Orc in Ithilien

Shagrat was following a steeply sloping trail that wended through tall stands of broad-leaved trees. He had gone only a short distance when the Hobbit, huffing and puffing and apparently running at full tilt, caught up with him. Trotting along by his side, he handed up Shagrat’s walking-stick, which in his haste the Orc had left behind in Dokuz’s camp. Shagarat grabbed it out of his hands while the Hobbit gabbled apologies breathlessly.

“It’s all right. You did me a favour, to tell the truth,” said Shagrat briskly, not letting up his quick pace. “I was looking for an excuse to get out of there.”

“What about your friends, those other Orcs?” the Hobbit said, hurrying to keep up with him.

No friends of mine, Shagrat told him, and said that he’d better go back to them, while he could still find the way.

Ludlow hesitated, dragging his feet.

Shagrat stopped, and regarded the irritating little creature for a moment. For some reason, Goldilocks had a hell of a soft-spot for Halflings, he knew that much. Really fond of them he was, and most likely he would do his nut or worse, if he ever heard that Shagrat had stood by and let one of them be done to death without even trying to stop it.

“What d’you think you’re doing with that band of blackguards anyway?” Shagrat asked.

“Well it’s the funniest thing. I came down here to see a bit of the country, all the sights and things, and they offered to give me the full tour. It was very reasonably priced.”

“They’ve got you to pay them?” Shagrat stared at him incredulously. “Are you soft in the head or something? Don’t you know anything about Orcs?”

Frowning, Ludlow asked him what he meant.

They were planning to kill you and eat you, not take you on a holiday, Shagrat explained shortly. With this he felt he was absolving any responsibility or duty of care for the Hobbit populace in general that he might have inherited from Faramir.

Ludlow, however, seemed to take this worrying news surprisingly well.

“Oh right,” he said. “I’ve been wondering about that.” He hurried up to Shagrat’s side. “Where are you going?” he asked.

Up into the mountains, Shagrat told him, where it’s high and cold and there’s clouds to hide you from the sun.

“Can I come?”

The Orc gave him a withering glare and turned away without speaking, continuing on up the woodland path. Despite this the Hobbit kept on scampering after him, following sometimes at a greater, and other times at a lesser distance. Trusting that he would be bound to fall behind eventually, Shagrat did his best to ignore him, and in this way they climbed, steadily gaining altitude for the rest of the night. By the time the sky was growing pale with the first morning light, they had come to the end of the oak and beech forests that had covered the lower slopes of the foothills. They were walking among coniferous trees now, and the patches of bare rock and scree-slope in their path were becoming more and more extensive.

Crossing one of these open areas, Ludlow suddenly let out a squeal of excitement. “Look, Shagrat!” he said, pointing to a cone-shaped mountain far on the western horizon. There was a faint column of smoke rising vertically up from it. “Whatever’s that!”

“Volcano,” the Uruk grunted, glancing at it and giving the Hobbit a baleful, yellow-eyed stare. “I saw one close-up, once. Take it from me, you wouldn’t want to get any nearer to it than this.”

At that moment he became aware of a faint voice that was echoing up the mountainside towards them.

“Shagrat! You shirt-lifting bastard!” it shouted. “Give me back my bleedin’ Hobbit!”

It was Dokuz. He came into view a moment later, running hard, in hot pursuit apparently, and he rushed on up the narrow path, breathing heavily.

“I oughter of finished you properly last time, and saved myself a lot of bother,” he yelled at Shagrat as he approached. “Should’ve left you as carrion on that mountainside, ‘cause carrion’s all you’re good for.”

“Funny, I thought that’s what you did do,” Shagrat commented, as he turned to face him.

“Yeah, well,” Dokuz said, looking nonplussed. “Well - you don’t know what a trial it’s been to me, keeping that little bleeder out of trouble. Give him here and we’ll say no more about it.”

“Don’t think I will, at that,” said Shagrat. He shoved Ludlow further up the path behind him, out of harms way, for no other reason than that this would be bound to irritate Dokuz.

“Last chance, Captain,” Dokuz said, going on to count each of Shagrat’s inadequacies off on his fingers as he spoke. “Don’t think I ain’t noticed you got a gammy leg. Can’t see you’re still standing, to tell the truth. You’re not wearing that eye patch for show, neither. Strewth, Shagrat mate, you look like you been chewed up and spat out again by somethink. What the bleeding hell’s ‘appened to you?”

