Upon the Edge of a Knife

Chapter 2

The slopes of Caradhras were stern. Twisted and rough, often with no clear path, it was a grueling way for those who went on shorter legs. It was nothing to Legolas, for he had been born and raised in the shadow of the Mountains of Greenwood, and climbing was to him almost second nature. He went unnoticed as the silent rearguard as Gandalf and Aragorn forged ahead in the lead while the daylight waned. They had not consulted him in choosing this road, exhibiting the same independent nature common to them both that excluded all others from their counsels. It was a disposition that was a particular vexation to Thranduil his father when it was he who was slighted by it, but for himself Legolas did not quibble his subordinate place in the Fellowship.

He looked ahead to see the dour-minded Dúnadan surmount another stony obstacle, a fine figure of a man with a broad back and straight shoulders. A lord. Legolas remembered when Aragorn had been naught but a youth of twenty years, boldly and proudly wearing his newfound name and rank into Greenwood where he presented himself to the Elvenking only to have Thranduil harden in one unforgiving week what aspects of his manhood Imladris had neglected. He smiled, for anyone who merited the final approval of his hardbitten father must be a worthy captain. And even as tumultuous as was the working relationship between Thranduil and Mithrandir, the wizard had won the respect of the Wood and its king. Legolas would not object to following the two of them.

Darkness was falling rapidly in the monotonous struggle to climb the foot of the mountain, but darkness alone would not obscure an Elf’s vision. Adjusting naturally to the fading light, Legolas fulfilled the duties of his placement. It was with confidence that Aragorn had assigned him the rear, the most vulnerable of positions. Even so, Legolas feared it would not be evils of flesh and blood that would harry them on this quest, and it was in that vein that his mind most often wandered.

Two paces ahead of him, Boromir stumbled on a treacherous crumbling of rock in the twilight, weighted down by his equipment. Legolas caught him ere he could fall, ignoring both the jarring of the rigid shield where it fell hard against his arm, and the rough blow of firewood against his shoulder. Ahead of them, Gimli and the hobbits glanced back when they could spare their eyes from the trail, but the incident was righted when it had hardly begun.

"My thanks," Boromir offered with sincere but colorless gratitude as he resumed his climb.

"It was nothing," Legolas said. But his voice was devoid of emotion as well, a match for the task before them. They had to stop once more as Sam coaxed Bill, the heavily-laden pony, over yet another ill-placed obstacle. With a stirring of sympathy for the patient beast, Legolas shifted his own load of dry wood on his back, making a conscious effort to keep it from entangling in his bow and quiver. It was a burden they all bore by Boromir’s advice. Even while it was a prudent foresight, the extra encumbrance made climbing all the more difficult.

Legolas exploited the idle moment to taste the crisp winter wind on his face, thinking what a pity it was that the threatening clouds obscured what would have been a fiery sunset upon the frozen face of the peaks towering above them. He was very much a creature of the North, and the Season of Snow held much charm for him despite the hardships it brought. He ceased resisting the cold and embraced it, imagining the snowfall and ice that must have graced the landscape of his home by this time. This was not where nor how he had imagined himself spending this year’s winter, but it would require more than a chill to turn him back. You may tarry, or come back, or turn aside into other paths, as chance allows. The further you go, the less easy will it be to withdraw; yet no oath or bond is laid on you to go further than you will. Lord Elrond’s words returned to him often. He had promised to go as far as the passes of the Mountains, and maybe beyond. It was the "maybe" that weighed upon him now, watching the laborious progress of the Fellowship ahead of him. Could he ever turn away with good heart? He was beginning to doubt it. Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens. Those had been Gimli’s words, and for once he and the dwarf were in complete agreement.

He could hear the idle complaints of Pippin ahead of them, both echoed and admonished by Merry, and could descry their diminutive forms in the thickening darkness that had descended upon them all. The clouds overhead obscured moon and stars, leaving them to find their way in inclement obscurity. Gimli grunted over the trail as it gradually steepened, demonstrating the unexpected surefootedness of his kind over arduous ground. The dwarf pushed the pony’s hindquarters ahead of him even as Legolas often braced his hand against Boromir’s swaying back, each doing his own part to keep their Fellowship together.

There was no one to catch Legolas if he should fall. The rear was a rather lonely place, but he would not have wished it on any of the rest of them. Well, he rethought himself with a twisted excuse for a smile, maybe the dwarf.

Boromir cursed under his breath as he was righted yet again from behind, perhaps annoyed by the Elf’s firm but quiet solicitude in addition to their trials. "This is madness," he grumbled, crawling blindly over the ascending rubble. "There are other more worthwhile ways to flirt with death, I am sure."

