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Azof and the Farmer's Wife	By : kspence Category: Lord of the Rings Movies > AU - Alternate Universe Views: 9835 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: Disclaimer: I do not own the Lord of the Rings book series and movie series, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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“Nonsense, is it!” Julienne exclaimed, chest swelling up with angry indignation. “Nonsense, you say! As if what I do is any concern of yours!”
Neighbour Drew stood in her path, blocking her way. “Shush, Julienne,” he told her, “shush. It’s not my business, what goes on –“ and here he broke off, apparently taking in the various details of Julienne’s deshabille. Sighing, he shook his head again and reached over to tease a brown beech-leaf out her hair. “Way I see it, it isn’t anyone’s concern, what – what grown people want to do in private, behind closed doors. Or, after the way life’s treated you, it shouldn’t be. But this, here, is something else again and it’s got nothing to do with you! So you’re going to have to stay out of it, and for once in your life, just listen. Listen to good sense.”
They stood, glaring and bristling at each other for a moment.
“Even he said as much,” Neighbour Drew continued, in a slightly more conciliatory tone. “The – foreign feller, that black boy, the Orc. Your –“ he stopped again, wincing with obvious distaste –
“My what?” Julienne demanded. “What would you think’s the best of saying it, eh? My ‘admirer’? My ‘companion’? How about just calling him ‘that ruffian I’ve been’ -”
“I don’t know and I don’t want to know,” Drew interrupted agitatedly. “Your friend,’ I was going to say. And he might be a fool for rushing in or he mightn’t be, but even someone the way he is has enough sense to see that a woman like you can’t go getting caught up in all this. Believe me, folk don’t want to know, but you can’t just go flaunting it. You have to leave ‘em enough room to pretend.”
“Don’t think so,” Julienned said. “I don’t like pretending, as you should know. Wouldn’t have bothered striking out on my own in the first place, if I’d the stomach to put up with that.” With an impatient movement she tried to step past her neighbour - but he put himself in front of her again, and when that failed caught her by her shoulders and held her firmly in place.
“Orc said to tell you to stay out of this, and I’m telling you, you will do, if you know what’s good for you. I don’t say it for a threat. It’s only good advice.”
Julienne struggled against him, but half-heartedly: with anyone else she might at this point have resorted to a kick to the shins or knee to the groin to free herself - but her neighbour was one of the few people of her current acquaintance she could count as nearly a friend or a potential ally, and he was an older man, whose health was failing, to boot.
The two farmers further down the track had accosted, and were now addressing Azof. “You know who we are?” the first of them said.
“Yeah,” the Orc answered. Wearily he dropped his arms down to his sides, held them there as the other one circled up the path and round behind him. “Yeah, I know you.”
Without warning the second farmer brought the short, heavy wooden staff he was carrying down over Azof’s shoulders and as he staggered forwards under the blow, gripped him tightly from behind, holding him in place for his companion, who delivered a series of vicious uppercuts to the Orc’s gut. Azof let out a low grunt of pain under the treatment, but didn’t seem inclined to try to defend himself, or to resist.
The farmer let Azof sag down onto his knees.   “We’ve a message for you, Orc.”
Using the butt-end of his stick as a cudgel, the first one struck him a brutal blow to the side of his head, knocking the Orc to the ground. “He says to stop messing him about. He says you’re wanted, tonight. Same time, same place.”
As Azof lay there, bleeding and stunned, the second one kicked him hard, in the centre of the chest. The blow drove the air from his lungs, collapsing them, and as the Orc gasped and retched helplessly for breath the farmer spat on him. “You’re messing us lot about, too, so think on, eh? This time, you’d better be there.”
With that the two simply - set off, returning the way they’d come, and as they jogged down the path the farmer’s wife wrenched herself free of her neighbour’s hold, hurrying to Azof’s side. Following after, Neighbour Drew looked down at them for a minute, wearily shaking his head some more. Then quietly followed after, going downhill, in the same direction his two companions had taken.
“Azof!” Julienne cried, “Azof! What’ve you let them do? Why didn’t you want to fight back?”
At first the only response he could make was a soft, guttural snarl. Then he said - “you think I can’t take care of meself? That I’m scared of two plonkers wiv’ sticks? Reckon they’d get a fair fight off of me, do yer?”
