Happy Birthday to Ray’s Dog favorite ranger. RD is vacationing on the deck and left the actual task of writing this to me. I hope he’s not overly traumatized when he reads it. He did demand I make it clear that neither he nor I--his mouthpiece--gain anything other than a couple of training treats for inserting ourselves into Tolkien’s universe. All rights for Tolkien’s work remain with his heirs and with the companies who paid big money to own a piece of the gravy train. The dog, under the contract I was compelled to sign, is entitled to and receives his usual Milkbone on demand. But for Meckinock, he’d do it for free.

A special thank you to Daw the minstrel for beta reading. All errors are mine. She did an extraordinary job of finding my comma obsession and eliminating them. The ones that are out of place are there because I rewrote something at the last minute and my finger went on automatic. Thanks, Daw.

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                                        In Search of Joy: Chapter One

Legolas moved into position to await his captain’s signal to attack. Roiling smoke blew in plumes of gray, black and milky white to block the mid-afternoon sun.  Flames, beaten by the wind, leapt from thatched roof to plank walls and onward as fire roared through the cottages of the woodmen’s village. Sweat beaded on Legolas’s upper lip. Even from where he stood in the trees, the intense heat blanketed him as if he stood on the edge of a mountain nearing eruption.

Only seconds passed, but Legolas felt as if lifetimes moved in slow motion within his full view. His gut tightened. Orcs, larger than any the Woodland Realm knew, fought in full daylight.  

The signal came and Legolas released his arrow into an orc wrenching a pitchfork from a man half the orc’s size. A young woman ran screaming from a burning house, a babe clutched in her arms and another small child latched to her free hand. An orc raised his blade to strike down the woman, but Legolas’s arrow found its mark. Staggering backwards from the bolt, the orc tumbled into the fire. The woman continued to scream as she jerked away, then ran blindly with her children. In an instant, she disappeared into the mayhem of clashing swords and raining arrows; Legolas could offer her no more help and moved on to the next target.

During the chaos of battle, Legolas knew of no way to determine whether he still fought in the beginning, climbed the middle’s peak, or neared the end. What he did know was his quiver had little left to yield.  He also knew the signal to take to the ground would come in moments. The elves would lose their advantage of being in the trees and picking off the orcs, but driving a blade into the thick hide of the unholy creatures left him with a satisfaction only gained by the physical exhaustion of hand to hand combat.

Pulling his last arrow, he sighted an orc bearing down on a mannish youth who tried to wield a sword far too large for him. The boy managed to block one blow of the more powerful orc before Legolas’s arrow pierced the enemy’s chest. Despite the boy’s shaking hands and knees, he hefted the heavy sword back up to ward off another orc that charged him. Legolas reached for his knives but before he could unsheathe them an arrow struck the orc. The boy swayed under the weight of his weapon and dropped to his knees. Legolas whipped his head to find Tree with his bow still trained on the felled orc.

The signal to ground came.  Legolas dropped from his perch into a full run. With his blades in hand, he entered the battle.

The sudden cracking of timber and the screams of women as they ran from a burning barn turned Legolas’s direction. The women scattered, helping the old and the children as they tried to outrun the orcs. Among them, Legolas recognized the wife of one of the village leaders.  Remeniel ran with her daughter, a small bundle of golden-blonde curls and fingertip dimples, clasped to her chest.  The woman dodged an orc, but when she veered, she met another. Before the orc’s sword could find its mark, Legolas’s turned the knife in his hand and sailed it to lodge in the creature’s throat. By the time Legolas reached the dead orc to retrieve his blade, Remeniel had staggered onward.

The women and children had little hope but to scatter into the forest and hide. As he neared them, intending to clear the way to the forest, an orc blocked his path. Legolas pivoted to his side, the snarling orc’s sword catching only air. Whirling back around, Legolas slashed through the gut of the creature. Kicking the orc aside, he again started toward Remeniel and her child.  In her panic, she tumbled over the outstretched legs of a dead villager. Her precious burden rolled like a ball from her arms. The woman reached for the child even as she struggled against the folds of her skirt binding her legs.

