The Lucky One by grey_gazania

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Chapter 1

FA 35

 

Linn was hunting with her brothers on the day she died. It was early autumn, and the sun kissed tops of the trees with gold as she walked on silent feet beneath the cool canopy of leaves. Overhead, squirrels busily gathered seeds, their chittering joined by the occasional cheep of a finch.

 

There were pheasants in abundance in this part of the forest, and Linn had three already in the rough sack slung over her back. Smoked and seasoned, the meat would help see them through the coming winter, and tonight they would share their bounty with their neighbors.

 

Perhaps the handsome Orn from across the river would join them. Perhaps he would ask Linn to sing.

 

She smiled to herself at the thought before turning her attention back to the forest. It was best not to lose focus. Dangerous things dwelt under the trees -- bears and wolves, and wild boars like the one that had killed her mother when Linn was just a child.

 

Bel, Aras, and Tor were spread out in a crescent ahead of her, but it was her sharp ears that picked out the sound of something following them. She whistled a three-note bird call, and her brothers froze in their tracks, each readying his bow.

 

“What is it?” Aras breathed in her ear once she had joined them.

 

“We’re being followed,” she murmured, her spine prickling uncomfortably.

 

Bel jerked his head toward the nearest tree and made the sign for climb, and Linn nodded. Dropping her sack beside the mossy trunk, she grabbed hold of the lowest branch and pulled herself upwards, careful not to snag her bow or quiver as she went. When she judged herself to be high enough, she stopped and peered out from between the leaves.

 

Her breath froze in her lungs. There was a pack of monsters behind them, moving low and quiet through the underbrush. Linn was young; she had never seen an orc. But she had heard the stories, and she knew what she was looking at. She whistled a warning, a shrike’s shrill shriek, and dropped to the ground to join her brothers as they ran. It was their only choice. They were outnumbered, armed only with light bows, but they knew the forest better than the orcs did. Hopefully they could lose them in the trees.

 

Linn had heard the stories. Orcs were vicious. Orcs were wicked. Orcs reveled in bloodshed and death. If orcs found you and you could neither kill them nor escape, you should pray that they killed you, because if they carried you north to the Iron Mountains you would become an orc yourself.

 

The stories didn’t mention that orcs were fast. The four elves ran and ran and ran, but the orcs were gaining on them. With each foot Linn and her brothers lost, escape slipped further and further away. As Bel and Aras ran ahead, Tor grabbed Linn by the arm, pulled her around behind the thick trunk of a tree, and boosted her up into the branches.

 

“Hide,” he hissed.

 

Linn climbed, her heart pounding in her chest as she watched Tor dash after their brothers. He’d almost reached them when he stumbled and fell to the ground with a pained cry. An arrow had struck him in the calf, and blood bloomed across his breeches, dark and wet.

 

Bel whirled around, an arrow of his own already nocked, and fired back at the orcs, striking their leader in the eye. It fell with a cry of its own, but its death only seemed to enrage the others. Even as Aras joined Bel in his attack, the orcs swarmed forward, trading their bows for heavy blades of iron.

 

Wounded, already grounded and vulnerable, Tor fell first, nearly hewn in two. Linn swallowed a scream and reached for her own bow, only to find that the string had snapped during her climb. She was unarmed. Her brothers were being slaughtered before her eyes, and she was unarmed and helpless to intervene.

 

Aras continued to fire, but his quiver was soon empty. He tossed his bow aside and threw himself at the orcs, only to be slain by the same blade that had killed Tor, his blood mingling with his brother's on the dull iron.

 

As she watched Bel struggle with the creatures, Linn made a decision. She would not let her brother stand alone. She leapt from the branches, landing squarely on one of the orcs. With a desperate grab, she wrested its dagger from the sheath at its waist and plunged the knife into its back.

 

It stumbled and dropped its sword, but quickly regained its footing and turned on her with a growl, knocking the knife from her hand and forcing her to the ground. She screamed and clawed at its face, but it only laughed. Then it grabbed her by the wrists, pinned her arms, and sank its teeth into her throat.

 

She struggled, but the creature was holding her tight enough to bruise, too tightly for her to escape. Again and again and again it tore at her flesh, ripping her neck to shreds. She soon went limp beneath it, choking on her own blood as she gasped for breath.

 

The leaves above her wavered and blurred. She could feel the earth shake beneath her, thump thuh-thump thuh-thump, but she didn't recognize the hoofbeats for what they were until a man charged past her on a horse, firing at the orc as he went.