“‘Cos I ain’t ‘uman,” Azof gasped bitterly, still down in the dirt. “I was made to be like this - out the rotten, maggoty stuff anyone in their right mind’d want to throw away. Made wiv’out courage - wiv’out honour, wiv’out decency, wiv’out – wiv’out anythink good. Till I met you, Jules, I didn’t even ‘ave hope. Best you could ‘ope for, where I come from, was some other fella’d get in the neck worse than you. That way we ‘ad nuffink, nuffink to lose. Not even our disgustin’, stinking hides worth ‘anging onto, so what d’you think’d ‘appen to a couple of farm-boys if a thing like me gets it into ‘is ‘ead he’s gonna fight back?”
Juliene helped the Orc to sit up, kneeling beside him as he wheezed and wheezed and struggled to catch his breath.
“I’m not stupid, Azof,” Julienne said. “I know those two and they’ve both got big dairy herds, down in the valley. Is that why they’re after you? ‘Cause you’ve been thieving from them?   ‘Cause I reckon it was a cow that got you with its horns, that day, and from the look of you after, it probably had you down and trampled you, too. If you’ve been a farmer’s wife, like I have, you’ll have a hard time not knowing what cow-muck smells like, and I know you were rolled right through a shed-load of it.”
“Cheers for washing me clothes, by the way,” Azof muttered, with a sickly sort of grin. Not to be so easily distracted, the farmer’s wife stared at him, impassive.
“It weren’t a cow,” Azof relented, scowling. “It was a stonking great bull! But I never stole nuffink, not really,” he insisted. “It’s just it’s – ‘ard, to explain.”
Julienne stood up and folded her arms, waiting for him to continue. After a moment Azof clambered to his feet. She gave him her arm to lean on and slowly, they began making their way back towards the farmhouse.
They walked for a long way in silence, the farmer’s wife, waiting, with increasing impatience, for some kind of explanation. At last the Orc cleared his throat, began talking as they walked. “You know how farmers, right, you’re basically a bit iffy. Always after a bit of somethink for nuffink.   It’s got to do wiv’ that.”
On the point of taking Azof soundly to task over this alleged ‘iffyness’ of farmers, Julienne paused to reconsider. What with the vagaries of weather and climate, together with occasional onslaughts of seasonal pests, farming wasn’t by any means a predictable avenue of business. The good years could be good, but at other times – well. Who could blame a farmer for salting as much as he could away as a buffer against the lean times? It wasn’t so much ‘iffy behaviour’ as ‘insurance’.
“Go on,” she said.
“It’s just after we come ‘ere, right? An’ you know that – that new Prince they’ve got.”
“Prince Faramir of Ithilien?”
“Yeah. ‘Im. I won’t say it was under his ‘protection,’ but he knew enough about it.   Bloke ‘as his - reasons, y’see, for wanting to make sure us, staying here, goes – well. Wiv’out an ‘itch. But you know what Orcs is like. Troublemakers, the lot of us, ain’t we? So pretty soon, for the farmers, to calm ‘em down, he’s setting up this – scheme, thingy, where he says he’s gonna pay top whack to make up for any damages what us lot has wrought -”
“Oh, Azof,” Julienne groaned. She had heard, via her helper Coppey, something about this ‘scheme’ a while back, and at the time had considered it the height of foolishness, as there were all sorts of ways in which it was absolutely ripe for abuse. “You’ve never been mixed up in that nonsense, have you?”
Of course he had. Offering perpetually cash-strapped farmers access to compensation - or indeed, ready cash of any sort was never anything more than an gilt-edged invitation for trouble.   Usually – and at best - there might eventually be found some minor loop-hole, or other possibility to be exploited; Prince Faramir’s plan in contrast was left wide open for it had only one stipulation: that any livestock losses be promptly examined by an independent assessor, who would confirm (or not as the case might be) the likelihood of an Orc - or Orcs - having been involved.   A retired merchant from the White City who had settled in the valley had been appointed to this role and in many ways, was an ideal choice: he was a man of high standing in his community, was considered to be unbribeable - completely beyond reproach, and also had, from his many years as volunteer in the City’s militia, a very good idea of what the aftermath of an Orc attack might look like. As a professional dealer in household textiles, however, the man was somewhat less well-versed in the nuances of what constituted ‘good’ livestock.
