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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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Given what had happened between them it was unexpected, then, when two nights later, there came a loud knocking at Julienne’s front door. Of course the farmer’s wife knew there was only person it could possibly be.
“Go away, Azof,” she shouted, from her seat by the fire.
The Orc began hammering much harder, rattling the door on its hinges and causing the rough boards to bow inwards alarmingly. A rain of sawdust, ingrained in the woodwork since the day of the door’s first making, sprinkled down from it.
“Open up Jules!” Azof yelled. “Or so help me, I’ll ‘ave to smash this door in! Won’t take me a minute to get through this old thing!”
“Don’t you touch it! Don’t you dare!” Julienne howled back at him, jumping to her feet and spoiling for a fight. “I’m still needing that, to keep keeping the likes of you where you belong - outside!”
At that Azof seemed to subside. “Let me in, Jules,” he said, in a much quieter voice. “I gotta talk to you. I’m – sorry! I just want to say my piece, and I’ll go.”
Perhaps it was the long-awaited apology that did it. A moment weighing the pros and cons, and the farmer’s wife began unfastening the many bolts and catches, taking her sweet time about it, too.
Azof was waiting in the darkness, just beyond the square of light that shone out from the kitchen lamps. He came forwards as Julienne opened the door.
“I brung this for you,” the Orc announced, shuffling his feet. He held out a messy-looking bouquet composed entirely of white flower sprays cut from blackthorn, commonly used in these parts for hedging, as it was a plant of unsurpassed spinyness, and grew quickly into a dense and impenetrable stock-proof barrier.
“You wanna watch - it’s got all jaggy bits,” he said, and as Julienne made no move to take the flowers, added sheepishly – “it got me a few times when I was picking it.”
“People say it’s bad luck to take – that - in the house.”
“Wot’s that?” The Orc frowned, curiously indignant.   “It’s only a bit of blackthorn! I’d never have thought you’d be one for believing such a load of ol’ rubbish! Some folk reckon it’s a sign it’s going to get cold again when it flowers, an’ what kind of nonsense does that sound like to you?”
“Yes!” Julienne exclaimed, “they call it the blackthorn winter!   And look – blackthorn flowering! Don’t you see how it’s snowing right now?”
And it was. Great, slushy flakes were pelting down from a dirty-looking, grey-black sky.
“Yeah. I s’pose. “ Azof concurred, and stamped his feet exaggeratedly. “So you gonna let me come for in minute, eh? Come on, Jules. It’s bloomin’ freezing out ‘ere.”
Very much against her better judgement, Julienne stood aside to let him past. The Orc entered, looking curiously around him and stood, radiating a faint odour of sweat and leather, rainwater and very unexpectedly – lye soap. The back of his neck in particular had a peculiarly scrubbed look. Julienne’s little living room suddenly seemed much smaller, and warmer, with Azof in it.
“You got a nice gaff,” he said approvingly.
Julienne shrugged. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t spent enough time at the window, staring into her house before.
“’Ere.” The Orc pushed his flower-bundle into Julienne’s hands. “Mind an’ watch that. You don’t wanna get yourself – pricked.” He broke off abruptly then, unaccountably embarrassed.
The farmer’s wife had him sit at the kitchen table while she put the blackthorn in a jug of water. Looking at the flowers more closely, Julienne supposed they were attractive enough in their own way. They were creamy coloured, each with five petals and its own bristling brush of stamens spreading from the greenish-yellow throat. The delicate flowers were shaped like little, white, apple-blossoms, and – as they were now - in season, covered the rough black branches like bubbles clinging from a soap-bath, clothing them with a frothy, frivolous-looking layer. In the house, they gave out a subtle, sweet and dusty fragrance.
“It’s - lovely, the way they come before the leaves, innit?” the Orc said seriously, watching as she examined them. “I never saw any kind of flower what did that before.”
“That stuff grows everywhere. I don’t think I’ve even looked at it closely before.”
“Me neither! Not before I come to live here, anyways,” Azof’s replied, his voice eager. Taking a drink from the mug Julienne had given him he spluttered, grimacing. “’Ere, what’s this?”
“Herb tea.”