 

The monster abandoned its attack on her and plucked the arrow from its arm, but before it could finish rising to its feet, a second man appeared, russet-haired, with eyes that shone like stars. He swung his sword and removed the creature's head with one blow.

 

Dropping to the ground beside Linn, he pressed his hands over her bloody throat. His lips moved, but she couldn't hear what he said. She couldn't hear anything at all. The world grew dim around her, until all she could see was the stranger's shining eyes.

 

Soon, the darkness swallowed even that.

 

 

"Thíniel! Tathor!" Amras shouted, calling for his healers as he desperately tried to stem the bleeding of the woman who lay choking on the ground before him. Not even a woman -- a girl, really. By the looks of her she was younger than he was, and he had yet to reach his hundredth begetting day.

 

Tathor was a few yards away, bent over the man who had still been on his feet when Amras and his people had arrived, but Thíniel was beside Amras in seconds, her eyes widening when she saw the girl's injuries.

 

"It was eating her," Amras said, sickened by the memory. "It was eating her alive."

 

"Monsters," Thíniel muttered. "Morgoth has much to answer for." Her hands never stopped moving as she spoke, first slipping her fingers under the girl's shredded skin to hold her windpipe closed, then rinsing the wounds with water.

 

"Lord Amras, I don't know that I can heal this," she said, looking at the blood, at the girl's ashy skin and dull eyes, at the way her chest heaved as she struggled for air.

 

"Try," he ordered. It was the least they could do. If only they'd caught the orcs a few moments sooner, they might have been able to save all four of the elves who now lay dead and dying beneath the trees.

 

Thíniel obeyed and set to work with needle and thread, doing her best to patch the girl's cartilage and blood vessels back together, pushing her own energy into her patient's tissues as she had been taught in Valinor.

 

A few minutes later, Tathor joined them. "The man?" Amras asked him.

 

Tathor shook his head. "The orc's blade struck his heart. I couldn't save him."

 

"Try to save the girl, at least," Amras said, moving out of his healers' way.

 

The order wasn't born of empathy alone. Amras knew that Maedhros had sent him and his twin to Ossiriand to gain the trust and goodwill of the people who dwelled there. Sitting back and letting one of the Nandor die would do nothing to further that goal.

 

As Thíniel and Tathor worked, Amras and his men carried the bodies to the edge of the forest. The orcs they piled up and set ablaze, but for the men they dug three graves. They were Quendi, and a proper burial was their due.

 

Dusk was creeping over the golden treetops when Amras returned to Thíniel and Tathor, his skin streaked with sweat, dirt, and ash. The healers had spread a blanket on the ground and laid the girl atop it, propping her feet up on a saddlebag. Her neck was bandaged and her chest still rose and fell weakly beneath her tunic, but her skin was pale as wax.

 

"Will she live?" he asked.

 

Thíniel shrugged. "Perhaps, if she's lucky. We've done what we can, but she's lost a lot of blood."

 

"Then we'll camp here tonight," he said. "If she's still with us in the morning, you can tell me whether we should stay here or continue on."

 

The girl survived the night, and after some deliberation, Thíniel and Tathor decided that it would be best to head back to Amras' and Amrod's fortress as planned.

 

"You've seen what orcs' mouths are like. If infection sets in, we'll be able to treat it better there," Tathor explained.

 

With saplings and a blanket, they were able to make a stretcher on which to carry her, and the band of elves began to make their way home. But luck was not on the girl's side; she didn't wake, and within two days she had begun to burn with fever. Despite the healers' best efforts, the flesh of her throat grew inflamed and began to leak pus, and she struggled to breathe when lying flat.

 

"Lord Amras, she's not going to make it," Thíniel said that night as she tried once more to clean the girl's wounds. "We're almost out of the herbs we need, and at this pace we're still three days out."

 

"What if you and Heledir took her and rode ahead?" Amras said. Heledir was the best rider of the group, after Amras himself, and three would be able to travel more quickly than twelve.

 

Heledir looked over from where he was picking a stone from his horse's hoof. "This is important to you," he observed.

 

"If you were wounded and among strangers, wouldn't you hope they would do all they could to save you?" Amras said. "Besides, you know why my brother sent us here. This is a chance for us to forge a relationship with some of the Nandor."

 

Heledir nodded. "I'll take her. Just let me-- Ah, there." His pick knocked the stone loose, sending it tumbling to the ground, and he patted the horse's leg before letting go. Once he was back in the saddle, Amras and Tathor passed the girl up to him, and he and Thíniel departed.

 

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