Chapter Text
Aragorn got just close enough to see the orc vanish inside the gates, but not close enough for his shortbow’s range. He swore. He had killed all the other orc-spies that might have overheard, but this one had managed to escape from him. He’d tracked the orc for weeks, and realised three days ago that it was heading for Moria. He’d tried to pick a faster way here, intending to lay an ambush for it near the gates, but he’d been just a little too slow.
What now? Moria was full of orcs, and probably other dangers too, and though he had seen old maps from its glory days, he wasn’t certain he’d know his way there. But the orc knew too many things that were too dangerous in enemy hands. The valar only knew what kind of damage it would cause if he got to tell it to other orcs. Maybe, just maybe, Aragorn could still catch him before he got too deep into Moria. Before the orc got deep enough to find other orcs and told what he knew. Before he got deep enough that Aragorn couldn’t find his way back out anymore. Aragorn knew he had to try.
He ran up to the gates and stopped for just long enough to dig out the small lantern he had in his pack and light it. Then he headed in, and chose his direction by the fading echoes of footsteps he could only just hear.
The hall beyond the gates was incredibly vast, but it seemed the orc had turned right and was heading to the side of the hall, not towards its far end. Aragorn followed, but never got the orc within its sight. He did find a doorway at the side of the hall and, hoping it was where his quarry had gone, went through it. Almost immediately beyond the door he found stairs disappearing into darkness beyond his lantern’s light. He headed down them.
When he came to a landing he stopped. He could hear footsteps some way down, and they seemed a little closer to him than they’d been before. Quickly he continued down the stairs until he reached their end. There was a corridor before him, and one door to his left. The footsteps echoed from somewhere in front of him. The corridor it was, then.
So the chase continued, on and on down dark hallways, Aragorn surrounded by a sphere of light from his lantern, his enemy somewhere in the blackness before him. There were many twists and turns, but so far he thought he could still keep track of them. But though the orc couldn’t be far before him, he never managed to catch a glimpse of it.
A flight of stairs up, then a turn to the right. Down a corridor for a while, then turn left and enter a long-since abandoned room. Another corridor, curving gently leftwards. A flight of stairs down. With each step Aragorn had to choose between stealth and speed, guessing whether the orc might be close enough to catch, or whether he should try and be quiet in the hopes that the orc would think he’d fallen behind and become careless with trying to shake the pursuit.
And then the footsteps fell more rapidly, breaking into a run. Aragorn rushed after them, and finally managed to catch a glimpse of the orc turning a corner. He ran after the orc through several more halls and chambers until finally he got close enough to slash at his back. The orc yelped, leapt out of reach, and, drawing his sword, whirled around to face Aragorn.
They were now in a room big enough that the dim light of Aragorn’s little lantern didn’t reach the walls. He had no idea how big it was, though judging by the way it echoed, it was neither very small nor very large.
He didn’t wait for the orc to recover, but lunged at him before he could get his sword to a proper guard. The orc made a valiant effort to parry anyway, but Aragorn slammed his sword aside and continued his attack. The orc just barely managed to dodge out of the way, but was left off-balance. Aragorn used the moment that gave him to cut the orc’s legs off from under him. He drew back his sword to drive it through the orc’s skull.
At that moment a bowstring twanged somewhere in the darkness behind him. An arrow shot with sharp aim shattered Aragorn’s lantern and the flame went out. Too late to save the orc Aragorn had been fighting; his sword was already falling back down as it happened, and even as the blind darkness swallowed him, he felt the jolt as his sword met bone and pierced it.
Aragorn pulled his sword out of the corpse and ran. He didn’t even know whether there would be a door at the other end of the room, but the orc had been running that way, and he should have known the place, shouldn’t he? What Aragorn knew was that blind as he was in the darkness, he could not fight his way past the orc or orcs who’d come up behind him. The only way to go was forward.
An arrow hit him in the lower back. He cried out in pain and surprise, but didn’t stop running until he hit the wall. He cursed and stumbled back a step or two, but despite the misfortune, some kinder power must also have been guiding his steps; his left shoulder had hit the wall, but his right had met only air. He’d found the doorway.
