Disclaimer: All characters, events and places in my stories that can be found in Tolkien's books are his; I am merely borrowing them. Everything else has sprung from my own imagination, or has been inspired by other writers' stories. This disclaimer applies to every story in this series.

Mae govannen!

The Elf and Ranger Tales are collections of short pre-Quest and post-Quest stories about Aragorn and Legolas.

This little tale is the first in the pre-Quest series.

TALE 1: ELVEN STRENGTH

The shadows were lengthening when the two riders approached the edge of a ravine, their eyes ever alert of their surroundings. They had been tracking orcs since the sun was up, and they had long ignored the ache of weariness. Several bands of the vile creatures had recently been sighted in various locations some distance from the Ranger settlement in the north, and though the signs of their passing had not been close enough to cause alarm, the vigilant Rangers had thought it best to ascertain where the orcs were headed.

These two riders had been following the tracks of one small group. But they knew that the hunt would have to be halted for the day. Winter was almost upon them, and already the days were getting shorter. Before long, the light would fail and it would be too dark to see much of the surroundings.

Aragorn glanced at the shy sun in the sky and pulled his coat tighter about himself against the biting cold. A few early snowflakes drifted lightly on to his hair, and an unkind wind began to blow across the ravine as well, promising to deliver more snow from the mountains. The Ranger reined in his horse. The orcs they were tracking did not seem to be in large enough a number to be a threat, he decided. He and Legolas could turn around and return to the camp on the morrow.

Rubbing his hands together and blowing on them for warmth, the Ranger looked at the elf beside him and gave a low grunt of envy he did not truly feel. Legolas was drawing in a lungful of the chilly air, hardly daunted by the sharp nip in it. The unblemished skin on his cheeks was only slightly rosy from the pinch of the cold, and his straight, slender form did not need to hunch over to hide from the wind.

The elf’s presence was an unfortunate reminder to Aragorn that he was not blessed with the same resilience against the cold, but the man would have asked for no other companion on this hunt. It was only by happenstance that Legolas had decided to pay his friend a visit at the Ranger colony, and Aragorn had immediately recruited his assistance for an all too infrequent chance to spend time with the friend whose company he treasured.

“It will be dark soon, Estel. We must find you some shelter,” Legolas said, looking around as he spoke. He pointed a long finger in the direction of a slight slope. “The land rises over there; we might find a cave or two if we proceed in that direction.” The elf nudged his horse towards the incline and began to move. “Come, Estel.” 

Aragorn smiled despite the chill. Impervious to the cold the elf might be, but Legolas was ever aware of his human friend’s needs. The man did not debate the elf’s suggestion. His ears and neck felt the icy fingers of the wind, and his body yearned for shelter and a fire. The horses would welcome them too, he was certain.

Bending to whisper comforting words to his steed, Aragorn’s keen eyes alighted on some marks on the ground a little way ahead of him, close to the edge of the ravine. He brushed away some snowflakes from his lashes and narrowed his eyes.

Orc prints? he wondered. It was too late to follow them even if they were, he thought as he dismounted, but they could resume their tracking the next day if they wished.

“Legolas!” he called to the elf who had already gone some distance ahead. “Wait a while. Let me take a closer look at these marks.”

Legolas halted his horse and turned back to see the Ranger walking towards a patch of rocky ground near the gaping chasm. “Man ce nich?” the elf asked. “Do you see tracks?”

Aragorn knelt and ran his hands over the vague depressions in the ground. “Older ones, I deem,” he replied. “The orcs who passed this way appear to have dislodged some larger stones as they ran… there are some cracks here… they must have been heav –”

A loud sickening crack rent the air, and Aragorn disappeared from view.

In one sudden movement, the ground beneath the Ranger had given way and taken the man with it over the edge of the chasm. Aragorn’s horse neighed in terror and bolted from the frightening sounds of the rocky earth crashing down the steep wall of the ravine.

For a moment, Legolas stared in mute horror. Then he was riding back furiously, a cry of anguish erupting from his throat.

