Not Again?!

Chapter 12

This was going to be a normal chapter, I swear, but combined with a freaky-deaky plot bunny and the depression that came along with the 3rd Hobbit movie, it just . . . turned out this way. I can no longer promise that this story will end well. :-/

"Can a day be normal and boring just once with the Peredhil around?" Glorfindel asked his horse. His stallion snorted without breaking stride and didn't answer, typically. "I didn't think so."

The Balrog-slayer had just found the tracks of Elladan and Elrohir at a stream near the borders of Imladris. He had been riding hard for the past two hours, trying to catch up to the twins, and figured he was less than a half hour behind them now. It looked like they had dismounted their horses back by the stream after finding the orc tracks, remounted, and continued on. Their horses' footprints were so faint that only a master tracker could find them, so light-footed were the mounts. It was a good thing Glorfindel was an elf, then.

Hooves tapped quietly over the ground as Glorfindel's horse swept through the trees with his rider scanning the ground ever so often to make sure they were on the right path. The stream was left a few miles behind them and Glorfindel was assured that he was managing to catch up, when the horse tracks suddenly – disappeared.

Glorfindel clicked to his stallion and it slowed, then halted. In mild confusion, the Elda leapt from his horse's back and scanned the ground. The occasional misplaced leaf and twig pressed into the ground had ended, leaving a perfect trail of . . . nothing. The horses couldn't have just vanished, so Glorfindel started examining the edge of the path and soon he found a few branches pushed to the side, but not broken. Following the very faint trail, he was surprised to come upon two elven horses suddenly.

One snorted in greeting and moved forward to nuzzle Glorfindel's hand, its gold-red head glittering slightly in the sunbeams creeping through the trees.

"Hinnor," said Glorfindel in recognition, stroking the velvet nose a moment and looking past the stallion to see Elladan's horse standing in the trailing branches of a willow tree. It whickered to him, but stayed where it was.

"They must have continued after the yrch on foot," Glorfindel realized, and patted Hinnor once, then turned. "Come, Hinnor, Gael. We go to fetch your master." Both horses grumbled lightly, but followed him. They would obey any order from their owners, but if another elf called them to do something else, they would do that instead.

Remounting his own white stallion, Glorfindel whistled for the two horses to follow him and nudged his mount into a canter, knowing immediately where the twins would have gone. The orcs had been heading away, barely outside the borders of Imladris. Glorfindel would have immediately gone out to dispose of them, but most of his warriors were on the west watching the Trollshaws – there had been a recent flurry of activity with the few troll groups that lived there, and he didn't want to let them get out of control. The orcs were going to pass Imladris by a secure margin of a hundred miles or so, and Glorfindel was reluctantly letting them pass in peace, but only because there were almost fifty and he didn't have enough warriors near this area to fight them off safely.

Elladan and Elrohir, however, had apparently thought that they could take the whole group on. Glorfindel knew it would be hard – they were very good fighters but even the best could be taken down – and the three or more dozen orcs had split into two groups, dividing for speed. The twins probably didn't know that there were two bunches of orcs, and might be surprised.

Glorfindel had known the folly of going by himself, but Erestor had refused to the let the two guards watching the Eastern Gate go with him. "They are needed," the adviser had said stubbornly, and Glorfindel gave in to go by himself.