Chapter Ten

It was long moments before Elladan finally lifted his head. He hated to break the connection he held with his brothers, but the practicality of the situation forced him to pull back. He blinked his tears away and looked at Elrohir, who returned the look with tear-filled eyes of his own, when he felt Elladan‘s grip loosen.

Both the elves looked at Aragorn. “Estel,” Elladan began, “we cannot stay here.”

“We do not know when those creatures will return, and put us all in danger.”

The man reluctantly nodded. He didn’t think he could pull himself to his feet, feeling physically drained by the emotions that had overcome him. He couldn’t bring himself to speak just yet either. He simply held his arms out to the side and waited for Elladan and Elrohir to help him up. It took several moments for all three brothers to gain their feet. Just before rising, Aragorn saw the piece of Legolas’s tunic lying on the floor beside him. He picked it up with a trembling hand and tucked it into one of his pockets.

The ranger watched as Elrohir walked over to the pile of weapons. The elf moved around to the back and knelt down. He couldn’t be seen but there was a scrape of metal and a slight shift in the back section of the pile.

When Aragorn asked, “Elrohir, what are you doing?” the younger twin said, “I...I found them.”

“Found what?” his older brother asked.

Standing up, Elrohir walked back around the pile and headed toward the two, who waited silently for him, puzzled expressions on their faces.

A moan escaped Aragorn, as he saw the two objects in his brother’s hands. He reached ou and took them, staring down at them in total dismay. They were Legolas’s twin long knives. If the man had had any doubts about Legolas’s ultimate fate before, he certainly had none now. “He would never give these up willingly. His father gave them to him the day he became a warrior.”

“I know,” Elladan whispered, as he also stared down at the intricately engraved blades with their ivory handles. With a deep sigh, he asked, “Did you not see Legolas’s bow and quiver?”

Elrohir shook his head. His throat was so constricted with renewed emotion, he couldn’t speak. Sure that Legolas’s weapons would have been the last ones tossed onto the pile, he hasn’t even tried to look underneath anything.

Aragorn looked once more at the awful array of bones on the other side of the cavern before turning his back on them for good. Whatever part of Legolas that lay there would be left there. He hated the idea of leaving his friend’s bones in this horrid place, but he honestly didn’t think he would be able to separate them from any of the other fresh, white bones they had found. All of them had been disfigured too much in the howlers’ attempts to get at the marrow inside to truly tell what race they belonged to. Taking home bones that may later prove to be something else entirely, made him shudder.

If he had had the ability, the man would have taken all of the bones, skulls included, back to their kin, wherever in Middle-earth they resided. But, of course, that wasn’t possible.

All of these beings had met the same fate, so their earthly remains would rest here---together. It was only an abstract kind of comfort that Legolas would not be left alone.

Another low moan escaped Aragorn, as these thoughts ran through his mind. He should never have to he thinking such dreadful things. How did this all happen? The ranger stood motionless. He knew exactly how it had happened. “I killed him.”

Elrohir turned to face the man. “You did no such thing, Estel. The howlers killed Legolas.” He tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice but wasn’t very successful.

“He didn’t want to come here,” Aragorn continued, as if he hadn’t heard a word Elrohir said. “He argued against it, but I wouldn‘t listen. I never do. In the end, he came because I asked him to. If he had stayed home like his father wanted him to, he would still be alive. Don’t you see? It was me that killed him.”

“No, you did not,” both twins said at the same time.

Aragorn knew exactly what they were thinking. “You will never be able to convince me that I am not responsible for what happened to Legolas, so please do not even try.”

“Legolas made up his own mind, Estel. You know he never does---did---anything he did not really want to do,” Elladan said gently, unable to stop himself from trying to reason with his brother. He was not sure if he should have converted the word ‘does’ to past tense. He almost winced as he did it.

“You’re wrong, Elladan. Legolas often made allowances for me because of our friendship. He went along with many of my ideas and did things he never would have done, if he had not been with me. I was always so sure of myself, always so sure I was right, believing that everything would always turn out exactly the way I planned it. I never dreamed my arrogance would cost Legolas his life.”