"For myself, I follow where Aragorn leads," Legolas maintained, though he imagined Boromir had not sought an answer. He did not expect insubordination of him, but the Man certainly had the discontented pride for it.

"Has he asked you?"

"He knows there is no need." Legolas gave him a helpful shove to get him over the next rise, taking careful note of what particulars of the terrain the Man would be blind to in the dark. There was heard a stumble ahead of them accompanied by the grumbling of a hobbit, their fair young voices roughened by the strain of endless travel.

The wind was merciless, beating down on them with sharp and intrusive fingers until even Legolas felt uncomfortable. It matched the unpleasant chill that threatened to grow in his heart, the same that had taken tenacious hold that night in Eregion when his suspicions had been confirmed and he had interrupted Boromir’s perilous musings. He had not spoken to Aragorn of it; he did not wish to throw more shadows onto the Gondorian before they were deserved. But he had kept a watchful eye on him, even as they all had to reinforce their own resistance to the insidious temptation Frodo bore with him.

Legolas had heard that guttural voice for himself, and he knew too well what Boromir faced. Gondor had been largely foreign to him before Elrond’s Council, but now he saw that realm’s position to be starkly similar to that of his own besieged homeland. The lure was the same: take the Ring, serve your father, defend your people. It was a lure baited with a twisted grain of truth, barbed with the guilt of negligence. Would either of them stand aside and let their people be destroyed because they lacked the courage to do this one great service to their cause? Imagine Lord Thranduil bearing the Ring of Power, was the enticement. His father was already one of the last of the mighty Eldar of old, a King and a Captain beyond compare in the eyes of his son. Possession of the Ring would render him nigh invincible, greater than all the lords gone before him, fair and terrible. But was that what he wanted to do to his father, make an unbridled terror of him? But why not take the burden upon yourself? Relieve your father of his burdens, take his place, Elvenking Legolas of the all the North with the One Ring safe upon your hand.

Boromir lost his footing again in the rock-strewn dark, falling inelegantly into Legolas below, shattering the dangerous fascination those thoughts had woven around his mind. Knocked and bruised one too many times by the gear the Man carried, Legolas held him back a moment when they had both picked themselves up. "Wait," he whispered tersely, catching his arm. "Give me some of that."

"No," Boromir objected in a hushed but adamant tone as he pulled away, his pride already suffering. "I shall carry what is my own, and I need no more assistance from you."

"Your ire is ill directed, son of Men," Legolas admonished him, the experience of his years coloring his tone. "You cannot see in this dark, nor can you climb adequately with your hands otherwise engaged, and I grow weary of breaking your falls upon my shoulders. Come, it is dark; none will know."

Soon Legolas had relieved a reluctant Boromir of his shield and his share of the wood, thus freeing the man’s hands to aid his forward progress over the uncertain terrain. The additional impediments were certainly bothersome enough for an Elf, but it was nothing his strength was unequal to. He would be useless now as a rearguard unless he let it all drop, but the driving objective at the moment was to bring the Fellowship to the mountain whole and entire. Legolas could feel that Boromir was far from pleased as he clambered over the ascending path to close the widening distance between him and Gimli. Slinging the great shield over his shoulder as gently as he might lest he damage his bow or fletching, Legolas gathered the second bundle of wood under one arm and continued on, cloaked in darkness, bounding with the sure footing of a buck over the random stones.

Left alone again with his thoughts, he returned to the fractured illusion Boromir had fortuitously interrupted, unwittingly returning the selfsame favor that had been extended to him on the forsaken plains of Eregion. It was the purpose of the Fellowship to catch one another when they began to fall, and that in more than a literal sense upon dark mountain passes.

As he always did, Legolas rethought the temptations that repeatedly invaded his mind now that their influence was diminished. He had found rational thought to be the most effective way to banish the lingering vestiges and strip them of their false allure. No, he did not want to bring the Ring any nearer his father than it had already been, then in the keeping of Bilbo the halfling. He would not want to see his father become any more or less than he was. As for the pretended fantasy of his own rise to absolute power, the mere thought did violence to his very nature and proved the Ring itself did not yet know him. He had no desire to be king. It was not only a deep and abiding love for his father that had given him sleepless nights at the royal bedside while their sovereign lord lay wounded, for Thranduil had taken his full share of the malevolent shafts he commanded his warriors to face. The Elvenking was no less vulnerable than the rest of them, though he seemed to think otherwise. Legolas sighed as he hitched up the sagging shield on his archer’s shoulders, thinking again of what a challenge his mother had left him in his father. The two of them together had been scarcely enough to look after him as it was.

