Chapter Eighteen

Aragorn had his sword half way out of its scabbard, only to find that the troll he had imagined moving up behind him was only an elf.

“Did I frighten you?” Legolas asked with a wry smile.

“Nothing so simple,” the man replied, taking several deep breaths to calm his racing heart. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

“Did you imagine me to be a troll?” The elf couldn’t hide the amusement in his voice.

Aragorn pushed his sword home rather more forcefully than was actually needed. It wasn’t until he let go of the hilt that he realized how tightly he had been holding it. “You have a very nasty habit of just appearing out of nowhere in absolute silence, yet this time I heard you. What was I supposed to think?”

Frowning, he ran his eyes swiftly over the elf from head to toe. He feared Legolas may have been heavy of foot due to the aggravation of one of his injuries. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.

Legolas shook his head, knowing exactly what the ranger’s close scrutiny meant. “None of my habits are nasty, I will have you know,” he declared indignantly.

Toning his voice down a notch, he said, “I merely wanted you to know I had returned. And why must you always complain that I sneak up on you?”

“Because you always do!” Not willing to engage the elf in what had become a continuing and mostly humorous exchange through the years, an exchange he never seemed to win, Aragorn simply sighed and said, “Never mind.”

The man then glanced behind Legolas, in hopes the elf had run across the horses while he had been in the trees. He didn’t have to ask to know that there were no horses accompanying the wood-elf.

“Which way did the horses go?” Legolas asked, hoping the ranger would have at least seen signs of them along the riverbank.

“They haven’t even been here,” Aragorn answered glumly. “I saw only deer tracks along with a few smaller animals. No horses. They must have gone another way.” He sounded both dejected at that thought and resigned to it.

The ranger’s attention turned to another more immediate problem. He jutted his chin toward the forest. “How close are the trolls?”

“Too close for us to continue standing here and talking. I would say maybe three minutes.”

“That doesn’t give us much time.”

“No, it does not.” Legolas turned to his right and pointed. “I suggest we go that way. There seems to be fewer rocks to hinder us.”

Most of the rocks on the riverbank that were upstream ranged in size from pebbles to ones that were less than two feet in diameter. Downstream it was a different matter. After a few dozen yards or so, the rocks gradually grew to the size of towering boulders. Due to a bend in the river, they couldn’t see that another hundred yards farther along, a forty foot cliff rose above the river.

The two friends headed upstream as fast as they could manage, but It wasn’t fast enough.

Suddenly, a troll came out of the trees and stopped midway between the forest and the water’s edge. Luckily the creature had chosen to scan the area upstream as soon as he came into the clear and thus had his back to the elf and the ranger.

The two former captives came to an abrupt halt thirty feet from the creature and froze, keeping themselves well behind him. However, they both knew it was only a matter of time before the huge beast turned to look in their direction.

“That’s a mighty quick three minutes,” Aragorn whispered in a slightly accusatory tone, though it wasn’t aimed at Legolas. The loud roar of the river insured that only the elf beside him heard his words.

Legolas shrugged. “There is always one who has to be ahead of all the others.” He looked at the ranger pointedly.

Aragorn rolled his eyes and dashed toward the trees.

It was going to be very risky to try and get through the edge of the forest between this one troll and all the ones they could now hear moving their way.

When Legolas arrived to settle beside his crouching friend behind a large oak, the man pointed above them. “We can take to the trees again,” he suggested. “Those creatures never seem to look up.”

Legolas shook his head. “The trees are too sparse here. And we do not have the time or the room to move into a denser area farther in.” The thought that if he’d been alone, he could have made it easily never entered his mind.

That thought did, however, enter Aragorn’s mind. Since he knew that urging Legolas to take that route was less than a waste of breath, the notion vanished as quickly as it had arrived. Their best chance was to stay together.

“There are sure to be trolls to our left, as well,” Aragorn said. “And since they seem to be farther back, I say let’s head downstream. We can hide in those large rocks, if need be.”

Legolas gave a quick snort of opposition. “You realize we night well be trapped there, should the trolls decide to look there, especially now that darkness can no longer hide us . And there is no reason to think they will not do so.”

“Maybe there’s a hidden cave in there somewhere?” the man asked hopefully, eyebrows raised and a grin on his face. When Legolas moved away without making a comment, Aragorn mumbled, “I guess not.”

With the decision apparently made, Aragorn began running after the elf, who had abandoned the trees to make a faster run along the open riverbank.

It didn’t help that Aragorn’s injured leg had picked that moment to let him know it was still there and wanting attention. He ignored it as best he could.

What neither he nor Legolas were able to ignore was the loud crack of thunder that boomed farther downriver and the black clouds that were rolling in on a very strong wind. The storm would be upon them in a matter of minutes, though at this point, even getting thoroughly drenched was much more preferable to getting captured again.

By the time the two friends reached the nearest of the large boulders, the troll, who had been on the riverbank, had spotted them and was giving chase. He was waving his arms in the air and yelling for all he was worth, trying to alert the other trolls now emerging from the forest.

The advancing creatures couldn’t understand what was being shouted, so they all turned toward the lone troll running beside the river. It wasn’t long before enough of them had emerged to make them look like a mass of dark tree trunks moving along the sand.

The lone troll was continuing to yell and wave his arms. He wasn’t trying to call the group to him, as they were evidently thinking. He was trying to tell them that they were running away from the fleeing captives.

Once the creatures came together and crowded around the single troll, they were finally able to understand what he had been shouting.

Scron had reached the river by then. “Git them back,” he commanded angrily, and they all turned and headed back the other way.

