Chapter Twenty Four

The progress that Legolas and Aragorn were making through the troll forest was slow, agonizingly slow to the man’s way of thinking. He frequently looked at Legolas and found the elf, more often than not, staring up into the trees. His eyes were narrowed in concentration.

Aragorn nodded to himself. If the trees kept Legolas’s mind off of his recent memory loss and his painful shoulder and headache by offering him comfort then that was good. If they could also offer a warning of approaching trolls, or any other form of danger that might show up, all the better.

So far, the trolls had not given any evidence that they were following the former captives. They may have lost interest after losing a third leader, however, Aragorn knew that they could just as easily burst through the thick forest at any moment. Even if the trees did warn Legolas, there was not a lot he could do to get the elf and himself to safety. Good luck would most likely lie in not being discovered at all, not in finding another hiding place.

As the two friends moved through the trees, the ranger tried to keep the sound of the river at a constant level on his left. That way he would be able to stay the same distance from it. Otherwise, the river could bend away from them, and he and Legolas would continue moving in a straight line and end up deeper in troll territory. Unless the river flowed in a circle, Aragorn thought with a touch of grim humor, it would eventually lead them out, and right now, that appeared to be their only hope.

The going became even more difficult as the forest floor started to become more and more littered with debris and exposed tree roots. Broken branches lay in disarray under the trees they had probably fallen from. They were covered with green leaves, which attested to the fact that they had been torn loose from their parent tree fairly recently, before the leaves had had a chance to die and turn brown.

“The storm must have been quite fierce along here to have torn up these branches inside the forest.” It was the only thing Aragorn could think of that could have done something like that.

He briefly thought that the trolls were strong enough to have accomplished such destruction, but that made no sense. The creatures didn’t know that he and Legolas had hidden high up in the trees the first time they had escaped from the cages, so the trolls would have had no reason to pull down the branches looking for them.

After a moment of silence, Legolas said, “They are in pain.” His voice was low and full of sorrow.

Aragorn had been so deep in thought, he had completely forgotten that he had made his comment out loud and thus was slightly startled when the elf spoke. He quickly regained his composure. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. He may not have been an elf, but he also hated to see living things destroyed in such a way.

“It is the way of Nature.” The fact the elf understood that didn’t seem to ease his mind any.

“Have they warned you of the trolls’ presence?”

Legolas shook his head and immediately regretted it. He was so desperate for sleep that he felt as if he could barely hold his eyes open. The pounding inside his head was driving him to a weariness he hadn’t experienced in a very long time. As if his body wanted to emphasize that fact, his next step resulted in a stumble.

Despite knowing a stumble was probably inevitable, Aragorn was so surprised he couldn’t prevent them both from falling. He landed on his knees while Legolas’s weight pulled him from the ranger’s suddenly limp grasp, and he fell flat on the ground. Luckily, he didn’t hit his head, but he became so dizzy, he almost passed out anyway.

Aragorn reached for Legolas and gripped his good right arm.

“No,” the elf said softly. “Let me lie here and rest a while.”

The simple pleading in his friend’s voice tugged at Aragorn’s heart, but he knew he couldn’t give in to his feelings. “We can’t stop, Legolas. I’m sorry. We have to keep moving.”

It wasn’t in the elf’s nature to beg, and he wasn’t going to start doing it now. With more willpower than he believed himself capable of, he pushed his weary, pain-ridden body up and then allowed Aragorn to lift him to his feet. He hated weakness, but he hated stupidity even more, so there was no way he was going to protest being aided. He couldn’t do it alone. Besides, arguing took too much energy.

Once he had a firm grip on the archer, Aragorn, himself weary beyond words, started moving them onward again.

The ranger tried to occupy his mind so he wouldn’t fall asleep on his feet. He suddenly realized that that was exactly what he had done. When awareness finally penetrated his groggy mind, he and Legolas were standing still, leaning on each other. How they had remained upright, he couldn’t begin to guess.

The first thing he noticed regarding their surroundings was that it was no longer raining, a minor blessing at this point but a blessing nonetheless. The second thing he noticed was the silence. Silence? Where is the river? Had they done exactly what he had feared: continued straight on while the river veered away from them? The man almost panicked. “We’ve left the river,” he said fearfully. He could have kicked himself for letting his physical exhaustion affect his good sense.

Legolas, still amazingly awake, said, “It is there.” He pointed to the left.

“You can still hear it?”

“Yes.”

Aragorn almost sagged with relief. Even though he knew how keen the wood-elf’s ears were, they had their limits. So if Legolas could still hear the river, they hadn’t gone too far off course. He promptly turned them to the left and headed directly toward where Legolas had pointed.

The sudden spike of fear had pumped adrenalin into the man’s veins and given him a jolt of energy, and he was determined to take advantage of the surge while it lasted.

*~*~*~*

The going for the next twenty minutes was still laborious, but Aragorn was able to keep them moving at a slightly quicker pace. His new-found energy was running low again by the time he finally heard the river.

At first, he was puzzled, because the river was not roaring the way it had been doing since he and Legolas had first encountered it. Then it dawned on him. His earlier hope must have been right. The river must have widened and flattened out. And with the current no longer surging over any large rocks, there was no longer the kind of rapids that existed downriver. That thought spurred the ranger to hasten his steps.

Legolas, who had appeared to be oblivious of anything but the forest around him, felt the pace pick up. However, it was Aragorn’s altered demeanor that alerted him to the change. He looked over at his friend. “What has happened, Estel?”

The man smiled. “I think the river has flattened out, so there may be a chance we can cross.”

Because of the amnesia, Legolas had no memory of the rapids at all, so he thought the comment was perfectly logical. Had he remembered the condition of the river, he might have felt differently.

