Chapter One – Rain

The rain pelted down harder than before in the night, sweeping over the heaving masses of bodies with its freezing hand, drenching all, numbing limbs that had to work in order to survive. It was such a fray as he had never seen or indeed taken part in before, and it chilled him. He could sense the deaths of those that fell, could hear the pained screams louder than any Man was capable, even as the thunder tried to split the sky in two. It all came to him – the smell of blood and fear, the awareness of lives being extinguished like candles and just as easily.

Legolas was terrified. There were no two ways about it. Impossible odds faced the side he was on and it was fear and the smallest dose of hope that kept him fighting with his efficiency. The fear of what exactly he was not entirely sure; it could be the fear of pain, of death, of seeing the collapse of all he deemed good in the world. Perhaps it was the prospect of never seeing the sun rise again, or never again seeing the stars, or of not being able to see his father again… His father was someone that he had frequently thought of during his travels with the Ringbearer. It was his father who had taught him to fight as he did, pushing him through lessons in weaponry ’til he was as efficient and accurate as an eagle and as swift as a wolf. He had resented the tutoring back then, but now he thanked the gods for his father pushing so relentlessly.

His quiver had been emptied long ago, so it was down to his ability with his knives to keep him alive.

Another Orc clashed its scimitar with his long knives. The weapon was effectively blocked by one knife, and the other sliced through its neck, sending a stream of black down its breastplate. This was how the night had been going so far – block, slash, kill. Block, slash, kill. He was so used to it that all of the death he brought about did not bother him quite as much as it used to – but it did not mean that he was impervious to it, that it failed to affect him anymore. It did.

He never got the chance to recover his breath as two more came at him, their lust for the spill of blood fuelled by the fall of their companion. They were bigger than the previous one had been – Urõk-hai. They even surpassed the Elf’s height such was their stature. He did not allow that to faze him in the slightest, however, and threw himself into the battle with all the vigour that his tiring body and mind could muster.

One of the disadvantages that Orcs had was that they were not very agile. One of the advantages that Elves had was that they were. Legolas was able to whip round the back of one of them and punch one of the knives in and out of its back with lightening speed. He hated killing like this – he thought it unfair to kill when his opponent could not see him – but here, right now, he had no option and showed no mercy, just as Aragorn had said.

The Orc collapsed and he was left with the larger of the two. It roared its rage into the night – one of the disadvantages of heightened senses was that the Elf could smell the putrid breath from where he stood. Had he known what it was like to feel so, he would have described it as nauseating.

Lightening snaked across the sky above their heads, and Legolas thought that he saw the tinge of something blue-green beneath the blood of Elves and Men alike upon his enemy’s blade. He classed that as his mind tricking him in the flash of light and paid no heed to it, diving into battle again with his night vision ruined.

This Urõk had incredible strength, and Legolas was forced to rely upon his speedy reflexes to keep himself alive. He only just managed to hold off the scimitar with one knife, and the attempted slash at its throat proved to be ineffective as his other weapon glanced off of the face of the Orc’s shield.

The Orc came for a second attack, and Legolas was hard pressed to deflect the next blow, emitted with greater strength and ferocity than the previous one had been. But turn it away he did, with the greatest thrust that he could muster, throwing the creature’s sword arm into the air. This was his only chance of beating it. He threw his weight onto his arm as he surged forward into its foul body, knife leading the way. But something happened as he made his charge that made him scream into the night. Something tore into his side. He fell more than pushed into the Urõk with his shock, still sending his knife through its gut as was intended. He then turned on his new opponent and slashed its throat as it foolishly lowered its guard to roar mockingly at him.

His left side was hot; he gasped with it, not really able to inhale as well as he wanted, the air entering his lungs in short, sharp bursts. It felt like the pain was burning him with its intensity, the purest agony he had ever experienced in all of his millennia…

He dropped the knife in his right hand to clutch at the wound, to hide the betraying blood that the Orcs would undoubtedly smell, his back bent in a feeble attempt to lessen the pain.