Ran into trouble after you lot pinched all my kit, Shagrat replied. “Little contretemps with a bear.”

“Conti- contree- my bleedin’ eye,” Dokuz scoffed, telling Shagrat to pull the other one while he was at it. “You’ve never taken on a bear. Unless you bullshitted the bugger to death at twenty paces with all your poncy talk, did you?”

Shagrat shrugged.

“We both know your sword-hand’s well knackered,” Dokuz continued, slightly rattled despite himself by Shagrat’s nonchalant attitude. “You – you ain’t got a weapon anyway.”

“You bone-headed idiot,” Shagrat snarled, unsheathing the blade that was hidden inside his walking-stick, “I’ll fight you left-handed any day of the week.”

“Very fancy,” Dokuz commented and without warning, he rushed at Shagrat. The older Uruk stepped sideways and back to avoid him, only to collide with the Hobbit, who had crept up so close behind him that he was practically hugging the skirt of Shagrat’s tunic. They both fell over, sprawling among the stones and rocks.

Dokuz sighed and rolled his eyes at them. “You’re nowt but a bleedin’ embarrassment,” he told Shagrat, as he bent over to disarm him. Shagrat, still on his back, lunged for his opponent and missed, and at that Dokuz kicked him away, his heavily-booted foot impacting hard against the base of Shagrat’s ribs. “Did I mention you were also outnumbered?” he added as Azof and one of the other smaller Orcs came clattering up the trail towards them.

“You got ‘em!” Azof shouted. “Nice one boss!”

The three of them began laying into Shagrat properly after that, belabouring him with their feet and fists. Unable to regain his footing, the beleaguered Uruk fought back in silence as best he could, but after several minutes Dokuz kicked him again, effortlessly finding that same centre of pain in his side, and when he did that all thoughts Shagrat had of anything else left him quite completely. Dokuz’s blows had done something awful to a pre-existing injury to his chest, something that Shagrat did his best not to think about, day-to-day. All the breath was driven out of him and wheezing helplessly, he folded himself around the frightening area of pain and looseness, curling up where he was lying to protect it from further damage.

His opponent however had other ideas. “That hit the spot, did it Shaggers?” Dokuz said, with some interest. “Azof. Hold him still a minute, yeah? That’s the way. Stretch ‘im right out.”

Azof’s strong hands grabbed hold of Shagrat and he began trying to force him up onto his knees. From his position at ground level Shagrat saw Dokuz’s feet moving purposefully out of his field of view and realising that he was planning to take a run at him, he struggled frantically to break free.

The next moment he was floundering on his face in the dirt. Azof had thrown him down and Dokuz had started screaming horribly.

“What the frigg – what the flying frigg is that?” the little snaga-Orc was screeching. “Where the frigg – where the frigg’s it frigging come from?”

All this Orcish yelling heralded the arrival of the Warg – Shagrat’s Warg – which had attacked, making a beeline for Dokuz. It was snarling ferociously and had him pinned to the ground. Worrying at him with its claws, it was growling and slavering at Azof and his smaller companion all the while. They were managing to hold it at bay, but seemed unsure how to proceed because -

“Don’t try nothing!” Dokuz was howling at them, “the bugger’ll have me - Shagrat, gerrit off me! Shagrat! Call the frigging thing off!”

Shagrat rolled painfully onto his side and stayed with his head down for a moment. It took him a long time to finally get to his feet. None of the other Orcs made any comment however.

“You,” Shagrat said, addressing the Hobbit, who was still cowering among the stones and watching them, round-eyed. “Get their stuff and bring it over here, will you?”

Ludlow obeyed immediately, hurrying over to where the Orcs had left their backpacks. One by one, he dragged the bulky objects back to Shagrat, also taking for himself a smaller, Hobbit-sized haversack that Azof’s companion had been carrying.

“Right,” Shagrat said to Dokuz, who was still underneath the Warg, “I’m taking this –“ he indicated the largest pack, which was Azof’s, “and that” – pointing to the Hobbit, for all the stuff you nicked off me before. Seem fair enough to you?”

