Nazsnaga

They were the last orcs in Mordor, the last orcs alive anywhere, as far as they knew.

There were six to begin with. On the second day after the Eye, Kraglugh said he had had enough. He picked a fight with Othrosh, who was bigger, and that was that.

Then there were five. They wandered across the land in a tight clutch. Food was no trouble because there were so many other orcs dead. They kept finding them, scattered across the ground, then tucked into hidey-holes. They did not mind meat that was rotting, so it would be some time before they ran out of the supply that was scatterd everywhere, so abundant that they could have easy provisions even while flitting before the approach of the Men. Indeed they were better fed than they ever had been in the army, so much so that food began to be boring.

There were spoils, of course. They were low-ranking orcs and tempted by what could be taken from the more decorated corpses. It was not long before Algig and Lugba came to blows over a medal. Lugba won, and then there were four orcs left, and that was when Rashnol stepped up.

“You utter gobshite,” said Rashnol. “You want to go extinct?”

“What’s extinct?”

“It’s when there are no more orcs anywhere,” said Rashnol. “I don’t mean to go extinct squabbling over rubbish. I mean to make trouble for the Men until I die of my own. None of you are going to kill me and none of you are going to kill each other. We will die free orcs, and we won’t roll over and let the Men win. Have you got that?”

“Sounds stupid to me.”

“Then you can leave,” said Rashnol.

Lugba actually did march off to make a go of it on his own.

“I’m not bringing him back,” said Rashnol. “You?”

Graushnut and Ghaugbor were the only ones left. Graushnut spat on the ground and said “He were no use anyway.” Ghaugbor nodded silently.

“Right,” said Rashnol. “Now here’s what it’s going to be from now on. There’s plenty of loot for everyone, and it won’t do any of us any good anyway. Because everyone’s dead. Right? So if you find something, and you want to waste your time carrying it off, it’s yours if you saw it first. No fighting. What’s the use?”

Graushnut and Ghaugbor nodded.

So they went on their own. They found a tower that was still standing, a poor piddling thing, a minor guardsroom.

“Listen, boys,” said Rashnol. “Them Men are chasing us farther every day. They’ll catch us up someday. Now, if we lie low in here, maybe they’ll pass us by.”

“What if they don’t?”

“I’m getting tired of running,” said Rashnol. “I think I might fight back.”

He had fought a maddened, abandoned pit-cow the other day and won. Graushnut nodded and said: “Alright, then. I won’t fight, but I’ll stay and see what happens.” Ghaugbor said nothing.

What happened was that the Men came. The group holed up in the basement, which had a convenient pile of dead orcs in the corner for provisions, and listened to the tread of them upstairs.

“Now what?” Graushnut asked.

“I’m thinking,” said Rashnol. He had picked up a crossbow and he twiddled with it absently. “I’m thinking I’ll take a few with me if they find us. But I’d rather not go. The satisfaction ain’t worth it. Maybe they’ll move on.”

But they would be back, that was the trouble.

“Oi! Lugba’s back. You! Lout! You think we’ll take you back now?”

Rashnol looked up. “You daft sod, that’s not Lugba!”

The new orc was half Lugba’s size, if that; slim as a stick and leaning on the wall. A cripple. Rashnol and his band had encountered a few orcs that were lying crippled and puling in the dirt. Nothing could be done for ‘em, and there was enough food without killing ‘em, so they’d left them alone unless they were begging for death. Rashnol hadn’t seen one up and about yet, and didn’t have a plan for what to do about it.

“What do you want?” Rashnol demanded.

“O,” said the new orc, “nothing- nothing.” His helmet was low over his face, obscuring it. His voice was high. His armor hung off him, obviously stolen from someone bigger.

“Are you a woman?” Ghaugbor asked with sudden interest. It was the first Rashnol had heard him speak.

“No,” the newcomer. “I am not, not at all! Many things, which may surprise you, but not that. No, not that!”

“You’re a talker,” said Rashnol.

“O, yes, yes, that, perhaps, yes-“

“I don’t like it.”

The newcomer went silent.

“What’s your name?” Rashnol asked.

There was no answer.

