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Speaks to the Trees	By : kspence Category: Lord of the Rings Movies > Slash - Male/Male Views: 4967 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 0
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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2. Wood chat
This third party would be Azof, a black Uruk of Mordor, whom Shagrat had known slightly of old.   Though shorter than average, he was extremely stocky; nearly as broad across the shoulders as he was tall. His yellow eyes slanted above high cheekbones in a cruel, angular face and most unusually for an Orc he seemed to boast some development of proper facial hair: he sported a thin black stripe of beard all along his jaw-bone – in a delicately-drawn line so narrow, carefully-trimmed and also (it has to be said), at such variance to the colour of the rest of the hair on his head that Shagrat often suspected he had to have been secretly augmenting it, by use of pen and ink.
In Azof the general Orcish fondness for making trouble for its own sake was developed to an especially high degree, and for some reason he had always had a particular axe to grind against Shagrat.
“Wasn’t expecting to see you out on your lonsesome tonight, Shaggers,” he opened, nastily. “Where’s your missus gotten to then, eh?”
“Ludlow’s back at camp,” Maz put in helpfully.
“I wasn’t talkin’ about our dear little sawn-off, half-pint Hobbit runt,” Azof said. And then addressing Shagrat - “I fort The Fairy Princess was honouring us wiv’ a visit. And everybody knows whenever that plonker turns up, you two goes about practically joined at the ‘ip for the duration.”
Though it would stretch anyone’s credulity quite a bit, the fact was that Prince Faramir of Ithilien and – of all people – the Uruk Shagrat, had been enjoying and on-again but mostly off-again love affair for quite a number of years at this point - and it was none other than Faramir himself who was this ‘missus’ of Shagrat’s that Azof was currently taunting him about. The previous day Faramir had arrived on one of his rather frequent visits to see his awful Urukish paramour – only to walk into yet another heated dispute between the recently-established mountain colony of Orcs and the locals already resident in the surrounding region, who (quite understandably) didn’t want creatures of Shagrat’s ilk anywhere near them. At that moment Faramir was no doubt utilising his (formidable) skills in polite-speaking and diplomacy to help calm the volatile situation; a fact that Azof, whose lax attitudes to notions of the personal ownership of property had engendered much of the trouble in the first place, couldn’t possibly have failed to be aware of.
“Not getting bored wiv’ you already, is ‘ee, Shaggers?” Azof went on, doing his level best to needle the other Uruk.   “If you’d only asked me, I could’ve told you I’d seen this coming.” And then, when that failed to get a response - “I reckon you surrendered your virtue to that boy far too quickly, Shagrat, an’ that’s the long and short of it.”
Thinking about the pleasant evening he might have been spending with his sweetheart, instead of standing about arguing with berks like Azof, had the other Orc’s antics not thrown such a monumental spanner in the works, Shagrat hunched his shoulders and clenched and unclenched his right hand repeatedly. In dealing with Azof the key point to remember was to never let the bugger know he was succeeding in getting to you.
“Should’ve been a bit more careful about the guarding of your ‘chaste treasure’, shouldn’t you, Shaggers? Loverboy will think you’re easy, now.”
“Leave the Captain alone, Azof,” an even larger Uruk, who had been on the far side of the narrow strip of woodland put in mildly, as he stepped closer to the little group. This was Rukush, surviving remnant of a one-time wizard’s army from the north. Rukush was an even-tempered fellow, who possessed what in Orcish terms was such an unusually pleasant nature that it would certainly have turned out to be a grave handicap for him, if he hadn’t been saved by the end of the war.
“I think it’s sweet!” Rukush said.
Shagrat glanced sidelong at him, convinced as usual that he was trying to take a rise out him – but also as usual, saw that Rukush was just being Rukush.
“You wot?” Azof was scoffing, his eyebrows arched in mock incredulity. “You fink it’s sweet, do you, the way our glorious leader’s come down’ter being nuffink better’n a little lapdog, always running after Queen Fairy-mir?”