Elladan and Elrohir both knew from experience that trying to reason with their human brother any further, when he was in the grip of extreme guilt, was an act of pure futility. He never listened to anyone at such times. They would just have to wait until the sharp pain of loss lessened enough for their words of wisdom to penetrate the man’s emotional turmoil.

Thinking he was in for more attempts to argue from his brothers and not wanting to hear any more, the man walked off toward the tunnel, putting Legolas‘s long knives in his quiver beside his small hunting bow. “I’m going home,” he declared firmly. Then he suddenly stopped short and the twins, who had not yet moved, waited to see why.

With his back still to his brothers and his head turned slightly to the side, he corrected himself. “No. I can’t go home just yet. I have to go to Mirkwood and tell King Thranduil that he was right all along. I was the worst friend his son could ever have had. And if I am very, very lucky, he will make my death a swift one.”

The idea that Thranduil would make the ranger pay for his youngest son’s death with his life was not as farfetched as it might have sounded. And right then, Aragorn’s mind was so mired in grief and guilt that he felt such a fate was totally deserved.

“Estel,...” Elladan began, but the man ignored him and resumed walking toward the tunnel.

With a sigh, the Rivendell elves followed. It was a very somber trio that left the cave a few moments later.

A silent world greeted them, as they emerged from the cave entrance. The wind had completely died away. The snow was falling as thick as ever, but it drifted straight down. The air, though still very cold, no longer had a bitter bite to it without the wind. What had been a blizzard was now simply a heavy snowfall. Only the two elves even noticed.

As they made their way down the trail from the howlers’ cave, Elladan glanced to his left. He spotted a large rock that he noted only because it was long and flat, and lying on its side at a slight angle, having most likely fallen over at some point in time. It looked so out of place, contrasting sharply with the tall jagged rocks all around it.

Though snow-covered, there was nothing else but the shape and position of this rock to mark it from its neighbors, so the elf turned his attention back to the trail, completely unaware that he and his brothers were passing within a few feet of the dying friend they already thought they had lost forever.

Likewise, Legolas was totally oblivious to the fact that his friends were passing him by.

~*~*~

When Legolas finally opened his eyes, he believed that he had only been resting for a few seconds, which had been his intention.

Lifting his head and turning it forward to look out of his little shelter, he was shocked to see that the small entrance was completely blocked with snow. ’How did that happen so fast?’ he wondered. The truth soon dawned on him. ‘Did I really fall asleep?’ It appeared that he had. The elf’s head dropped in relief that he had not fallen into the kind of deep sleep that would have stolen his life from him. ‘I must stay awake.’

The next thought that entered his mind was that he didn‘t feel cold anymore. He certainly wasn’t shivering. It was true that he was no longer in the freezing wind, but he should still have been cold. And he was not. In fact, he was very warm, despite being surrounded by cold stone.

Lying very still and concentrating his senses on his body, he took stock of what it was telling him. It didn’t take long for it to tell him the answer: he had fever. Unchecked infection led to fever. Time spent with Aragorn had taught him that, as well.

The man had told him more than once of mortals, who had died from serious infections that had progressed too far and couldn’t be reversed. The human healer had explained that the poison such infections produced could quickly gain enough strength to stop the heart. That had been a very sobering concept for an elf to accept. And being an elf, Legolas had never believed it could happen to him.

It was obviously the heat the fever produced that kept him from freezing to death while he slept. At the same time, the fever meant the infection was both worse and spreading. At first, Legolas had no idea which one he should feel grateful for, but upon further thought he realized that staving off freezing to death would have been the more immediate concern.

Continuing his assessment, Legolas could feel sweat soaking into his clothes. Again it was only the high heat of his body that now kept the sweat from freezing and thus encasing him in cold, stiff clothing.

The elf took a shaky breath. His fever had helped him in two ways, but he was far from free of the danger of dying, and he knew it.