Thranduil had not been at all pleased by his son’s decision to join Mithrandir’s Fellowship, but had let him go with his reluctant blessing. As much as it had grieved Legolas to cross him, knew he could never have taken no for an answer, and his father had recognized that. Sometimes the call of duty assumed a foreign voice. But now another choice loomed before him, one of north or south, for he had come as far as he had promised. Once they had passed the mountain barrier, should he go on with Frodo or return to his father? Looking ahead through the gloom, Legolas fixed his keen eyes on the back of Gimli the dwarf, wondering what he would do. After wrestling with his own conscience and reconciling his conflicting loyalties, he knew in his heart of hearts that it would be reduced to a mere matter of saving face, for an Elf of Lasgalen would never do less than a Dwarf of Erebor. His father would not wish him to shrink from that kind of challenge.

After midnight the path narrowed dangerously, sheer cliffs on the left, a dark ravine on the right. Legolas thought he could see the bottom in the gloom, but did not like to think about the distance. Boromir finally turned and silently demanded the return of his shield, but that was all Legolas would surrender. He did not want to be reaching out here to catch those who were not blessed with elvish balance and agility. The way only grew steeper, taxing the strength of weary legs and backs. Legolas’ heart went out to the hobbits, who were not adequately conditioned for this discipline. He watched them trudging bravely up the winding path as it twisted ahead and showed them to him, climbing single-file in unquestioning dedication, curly heads bent obdurately against the biting wind. And did he dare consider turning away? At last he stopped deceiving himself, for he knew he could never leave them, not before they had seen the end together. His fate would be theirs.

At last they reached more level ground, but had only exchanged one difficulty for another. Legolas knew that scent, cold and sharp, that faint sound that softly muffled all else. Frozen flakes gently stung his nose and cheeks, swirling in quiet wraithlike forms to settle thickly on their cloaks. The snows had begun.

They went on, but the snows only thickened. No one voiced their concerns, but all knew the peril was mounting against them by the moment. It was not long before they all pulled up their hoods, blessing Elrond again for the cloaks and furs given them in Rivendell. 

"I don’t like this at all," came Sam’s voice from somewhere in the middle of the line. "Snow’s all right on a fine morning, but I like to be in bed while it’s falling. I wish this lot would go off to Hobbiton! Folk might welcome it there."

His hands full, Legolas let his hood blow back and then shook the snow from his hair. He was glad to hear Sam still had spirit enough, but the little one had a legitimate concern. Legolas liked snow well enough, but he looked forward to cinnamon spiced wine afterward beside a warm hearth with his friends. He seriously doubted they would find any such amenities at the summit of Caradhras.

Gandalf had halted in front, a discouraging sign. He turned to Aragorn beside him, and Legolas trudged forward through the ankle-deep snowdrifts with Gimli and Boromir to hear what passed between them.

"This is what I feared," the Wizard sighed, snow thick in his beard. "What do you say now, Aragorn?"

"That I feared it too, but less than other things." Aragorn glanced back to meet the gaze of the others. It seemed to Legolas that he looked for something in his eyes, advice or admonition, suggestion or sentiment. But Legolas had nothing to share with him besides uncertainty, and that was no help to anyone. "I knew the risk of snow, though it seldom falls heavily so far south, save high up in the mountains. But we are not high yet; we are still far down, where the paths are usually open all winter."

"I wonder if this is a contrivance of the Enemy," Boromir offered, echoing Legolas’ unspoken thoughts. They had seen many severe winters after the coming of the Shadow to Dol Guldur. "They say in my land that he can govern the storms in the Mountains of Shadow that stand upon the borders of Mordor. He has strange powers and many allies."

A snow-frosted Gimli grumbled in front of him. "His arm has grown long indeed if he can draw snow down from the North to trouble us here three hundred leagues away."

"His arm has grown long," Gandalf said grimly.

Legolas surreptitiously returned Boromir’s bundle of wood to him, and then shook out his cloak as the snowfall slackened and the wind quieted. Gimli growled and spat snow from his beard, stomping about where he stood lest his feet succumb to the falling temperature.

"Too cold for you, Master Dwarf?" Legolas asked with mock solicitude, unable for the moment to help himself.

Gimli turned a frigid look back at him, enough to freeze him where he stood if the storm did not. "And what would an Wood-elf know of snow in the mountains?" he asked scathingly. "The laugh will be mine when we press on and the frost has found you longing after your haunt beneath the trees."