“Ain’t you got any ale in the ‘ouse?” Azof asked, grinning hopefully. “Or maybe something a bit stronger. Something to put hairs on your chest, eh?”
“Don’t drink ale,” Julienne said.
“Forget I arsked,” Azof muttered. “Sorry.” Taking a big swallow from the mug he smiled wanly. “This is triffic.”
The sat for a minute in stilted silence.
Then Azof said, suddenly: “I told some of them others ones about you.”
“Other ones?”
“Oh, other Orcs,” he nodded. “Nasty pieces of work. I talked it up a bit too. Made out we’d done a load of dirty stuff we’ve – not.”
Really, what else should she have expected from such a person as Azof?
Julienne sniffed. “Then it’s lucky I’m not much fussed what anyone thinks of me, any more,” she said, and to her surprise, realized that this was more or less true. “I suppose that must go double for a load of Orcs I don’t even know. No, I’ve had enough of all that rubbish. Don’t even know why you’re bothering telling me about it.”
Azof stared at her. “Well sometimes I can be right arsehole, can’t I? I know that.   But I like you. I liked you right from the off. From that first minute when I was ‘iding in them trees and you seen me and you was well scared. Most folk would have wanted to run and ‘ide, and I wouldn’t blame ‘em. But you – you just stood there, effin’ and blinding at me. I was well impressed. ”
“I didn’t think I’d make it as far as the house,” Julienne said, faintly.
“You was wise not to run,” the Orc told her, very seriously. “’Cos that’d’ve made me want to chase after you, wouldn’t it, and if that ‘appened, I mightn’t‘ve been able to stop.”
“Are you trying to frighten me, now?”
“Maybe.” Azof was nonplussed. “Maybe you oughter be frightened - I dunno. Course, I don’t mean you any ‘arm, not at the moment. That ain’t what I’m saying, ‘cause you must know I like you, I’ve said. But sometimes things go pear-shaped. When you and me – you know, the other day. In that wood. Well, then I knew you proper liked me, too. But afterwards, after I – went, well you was upset, wasn’t you?   And I knew I’d been a right arsehole over it. So I thought, when I come ‘ere tonight I was gonna try an’ h’explain. ‘Cause I been coming ‘ere under false pretences. I ain’t no good to you Jules. I ain’t no use, and that’s the long and short of it.”
This didn’t make a lot of sense to Julienne, and she waited for Azof to continue.
Azof laid his hands flat on the table. “This is about the end of the war, right? ‘Cos that’s when it come on – just after. ”
“Some of ‘em,” the Orc began, “the ones still in Mordor come the fall, had it worst. I ‘eard half of them dropped in their tracks, and the other half lost their marbles on the spot. Couldn’t take it.”
“Anyway, me an’ my mate Dokuz, right, when the big stuff all kicked off we was a bit further out. Reinforcements was coming, and we was part of the detail got sent ter meet ‘em at the coast. But we felt it come the end all right, even from there.   Moment it ‘appened was like a big – jolt, or something, an’ we knew. You couldn’t not know, really! Put the wind up us and that lasted a while.” Azof grunted, ruefully.   “We was pissing ourselves! Got so bad we was scared of our own shadows. Didn’t dare do anything but curl up and hide. When that passed, we thought we was over the worst of it.” He gave a weary sigh. “We was well wrong as it turns out, wasn’t we?”
“First it was me ‘air,” Azof said. “Oh yeah - I ‘ad proper hair in them days. Full ‘ead of it what turned dead white in one night. It started droppin’ out. Stuff ’ud come away in great ‘andfuls, what fell into dust soon’s you touched it – blowing away like ash in your ‘ands. Went on till I’m in the state you see me now - bald as a blimmin’ egg! Same thing wiv Dokuz’s teef – come a few days after, and the ones at the back ‘ad all crumbled away to nuffink.  ‘Orrible business. It was like a - wave, or somethink - you know like when you drop poison, in the middle of a pond? It found us, all the way from Mordor, only it took its time to spread.”
Azof looked down at the table. “An’ that weren’t the worst of it. Next time I went for a J. Arfur –“
Julienne tilted her head, mystified.
“Tried to pull on the plank.”
The farmer’s wife was still none the wiser.
