Chapter Eight

Once the surprise of Pickett’s sudden attack on Aragorn had worn off, Legolas’s first reaction was extreme anger. He wanted to grab the bone he had used on the unconscious troll and charge Pickett with it. Fortunately, reason prevailed, and the elf‘s thoughts instantly shifted to Aragorn.

“You an’ yer brother tricked me,” Pickett declared unhappily.

Ignoring the huge beast, Legolas ran to Aragorn and knelt down beside him. It didn’t take a healer to see that the man had been knocked out cold. The elf carefully lifted him up by the shoulders and saw the beginnings of a bruise on the left side of Aragorn’s fast-swelling jaw. A bruise was also forming on his neck.

“We did not trick you. You fell asleep,” Legolas said firmly over his shoulder. “We merely wished to leave here and return to our home.”

“You two almost got me killed by Hatch. Now he’ll have you to beat up, not me.” The troll spoke with an air of triumph that he had deflected the anger of his leader off of himself on onto these two.

It occurred to Legolas that Pickett had suddenly become a complete opposite to the pathetic creature he and Aragorn had known before. There was no mistaking that this version was potentially dangerous. Pickett could well decide not just to hand Hatch two captives but to hand him two dead ones.

“I just about liked you,” Pickett said, his former pathetic tone almost coming through his words. Then the anger returned. “But you stole my key and ran away, leavin’ me to face Hatch.”

“We do not have your key,” Legolas declared. His statement was true enough, since he had buried it in the woods right after they had escaped the cages.

“I ain’t figured it out yet, but I know you did it.”

Legolas was well aware that once creatures with minimal brain power made up their mind about something, it usually stuck and couldn’t be budged. Such was the case with Pickett right now. The troll was convinced he had been tricked and that was that, as far as he was concerned.

“Git him up,” the troll demanded, abruptly changing the subject.

“He is unconscious,” the elf remarked irritably. He was worried about Aragorn and wanted Pickett to shut up and go away, and it had nothing to do with wanting to be free to escape.

Pickett narrowed his eyes. “What’s that mean?”

“It is similar to sleep, but he cannot just wake up.” Legolas suddenly realized the absurdity of trying to explain the meaning of a word to this creature, like he was a child.

“It’s another trick. Wake him up.” Pickett insisted. He was not going to accept anything that ran contrary to what he believed. He reached down to grab Aragorn by the arm.

Without thinking, Legolas pushed the troll’s hand away angrily. “I will carry him.” To himself he said, ‘Just keep your filthy hands off of him.’

The elf gently picked Aragorn up and cradled him in his arms. He then turned to face Pickett. If the expression on Legolas’s face didn’t inform the troll of the elf’s total lack of fear, the look in his eyes did.

Pickett let out a low growl, showing that he was not intimidated. Nonetheless, he stepped out of the way and let Legolas move out of the hut ahead of him. Once outside, the troll swept his arm toward the cages.

Sighing, Legolas moved across the camp with his burden, though that was one description he would never use in reference to an injured friend. He stopped several feet from the metal bars, gritting his teeth at the thought of being put inside those bars again.

Since both of the smaller cages were locked, and the key was missing, Pickett pointed to the very center cage where he had most recently been held. “Git in that one. It’s where Hatch put me after you got away.” The concept of irony was beyond him, yet the idea of these troublesome brothers being put in the same place he had been held in for letting them escape pleased him.

Legolas frowned. How had he missed seeing Pickett, if he had remained in the camp? Legolas shook off the mental question. Time enough later to think about that. Legolas entered the cage.

This time around, Pickett stood facing the metal prison and watched the two recaptured beings.

The elven prince paid no attention to what Pickett was doing. All he had on his mind was helping Aragorn. He carefully laid the ranger down on his stomach and gently turned Aragorn’s face away from him, so he could have a better look. Parting the dark hair in back of the ranger’s head, the elf made his examination both by sight and by feel.