Legolas scowled but said nothing. He was not one to continue an idle quarrel, regardless of how uncouth his opponent might be. His father had called him self-deprecating; his mother had called him prudent.

Gandalf continued on again through the deepening snowdrifts now that the wind had shown them mercy enough to relent for a time. But they had hardly begun when they were assaulted again by driving blasts of snow, and it seemed the mountain meant this time to stop them. Legolas turned his face from the biting fury of the storm with a grimace lest he be blinded. This was quickly becoming ridiculous, the sharp whistling howl of the wind seeming to mock him, all of them. The snow underfoot was piled higher by the moment, and doubtless would only worsen as they continued further up the pass. Still they trudged forward, for they had little choice in the matter. They had slowed considerably though their effort had doubled, pushing through rising drifts against the unbridled force of the wind.

At last they could walk no more and halted at once by unspoken consent, for it was effort enough to maintain their footing on the path when the ferocity of the gale seemed intent upon sweeping them away to the nightmarish fall beside them. More than that, Legolas had felt a familiar prickling chill creep up his spine that had nothing to do with the cold, the same that over time had come to instinctively warn him of a malevolent presence near. The wind had indeed assumed a wild and laughing voice, and with a flash of premonition he pulled Boromir back against him as there came a dull roar like thunder, and a great frosted boulder crashed down onto the path beside them, fracturing the jagged stone with a showering of cold shards. Nor was it the only one.

"We cannot go further tonight," Boromir called over the howling of the storm, unnerved by the incident but still steady on his feet. "Let those call it the wind who will; there are fell voices on the air; and these stones are aimed at us!"

"I do call it the wind," Aragorn said, turning. "But that does not make what you say untrue. There are many evil and unfriendly things in the world that have no love for those that go on two legs, and yet are not in league with Sauron, but have purposes of their own. Some have been in this world longer than he."

"Caradhras was called the Cruel, and had an ill name long years ago, when rumour of Sauron had not been heard in these lands," Gimli said for himself.

"It matters little who is the enemy, if we cannot beat off his attack!" Gandalf shouted back.

Legolas heard the plaintive plea of a hobbit over the shrill voice of the storm, probably Pippin. Those gentle folk were suffering badly in the fury of the elements, and he wished for their sakes that they would find someplace to weather the worst of the unnatural blizzard.  Gandalf answered in his strong voice, to the relief of many. "It is no good going on. Only a little higher, if I remember rightly, this path leaves the cliff and runs into a wide shallow trough at the bottom of a long hard slope. We should have no shelter there from snow, or stones – or anything else."

"And it is no good going back while the storm holds," Aragorn said. "We have passed no place on the way that offered more shelter than this cliff-wall we are under now."

Shelter, Legolas thought wryly. He passed a bare hand over his eyes to brush the frosted snow from his brows and lashes. This was hardly a shelter. It was a pity Caradhras did not have a higher timberline.

There on the cliff side the Fellowship gathered as near to each other and to the rocky wall as they could. The storm showed no sign of relenting, nor the sun of rising. It would be a long night still. By this time Legolas had tired of his place in the back, and so with an effort he crawled out of the knee-deep drift he stood in, treading with light steps over the surface of the snow to settle down amid the hobbits and the pony. The good beast was himself a meager shelter for the halflings, bearing his trials with proverbial patience as he stood up to his hocks in snow.

The great drifts mounted by the moment, Legolas and Aragorn working together to keep the hobbits from being buried. Aragorn took unspoken charge of Merry and delegated Pippin to Legolas’ charge. That one had begun fading, chilled and drowsy, his once rosy cheeks turned a deathly blue. Legolas gathered him into his lap to share his cloak and his warmth, for those elven kind were more constant and mere cold would not easily prove fatal to them. The snow did not relent, but now Legolas allowed it to build up around him as his father’s hounds often did, something to blunt the buffeting of the wind. Pippin shivered violently where he lay against him – a good sign – and after a moment some color began to return to his pale face. The perian was so young, he would not wish him an early death on a pitiless mountainside. His father would have been fond of him.

"Elf, have you ever had frostbite?" Gimli asked with a grim smile, eyeing Legolas’ fine ears and fingers, both of which were unprotected. "You will, if ever we pass this mountain. I will be glad to cut off anything you wish," he said, running a gloved hand over the dark outline of a small ax at his belt.

Legolas turned a silent but withering glance upon him, trusting to the fabled eyesight of dwarvish kind in dark places, concerned more for the hobbits and with good cause. Boromir leaned over and lifted Frodo out of a new drift, jarring the spent hobbit again to consciousness. "This will be the death of the halflings, Gandalf," he said, an irritable tone in his voice directed at the cruel world at large. "It is useless to sit here until the snow goes over our heads. We must do something to save ourselves."