Leaping to his feet, the Orc paced back and forth in agitation. “Don’t you gerrit? Why d’you fink alls I do is stand there like a spare part an’ watch? It’s all I can do!”
“It,” he said, looking significantly at Julienne, so that she would be sure to understand what he was talking about, “don’t work no more. You get what I’m talking about?” He made a vague chopping gesture downwards, from the middle of his body. “Me candle. The ‘old man’. My todger. It. It.”
Julienne did her best to look at anything, anything other than the sadly-afflicted region of the Orc’s person, but failed utterly and gave it a brief, searching look.
“Oh yeah, it’s still there. Ain’t you seen? That time I got ‘im out for you, at the window? I just can’t do nuffink with it. Why d’you think I always go running off like that? It’s so embarrassing, is’n’it?”
“An’ it’s not cos’ I don’t wanna. Cos’ I’d do it - I’d shag you, in a minute, if I could! I’m not fussy - I’d shag anyone, I would!”  Azof stopped and stood for a moment, frowning. “Look, Jules, maybe that didn’t come out right.”
The Orc knelt down beside Julienne’s seat and gazed earnestly at her. “But I’m no good for you,” he repeated. “I can watch yer, an’ even if I get turned on like anythink – an’ I do, cos it’s lovely, watching you - I don’t get ‘ard so I can’t do nuffink about it. Can’t do nuffink wiv’ it.”
This was all a great deal to take in, and not quite knowing what to say to him, Julienne latched onto the first thought that occurred to her – something he’d touched on earlier in his tirade.
“When you left that day in the wood. How did you know I got – upset, afterwards, then?”
“Eh? Oh, ‘cos of I was keeping an eye on you from just up the ‘ill.” Julienne stared at him. “What! It was getting late, and I ‘ad to make sure you got ‘ome safe. There’s all sorts of weirdoes and dickheads – ruffians and foot-pads and all sorts ‘anging about. And I was there when that cattle-trader, the wanker, tried to feel you up. I was gonna clock ‘im one but you seemed well up for sorting it.”
“D’you know him then?” Julienne said, wondering how Azof had come to know how her cousin earned his living.
“Nah.” Azof scratched his head. “I’ve maybe seen him around and about, that’s all.   He’s kin to your ‘usband, isn’t he?”
“Everyone round here’s kin to my husband! You don’t - know him as well, do you?”
“Alls I know is he’s a great bushy-bearded twat who turfed you out that ‘ouse of yours down the village so he could shack up wiv’ some ovver woman instead,” Azof replied, clearly indignant on Julienne’s behalf.
Azof’s interpretation of those painful events though gratifying, wasn’t strictly accurate. “He never turfed me out, not really,” Julienne explained. “I had to leave – but it was of my own free will. Those two were all for me staying on after – like an unpaid housekeeper, I think.”
“Your old man wants his head looking at,” Azof muttered, “seeing as he already ‘ad someone as nice as you.”
“But you’ve met him, have you?”
“Well he’s a farmer, isn’t he?” the Orc replied, exasperatedly. “I’m known to quite a few of the farmers, round these parts. But they ain’t no friends of mine,” he snarled, “and that goes both ways!”
He sat bristling for a moment and then added belatedly - “present company h’excepted, of course. If I can still say that, now you know I’m such a dead loss.”
Poor Azof! He was fishing, obviously, and Julienne shook her head at him. But what a ridiculous situation! The Orc had gotten ahead of himself, absurdly far in fact, and she had to struggle to suppress an almost overwhelming impulse to burst out laughing at any moment. Julienne wasn’t an unkind woman, and it was obvious that this would be exactly the wrong thing to do.
“I don’t know much about these things, Azof,” she told him, doing her best to sound sympathetic, “but this – problem, you say you’ve got. I don’t think it’s all that out of the ordinary. I think it just - happens, to some men sometimes.”
“Not to an Orc, it doesn’t!” Azof all-but wailed out. “Unless the whole lot gets chopped off, I’ve never heard of anything remotely like this!”
“Maybe if you give it time, it’ll sort itself out.”
“But me hair! It ain’t growing back at all!”
The Orc was so woebegone that Julienne couldn’t help but felt sorry for him. Certainly it was unenviable, and obviously distressing, this position he found himself in. She reached out and ran a sympathetic hand over his scalp. The skin was very warm and felt smooth, like polished leather. There wasn’t even the slightest trace of stubble.
