“Wake up, King!’ The last word was spat out in disgust.

When he did not open his eyes quickly enough, or at least as quickly as his captors wished, his damaged, dangling arm was roughly grasped and twisted cruelly behind his back. The fragile, already damaged nerve endings screamed and this in turn caused him to let loose a painfully agonized cry.

Through the tears of pain that the twisting of his injured arm and shoulder produced Elessar was able to see  the dark, hate filled eyes before him, the long dark, oily hair that hung from the heads of and partly covered the greasy, tanned skin of….

Corsairs!

“Surprised, Majesty?” The last word again was spat out in disgust. “You shouldn’t be really, you should’ve known it would only be a matter of time before we caught up with you , found  you, and took our revenge out on you for what you and your friends,” the word friends was also spat out in disgust. “did to our brothers after your little trip through the Paths of the Dead.”

“And now we want our pound of flesh,” a vaguely familiar voice added. “Don’t we, boys?”

Elessar turned his head to the left and made direct eye to eye contact with the man in the crowd who had started the cry for the tie breaking race.

“You?!” He ground out the word painfully and at the same time with an element of hate behind it.

The Corsair next to him grinned evilly, a heavy wooden club in his hand. He thumped it once against his own palm and then, drawing it back slowly and carefully, thumped the back of Elessar’s damaged shoulder.

Another cry escaped from the lips of the King of Gondor as he bucked, trying to get away from the source of this latest pain.

“You won’t even recognize yourself by the time we’re done with you, King,” the leader of the Corsairs taunted the now prostrate Elessar. “ Nor will that Elven friend of yours recognize himself when our associates finish with him.” He drove the steel capped toe of his boot into the downed King’s ribs.

The waving of his hand was all the encouragement his men needed. Soon, and without any means with which he could defend himself, Elessar was reduced to a bloody and bruised mound of flesh, curling into itself to escape the onslaught.

The painful, bruising kicks and endless violent jabs slowly ceased as the pirates grew bored with him. Soon he was left alone with his physical pain, and the new mental anguish that somewhere within this whatever it was, his chosen brother was in the hands of the men from the south of Middle Earth, the Haradrim

As much as the Corsairs wanted their pound of flesh from him because of what had happened to their clan mates, so the Haradrim wanted Legolas for what he had done on the fields of Pelennor.

Painfully his mind flashed back to that moment when he had ordered the Elf Prince to take down the on coming Oliphant and sealed his brother’s fate. From what he had been told since that day, the shaman who had been driving the Mumikil that day was one of the most powerful, most influential of all. Now the various factions were warring to see just which of them would take his place. The honour of that title would be given to that shaman  who could prove he had killed the Elf Prince.

This was not the first time such an attack had been visited upon his brother.

Only last year the Haradrim had visited the Elf colony in Ithilien. They had been thwarted because of the Valar and his own silken tongue, a tongue that had persuaded the then visiting King of Rohan and his own stubborn Commander that there was indeed an urgent need to race across the miles of ground between Minas Tirith and North Ithilien.

Painfully he dragged his bloody, swollen body off the earthen floor and staggered to the crude wooden slab the Corsairs were using as a door. The small open square that the pirates used to check up on him was just at his eye level and he was able to see out into the main cavern area.

And what he saw made him feel violently ill.

Reflecting on the far cavern wall was the figure of  one of the biggest men he had ever seen, in his reflected hand one of the gross, disgusting spike clubs like the ones that had been wielded by the Corsairs when both he and Legolas had been taken.

Horrified he watched as the shadow club was raised into the air, he heard the sound of it as it droved through the still unmoving air of the cave. Turning away, he covered his left ear with his good hand and pressed the right hand side of his head against the stone wall in an attempt to block out the long, painful scream he knew would come from the mouth of his chosen brother when the vile club made contact with, and ripped open the flesh of his friend and brother.

How long he lay in that position Elessar was uncertain of, for the next thing he knew the steel toe capped boot was once again driving itself into the small of his back.

Looking up he saw his friend from the festival standing over him, another figure, one who was just out of the light, was standing behind him.

“Present time, King,” the pseudo Gondorian jeered. “Something to make yourself a blanket with when you get back.”

Elessar watched as out of the shadows come the Harad figure he had observed earlier, the shadow with the club, emerged the bloody and flesh covered club still gripped in his hand.

Sick to his stomach, Elessar tried to turn away from the sight, but found  that he could not, his eyes were drawn to the sight of globules of Legolas's flesh hanging off the spikes.

“Here!” the shaman spat and tossed something in his direction.