Coppey had told Julienne an amusing story about an Orc-slaughtered plough-horse, cow-hocked and so old it had literally, no remaining teeth, that had been inspected and passed by the inspector as a valuable stud-stallion in its prime.
Julienne rounded on her companion. “Azof! You said that money was ‘legit’!”
“Everyone round ‘ere’s in on it,” the Orc muttered. “Your ‘usband, all his farming mates -”
“Are you saying that makes it all right?”
“No!” he protested. “I mean it was just a bit of a laugh to start wiv’. Me an’ this bloke I’d run into, an’ a couple of his mates. Then that cousin of yours sticks his oar in. Wants to get us organized.”
Cousin Drew had been quick to appreciate what had potential to become quite the profitable opportunity. He traded in healthy livestock, primarily, but a significant arm of his business dealt also with animals that, for whatever reason, had come to the end of their useful lives. The sick and the dying, purchased for a very nominal sum or that he was on occasion, actually paid to transport, had once been bound only for the knacker’s yard. These were the animals that, through Azof’s involvement, would come (in an albeit macabre manner) to (briefly) find a second lease of life (of sorts). Transported to various farms around the countryside, despatched on the premises and verified as Orc-slaughtered livestock, they would then be counted as genuine losses, and generous compensation paid accordingly.
“And why can’t they do without you?”
Azof hesitated, looking shifty. “There’s – stuff you need an Orc for. Stuff what comes natural to us what you folk - can’t seem ter manage off your own bats. One lad ‘ad a go trying to set one up on his own an’ when he saw it, that merchant geezer just laughed in his face.”
This put Julienne in a tricky position. She was well aware that her presence, her status as an independent-living woman was tolerated – and even then, just barely - by local society only because in the aftermath of her.... marital irregularities, she was widely held to be the injured party.   Without a minimum level of support – even the simple goodwill of her neighbours, what was currently a difficult living situation could easily turn out to be insupportable for her. Julienne’s relations with the rest of her community were in a fine and delicate balance – a set of circumstances that the Orc’s recent activities threatened to irreparably disrupt.
“Azof,” she told him, “what you do is your own business. But you said so yourself - I can’t have you bringing – trouble, like this, right to my door. If you want to keep coming and seeing me, you’re going to have to stop.”
“But I ‘ave said no! I did already! An’ that tosser an’ his mates come looking for me. You seen ‘em yourself - that night I run off from yours up into the woods? I ‘ad to let ‘em beat me black and blue, that time. Well. Black-er.”
Julienne was appalled. “What?”
“They think they got me running scared! An’ it’d be funny, if they only knew the half of it! I ‘ave to pull me punches, else I’ll - ” he broke off, shaking his head helplessly.
“Or else what?” Julienne asked.
“Or someone’ll get killed!” Azof cried, in exasperation. “’Cos I can’t trust meself! So I can’t risk it, can I, ‘cause I don’t even know how to ‘old back, not really! An’ I’ll tell you, Julienne, I’m scared if I was ever to let go on ‘em, propl’y let go, even for a minute, that’d be the end of it. ‘Cos me an’ the one in charge up on the mountain, we don’t like each other, not one bit. I reckon the old goat’ll bust a gut laughing, when he hears about this. He’s been wanting rid of me, an’ this’ll be a fine excuse. I’m stuck between a rock an’ an ‘ard place, ain’t I? Well an’ truly caught!”
He sounded as if he was painting an overly gloomy picture of the situation, and Julienne told him so.
“I ain’t,” Azof said. “I’d laugh meself, if I ‘eard about this ‘appening to someone else. That’s how it goes. We’re Orcs.”
By now they had reached the outskirts of the farmer’s wife’s vegetable plot. Azof seemed to hesitate for a moment at the gate, but then followed Julienne through the garden towards the cottage, where they stopped at the outhouse door.
Azof waited on the threshold. “Not gonna want to bath me an’ put me to bed this time, are you?”
“No,” Julienne told him wearily, “no Azof, this time I think I’d better not. But you can come in for a minute.” She pulled him by the arm towards her, reaching peremptorily for his forehead. “Might as well let me see to that cut of yours, anyway.”
“Leave be,” the Orc snarled, slapping her hands away. “I told you – I can do for meself.   ‘Oo d’you think I ‘ad to run round, doing this stuff for me before?”