Facing death at the hands of an enemy was part of being a warrior. He had done it more times than he could count. Facing death surrounded by stone and suffering from a condition he should not even have been susceptible to, sent a kind of fear through the prince that he couldn’t remember experiencing since he was a very small elfling and had seen his first giant spider---up close.

He knew he needed to find his friends. Surely, Estel would have athelas or some other herb with which to treat the infection. ‘But I do not want to attract the howlers to them.’ His mind was still too hazy to realize that Aragorn and the twins were most likely being stalked by the howlers, if they had not been caught by them already.

The elf tried to slow his pounding heart, knowing that the poison of infection would act even faster, if he couldn’t gain control of this accelerated heartbeat.

Legolas lay his forehead down on his arm, only this time he was too keyed up to be in any danger of falling asleep again. Like an out-of-control river flooding its banks, naked fear spread through his mind.

The cold that had caused the numbness in his shoulder had departed with the arrival of the fever Lying still had kept the pain pretty much at bay. However, when an involuntary tremor violently shook his body, his shoulder screamed its protest at the movement, and a sharp stab of agony hit him yet again. Surprised at the sudden intensity of the searing pain, Legolas couldn’t help crying out. He quickly put his right hand over his mouth, but by then it was much too late.

~*~*~

“What was that?” Elladan said, stopping and turning to look back up the trail they had just traveled down.

Elrohir looked at his older brother. “I am sure I also heard something. It sounded like a faraway cry of pain.”

Aragorn turned back toward his brothers, when he realized that they had stopped. “Perhaps it was one of the howlers,” the man said with a bitter tone of satisfaction that one of the creatures, who had killed his best friend, would now be suffering.

The ranger’s mind had been in a fog ever since he had discovered the torn and bloodstained piece of Legolas’s tunic in the cavern. Now his ranger training was coming to the fore. A broken heart he may have, but he knew he and the twins still had to make it off of this accursed mountain.

Elladan shook his head. “I do not think it is a howler. A wounded animal perhaps,” he suggested. He held his hand up. “Listen.”

Even knowing the two elves would have a much better chance of hearing any sounds that might make themselves known, Aragorn nonetheless strained to listen. He wanted to hear for himself whatever Elladan and Elrohir had heard.

The heavily falling snow muffled whatever sounds that might ordinarily have been picked up by the elves’ sensitive ears. Now there was nothing but the whisper of tiny ice crystals hitting each other as they fell.

“It’s nothing,” Aragorn said with obvious disappointment. The idea that it might have been Legolas never occurred to him. As painful as it was to do, the ranger had completely accepted the elf’s death.

Aragorn thought that perhaps it was some other unfortunate prey of the howlers. There was no way to know what other creatures either inhabited the mountain or had wandered upon it. “Let’s leave before the howlers show up and do to us what they did...” He couldn’t finish the thought much less say the words.

After a few more seconds of intense concentration, Elladan said, “You are right, Estel. It is nothing.” He nodded to Elrohir, and the two elves followed behind their foster brother.

None of the three saw or felt the intense gaze of the howlers that were grouped on top of the nearby rocks. The leader stared at the retreating backs of the intruders. He had no intention of letting them escape. He had hoped that they, the elves at least, would have been able to find the golden-haired elf. Having all four together would have been much easier.

The howler was so angry that such had not been the case that he decided to let the three descend to the edge of the snow line before capturing them. “Let them think they have escaped us.” It was a cruel form of revenge, and the howler delighted in it.

Turning to the rest of the group, the howler barked his orders, sending half of them to continue the search for the wayward elf and the rest to go by another route to the snow line and wait for the human and his two elven companions. They were then to be taken to the cavern.

There was no question that the golden-haired one would be found eventually, but the howler leader knew the poison that was now coursing through the elf. The elusive being had managed to conceal himself well, and it would take a concerted search to find him, another thing that angered the creature. But the elf must be found alive or there was no point in finding him at all, because except for the marrow left in the bones, howlers did not eat dead meat.

TBC