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Orc in Ithilien	By : kspence Category: Lord of the Rings Movies > Slash - Male/Male Views: 8628 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- 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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Following the Uruk’s most recent parting with Faramir, which was notable for its toe-curling awkwardness all round, performed as it was under what was - to all intents and purposes - a heavily armed guard, Shagrat and Ludlow and the rest of their rag-tag band were making their way towards their notional ‘land holding,’ up in the mountains. Progress was slow on account of Shagrat’s injury; moreover they were traveling on foot, and they had a miserable time of it, trudging through sloughs of sludge and mud and in the valley bottoms, then stumbling on up sodden hillsides in the pouring rain. Up on the mountain plateau they searched, fruitlessly, for the advance-party who’d been sent ahead of them but at first could find no sign.   Not until afternoon on the fourth day, after the rain had stopped for long enough to allow the wispy clouds that had been covering the upper slopes of the mountain to dissipate, did Rukush manage to sight smoke against the desolate hillside, the origins of which seemed to be from a hidden cleft or gully, some distance beneath.
So, they trekked back down the side of mountain to investigate. By the time Shagrat’s company reached the head of the hidden valley, the late winter sun was setting and a cold rain blowing in from the west.   Rounding a corner they came to the edge of a broad, open area, set on a rock-strewn down-slope and surrounded on three sides by craggy walls of rock.   And the other Orcs were encamped there, the smoke they’d seen coming from a haphazard-looking fire, which was billowing clouds of smoke in a desultory fashion and threatening at any moment to go out.
“And what do they call you?” Shagrat demanded, stalking up and aiming a shove at one of the Orcs sitting nearest him on edge of the clearing. It was someone he didn’t know by sight - a little mountain goblin, with greenish-yellow skin and large, bulging eyes. “Where’d we pick you up from, eh?”
The goblin looked the Uruk up and down fearfully. Shagrat towered over him; the larger Orc’s teeth were bared and he was filthy, and reeking of blood. “’M’ Slaglob, if it pleases you, Milord - Master – Your Honour - Sir,” the goblin gulped, wringing his hands apprehensively and all but tugging his forelock, “I’ve come ‘ere from the North. ”
Shagrat looked around the clearing, carrying out a quick head-count of the ill-matched assortment who were sitting, lounging and crouching among the fallen boulders that littered the rocky canyon floor.   There were about a dozen of them visible; snaga-Orcs, big mountain Orcs, Uruks; Orcs of every description scattered through the clearing and all of them just – sat on their arses cluttering up the place; loitering. They were a thoroughly dispirited-looking bunch.
“Now then Slaglob,” Shagrat asked briskly, “what d’you think you’re doing? Can’t find anything better to do than just sit here hanging about?”
There was a yell and a brief flurry of activity on the far side of the canyon, and suddenly a shortish, wiry Orc was leaping towards them, the many mess pans and tin cups and other assorted pieces of metal that were hanging off the enormous knapsack he was carrying making a merry clanking noise as he approached. Stopping directly in front of Shagrat he drew himself up very straight, stuck his nose in the air and pushed his shoulders as far back as possible, his pose so rigid with tension that the strain of it, combined with the size of the backpack he was wearing made him overbalance and tip over backwards directly.
Moving very surreptitiously, the goblin Slaglob began creeping away.
Sighing under his breath, Shagrat bent down to help the knapsack-bearing Orc retrieve some of his fallen belongings.   The kitbag in particular was a deadweight he could barely lift.   “What on earth you got in here?” he asked in amazement. “Rocks?”
“Sah! Yes Sah!” the Orc replied. Scrambling to his feet and snapping rigidly to attention once again, he delivered an impressively elaborate salute. “Second Lieutenant Dargaz of Mordor reporting for duty.   We all knows who you is, Captain Shagrat, Sah!” When he stood up straight like this, Dargaz’s flat nose reached to about level with the middle of Shagrat’s chest and he was a watery-eyed, otherwise utterly unremarkable-looking creature. “Beggin’ your pardon,” he said, “but ‘as you h’identified some variety of problem, Captain Shagrat, Sah?”
“Well, Lieutenant Dargaz,” the Uruk said, raising his voice to address the massed group of Orcs at large, “my problem – if I’ve got one, seems to be that at the moment, it looks very much as if you and Slaglob and all your mates ain’t even got the sense to get in out the rain.”
Manic energy seemed to burst forth from Dargaz. Without warning he grabbed a violent hold of his own ears - one in each hand – and, yanking them painfully away from his head, proceeded to scamper about in circles agitatedly.
