Azof and the Farmer's Wife

After Azof left Julienne’s cottage – well, the rest of that night was a bit of a blur. 

Barely registering what he’d been about, the Orc, in a disoriented state, feeling raw, anguished, and stunned, found that he’d made his way – by means of putting one foot in front of the other, automatically – down the hill to the village, and once there, there was nothing else for him to do.  He had set about trying to drown his sorrows in the local pub. 

He hadn’t been thinking clearly.  Maybe he’d been a little bit – in shock.  Azof wouldn’t know.  But his estrangement from Julienne – the enormity of what had happened between them, the things he’d said and done – it had been too much for him.  At first he’d tried to think of a way around it, some means by which he might reinstate himself in the farmer’s wife’s good graces - but, that night, it was like trying to scale a blank, ice wall.  He could scrabble away with his claws, but was never able find the slightest purchase in it.  Any thoughts or ideas he might have had went slipping and sliding away in the face of just one awful concept: the tangible and overwhelming fear that Julienne was done with him, and in the face of that Azof’s courage failed him.  The Orc had always feared – he’d known, or suspected on some level that it would come to this and now the worst had happened.   Since then he’d been doing his best to think of absolutely nothing at all.

He’d found it easy at first.  There’d been strong drink, in copious quantities.  Followed by a blissful period of forgetfulness – then more drink.  That had gone on for a while.  Then had happened a chance encounter with Julienne’s cousin, the livestock-trader Drew.   Possibly he’d assisted Drew in dispatching another of his livestock-compensation cases.  His memory of the precise events was…..spotty but Azof thought that one might not have gone so well.  The situation might well have turned inappropriately ugly, and messy.   He has a recollection of trader Drew looking at him, afterwards – like he didn’t recognize, or know what to make of Azof at all. 

It was the morning – or quite possibly any number of mornings after Azof’s first great drunken binge.  Only half-awake as yet the Uruk grunted, and tried to roll over on his side.   

He couldn’t manage it.  His neck hurt and there was something heavy and unyielding in his way.  He jerked his head in irritation – and couldn’t fail to wake up properly after that!  A searing pain shot through him, centred on the fleshy little wall of tissue between his nostrils and Azof yelled aloud and thrashed his head in consternation and surprise. 

“Ah!  AAAHH!  F-U-C-K-K!”

The Orc immediately discovered that moving his head back and forth or even sideways was out of the question.  It was because there was something – something that felt odd, uncomfortable and heavy exerting a weird kind of pressure in the middle of his face; somehow whatever it was was sort of tugging on him, from there.  Only when he tried to reach up to investigate did he belatedly register that his hands were tied.

Full realization of his predicament came crashing back shortly after that.

Azof was lying on his stomach.  He was chest-down atop a robust metal framework that formed a long, narrow bench, straddling it with his arms and legs dangling uselessly down on either side.  His wrists were fastened together somewhere out of sight underneath, as were his ankles, and as for his head! – Azof’s head was slotted through a narrow aperture in a sheet of metal at the front end of this framework, and was held fast by the neck there.  And right through his nose – which stung and was throbbing horribly was – there was - 

Flashes of muddled recollection returned to him.  He’d been drinking all day in the pub.  There’d been a….heated disagreement with some bushy-bearded fellow.  With Julienne’s husband, the Orc realized, with a sinking feeling.  That had gone on to fisticuffs; then an all-out bar-room fight.  Azof felt a vicious stab of satisfaction as he remembered launching himself across the pub table at him;  the crunch of snapping cartilage under his knuckles….Yeah.  He was pretty certain he’d broken the Farmer Drew’s nose.        

Well?  The bearded twat had it coming!  It had made Azof hot and cold with indignation, the things he’d been insinuating about his former wife.

At that point Cousin Drew, the livestock trader had stepped in.  He’d smoothed ruffled feathers all round, and had then offered the Orc a place to sleep it off - to stay; he’d gone with him and then – the details were still hazy - that had somehow translated itself into – this.

Azof was on his belly in a cattle-crush.  It was a sturdy, box-like structure designed for keeping all manner of domestic livestock safely confined and contained during the administration of routine husbandry procedures, veterinary remedies, etc.  The central bench on which he was lying – to which he’d been strapped, across the shoulders and again at the small of his back – that bench was surrounded by the main body of the apparatus: a framework of metal panels and pivots and bars.

The Orc was stripped naked and there was circle of dull, thick brass piercing his nose.  A taut cord tied to the ring between his nostrils was drawn tight and secured at the other end to a mooring point in a dusty, straw-strewn stable floor.    

Azof stared, cross-eyed, down at it.  “What the fuck?!”  He jerked his head back in an involuntary movement, trying to get a better look - but that only caused a fresh spike of pain to lance through him.  “Ow!” he howled, eyes watering, and then yelped out again, in surprise. 

“Ow!  What the bloody – fuck!  Oh fuck!”

Someone had come into the room or building with him, and whoever it was had just slapped Azof with a hard, stinging blow directly on the backside.  Unable to turn his head, the Orc could only wait and listen as a series of unhurried footsteps, pacing the length of the livestock crush first on one side, and then the other behind him, finally brought the person round to the front of the crate and into his field of view.  The Orc couldn’t look up far enough to see the other fellow’s face - but recognized clearly enough the man’s cream-coloured trousers and his impractical, suede-covered shoes.  As a result of Azof’s efforts over the last cow he’d dispatched, when he’d last seen those shoes and clothes they had been stained with gore - a rather a different colour; but it was still the livestock trader, Cousin Drew.    