After several moments of careful inspection, the archer found evidence of a hard hit to the head and decided that Aragorn probably had a mild concussion. Luckily, the knot that had formed under the skin was not bleeding.

Suddenly, Aragorn’s eyes snapped open. He tried to jerk his body up and wondered why all he saw was dirt. He rolled over on his back but could move no further. Lifting his head, he saw two slender hands pressed against his chest. It was an all- too-familiar position he found himself in.

The man moaned, more from the realization that he was hurt - yet again - than from any pain his injuries were causing him. However, he quickly became aware of a throbbing headache.

He slowly lowered his head and then looked up to see an upside down elven face suspended above him. He also recognized the worried look on said elven face. “What happened?” he asked in a slightly disgusted tone, knowing for sure now that something had.

“I am pleased to see your eyes open, Estel. As for what happened, Pickett sent you flying into the back wall of Hatch’s hut.”

“Ah yes. I remember now.” The ranger struggled sit up. This time no elf was going to hold him down, so Legolas readily offered his help. Aragorn couldn’t hold back both a grimace and a groan.

“Your head sustained a hard blow when it hit the wall,” the elf explained.

Aragorn shook his head, then quickly regretted it. “No, it isn’t my head, though it does throb.”

“It is your back,” Legolas stated with no hint of uncertainty.

“Yes. First the whips, then standing in that tree with my arms over my head. Now this latest assault on my body.” As if to emphasis another injury, he gingerly rubbed his sore jaw, as he worked it from side to side.

Legolas couldn’t help but laugh. “You do seem to be collecting injuries rather swiftly.”

Then Aragorn’s expression turned to bewilderment. “My head must have struck pretty hard, because it just dawned on me that you said Pickett hit me.”

“Slow but sure,” the elf remarked, referring to the ranger’s tardy grasp of what was said when he first came to. “Yes, it was Pickett.” He pointed to the troll a few feet away.

Aragorn looked and saw that it was indeed Pickett standing in front of the cage. The troll’s beady black eyes were glaring at them so intently that Aragorn almost looked down to see if whiffs of smoke were coming off of his body.

Before Aragorn could ask, Legolas said, “He claims that Hatch was going to punish him for letting us escape, so now we are to pay instead.”

“Why am I not surprised at that?” the ranger commented. “I think my poor body is going to be collecting even more injuries before this is all over.”

It was a serious jest, and Legolas vowed he would do all in his power to keep that from happening, or at least to minimize the injuries Aragorn would have to endure. He totally ignored the thought of what hurts his own body was likely in for.

Aragorn swallowed hard, unable to push aside his body’s craving for water. He looked around the cage.

“There was no water for either wounds or thirst,” Legolas replied to the ranger’s fruitless search to have his body and throat refreshed.

Both knew asking Pickett for water was a lost cause. He would as likely give both of them more of his fist.

Pickett listened to the two beings talk, though they were using more of those strange words, and he had no idea what they were saying. He didn’t fear their language. That, he decided, was not what they had used to trick him before. Against his will, he found that the sound of the speech was pleasant to listen to. Had he possessed the capacity to understand beauty, he would have said it was beautiful.

Pleasant though their speech may be, the sight of the two brothers kept the troll’s anger up. He had grown to hate these people, and that kept him from falling under the spell of the Sindarin language. He would be glad to watch the punishment that would be meted out to them. Now, all he had to do was wait for Hatch to return. He was sure that this time he would receive a reward for his efforts in bringing back the two captives.

At Legolas’s stern insistence, and despite Aragorn’s argument that his back stung but that was all, the man now sat quietly while the wood-elf satisfied himself by checking his back for any further damage that might have been done, when the ranger was thrown against the wall.

Finally, Legolas pulled Aragorn’s tunic back up on his shoulders. “The cuts are on their way to closing nicely and only a little red remains.”

Aragorn gave his friend an I-told-you-so look.