“Sir! But Sah!,” he panted (occasionally) over his shoulder as he ran, “our h’instructions was to sit tight an’ await further orders, Sah! An’ some of these laggards ‘ave only been trying to go ‘an wander off! Me an’ my archers –“ he gestured vaguely towards the far wall of the canyon, “’we’re seeing to it that no-one’s able to break the line – or we’ll pincushion ‘em! Turn ‘em inter walking pincushions for their trouble, won’t we?” He began to laugh aloud then, a horrible, high-pitched tittering that seemed to force itself out of him.
“Ain’t that right, you lot!” Dargaz bawled, flinging his head back in the rain and shouting straight up into the lowering sky. At that a number of Orcish faces raised themselves briefly from their hidden perches high on the opposite cliff, before quickly ducking back under cover again. After a moment a short, black-fletched arrow described a swift and deadly flight towards them, singing a near-miss past Dargaz before it lodged deep in the ground by Shagrat’s feet.
The Uruk jumped back. “Strewth!”
“We shoots straight, Sir, see?” a wheezy voice from up on the rock wall called down to him.
So!   (Shagrat reflected.) Seemingly Dargaz had taken it upon himself to keep everybody here, their wishes to stay or go notwithstanding, had he? This was a scenario so peculiarly reflecting (albeit in short-term and small-scale miniature) of a situation that every one of them had lived through in the not-particularly-distant past that it seemed to argue that Orcs, in many ways, might even be said to be agents of their own misfortune. Here, out in the back of beyond left completely to their own devices and one of their own was still managing to absolutely bollix things up for everyone else!
Looking at wild-eyed Dargaz as he transcribed his ever-decreasing circle, hurrying endlessly round and round and back and forth, Shagrat was forced to revise that first impression, of him seeming unremarkable enough. Actually a closer look showed clues that had always been there, in his twitching eyes and the way his face would keep rapidly changing expression in spite of there being no cues visible or audible to provoke it: the fellow must have fallen a long way off his rocker, to get himself in this state, mustn’t he? Shagrat wondered when he had first begun to crack.
“Dargaz! At ease, Lieutenant,” he said.
The smaller Orc stopped in his tracks, chest and shoulders heaving. He stared blearily up at Shagrat. “That an order, Sir?”
The Uruk shrugged. “If you like.”
“No!” Dargaz exploded.   “I been tasked wiv’ seeing to this!” He began frothing at the mouth, a little bit. “Us Orcs, we’re gonna rise up! We heard a leader would be coming, an’ ‘ere you are! A leader, ‘oo would guide us unto victory –“
By now Shagrat had had more than enough of this. “You must’ve heard wrong.   Or maybe got the wrong bloke, then, because I’m not,” he said shortly. “Now, this is my patch, here – “
“He’s got the paperwork to prove it!” Ludlow piped up, stepping forwards bravely.   There was some movement from the assembled Orcs sitting in the canyon then, as the ones in earshot turned curiously to look at him.
“That’s right,” Shagrat continued, raising his voice so they all could hear. “All I want’s a quiet life. There’s room enough up here for anyone who wants to have a quiet life, alongside of me, it they want it. But I’ll tell you now: there’s going to be no more playing of silly beggars, or rising up, or funny business in general. Anyone that doesn’t want something like that is going to have to – to sling their hook. And I should think that’s by far the best offer you lot are going to be getting for a long while, out of me – or anyone else.”
“But, we was told!” Dargaz snarled. Baring his fangs he dropped his head and braced his feet for battle, quickly reaching for his weapons.
Before he even laid hands on the black-handled knife at his side, Shagrat was reeling back as the influence of a shock, far greater than the force of any physical blow, struck him. It hit straight for the tracery of flat, silvery scars that covered his shoulder and the left side of his body; leavings from a set of horrendous injuries that had once befallen him, long ago. A fell blend of magic and witch-doctoring had been practiced in order to restore the Uruk, and now the remnants of it left in him were calling to – or answering - a similar variety of black enchantment that had been used in the forging of Dargaz’s weapon. Without even having to look at it, Shagrat knew beyond doubt what manner of blade it was the smaller Orc was carrying.
He grabbed at his stricken shoulder, as if holding tight could stop the joints from wrenching themselves apart and staggered sideways, clumsily taking hold of his own sword in his left hand. This was more or less of a pointless effort: a freezing kind of agony was skewering down and down through the Uruk’s afflicted side, rooting him to the spot so effectively that he could no longer even step aside.