Gandalf searched in his pack and produced a flask of the miruvor of Imladris, admonishing them to take only a mouthful each. It did much to revive them all, banishing the deadly apathy that a chill can effect in a weary heart. Pippin was awake now but seemed to have no intention of leaving Legolas’ arms until the snow had gone, and still it seemed inexhaustible. There was much Legolas would have freely given at that moment for a glimpse of the sun, but the reign of darkness was yet far from over. He remembered when he and his cousin had once been stranded in bitter weather, and he had known many eternal nights like this one. Aragorn and Merry pushed away yet more of a growing white drift as Sam brushed frost from the pony’s forlorn face. It was an exercise in futility, for the snow swirled faster and thicker than ever before on the wind that howled madly around them.

Pippin shuddered again, but more out of fear than from the cold. Legolas felt him cling to him with the desperation of a child riding a nightmare, a faltering heart beating fearfully against one of a more staid rhythm, hiding his face from the wrath of the malevolent mountain that threatened to punish them all. Legolas felt for him, imagining Pippin’s lapse of courage was only what could be expected of one who had been swept far from home to an uncertain future at the mercy of heretofore nameless powers he did not understand. Merry sat close against them and Aragorn stood over them all with a look of grim sympathy upon his dour face, holding out his cloak to blunt the wind over the shivering halflings. Boromir had set his shield against longsuffering Frodo while Sam huddled behind the shelter afforded by his pony. Both Gandalf and Gimli sat alone, enduring in frigid silence. The snow rose ever higher.

Frodo hung his head wearily, revealing a glint of silver chain at his neck in the snow-swept darkness. Legolas sat imperceptibly straighter against the cliff face, for it eerily seemed that a maleficent eye had just opened to him, an unwelcome and loathsome presence added to their company. It was there still, and in the depths of his mind he heard it laugh. Bitter and sardonic, it ridiculed their hopeless attempts to destroy it, for in the end it would master each of them. What chance did you think you had? It is all in vain. Do you see? Already they die. Did you believe a hobbit could contest the will of the Dark Lord, you misbegotten spawn of Oropher the Fool!

Legolas started as Aragorn kicked him in the leg, his burning flare of anger jarringly smothered in that jolt of surprise. The Dúnadan’s gaze was hard but concerned, and as he steadied his breathing Legolas knew Aragorn must have noted the unhealthy fixation in his eyes, something they had to watch for in each of them. Released once more from the dark tendril that had ensnared his mind with thoughts that were not rightly his own, Legolas shuddered once and looked away. Even the intangible touch of the Ring was repulsive when it did not seek fair cloak for its intent, for it smacked putridly of the Dark Lord that had so marred their lives. He did not envy Frodo the task appointed him.

"What do you say to a fire?" Boromir asked at last, throwing his bundle of wood down in front of their huddling group. "The choice seems near now between fire and death, Gandalf. Doubtless we shall be hidden from all unfriendly eyes when the snow has covered us, but that will not help us."

"You may make a fire, if you can," Gandalf said, but seemingly with little confidence in their success, for the wood was more than a bit damp by this time, and lighting a flame in the driving wind and snow would be a challenge indeed. "If there are any watchers who can endure this storm, then they can see us, fire or no."

There was one who could see them, Legolas knew. But that mattered little, for they carried it with them.

"Legolas, you are of the woodland folk," Aragorn said hopefully. "Perhaps your skill will have greater effect than mine."

It was true that in Mirkwood Thranduil could ignite or put down a great blaze by his will alone, a talent his son shared to some extent. But here Legolas was far from their own realm and his father’s puissant influence, and thus his own power was sadly reduced. Setting Pippin aside, he relied on woodcraft alone, and though his skill in that regard was rivaled by few, no flame he struck could survive the unsparing wind. At long last he was forced to reluctantly admit his defeat in favor of the dwarf, but neither could Gimli coax a fire to life.

"Give it to me," Gandalf sighed at last, seeing the others were helpless to fight the ill will of Caradhras. Taking the bushel of tinder, he held it high and thrust his staff into it with a stern word of command as the Company watched. With a flamboyant burst of unnatural blue and green flame the wood ignited in the surrounding dark, an ineffably welcome sight. "If there are any to see, then I at least am revealed to them," he said, setting it in their midst. "I have written Gandalf is here in signs that all can read from Rivendell to the mouths of the Anduin."