He carried on with his task, trying as hard as he could to not allow the agony to engulf him or to frighten him too much with the way it impaired his vision. His lung had not been punctured, he was sure of that – there was not the coppery tang of blood in his mouth, which was a good sign, he thought bitterly. But that small dose of knowledge about his wound did not cause the pain to diminish by any means, and he knew not what other damage had been done to his body.

With the passing of another Orc life he could take no more. Sharp pains flashed through his muscles, sometimes so intense he nearly dropped the knife he still held. His head lightened, making his actions uneven, sluggish, threatening to make him pass out, and his vision was so bad he could no longer distinguish Orc from Man. He could not afford to kill one of his fellows by mistake. The best he could do was get out of the way. And so he searched for a wall against which he could crouch and die. If an Orc got him before then, then so be it. A great darkness loomed at him as he staggered over corpses of both foes and friends. And then his eyes could see only pitch dark – and all was lost to him when his body fell as his mind fleeted from the intolerable tribulation that it could cope with no longer.

Aragorn breathed in the morning air with a smile playing across his lips. The sun was on his face and victory was theirs. He simply thanked the gods for Gandalf and Éomer coming in time. That last charge had completely turned the tables in their favour.

He was keen to discuss what had happened with Legolas – undoubtedly the Elf would have something to say about the events that had ensued. And it was then that Aragorn realised that he had not seen him since the Elf had hauled himself and Gimli up the Wall that night.

He cast his grey eyes about the battlefield, hunting for a blond head or grey steed. When he found none, he began to worry. Convincing himself that the field was huge and that there were so many horsemen in one area it would be the near impossible to find one alone, Aragorn walked Brego through the throng of men and horses with the vague hope that he would find his best friend.

It was strange how he saw so many people that he knew alive and well – Éomer, Gandalf, Théoden and countless others. Why could he not find the one that he wanted?

They rode back to the fortress, and, as soon as he entered, Aragorn handed Brego over to a confused Éomer, offering only a hasty explanation of wanting to find his friend before he hurried off into the swarm of joyous people from the Glittering Caves.

He asked some of the people he came across if they had seen an Elf wandering around. The multitude of them replied yes, but when pressed for information about their garb the answers were never what he wanted to hear.

Dread began to settle in his chest as Aragorn decided to scour the Deeping Wall and check the masses of bodies that lay about the Wall’s feet. Elves, Orcs, Men, they were all there, unmoving. Dead. All of this death, this waste of Elven and human life made him feel sick. It heightened his sense of foreboding.

There was such a vast amount of rubble scattered on the ground – fine shards of stone from the blasted Wall snapped beneath his boots, grating with the dust and bits of rock, and he found his way obstructed more than once by gigantic boulders which had been flung into the air as though they were leaves in a gale. He did not wish to know what lay under some of them, though it was rather telling sometimes by the dark stains which formed grizzly stains in the dirt.

He could not help but smile as he passed the corpse of an Orc that lay flat on its back with a green-fletched shaft protruding from between its eyes. Legolas’ mark.

Something glinted in the shadow of the Wall on the ground as he passed. He realised what it was with a horrified gasp and picked it up. One of Legolas’ long knives, stained with black blood. Aragorn knew that its master would never discard it willingly – he was simply too proud of them to do that. His hand shook as he rotated it, and he was unable to oppress the dread that welled in his chest.

Panic over-rode the foreboding sense that he had previously felt as he hunted more frantically, and it was as though the pit of his stomach had disappeared when he saw the figure with blond hair slumped in the corner of a cold stone stair, completely still. A leg was brought up tight to his chest, the other closest to the Wall stuck out before him, his head facing the Wall.

Aragorn practically flew over the corpses to get to him, cold with fear, skidding to a halt in the debris at the Elf’s side. He went down on his knees, caring not for the biting rock pieces that stabbed at his skin.