Trader Drew reached down and patted the top of Azof’s head almost fondly, as the furious Orc twisted and struggled away from him.

“Now, now!” Cousin Drew admonished, cupping his hand round Azof’s chin.  He twisted the ring in his nose - just a little bit.

“Ooh-yah!  Fuck! You bastard – “Azof reared his head back violently, almost wrenching the thing out of his nose.

 Drew was too quick for him.  “Ah-ah-ah!” he chided, unclipping the end of the tie from its fixing on the floor, “musn’t do that!  You’ll only end up yanking it through again.  Won’t have no nose left if you carry on like this, will you?”

Azfof rolled his bleary gaze up the livestock trader and growled at him.  “No nose?  Then ‘ow d’you reckon I’ll smell, then?”

The other man ignored him.  Delivering another lively slap to Azof’s rump he said: “What did we say yesterday, Mr Orc, eh?”

As Azof glowered at him in sullen silence, the livestock dealer cheerfully answered his own question.  “You got to know your place!”  he said, emphasizing that with another slap to Azof’s buttocks.  “Gotta learn the right way to behave!”

“You…fucking – what?”

“Domestication,” trader Drew explained.  “It’s a process.  Going to be time-consuming, too.  I couldn’t think what to do at first, and I won’t deny I was worried, but after a time it came to me.  You might be nothing but a wild and vicious savage as yet, no use to man nor beast – but oh!  Mr Orc!  Just you wait.  You’ll be the first, ‘cause what I’m planning to do is to mould you.  I’ve got all the right resources -” here he gestured grandiosely at the rest of the room, showing off what looked to Azof like a nameless pile of rusty agricultural junk, “and equipment, but that’s by the by.  Because you know what’s most important in this process?”

“What process?”

“Keep up!” Drew had with him the little buggy-whip he used when driving with his horses.  He now unwound the string from the handle and held it out in front of Azof.  “Smell it,” he instructed.

“Fuck off!”

The whistle of the lash through the air told Azof it was coming, yet as it hit home he couldn’t help but yowl out in pain and surprise.  He swore.  “Shit!  Fucking, shitting shit!”

“Perseverance, Mr Orc, is the most important part of the process of domestication,” trader Drew informed him.  “And as for you and me, we’ve bags of time.”

“We do, do we?  Know what I reckon?  You’re off your head!” 

“You remember what domestication involves, don’t you?” Drew continued.  “No?  Domestication’s what you do when you’re faced with wild and vicious savage things, to make ‘em be useful, obedient, and good.  And it’s all about reward and punishment isn’t it?  Carrot and stick – that’s the root of it.  It’s a gradual process that involves me bringing you into line.”

“Carrot,” Drew repeated soothingly, and spreading his hands flat on Azof’s shoulders, began digging his fingers in, rotating the joints in their sockets and administering a thoroughly-unwelcome deep-muscle massage.  He moved on, unhurriedly, working his way down the Orc’s spine toward the small of his back.  “There.  There now,” he went on, taking up a sickeningly sympathetic tone.  “And here, you’ve been stuck out here so long.  I bet that feels much better already, doesn’t it?”

Azof heaved and tried to buck and roll and was able to do – exactly nothing to get away.  Dismayed and confused he repeated – “what – the fuck?”

Drew held him steady until he stopped struggling.  “Oh, no, no, no.  First thing you’ve to learn is you’ll take what I give you.  The good and the bad together.  You don’t decide, and you won’t resist.  All that’ll get you is a good dose of stick.”

“’Good dose of stick’, eh?” Aozf snorted.  “You even hear yourself, what you’re saying to me, can you?”

The farmer’s expression darkened.  “What d’you mean?”

“If ‘good dose ‘a stick’s’ another way of you saying you wanna bum me you better hurry up getting started, ‘cause I’m planning on getting myself out of this thing” – he rattled his hands and  feet in their restraints -  “in just a jiff.”

“How dare you.” Drew’s voice was cold with fury.  “When I was only trying to be nice.   As if I would think of something so filthy – that vile - ”

“Yeah?” Azof snorted.  “What wiv’ you putting your ‘happy ‘ands’ all over, an’ going on ‘bout how you’re gonna put your ‘carrot’ to me, I dunno what else you was expecting me to think – “

“Stop talking.”  Drew reached down and without warning closed his hands round Orc’s throat, thumbs squeezing tight across his windpipe.  It was a practiced hold, and Drew maintained it efficiently and without emotion, looking on impassively as Azof twisted and thrashed in place and choked, fighting for air.

“Stop struggling,” the man instructed.   “Best listen to me!  Behave yourself!  Stop struggling, now.”  He repeated it again, and again, and was still saying the same words as Azof’s vision began greying out and at last he lost consciousness.

“No, you’re not going anywhere, Mr Orc,” Drew whispered soothingly, stroking Azof’s face.  “And never worry.  Won’t be long before I have you eating,” he promised, “out the palm of my hand.”  

TBC