Of Archery and Stuff

[Draken]

My first (and maybe last!) fanfic...not very serious I'm afraid!

Part One:

I drew back the long bow slowly, smoothly. I felt the tension build in the bowstring, the smooth slide of the arrow shaft over my left thumb. Back I drew the string until it kissed my lips. I could feel the power harnessed in it. My left arm steady, I took aim at the tree trunk some fifty yards hence. With the slightest movement of the fingers of my right hand I let the string slip from my fingers. With a whistling rush the arrow arced away and slammed with a deep thud into the tree. Well, into A tree. A tree some way to the right of the one I’d aimed at.

“Sod it!” I shouted, throwing the bow down. “Bloody thing must be bent.”

“Hmmm.” A dapper figure clad in russet brown looked up from a set of parchments. “Bad luck old chap. You’re getting better though. Keep at it, eh?”

I glowered first at him and then the bow.

“Just my luck,” I muttered under my breath. But loudly enough, obviously.

“What’s just your luck, old bean?”

I sighed. “Nothing, Jacko, nothing…well…it’s just you read about this sort of thing all the time. Swirling magical vortex opens up, you step through it and wham you’re in Middle Earth.”

Jacko nodded. “Same here, though of course in my case I didn’t so much step as dive through in the bird.” He looked across, as he often did, at the crashed Spitfire up on the outcrop. “So…why just your luck, hmm?”

“Well the idea is you end up Minas Tirith or Rivendell or Edoras. If you’re a girl you get to shag Legolas, if you’re a bloke you screw Arwen.”

“Ah.” Jacko put on his wordly wise look, which was always irritating. “And here you are stuck in the Misty Mountains with some chap from your own history books.”

I managed a weak smile. “It’s not you. It’s just being so far from the action. And knowing I’d be sod all good if there WAS any.” I looked disconsolately at the long bow.

Jacko looked back down at his parchments. “It’s not all a barrel of laughs for me, old chap. There’s a war to win you know, and here I am in some fictional world. Not just that, but a fictional world that hasn’t even been published yet, as far as I’m concerned. It all sounds like the plot of some ludicrous story.”

We looked at each other uneasily and I cleared my throat. “Anyway…I suppose it’s not all dull. Sauron’s right hand will be stretching out and all that. This lot will need some help.” I nodded at the elves and dwarves arguing more-or-less good naturedly over which trees the dwarves could fell in the woods below their new settlement.

Jacko nodded while thoughtfully stroking his handlebar moustache. “I’ll say.” He looked up the valley to where the trees gave way to bare grey rock, with fissures and ravines set in deep, menacing shadows. “You say those peaks are crawling with Jerry, hmm?”

“Orcs, Jacko, crawling with orcs. Not Germans.”

“Ah,” he commented, not looking convinced. “Either way, these chaps really should move out from here. Sitting ducks, you know.” He looked warily at the peaks above us. “Never give the enemy the advantage of height.”

I shrugged. “This woodland is sacred to the elves. Those really big trees in the middle are mallorns, the northernmost stand of them, they won’t abandon them. The dwarves have set their minds on re-opening that old garrison of theirs from the Orc Wars and they’re a stubborn bunch.”

Jacko looked unimpressed by the logic. “And you found that from all those meetings you’ve been having with them?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Bloody good job they speak English, what?”

“Yes, well never mind that. The fact remains we’re not that far from the Moria gate and there’s a zillion orcs in there. If even a fraction of them head this way we’re right in it. We need to figure how to stop them, or survive, or both. Now you’re in the RAF and I once won a game of Diplomacy, we MUST be able to figure a decent strategy between us.”

Yet again he looked wistfully at the pranged Spitfire. “If I could get the Spit in the air again I dare say that would help.”

I sighed. “We’ve been through this before, mate. Even if we could fix her there’s no aviation spirit in Middle Earth.” I looked again at the plane. “Uh Jacko, where’s the undercarriage?”

“What? Oh I lent it to the dwarves, they want to tinker. You’re right about the aviation spirit of course old chap. But the guns are fully functional and there’s quite a bit of ammo left….”