“I think it’s sweet the way the two of them are so devoted,” Rukush elaborated. “You can see ‘em always holding hands and that when they think no-one’s looking.”
Shagrat, his calm mood by now no more than a distant memory, was almost beside himself with irritation. He could take Azof’s mockery in his stride easily enough, but this clap-trap the other Uruk was spouting! He heartily wished that Rukush would please, just stop talking about this.
“He’s gone down to the village to pay the farmer for those cows you ate, all right, Azof?” Shagrat barked out, knowing even before he’d uttered his words that Azof wouldn’t let that be the end of it.
Azof guffawed. “What a plonker! S’pose that’s lurve for you though, innit?”
“I still think it’s nice to have someone special,” Rukush insisted.
“Ooooo! Sounds like we might be speakin’ from personal h’experience!” crowed Azof. “You’re never telling me you’ve got ‘someone special’ too, then, are you Rukush?”
“Well –“ the other Uruk broke off, before continuing bashfully - “I was going to meet this girl, tonight.”
“Now, where are you going to find a ‘uman to get with you?”  Maz demanded. “They all ‘ate Orcs! An’ that goes double for the ol’ misery-guts ones round ‘ere!”
“She’s not from round here though is she!” Rukush countered, “she’s from the travelling folk. They’ve come an’ camped in the bottom of the next valley down the ridge. And they don’t seem to mind us near so much as the other people here do.”
“You don’t know nothink about it,” Azof announced slyly, “because I’ve been seeing one of them farmers’ wives from down in the valley meself.”
“You’re going steady with one of the women from the village?” Rukush exclaimed, astonished.
Azof looked blank. “Eh?”
“Stepping out with her, I mean. You’re not really, though, are you Azof?”
“No, I’ve been seeing her - watching her, I said,” Azof repeated. “It’s not every night, but she has a sponge-bath most every other evening before she turns in. Never shuts ‘er curtains neither. An’ you can see the bleedin’ lot!”
Maz gasped. “What’s she like?” he asked eagerly, hopping from foot to foot.
Azof shrugged. “I s’pose she’s nice enough. Bit older, mind you though.”
Maz shook his head impatiently. “No! I mean – what’s she like? ‘Ave you seen her ‘jubblies’?”
“Yes, Maz,” Azof replied, “and like I said, she’s no spring chicken - but her bazooms is still bloomin’ enormous - and she always soaps up a right good lather over ‘em  too.”
“What about ‘er bum?”
“Yup, an’ it’s a good big ‘un as well,” the block-shaped Uruk replied, salaciously pouting his lips. “Got a great stonking pair of luverley white buttocks, she ‘as!”
“But can you see –“ said Maz, dropping his voice nervously – “have you ever seen her minge?”
“Course I have,” Azof said, suavely.   “’Er lady garden, fanny hair, flaps, an’ everythink. I told you Maz – I’ve clocked the blinkin’ lot!”
“Can I come an’ see her with you some night then too, Azof?” Maz asked eagerly. The little Orc was practically salivating.
“No, Maz,” Azof told Maz, with a gruff sort of proprietorial  /stern tone, oddly out of character for him (Shagrat noted) as in general the fellow was such an awful blinkin’ show-off - “you bleedin’ well cannot.”
By this time Shagrat, who was after all nominally in charge of this Orcish rabble, had heard more than enough.   “Now then Azof,” he growled, “you’re not going to be seeing this farming person again either. I’m not having you stirring up even more trouble with those folk down in the valley – and especially not now when we’ve barely gotten over the last lot! You know they’re not happy we’re here to begin with.”
“You said the Queen of the Fairies ‘ad come to sort all that out for us!”
“That’s as maybe!” Shagrat yelled, “but the way you’re carrying on’s only going to make things worse, isn’t it!”
