I guess it is an archaic form...

Sometimes I hear an adverbial phrase 力{ちから}なくなく used in context when someone
resigned something after an effort. Let's say a warrior was pursuing another
one to no avail and …力なくなくお城へ引き返した.

Does なくなく correspond here to 無く無く and does the repetition emphasise the first
無い? Or perhaps (I doubt it, but cannot really exclude the possibility from the
context) does it negate it (like 無くもない), ie. "he resigned _not having lost_
all his strength"?

Or maybe it is something else? 泣く泣く? But then how does it relate to 力?
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negation archaic-language
Is なくなく an emphatic negative expression (e.g. in 力なくなく)?
力無く means "weakly" and なくなく(泣く泣く) means "begrudgingly".

I don't know the word of 力なくなく. 力無く泣く make sense, it means I cry weakly.
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Seeing this particular phrase 力なくなく for the first time myself, I cannot think
of it as anything else but a kind of
[畳語](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%95%B3%E8%AA%9E) (reduplicated
words/phrases) version of the adverbial phrase 力無く (without strength; limply,
exhaustedly), with the meaning unchanged.

Using 力なくなく as double negative (i.e. not without strength) would be pushing it
both grammatically and stylistically, and 力泣く泣く leaves 力 abandoned, disjoined
from any part of the sentence, as you suspected.

Now, as 畳語-fying goes, 力なくなく seems atypical, but I don't know of any rule that
says it cannot be done, and Google search shows that it has been done by
published authors too
([力なくなく](https://www.google.co.jp/search?q=typo&oq=typo&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.878j0j4&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8#tbm=bks&q=%22%E5%8A%9B%E3%81%AA%E3%81%8F%E3%81%AA%E3%81%8F%22)
and
[力無く無く](https://www.google.co.jp/search?q=typo&oq=typo&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.878j0j4&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8#q=%22%E5%8A%9B%E7%84%A1%E3%81%8F%E7%84%A1%E3%81%8F%22&tbm=bks)),
unless these examples are just typographical errors or another construction
altogether -- but it doesn't look that way.

I believe it's done more for rhythmic effect than emphasis, if anything. The
seven-syllable variant makes the flow of the sentence a little more...
lilting, at least to my ear, though the scene it describes (a disheartened and
exhausted warrior making his way back to his castle empty-handed) is just the
opposite of that.
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