Chapter Two

Six weeks later to the day, Legolas and Aragorn arrived at the place where they had first met Treco and were to meet him again. They had been forced to rush, so that they could arrive in time, since they had been a fair distance away by the time they were free to leave for the meeting place. They also knew that the dragon was not likely to be very patient in waiting for them.

“Great,” Aragorn muttered. “We hurried, and he isn’t even here.” The ranger was more than a little perturbed.

“He will be here,” Legolas reassured his friend.

Aragorn stared at the elf. “And just how many times have you rendezvoused with a dragon in your many years of life?”

Indignantly, Legolas said, “One does not necessarily need to have done something to know of its future predictability. Did you not learn that in your studies?” Then he added, “Or did you, in your rebellious youth, skip them?”

“I was not a rebellious youth. I studied plenty, believe me. Lord Elrond would not allow anything less.”

“I remember many a fine spring day spent indoors studying and being tested on what he had learned before being allowed to go outside and play.” He also remembered many a fine spring day when Lord Elrond permitted him to do his studying outside. However, he saw no reason to mention that particular fact, although Legolas was well aware of it, often having spent time with the young human on those out door study sessions.

Reminiscences ended abruptly when Legolas held his hand up for silence. He cocked his head, listening intently to sounds that the ranger could not, as yet, hear.

In a voice only slightly above a whisper, the man asked, “What is it?”

“We are not alone,” the elf announced, pulling his bow off of his back and fitting an arrow to the string.

Knowing Legolas would not have drawn a weapon, if it was the dragon that he had heard, Aragorn quietly drew his sword. “How many?” he asked.

“I do not know, but they are all around us.” For that reason he did not take aim but simply kept his bow in readiness, preferring to wait until he had the most optimal target in sight. When that time came, it would take him only an instant to raise his bow and fire.

The two friends quickly moved so that they were standing back to back. It was an old familiar stance they used when facing multiple enemies, known or unknown.

They had barely gotten themselves set, when several rough looking men made their presence known. Easterlings!

“Well. Well,” one of the men said. “Look what we have here---an elf and, if I’m not mistaken, a ranger.” Grinning at the pair, he sneered, “Put your toy bow away, little elf.” He pointed a dirty finger at Aragorn. “And you can drop that puny sword you carry.”

Neither elf nor ranger moved a muscle. The man’s grin faded. “I said drop your weapons.”

“And why should we do that?” Aragorn asked, eyeing the large man that stood slightly to his left.

“You are outnumbered, that’s why.” It was plain by the reddening of his cheeks that this man was becoming angrier by the minute. Evidently he was not used to having his orders disobeyed nor did he like it.

He tried to stare down the ranger, but Aragorn remained unaffected, so the Easterling said, “We will relieve you of all your weapons by force, if you do not do as I say. Trust me. That will not be a peasant experience---for the two of you, at least.” The grin was back. “Now put your weapons down.”

“Not likely,” the elf replied. His back was to the man, who was speaking, but he faced two other men, who looked just as disagreeable as the apparent leader did.

“You might want to rethink that defiant attitude, elf.”

“Let’s just rush them,” another of the men spoke up for the first time. He took a step forward and glanced over to the leader in hopes he would be given the command to forcibly disarm these two ‘foreigners‘.

“We aren’t alone,” Aragorn said in a steady voice. “Leave now, and you may be spared.”

Laughter erupted all around. The ranger’s words rang hollow in their estimation. They certainly weren’t going to just turn around and go away because this ranger told them to. The notion was absurd. These men lived for danger, and the prospect of a fight delighted rather than repelled them.

The leader made a great show of looking all around him. “Where are your allies? I see no help in sight for the two of you. Maybe your friends realized what you don’t: that there is no chance to win against us, so they are the ones who fled to save their own skins.”

The words were met with more laughter from the unkempt group. “Hobert, take their weapons.”

One of the men boldly walked forward. He stopped when Legolas, who was almost directly in front of him, raised his bow several inches, though he still didn‘t fully draw it.

“Go on, Hobert. He won’t shoot,” came the leader’s confident comment. Making eye contact with Aragorn, he pointed upward and to his left. “Look there.”

A man was standing on the top of a seven foot rock several yards away, with a full view of the two friends within the circle. He held a fully drawn bow. When the leader looked back at the elf and the ranger, he grinned again “He may only get one shot off, but he will kill one of you. Which one will it be?”

