A Family Way

6. Performing to order

 

 

Rashanka had only an abridged version of this story from Omran, but what she understood was enough to prick at her conscience, and from that point she decided to make an attempt to improve her attitude towards the Orc – or at least to do her best to interact with him more civilly in future.   Unfortunately her resolution lasted only until the start of their next scheduled tryst.

 

They had taken up suitable positions – fully clothed positions - on the bed peaceably enough, when Rashanka noticed that her grotesque paramour had his hand up at his mouth and was surreptitiously wetting his fingers. 

 

“What’s this!” Rashanka demanded, as she seized hold of the Orc’s wrist and shook it accusingly.

 

“Oh,” he explained distractedly, “it’s just I might need a bit of – help, to get things going.  You know - down there.  Since you’re not really getting in to this, I mean you’re not enjoying it much, are you?”

 

“You think I do this for my pleasure?” the woman exclaimed, shoving him off her in astonishment.  “I do not pretend to ‘enjoy’ any of it!”

 

“It isn’t any great shakes for me either,” the Orc replied, his tone tense, “having to perform to order whenever you say, but even if you’re not bothered about going easy on yourself, if we carry on the way we have been, I’m going to get badly – chafed.  And when that happens it’s going to put the bloody kaibosh on your plans for certain.”

 

“It is ‘no great shakes for you either,’ you claim?” Rashanka cried.  “And yet I have  evidence enough to be ‘certain’ in my mind that during these repeated couplings upon which you insist, you surely receive gratification enough yourself!”

 

“I don’t know about insisting on anything,” the creature retorted, “seeing as it was you started up all this palaver in the first place.  And as for getting my jollies – it isn’t easy, trying to keep a grip on everything so’s I can finish off the moment you tell me.  If it makes you feel any better I don’t get much out of it either, when it’s like this.”

 

Honest enough to recognize that the knock the Orc had delivered, however unconsciously, to her own vanity, Rashanka felt that she ought at least to try and justify her position. 

 

“But your continued presence here is something you petitioned for!” she protested, “and you remain here willingly – as much as is possible for someone in your straitened situation.  By the terms of our bargain, I am not forcing you to act other than according to your own inclination.”

 

The Uruk was silent for a moment, and eventually he said:  “You know, I’m not just going along with this because you could wipe the floor with me if I didn’t.  That is, I – it’s not the only reason.”

 

On hearing that of course Rashanka was bound to insist on further explanation.  There wasn’t a ready response that Shagrat could give her however, as the subject had only crossed his mind infrequently - if at all, and concerned an overall concept that he had never even thought of attempting to put into words.  But he tried to make himself clear with:

 

“It’s because even if I haven’t seen a proper one like you in years and years, it’d still go against the grain.”

 

It would be a mistake for anyone to assume that the size, ferocity and aggressiveness of the Uruk-hai were characteristics that had arisen by simple chance.  This was because the great soldier-Orcs of Mordor were the result of a deliberate breeding programme initiated many centuries before with the aim of producing a superior – and highly durable – type of warrior.

 

That larger, fiercer females gave rise to larger, fiercer progeny – and were better able to withstand the rigors of gestation, followed by the stress of birthing of their proportionately larger young – these were traits that had quickly been noted and amplified by active selection in the progenitors of Shagrat’s race.  The Uruk wasn’t properly able to explain the peculiarly strong impulse he felt towards appeasing Rashanka - which wasn’t merely the result of a wish to avoid physical harm, because an instinctive deferral to larger, wildly aggressive females wasn’t so much a tendency that had been bred into the males of his species as a vitally important strategy for the preservation of life. 

 

“A proper – what?” Rashanka demanded.  “What do you think to mean by that?”

 

“A proper Uruk - lady.  And even if you’re half-and-half –  have you any idea who your old man was at all?”

 

There was every likelihood that he had been a man of the Haradrim, but other than that Rashanka had couldn’t have said (a point that among Orcs, was of course no cause for comment).

