Chapter Text
"No! This is what Sauron wants!” she cries out in desperation.
Adar turns unfeeling eyes from her, his sole focus now his legions blanketing the hills around the Eregion.
His tall, imposing figure distorts into towering shadow limned by the blazing pyres in the valley below as Galadriel frantically fights the rough hands dragging her back. His orcs’ iron grip on her arms is an agony she can scarcely pay mind to now that her beloved city of Eregion has been doomed to fall. The reverberating call of Adar’s warhorn is a harbinger of death against her back as she is hauled away.
She is jostled back into her captor’s tent and in those close confines, the stench of her orc handlers becomes its own close and cloying presence. Her wrist is held in an unyielding grip, fingertips going numb as they wrestle her into the heavy iron manacle, chaining her back to the central tent stake. The pack steps back in relief, now that this wily she-Elf is contained. One starts to prowl around her while the others debate in rasping Black Speech.
Her attention is drawn out of her panic back to the orcs. Their disconcerting eyes are rolling toward her, leaving her skin crawling. She feels and smells the presence of an orc at her back – far too close for comfort. She shies away and tries to twist to face it, narrowly avoiding a gauntleted fist clawing at her.
Turning, she feels another one paw at her from the other side. Her pulse sings in her ears as the realisation dawns that she is in real danger. Adar’s casual dismissal of her has made her vulnerable to his children. Apprehension thickens the air. She can feel a hint of frenzy as they crowd closer – still out of arms reach – but the look in their eyes is now predatory instead of cautious.
She instinctively slows her movements, glaring while she bares her teeth and draws herself up to her full, if diminutive, height. She is Commander of the Northern armies. She has earned her reputation over millennia and she is no coward.
A low growl rumbles from a hooded orc, and she has this small warning before he lunges at her. She throws her shoulder down and manages to wind him as his momentum carries him over her back and down to the ground. The others circle and snarl at her, shoving at the orc curled up on the tent floor.
Their foul breath permeates the air and she is all concentration as knives are loosened in belts. The next lunges dagger first, but her hand is already flying and her knuckles land a blow to his inner forearm. Nerveless fingers drop the wicked dagger at her feet while her other fist delivers a blow to the creature’s liver through his decaying leather jerkin.
As this orc crumples, she kicks him swiftly and hikes her toe under the fallen dagger blade. It arcs gracefully through the air into her outstretched hand. She has a moment of hope before a heavy shape collides with her back. Her momentum is arrested by the manacle, and with a sickening pop, her shoulder is wrenched out of its socket. Pain blooms deep into her chest and arm as she feels each tendon split and tear.
She is dangling by her wrist, half on the floor as her attackers take hold of her. She tries to stave them off with one arm but they’ve crowded her and she feels the beautifully soft-spun elven linen tear as one has her by the collar and another rips the sleeve clean off in their frenzy to subdue her.
The heavy handle of a blade collides with the back of her head and dark spots dance around her vision as it tunnels and everything goes dark.