“Estel!” he cried as he all but leapt from his horse and slid on his knees to the freshly collapsed edge of the ravine. Heedless of the risk of another collapse, he peered into the chasm, his tongue cleaving to the roof of his mouth. The elf cursed when he found that he could not see beyond the wall of rock immediately below the fracture. He moved a few yards to the side, but some dust was still rising from the fall of earth, conspiring with the increasing snowfall to obscure his sight. Frustrated by those obstacles and the deepening shadows, the elf leaned far over the edge, gripping it with whitened knuckles. He called out again. “Estel!”

The absence of a response from below frightened Legolas. “Estel, saes, answer me! Can you hear me?”

Some fifty feet below the fractured edge of the ravine, Aragorn gave a small whimper. By the mercy of the Valar, he had slid along the ravine wall and fallen hard onto a ledge, spared from freely plummeting another hundred feet with the rocks to the cruel base of the chasm. But at the moment, the man felt only half-alive. Stunned and out of breath, he was still unable to say anything. He was simply numb. He heard Legolas calling to him but he could not respond.

Then the pain came. He had landed with all his weight on the left side of his body, and as the pain shot through his limbs, he cried out plaintively.

Legolas gasped in alarm, casting his eyes in the direction of the man’s voice. Leaning even further over the edge, the elf spotted his friend on the ledge. Thank the Valar, he said under his breath. “Aragorn, can you hear me? How badly are you hurt?”

Aragorn felt blood trickling from a bad gash above his ear, and he suspected that he had fractured the arm and leg on the side he had fallen. His hip also hurt when he tried to move, and despite the merciless wind, he perspired in his pain. Gritting his teeth, he called out this information as best as he could, and even as he did so, his mind was already running through his options. It was not possible for him to attempt a climb, and he was too far down for Legolas to use the rope they had with them; it was barely twenty feet in length.

“Go, Legolas, and find aid,” he said resignedly. “I will wait here.”

Legolas was incredulous. “Have you broken your head as well, Adan?” he retorted from above. “You would have me ride off and leave you there?”

“I cannot climb back up, Elf!” the Ranger shouted back in frustration. “We need more rope!”

Legolas did not respond immediately. His face and hands disappeared from Aragorn’s sight, and for a few moments, the man could not felt help feeling a twinge of dismay at being left alone, though he had asked the elf to seek help.

But Legolas’ voice soon came back from somewhere beyond the edge. “The nearest settlement may be a long way off, Ranger, and you will die of cold before I return, if orcs do not spot you first and use you for target practice,” he said. “I will come down.”

Aragorn expelled a loud breath. “Wh-what!” he protested. “No, Legolas, it is too dangerous!”

But even as the words were leaving his lips, Aragorn saw his friend lowering himself over the edge, their only coil of rope slung around one of the elven shoulders. Legolas began making his way down the face of the cliff, reaching for handholds and footholds that Aragorn thought too precarious even for an elf. The swirling snow did little to assuage the Ranger’s anxiety, and he gritted his teeth again.

“Of all the foolhardy feats,” he muttered. “For Valar’s sake… Legolas… take care!” he gasped out in between loud groans of pain, the sight of the elf’s descent along the sheer cliff face adding to his torment.

After what seemed an age, the elf stepped safely on to the ledge, much to Aragorn’s relief. There was not much space left for Legolas’ long limbs to move about, but he quickly knelt and spoke softly to the man while examining him. The elf pursed his lips at the gash beneath the dark hair on Aragorn’s head, though he was visibly relieved at the absence of other injuries there. And when he tentatively touched the Ranger’s arm and leg, he received angry hisses of pain in response.

Legolas looked around them and noted the gathering dark, the falling snow, and increasing strength of the wind, and turned back to Aragorn. Already, the Ranger was shivering both from the pain and the cold.

“You cannot remain here,” the elf said firmly, standing and looking back at the cliff face he had descended.

“W-what a-a-are my ch-ch-choices?” Aragorn challenged miserably through chattering teeth. 

Legolas studied the cliff face a moment longer and turned back to his friend with determination in his eyes. “I will bring you up,” he declared, unwinding the rope he had brought along.  

