Chapter Eleven

Forcefully pushing his fear into the background, Legolas lifted his head once again and tried to think. He knew if he stayed here, he would die. There was no amount of speculation that could bring him to any other rational conclusion. He did not want to die lying inside what amounted to a tomb of stone. This was the preferred place for a dwarf, and that alone made it the worst possible place for an elf to meet his end.

The archer didn’t know how much the howlers would make him suffer before they killed him, but he couldn’t imagine it being any worse than what he was going through right now. If he had only known that those dreadful creatures preferred to eat their meat while it was still alive, he would probably have stayed right where he was, gone back to sleep and drifted quietly away toward the Halls of Mandos.

As it was, he made up his mind to leave this hole and take his chances out on the trail. So deciding, Legolas pulled himself closer to the snow-blocked entrance and reached forward.

Punching a hole in the snow, he breathed deeply of the fresh air. He was surprised to note that there was no longer any wind. He should have heard the surrounding silence before, but he had not. His warrior’s heart was dismayed at that revelation. Such a lack of perception of what was around him could have proven fatal in times of war. And was this not a war? He shook his head, and keeping his left arm down by his side, he continued to clear away the snow with his right hand.

He pulled himself forward until his head was even with the small opening. Reaching out so that he could once again pull his body forward, he saw two pairs of hands grab his arm.

For just an instant, his heart soared, thinking it was Estel and the twins, who had somehow found him. That exhilarating hope was soon dashed, when his eyes settled on the black bony fingers gripping his right arm. He tried to yank it free of the horrid creatures’ grip but couldn’t manage it. They, in turn, roughly jerked his body out of its hiding place and deposited him unceremoniously on the ground.

The howler that stood directly in front of him grinned widely, exposing its jagged, yellow teeth. There was no mistaking the look of triumph on its hideous face. The prize had been discovered and recaptured.

A howl soon erupted from the creature’s throat when it threw its head back. It was a call to alert the leader that the missing elf had been found. Once the sound died away, the howler again looked at Legolas and grinned. It was clearly enjoying the elf’s look of dismay.

Legolas wondered for the second time how such a deep, resonant tone could come from such a scrawny being. He supposed it somehow came about as part of the curse Morgoth had put on these Drughu, just as he had evidently given them the ability to withstand the bitter cold while having no fat or even clothes on their spindly bodies.

Interesting as this speculation was, Legolas had a much bigger problem to solve than these little mysteries. He had to try to concentrate on finding a way out of this current mess. He knew that once he reached the cave, he would never leave it again. Having allowed his escape once, the howlers would never be so lax again. Legolas had to get away while they were still outside.

The virtual impossibility of accomplishing that task struck home to him, when he tried to stand up. His quivering legs would not hold him, and he fell to his knees.

“Get up, elf,” an angry voice said, as the leader walked up behind him. The creature grabbed a handful of golden hair and pulled the elf’s head backwards. “You have been the cause of too much trouble. That will no longer be tolerated.”

To reiterate his determination to subdue Legolas, the creature walked around in front of him, balled its bony fist and punched the elf in the left shoulder.

Legolas’s scream of agony rang out across the mountainside. No amount of pride could have kept the elven prince silent during such an excruciating explosion of agony. Legolas fell to the snow-covered ground, his mind reeling, and his body beginning to spasm.

Unimpressed and uncaring, the howler bent low. “Get up,” it demanded. “I know elves can handle a great deal of pain. You do not fool me.”

The only reaction the creature received from Legolas was the jerking of his body and a series of moans. The words being directed at the elf were meaningless. All he knew was blinding agony.

Whether the elf was faking or not didn’t matter. The howler had lost whatever patience it possessed. “Take him,” it commanded to the two creatures nearest the wood elf.

The two howlers, who had been the ones to pull Legolas from his hiding place, grabbed him by his left arm and began to drag him up the trail toward the cave.

The new agony that was now added from being pulled by his left arm was too much for the weakened elf’s inner strength to handle. Mercifully, he passed out.

~*~*~

“That’s no wounded animal,” Aragorn said, as he turned back to look toward the slopes above him. The sound that had reached them through the driving snow, though muffled, was plain enough for even the human’s mortal ears to interpret.

Elladan approached his foster brother and put his hand on the man‘s shoulder. “Estel, I know what you are thinking, but we cannot go back. We have escaped the howlers once. We would not be that lucky a second time.”

Aragorn knew Elladan was right, yet he couldn’t just dismiss the obvious distress he heard. “Wouldn’t the two of you try to save someone in such dire straits from those horrid beasts?”

“Estel, you have a good heart, a healer‘s heart,” Elrohir said, “but you cannot save everyone.”

Elladan continued the argument. “We cannot save anyone, if we end up being killed ourselves. You know this.”

“What I know is that I can’t turn my back on someone who needs my help. I’m sure that what we heard was not an animal. It was...someone.”