This was quite the understatement. Having secured part-ownership rights to a tract of otherwise desolate mountainside on a technicality, Shagrat was finding that in practice his occupation of this conveniently isolated piece of land (as a sitting tenant with a few of his fellow-Orcs, plus one itinerant Hobbit thrown in) was turning out to have all sorts of unlooked-for ramifications.   Their nearest neighbours  – together with most of the local district, in fact – were all up in arms about the situation, and that these people had not (yet) come together as one to unite against their common Orcish enemy, was only due to the general lawlessness of the upland region – together with the deep-seated clannish character of its inhabitants, most of whom were already embroiled in various complicated inter-familial disputes and squabbles over all sorts of sundry matters – many of these epic quarrels of centuries’ duration in themselves – of their own.
It was important in the light of all this for the Orcs, if they were ever to successfully establish themselves, to avoid sticking their heads up above the metaphorical parapet – a point which Azof, with his livestock-poaching antics, and now, peeping-Tom-foolery, needed to be reminded of now and again. Shagrat delivered him of a short, sharp, dressing-down accordingly.
“But what about him and his Pikey bint!” Azof exploded, pointing a shaking finger at Rukush.
“What’re you even bringing me into this for?” the other Uruk was outraged.
“That’s different,” Shagrat said firmly. “Because Rukush’s Gyppoe friend – “
“’Not ‘Pikeys’. ‘Gypsy travellers’,” Rukush put in.
The others turned to stare at him.
“Gyppoes prefers to be called ‘Gypsy travellers’,” Rukush explained.   “When you say ’Pikeys’ it has –it’s got all sorts of - “ he broke off, apparently searching for the right means of expressing himself.
“Negative connotations?” suggested Shagrat after a minute.
“Oh, lah-di-dah! ‘anging about wiv royalty, an’ h’ain’t we gettin’ verbose!” crowed Azof. “Anyway it don’t make no difference whatc’her call ‘em. Gyppoes is still a load of light-fingered, clothes-peg-selling, wagon-dwelling horse-thieves.”
Shagrat rolled his eye. “But at least Ruskush’s Gypsy traveller friend knows she’s stepping out with him!”
“How is that different?” demanded Azof.
“’Cause of he’s not spying on her through her window, when she’s alone at night, is he!”
“Come on, Azof,” Maz said, shivering. “All that ‘anging about! Even you’d ‘ave to admit that is a bit on the creepy side, is’nit?”
“I’m not spying on her,” Azof retorted. “She knows all about it. Doesn’t begin taking her bath till I get there, most times. She very bloomin’ well makes sure I’m there before she even gets started!”
The other Orcs looked at one another, perplexed.
“An h’exhibitionist!” Maz hissed.
“And you’re sure you’re not getting hold of the wrong end of the stick ‘bout all this, are you Azof?” Rukush ventured at last.
“I ain’t! Threw a proper strop one night the other week after I got ‘eld up and never made it over to her gaff, didn’t she! And next time I went, wouldn’t take her kit off for ages.   I told you – she leaves the curtains, big, ‘eavy shutters like they’ve all got an’ everythink open, specially.”
Apparently Azof was warming to his subject because he carried on excitedly: “First night I went down to ‘er’s, right, I started off ‘iding in the bushes in ‘er back yard, right, ‘cause you can get a good view an’ you’re kinda under cover too.   But after a while she clocks me ‘anging about in there, doesn’t she, an’ -”
“What sort of bushes were they?” Maz asked.
“Wot? – Oh – they was, er - some sort of cultivated variety of the wild ‘azel nut, I think. Anyway, this woman, Julienne ‘er name is, right - ”
“Hazel bushes!” interrupted Maz. “Oh, but they’re brilliant! The way the bark’s all shiny-smooth in winter – then it’s so pretty when the first leaves do come. An’ in autumn you get ‘azel nuts! Or cobnuts!”
“Or filberts!” Rukush put in.
“Eh?”
“Some people says ‘filberts’ instead of ‘hazelnuts’,” Rukush explained. “I quite like nut trees too. Walnuts, ‘specially.”