Aragorn stared at his friend. Through clenched teeth, he managed to argue: “Elf, are you m-m-mad? H-how would you g-g-get me up there? I c-cannot use half my l-l-limbs! The r-rope is t-t-too sh-short!”

The Ranger’s words seemed to be falling on deaf ears. Legolas was already removing his strong leather belt and telling Aragorn that he would strap the man to his back using both their belts and the rope, and bear him up the cliff face that way.

Ignoring the man’s look of disbelief, Legolas knelt and touched Aragorn’s uninjured arm and leg. “Hold on tightly with these,” he instructed.

The Ranger was dumbfounded. I am no child! he wanted to scream, I am a grown man, and you cannot scale that cliff bearing my weight on your back! Aragorn could not be sure whether his head was shaking from the cold and pain, or from a violent effort to register his refusal. “M-m-mad!” was all he could blurt out.

Legolas grasped the Ranger’s hand that was not hurt and looked steadily at him. With his golden hair blown back from his face, it seemed to Aragorn that the elf looked like one of the Ainur come to his aid.

“Estel, you cannot lie here without anything to help the pain or to clean that cut on your head,” Legolas said quietly. “And I fear that you will then freeze to death in this wind and snow. I cannot keep you warm enough, mellon nin, and I can find no other help quickly enough. Let me bring you up there now, while there is still enough light for me to see the handholds.”

Aragorn stared back at the elf, then looked in dismay over the edge of the ledge to the hundred feet or more to the bottom of the ravine – where they would end up if they should slip…

He felt an elven hand grasp his chin and turn him back to face fierce blue eyes that looked at his pleadingly.

“I would not suggest this if I did not think I could do it,” Legolas said, reading his companion’s thoughts. At the man’s doubtful silence, the elf spoke again. “Estel... heir of Isildur… I will not let you fall.”

Aragorn’s voice was weak. “It is not just I who would… not just I…you, too, would… ” he began brokenly and stopped.

Legolas did not flinch, and his hand under the man’s chin remained firm. “Then I would be spared the grief of seeing you perish alone,” he stated quietly.

The snow whipped about them, fell on to Legolas’ long lashes and melted from the heat of his unwavering gaze.

I fear, Aragorn said silently through his own troubled grey eyes. But I hear the strength of the promise you make, Legolas. I will trust you.

The man swallowed his rising fear and nodded his assent. Much of what followed was then a blur for him; through the haze of pain and cold, he barely noticed what his friend was doing.

Legolas worked swiftly in the failing light. He removed his light elf shoes first. Then, hardening his heart against the moans of pain, he lifted Aragorn, looped and tightened their belts, and used the rope to secure the man to his back at the chest and waist. He gave his friend no time to doubt. Jamming his strong fingers and toes into the first of the crevices in the hard rock, the elf took one deep breath and lifted them both off the ledge for the long, slow climb up the cliff face.

Bearing the weight of two grown males on his aching hands and arms and legs, the elf fought against time and the elements. He tried to move quickly, but he also needed to seek and hang on to each hand and foothold while carefully selecting the next one, for he could not afford even one false step.

Behind him, with his head close to the elf’s, Aragorn said not a word. He heard his friend pant quietly with the strain of the ascent, felt each steely grip and flex of the elven fingers and each forced stretch of his limbs, and he knew that Legolas was hiding his labor in a focused silence. The Ranger’s own pain was great, but he could do little more than circle his unhurt arm about the elven waist and help where he could using his own good leg. The weight of the task was borne entirely by the elven friend in whose hands he was truly placing his life – both their lives.

It was fifty feet of a nightmarish ascent for Legolas and Aragorn. Twilight threw a deep purple mantle over them halfway up, and the wind blew the snow around them in a taunting dance. Only Legolas’ keen sight enabled him to still discern the safest places through the growing dark and wet, and only his elven strength kept him moving up one torturous inch after another, not thinking beyond the next hold.