Groping for the carelessly tossed item, his stomach again turned as he realised that in his hand was Legolas’s shorn, silver blonde hair.

A series of growls left his lips, as every nerve in his body demanded that he get up and wipe the smug smile off the shaman’s ugly face.

“Don’t even think about it, Majesty.”

The slap sent him back down to the floor.

The pirate nodded to his companions just outside the door.

“Bring him. Time for him to see his friend.”

The rough handling of the King by the pirates soon saw Elessar on his feet and being dragged toward the main cavern.

One look into the open area was enough for the King, blood was still lying where it had fallen. This was just too painful and he closed his eyes, hoping that the journey through this part of the cave would soon be over.

Legolas’s piercing scream reached his ears just as his guards dragged him out of the main cavern area and around the corner into another side cave.

“There he is,” the pirate/villager taunted.

Elessar found himself pushed up against a door similar to the one that blocked the entrance to his cell/cave. The open square was once again at his eye level and he got the first glimpse of his chosen brother since he had fallen unconscious in the forest.

Legolas was slumped against the far wall of his cell ,shivering, not from cold, but from pain. Every inch of his brothers back was covered in blood, not one uncut, unbloodied piece of skin was the King able to see. Standing slightly back from the Elf was another of the Haradrim, in his hand was clasped an empty bucket. The floor of the cell was covered in moisture and Elessar quickly recognized the smell.

Breathing deeply he fought down the urge to rip the throat out of each and every one of his guards. The floor of the cell was covered in sea water.

“Enough!” the Corsair ordered as he indicated to his fellow pirates to drag the angry, shaking King back to his own cell.

Taking the only opportunity open to him, Elessar cried out in a loud if painful voice the one phase he could think of that would give his beaten and physically broken brother something to hold on to.

“Gwador, catch.”

Having been dumped back in his own cell, Elessar now pondered escape.

The sloppy and inefficient manner in which he had been dumped and left told the King that not much about the Corsairs had changed.

The pirates that held him and Legolas now were no different than the ones they, along with Gimli, had encountered after emerging from the Paths of the Dead.

Weak and ineffectual guards had been posted on the Corsair ships that day. If those guards had been Gondorian, Rohirrim, or Elven, the three runners would never have even gotten close to those ships. But they had and history now remembered what they had done.

Thinking him weakend both in body and in spirit by what had been done and shown to him over the past hours, the pirates had left no guards on his door, and much to his delight, they had been very careless when closing it. The wooden plank was ajar, just waiting for him to push it open, dash across the main cavern, release his brother and escape.

With adrenaline now charging through his veins, Elessar acted on his plan. The pain of his arm, back and other injures were all forgotten as he flung open his makeshift door and charged across the still bloodied floor towards Legolas’s cell.

Most of the pirates seemed to have left the cavern, perhaps to celebrate what they saw as the success of their plan. What resistance he met soon went down, thanks to the club he had managed to procure from the first Corsair he surprised. His sole focus was the cell on the other side of the main cavern and it’s badly injured occupant.

His brother was still hunched against the back wall of his cell, unnervingly still and silent. Elessar’s heart dropped as he looked in and saw the Elf Prince. His mind raced with the thought that his brother had died and all that was left was the battered and bruised shell that was once his body.

His need to hurry fought his need to know. Slowly and carefully he knelt alongside his brother, his hand gently stroking the now short hair on the Elf’s head.

“Legolas? Gwador nin?” he asked gently, his hand now stroking Legolas’s near frozen cheek.

Tears started to roll down his own cheeks as one minute, then another and another passed by and Legolas did not answer, or even acknowledge him.

“I … am ..still here,” the trembling, pain laced voice of Legolas said finally breaking  the deadly silence. “My brother.”

Gathering Legolas’s head gently in his hands, Elessar brought his forehead close to the Elf’s.

“Do not scare me like that again,” he ordered softly. “ I do not think my soul could handle it.”

Painfully and ever so slowly Legolas nodded his agreement to the King’s request.

“The way is clear,” Elessar continued. “If we are every to leave this place, the time is now. Brego and Arod are very close .Can you manage ?”

“Yes… Gwador.”

Legolas was keeping his words, short and to the point, the King noticed, but it bothered him not. That his brother was able to move, albeit slowly, and talk to him at all was of much greater importance.

A quick dash back into the cavern earned the King a pirate garment, it was dirty and smelly, but it would do to cover his still half naked brother and offer some protection from the air outside and the inevitable twigs and stray branches the pair of them would come across.

“Ready?” he asked as Legolas painfully shrugged into the offered jacket.