He slipped through the doorway, and felt for the wall with his hand. It seemed to split; there was another doorway leading right, but there was also a hallway continuing forward. He picked the doorway to the right, mostly just to get something between himself and the archer even for a moment. It opened to another tunnel, and he followed it as fast as he dared, left hand tracing the wall, right hand still gripping his sword. He heard footsteps behind him, so as soon as he felt a doorway opening again under his hand, he ducked into it to get out of the way of a clear shot.
That continued for a little while, and he started to get an uncomfortable feeling that the orcs hiding in the darkness behind him were enjoying this. Certainly they saw well enough in the darkness that they could have shot him dead a dozen times already. But he was blind in the dark, and not much of a threat to them, so letting him try to escape them in this maze of rooms and hallways, ever conscious of their presence, was nothing but a game. Aragorn hated the thought that his fear and vulnerability were a source of fun to them, but there was nothing he could do about it.
And it was indeed “them”; he could hear now clearly several sets of following footsteps, though how many exactly, he wasn’t sure. More than he’d have liked to fight even in bright sunlight, where he would have seen well while they would have been at disadvantage.
His foot caught on something and he tripped and fell on his face. The already broken lantern clattered away from his grasp, but he managed to keep a hold of his sword. He got to his knees, and was rising to his feet when he heard the footsteps behind him break into a run. He knew he couldn’t outrun them now, so he turned to face them and raised his sword to a guard.
When he judged from the sound that the orcs had to be close, he swung his sword blindly. He must have hit one, because he felt and heard his sword glance off of mail, and heard a pained grunt.
He had no time to savour that small triumph, however. Something hit him hard in the stomach, and he staggered back, nearly doubling over in pain. He made a thrust with his sword, and felt it sink deep into flesh. Then, not caring that there might be deadly weapons in his way, he rushed forward. He hit someone, and they both tumbled into the ground. His opponent muttered what were undoubtedly swearwords in a language he didn’t know.
They wrestled each other for a good while, each kicking and hitting and biting whatever he could reach. Aragorn still had the sword in his right hand, but at this close a distance the blade did no good, and instead he bludgeoned the orc with the sword’s pommel. For a moment he was on top and had the orc pinned under him, but then a sharp pain in his back distracted him. He twisted around and swiped blindly backwards with his sword. It hit something, though what or how deep, he couldn’t tell.
The orc he’d been fighting used that moment to his advantage. He threw Aragorn off of himself. Before Aragorn could react, he was pinned to the ground by a heavy knee on his chest, and powerful hands closed around his throat. He kicked and struggled and pummelled the orc’s armoured side and clawed and tore at the hands around his throat, but he didn’t have the strength to break the hold. He couldn’t breathe, he could barely think, and he felt his strength and control flowing away like water from a cracked cup.
His left hand fell on the sheathed dagger at his belt. He seized it and stabbed it desperately at the orc. It met chainmail and glanced off. He stabbed again, lower this time, and felt the hem of the mail shirt brush cold against his hand, but the dagger met flesh and sunk deep into the orc’s thigh. The orc cried in pain, but didn’t let go. Aragorn pulled the dagger back. The orc’s blood splattered all over him but he hardly noticed it. He went for another stab, higher this time, and found the orc’s neck. The orc let go of him and collapsed, and he struggled out from under him and staggered to his feet, coughing and gasping for air.
But he hadn’t won yet. There was one orc at least still somewhere near him. If he was lucky, he might have wounded that one, but he doubted he’d have killed it.
He staggered blindly forward, and it was pure dumb luck that he stumbled at the right moment for the first swing to miss. He felt the breeze as it brushed past his shoulder and whirled around, raising his sword just in time for it to meet the orc’s blade. He didn’t have the strength to block the strike, though. It forced his sword aside and he had to jump aside to avoid it. He stumbled backwards and flailed with his sword in the direction the orc was in, but each swing either met only air or was thrown aside with a far more precise hit by the orc’s blade.
Aragorn retreated further and further, knowing that it was no use. Sooner or later he’d find himself with his back against the wall. He was only wearing himself out and delaying the inevitable. It was luck even now that guided his hand, not skill.