None were listening anymore, for they were busily feeding the fire. The hobbits came to new life in the light of the cheerful flames, and everyone climbed to their feet as the snows began to melt and turn to cold streams of slush underfoot. Gathered into a tight circle around that windswept beacon of hope, they all warmed their hands, and the hobbits their feet, daring to hope the end was near.

Gandalf leaned down to speak to Frodo, and Legolas felt Aragorn nudge him inquisitively. "A trying night for you?" he asked in a low voice, using the Sindarin tongue.

"Yes," Legolas confirmed in the same tone. "But it does not seduce so much as provoke me."

"I saw that. It knows not yet how to seduce you, perhaps. Do not dwell upon it."

"That is easier said than it is done, my friend," Legolas murmured wryly. "You ought to know that."

"I do," Aragorn nodded, admitting the inability to ignore that intrusive voice. One might as well ignore the coiling of a snake around his throat. But they did not have to consent to be bitten. "It is a difficult road, Legolas." He smiled, heedless of the incessant storm. "But I would sooner have you among us than all the lords of Elrond’s house."

He threw his bushel of wood onto the fire, renewing its waning vigor. It was initially comforting, until Legolas considered just how quickly it burned. Like many of them, he knew a great deal of fires and survival in the untamed reaches of the world, and it was the brutal truth that the wood would not last long.

"Another already?" Pippin asked shakily, eloquently voicing their thoughts over the threatening howl of the wind, held at bay only for at the moment. They could only hope the dawn was not far.

"The night is getting old," Aragorn assured them when at last all the fuel had been spent. "The dawn is not far off."

"If any dawn can pierce these clouds," Gimli said, suffering from a bout of pessimism.

"The snow is growing less, and the wind is quieter," Boromir observed. He had wandered away from the circle and turned his noble face toward the sky, though there was little enough to be seen.

He was right. Legolas felt the fury of the storm melt into a gradual calm, but the glaring intent was not lessened, as though the black spirit of the mountain waited only to draw new breath before it lashed them again. Dawn grew around them slowly but strongly, showing them a world silent and buried beneath a chilling blanket of white, the path behind them vanished. Even so, it was a clear breath of air after that dark and vicious night, and Legolas was glad to have it. His spirits rose with the coming of the light, banishing the memories of biting wind and sharp swirling snow as an awful dream.

"Caradhras has not forgiven us," Gimli observed, his breath turned frosty in the cold air. Their position was readily apparent to others besides Legolas, and the dwarf needed no sixth elvish sense to know it. "He has more snow yet to fling at us, if we go on. The sooner we go back and down the better."

"Yes, but how?" Merry asked, looking back at the bright wall of snow that stood where the path ought to have been. It would be enough to drown the smaller ones among them.

"If Gandalf would go before us with a bright flame, he might melt a path for you," Legolas suggested, looking out over the snow-softened crags. How they went did not matter to him now. They would go, and then they would be gone from this cheerless mountain. That alone was enough to lighten his heart.

"If Elves could fly over mountains," Gandalf came back at him, obviously not enjoying the same benefits brought by the dawn, "they might fetch the Sun to save us. But I must have something to work on. I cannot burn snow."

Mithrandir always was a bit short-tempered, Legolas remembered.

"Well, when heads are at a loss bodies must serve, as we say in my country," said Boromir, adopting the familiar air of a captain as he saw a lapse in command. "The strongest of us must seek a way. See! Though all is now snow-clad, our path, as we came up, turned about that shoulder of rock down yonder. It was there that the snow first began to burden us. If we could reach that point, maybe it would prove easier beyond. It is no more than a furlong off, I guess."

"Then let us force a path thither, you and I!" Aragorn said, accepting the challenge as between two Men. After lingering so long, the prospect of renewed activity was appealing to all of them. They fell to their task with hopeful enthusiasm, burrowing through the ever deepening drifts as well they might, forging a path through the glistening snow at times chest-deep with all the brute strength they could muster. Their progress was slow, but promising.

Legolas watched them and smiled. He could well have been named one of the strongest among them, but he had not been invited, and their way was not his way. "The strongest must seek a way, say you? But I say: let a ploughman plough, but choose an otter for swimming, and for running light over grass and leaf, or over snow – an Elf." With familiar ease he bounded to the top of the piled snow, shifting his weight as only an Elf knew how. The drift bore him without complaint, sinking only slightly under his feet where he stood. The fresh crest of white stretched away before him, open as the woodland path where he and his friends would run at home. The temptation was irresistible. "Farewell!" he said, smiling back at Gandalf. "I go to find the Sun!" And gathering his legs beneath him, he broke into a free run over the snow reminiscent of so many white winters beneath the eaves of Greenwood. And after his confinement through the night, he felt like a horse turned out of the stable at last into the sunlight. He passed Aragorn and Boromir in a matter moments, waving back at them before he reached the turn in the path and rounded it without a pause.