After a few more moments of walking, the two friends broke free of the forest and made their way toward the river bank, which was only a few feet wide where they were.

As they approached the water’s edge, Aragorn stopped and stared. He was dismayed to see that, despite the fact the river appeared smooth by comparison to the wild rapids, it was running very fast, much faster than he had expected.

Even had he and Legolas been in top form, they still might not have been able to make it across. The river, normally no more than two feet deep, was now almost twice that, and in their weakened condition, neither elf nor ranger would get very far against this powerful current.

Through half-lidded eyes, Legolas saw and understood what Aragorn was thinking. “We cannot cross here,” the elf said, his voice barely above a whisper.

Unable to keep the disappointment out of his voice, Aragorn replied, “I know”. He looked upriver but saw no change in the river’s condition. “I’m sorry, mellon nin, but we must keep going.”

The very thought of doing so almost caused Legolas to sag in defeat. He had worked so hard to get here while trying to help his friend expend as little energy as possible. And now it was all for naught, because they were not going to be able to stop.

Just as Legolas had read Aragorn’s demeanor earlier, the ranger was now doing the same with the elf. “Don’t worry, Legolas, we’ll make it.” Aragorn inhaled deeply and let his breath out slowly. ‘Somehow,’ he added silently.

*~*~*~*

As the two friends continued along the narrow riverbank, it became clear that the river was widening even more. That realization lifted the ranger’s heart.

The main reason for the change was that the land itself had become lower than it was downriver, allowing the water to penetrate in toward the forest. It looked as though the water’s depth would be such that it could be crossed with only a minimum of danger.

After going around another bend, this one to the left, the riverbank disappeared completely, as the water did indeed extend into the trees.

Aragorn halted, pulling Legolas to a stop beside him. There was a choice that needed to be made. They could go back into the forest until they were able to skirt the water or go into the edge of the river and hope the current wouldn’t undercut them.

Legolas, his eyes almost closed now, looked up. Despite the fact the elf appeared to be near unconsciousness, he was lucid enough to ask a question appropriate to the situation. “Why have we stopped?”

“We have to go into the river,” Aragorn said. “I don’t know if we can withstand the current.”

Legolas calculated the choices they had and understood what they were facing. “We really have but one choice. The trolls lay that way.” He pointed toward the forest, as he spoke.

“Agreed,” was the only reply Aragorn needed to make.

With another deep sigh, the ranger adjusted his grip on Legolas and started forward. It didn’t take more than a few steps before they entered the water at the edge of the river. The going was a little harder in the water-soaked dirt under the water.

Before long they were forced out farther into the current. The pressure against their legs increased with each step to the left that they had to make.

Another twenty yards found them farther out into the river than Aragorn knew was safe for them to be. Even so, he and Legolas were managing.

Then disaster struck. Or rather, it was an uprooted tree that did so. The tree wasn’t large, but it was being driven with tremendous force, seeming to fly along the surface of the water. It hit Aragorn’s legs and knocked him backwards. He and Legolas splashed into the water and were quickly swept along, moving downriver at a rapid pace, as if trying to catch the tree that had just upended them.

Try as he might, Aragorn couldn’t hang on to Legolas, who was torn out of his grasp and flung away from him. “Legolas!”

The elf heard Aragorn call his name and tried to call back to the ranger, but when he opened his mouth, it quickly filled with water. It was all he could do to keep his head above the surface, as the two of them were being separated farther and farther apart with each second that passed.

At least, the cold water, the result of runoff from melting snow in the mountains to the north, had brought the elf’s groggy mind back to something resembling full alert. He wished the bracing water could renew his weary body the same way. Instead, it seemed to sap even more of his energy, and he began to shiver.

Survival now, he quickly realized, was going to take every bit of willpower his mind and heart could summon. He wasn’t going to give up by any means, but he wondered if it was all going to matter in the end. The powerful river had a mind of its own, and right now the river was the one winning the battle.

Even though they were separated, Legolas and Aragorn each knew their best chance to get through this ordeal was not to fight the river but simply to let themselves be taken by it. They would just have to ride out the worst of it as best they could. That would have been all right if it hadn’t been for the fact that they were fast approaching the rapids, which would be by far the worst of it.

The trick was to keep moving in the strong flow of the current and not get caught in one of the whirlpools at the base of the large rocks that they soon found themselves flying past.
Avoiding being smashed against those very rocks was also imperative. Neither idea was exactly novel, but they had to concentrate if they hoped to get out of this alive.

Legolas may not have remembered that these rapids even existed due to his memory loss covering the time they had spent among the boulders, but he had been caught up in enough of them in his long life to know what was coming.

His swollen shoulder prevented him from actually swimming the way he normally would have, but he did manage to stay on top of the water most of the time, only occasionally being thrown or pulled into its depths.

When he saw these times coming, he was able to take a quick breath to see him through until he surfaced again. More than once, however, he didn’t see it coming and ended up underwater with no air in his lungs. At those times, he came close to drowning.

The next time it happened, Legolas was flipped up and over a rock, sending him plunging down the other side. He expected to bob up and be swept free the way he had been the last time this had happened. He wasn’t.

The elven prince found himself being forced downward from the immense pressure of the water coming at him from above. It felt like a giant hand pushing down on his back. He was caught in a backlash of current, and what little air he still held was being forced out.

When he opened his eyes to try and see what he could do to extract himself from this predicament, all Legolas saw were bubbles and the base of the rock he was pinned against. The swirling of the water skewed his sense of direction, and it was only then that he realized he was partially upside down.

His lungs were burning from lack of air, his dizziness was back in full force, and the pressure of the current was stronger than he was, at this point. Time was running out. If he passed out or failed to take in more air quickly, Legolas knew he would die trapped underwater.

In short, if he didn’t get loose soon, he never would.

TBC

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