Elf Dream

Chapter 1. Where am I?

This is my first LOTR fanfiction, so please, give constructive criticism. If you like it, vote it. If you like ME fan me!!! By the way, LOTR is my favorite set of books and movies, so I hope I've done it justice. By the way, i don't own LOTR. *Sigh...*

LOVE,

:)  Tiernan  (:

I awoke covered in dirt and pine needles, in a forest, surrounded by lush vegetation and brush. It looked like it was afternoon, but I wasn’t positive. I sat up and kneaded my eyes, curious as how I came to be here. “Where am I?” I asked myself. I glanced around, looking for anything familiar, but I was positive I had never been here before. How did I get here? As I tried to stand up, my head began to spin. Suddenly, I realized why I felt so odd. I braced myself against a tree trunk and thought very hard for a moment. Yes, I was positive. I didn’t know who I was.

Suddenly, I heard a loud “CRACK!” in the bushes. I dropped down behind the tree and glanced around it, trying to see what whatever had made the noise was. As I looked, I noticed that my vision was perfect. I could see amazingly far. Then I heard more noises. All of the sudden a grayish face appeared from behind a hill. While I watched, more and more of them seemed to appear. They were hideously ugly! Their faces looked as if they had been cobbled together from whatever was lying around. Their jaws were crooked, and their teeth were pointed and yellow. About a quarter of them were approximately human size, and the rest were short and squat, but their squinty eyes and fierce gazes made sure that everyone knew they were not to be trifled with.

They were all wearing a sort of armor, and they all carried weapons. Some carried bows, others axes, but the most popular weapon of choice seemed to be a sword. As they approached, I heard them talk amongst themselves in a harsh, guttural language. About forty feet from my tree a big one held up a fist, and the others behind him halted. He began to speak, but this time I could understand him. His voice was rough and deep, and he himself were coated in dirt and grime.

“Saruman needs our forces, and you maggots in the back can’t keep up!” he bellowed, gesturing to the smaller group in the back. “The attack is in three days, and if he doesn’t see us by tomorrow, we’re not getting any spoils!” The group muttered uneasily to themselves. Changing tactics, he tried to bribe them. “As soon as we get back to Saruman, he will give us a feast!”

One little one in the back muttered, “Nothing to eat, only this stinking stuff to drink! And they expect us to run!” Apparently, I was not the only one who heard him. The big one waded through them, making his way to the one in the back.

“What was that?”

“We haven’t any eats for three and a half days! Why can’t we stop here? I’m sure the White One wouldn't want us to hurts ourselves, now would he?” he asked, running his tongue along the bottom row of his jagged teeth. The big one grabbed him around the neck and lifted him up.

“Listen here, He wants our service for the battle. That’s what we’re paid for. And even if we could stop, a maggot like yourself couldn’t catch a rabbit if it stood still in front of you!” He tossed the little one back into the ranks as if he weighed nothing. He walked back to the front of the group and was about to signal them to move when he just stopped. He glanced around the clearing. “Wait…” He sniffed about for a moment. “Manflesh!” By this time, I was seriously hyperventilating. I had a two scabbards on my belt, complete with swords, but against all of these…things, I had no chance. I quietly slipped both of them out, and silently prayed that I knew how to use them.

“Spread out! They’re not far away!”

breathed in and out slowly a couple of times, but I knew that if they saw me there was no way I was getting out of there alive. The pack unsheathed their weapons, keeping them out in case they found me; or in case of an attack. They advanced slowly, checking behind every trunk and every hill. There were at least seventy of them. Maybe I could outrun them. I shook the thought off. I was still wobbly on my feet, and these warriors, though they seemed to be tired, looked like they could still run. Suddenly, a little gray-green head popped out from the other side of the tree. His face pulled into an unpleasant leer, stretching his skin.

“Hello there!” He raised his axe above his head, ready to bash my skull in. My heart racing, I whipped one of the swords across his throat before he could deliver his stroke. I watched in a mixture of horror and fascination as his head separated from his throat, now spurting thick, reddish blood, and rolled to the ground.  As soon as he fell, all eyes were on me.

“Get her!” the big one from before called. Apparently, he was some sort of leader.

“She’s mine!” one of the small ones yelled as he leapt towards me. With a single stab, my blade was impaled in his middle.

“Oy! She poked a hole in Uftahk!” one of them cried. Then they came. At first, they came one at a time.

“Who can defeat the little one?” they would yell, and another would step forward. They surrounded me, in a large circle. After the first four died, they realized that I might be a bigger threat than they had originally thought.

“Come on! Let’s get her!” the one that had yelled out before shouted. They advanced together, their weapons drawn, making sure that there was no way I would get past them. A sword flashed down towards me. I leapt aside, leaving it to hit the ground, throwing the owner off balance, whom I then decapitated as the others tried to kill me. Axes, swords, and arrows came towards me, but somehow, amazingly, I dodged most of them. An axe cut a pretty good nick on my leg before I could chop the wielder to bits, and an arrow managed to pierce the tough armor that I was wearing and impale itself into my shoulder. Thankfully, the wound was not deep, just painful. I cut and slashed, knowing that if I didn’t get out of here quickly, I was going to die.Then I was submerged in a pool of bodies, all stabbing, hacking, and cutting. There were too many blades! Too many bodies, just too many!

“Don’t kill her yet! Capture her! We need information!” the leader boomed out as a blade came dangerously close to my throat. Eventually, by sheer numbers they overwhelmed me. I cut here, a bruise there, and pretty soon they had forced me down. They wrestled the swords out of my hands, holding them behind my back. At this point I was just wondering why they hadn’t killed me yet, and how I had killed so many of them. The leader walked up to me.

“Well, well. If it isn’t a little elf. But there are more. I smell more! Where are they hiding?!” he yelled, picking me up by my hair and shaking me roughly back and forth.

“Ah!! I don’t know!” I managed. His eyes blazed.

“Then you will die.” In response, I gathered up a pool of blood in my mouth, and spat it at him. It landed far from him, but the intent was clear. Go on then, kill me. I was to woozy to care much. I had been cut so many times, and I was sure that I had lost too much blood to survive, even if they didn’t kill me.

“Last chance, Elf. Where are the Halflings?!” Halflings? What? Whatever he was talking about, I was obviously interrupting a war.

“What Halflings?” I asked, my voice full of pain.

“She doesn’t know anything, Captain.” one said. He bared his teeth and dropped me painfully on the ground. A few of the big ones laughed, and the littler ones pushed me semi-upright, onto my knees, my hands behind my back.

“Fine then, keep your secrets. We don’t need them, Saruman and the Great One know it all already, don’t they?” he asked his companions. They nodded. He picked up his axe off the ground and tossed it from one hand to the other. Then he raised it high above the ground, over his head. Just before he began his downward stroke, he smiled at me. A terrible, evil smile that I’m sure only the people he killed saw. Suddenly, an arrow, seemingly from nowhere, sprouted from his chest. He didn’t even have time to look confused. Then I blacked out.