Finally there came the blow that his luck was not enough to save him from. The blade fell heavily on his left shoulder and dragged a diagonal cut across his chest.
The strike cut one of the shoulder straps on Aragorn’s backpack, and the heavy bag fell from his left shoulder to hang on his right, where the strap was still intact. It pulled Aragorn off-balance. He stumbled backwards, trying to find his balance again, but he hadn’t taken more than two or three steps before his foot met only empty air where he tried to step down. He lost any chance of recovering his balance and fell, tumbling down stairs he hadn’t known were there.
He came to a stop at the foot of the stairs, but for a while he hardly realised it. His head was ringing, everything felt fuzzy and unclear, and it took a moment before he could think or understand at all what had happened.
From somewhere far away at the top of the stairs he heard voices talking in some orcish language, echoing loud enough that he heard it even over the ringing in his ears. He didn’t understand the words, but the tones seemed heated and tense, some of them even fearful. If he had to guess, he’d have said it sounded like a debate.
After a while the voices died down. Aragorn laid where he was, half-expecting one of them to come down here and finish him off, but unable to gather the will to get up and continue moving. Seconds passed, and then minutes, but no steps came down the stairs. Maybe they thought he was already dead. But even if they did, why not come down to make sure? Why not come down to take whatever he had on him that might be of worth to them? He had a good sword, and other useful supplies, and he knew the orcs weren’t above stealing from their victims.
But no one came. Aragorn laid on the cold stone a while longer. Each gasp of breath still hurt as it passed through his bruised throat, and his back hurt, and his shoulder hurt, and his head, too. Everything hurt.
Still, there wasn’t any point in staying there forever. Eventually he started struggling up. He got to his knees and sheathed his sword and dagger again. He knew he should have taken the time to clean them first, but somehow it seemed like too much effort to do right now. He discovered soon that he couldn’t move his left arm much without the pain in his shoulder becoming unbearable.
He managed somehow to get to his feet, but as soon as he did, pain shot up his right leg and he had to fight to stay standing. He felt sick and dizzy. The complete darkness all around only made him feel more disoriented.
He took a few careful steps. It was pure agony, but he could walk. He made his way to the wall and walked around the chamber, tracing the wall with his hand.
Besides the stairs leading up, there were three other doorways leading out of the chamber. Two opened into stairs leading further down, while one led to a hallway on the same level as the chamber.
Aragorn didn’t dare try to go back up the way he had come. No matter why the orcs hadn’t come down after him, they might still be near enough to stop and catch him if he tried retracing his steps — and he wasn’t even certain he’d remember the way back out, anyway.
Going down didn’t seem like a good idea, either. He was already further down than he wanted to be; he’d have to get back up to the higher levels to get out.
So he entered the hallway, and hoped it would eventually lead to stairs that would take him back up. It was slow going; even without the injuries and the dizziness, it would have been hard enough to find his way. The wall under his hand at least gave him a direction to go, but that only helped so much. Here and there, the floor was cracked and broken, or rubble had fallen on it, and in the dark he couldn’t see it. He tripped up more than once.
The tunnel seemed to continue on for a long while, although in the darkness and injured as he was, the walk might have seemed longer than it truly was. Aragorn felt tired, and the dizziness wouldn’t go away. He knew he’d have to do something about his injuries, too – although how much he could do by feel alone in the dark, he wasn’t sure. But the hallway felt too open, too exposed, for stopping to rest.
At some point Aragorn began to feel like he was being watched and followed. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling, but he listened as hard as he could, and even stopped several times, and could hear nothing besides the sounds he made himself. There was no sign of any living thing down here. The feeling still wouldn’t go away, but finally he put it up to the darkness and exhaustion. It was just his mind playing tricks on him. It had to be. He’d have noticed something more than a vague feeling already if it wasn’t.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity of walking, he felt the wall disappear from under his hand. After a while of investigating, he found that the tunnel he’d been walking through came to an end, meeting another tunnel at a right angle. In that tunnel there were a few doorways close to each other. None had stairs going up, but one opened to a tunnel, one to what by the echo sounded like a massive hall, and one to a relatively small room.
