legolas asked timidly, from where he was bracing the stick.  Unwilling to open his mouth for fear he would be sick again, Ithilden shook his head and then glance at his little brother’s pale, resolute face.  “Sometimes people in the infirmary threw up too,” Legolas said, obviously trying to comfort him with this piece of information.  Ithilden smiled weakly at him and then clenched his teeth and began inching forward again.

“Ithilden,” said Legolas in a small voice, “I am sorry I went where the spiders were.” He put his grubby hand on top of one of Ithilden’s.  “I was tracking a big deer,” he confessed.

Ithilden sighed.  He had not even asked what Legolas was doing so far away from him. It had just seemed natural to find that his little brother had wandered.  He wondered now if he could have prevented it.  “The warriors who came this morning told me about the spiders. I should have warned you.”  He glanced down at the tear-streaked face.  “I did not want to frighten you, but I think you were frightened anyway.”

For a moment, Legolas looked as if he were going to deny being afraid, but then, slowly, he nodded.  “I am still scared,” he said soberly.

Ithilden wanted to hug him but was in no position to do so just then.  “You were brave to go for the antidote even though you were scared,” he said.  Legolas responded with a very small smile and curled his fingers around Ithilden’s.

Suddenly, Ithilden felt the stick catch on a tree root, and before he could stop himself, he was falling, with his arms out to catch himself.  The impact on his right arm was agonizing, and he could not help crying out.  He bit off the sound, but Legolas gave an answering cry of distress. “Did you hurt yourself?” he asked.

Ithilden shook his head.  “Just surprised,” he lied and then reached for the stick.  Legolas jumped to hold it, and Ithilden dragged himself upright.  As he stood, swaying a little, he abruptly realized that his vision was beginning to blur, which was almost certainly why he had not seen the tree root that had tripped him.  And even his right leg was starting to go numb. The venom must be starting to take effect again.  We will never get to the camp at this rate, he thought in despair.  But there really was no choice, and he began inching forward.

He had managed to move only a dozen yards or so before he fell again, and this time, he knew he was not going to be able to get up. For a moment, he lay in despair, digging his fingers into the layer of leaves beneath his hands.

Legolas dropped to his knees next to him.  “Shall I try to lift you up?” he asked. The idea was so absurd that Ithilden nearly laughed, but his valiant little brother was too much in earnest.  Ithilden knew what he had to do. Indeed, he had known it since the first time he fell.  He and Legolas were never going to make it back to their camp.  They needed help and there was only one way to get it.

He rolled onto his back and lay staring at the trees overhead. They were murmuring sympathetically, concerned for him, but giving no hint of danger at all.  Perhaps he and Legolas both would be all right, he thought desperately.  He turned his head to look at Legolas’s worried face.  “No,” he said.  “Can not get up this time. Venom is taking effect again.”  He tried to maintain normal speech but found it harder and harder to speak the words.  He drew a deep breath. “You have to go for help.”

Legolas blinked uncertainly. “By myself? Again?”  He did not sound at all happy about the prospect.

Ithilden nodded.  He knew Legolas wanted to stay with him but there was no way to predict when help would find them if they waited here, away from their camp.  He was rapidly losing any ability to function, and he simply could not imagine leaving Legolas alone with spiders nearby while he himself lost all signs of life.

“But I do not want to leave you here alone!” Legolas cried, echoing Ithilden’s thoughts. “What if the spiders come back?”  His voice shook, and Ithilden knew his little brother was remembering the terror he had felt when the spiders attacked him.

“Listen to trees,” Ithilden urged.  “No spiders here.”  Not now, he thought but did not say. “Be all right until you get back.”

Legolas sat back on his heels, and Ithilden could see in his face the moment when he resolved to do as Ithilden was asking him to do.  “Where should I go?” Legolas asked, his tone suggesting that he was well aware of how far they were from anyone else.

“Go back to the path and then go home,” Ithilden said firmly.  Legolas would only be further upset if Ithilden sounded uncertain now.

“But that will take hours!” Legolas cried. “Even if I run, it will take hours!”  Suddenly he brightened. “I will go through the trees.  It will be much faster.”

“No!” Ithilden said sharply. “Path is safer. Stay out of trees.”

“I will listen for danger,” Legolas argued. “The trees will tell me if spiders are near.”

For a moment, Ithilden despaired. What could he say that would make his foolhardy little brother do as he was told?  Unbidden, a sudden memory flared of a time when he had been not much older than Legolas.  He had been teaching his horse to jump higher and higher obstacles, and his father had seen him and forbidden him to continue.  Ithilden had been outraged at what had felt like a slight to his horsemanship.

Storming into the royal family’s quarters, he had run into his mother, who had coaxed him into the sitting room and gotten the whole story out of him.  She had let him rage at his father’s unreasonableness for a while and then had asked him how he would know when he had finally reached his horse’s limit and chosen a jump that was too high.  The question had stopped him cold, and understanding had finally dawned.  “My horse would miss the jump,” he had said, marveling that such an inevitability had not occurred to him before.