A guttural cry that made Legolas’s skin turn cold joined the noise of the battle as an orc brought his blade up to skewer the woman. Legolas lunged forward, leaping broken bodies, but from out of the chaos, an arrow caught the orc in the back. The sword dropped, tilting in its fall, to roll from the terrified woman’s back.

Remeniel crawled toward her child. Legolas had no time to aid her. Three orcs charged him. Two, he sent to their death while Tree finished the third.

The woman’s screams snapped his attention back to her. An orc snatched the little girl from the ground and tossed the flailing child to another. He raised his sword over the woman. At that moment, a strange man clad in dark leathers, drove his sword into the orc’s back. The creature roared his death cry as the sword’s tip emerged between his ribs. The man ripped the sword from the orc’s torso and silenced him with one swift strike. The orc’s head dropped to the ground. The body toppled like a felled tree next to the severed head.

Legolas leapt after the child. The orcs’s numbers had lessened, but a wall of smoke obscured his view. A glint of golden hair, dulled by the gray curtain, caught his eye. He rushed forward only to meet a blade swinging toward him. With his long knives crossed, he stopped the sword. His arms strained to keep the orc at bay. Legolas shoved his foot into the creature’s stomach to push him back. As the orc stumbled, Legolas sliced through his thick neck, blood spurting as the head lolled backwards. When the decapitated body tilted, Legolas jumped aside to keep the bloody carcass from falling on him.

The screams of the child echoed around him, muffled by the smoke bank, but just ahead, four orcs, with no more care than if they fought over a rag doll, snatched the girl from one to another. As Legolas reached the group, the strange man leapt forward, his sword blurring as he cut through the orcs. Legolas engaged the foul creatures from the other side and in moments, the four orcs lay dead in pools of their own blood.

Legolas jerked his knives from the chest of a creature and whirled to meet the next one. When none came, he searched the carnage for the child. Through the haze, he saw the strange man kneeling over what appeared to be only a bundle of bloody rags. Legolas sprang over the orc’s body toward the strange man. From the pack on his back, the man pulled a blanket and wrapped the small mound. A lock of bloodied golden hair fell from under the man’s gentle hands.

“NO!” Legolas yelled as he dropped to his knees beside the man. “No…” The last sounds of the battle echoed at a distance until only weeping and the receding shouts of men and Elves remained. Legolas sat in stunned silence, staring at the tiny lump as blood seeped in wider stains through the rough gray blanket.

The man whispered something so softly Legolas did not hear. Even had the man spoken louder, Legolas could not have understood him. Nausea swept over him, and his heart had lodged so firmly in his throat, he did not know if he could draw another breath.  “She was just a child,” Legolas said in disbelief.

The man placed his hand on the blanketed child’s head and whispered something again.

Legolas stared at the dark-haired man, but could find no words. A firm hand grasped his shoulder. Legolas did not need to look to know that Tree stood behind him. The touch of his fellow warrior was enough to jar Legolas from his grief. He took the tiny figure into his arms and stood. The man rose also, tugging sharply on a leash tethered to his arm. Legolas turned and walked back toward where a village square had once stood. From the corner of his eye, he glimpsed dark leather keeping pace at his side.

Tree tapped Legolas’s arm and nodded toward where Remeniel sat on the ground near the smoldering ruins of her home. Another woman knelt at her side, her arms wrapped around the sobbing woman’s shoulders. Men dug through the ruins with sticks and small branches. One man dug with desperate abandon, wholly focused on the charred timbers and scattering ashes that had once been his home. “Are you sure she came back here?” he demanded of his wife.

“No!” the woman answered. She gasped between her sobs for enough air to force out her next words. “But I can’t think where else she would go when we were separated. She was scared!”

The man’s face set with determination, he renewed his efforts to push aside what was left of the front wall, now only ashes and smoke, charred wood and glowing embers.

Legolas fought the sick swaying of his stomach. Remeniel had seen the orcs take the child. Why were they looking for her here? In his heart he knew she could not face what she had seen.