“He can’t ‘ave that one,” Azof protested, pointing at his pack. “Tell ‘im, boss. It’s got the –“

“Tell him he can have whatever he likes,” Dokuz interrupted frantically. “Take whatever you want, Shagrat, old mate,” he called.

Obeying a quick command from Shagrat, the Warg jumped clear of Dokuz. It kept on barking maniacally at him with hackles raised, and it clawed the ground in frustration that Shagrat had halted its attack. “See this lot off, all right?” Shagrat told it. “Make sure they don’t come back in a hurry.”

The Warg bounded energetically towards the three Orcs. For a moment Azof looked as if he was thinking about standing and facing it, but with Dokuz yelling:

“Leave it! Leave it!”

- at him, he joined in their scramble to get out of the way.

Shagrat waited till they were far out of sight down the rocky path. He shouldered Azof’s pack then sat down heavily under the unexpected weight, trying to gauge distances across the mountainside to the next stand of trees. It looked like a long way. Too far, maybe. The sun was getting higher and the bare ground ahead of him was already beginning to swim and grow hazy with the heat. The Hobbit was also hovering around at the edges of his vision, irritatingly.

“What d’you think you’re looking at?” Shagrat snapped. “Haven’t you seen someone getting done over before?”

“No!” said Ludlow.

Shagrat snorted wryly, explaining that the good kicking he’d just received wasn’t the first one he’d ever had, that it hadn’t been the worst by a long shot, and the way his luck was going these days, it probably wouldn’t be the last one either.

“But they attacked you three against one,” Ludlow said, bristling with indignation. “It wasn’t fair.”

We’re Orcs, Shagrat told him wearily. That’s what we do. Thinking about the beating he’d taken made the pain of it return with a vengeance. He was far from being the Uruk he once had been, and was well past being able to take that sort of treatment in his stride. Worse in a way was the knowledge that he’d been bested by Dokuz yet again – another knock to his already-battered pride, and pride was a commodity of which, given the life he’d been leading lately he’d had little enough remaining in any case. Feeling dreadfully tired, he slumped down next to the nearest boulder and rested against it. It couldn’t hurt to close his eye just for a minute. He woke a moment later with Ludlow patting his arm insistently.

“Come on, Captain, you can’t stay here,” the Hobbit was saying.

“Get away from me!” Shagrat howled, coming awake with a start and shaking him off, “stop following me! When will you get it through your thick head I don’t want you – leave me alone!”

Ludlow skittered a few steps back in fright but stopped where he was and went no further. Apparently he was going to be stubborn about this.

In the end Shagrat had to accept the Hobbit’s help. He didn’t particularly fancy his chances of making it to cover unaided and since his only other alternative would have been a slow death from exposure out on the mountainside, he reluctantly leant on the shoulder that Ludlow had offered him. They made slow progress as Shagrat seemed unable to catch his breath properly and had to stop frequently, but at last they reached the nearest stand of trees.

It was cool and dark under the branches, and lurching free from the Hobbit, the Uruk dragged himself further into the little wood. The ground was carpeted with pine needles and he sank down and lay on his back. Through the pine boughs the sky was dazzlingly blue, and for a while he watched the clusters of white clouds above him chasing along in the sunlight, being blown by the gusty morning breeze. There was even the tinkling, musical sound of water falling over rock coming from a little stream nearby . That it couldn’t possibly have been more ghastly, was Shagrat’s last coherent thought, as he fell asleep. He had never seemed to require much in the way of shut-eye, back in the old days, but that was another thing about him that circumstances seemed to have changed, and by the time he woke again it was dark.

Fortunately Ludlow had already spent some time living among Orcs, because otherwise the spectacle of Shagrat, screaming and lurching to his feet like some kind of demented scarecrow in the moonlight would surely have sent him scurrying for cover.

“Oh hello. You’re up again, I see,” he observed blandly, once the Uruk had quietened somewhat. “How are you feeling?” He was sitting beside the neat camp-fire he had built, busily cooking a meal. The Warg was close by, watching him with a hungry look in its eye.

Shagrat grumbled unintelligibly in reply. The Hobbit got up and handed him a large tin mug of something alcoholic, explaining that he thought that Shagrat might like a drink from the bottle Azof had been carrying in his pack. The fumes rising off the vile brew made the Uruk’s eyes water.