His mother had smiled. “Neither your adar nor I would like to see you or the horse be injured, my heart.  But my mare needs some training at getting over jumps.  Perhaps you would be willing to ride with me tomorrow and help me with her?”  Pleased at the idea, he had nodded, and they had gone riding together, and that had been the end of the matter.

Now he looked at Legolas and made a last effort to speak clearly.  “Did you listen to trees when you found the spiders back there?”  He jerked his head in the direction from which they had come, and Legolas shuddered.

“Yes,” Legolas said.  He frowned.  “But it was too late.   I noticed they had fallen silent, but that was because the spiders were already there.”  He grimaced.  “Do you think that might happen again?” he asked reluctantly.

Ithilden nodded.  “I will be’ll right for a while,” he went on. He could hear his speech starting to slur.  “Better t’be certain that help comes than take chance to get it more quickly and have it not come’t all.  You’n I both safer’f you take path.  Unnerstan’?”  He reached up and caressed the side of his little brother’s neck.

With a sigh, Legolas nodded, and to Legolas’s obvious surprise, Ithilden drew his head down to kiss him on the forehead.  “Careful,” he admonished.

“I will,” Legolas said with determination. “And I will be fast too.” He rose to his feet, hesitated briefly, and crouched back down to throw his arms as far around Ithilden as he could reach.  Then he jumped up again and, without looking back, he ran in the direction of the path.

Ithilden looked up at the trees.  “Look aft’him,” he murmured and then allowed himself to slip gradually away into darkness.

***

Legolas trotted along the path, trying to keep himself to a steady pace, as he had heard the masters admonishing the novices to do when they ran near home every day.  “You have miles to go yet,” he had heard one of the masters calling one morning.  “Think about spreading your energy over that whole distance.”

Legolas tried to think about that now, but it was hard because thoughts of Ithilden lying alone in the forest kept intruding.  Legolas had always simply assumed that Ithilden was strong enough to conquer anything, and he had been deeply shaken by seeing him helpless.

Moreover, Ithilden had been forgiving, but Legolas could not help but feel that it was his fault that spiders had bitten his brother.  If he had not gone after the deer on his own, neither he nor Ithilden would have been near the creatures.  And if Ithilden had not had to cut Legolas free of the spiders’ webs, Legolas firmly believed that he would have killed every spider in sight with no trouble at all.  Legolas had done something that caused harm to his brother.  Now it was up to him to save him.

He glanced longingly at the trees alongside the path.  For a moment, he found himself wondering what it would hurt if he traveled through the trees near the path.  Then he brought his attention fiercely back to concentrating on running.  Ithilden was hurt. It would be foolish to take a chance with his brother’s safety in his hands.

The day was growing hotter, and sweat ran down his face.  He had realized too late that he had no water with him because he had used his waterskin to mix the antidote.  He supposed he could have taken Ithilden’s waterskin if he had thought of it, but he was glad he had not.  When he had been working in the infirmary, he had seen that people who threw up liked to have a little water to clean their mouths, although the healers had usually not let them drink much.  Ithilden might want the water he carried.  He averted his mind from the idea that when he had left Ithilden, his brother had not looked able to drink even if he had wanted to.

His legs started to hurt, and he was panting despite his best efforts not to outrun his breath. I cannot take time to rest, he thought desperately.  He was perhaps as much as halfway home, and that was not nearly far enough.

A sudden sound from ahead drew him out of his concentrated misery.  Horses!  He heard horses!  One of the Home Guard patrols must be coming!  He stopped where he was, shaking with relief and exhaustion.

From around the bend in front of him came three riders. And at their head was his father.

***

Thranduil laid a hand on his stallion’s neck and drew him to a quivering halt, as his guards too brought their horses to stop.  “Legolas!” he cried and leapt from his horse to catch his filthy-faced son in an embrace.  “What are you doing here?  Where is Ithilden?”  He scanned the child’s face and clothes, seeing what looked to his horror like dried black blood and strands of grey stuff that was only too frighteningly familiar to him.  Could it be webbing?  His heart stopped at the idea that Legolas had been tangled in a spider’s web.

Legolas was trying to choke out an answer, but he seemed to have no breath and, what was more, he was obviously close to tears.  “Hurt!” he finally gasped.  “He is hurt! Spiders bit him!”

Thranduil’s heart lurched.  “Where?” he demanded, grasping Legolas by the shoulders. From one corner of his eye, he could see the appalled looks on the guards’ faces.

“I will show you,” Legolas answered, trying to move toward Thranduil’s horse.

“No, tell me,” Thranduil demanded.  If there were spiders where Ithilden was, then Legolas was not going back there.

“I cannot,” Legolas wailed, and now he had lost the struggle not to cry.  “He is in the woods near our camp, but I have to show you.”

