A Burden

The next day the city packed up camp and began walking once more. Raina had not been able to sleep the night before, and so she rested on her and Legolas’s horse while he guided it from the ground.

Two of the guards were riding ahead to scout out the rest of the ride as Raina lifted her head to Legolas. Small creases had formed on his forehead as he watched them ride off.

“What is it, Legolas?” she breathed, sitting up all the way now to try to see what he was seeing.

“Listen,” was all he said. “I hear something out there, but I cannot tell what.”

Raina did as she was told, lifting her head to the wind. And she heard it, soft at first, but soon thundering pounding of a beast’s paws.

“Wolves of Isengard!” she cried, looking at Legolas in worry. “They are still a mile away, but a scout is on its way now!”

Legolas did not speak, but sprinted to the crest of the hill, and disappeared within a moment.

While he was running, Raina rode as fast as the horse would let her to Théoden.

“Scouts from Isengard!” she gasped. “They’re here now!”

Behind her, Aragorn rode up as well. “Wargs! We’re under attack!”

Théoden turned to his people and started giving orders for the women and children to leave. In the back of her mind, she heard Èowyn protesting that her uncle was making her lead them. Her focus was on Legolas, standing alone on a rock jetting out of the hill, shooting enemy after enemy. She prayed that they did not have bows and arrows as well, because he would be a very easy target.

Around her, the remaining guards and riders situated themselves on their horses, waiting for the command to ride. Raina pulled several arrows from their holster on her back, notching one in preparation. Fighting now took barely any reassurances, and Raina felt confident this time. This time, she was not ridiculously outnumbered, she was a better shot, and she was atop a horse. These were all good confidence boosters.

“Follow me!” Théoden yelled with a war cry as the riders behind her raised their swords as well. Raina narrowed her eyes at the growing mass of Wolves, all waiting for them to make the first move. She was going to have to pick up Legolas, she thought with a sigh.

They rode out quickly, as Raina held onto the horse with her knees and shot as many of the wargs as possible.

As soon as Raina’s horse came near, Legolas gracefully ran with it, pulling himself up on the other side, behind Raina. She snorted as he showed off, and quickly placed her bow back on her shoulder and unsheathed the twin blades that had crisscrossed on her back. She wielded them in circles with a bit less confidence, but killed about as many of the Uruks as the Rohirrim did.

The Uruks were as ugly as Raina remembered, but what really frightened her were the growls that ripped from the Wolves throats.

Behind her, Gimli jumped off his and Aragorn’s horse to fight on foot, and Legolas followed suit.

A Wolf took a bite at the horse Raina was riding, and probably would have killed it had Raina not jerked her balance to the other side, forcing the horse to turn abruptly. When the Wolf came back again, Raina grasped one of her daggers, and threw it as hard as she could down the beast’s throat. She grimaced as it chocked and fell backwards, all the life of it gone.

Legolas soon jumped back on their horse, and they rode through the remains of the battle slowly, until one of the remaining Uruks pulled Raina down to the dirt.

She took a breath, her eyes closed to keep the dust out of them, and rose slowly, grinning at the Uruk who had been stupid enough to pick a fight with her, probably thinking she was an easy target.

She replaced her blades slowly, taking her sword out instead and wielded it to get a grip before the Uruk lunged.

She dodged it, letting it fall behind her before she swung down with her own sword, hoping to kill it then. But it rolled over as he sword stuck in the ground, and jumped up, poised to fight.

Abandoning her sword for the moment, she lunged at it with her bare fists, catching the Uruk off guard. It fell, looking up at her in shock and she snatched its sword from its grasp, and stabbed the Uruk in the stomach, killing it almost instantly. She didn’t bother to take the sword back.

She looked up, breathing heavily. The battle was nearly over, and the Riders were cleaning up the last few Uruks and Wolves.

She turned around slowly, trying to find everyone. Gimli was being helped up by Théoden there, Legolas was riding around, probably looking of her, over there…

She kept turning until she came face-to-face with one of the last remaining Wolves, its face just inches from her own.

She stared at it wide-eyed as it stared back at her, neither moving. Raina didn’t want to reach for one of her weapons in case it decided to attack then, but she couldn’t keep standing there looking like a weak little girl.

She took a deep breath, moving her hand slowly for the sword that was not in its sheath.