He ran on, gliding over the lessening snowdrifts, the nearest his kind would ever come to the experience of flight. At last he slowed when the snow was suddenly no more, enjoying the bite of the cold air in his chest and the awakened strength of his heartbeat. He looked back over the pattern of the snowfall, the abrupt cessation confirming their suspicions that Caradhras himself was to blame for their ordeal. In any case, it would make their retreat easier. That word was sour where it sat on the tip of his tongue, agitating what traces of his father’s pride ran in his blood. The clouds hung thickly about the ledge where their Company had been pummeled and punished, but were not gathered so much elsewhere. Continuing at an easy pace down the path, he set out to find the Sun as he had pledged to do.

Observing the position of the clouds, he sought a way around them. It was not an easy task, for the paths were still treacherous and usually did not go where he had a mind to go. Picking his way quickly down the way they had come the night before, stone to stone, Legolas at last found a rambling ravine that looked promising. Dropping from his perch, he braced his legs and slid down the crumbling wall in a cloud of gravel dust, bounding away from boulder to boulder with the quick judgment and confidence that comes of uncounted years in a challenging world. Veering away from the road the Fellowship had taken, this straying trail at last began to climb again, but at the same time it was leaving the choking cloud cover. Legolas followed eagerly, seeking the sun on his face.

But when he finally mounted the high point, there were still clouds hanging overhead intent upon denying him a clear sight of anything. It was frustrating, and Legolas sighed visibly with a huff of frosted breath, wondering if Caradhras was mocking him again. "Go on!" he rebuked him, shaking a fist at the clouds for all the good that would do. "You have already bested us! Leave me be!"

He did not expect anything to come of it, and sat down on one of the many cold boulders to be had, wondering just what Gandalf had in mind now. The mountain would not let them pass regardless of whether the way was watched or not. They would not turn for the Gap of Rohan despite Boromir’s insistence. That did not leave many options to consider, and he shuddered to think of what roads remained to them.

Sitting there on the foothills of a hostile mountain, Legolas wondered again how it had come to this, all their hopes of salvation riding on the shoulders of a valiant but weary halfling. He had often heard his father lament the folly of the Rings, and his son had to agree after what he had seen. The Rings had been wrought long before his birth, but his grandsire Elvenking Oropher had not been offered one, dismissed by the Noldorin Lords and their allies. It was just as well, for it would have required great strength of will to refuse it at the time. But it also meant now that the One Ring had afforded Sauron no special influence over Thranduil, for the Woodland King’s mind remained adamantly closed to him. Their abstinence had not granted them a particularly comfortable existence, but they had learned to make the best of it, and took some measure of grim pride in that they did not rely upon a jeweled crutch of Celebrimbor’s making.

A spill of bright sunbeams fell over him unexpectedly, and Legolas looked up to see the clouds receding, chastened. Revealed with their passing was a clear blue sky over the reaches of Eregion below, and smiling down upon the world was the distant winter Sun, offering more light than warmth, but the very sight of her was heartening. Legolas rose to his feet, a smile again gracing his features. It seemed Caradhras had at last done with them. Gratefully saluting the fair face of the Sun as an elvish knight would a lady, he turned back to return to the Fellowship, leaving her to her appointed ride over the vast reaches of the ever-changing world.

Retracing his steps without hesitation, he followed the ravine back to where he had left the path, surmounting the rockslide with a running start. From there forward it was a mere matter of following the snow, and if sight or memory would not serve him, he could follow the scent well enough.

He walked back, listening to the cold and quiet stillness of the place, the same lifelessness that had disconcerted Aragorn in Eregion. They all could feel their progress was marked by faraway eyes, a paranoia that evoked a feral instinct to slink under a rock. But it seemed there was no help for it.

Again there was a dusting of snow underfoot, deepening only gradually as he went on. Then it rose sharply in a great drift behind the shoulder of rock that marked the beginning of the storm the night before. At first he wondered that their Men had not yet forged their way through it, but then a smile touched his lips again as he caught the faint sounds of discouraged voices within the snow. With a lithe bound he knelt upon the top of the mighty snowdrift, and loosed a bark of laughter. "You have tired so soon, my stalwart friends?" he asked with a glint in his eye.

Aragorn and Boromir looked up at him there, their strength spent as they sat in a churned mess of snow and wiped cold perspiration from their brows. "Laugh at us if you will, Legolas," Aragorn sighed wearily, "but look first how far we have come. But the snows have not receded and we have little enough strength left as it is."

