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Elves, Orcs and the Road to Recovery Print

Written by KC

06 November 2004 | 58662 words

Part 11

Faramir continued to recuperate over the next three days. No more orcs were seen, however Thranduil decided that the company would ride further northeast on the morrow to see if more signs of orc movement could be detected. On the night of the third day, Thranduil was brought back from his reverie abruptly by the sound of his human son rising from his bedding and walking away. The elven King jumped up gracefully and followed Faramir as the young Steward walked straight towards the outcropping in the distance. Maglor, also brought back from his reverie by the sounds of movement, caught up with Thranduil and both followed the young human as he walked resolutely.

"He still sleeps," Thranduil whispered as looked askance at his Seneschal as they walked with Faramir.

"I assume this is not a recent aberration on the young one's part?" Maglor whispered as he looked at Faramir with concern. "How did he survive at Amon Hen with its treacherous drops and water-filled pools with sharp rocks?"

Both elves moved past the young Steward and stopped just short of the edge of the outcropping so they could stop Faramir if he wandered too close. As if knowing where the edge lay, Faramir stopped and 'looked' out across the hills to the southwest.

"What do you see Faramir?" Thranduil asked in a soft voice so as not to startle or wake his son.

"Feel…do you not feel it? Faramir responded in a distant voice as he held his right arm stretched out in front of him, moving his hand as if touching something physical.

"Feel what, ion-nin?" the Elven King asked, feeling the hairs on the back of his neck rise.

"Evil," the young Steward replied in a soft moan, swaying slightly.

Thranduil and Maglor shared a look of concern and bewilderment.

"What evil can you feel, pen-neth?" Thranduil questioned, looking in the same direction as his son.

"Sar…u…maaannn," Faramir drawled in a deep, hoarse whisper. "He is seeking an object of power…it calls to me…it is frightened for Middle Earth…it cannot fall into the hands of the evil wizard," Faramir whispered in ever growing distress. "I come!" the young Steward shouted.

The shout turned into a scream of pain as Faramir clasped his head with his hands and collapsed. He would have fallen heavily to the ground had Thranduil not lunged forward catching his son. The elven King lifted him gently and turned around to go back to the campsite. Legolas and the twins ran towards him.

"Ada, what happened?" Legolas asked concerned by his brother's paleness that his keen elven sight could discern even in the moonlight.

"He has had a vision, my elfling…an evil one," Thranduil replied as he walked quickly back to the campsite. On reaching the camp, the elven King put his human son back abed and sat vigil until morn.


Faramir came to consciousness slowly. His head felt thick and he felt a familiar pounding behind his eyes. 'Oh why, why, why, why, why do I drink', was the first conscious thought the young Steward of Gondor had upon awakening. 'I do not remember drinking', was the second conscious but perplexed thought of the morning. 'Oh crap…a vision', was the third thought as he moaned at the injustice of it all.

"Are you alright tithen-pen?" Thranduil asked as he brushed hair back from his human son's face. The young Steward looked around him blearily still attempting to order his thoughts. He could see Maglor in the distance squatting down by the campfire and Legolas and the twins walking towards him. He assumed that Finrod was still on watch.

"Except for the pounding in my head mimicking a hangover and that had without at least the pleasure of getting drunk," Faramir answered in a beleaguered, war-weary tone. "It is Middle Earth that may not be alright. I cannot believe that Saruman is gathering orcs yet again!"

"You have had visions before?" the Elven King asked gently as Legolas and the twins squatted down beside the young human.

"Yes. Same as the old Steward; yet another reason for him to have felt uncomfortable about me. I 'saw' too much and he thought me a threat," Faramir replied around a yawn with a mixture of bitterness and sadness.

"Where do you think Saruman is gathering the orcs, ion-nin?" Thranduil continued his questioning.

"I am not certain, ada but I got a vague sense of Minas Morgul," the young Steward replied in a distant voice, wincing from the pounding in his head.

"You mentioned an object of power last evening whilst you were…" the Elven King began.

"Sleep wandering again was I?" Faramir groaned with a shake of his head, then moaned at the pain the gentle shaking caused in his head. "I have not had a vision since the Ring of Power was destroyed. I thought the benighted 'gift' gone from me."

"Maglor wondered how you managed to steer clear of the deadly obstacles at Amon Hen," Thranduil said as he continued to stroke his son's hair.

Faramir blushed spectacularly. Thranduil raised an eyebrow in question and looked at his human son intently. After several long moments under the intense scrutiny, the young Steward relented.

"Boromir found me once sleep-wandering close to the edge of a drop into the forbidden Pool. He left a decree that I was to be secured to the wall of my sleeping quarters when-ere I slept there. I tried to argue with him that I had managed not to fall in as yet and was confident that I could continue to do so but he would not listen," Faramir related, annoyance at the indignity of the situation sounding clearly in his tone.