Legolas and Aragorn darted in among the boulders just as the sky opened up. So much rain was coming down so fast that it resembled a curtain, able to hide them until they were safely out of sight of the trolls.

Rain bothered the creatures about as much as it did a spring flower, so the search was hardly going to be suspended until the storm passed.

The wind had not let up, so the drops were being driven almost sideways. That was actually a blessing to Legolas and Aragorn. Instead of being pelted from above, the two were partially protected by the high rocks, as long as they stayed on the opposite side of them. The rain poured down the sides of the boulders and was carried away in little streams across the sand to add their volume to the raging river.

“Good as any cave,” the man commented, grinning broadly.

A momentary lull in the wind sent a spray of water full in the face of the ranger. He was no longer grinning, as he swiped across his face with his sleeve. The gesture did little good, since his tunic had become so wet, it wouldn’t hold any more water.

“I would say so,” was the elf’s sarcasm-tinged remark.

Aragorn held his finger up and pointed it at Legolas. “Not another word, elf,” he warned.

Even above the wind, the rain and the roar of the river, Legolas could hear the trolls getting closer to their position. “They are coming. We must move farther back into the rocks.”

Legolas and Aragorn made their way behind a boulder that had been at their back and then twisted around another one. It was hard going, because the bases of the rocks were so close together that the two friends couldn’t touch the ground between the giants and had to step over. They pushed against the wet sides with their hands in order to keep their balance.

“We must hurry,” Legolas urged. “The trolls are getting much too close.”

At one point, Legolas tried to swing himself between two rocks. His left shoulder protested and was not able to take the weight he was asking it to hold. The pain struck him so suddenly that he didn’t have time to prepare for it. He jerked his hand away to relieve the pressure and with his support gone, the archer promptly slipped.

Aragorn grabbed the elf’s right arm and held him steady until he could maneuver to the other side. Legolas turned back and nodded to his friend, who just grinned at him.

Aragorn made it over the rock base with no problem. He couldn‘t resist a jibe. “It isn’t usually you that needs help when balance is involved.” The words weren’t out of his mouth before he remembered Legolas’s injured shoulder.

Seeing an apology coming, Legolas waved it off. “No need to apologize, Estel. You forgot for a moment. That is hardly a reason for guilt.”

This time, it was Aragorn who nodded, knowing the elf was right, though he still felt bad about making the remark.

The two friends continued to work their way among the rocks, seeming to inch their way along much too slowly but still staying just ahead of the trolls.

The large creatures weren’t slowed by having to maneuver between the rocks, but they were slowed by searching as deeply into the crevices as they could go. Some spaces were just too small for them to get through. They stayed as close as they could, rooting around as they made their way downstream.

There were a couple of close calls, as either Legolas or Aragorn was forced to move parallel to a nearby troll and was almost discovered.

One thing the elf noticed, as they moved around a bend in the river, was that the ground to their left was rising up into a solid rock wall. He wasn’t pleased, because that cut off one way to escape should the trolls find them and try to swarm the rocks. It surprised a little him that they hadn’t already done so.

It wasn’t long before Aragorn moved around a boulder and found himself facing a rock wall. “Where did that come from?” he asked himself. He had been concentrating so hard on keeping his feet firmly under him that he hadn’t noticed a cliff growing up beside him.

The man felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see Legolas standing next to him.

“I see you have found the cliff.”

“Yes. It seemed to suddenly appear, just like a certain elf I know.”

“Of course, it did,” was Legolas’s only comment.

Aragorn stood and stared up at the rock face. He thought that perhaps they could wait until the trolls moved farther downstream and then attempt to climb out of their current position. However, on closer inspection, he saw that the wall was relatively smooth with little in the way of protrusions or indentions to offer secure hand and foot holds. Also the rain was pouring down its sheer surface, creating what amounted to a waterfall. “No way to climb it freehand, and without ropes, it’s impossible.”

Even the elf doubted he could have been successful on this cliff in these conditions.

“Are there trolls down the bank behind us?”

“There are," Legolas replied. "They have scattered themselves all along here. All they have to do is wait us out.” That was not a very encouraging thought, but knowing how unorganized they were, it might not be a situation that lasted very long.

“Well, we have plenty of water,” Aragorn pointed out, sticking out his tongue and licking water off of his upper lip.

The sky was beginning to lighten, as the darkest of the clouds continued moving to the east. As a result, the rain had slackened to a steady drizzle.

Legolas and Aragorn were starting to feel a little better about their situation, when both of them had to duck down after hearing a troll rooting around on the other side of the rock they were behind. He was so close they could smell his stench, made worse by being wet.

As big as the creature was, he couldn’t wedge himself into the spaces between the surrounding boulders. After a few minutes of trying, he gave up and moved away.

The ranger closed his eyes and sighed. “That was entirely too close.”

Legolas moved on and cleared the space between two boulders. While he waited for Aragorn to join him, he looked up and saw a faint purple glow under the darkest of the receding clouds. He then felt a sizzling sensation crawl over his skin. “Get up on a rock, Estel!” he yelled urgently, heedless of any nearby trolls. At the same time, he himself jumped and found a precarious perch on a tiny piece of rock that jutted out from its base.

Their years together had taught them both that when one said, “duck” or “stop” or “run” or whatever else needed an immediate reaction, the other did it instantly without thinking about it.

Aragorn had barely leapt onto a small flat rock beside his left foot when the world seemed to vanish in the blinding flash of a bolt of startlingly brilliant blue-white lightning. The super-heated air around it expanded so fast it sent out a shockwave of thunder that drowned out all other sounds, including that of the wild, raging river.

TBC