“Walnuts!” Maz nodded appreciatively. “Yeah. Walnuts ‘ave got lovely leaves ain’t they. All soft and bronzy in spring, before they toughen up an’ go proper green. Nice! And how the whole plant smells good! Strongly h’aromatic throughout.”
He looked round the group for a moment with a decidedly shifty air, and then lowering his voice, asked Rukush hesitantly: “Is... is that what yours’ has turned out to be, then?”
“Rukush’s what has turned out to be?”  Azof scoffed, not quite convincingly. “What’c’her on about now, eh, Maz?”
There was an awkward moment of silence.
“Do you know what these two are yammerin’ on about, Shagrat?” Azof demanded, turning to the older Uruk.
Shagrat sighed as he looked around the little group. Perhaps it was about time for them to be getting these things out and in the open, at that. Because Maz might talk about his pheasant’s nest, and Azof and Rukush their respective ‘girlfriends’ as justification for why they were out and about that night; but it wasn’t even as if it was just the four of them who were affected. The sweet draw of that soft, spring evening had been strongly felt by everyone - to the extent that the Orcs’ camp had been nearly deserted by the time Shagrat himself had left it.
Looking Azof in the eye, Shagrat said quietly - “I think you know what he’s talking about as well as I do. Otherwise I’m betting we wouldn’t be finding you, Azof, standing around making silly excuses for why you’re hanging about here, at night, in a wood.”
“Now, I’ve got as much right as anyone else –“ Azof began, blustering.
“Is it walnut though, Rukush?” Maz whispered, ignoring him. “I mean the tree wot ‘as... turned out to be the right one for you?”
“Nah, I mean I like walnuts all right and everything,” replied Rukush, “but for me it’s def’nitely the small-leaved lime!”
“Yes, to my eyes it ‘as got a somewhat more attractive growth habit than many of the larger-leaved varieties,” Maz commented, knowledgably. “Foliage not quite so luxuriant of course - as you’d h’expect given the name - but I do like the look of them downward-arching branches, wot becomes apparent in the more mature specimens, in general.”
Azof fairly goggled at him. “Wait a minute! Anyone thought to wonder how does a pig-ignorant little twerp like Maz come to know all that?” he demanded. “’I bet ‘ee couldn’ tell a bloomin’ lime tree from a cobnut from an ‘ole in the ground the other week! Now he says ‘ee ‘likes the look of the downward-arching branches in general!’ Like ‘eck ‘ee does! Where is all this h’information coming from, is what I want to know!”
“Oh. Mine’s a bit like I’m hearing this voice,” Rukush answered helpfully.
“This voice – comes from outside of yous, does it?” Azof muttered fearfully.
“Oh, no! It’s a voice I hear just in my head.”
Maz nodded.   “She’s a lady.”
“Yeah. Dead ethereal –an’ awful well-spoken, too. Mouth full of plums, that lady’s got.”
“An’ knows everythink you wanna know about plants, don’t she, Rukush?” Maz said seriously.
“Yeah, because it’s like she made them,” the Uruk replied, shaking his head in wonder, “or something. Actually I’m not too sure I understand that part. ”
“Satisfied with that, Azof?” barked Shagrat. “Apparently some posh bird’s been telling them all about it.”
“’Earing a voice in yer ‘ead!” spluttered Azof, quivering now with indignation, “takin’ account of a voice in yer ‘ead! Listen to yerselves! Think, for a minute. Where, exactly, ‘as that sort of thing gotten Orcs like us before?”
“Wind your neck in Azof!” cried Rukush. “This is nowhere near the same!”
“Ee’s right,” Maz put in, “this isn’t like when we were in” – and he whispered it low – “Mordor. It’s ‘elpful, this voice is! It isn’t like it takes you over – an’ – an’ crushes you an’ drives you till there’s nothink left, like it’s some sort of – of -“ he stopped, and stood waving his claw vaguely, not sure how to finish.