Legolas called the man’s name, “Dolgon!” Not hearing, the man continued to plunge his stick into the ashy debris. The woman looked up at Legolas holding the small bundle. Her scream stabbed at his heart and his eyes burned. She lunged forward to fall at his feet. Her husband flung the stick aside and ran toward them. The other woman scooped the weeping woman her into her arms and rocked her as a mother would soothe a child.

Legolas placed the precious burden into the man’s arms. “I am sorry.” To Legolas’s ears, his voice sounded distant as if it had come from someone else. It faltered, too weak to carry a message of such importance. “I could not reach her in time.”

Dolgon said nothing as he received his daughter’s body. His eyes, red-rimmed from the smoke, spilled to cut watery trails cut through the dark smudges on his cheeks like rain snaking its way through a burnt and barren land. Legolas thought Dolgon nodded his understanding, but he could not be certain. The child’s father walked back toward the smoking rubble of his home. A lone bench had survived the inferno, remaining untouched outside where the front door had once been. Only the day before Legolas had sat on the bench while a proud little girl had shown him her new doll. Now the man sat alone on that bench, tenderly embracing the ruins of his life.

Tree leaned toward him and spoke where only Legolas could hear. “Come. There is much to be done.”

Legolas walked with Tree toward a group of warriors dragging the bodies of the orcs from the village. His captain strode among them, stopping a warrior here and there and sending them to other tasks.

Passing a small intact cottage, Legolas became aware again of the dark-haired man following behind him. He stopped and turned. “You are not one of the woodmen,” he said as a statement of fact. The man’s dark head towered above the woodmen, and his features revealed no kinship.

“No,” the man answered. “I saw the orcs enter the village. By the time I arrived, they had already begun their attack.”

Legolas slid his eyes over to the strange creature tied to the man. “Then you are a traveler?”

The man’s brow wrinkled. “I have traveled the reaches of Middle-earth, but I have come to the Greenwood with purpose. I desire to speak with the captain of this Elvish patrol.”

Through the fog of fatigue and grief, Legolas suddenly realized the man spoke perfect Sindarin, though his inflections were strange. “I will take you to him.”

The man’s eyes widened.  “You are not in command?”

Legolas shook his head. “No, I am the second of this patrol.” Legolas saw no need to explain how he had come to be second in a patrol when he himself still held a captaincy on the eastern border.

The man bowed his head respectfully as if understanding that Legolas was in an unusual position. “Then I beg your pardon,” he said. “I meant no disrespect to you or your captain.”

“Come.” Legolas led the way to Opalan.

As they walked through the waste of battle, Legolas noted the man’s bearing. Weariness had not passed over the human, just as it had not forgotten anyone else there, but this man retained an air of confidence and determination.  “How have you come to speak the language of the Elves so well?”

The man did not falter in his long strides. “I was raised among Elves.”

Legolas remained silent for a moment to allow the man to continue, but when he did not, Legolas prodded him to go on. “What name do you go by so that I might tell my captain?”

“I am known as Strider.”

Again, Legolas waited for something more, but in an echo of his earlier terseness, the man offered nothing.

“And this creature?” Legolas motioned to the strange being that scuttled along behind the man. Pale and sickly, its wide-eyed gaze jittered from one point to another as if the creature sought the opportunity to escape the destroyed village…or the man.

The stranger did not even glance back to the being, but continued to walk between Legolas and Tree, dragging the sorry being in his wake. “I fear I have leave to disclose such only to the Elvenking. I beg your forgiveness.”

Legolas surveyed the man with the impassive expression he learned from his elders. “I see. Then I shall not trouble you with more questions.”

When they reached the harried captain, Legolas introduced the human with the scant information he had been given, then fell silent.

Opalan’s gaze lingered on the creature. “You wish an audience with the king?”

“I do,” the man replied. “At the behest of Mithrandir, I have come this way.”

Opalan turned from the creature crouched at the man’s heels. “And what business do you have with the king?”

Strider bowed his head again in respect. “Please forgive the mystery of my request, but I fear I cannot discuss the nature of my visit with any but the king.”