‘Legolas,’ Aragorn said urgently, tears choking him. No, this could not be so. He would not allow it to be. ‘Legolas, please speak to me,’ he begged, the pain of loss already beginning to tug at his hope that his friend may yet be alive.

The Elf turned his head slowly from the Wall at the sound of his friend’s voice, blinking constantly because his eyes would not remain focused and his head pounded as though his brain were trying to escape.

‘Aragorn?’ A hoarse whisper, little more than that.

Aragorn laughed and threw his arms about his friends’ shoulders in a tight embrace, his tears now turned to those of joy at finding him alive. But the smile faded from his lips as he drew away to look the Elf in the face.

His eyes were sunken and dull. His skin was deathly pale, save on his left cheek where it was grazed from when he had fallen into the Wall, and there was a trickle of dried blood down his face that originated from a cut just in his hairline. His lips were tinged with blue. There was something very wrong.

‘You look terrible.’

Legolas chuckled at his friend’s words and shook his head to himself.

‘You are hurt?’ Aragorn found his fear again, just as poignant as before as he watched his friend’s face closely.

‘It’s just a scratch,’ came the reply, a small smile trying to break onto the Elf’s face to calm his friend. ‘I’m alive, so it can’t be too serious.’

‘You and I know that that is not true,’ said Aragorn, shaking his head.

‘I am alright, Aragorn! Stop fretting!’ His tone had been sharp. It was never sharp.

‘Well then, you can come back to the Hornburg with me.’

When the Elf made no movement, Aragorn took his right arm and tried to pull him up. Nothing could have readied him for what was to happen next.

Legolas screamed out in obvious agony and Aragorn let go instantly, Legolas’ hand shooting back to where it had been before it had been taken away. He was appalled by the sound that he had never heard from the Elf before in his life.

Legolas’ face was screwed up in pain, the heel of his outstretched leg digging into the dirt.

‘Let me see it, Legolas.’

Legolas’ eyes were still closed with his pain, but that did not stop the tears leaking from them. He shook his head at Aragorn’s request.

‘Legolas. Legolas, look at me,’ Aragorn commanded in a soft tone. He crouched and stared at his friends’ face, waiting. ‘Stop being stubborn and look at me.’

Something of the king inside him could be heard in the Man’s voice, and Legolas picked up on this. He could not refuse that order as much as he wanted to. So he opened his eyes grudgingly and looked at his friend.

‘Now let me see.’

His hand came away slowly, reluctantly, the Elf gasping as it did so. As soon as it was held before him, Legolas actually looked upon his hand for the first time since he had placed it there. What he saw terrified him. It was not of the natural tone of his skin, but dripping crimson onto his trousers.

‘It’s a big scratch,’ he breathed, an uneven frightened laugh escaping his lips. His attempt at levity did not succeed in making him feel any better, though. He turned to his friend for comfort, simply getting Aragorn’s eye contact. It hurt Aragorn to see the sheer terror in his blue eyes as he looked up at him.

He ventured his own hands to the Elf’s side, pulling gently on the torn, blood-soaked jerkin to make his inspection a little easier. Despite the fact that the wound was up close to the Wall, he could see the extent of it. It was not a mere scratch. It was a lengthy laceration, deep enough to cause him great concern.

Whilst he was leaning over Legolas’ body, he could feel heat radiating from him. As he drew back, the Elf said in a quiet voice: ‘I feel cold.’ He was actually shivering.

Legolas never felt the cold, and Aragorn knew that to be a fact. On Caradhras he had been the only member of the Fellowship to go without a cloak and be perfectly happy, even during the blizzard. Cold just did not affect him.

Aragorn laid a hand across his friend’s brow and found it to be burning hot. Now he was very worried.

‘Come on, mellon nin.’ Aragorn scooped the Elf up carefully in his arms, deeming that it would be foolish to even contemplate making him walk.

Legolas huddled into Aragorn in an attempt to get some warmth as the Man strode back towards the Hornburg.