“- compulsion?” Shagrat concluded for him, eventually.
“That’s right!” Maz cried, defiantly. “So you tell me, Azof, where’s the ‘arm in that?”
Azof merely made a short lunging step towards him, and the little Orc, all his earlier bravado vanishing, scampered back to cower beside Rukush.   Azof shook his head at the pair of them.
“It’s perverse, this carryin’ on with nut bushes and such is,” he muttered.
“Azof doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Rukush said, turning to console his smaller friend. “He’s just narked ‘cause of we didn’t want to listen to his silly, grubby stories, isn’t he? Look Maz, there’s some nice lime trees just on the edge there where this wood gets big and opens out an’ I’m going across there, in a minute. You know Maz, d’you – d’you want to come and see them with me?”
“Nah, I’ll stop ‘ere with me ‘azel shrubbery, if it’s all the same to you, Rukush mate.”
The two Orcs were now grinning at one another ecstatically, as if engrossed in sharing some wonderful new secret.
“We shouldn’t even be speaking about this!” insisted Azof. “Don’t’cher all remember how it was, before? I’ve not forgotten, even if you lot ‘ave!   Trees an’ that ‘ave got long memories, is what we was told time an’ again in barracks. And we was always learnt about the way they hate Orc-folk like us!”
“But that doesn’t seem right, not here and now, anyways,” Maz replied, sounding none too sure of himself. “Happen – ‘appen these ones don’t?” He turned to Rukush in for support. “There’s no harm in it, surely?”
“And why would we ‘ave any call to think things ‘ud be any different ‘ere?” sneered Azof.
Rukush’s brow furrowed with effort as he made a valiant attempt to think things through. This was always a slow and painful process for him, and a measure of the great importance he attached to Maz’s question was that he even bothered trying to answer it in the first place. “All these old roads and bridges and what-not you see all over in Gondor,” he began eventually, following several false starts. “That stuff they say the Men from the West built.”*
“Tarkish h’infrastructure?” sneered Azof. “Yeah, I’ve seen it an’ it’s rubbish. What about it?”
“I mean I heard the Tarks here were builders back in the old days. Workers of stone.”
“They were well known for it,” put in Shagrat, who of all of them had arguably had most first-hand experience of Tarkish skills in stone-masonry – as he had in fact inhabited a building made through their efforts, the Tower of Cirith Ungol, for many years.
“Tarks was also well good at smithy-work. Ship-building too,” Maz added.
Azof shrugged. “I s’pose that’s all fair enough. Don’t see what difference it makes though.”
“What I’m saying is, you can’t build, in stone, or make roads – or do all them other things like Maz said – without, well – felling a good few trees can you? I saw it with that wizard when I lived up north,” Rukush explained defensively. “Had us lot slash and burn down acres of the old forest he did, and the woods – well, I can tell you they wasn’t pleased by it.”
“The woods wasn’t pleased by it?” Azof exclaimed. “You see ! This is ‘xactly wot I’ve been saying all along!”
“But what I’m trying to get at - if only you’d let me finish, is something’s different here! I remember how it was before, and the feel of all this is different! I dunno - maybe it’s because of these trees having been chopped before, back in ‘istory, but not by the likes of us –“
“Or maybe something’s different, now, about - us?” Maz suggested, very quietly.
“It could be that,” Rukush acknowledged, “I don’t reckon it’s for me to know – but maybe, it could. But whatever is – behind it, it’s like the trees, an’ – an’ even the little greenstuff here, I don’t think it’s bothered if you’re a Man, or beast or – or even an Orc, so long as you – you know, you see it for what it is. Really an’ properly see it, I mean.”    He broke off, apparently exhausted by his efforts to explain himself.
“But. We. Is. Orcs!” roared Azof. “Seein’ trees and liking plants? Everybody knows we shouldn’t have no truck with that, because we don’t go in for – all that namby-pamby sort of thing!”
