The Daugher of Elrond {Ongoing} Of Every Race Saga Book II

Chapter 41: Fangorn Forest

The dark line of trees rose above them, blackened emerald against the sunlit horizon. But before it, like a stinking heap, a blot of ink against the parchment of landscape, lay the smoking pile of orc carcasses, the stench stifling the fresh morning wind.

Aragorn checked his horse's reins for a moment and Celebwen felt him stiffen in shock before they rode on.

It looked no better when viewed closer. The mound of death was almost as tall as she was dismounted, and she fought the urge to gag on the horrid reek as she stepped closer. There was no way any of them would search through the pile of charred bodies for a sign of the missing hobbits.

Gimli tried, however, poking it gingerly with his axe. A shriveled bit of gilded leather fell and a sob escaped his lips. "It's one of their wee belts," he wept.

Celebwen closed her eyes tightly, trying to feel her way back hours before when only the moon had shone down on these fields before Fangorn, but all was dark and misted, and much was hidden from her sight. 

From a distance, she heard Legolas murmur something in the Elven tongue and Aragorn cry out in anguish. Gimli joined them in their despair. But she, for whatever reason, refused to weep with them. 

If Merry and Pippin were truly gone, she would have felt it, would have felt the void and the cold edge of fearful darkness. But she didn't. It was just—empty. Empty and confusing, like sunless fog. 

Then out of the fog came their faces so clearly she gasped, her eyelids flying open. 

Aragorn met her gaze at that instant and began to search the ground for signs of their escape. Aragorn was a far better tracker than she was, and she was afraid some dark magic—Saruman's, perhaps—had hidden from her what she would have otherwise have read. 

"A hobbit lay here, and the other," Aragorn said in a low voice, his fingers resting lightly over the ground. 

Celebwen gave up trying to see through the mist and trusted him with it. Legolas and Gimli, tears still upon the dwarf's face, looked to him in hope. 

"They crawled, hands must have been bound." He picked up a piece of rough rope, crudely cut in two. "Their bonds were cut." His eyebrows furrowed. 

Celebwen blinked. Had someone helped them? Or had fate shown kindness to them? Certainly it was no orc. 

"Tracks lead away from the battle," Aragorn continued, his eyes bent towards the ground and searching carefully. Then he stopped, staring at the forbidding wall of trees before them. "And into Fangorn Forest," he added, both wonder and fear evident in his voice. 

"Fangorn?" Gimli cried. "What madness drove them in there?" 

"Not—madness," Celebwen said softly, the mist in her mind clearing. "I think it may have been wisdom." 

"Wisdom?" Gimli snorted. "Wisdom to run into a forest?"

Legolas glared at Gimli, something he had not done since before Lothlórien. 

"Gimli, if you were fleeing orcs—no, trolls, that's a better comparison—while horsemen were running amuck in their midst beneath a fitful moon, wouldn't you run to the first place of shelter you could find?" 

The dwarf grunted in disagreement. "I would try and stand my ground."

"If you were unarmed, what then? Trust to fate and hope the strange horsemen will have pity on you? Even Éomer and his Rohirrim said they never saw the hobbits because of their small size. In the heat of battle, especially in the dead of night, it is hard to distinguish between friend and foe, especially if they are unknown."