The farmer’s wife drew back from him, a little bit shocked.
Her surprise and dismay were not unnoticed. “You’re cottoning on now, eh?” Azof said in a low, bitter voice, deliberately shoving his way through the doorway after her. “This is Orcs. Vicious bastards, the lot of us. Always biting the ‘and that feeds, an’ that. You should see that this is what we’re really like.”
“Well, if you’re going to be like this, Azof, maybe you’d better come back when you’ve had a chance to calm down.”
At worst her notion of dismissing him was mild, and only very vaguely implied, but the Orc seized upon it so quickly it was clear he’d been expecting something exactly of the sort. “Oh, so you reckon you want me gone now, do you?” he said. “To leave you alone, in an isolated little ‘ouse like this?” He let out a long, sighing breath and slouching back, took a long, unhurried look round at the four whitewashed walls and then up into the roof-thatch.   “Reckon it’s gonna be easy come, easy go, do yer?   That’s what’s you’re thinking right this minute, innit?”
“You know Jules,” Azof said softly, picking with one claw at a piece of loose mortar, “back in the day I done my share of looting and pillaging and I can tell you, this place would’ve burned to the ground in two seconds flat. And I’m not saying I’d have fucked you before I done it, but I’d have drunk your blood, an’ made a dinner out your innards after, just the same.” He glanced over at the farmer’s wife evidently looking for a reaction. When he didn’t get one he gave her an odd, distantly puzzled look. “Still not feeling the urge to yell an’ scream the place down any time you look at me, are yer?” Azof made a small clucking, tutting noise, almost as if speaking to himself. “Oh, Jules. You must want your ‘ead read.”
“It is easier than I thought it’d be,” he went eventually, still speaking in the same unnerving, chillingly calm tone, “not having someone inside your ‘ead, forever pulling on the strings, but I won’t lie. ‘Ave ter keep an iron chain round that side of things, all the time - just in case. It’s not that I’m making excuses cos I ain’t - it’s in me nature. Like I said, if you were scared and you’d run off that day I’d have had to chase you. ‘Cos we wasn’t just trained to do it – we was bred for it. It’s what we’re for. Ain’t supposed to ‘ave a choice. It’s all we was ever h’intended to be able to do.”
“Maybe, if I wanted, I’d of been able to stop.” At last the flat tone he’d been using broke, and his voice shook. “But maybe once I started I wouldn’t’ve wanted. Cos’ I dunno. I never tried to stop meself before - let alone ‘calm down’.”
“I don’t believe it,” Julienne said stoutly. “You’ve shown you can be a decent person, Azof, if you want to be –“
The Orc’s eyes glittered. “That’s the thing, though. I ain’t ‘people’ – ain’t even a proper animal, if it comes to it. ‘Made wiv just one purpose,’ ain’t that what they say? That purpose is done wiv’, an’ the end of the war should’ve seen the finish of me. But I’m still stuck ‘ere, an’ you tell me, Jules, now what am I supposed to do?”
He hung his head, began shaking it slowly from side to side, his manner taking on a definitely menacing air. “I’m an Orc. Shouldn’t be able to be like this, coming ‘ere, all nice, an’ pretending like I’m normal wiv’ you. When you seen me, you should’ve run away an’ been frightened or maybe hit me wiv’ a shovel or a brick. An’ maybe then it wouldn’t’ve ‘ad to come to this.”
“As for them animals I kill’t, yeah, I enjoyed it to start with, ‘cos it’s like I said - still an Orc, inn’I? But then – funny thing is - the thought of it started to make me sick. Maybe cos’ I met you, or cos’ I’m fickle. Maybe I’m just thick.” He rounded on Julienne, grinning bitterly. “You reckon I’m thick, Jules? Not so stupid I don’t know when I’m not wanted, eh? You’ve ‘ad a dirty, low, revolting thing like me in your ‘ouse and in your bed – and, an’ in, you, and maybe now the thought of it’s starting to make you feel sick?”
Julienne had been on the point of reaching for him but it was as if a stranger, more than anything, had come in to take his place. She drew her hand back just short of touching him – a move of which Azof, unfortunately, didn’t fail to take note. His eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared.
