But One Star of All

Eighth Entry - The Games of Our Enemies

Thranduil merely rolled his eyes at me and kept his hand raised, elbow on the arm of his chair, when I borrowed his teacup to take a sip of its contents before returning it. "Do enjoy yourself while denying the beasts their fun," he drawled, reading something important that I hadn't bothered with, as most of the paperwork that came into this realm I was happiest giving to Thranuil. He had a knack for locating the tiny details and noting their correlations, whereas I looked at the larger picture and determined my opinions from there. Because of that, he was happiest looking over this sort of work himself as well.

The fun he spoke of was the tearing down of branches in the southern sector of our forest. The orcs were either building fires we didn't see or making bows for the armies we hadn't recently seen. I and five others were on our way out to see if we could find evidence of where they were going when they finished desecrating our sacred trees, or the means to stop the desecrations in the first place. We intended to miss them, only to see what they had left behind, and to not engage. Engaging this many orcs took more planning than we had yet to put forth.

Reading footprints was not one of my skills, but for one of the women accompanying me it was. She crouched and lightly touched the soil around and inside several footprints, then rubbed her fingertips together to judge the dampness. "At least thirty, no more than thirty-five," she judged with a small frown. "They were here less than an hour ago though."

We had hoped for a wider margin of distance than that. "Keep your attentions in all directions," I advised. "We've seen evidence lately that some of them don't mind climbing trees." I sank into a crouch of my own and lifted a torn-off, abused bit of leather from underneath a layer of disturbed and fallen leaves. There was some symbol stamped into one side of the leather, and judging by the few wooden beads stitched around the edges of it it had the makings of a form of charm. Somehow this took me aback—it had never occurred to me before to think of orcs as a race with any otherworldly beliefs. I tried to understand them, knowing they must have desires of some sort to constantly force themselves against us. But I could not see them creating charms to ask invisible gods for luck or health or victory. They did not appear to be creatures which thought outside themselves.

"The damage is restricted mostly to ash and walnut," said one of our other scouts. "Decent bow wood."

"That stands with our assumption," I mused, disturbed both by the charm and the recent passage of the creatures we observed the leavings of so we could come back and destroy them later. "Unfortunately I can't see a way to prevent them from harvesting any more of our wood unless we start killing off the ones we find. I doubt, however, that that will discourage them for long."

I listened carefully to our surroundings, a hand stretched across me to grip the handle of one of my swords. This situation was off somehow; I was uncomfortable being here. On occasion I took anxiety where none, to our concrete observations, was needed. But never had I turned away and taken harm for it. "Let us go. We will return another day." I pursed my lips to whistle for one of our people who was further spread than the others, inspecting the damage to a particular tree, and he trotted back to join us. Before he reached us however the wind changed, and his head whipped to the north.

"They are here!"

I drew both my swords in an instant and we plunged in that direction—in the direction of home—to meet them. My people tended to specialize in the unexpected, and small forces charging the enemy were not common.

But there were far more of them than we had anticipated. The six of us could not easily fight the over a hundred orcs who now swarmed in around us.

"Together!" I bellowed, and we joined to put our backs to each other, the better to avoid separation. I flung about me with both swords, unable to fight as freely as I was accustomed to doing with my brethren so close on either side of me.