“And which one of you wants to die?” Aragorn said in return. He made a great show of looking around at the various members of the group within his line of sight before settling on the leader. “Are you the one eager to end his life?“ he asked.

The large man merely shrugged. Aragorn’s words didn’t have the desired effect, which is what he half expected. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

Legolas and Aragorn both realized with dismay that the Easterling was right. One of them would surely die before the remaining one could do more than kill one or two of these men. It was not worth it. The better plan would be to let themselves be taken, repulsive as that thought was, and then wait for their chance at escape later.

“Face me, elf,” came the leader’s command.

Reluctant to turn his unprotected back on any of these men, Legolas nonetheless turned around to stand shoulder to shoulder with his friend.

With a silent agreement borne from long association with each other, both bow and sword hit the ground.

The leader smiled, revealing yellowed teeth that made Legolas look away. “I’m sure you carry knives in your boots. I want those, too.”

After relinquishing their hidden knives, the elf and the ranger had their hands forcefully pulled behind their backs and then tightly bound. More tightly than was necessary, they each noted.

Aragorn looked at his friend. “Treco will be here, eh? I don’t see him. Do you?”

Legolas stared at the ranger. “We set a day, Estel. Not an exact moment. He will come.”

“Yeah, sure. After we’ve been taken away to Valar knows where.” He shoot his head. “This scene sure seems familiar.” He couldn’t begin to count how many times he and the elf had been taken prisoner by one enemy or another in their many years together. Would it ever end?

The elf only shrugged at his friend’s remark and then winced at the pain the tight ropes caused by that simple movement.

Aragorn turned his head to the skies, hoping to get a glimpse of Treco swooping down toward them for the rescue. What a sight that would be. It only occurred to him later that if the dragon had obeyed orders, he would be walking, not flying. Somehow the prospect of that sight didn’t seem as awe-inspiring. However, any way the dragon showed up, hopping on one leg even, would be good enough for him.

“Who says he would help us anyway?” the ranger asked, pulling his eyes away from the sky and putting them squarely on the elf. “I doubt he would risk being shot at by a number of men just to save our hides. We fixed his wing, so he is probably hundreds of leagues from here, enjoying his old life with no thought for us at all.”

Legolas wanted to argue the point in defense of the dragon, but just as he opened his mouth, he and Aragorn were roughly shoved forward. Several men walked ahead and several behind them. There would be no chance for escape as long as they were moving in such a manner. They would have to bide their time a while longer.

*~*~*~*

More than once during the four hour journey before dark, Aragorn scanned the skies. Despite his earlier comments, he wasn’t quite ready to give up on the idea that Treco may be tracking them, ready to attack the Easterlings and free him and Legolas. It didn’t happen, which, in all honesty, wasn’t really a surprise to him.

Aragorn had no way of knowing that Treco had arrived a the meeting place less than half an hour after the two friends had been captured and taken away.

It was Treco who waited and waited for the elf and the ranger to show up. He had been patient, at first, but as time went by, he became very annoyed that the two beings, who had been the ones to tell him to come back here on this appointed day, had not shown up themselves.

Treco was not prepared to stay and wait indefinitely for an unreliable mortal and a normally reliable elf. That elf must have been adversely influenced by the human. Treco didn’t care who was to blame. He began to pace up and down, grumbling angrily, as time went by.

Soon he could stand no more, as he ripped through the now tattered bandages with long jagged teeth. Testing the viability of the now mended bone and being satisfied his wing would support him in the air, he had taken flight.

It had felt so good to fly that the dragon took off toward his home, soon forgetting all about the undependable twosome.

Aragorn would not have been happy to know he had been right about being forgotten by a homeward-bound, flying dragon, though in fairness, the dragon had shown up.

*~*~*~*

When the golden glow of the setting sun was all that was visible on the western horizon, the Easterlings stopped to make camp.

Legolas and Aragorn were shoved down, each next to a large tree a good four feet apart. Both had ropes tied around their waists and secured around the tree trunks. Their hands were left bound.

“We’re thirsty,” the ranger told the two men, who had tied them up. “Might we have some water?” His voice was calm, not displaying any of the anger he felt. Antagonizing these men was not going to get them anything but grief. They needed food and water to keep up their strength. It was the only way they had a chance of fulfilling their idea of escaping.

“We’ll see,” one of the men said. “It depends on how generous Grath is feeling this evening.” He laughed harshly. “I wouldn’t lay any money on that happening. However, dead you’re not worth much to....” He clamped his mouth shut before revealing something he was evidently not supposed to reveal.