“Oh-ho! An’ about time, too. Gettin’ scared now, ain’t ‘cher? Fancy trying out that running trick?”
Darting a glance towards the door, Julienne bunched her skirts up in her hands, nervously. Running away? Yes, she might have been thinking about it.
Azof stretched one long arm out in front of her face and thumped his fist, hard, against the wall beside her, blocking the way.
“Don’t try an’ pull that on me,” he snarled, beads of spittle flying from his lips. “Not when me blood’s up. I mean it, Jules. Don’t.”
The Orc’s teeth were bared and he was slavering, like a beast. The look on his face made him almost unrecognizable; it could easily have been another person, standing there raving at her.
Boiling rage – even if not all of it necessarily directed at Azof, suddenly overcame fear. Julienne’s temper snapped and she shoved him away from her as hard as she could, pushing him in the centre of his chest. “Tell me what to do, would you?” she cried, “want me to shut my mouth and keep mum while you trample me down and get on with whatever carry-on you want? I am sick of it! No, I’m going to go where I like and I’ll run if I bloody well want to, but I’ll tell you Azof – tonight I’m – I’m buggered if I’ll go running, and running and hiding away, as if I’m the one who’s in the wrong! You get out! And I’ll stay where I am, thanks! You’re not turning me out again because this time I’m in my own – bloody - house!”
She punctuated the last three words she’d spoken with more hefty shoves to Azof’s chest, that moved him not one jot and now, pushing at him weakly once again, she staggered back from the Orc, light-headed and reeling in a backwash of reaction to her strong emotion.
Azof mouth snapped shut and with the last of her shoves he rocked back on his heels , wide-eyed, looking stunned. The arm he’d raised swung heavily down to his side, and as Julienne pushed past him and stood in the doorway, he hung his head, shaking it slightly as if to clear it.
“You’d better go,” Julienne said, and to her surprise found she sounded quite calm and collected. “Get out. I want you out of here, right now. I’m going in the house now, and you’d better be gone by the time I get back. I don’t want to see you round here again till you’ve sorted this mess out.”
The Orc’s face fell. “But, Jules –“
“I want you to get out.”
He was shaking his head again, this time in outright disbelief. “You don’t mean it,” he said. “After – everythink? How the two of us have been? You can’t wanna break it off wiv’ me, just like that. You can’t!”
“Go, now,” Julienned repeated. “I’m not going to be changing my mind, Azof, so you needn’t bother asking. Not about this.”
“You mean you want me to go an’ – an’ that’s the end? That’s going to be the finish of it?”
Julienne stood firm. “You heard what I said.”
Azof’s great, muscular shoulders hunched. He didn’t look at Julienne, but his expression was crushed and his bearing utterly wretched as he turned to step through the open door, which he closed, carefully and quietly, behind him.
The oppressive silence in the room after he’d gone stretched Julienne’s nerves to breaking. She paced the few steps back and forth to cross the outhouse; passing the table she’d sat upon when Azof tended her injured legs; passing the spot he’d pleasured her so shamelessly, down upon the floor. Sick at heart, she was missing him already, wanting the Orc back with a yearning that alarmed her, so sharp and painful was its intensity. For a moment she almost relented, was once again on the brink of dashing out into the night in pursuit of him. But this time, she made herself hold firm. Instead the farmer’s wife sighed wearily, fastened all the shutters, then bolted and barred the outhouse door.
TBC
A/N Dear AntiDolorifico, thanks ever so much for the review, it’s always great to hear from you and I really appreciate your taking the time to write – especially when it sounds like you’re pretty snowed under at the moment. Shucks, it’s good to know that all the...intimate scenes aren’t turning out to be too tedious! This is more or less my first explicit /consensual M/F fic (I keep getting stymied whenever I try to get Shagrat and Rashanka into bed together on the other one) so it’s kind of uncharted territory for me.
Yes, I’m glad it seems to be coming across that Jules is still a bit reserved as regards her and Azof’s – well I suppose you’d have to call it a ‘relationship’; that is largely intentional (and not just because I wanted Jules to be a contrast to Azof, who just never shuts up) – given her past experiences I think it’s pretty likely that she’d take a while to be completely convinced.
So since you’re still following it, I am sorry that progress on the story has been so very slow. I do intend to finish it - sooner or later!
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Azof and the Farmer's Wife