Orc in Ithilien

Gloomily, Shagrat glanced out of his window again, at the same time drawing his breath in a series of deep, careful sniffs. The fog and gathering dusk had long since obscured the figure of the Rohirrim esquire who had been set to watch this part of the building, but Shagrat could tell from the faint tang of horse-sweat and unwashed body parts that occasionally wafted downwind towards him that the man was still standing guard in the shrubbery, where he had first concealed himself several hours previously. The inside of the house was being watched as well; there was a heavily armed, straw-headed pair lingering just down the corridor from Shagrat’s bed-chamber. It seemed clear that steps had been taken to ensure that Shagrat would not be leaving Ithilien intact. In fact he seriously doubted his chances of surviving the night

Moving as quietly as he could, Shagrat gathered his few belongings together on the bed. There wasn’t much to take. A walking-stick, given him by Goldilocks, which concealed a rapier-thin blade in its shaft, an empty wine-skin which would serve as a water-flask at a pinch, and a heavy woollen cape. Shagrat had also at one point made himself a leg-brace. When it was fitted in place he was able to stand properly and even walk distances if he was careful, though in all honesty, he’d hoped that he would never have any cause to use it. Faramir had managed to inveigle only one medical man into seeing him. The fellow, who Shagrat suspected was more usually a horse-doctor, had muttered that in cases of this sort, the best option for treatment was usually a sharp blow to the head with a blunt instrument, but at Faramir’s insistence, he’d done his best to re-align the breaks in the Uruk’s ankle. This had been painful, and had not done a noticeable amount of good, so in the end Shagrat had spent an afternoon hammering the brace roughly into shape – in true Orcish fashion – from various second-hand pieces of leather and metal plate he’d scrounged for, around the Royal Stables. The farriers and grooms there had for the most part seen active military service, if not during the Ring War itself then as members of the local militia during the preceding years of hostilities. And yet for some reason these men seemed to view the Orc with substantially less aggression than the household staff. Like so much of human behaviour and the motivations that drove it, this was a mystery to him.

Unfortunately for Shagrat it was this leg-brace that was his undoing. When by his reckoning it was dark enough outside for him to make his escape, he bundled his few possessions together in Faramir’s cape and managed to lob the package out of the window quietly, but when he tried to swing his legs over the windowsill, the unaccustomed weight of the brace made him clumsy. He caught the edge of the open window-frame heavily with his foot, so that the casement shattered, and then there came a prolonged racket of breaking, falling glass. At this the doors to the bed-chamber burst open immediately: the Rohirrim guardsmen were there, shouting, fitting bolts to their crossbows and taking aim, and at that Shagrat, galvanised into action, heaved himself off the window-ledge, reaching for a large, woody-stemmed creeper that was scrambling its way up the outer wall of the house. His claws scrabbled through the foliage and scratched masonry as he desperately tried to find a purchase against the rough stone and branches, and in this way he fell rather than climbed most of the way down, but the creeper slowed his descent and he arrived at ground level badly shaken, but otherwise unhurt. Collecting his belongings, he began moving at the fastest hobble he could manage, heading across the open space of the palace lawn towards cover.

Again however the Orc had miscalculated. As he hurried through the dark, a whistling rush of arrows passed him by and he realised he was being shot at - shot at, but not by the Rohirrim guardsmen in his room two stories above. Jinking and dodging clumsily he risked a look back over his shoulder and saw the esquire who’d been set to guard the palace gardens running at full tilt at him, rapidly closing the distance between them. But when he was no more than a dozen or so body-lengths from the fleeing Orc, another patch of darkness seemed to detach itself from the wall of foliage surrounding the lawns. It bowled across the grass with frightening, bounding speed and connected with the running Rohirrim, knocking him down and rolling with him, over and over. He gave a horrible, terrified scream at the same time as Shagrat, bellowing commands in Orcish at the top of his lungs was turning back, lurching back towards the fallen man as quickly as his one good leg could carry him.

By the time Shagrat reached the Rohirrim his attacker had gone. The esquire was lying on the ground on his side, not moving but he was at least still breathing. The youth was not uninjured, for his assailant’s claws had raked him from shoulder to waist on the left-hand side, shredding through his long leather jerkin as if it was fine crepe, and gouging a series of deep wounds. The Orc probed them briefly with his claws and was relieved to note in passing that although ugly, the marks did not seem severe enough to be life-threatening; presumably the man had fainted through shock.

Quickly searching the unconscious man’s body, Shagrat relieved him of his torn waistcoat, belt and side-weapons. At this point the young man began to revive, and in spite of whatever horror he had been subject to before Shagrat’s arrival, his face contorted with terror and revulsion when he saw the Orc looming over him. The sharp, sudden scent of the Rohirrim’s fear and the reek of fresh blood that rose so sweetly from his wounds made Shagrat’s head swim, and in a reaction that was natural for him as breathing, his mouth started to water and unconsciously he licked his lips.

Though he had not spoken and had scarcely made a move towards him, the Rohirrim reacted immediately to the change in the Orc’s attitude, and trembling with fright, he began to squirm backwards away from him. Shagrat watched intently for a moment as if entranced, then shook himself.

“Call for help before you bleed to death,” he snarled at the man. There were lights already kindling in the lower level of the lodge, and the Rohirrim guardsmen would no doubt be arriving very soon. But even so, Shagrat hesitated. It would have been a different matter had he been able to steal away undetected, but Goldilocks would undoubtedly think the worst if he was to leave like this, and there was little enough in the world that Shagrat cared about other than the Prince’s good opinion of him. It was that and that alone that had stopped him from attacking the Rohirrim a moment previously, and he wondered for a heartbeat if he could not stay and try to explain. There was perhaps a chance – against everything else – that Goldilocks might listen to him. But Shagrat’s decision was already being made for at that point two things happened in rapid succession. First of all the injured man began to set up a great clamour, yelling for help at the top of his voice.

“The Orc!” he shouted. “It has savaged me! Help me - here! The beast is here!”

Then there came out of the great house behind him the faint sound of voices, shouting loudly and far away.

“Shoot the Uruk, on the Prince’s express orders - shoot him!”

Shagrat stared back at the house for a moment, aghast. With the best will in the world, he couldn’t say that he hadn’t entirely been expecting it, but it still took the heart out of him (or rather ripped it open, squeezed it dry and left a ragged, aching void in his chest) to hear that from his beloved Goldilocks. But with an effort, he pulled himself together. Moving to the best of his ability, and with scarcely a glance over his shoulder at his erstwhile lodgings, the Orc turned his back on the royal palace at Ithilien and legged it off into the night.

TBC