“To whom?” Aragorn asked.

“Not my place to say,” was the only answer he got. The man turned and hurried away.

“I had a feeling these were not the people who wanted us, “ Aragorn mused. “They’re the enforcer types, hardly the thinkers.”

Legolas nodded then changed the subject. “So Grath is the leader’s name.” Not once had anyone called him by name during their journey here. “Have you ever heard of him?”

“No, but then I don‘t really think his reputation is very widespread.” He couldn’t help a small chuckle.

“Not like Strider‘s, at any rate,” Legolas returned in the same light vein.

“Of course not.”

A short silence fell before Aragorn said, “My hands are getting numb. If they feed us anything, I‘ll have to slurp it up with my tongue.”

“The feeling in my hands is fast fading, as well,” Legolas informed his friend. “As for your slurping your food, I’ve seen that enough to last a lifetime---an elf’s lifetime,” he added with a straight face.

The ranger just gave the elf the look he usually did, whenever he said such things, like the immortality of elves, the way heat and cold don’t affect elves as much as mortals, the keen sight and hearing of elves, the endurance elves display, the physical strength of elves, the... The list of elven superiority seemed endless.

Legolas was always happy to point out that elves also had great intuition, sensing things that mortals had no clue about. It was always done in fun. Legolas would never say anything that would offend or hurt his friend.

Aragorn merely narrowed his eyes at the elf, and it made Legolas laugh. Unfortunately, it was the wrong time to show mirth.

Having heard the elf’s laugher, Grath walked up and backhanded Legolas across the face. His hand made an angry red splotch on the elf’s porcelain skin. The man glared down at him. “I guess if you have the strength to laugh, you aren’t in any great need of nourishment. You’ll not get any tonight.”

Grath walked away then turned back and pointed his forefinger at Aragorn. “That goes for you, too, ranger Now it was his turn to laugh, which he did. The sound was loud, rough and grating.

Legolas winced more at the words themselves than the harshness of the sound. He looked at his friend. “I am sorry, mellon nin. I did not mean to provoke him. Now you will also go without.”

“If I had my way, I’d have provoked my hard fist right into his ugly, lopsided mouth.”

Legolas shook his head. “Estel, you have such a colorful way with words.”

“Yeah. And it probably would have gotten us both beaten. Not that people like those,” he jutted his jaw toward the Easterlings gathered around their campfire, “would need much of an excuse to cause someone pain.”

He did not mention that crude though the men may be, they evidently knew how to cook. Drifting smoke carried the smell of roasting fowl of some kind toward the two captives, and it was all Aragorn could do to keep himself from licking his lips. It was only the thought that one of those horrid men might see him doing it and realize that the ranger was suffering hunger pangs that kept him from doing it. His stomach, however, was not as discerning. Luckily, only Legolas heard the internal protest.

In an effort to keep his mind off of his ravenous appetite, Aragon said, “Have you seen any weakness in their defenses we can exploit?”

Legolas’s mind was somewhere far up in the star-strewn heavens, and only jerked back to the present, when he realized that his friend had asked the same question twice. “What did you say?”

Understanding the elf’s lack of attention and not making a comment on it, Aragorn said, “Weaknesses. Do you see any we can take advantage of?”

“I have not as yet, but men will always make mistakes,” he grinned at the man beside him, “so all we have to do is wait until such mistakes present themselves.”

Not offended by the elf’s remark, the man nodded. “I think that after they turn in for the night, our chance for escape will increase.” It was a logical idea that had served them well under similar circumstances in the past.

When the camp finally quieted for the night, guards were set about the perimeter. To the consternation of both elf and ranger, two guards were set to watch them. Unfortunately, neither one looked as if they were going to go to sleep on the job. No liquor was present to aid them in that, and the two stared at the prisoners, as if daring them to make a move.

“I think these two take their guard duty rather seriously,” Aragorn comment in elvish, pretty sure he would not be understood.

“So it would appear,” Legolas replied.

“Hey, there. None of that. Speak a decent language we can all understand.

“Well so much for secret plans.” When one of the guards raised up apparently ready to enforce the command not to speak something they could not follow, Aragorn said in the common tongue, “All right. Don’t get excited. We know how to speak so even you can understand.” He knew he was lucky when the man didn’t take offense, or if he did, he didn’t do anything about it.

TBC