“What’s that on your face,” Ludlow asked, peering at him closely. “Is that –“

“It’s nothing,” Shagrat said, wiping his mouth hurriedly. He coughed carefully into his hand. There was more of the same but, he was relieved to note, a lot less of it than there had been before.

“- is that blood?” Ludlow exclaimed. He watched Shagrat swallow a deep draught from Azof’s cup. “Should you be drinking that in your condition?” he said.

Probably not, Shagrat told him, but at least it made you feel like it was doing some good. A fresh fit of coughing shook him.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“It was that – that blasted volcano I told you about,” Shagrat wheezed. “Blew its top right after the fall of Mordor.” He waved his claw vaguely. “All burning smoke, and raining ash and poison fumes, rolling down the mountainside, while everyone the wrong side of the Black Gate was running for it.”

Ludlow gasped. “How did you escape?”

Shagrat hesitated. “Well I – actually I was in prison at the time.”

“In prison?” Ludlow echoed, seemingly far more disturbed by the idea of Shagrat being an ex-jail-bird than he was by the fact that he had spent most of his life as a servant of the Dark Lord in Mordor. “Whatever were you in prison for?”

“Gross dereliction of duty,” Shagrat said shortly. “They’d had their eye on me a long time, after - after something that happened before. I got my command back eventually, but short of officers or not, they never forgot and I was watched all through it, even closer than usual. So this time, they didn’t hang about to ask questions. I was sent down soon as they’d figured out something had gone wrong. I was lucky though, compared to some.”

“Lucky?”

“I wasn’t burned to death straight off for starters, was I? And the pit they’d thrown me in was deep enough to hold out through the first of the earthquakes. Tremors tore down the walls, and afterwards it took me forever, but in the end I was able to make it back up to the surface. But the smoke did a number on my blasted lungs, didn’t it? They’ve never been right since.” Having his chest caved in courtesy of Dokuz hadn’t exactly done them any favours either, Shagrat thought, as he gingerly fingered his bruised ribs.

Then what happened, Ludlow asked him.
Shagrat was silent for a minute or two. He’d never spoken about this, as with the other Orcs it had become something of a taboo subject but from what he’d seen for himself at the time he knew that their experiences must have been fairly similar. Their dark master Sauron had kept things in order – amongst other, more directly physical methods – by putting a cruel little splinter of himself inside the heads of all his minions. ‘Minions,’ thought Shagrat, that was undoubtedly what Dokuz would’ve called poncy talk, and it was: it was just a fancy way of calling what they all of them were, which was slaves. Every one Shagrat had known back then had been affected by it, some undoubtedly worse than others, but even if it was just the faintest trace, such was the Dark Lord’s power that it would be enough for Him to ensure they’d keep in line. When that connection went, well, it hadn’t exactly been pleasant. Shagrat wondered if the Hobbit could possibly understand what it had been like, and sincerely doubted it.

“A lot of us stopped where we were standing,” Shagrat said eventually. “Shock, or something, I don’t know. Everyone was hard hit when Saruon - that’s the Dark Lord, fell. He took a fair few right on the spot. Intended to most likely, odds are he meant to take everyone with him when he finished. That’s the way they did things back then in Mordor, but he never managed it. The dregs was left running about like headless chickens afterwards, myself included.”

In a long and violent life filled with mostly horrendous experiences, the lasting terror and panic he’d shared with the other minions of the Dark Lord at the fall of Mordor still stood head-and-shoulders out as one of Shagrat’s more notably unpleasant memories. A nameless, choking fear had driven him and his comrades on like dust at the foot of a whirlwind, forcing them to flee and scattering the remnants of the Black Army far and wide. Shagrat, like the others had run till he dropped, lying insensible in the open wherever he fell, and when he awoke he’d run some more. Many of them had not made it past that part, and had succumbed to the heat, and madness and exhaustion but slowly, over time, the terror had gradually dissipated. When he finally came to himself, the Orc was many miles from where he’d started, in an unknown region in the foothills of the southern mountains.

“Then I met up with that lot, with Dokuz and some of the others,” Shagrat said. “We had a bit of a ruck not long after that as it happens. Decided it would be best if we went our separate ways.”

TBC