 After a long pause, the captain motioned to the forest. “Then I will assign a guard to see you safely to the stronghold. These woods are perilous and such guidance will be needed. If you will allow me to see that the villagers are aided by whatever means the Elves may offer, then I will do so.”

Strider placed his hand over his heart, more, Legolas thought, as a gracious gesture rather than a salute of rank to the captain. “I offer my own aid, captain. I know something of healing and would care for those whom I might.”

Opalan sighed. “We would be grateful for your help.”  The captain’s formal stance loosened. Legolas took this to signal the captain’s trust of the man. He felt no darkness in the stranger, but prudence demanded caution when dealing with humans. The captain turned his attention to the smoking village. “I will leave you then to do as you will. There are many wounded, far more than the Elves or the men can aid.” He stopped and looked once again to the creature. “Are you certain this one will cause no harm?”

Strider’s eyes grew as cold and dark as gray thunderheads shuttering a summer day. “He will do as I bid or I will kill him.” The stranger spoke with assurance that a truce had already been negotiated and it would stand.

“I will hold you to your word,” the captain said then strode away to resume his duties.

While Legolas aided the woodmen with their dead and wounded, he lost sight of Strider. There was little time to think about anything other than the needs of the woodmen, but when Legolas found a quiet moment to retreat into his own thoughts, he attempted to lay out the puzzle called Strider and construct the few pieces of information he had into a coherent picture. Legolas found nothing about the human to be congruent.  

After Legolas appointed a small contingent of Elves to erect makeshift coverage for the men before the light faded into the cold of a winter’s night, he finished helping move wounded to structures still standing. In one of the cottages, he found Strider bent low over a young girl on a pallet. A gaping wound laid open her side. Legolas remained silent as the man smiled and spoke to her as he worked. Legolas could see the man’s ability as he cleaned and stitched the torn flesh. The girl closed her eyes as if her pain and fear subsided under his steady hands and gentle presence.

Still, the creature remained tethered to the man. Balled up on its haunches, its knees stuck nearly above its ears. It seemed to watch the man with a mixture of curiosity and disdain on its odd, flat face. In the confines of the small cottage, the villagers kept their distance from the creature, never venturing closer to it than necessary.

Legolas squatted next to the man. “Is there anything I might do to help you?”

Strider did not remove his eyes from his work. “I could use more clean water and bandages. There does not seem to be enough.”

“I will see to it.” Legolas started to rise, but bent back again. “Is there nothing that we can do with this being?  It seems to unnerve the villagers.”

The man smiled at the young girl, then looked up. “I cannot be parted from my charge. Place a guard on us, if you like, but until I have reached my destination, the creature will remain with me.”

Legolas scratched at his neck where his skin itched from ash and sweat. “Would it free your worries if I posted a guard to stand watch over the being while it remains with you?” A guard would also free Legolas of worry.

Strider turned back to his work. “That is not necessary. I have grown accustomed to having two minds while it has been with me.” He glanced back to Legolas. “But I would not be unhappy to be able to place all my attentions into what my hands are doing.”

“Then I will see the creature is watched.” Legolas rose and called a young warrior to him, explaining that he could continue to aid the wounded, but his primary task would be to watch the strange being. Legolas thought he saw the man’s shoulders relax.

The sun had sent its last light from the western horizon when Legolas, tired and heart sore, joined the able bodied villagers under torchlight as they committed their dead to the ground. A row of graves had been dug and shrouded bodies lay next to each one. Some of the bodies were small, too small for such large graves. Along with the little ones, adults, men and women, wrapped and tied, waited to be secured into their final resting place. Family and friends wept. But many of the faces reflected the same numb disbelief that must have shown on Legolas’s face. He tried to school his expression to one of somber reverence, but each time he thought to gather himself into the countenance of a warrior, he saw a ragged bloodied ball and a flash of golden hair. Death was not new to him; he had seen it many times in his years as a warrior, but he had never seen so many people cruelly destroyed at one time. Grief would not let go of his heart.