 

“Most people assume,” she replied stiffly, “I was gotten on some unfortunate woman of peasant stock, following her ravishment by one of the foul denizens of Mordor.”

 

The Orc gave her a level look.  “Do me a favour,” he replied, “I’m not saying it never happens, but it can’t have been that way in your case, can it?”

 

“What makes you think so?”

 

The Orc snorted.  “Because it doesn’t matter what anyone says, these yokels might be simple, but they’ve ways enough of getting rid of an unwanted sprog, never mind one that’s not even all their own, and that goes double for Harad-folk.  Your lot had physics, and scholars, back in the days when these Tarks hadn’t even thought of coming out of the West.  And even if you are half-and-half - and you look it, you’ve still more Uruk in you than anyone - like you - I can ever remember seeing.”

 

“How can that be?” Rashanka exclaimed, with extreme scepticism.  “You of all people must have seen Orc-women enough!  Were there none for you to look at when you lived in Mordor?”

 

“Orc women?  Those snaga!” Shagrat said, waving off her objection, “but Orcs like you and me – there were never so many to begin with, all things considered.   And as for the likes of you, they were always a bit of a law unto themselves.  Different.  You know.”

 

“I don’t know,” said Rashanka, emphatically.   “What do you mean?”

 

“Are you joking?” the Orc asked incredulously.  “Have you never seen an Uruk-woman?  They’re queer in the head!  And did I mention they’re bleedin’ massive?  Your dam, now, what was she like?” 

 

“It is difficult for me to say,” Rashanka replied, “for my memories of my mother are from long ago, before I was yet full grown.   But I think she was a little wider in the shoulders, and here, in the chest – I think she must have been more broad.  As for her height -” she here gestured with her hands, indicating a distance of about a half a foot - “it would perhaps have been this much again added to yours.”  

 

Though at this point Shagrat did not by any means represent the fine figure of Orcish manhood he might once have done, he was at least still undiminished in height.  But knowing he was a larger specimen of his type, the Uruk had to swallow a vicarious thrill of foreboding when he thought about what Rashanka’s mother must have been like.

 

“Back in Mordor you were nothing if you couldn’t fight,” the Orc resumed, following an uneasy and contemplative silence, “but no one in their right mind would’ve tried anything on with one of your lot because – now don’t take this the wrong way, but you tended to be a lot narkier, too.  On top of that when you ganged up -”*

 

“Ganged up?”

 

“Yes, ganged up!  Never mind fighting like cats and dogs the rest of the time, but if anyone else got the wrong side of any one of you, the whole lot’d close ranks and would be down on him like a ton of bricks.  It was bloody frightening, I can tell you!  Woman Uruks like your mother ruled the roost in Mordor back in the day.  I mean before.”

 

“Before?”  in spite of herself, Rashanka couldn’t help but be intrigued by the insights Shagrat seemed to be providing into the life of an Uruk-hai in Mordor.  “Before what happened, exactly?”

 

“Before we – lost ‘em.  Before they all upped and legged it - like your Mum must’ve done.”

 

“The females of an entire race somehow were - lost?  Preposterous!”

 

Shagrat shrugged.  “I’ve heard ideas doing the rounds that are – preposterous-er.”

 

“This is just a fantasy,” interrupted Rashanka suddenly growing weary of the subject.   “You know nothing, really, of my mother’s circumstance,” she continued, “and these are generalizations, nothing more than that.  You can’t be certain about any of this.”

 

“I didn’t say I know for sure,” Shagrat protested, “but I still see well enough and I tell you it’s obvious, to anyone looking at you.  Your mum ran off, didn’t she?  And she wasn’t the only one, not by a long shot.  Can’t stand being told what’s what, and especially not what to do, that’s the first thing I should’ve told you about the woman Uruks.  As for soldiering, taking orders, kowtowing and all that – stone me!  They were a dead loss! Didn’t hang about long in Mordor after we got the – call.  Took it into their heads to pick up and go off – somewhere, and before you knew it, there were next to none of them left.”  He stopped to consider this for a moment.  “They probably had the right idea, thinking back on it.”