Dargaz began swaying delicately, back and forth. Weaving like a snake about to strike, he held his poison-dagger out in front of him.
“Drop the cursed bloody thing, Lieutenant,” Shagrat panted. “Now, that is an order.”
The other Orc ignored him. His knife, like its owner, was small and dull and nondescript, but its uninspiring looks belied the latent power with which it had been suffused. The power that Dargaz, through his raves and raging had conjured up was immediately recognized by every Orc present, for it was of exactly the same type as the power that their dark masters in Mordor, and elsewhere, had wielded in control of them, and the shape of it was as familiar as the sting of a burn on the skin or the bite of a lash.
As Dargaz drew his knife, the Orcs closest by immediately began backing swiftly away and of Shagrat’s company only Rukush recalled his earlier instructions. Stepping in, he lifted Ludlow off his feet, tucked the Hobbit under one arm and took him with him.
Dargaz gave no sign that he’d noticed any of this; already sunk too far in madness, maybe, or perhaps he only considered the others unworthy of hi s notice.
Movement of any kind was becoming difficult for Shagrat, yet he was able to manage a feeble side-swipe with his weapon; a negligible act of resistance really, performed more or less for appearances’ sake. But still it was an action the Orc regretted instantly, and he was reminded of how far he’d come from appreciating his ever-subservient, always-inferior position in the natural order when Dargaz’s attention momentarily focussed on the sword in his left hand. He felt a quick twist then a snap of bone, and shrieked out once through his teeth.
The Uruk slumped onto one knee, sword still clasped in his injured hand. It was all he could do to roll his eye up towards the smaller Orc and what he saw there appalled him: Dargaz, by now, had all but gone; his essence in effect replaced by whatever fragment of personality or type of presence it was that had anchored itself by means of his wicked, black-bladed little knife.
Shagrat looked into the eyes of the dagger’s incorporeal master and as the shred of that twice-dead entity stared back, there passed between them a dawning, dreadful kind of recognition. Shagrat could not help but recognise the last, fragile, earthly remnant of a Ring-Wraith to which he had once been sent for questioning. At the same time the shred, or echo of personality bound to the knife slowly bared Dargaz’s teeth in a mocking rictus of a grin.
The Wraith would not allow Shagrat to break its gaze; he struggled mightily but as always, and even in this sorely reduced state, it began, effortlessly, to overpower him. Numb with horror, he began to register the tendrils of its influence – fainter that he would have believed possible, but still horribly familiar to someone who had experienced such an invasion before - slipping towards him, wavering, then settling, like a foot into a well-worn shoe.
Dargaz raised the knife high over his head. Pits were forming on its dull surface and an evil-coloured mist had started to rise from it. Shagrat estimated the impact would likely hit a weak point in his armour, just below the collarbone. Not a killing blow, but in all likelihood it would be enough to render his – current situation – permanent. More than enough, probably.
All the joints in Shagrat’s neck had seized in place but from the corner of his eye he was able to register movement among the Orc off to his left, where a frantic, jerky scuffle seemed to be taking place. Rukush yelped in pain and surprise, and swore.
“He bit me!” he cried, as he lost his hold on the Hobbit he was carrying and utterly failed to keep him back at a relatively safe distance.
“Shagrat!  Shagrat!” Ludlow was yelling, as he pelted headlong towards the Uruk.
Shagrat couldn’t even turn his head but his voice at least was still his own. He managed to howl out -“Rukush! Grab him!” before a strangle-hold crushed his throat. The Uruk was considering, thoughts coming through a familiar kind of mental fogging that as last words went, these, at least, were better intentioned than anything he might previously have anticipated, when the not-inconsiderable mass of Ludlow, with all the momentum of his short-distance run came barrelling into him. They went crashing down together.
The Hobbit’s approach provided a timely moment of distraction. As Dargaz’s (or whatever presence it was that was currently animating Dargaz’s), attention turned to him, one of the Orcish archers moved into the open, taking aim as he stepped out of cover on the opposite cliff. A black-flighted arrow flew towards Dargaz; hit him squarely in the back of his upraised hand. The deranged Orc faltered, visibly, at the impact but stood wavering for a second or two, still trying to clutch the poison-knife. He lost his hold and as if it was rending the air, it fell with an ear-splitting screech, hitting the ground with a dull clunk. The noise cut off abruptly, the echoes of it rolling round like thunder about the rock walls of the canyon, and Dargaz, dropped onto his back, pole-axed.