When he saw the doubt in his brothers’ eyes, he redoubled his effort to convince them that his cause was a just one. "Suppose that was Legolas---or me---and someone else heard what we just heard and they simply turned their back and walked away, leaving us to what I’m sure is a horrible fate. How would you feel then?"

Knowing someone else may have had the chance to save one or both of them and refused to do so would have been devastating to the twins. And now, having the chance to keep another family from experiencing that same kind of devastation, could they simply walk away?

Elladan and Elrohir looked at each other. Both sighed and shook their heads in defeat at the same time, the dreadful choice pulling at their hearts. “You are going to go back and attempt a rescue, are you not?” Elladan asked, knowing full well what the answer would be but for some reason needing to hear it anyway.

“I couldn’t live with myself, if I didn’t at least try. I owe that much to Legolas. I couldn‘t save him, but maybe I can save whoever it is up there from dying as he did.” Aragorn’s heart clenched at those last four words. They were so hard to say, so hard to accept.

The elves knew the matter had been decided. Estel was going to attempt a rescue and no amount of talking would change his mind. They could not---would not---let him go alone. They also could not bring themselves to mention that it was just this kind of steadfast belief that he was right that he himself had said made him responsible for Legolas’s death. And lastly they had to answer their own internal question: no, even if Estel had not been with them, they could not have simply walked away.

“Let us go, then,” Elladan said, as he turned and started back up the trail. His face was grim. He prayed to the Valar that they weren’t all walking straight into the same kind of fate that Legolas had suffered.

They hadn’t taken more than ten steps, when the mountain gave a low rumble, soon growing in intensity until it sounded like the deep-throated growl of a huge bear, though this was many times louder and, if possible, more fierce. Then everything began to shake violently.

“What in Arda?” Elrohir said, as he grabbed hold of Elladan’s shoulder to steady himself. It helped only partly, since Elladan was having trouble keeping his own feet under him.

There was no solid ground beneath the brothers, and so none of them could keep their balance, slipping and sliding on the icy snow. In less than half a minute, all three lay in a tangled heap.

Near them, two large rocks toppled over, their huge bulk slamming with a muffled thud into the thick snow piled up across the trail. One boulder had been shaken loosed from its foundation and thrown down, as if it had been pushed aside by some gigantic invisible hand. The other one simply sheared off a foot above the ground, slid forward until it teetered and then crashed into the first rock as it went down.

The brothers, unable to untangle themselves while the ground still shook, had no choice but to wait for the mountain to come to a stop.

They resembled, not to mention felt like, dry beans bouncing around on a hot skillet. Despite the danger they were in and with snow being thrown forcefully into his face, Aragorn laughed to himself. If only they had some of the heat from that imaginary pan to counteract the biting cold that continually made its way inside his clothes.

When the mountain finally stopped its violent quaking and the rumbling died away like a retreating thunderstorm, the brothers looked at each other and smiled, realizing how lucky they had been not to have had those boulders fall over on top of them. There would have been no chance to get out of the way.

The ground was still settling, so it was with a concerted effort that the ranger and the two elven warriors gained their feet and managed to stay upright. The minor tremors made walking too precarious just yet, so the trio stood and held onto each other.

Aragorn remembered the talk that had led to his wanting to come here in the first place. There were tales of howling and rumbling on the mountain. ‘Well, now we know that those stories were true.’ The realization that he hadn’t been led here by false rumors made no difference to him. He had lost too much for that to offer his broken heart even the slightest bit of comfort.

~*~*~

Much higher up on the snowy slopes, while the mountain was still convulsing, the howlers were also having trouble standing up, even though they had been living with these earth-shaking episodes for centuries.

The two creatures that had been dragging Legolas let go of him at the first hint of the shaking event to come. They ran immediately over to the boulders nearest them and reached as far around them for support as they could manage.

They had developed the ability to tell the difference between a rock that merely shook from one about to fall over. The howlers were agile enough to get out of the way should they detect one about to shift its position. Like the human and the two elves far below them, they also would have had a difficult time escaping falling rocks had they been lying flat on their backs.

Legolas, still unconscious, lay sprawled in the middle of the trail, his face turned sideways and half buried in the snow. His body rolled from side to side, in turn lifting his face out of the snow and then forcing it deeper into the tiny white crystals.

He was soon bounced onto his left side. The reaction was immediate. He moaned loudly and then flung himself over onto his back. It was strictly a reflexive action to get away from the pain. It was only marginally helpful, because the bouncing itself caused pain.

Knowing he could not escape them, the howlers ignored him, too intent on keeping themselves safe to worry about the elf. It was a futile effort for two of them. A boulder behind them fell over and crushed them between it and the one they were holding onto. They didn’t even have time to scream.

A few drops of black blood stained the pristine snow, but that was all there was to indicate what had happened.

Another boulder, larger than the one that had just killed the two howlers, broke loose and started falling across the trail, heading straight for the prone elf, who was totally oblivious to the fact that he was about to be crushed beneath a ton of falling rock.

TBC