 

After the females of his species were gone, Shagrat, in common with most of his compatriots had barely spared them a second thought - had wondered about them so infrequently that it was as if their very existence, together with the absorbing business of procreation itself had been obliterated from their collective consciousness.  The plain fact was that this spoke volumes about the nature of the forces by means of which the Orcs of Mordor had routinely been curbed and controlled, yet even now with those malign influences long since removed, the habits of unquestioning obedience were still in some respects so deeply ingrained that it only occurred to Shagrat to find this situation - vaguely suspicious.

 

“What of those few who remained?” Rashanka prompted.

 

He gave her a ghastly smile.  “Oh, I wouldn’t say it was ‘few’, exactly.  What was left was plenty for the War and what have you.  You know how our kind were built to last and last.”

 

“And there were no further attempts to – that is to say, at breeding?”

 

The Uruk looked shifty.  “Oh - well.  Most folk just got into – into other things, instead.”  He cleared his throat awkwardly.  “D’you know how your mum got on, afterwards, after she went?”

 

Rashanka shrugged.  “I know only that she had been travelling for many years - a lifetime’s worth of years and more - before she encountered the people of my tribe.  Her appearance, her size – that she was alone in the deep desert but not in want of help, and then in later years, her longevity -  my mother was eventually assumed to be an earthly manifestation of one of our principal deities and came to be revered as such.  I inherit all of my current position, my status, from her. As in time will - my daughter.”

 

“Ah.”  Shagrat huffed out a long sigh.  “I see,” and a keen look passed between the Orc and half-Orc.  They were perhaps at last beginning to understand each other’s motives a little better.

 

TBC.

 

* This set-up is directly lifted from the happy home lives of spotted hyaenas, in the quite likely event that some of the stuff in this chapter seems to be getting a bit too far-fetched.  Spotted hyaenas seem like a fairly good model for Tolkien’s Orcs: they’re social carnivores that live in great big marauding groups, and are well-known for having such a disproportionately bad reputation that few people seem to have a good word to say about them.  And there are other parallels: hyaenas are generally perceived to have questionable eating habits and to be amoral, filthy, vicious, cowardly and unsightly.  In some cases they are greatly feared by the people who live alongside them, not only because of their depredations on livestock and sporadic attacks on humans (a very real risk, especially for people who are young / vulnerable / infirm) but because they are considered to be dark creatures that ally themselves with witches and all-round evil.  And anyone who knows anything about hyaenas in mythology will also tell you that for a long time, it was believed that there were no female ones.  Could the popular perception of hyaenas be any more Orc-like?  While nobody has yet suggested that hyaenas were mutated into their (alleged) sorry current state, they have also often been compared most unfavourably and very specifically with another, more aesthetically-pleasing carnivore that has a reputation for nobility, with which they have a famous and long-standing ‘enmity’ as the two species live in similar habitats and actively compete for prey.  Seen in this light, lions vs. hyaenas out on the African savannah might not seem a million miles from Elves and Orcs in Middle Earth....        

 

In addition to their many other attributes, spotted hyaenas are also a pretty much unique real-world example of a social carnivore that lives in female-dominated groups; male hyaenas find themselves having to tread very softly indeed around their larger, more aggressive, female counterparts (see Shagrat’s comments on this subject to Rashanka in the preceding chapter: quite a lot like that).  These animals also appear to be insanely aggressive in their dealings with one another, a trait they take up almost from the moment of birth.  These are very unusual  characteristics, and the obvious question that everyone wonders about these hyaenas is basically – could it be that it is all somehow  linked? 

 

Anyway, given the other similarities, a similar social set-up might not be absolutely impossible for Uruk-hai - especially considering the much-discussed point that if Orcs really ‘multiplied after the manner of men and the Children of Illuvatar,’ how come you never hear of any that were definitely female?