Freed from the knife’s influence, Shagrat rolled sideways away from the spot it had fallen, taking the Hobbit with him.
“Did it get you? Did it get you? Are you cut?” Kneeling beside his companion, he pawed inexpertly at the fastenings of his clothes, panickily trying to reassure himself that Ludlow had remained intact.
Azof sauntered up. Now it was too late to do anything useful, of course. “Cor!  Shaggers!” he exclaimed. “You planning on drilling ‘im, right on the spot? ‘Course, I’d always ‘eard that near-death situations could ‘ave this very effect.   H’affirmation of life. Or something. Innit?”
“Fuck off, Azof,” Shagrat snarled, low and deadly.
“Oooo! An’ now the veneer slips! You seen what a temper he’s got on ‘im before, ‘ave you, half-pint?”
“I’m all right, Shagrat,” Ludlow said, ignoring Azof. He gave him a watery smile.
“What were you thinking!” the Uruk exploded. “You should never have gone near it!   Because, you know, even the smallest scratch, from a blade like that –“
“I’m fine,” Ludlow insisted. “And I’m very glad that so are you. But –“ and he eyed the varied assortment of Orcs who were now beginning to edge curiously towards them – “maybe just at the moment you might find something better to be getting on with?”
“Right. You’re right.” Collecting himself with an effort, the Uruk clambered up and drew in a deep breath. “So who else reckons they’re with this pillock?” he roared, pushing Dargaz with his foot.
“It’s just us up ‘ere!” the wheezy-voiced Orc shouted to Shagrat directly.   “An’ we’re throwning down our weapons! We’re comin’ out!”
“Didn’t ‘ave ‘ardly no more arrows anyway,” another of the archers added.
“And our ‘ands is up!” a third one said.
The Orcs from the cliff, not as many as ten, but certainly a half dozen strong, trooped down into the clearing.
“We’re with you, Captain!” Wheezy-voice called nervously as they approached. “I mean, I shot the Lieutenant, when the chips were down for you didn’ I? We surrender, and all that!”
“Yeah. You’ve said.”  Shagrat looked down his long nose at the lead archer. The Orc stood up straight for inspection, barely even cowering away from him at all. Based on the style of his bone-and-plate armour, the Goblin, in common with the majority of Dargaz’s archers, was probably of mountain tribe-stock originally, and like the others he had greeny-grey skin, wide eyes and black, stringy hair.   He was relatively short in stature and was also, Shagrat realized after a moment, female. Not that there was obviously much – the female being a typical Orc - by way of looks or her style of dress to indicate this. The Uruk shifted slightly, quite unconsciously altering his stance.
“Me name’s Melek,” the lead archer told him, “an’ that’s Burzurg, who I put as me second in command after the Lieutenant there, completely lost it.”
“Old Dargaz,” she went on, shrinking a little under the Uruk’s cold-eyed stare, “now, I don’t think any of what’s ‘appened was really his fault.”
“He were never the same since taking hold of that blasted knife!” Burzurg put in, and between the two of them, the rest of Dargaz’s (short) story was soon related. Led by Dargaz, the squad of archers had banded together following the end of the hostilities, until one dark and moonless night they had been picking their way round the edge of one of the old battlefields on the plain of Gondor –
“An’ it called to him!” Burguz cried. “Straight out the ground! Buried deep, an’ all steeped in old blood and bone and what-not but he wouldn’t stop – just kept digging, an’ digging, down, down, through the muck and gore. Night after night he had us there, searching, and ‘ee’d never say what for! And then after he found it -”
“He always was a bit of a stickler,” Melek broke in, “but after he laid hands on that knife he went bonkers about it. There were never no more reasoning with him.”
“Like you saw! Said he had ‘fresh orders’. Like he wanted to pick up where we left off fighting the war but this time, he’s determined us lot’s gonna win.”
“An’ we said, what, with just the six of us?”
“So he said we’d have to find reinforcements, wouldn’t we. That’s when we ‘eard about you.”
“So I’m askin’,” Melek said, looking Shagrat straight in his good eye, “on account of the Lieutenant, who was a good sort and a – a stalwart fellow, what ‘eld us lot together through thick and thin an’ most of all when times was rough.   Maybe you could think about going a bit easy on him?” She wrung her hands together. “It weren’t his fault!”
Shagrat fidgeted under the earnest archer’s gaze. “Fine,” he said eventually and looked away, chewing his lip.