On the outskirts of the mourners, Legolas saw Strider, standing with his right hand over his heart and his left hand grasping the tether to the pallid creature.  It squatted behind the man, unblinking and silent as it watched the rituals of the woodmen. Its eyes never left the scene before it, but Legolas felt the creature seemed without understanding for what he witnessed, a being vacant of all but what mattered to him. Legolas’s stomach tightened and a cold wave rolled over him.

The warriors camped to the east of the village, near enough to continue to aid the villagers come morning, but far enough to grant the people peace to mourn. Legolas assigned the watch, then returned to the fire. Little conversation could be heard, only the rhythmic scrape of a warrior sharpening his blade blended with the crackling of the fire.

Again the man held himself apart. Strider had hobbled the creature to a tree and bound its hands and feet together, but he had not removed the tether from his wrist.  He seemingly paid the creature no mind, but Legolas could tell by the firm set of the man’s shoulders that he was aware of every move or breath the being made.

Legolas poured a cup of hot tea and sat down next to the captain. “Everything is quiet,” he said. “The watches are set.”

Opalan rolled an empty cup between his hands. “At first light, I want you and Tree to take four more warriors and see this man to the stronghold.”

Legolas looked up with surprise.

“I think it would be best.” Opalan stretched his legs out and crossed his ankles. “This has been a trying day. You were due leave when you came here to help me, and I think it is time now.”

“Have I displeased you in some way?”

The captain shifted on the log. “No, of course not. You are a capable captain in your own right. It has been a long time since you were in need of someone to direct you on the battlefield.” He looked up at Legolas. “You have never seen a child die before, have you?”

Legolas shook his head. “Have you?”

“It has been a long time, but yes, I have. And I can tell you that it gets no easier no matter how many times you see it. To see innocent people slaughtered is never painless, but a child….”

“And you are sending me home because of this?”

“No, I am sending you home because you are exhausted and this was merely the final blow. I would have sent you home soon anyway.” He clapped Legolas on the back. “You have been a tremendous help to me over the last two months and I am grateful for your aid. The newer warriors are doing well and today they proved it. You have done your duty.” Opalan straightened. “I have to send someone to escort the man and his…creature. You will make a good guide to seeing him home to the king.”

Legolas’s mouth curved into a faint smile. “I admit I would like to sleep in my own bed for a few days.”

“Do not get too accustomed to it. The commander will not let you get overly comfortable.”

“I think not.”

“Get some rest.” Opalan stood and rolled his shoulders. “The morning will come all too soon.”

Legolas stood as well. He took the full cup of tea and went to where Tree had stretched his long, lanky frame on his bedroll.  Legolas’s found his roll already thrown out next to Tree’s. Sitting cross legged, he sipped the cooling tea.

Tree opened his eyes. “Did you eat?”

Legolas shook his head and continued sipping the tea.

“You should, you know.”

“I have no stomach for food.”

“Still, you have not eaten since very early this morning. Even when you do not feel hunger, your body still needs nourishment.”

Legolas turned his head to see the older warrior. “When my father appointed you to help train me and watch my back, I do not recall him mentioning that you were to replace my naneth.”

Tree chuckled. “Only while on patrol. But it was not the king who so commanded me; it was the queen.”

“My naneth?” A faint smile curled on his lips.

“You are her baby, Thranduilion. Get used to it. That will not change.”

“I am a bit large to sit on my naneth’s knee.”

“A fact of life, young one: You might grow into a capable adult and a formidable warrior, but naneths always have first claim.”

Legolas grunted.

“Your naneth is wise. She will let you go and choose your own path, but in return, she expects you to be worthy of her trust. That,” Tree said, looking at Legolas from the corner of his eye, “includes taking care of yourself even when you do not feel like doing so.”

“You are annoying,” Legolas said as he pushed up from the ground. “Have I mentioned that today?”

Tree closed his eyes. “It has been several hours.”

Legolas made his way to the fire where a stew still bubbled in the pot. When he glanced back at his guard, a trace of smile lifted Tree’s entire face.

TBC