When I gained consciousness, I opened my eyes. But still, I saw darkness. An unsurprising reality in Mirkwood. Yet, this was too dark.
A few more blinks. I began to feel my lashes brushing against fabric pulled taut over my eyes.
They had blindfolded me.
With increasing awareness dawning, new aches bloomed around my body. My shoulder pulled back behind my back. My wrists tied. My ankles similarly fettered in front of me. A tree behind my back. My extremities were numb as if blood had stopped flowing during the long hours of my unconsciousness, but my mind was already running. I took a moment to wiggle my fingers and to regain sensation. Then, I splayed my fingers against the tree behind me and attempted to push myself forward and up. A rope around my chest caught my momentum and threw me right back to the hard ground.
They had bound me to the tree.
Then, from my right, I discerned the sound of metal on metal – a swordfight. They had come to rescue me. I yelled, hoping they’d hear.
From their end, I picked up grunts and battle cries fairer than the orc-kind made. I leaned forward against the rope, as if I could will them to come closer and find me.
Then as soon as it had all started, silence resumed. Who had been victorious? I, too, closed my mouth and sat silently, straining my ears against the sound of my loud heartbeats.
Soon, a dozen or so footfalls joined the rhythm of my heart, thudding closer. The hair on my neck rose and I instantly cowered back toward the tree. These steps were not elven kind. My heart sank and the heavy footsteps took over the march.
There was a struggle, though. Two pairs of footsteps faltered in place every so often to deliver a kick, which was accompanied by a subdued grunt. My breath hitched as I leaned up against the rope binding me to the tree. Did they have another?
Please, let them not have taken another…
I needed to let them know they weren’t alone: “Who goes there? Are you a friend?”
My elvish was immediately responded to with the muffled sound of someone talking desperately to me through cloth around their mouth. In my blindness, I could almost feel them stretching out to me.
A harsh order barked in a foul tongue while another kick brought the muffled elvish to a whimper. Heavy footsteps stomped towards me and I felt the sudden sting of a lash meet my shoulder. My scream was interrupted halfway by a strip of cloth that invaded across my mouth and wrapped into a knot behind my head.
For the rest of the journey, they left my mouth bound. But I wished they had bound my nose instead. They smelled of death and rot, and the odor invaded my senses as they dragged me along behind them by rope through Mirkwood.