The small room, Aragorn discovered, had one other entrance in addition to the one in the tunnel he’d come from. And both of them had wooden doors that, though ancient, were still intact. And both could be barred from the inside. As he went around the room, feeling the wall with his hand, he discovered an unlit torch left in a sconce on the wall.
That discovery convinced him that it was the best place to stop and rest that he was likely to find. He went to pull the doors shut and barred them, and then turned his attention again on the torch.
Whatever oil or wax may once have been added to it to make it burn better was long since gone, but the wood was very old and dry. After fumbling with his flint and steel for a while, Aragorn did manage to light it.
It took a while for his eyes to adjust to there being light again, but he’d already spent hours blinded by the dark, so it hardly mattered. By the time he could see properly, he was already halfway through digging his healer’s supplies out of his pack. Once he had them and his waterskin ready, he sat down and began struggling out of his gambeson to get a proper look at his injuries. He should have done it before, he knew, numbly taking note of how tired he felt, and how cold, and how his hands shook, and how much of an effort everything seemed to be. But at least he knew that none of his wounds was bleeding very rapidly, or he would have died of blood loss already.
His palms were scraped raw and bloody from all the times he’d tripped and fallen in the tunnels. The cut going from his left shoulder down across his chest wasn’t very deep; his gambeson had taken enough of the force that it had only scraped across the ribs, and not cut through them or even broken them. It had broken the collarbone, though; Aragorn could feel the ends of the bone scraping against each other when he touched the area with his hand. Besides that, even if the cut wasn’t deep, it was still long, and even if it didn’t bleed that fast, it did still bleed enough to be a problem.
The wounds on his back were harder to assess, because he couldn’t see them and had to struggle to even reach them. Judging by the slash in the back of his gambeson, and the blood-stain surrounding the slash, he could guess that the cut couldn’t be too big, and probably not very deep either. The only wound that truly went deep was the arrow; it had hit his lower back, well below the ribs, but it had hit at an angle, going towards his side rather than straight through. He tried pulling at the bit of shaft sticking out of the wound that hadn’t snapped off at some point in the struggle, but it hurt too much and he gave up quickly. It was probably barbed, and there was no way he could get it out by himself without causing far more damage than it had done going in. Better to just leave it.
He did his best to clean the wounds with a little water, but he didn’t dare use much of it, since it was all he’d have for drinking, too, until he found his way out of here. Then he bandaged the wounds as best he could. The result was sloppy, but it would have to do.
His hair was getting into his eyes, and he stopped to swipe it out of the way. His fingers met something wet on the side of his head, and when he pulled them back, they were stained with blood. Oh. That did explain the dizziness and the headache.
There was nothing to be done about it. The blood had gotten everywhere in his hair, to the point that he couldn’t even find where the wound was, and he was close to running out of clean bandages, too.
Then he turned his attention to his injured ankle. It was by now too swollen for him to be able to pull the boot off. That was probably going to be an issue, but he didn’t like the idea of cutting up and destroying the boot, so it would have to be left like that. At least it could still more or less take his weight, so he was relatively certain it was only sprained and not broken.
It was then, as he leaned back against the wall and began wearily searching his bag for something to eat, that the horror of his situation really hit him. Until then he had been following a mental list of things to do next, automatically searching for a time and a place and a way to check things off that list, but now that he was reasonably safe and had taken care of the immediate concerns, there was room in his mind for fear.
He was lost. He was alone. No one knew where he was, no one would come to his aid. The flickering torch on the wall was the only light he had, and it wouldn’t last forever. Once it was gone, he’d be blind again. Between him and the gate, assuming he could even find the way back to it, lurked the-valar-alone-knew how many orcs, and orcs saw just fine even in darkness like this.
Suddenly the doors to the room, made of sturdy wood though they were, seemed far too flimsy to stand for long between him and the danger. And even if they were enough to protect him for a while, sooner or later he would have to venture out beyond one of them again.
He ate a little, and drank a mouthful of water. It wasn’t enough, but even though the rations he had would in any other situation have been enough that he didn’t need to worry about them, here he had to be careful. He didn’t know how long it would take him to find a way out, and nothing that he could eat grew or lived here.