"So you were secured by…?" Thranduil prompted with a twinkle of amusement.

"A rope tied to my ankle," the young Steward of Gondor responded, glaring at the smirking elves daring any of them to laugh and then wincing again as the pounding in his head grew worse.

A goblet appeared before King Thranduil. Faramir moaned.

"Not another sleeping draught, Maglor, I only just now woke," the young Steward whined.

"No, young one, just something for the ache in your head," Maglor chuckled as Thranduil assisted his son to sit. Faramir sniffed the brew and wrinkled his nose.

"Nothing that smells this bad can be at all good for one," Faramir whined again.

"Drink up, ion-nin. For I can assure you that you do not want Maglor annoyed with you. Trust me on this," Thranduil said with a wry smile.

With more dark looks at the Seneschal, Faramir drank the brew and sighed in relief a short while later as the brew took effect.

Later that morning, the company of elves and human mounted their horses and made for Minas Morgul. Just over a day's hard travelling found the company within a short distance of the ruins of the old stronghold. Faramir, Legolas and the twins scouted ahead moving along a high ridge that overlooked the pass in which Minas Morgul was situated. What they saw made their hearts sink for orcs were indeed gathering, hundreds of them, the wretched creatures looking starved and desperate. The trio made their way back to where Thranduil, Maglor and Finrod had stayed with the horses.

Thranduil instructed Finrod to ride to Minas Tirith to warn Estel and advise him to muster his army and rendezvous a few miles back at a unique rock formation. Finrod nodded once in agreement, ran to his horse mounting quickly and rode for the White City. The others hid their horses and made camp in a cave that Legolas discovered a short distance away. The cave afforded the company a view of the gathering orcs below.

When settling down for the night, Maglor looked at his young charge in a musing manner and then disappeared abruptly only to reappear with a length of elven rope.

"I absolutely, positively, let there be no mistake about this, refuse to submit to being tied down like some errant dog!" Faramir exclaimed upon seeing the rope. "That is a low blow, elf," the young Steward continued in a deeper, darker tone, glaring at Maglor as the elf produced 'Faramir's Bane' as if from thin air.

For the next two days and nights they watched the ever-growing number of orcs below and waited for sign of Aragorn.

Legolas, and the twins and Thranduil, Faramir and Maglor alternately made forays out to where the orcs were gathering to check on orc movements and to gather intelligence. On one such foray, Faramir, Thranduil and Maglor fanned out to see if they could catch sight of Saruman. The young Ithilien ranger's stomach fell into the depths when he realised the orcs were alerted to his ada's position. Having just enough thought left to realise that his arse was toast…if he survived, Faramir threw a rock in the opposite direction but in doing so gave away his own position.

Before the young ranger knew it, orcs were swarming over him and wrestled him to the ground. Strangely though thought Faramir, they did not kill him but pulled his arms roughly behind his back, tied his hands and relieved him of all his weaponry. Pulling him to his feet, a large Uruk-hai propelled the young ranger forward. In the trees to the right, Thranduil was beside himself with near panic as he watched his human son at first covered in orcs and then, hands bound, shoved towards the ruins of the stronghold. Maglor had to restrain the elven King from going after his son.

From their vantage point above the pass, Legolas and the twins saw the incident with ever growing horror and clambered down to the pass below. There they met with Maglor who was all but dragging the distressed elven King back away from the orcs.

"We have to plan how we are going to get our young one back," Maglor, ever the voice of reason, said as a visibly distressed Legolas moved to the other side of his father and helped Maglor guide the King to the camp.


Faramir was pushed through the doorway of a stone structure so hard that he fell to his knees and just managed to stay from falling onto his face. Gathering his breath, the young ranger looked up and was greeted by Saruman.

"If it is not Gandalf's pupil," came the smooth greeting from Saruman. "I have been expecting you wizardling."

"I am so pleased not to have disappointed you," Faramir retorted in a calm, even tone that he certainly did not feel, as he rose to his feet and inclined his head forward in a small bow.

Saruman laughed suddenly but just as quickly his expression turned dark.

"Show yourself," the evil wizard said in a smooth and commanding tone, as he looked around, "show yourself or this young one dies!"

"I have heard it said that talking to oneself is the third sign of madness," Faramir said in a conversational tone as he struggled to remove a small knife from his leather wrist protector. "Have you suffered the other two signs in order or…"

A punch to his back by the Uruk-hai sent the air from the young ranger and sent him back down onto his knees.