“Perhaps not having hair’s not the worst thing in the world.”
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                “It’s not really me ‘air I’m worrying about though, is it?”  Azof sighed. Huffing out a deep, shuddering breath he leaned in and rested his cheek against Julienne’s leg. And it felt comfortable, like the most natural thing in the world for her to sit there petting him, for a time.
Outside, the weather was picking up. The wind whistled in the chimney and sent a chilly blast gusting down into the fireplace. A log fell in the grate, dislodging a shower of glowing, half-charred fragments that clinked and pinked on the stones of the hearth as they cooled. Looking down at the bald Orc with his head in her lap, Julienne couldn’t help but think of all the long, wintry miles that lay between Azof and wherever he intended to spend the rest of the night. Of course, he’d come and gone under similar conditions before, but now he was here with her, indoors, the situation somehow seemed – different.
“Azof,” Julienne said, “it’s getting late. I’m going to be turning in, in a minute. You can stop over, if you want.”
The Orc raised his head. “You don’t want shot of me?”
“It’s the type of night you wouldn’t want to turn out a stray dog on,” the farmer’s wife replied. “Yes, you can stay.”
This did however raise the question of - ‘where.’
Following (and clearly anticipating) Julienne’s chain of thought, Azof said quickly – “you know, since me – trouble come on, I’ve been piling on the weight. Can’t seem to stop stuffing me face. So you probably don’t want to shove me in that out-house.” He grinned at her. “Better not leave me alone with all that ham.”
Julienne told him he was welcome to rest on the straight-backed kitchen settle, and the Orc flung himself back onto it, wincing exaggeratedly. So it didn’t come as a complete surprise when Julienne, having readied herself for bed, heard the creak of a floorboard behind her as Azof came creeping into her bedroom.
“I couldn’t get comfy out there,” he protested. “If I’d had to spend the night on that thing, I’d’ve ended up with a right crick in me back. Come on, Jules. You know I only want to be in here, with you. Go on - I’ve been wanting to have a try-out of that big bed for ages!”
There was enough room for him, certainly. The bed-stead, though elderly, was easily large enough to accommodate two – though the springs did dip alarmingly as Azof climbed in behind her.
“Mind and stay on top of the covers,” Julienne told him, firmly.
“Oh, yeah, I will,” Azof muttered, shuffling up beside her, very close. The Orc snuffled his nose into the hair at the back of Julienne’s head, and gave a contented-sounding rumble, deep in his chest.   “I’ll behave myself,” he promised. “I’ll be no trouble. Honest.”
TBC.

A/N: The mystery of Julienne’s inappropriately French-sounding name is solved in this chapter; I didn’t have in mind Professor Tolkien’s reverse-Francophilia when deciding what to call her, so much as - for some reason - Azof running round bellowing ‘JULES!....JULES!!’ at the top of his voice and in an Estuarine accent. TV chef Jamie Oliver’s probably to blame for that part, anyway.
Antidolorifico – cheers, as ever, for the comments! Total nutcase? I like that! And I’d agree - it’s not your typical Orcish behaviour is it. As you see I like trying to come up with scenarios in which they don’t immediately act as nature (well I say “nature”- breeding programmes, Dark Lord Sauron, genetic engineering, behavioural programming, all that jazz - you know what I mean) probably intended. You may be happy to know there’s moar Orc sex – of a sort, (Azof’s extenuating circumstance permitting) - all described in horribly cringe-worthy detail coming up next!
LoveHopes – thank you very much for the vote of confidence! Stories featuring Orcs as anything other than hack’n’slash fodder / perpetrator of awful crimes upon the person(s) of Legolas / Frodo / A.N.Other, can take a bit of finding, but if you drop me a line with your email address I’ll be happy to send you some recs. Although I wouldn’t claim to be the best person to ask: if you do a google search for ‘the lauderdale’ and ‘orcs’ you’ll quickly come up with the most exhaustive possible list of Orc-related fics; more of a database, actually. I’d link you to it directly but I’m not sure of the form, linking to proper stuff from aff.net.....
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Azof and the Farmer's Wife