“Yes, Estel, I know you told me.” The elf’s tone was indulgent in conceding the ranger’s earlier argument that his back stung a little but had suffered nothing worse from the troll’s unexpected attack. “You could have sustained a broken jaw or even worse, a broken neck.”

Aragorn nodded but then said, “I have a feeling that we may still need to consider those injuries as possibilities.”

Turning the subject back to Pickett, Legolas returned the troll’s even stare. “I do not understand how I could have missed seeing Pickett, if he was in this cage when we entered Hatch’s hut.” The idea that that had happened irked the elf.

“Pickett was in these cages?” It was the ranger’s turn to be puzzled.

“Yes. Hatch put him here for letting us escape. I should have seen him in here.”

“Well,” the ranger mused, “if you look across the camp at the hut, you can see that the fire is still fairly high and sends off waves of heat that distort what lies beyond. He might not have even been in the cage right then. Or he could have been lying down.”

Legolas sighed. “I suppose you are right. Yet, I still think I should have seen him.”

Aragorn clapped his hand on the elf’s shoulder. “You, my friend, sometimes put too much pressure on yourself because of your elven senses. It may come as a big surprise to you, but elves are not infallible.”

Legolas gave the ranger a mock look of horror. “Please do not let my father hear you say that.”

Aragorn started to make a remark about the elven king that he would probably have been glad he did not have the chance to make.

Just then a noise could be heard at the edge of the camp. When Legolas and Aragorn looked in that direction, they saw Hatch returning with several other trolls.

The troll leader did not look toward the cages but headed toward the fire. When he got close, he kicked a large log and sent it flying into the middle of flames. Sparks flew and a pile of burned out branches collapsed under their own weight.

Aragorn could not resist a snide remark. “I guess they couldn’t find the escaped captives.”

“They will soon enough,” Legolas replied dryly. There was little humor in his all-too-true words.

Hatch stomped off toward his hut.

Pickett wasn’t sure what to do. He certainly wanted to tell Hatch that the captives were back in the cages. However, running after him would leave the prisoners unattended in an unlocked cage.

The logical thing to do was shout out to Hatch and get his attention. But Pickett remembered all too well that the leader had once cuffed him on the ear for raising his voice. That Hatch would happily forgive such disobedience did not occur to Pickett, nor did the fact that he would still be in trouble if he didn’t inform Hatch right away.

The elf and the ranger just stared in disbelief at Pickett’s failure to report their recapture. Neither had the slightest notion as to why this was happening.

“I have no idea,” Aragorn said.

“Estel, we must hide my knives. Once Hatch sees his overturned bed and finds that they are missing, he will be back out here angrier than ever.”

Using their bodies to shield their actions, they buried one knife very shallow in the dirt to keep it from being found should they be searched.

Legolas reached out and pushed the other one inside the ranger’s tunic.

“No, Legolas,” Aragorn protested, starting to pull the knife back out again. “It’s your knife. You should keep it.”

Legolas gave the man a warning look of discouragement, as he held Aragorn’s wrists.

“Legolas,” the man said in frustration. When he saw that he wasn’t going to get anywhere in this particular argument, he shook his head. “Stubborn elf.” With narrowed eyes, he said, “I win the next one.”

Legolas grinned. ‘Maybe,’ he said to himself. Then he moved away from that line of discussion and tackled another point regarding the knives. “We can only hope that Hatch will think one of the other trolls took them. I doubt he would think we found them under his bed.”

Unknown to the two friends, the troll they had knocked out had come to and found Hatch’s bed on its side. Thinking he would be blamed for doing it and knowing nothing about the hidden knives, he turned the bed back over and piled the grass and blanket back on it. Then he quickly exited the hut. All this was done while Pickett was watching Legolas and Aragorn and before the others had returned.

It remained to be seen whether this was a lucky break for the elf and the ranger, or whether it would ultimately prove to make no difference at all.

TBC