"I do laugh at you," Legolas said, "and if you could see from my vantage, you would laugh as well."

"Tell us then, Elf of Many Talents," Boromir said testily, catching his shortened breath. "How far does this cursed snow stretch? Tell us how far yet we heavy-footed Men must toil ere we see our escape?"

Legolas smiled knowingly, forgiving the Gondorian’s ire. "Tell you?" he asked. "I shall show you." Sliding down the back of the drift, which neither of the Men could see, he thrust his hand deep into the snowy barrier. In a matter of moments his efforts had cleared a hole that was enough to see through in a wall of snow as deep as his arm was long. "Now," he called to those on the other side, "can you find strength enough within you to come this far?"

Their enthusiasm renewed upon seeing that freedom was at hand, both Aragorn and Boromir kicked and pawed at their snowy prison, bursting through at last and stumbling out over the remaining piles of slushy white. Now Aragorn did laugh, seeing how near they had come without knowing it. "My thanks again to you, Legolas," he said, laying a grateful hand on his shoulder. "We were tempted strongly to despair when there remained only the final effort before us."

Legolas returned the gesture. "I am your eyes when your own will not serve," he said. "But come, Mithrandir awaits us."

Not wishing to trudge through the snowbound path the Men had made if he did not have to, Legolas returned to his light-footed way over the drifts themselves. He covered the open furlong again at a brisk but unhurried pace, knowing they would have to wait for Aragorn and Boromir as it was. "Well, I have not brought the Sun," he apologized playfully as he rejoined the others. "She is walking in the blue fields of the South, and a little wreath of snow on this Redhorn hillock troubles her not at all. But I have brought back a gleam of good hope for those who are doomed to go on feet. There is the greatest wind-drift of all just beyond the turn, and there our Strong Men were almost buried. They despaired, until I returned and told them that the drift was little wider than a wall. And on the other side the snow suddenly grows less, while further down it is no more than a white coverlet to cool a hobbit’s toes."

"Ah, it is as I said," Gimli said bitterly, striking a fist against his leg. "It was no ordinary storm. It is the ill will of Caradhras. He does not love Elves and dwarves, and that drift was laid to cut off our escape."

"But happily your Caradhras has forgotten that you have Men with you," Boromir said heavily as he trudged back to them with Aragorn behind. "And doughty Men too, if I may say it; though lesser men with spades might have served you better. Still, we have thrust a lane through the drift; and for that all here may be grateful who cannot run as light as Elves."

At that, Boromir turned the smile of an amiable rival on Legolas, and he returned it. That Man had an endearing charm about him, he thought to himself, but that was only greater reason to keep a wary eye turned his way.

He followed as the Men carried the hobbits beyond the snow one by one, and waited at the end with them as the others made their way through. Poor Bill was made to carry Gimli as well as the rest of the baggage. Behind the pony came Aragorn with Frodo, and with the Ringbearer among them again Legolas recognized the same twinge of warning just as an angry avalanche of snow and stones fell from the laden cliffs with an awful roar. The Fellowship cringed against the mountainside as they were lashed again with a vicious spray of ice, the small ones shielded by their taller companions. When the malevolent rumble had stilled and the powdered snow had settled, the path behind them had become impassible yet again.

"Enough, enough!" Gimli shouted as he shook his fist at the mountain, his auburn beard again frosted nearly as white as his father’s. "we are departing as quickly as we may!"

It was a humiliating defeat. Weary and discouraged, their Company plodded through the lessening snow that remained in their way, admitting Caradhras’ victory. Legolas had again assumed his place behind the others, shaking the snow from his hair and clothes before it could melt. The downward climb would be a long weary way for those tired by the rigors of the previous day, and the hobbits were already dragging their furry feet. The weariness that plagued Legolas did not abide in his limbs, but in his heart. A day had been wasted in a futile attempt that had done nothing but tax the strength of the Company, and time and vitality were two things of which they had little enough to spare. More than that, he felt an ominous foreboding when he thought of the road ahead, and he knew it to be more than his imagination at work. Their way darkened as the noose was tightened. He glowered ahead at Frodo’s back, his anger directed not at the hobbit but at what he carried. It was laughing again, the silent but very real sound just as ominous as the hoarse cackling of the crebain ahead that only his ears could hear.

"The birds again!" Aragorn called, sighting them at last.

"That cannot be helped now," Gandalf said with short enough patience. "Whether they are good or evil, or have nothing to do with us at all, we must go down at once. Not even on the knees of Caradhras will we wait for another night-fall!"