“Maybe we ‘ave just been – mis-h’informed,” Maz said doggedly, “about what we does and doesn’t like. Or - or even purposely misled. I mean it wouldn’t be the first time, would it?“
“The Captain’ll know what’s for the best,” announced Ruskush after a moment.   Turning to Shagrat he said stoutly: “If he thinks it’s all right for us to keep on as we have been doing - I say it will be.”
“Have you got a tree wot ‘is – the proper one for you too then, Shagrat?” Maz breathed. “Have you?”
“Well, ’ave you or ‘aven’t you, Shaggers?” jeered Azof when the big Uruk didn’t reply. “An’ if he ‘as,” he told Maz and Rukush, airily, “chances are it’ll be something with a pretty flower-pattern on it, or growing in a pot - like a little pansy-bush, I should think.”
There was a stiff moment’s silence. The other Orcs waited expectantly.
“Grey poplar,” said Shagrat in a tight voice, at last.
At this Azof positively roared and hooted with laughter.   “A tree wot only grows in the fertile loams of riverine floodplains! And you livin’ halfway up to a bloomin’ mountain-top! Oh, Shaggers! You’ve been shafted again there all right, you poor bastard! Them farmers down the valley‘ll shoot you full of holes soon as look at you, long before you even get near any grey poplars!”
“What about you, then, Azof?” Maz asked, bristling. “Got one of your own too, ‘ave you?”
“It’s blackthorn,” Azof replied, sticking his chin out and changing his stance slightly, as if he was daring anyone to make something of it.
Maz looked appalled.   “Blackthorn!”
“Not even a proper tree, is it?” scowled Shagrat.
“More of a thicket,” agreed Rukush. “Blackthorn hasn’t really got what anyone’d call ‘a trunk’.”
“It’s as proper a tree as ‘azel is, in’t it?” yelled Azof defensively. “All that bloomin’ ‘self-coppicing’ malarkey!”
“Still difficult to cuddle up to, mind, Azof,” Maz said, recovering from his shock somewhat. “It’s so - spiny. An’ I ‘eard if you prick yourself, on the branches it’s got this ‘orrible, ‘orrible fungus -”
“Oh, go an’ prick yourself!” Azof howled.   “It’s no bleedin’ surprise that Maz’d know all about ‘orrible funguses’! He would, wouldn’t he, the dirty little bleeder! We’ve much more chance of picking somethink catching off of you, Maz, as off a blackthorn bush! Or – or off your ‘orrid, manky old tregs! What’d you go picking ‘em up for ‘im for, Shagrat? You should’ve left ‘em lying where they was! They’d ‘ave been better off buried in an unmarked grave at midnight! ”
Maz abroad in the countryside with his trousers on, rather than off, had generally seemed the lesser of two evils to Shagrat, and he said as much to Azof, who swore at him and looked as if he was about to start squaring up for a fight.
“No use taking it out on him,” said Rukush in a mild voice, stepping in almost nonchalantly, to put his great muscular bulk squarely between Azof the old Uruk Captain. “It’s not Maz’s, and it’s not Shaggers’ fault you got landed with one of the duff ones, Azof.   I think it serves you right.”
Azof shot him a filthy look. “Blackthorn’s better than stinkin’ poplars at any rate!” he shouted back at them, as he proceeded to stomp off into the woods. They heard his voice echoing back through the trees: “an’ at least I can always make sloe gin!”
Shagrat watched him go with a baleful eye. Then he shook himself and sighed. “Right then,” he said, addressing the two remaining Orcs. “Any other business? No? Then I’ll be bidding you both a good night.”

*not surprisingly, Tolkien did address this specific point, but seems to have reckoned something along the lines of – ‘the vegetation of Ithilien / Gondor wouldn’t have “minded” being cut down and used in building by the Men of the West, because what they were doing was well-intentioned.’
Yeah. Well (bearing in mind I write stories about Faramir getting it on with an Orc in my spare time) I can’t say I'm entirely convinced by that line of reasoning myself....
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Speaks to the Trees