"Show yourself!" Saruman shouted as the Uruk-hai grabbed a fist full of Faramir's hair and pulled his head back, putting a nasty looking sword to the young human's neck. "Ahhh, there you are," Saruman said in a silky voice as he moved to one of the stones in the wall of the structure.

Feeling the grip of the Uruk-hai loosen as Saruman pulled the stone from the wall and reached into take hold of its contents, Faramir cut his bond and bounded out of the Uruk-hai loosened grip and ran past Saruman grabbing the object from the wizard's hand as he did so. The object turned out to be a ring that, in the middle of the melee, slipped onto the ring finger of the young ranger's left hand. Saruman let out a bellow of rage as Faramir ran for his life.

Just as the young ranger ran out of the stone structure all hell seemed to break loose. Yells, shouts and sounds of fighting could be heard. It took but a moment for Faramir to realise that the King had arrived even as he kept running pursued by the Uruk-hai. Without any weapons, except for the small knife that he still clutched, ranger instincts sent the young Steward looking for higher ground. Clambering onto a wall of the ruin, Faramir continued to climb as quickly as he could still followed closely by the Uruk-hai.

The Steward heard a grunt from below and turned just in time to see three elven arrows protruding from the creature that proceeded to fall to the ground dead. Faramir sighed and sat down upon the stone on which he had been standing. Looking down he could see that the fight was all but over and that his father, Elessar and Maglor all had surprisingly similar looks of anger on their faces. Legolas just looked at him shaking his head.

"Ion-nin, will you not come down?" Thranduil asked in a deceptively calm voice but one that did not fool Faramir one wit.

"No." the young Steward replied.

"Why not, ion-nin," the elven King asked in the same calm tone, one that made Legolas wince.

"I have decided that I quite like it here," Faramir answered. "I may even move here permanently. It does not look so bad from a certain angle," he added as he looked up and around.

"Please come down ion-nin," Thranduil said in a calm, soothing voice, this time making Aragorn wince.

"No. I know what is going to happen if I do and it is not fair," Faramir replied petulantly, eliciting chuckles from the elves and humans gathered below.

Legolas chuckled, remembering a similar conversation he had had with Gandalf whilst ensconced in a tree.

Losing patience, which was in short supply to begin with, Thranduil jumped up onto the wall and quickly clambered to where his human son was sitting.

"Bloody elves!" Faramir muttered as his father sat down beside him. "Oh ada, I am so sorry. I was so scared for you," the young Steward sobbed out in a harsh whisper as he threw his arms around his father's neck and buried his face in the elf's shoulder.

"As was I for you ion-nin," Thranduil replied as he returned Faramir's hug, to reassure himself that his human son was indeed alive and safe - well from the orcs anyway, he amended as he alternated between feeling relief and anger.

NB: Please do not distribute (by any means, including email) or repost this story (including translations) without the author's prior permission. [ more ]

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8 Comment(s)

I love your stories! They a amazing!

— Ria    Thursday 28 February 2008, 4:31    #

Hi Ria,
Thank you for letting me know you enjoy my stories! Always nice to get feedback :)

KC    Friday 29 February 2008, 8:23    #

I just want to say THANK YOU!!!! Not only for writting a beautful story…but for not turning Thranduil into some heartless a—hole. I don’t know where people get thinking that the woodland king hats and wants all men to die, after all in The Hobbit, Thanduil helps the people of Laketown after it was attacked by Smuge and they said if it hadn’t had been for that them none of them would have survired the winter. But again thank you very much, Faramir needed someone to look after him and you gave him the perfect Daddy.

— Leigh Ann    Saturday 17 October 2009, 21:11    #

This has solidified Faramir’s standing as the greatest character of The Lord of the Rings, because, though he never had been and never would have been seen like this in book or movie, I can see how the man Tolkein wrote would be very capable of these things.
So congratulations, you’ve written him perfectly.
Best story ever!

— Anna    Friday 26 February 2010, 1:43    #

I have enjoyed reading all your stories so much, they have made me laugh and cry at the antics of faramir, and I love the relationship between faramir, his elvan family and the love for each other they share :)

— key    Monday 28 February 2011, 17:21    #

What a wonderful series! I’ve read to the end at least twice now, this is my third time through. Your characters are compelling and quite enchanting. Dear old Fara is wonderfully portrayed throughout, equal parts haunted and humorous with his and the elves antics! Great stuff!

— KateF    Tuesday 30 July 2013, 20:52    #

Thank you for writing such an enjoyable story, including family-like relationships between male characters. It was good, and very needed!

— Treedweller    Wednesday 16 January 2019, 8:38    #

It’s really great and I love it apart from the spanking bits but I’ll just grin and bare it. the idea of Faramir being adopted by thranny d is so cute and I love it.

— comrade hannah    Saturday 20 July 2019, 22:16    #

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