Miraculously, the excruciating climb came to an end, and Elf and Ranger reached the top before true night fell. With one last effort, the elf heaved them both over the lip of the ravine, and without bothering to release Aragorn from his back, crawled a safe distance from the edge before he allowed himself to collapse flat on his front to catch his breath. The elf was too exhausted from the incredible strain of the climb to say a word, and the Ranger was still too shaken to do more than breathe his gratitude again and again into his friend’s ear while the snow rained on them.

But the pain that had been pushed to the back of Aragorn’s mind during the terrifying ascent now returned with full force, and his limbs and body began to shiver from the intensity of it. That alone was enough to spur Legolas into motion once again, and without much further speech, the elf had Aragorn released from his secure bonds, wrapped in blankets and mounted on his horse. Fortune smiled on them when they found a cave where Legolas had thought it would be. The elf continued to work, boiling herbs for his friend’s pain, cleaning his cuts, and making splints for the fractured arm and leg.

Finally, when the crescent moon was already high in the night sky, its rays touching the tops of trees, the elf was able to draw a deep breath and lean back against the cave wall.

Having been in a daze and too blinded by his own pain, it was some time before a rested Aragorn noticed, in the light of the fire that Legolas had kindled, the state that the elf was in. His long hair and clothes had come pitifully undone and disheveled, and for one of the rare times since Aragorn had known him, the fair face was drawn with fatigue.

But what finally arrested the Ranger’s attention – as Legolas reached out to feed sticks into the fire – was the condition of the elf’s hands. Catching a glimpse of blood, the man grabbed one of Legolas’ hands with his own good one and looked at the palm, eyes widening. He was horrified at the rawness of flesh that marked the palms from which skin had been cruelly chafed off.

“It’s bleeding!” the Ranger remarked in dismay. The elf quickly pulled his hand out of Aragorn’s grasp, but the Ranger grabbed the other one and held on, studying the palm and fingers.

“It is nothing, Ranger,” the elf claimed, attempting to withdraw the hand from Aragorn’s strong hold.

“It is not nothing, Elf,” Aragorn protested. The healer in him noted with disapproval the cuts and abrasions marring both the palm and the sides of each digit. Then his eyes travelled to the torn skin on the elven knees and feet, and he realized how the elf must have hung on to the sharpest and most jagged handholds on the cliff face that he could find, for those would have been the least slippery.

Aragorn shook his head sadly. “This is from the climb,” he whispered hoarsely. “Oh, Legolas…”  The man closed his eyes and placed his forehead gently on the wrist below the bleeding hand, not knowing how to express his regret and apology. 

Legolas hesitated a moment before placing his other hand quietly on his friend’s bowed head. “I vowed you would not fall,” he said, smiling. “My cuts will mend, Estel; a broken word would not.”

No more was said of the matter that night. That was the extent to which Legolas would allow any reference to be made to his injuries, or to the agonizing climb he had undertaken for Aragorn. The snow continued to fall, and for a while, the friends sat watching it in silent companionship, finding warmth in more than just the dancing flames.

The Elf and Ranger left the safety of the cave two days later to return to the Ranger settlement where Aragorn could continue to mend. It was snowing even harder now, and Aragorn was still in pain. But the Ranger was not worried.

As they rode up to the crest of the hill, with Legolas leading the way, Aragorn turned in his saddle to cast a last look in the direction of the ravine that had almost claimed his life. Snow made the landscape beautiful now, as if its whiteness was attempting to erase the horrible memories from his mind.

But the Ranger knew he would never forget the day when pure elven strength – of the body and the spirit – had lifted and delivered him. It was all that had stood between him and a cold, hard death.

And he knew it was a strength he would be able to hold on to for many years to come.

(Tolkien says in his Book of Lost Tales that when he first conceptualized Legolas for LOTR, he conceived him to be “as strong as a tree.”  Well, the elf may not quite be that strong :-) but that idea inspired this story.) 

Note to old friends and new:

Please consider this quickly written tale a modest New Year offering to all who would accept it. May 2009 bring you love, joy, health and peace – and many more Aragorn and Legolas tales to delight you!

I miss everyone more than I can say - hope to hear from you.  :-)