Dargaz was still lying on the ground, where he had commenced shivering and gibbering quietly. It was the kind of reaction Shagrat could very well understand.
“War’s over Dargaz,” the Uruk told him, delivering him of what was, considering recent events, a relatively gentle kick. “No two ways about it. Our side lost. You clear about that?”
Dargaz didn’t respond.
Shagrat kicked him much harder. “’D’you understand?”
Dargaz continued to whine, breathlessly, but his tone took on a slightly more affirmative register. Curled in on himself on the ground, the little Orc was sobbing and shaking violently. Shagrat stared down at him, a bleak look in his eye. The reaction, based on past experience, would probably get substantially worse before it stood much chance of getting any better.
“Melek,” he said softly. “Take your mate and see if you can’t sort him out. And mind and – one of you sit with him. He’s not going to want to be left on his own, for a bit.”
“He’s off the hook?” Melek gasped, aghast. “Just like that?”
Shagrat gave a single nod. “Get him out of my sight.” Grabbing Dargaz and dragging him with them, Melek and Burzurg hurried to comply.
“’So he’s not even going to be for the chop?” Azof was clearly disappointed.
“From now on, we’re going to be trying to keep the outbreaks of cannibalism down to an absolute minimum, all right?”
“Says ‘oo!”
“I do!” Shagrat yelled, into his face. “It’s new rules!”
“But does ‘minimum’ mean ‘never at all’ or ‘just once in a way?” Azof persevered. “Maybe we could ‘ave at it only for ‘olidays, an’ stuff like that?”
Running a critical eye over Azof’s bulky body, Shagrat considered this. Biting his head off in a very literal sense would certainly solve one or two of their more current and pressing problems, it was true; but then again feasting on one of their own at this point might be seen as setting up an unfortunate kind of precedent.
“...never,” he decided, finally. “You mightn’t have noticed, but there aren’t even that many of us left.”
Perhaps recognizing the possible precariousness of his own situation, Azof subsided. “Just speakin’ ‘ypothetically, but what if we was to get new blood in?”
The other Uruk ignored him.  “Rukush, look, make yourself useful.” He jerked his head towards Melek and Burzurg, where they were having a hard time preventing Dargaz from jumping up and making a mad dash for it. “Why don’t you just - just sit on the Lieutenant till he calms down.”
“’Ere,” Maz said, crouching down – not too close - beside the black knife. Deep notches were appearing all along the sharpened edges and the earth around it was beginning to look scorched. “But what we gonna do ‘bout that?”
“Bury it again?” Rukush suggested.
“What, an’ leave it waiting for the next weak-minded pillock to accidentally stumble upon it and get filled wiv’ some sudden an’ h’inexplicable desire to be the one ‘as gotta rule us all?” Azof scoffed. “Yeah. Brilliant. ’Nother brilliant plan as usual, Rooks.”
“Earth an’ air, an’ fire an’ water,” one of Melek’s archers suggested after a minute. “I ‘eard someone say how that’s best what you can do against stuff to do wiv black magicks an’ witches.”
Maz seemed to consider this for a moment . “Well, I s’pose it is on the ground and in the air already,” he said. Scampering over to the smouldering fire the Orcs had built in the centre of the clearing, he selected a branch with an ember still glowing on one end, and fanning it into flame again, scampered back and dropped it right on top of the knife. “There’s fire! An’ now, I s’pose, as for water –“ at that he began loosening the fastenings at the top of his leggings.
“Oh, Maz - you dirty little bleeder!” Azof groaned. “No - you ain’t! Maz! Put it back in your pants!”
A great cloud of (understandably) noxious-coloured steam rose as Maz’s stream spattered down onto the heated metal.   The amount of vapour increased substantially as Azof, quickly followed by Shagrat, joined in with him.
“Old time’s sake,” the Uruk explained, shifting uncomfortably.
Azof shrugged. “I fink we all know ‘ow that story goes.”
At length their work was finished. “’Ere,” Maz snickered, examining the still-smouldering damp spot, “’ere. Look – see? We’ve pissed it right off!”
And they had: by luck or accident or just plain coincidence, the dagger, hilt and blade and wrappings round the handle had indeed disintegrated, leaving only a blackened patch on the grass.
Maz dusted his hands off, looking very pleased with himself. “That’s taken care of. So now wot?”
Shelter, then board and lodgings seemed the order of the day and once again, the Hobbit had something more than useful to contribute.
“I think,” Ludlow said, “I saw where there’s some caves over up top.”

TBC.
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Orc in Ithilien