Flinching, Raina finally noticed that her sword was still stuck in the ground. Her eyes flickered up to the Wolves, and she noticed something in this one’s that were not in the others. This one had the eyes of a dog, one that a Hobbit in the Shire would have kept as a pet. No malice was reflected back to her as she reached up to touch the Wolf’s head.

As soon as she did, the Wolf jumped, making Raina flinch again, thinking that this was her doom. But instead, the Wolf was still staring at Raina expectantly, but now its tongue was hanging out of its mouth and its tail was wagging happily.

Raina laughed, rubbing the Wolf’s head affectionately.

“Who knew?” she whispered to herself before a shadow was cast over her.

She squinted as she looked up at the rider.

“Well what do you know?” she asked with a grin. “You just keep showing up everywhere.” It was the incompetent guard that she had met the first day she had been in Edoras.

He grumbled a response before unsheathing his own sword. “I’ll get rid of this for you, My Lady,” he said with a smirk. Raina narrowed her eyes. Was he trying to flirt or get on her nerves?

“It’s okay,” she said testily. “He’s peaceful.”

The guard snorted, and Raina thought he muttered, “Women,” under his breath, but his uneducated accent was hard to decipher.

He cleared his throat before speaking. “Girl, this is a Wolf of Isengard. They are bred to kill people like us. They all need to be disposed of.”

Raina gave a fake flirtatious smile, edging around the confused Wolf so she was standing beside the guard.

“Wait, what’s your name?” she asked softly, as the guard puffed his chest up, probably thinking that that had been a lot easier than he thought. He grinned back at Raina before answering.

“Lesure Thistlewood,” he said with a touch of pride.

Raina grinned at Lesure for a moment before reaching up quickly and grabbing him by his collar and dragged him off his horse, down to her level.

“Well then listen to me, Thistlewood,” she growled as he stared into her eyes with fear. “If you dare touch this Wolf, I will-!”

“What’s going on here?” Legolas asked from his horse above the two, his eyebrows raised.

Raina motioned toward the boy that she had let go of, whom was now in the dirt. “He was trying to kill this Wolf, who is obviously peaceful and doesn’t want to hurt us,”
she said.

The boy shrugged defensively. “It’s a pet of the enemy!”

Legolas’s gaze moved from the girl, to the boy, to the Wolf, whose tail was now wagging again in excitement.

“Let it go,” he finally said to the boy as he jumped off his horse to help him up. The boy took Legolas’s outstretched arm, but when the Elf pulled the boy up, he hissed in his ear.

“I would stay away from her, if I were you.” And his tone made it pretty clear that Legolas wasn’t saying that Raina would be the one to come after the boy.

But Raina wasn’t paying attention. She had circled the Wolf, and decided that it needed to have its spiked collar off.

Failing to find an easier way to do that, she climbed on top of the beast and started taking the leather and metal off its neck, careful not to irritate it too much. Every time the collar moved, the Wolf would whine and twitch, making Raina think that there was more to that collar than met the eye.

Sure enough, once she had been able to unwrap the collar, it was spiked on the outside for show, but huge metal spikes were also in the inside. Her lips curled at the cruelty of Isengard as she threw the leather into the dirt and jumped off the Wolf’s back.

The Wolf barked happily and licked her face. Raina laughed, hugging its head to her own as she stared into its eyes.

“It needs a name,” she said finally.

“You’re keeping it?!” Legolas, for the first time she had met him, sounded shocked.

Raina gave him a look. “Of course I am. We can’t let him go, because he might not make it on his own.” With this, Legolas snorted, and Raina rolled her eyes. “And we can’t send him back because he obviously doesn’t fit in with the other Wolves. They’re probably mean to him.”

Legolas gave her a look, but didn’t say anything as she scavenged some rope off a dead Wolf’s pack and tied it around her Wolf’s neck and lead him behind Legolas, who was leading his horse.

“I think I’m going to name him Hamson,” she said idly before turning to the Wolf. “Do you like that?” she cooed. “Hamson?”

Hamson licked her face again in reply, so she took that for a yes.

“Legolas!” she called happily, running up to him and Gimli. “Hamson likes his n-“

She never finished her sentence as she caught a glance of their faces. She didn’t have to ask what was wrong, because in a moment, she figured it out for herself.

In Legolas’s limp hand was the Evenstar pendant. Aragorn’s necklace, given to him by Arwen.

“Where’s Aragorn?” she asked hoarsely, emotion catching up with her voice.