Having already raised two sons to adulthood, Thranduil knew that this young one was near the breaking point.  Without another word, he conceded the battle, lifted the child onto his horse, and swung up behind him.  He wrapped his arms tightly around his trembling son and felt the stickiness of the webbing on his clothes. “Very well,” he said soothingly, fighting to control the terror he felt. “Show us.”  Legolas pointed wordlessly down the path, and the three of them took off in a flurry of flying hooves.

So this was why he had been troubled all that morning, Thranduil thought, why he had had a growing sense that something was wrong, although he had been unable to identify just what it might be.  He had thought he might just be restless and had gone for his daily ride earlier than usual, choosing a path he did not usually follow, and riding farther than he usually rode.

Judging by the way Legolas trembled in his arms, there was need for haste, and he pressed his horse forward so that the guards had trouble keeping up.  As he rode, he tried to feel the bond that lay between him and Ithilden, and now that he knew where to look, he was astounded that he had not felt his oldest son’s distress before.  Ithilden’s fëa was wandering somewhere, lost in pain and confusion.  He willed his horse to go faster.

But the son who lay ahead was obviously not the only one in distress.  Without slowing, he bent to scoop his waterskin from where it hung at his horse’s side. “Here, my heart,” he said and put it to Legolas’s lips.  As much water ran down his son’s chin as into his mouth, but his face was dirty anyway.  He gulped a drink and then pushed the skin aside and returned his hands to where they had been clasping Thranduil’s left arm, circling his waist.

“Hurry, Ada,” he breathed, and Thranduil’s heart twisted at the childish form of address. What had been happening to his two sons?  He nuzzled his chin against Legolas’s sticky hair.

His horse fairly flew down the path, so much so that when Legolas cried “Turn here!” he had to backtrack for a few paces to leave the path and ride toward his sons’ campsite.  The guards caught up, for his horse necessarily moved more slowly now that they had left the path.  Legolas guided them through the campsite and into the woods on its west side, where the trees were thick enough that they had to dismount and hasten ahead on foot with the horses trailing obediently after them.  Legolas kept hold of Thranduil’s hand, drawing him hastily forward against Thranduil’s efforts to hold him back, out of possible danger.

“There!” he finally said and dropped Thranduil’s hand to rush to where Ithilden lay.

Thranduil’s heart nearly stopped at the sight of his oldest son, lying pale, inert, and completely unresponsive.  He hastily dropped to his knees and put his ear to Ithilden’s chest.  For a moment, he could hear nothing but the rushing of his own blood in his ears.  Then he felt as much as heard the very slow, thready beat of Ithilden’s heart.

A distraught Legolas was shaking Ithilden by one arm.  “Wake up!” he cried.

Thranduil put one hand over Legolas’s.  “He is alive,” he assured the child.  “The healers will take care of him.”

“We have antidote with us, my lord,” said one of the guards, who had already opened the emergency healing kit he carried and was pouring anti-venom into his water skin.  He nudged Legolas gently aside and then knelt next to Ithilden and tentatively stroked his throat, searching for a swallow reflex.  Seeing the muscles there contract, he put his arm around Ithilden’s shoulders, lifted him to a sitting position, and began the slow process of trickling a little water into his mouth and then stroking his throat to make him swallow it.

Thranduil watched the proceedings with growing impatience.  Legolas sat huddled on the ground, staring at Ithilden and sobbing, softly it was true, but loudly enough to tear Thranduil’s heart out.  He pulled the child to his feet and put his arm around him.  The guard was dribbling the liquid into Ithilden a few drops at a time while precious minutes slipped away, and suddenly the whole slow process did not seem to Thranduil to be worth the delay it was causing.

“Enough!” he cried.  “He needs the healers.”

He shoved the guard aside and started to slide his arms under Ithilden, but then he focused on Legolas’s stricken face, and he hesitated.  Only one of these sons could ride with him.  He looked again at the unconscious Ithilden and then stood and stepped away.  “Take him,” he ordered the guards, who, he remembered, were there to help only because Ithilden insisted he ride with them.  “Legolas, you will ride with me.”

The guards hurried forward, but Legolas turned to Thranduil.  “Can you not take him, Adar?” he begged.  “Your horse is faster.”

Thranduil hesitated for only a second and then smiled at his gallant baby. “Of course I can,” he said and bent to lift his heavy son in his arms, as he had done when Ithilden was small.   The guards helped him get Ithilden onto the stallion’s back, and then Thranduil leapt up behind him and steadied him, much as he had steadied Legolas only minutes before.

The guards immediately scrambled to be ready to follow him, undoubtedly conscious of the fact that the safety of both their king and his heir was in their hands.  And of his youngest son, too, of course. One of them lifted Legolas hastily to his horse’s back and mounted behind him.

Thranduil regarded his child, who now looked very small seated before the guard.  “You did well, Legolas,” he said and then turned and began to pick his way through the trees and back to the path, where he intended to make his stallion run his heart out.