Rashnol sneered. “Right. I don’t like you talking, so you decide you’ll fix me by not answering questions.”

“Didn’t mean no harm,” said the newcomer, “only we- I thought it was a test, perhaps, yes. It’s my name he wants, is it?”

“Did I stutter?”

“No, no, very clear, he was. Nazsnaga is my name. And what is yours, eh?”

“I’m the Boss, to you.”

“Very well! The Boss.”

“You’re forward for a cripple.”

“I’m used to it,” said Nazsnaga. “Yes! Used to it!”

“Used to being forward?” Graushnut asked in confusion.

“Yes, of course,” said Nazsnaga with a self-effacing chuckle better suited to soft Men than to an orc, even a puny one, “but I meant I am used to being a cripple. I gets around better than ye’d think, perhaps.”

“Used to it, eh?” said Rashnol.

“Yes, many long years now, don’t bother about us.”

Crippled orcs were rarely thought to be of much use. This one must have some unusual talent. “So what can you do?”

“All sorts of things,” Nazsnaga demurred.

Rashnol fiddled with his crossbow. He had decided at some point that killing other orcs for the usual reasons (they were annoying) was a waste, because orcs were in short supply these days and not likely to start making more of themselves. But Nazsnaga was acting dreadfully suspicious and useless, loitering about with this uninformative chatter, and if he was going to be enough of a nuisance to be a risk to the company, off he’d go.

“I am a spy,” said Nazsnaga. “I may go and look at the Men outside if he wishes, and they will not see an orc.”

“No,” Rashnol grunted, tempting as it was to let Nazsnaga go and get killed by someone else. “I don’t trust you not to bring ‘em down on us. Sit down there and be quiet.”

“Very well! Of course,” said Nazsnaga, sitting down. “But we- I did stand there some time before you saw me, so I can be quiet, yes quiet.” A note of alarm came into his voice. “What’s that he’s got? What’s he doing?”

Graushnut was holding a dagger and looking expectant.

“What’s that?” Rashnol asked him.

“He’s in the way,” said Graushnut.

“Not if he sits in that corner. I told you, Graushnut, I don’t mean to go extinct from orcs killing orcs. What’s the point of it?” He would not let on that he’d been pondering the same thing. It would make him look weak, and for that reason, he realized, he could not kill Nazsnaga unless he attacked first.

“He’s no good to anyone,” Graushnut groused.

“Doesn’t matter. We have enough food and he ain’t causing enough trouble yet. Let him die on his own if he wants to.”

Nazsnaga sat where he was in the corner, dipping his helmet down even lower over his face.

“Now, everyone, be quiet,” said Rashnol. “If these Men do drag me out of my hole like a rat it won’t be because you dipshits won’t stop talking.”

There followed an intensely unpleasant length of time, which may have been minutes or hours. Everyone sat around and stared at each other. This grew boring and at length Graushnut went to sleep. So did Ghaugbor. Rashnol sat watchful, hearing the distant creak of the footsteps of Men, not just any Men but the soldiers of Gondor, well-armored and jovial. What he wouldn’t give to see their Sun burn them all to ash!

Nazsnaga studied him, and his eyes were points of light under that silly outsized helmet. Rashnol’s attention lapsed for just a moment and suddenly the pint-size freak was very close to him. He didn’t smell right. Wet and pale and fishy.

“What will happen if the Men do leave?” he asked. “What will you do, where will you go?”

“Off,” said Rashnol.

“They want to own all of these lands.”

“Good for them.”

“You will have to go away forever. Out of the Black Lands.”

“You’re a sharp one, ain’t you? Course I will. You have to yammer on loud enough for the whole Tark City to hear you?” Actually Nazsnaga’s voice was a faint hissing whisper, while Rashnol’s was near a shout.

Rashnol’s gaze flicked to Graushnut and Ghaugbor. They were none too smart, and he doubted they had realized what he had realized long ago- that there would be no permanent home for them in Mordor.

“They sleeps,” said Nazsnaga pleasantly. “It is just you and us now, just you and me, of course. O! He mustn’t.” Rashnol was picking up the crossbow. “I don’t mean you any harm. I have advice. That is all. I give good advice. But you needn’t take it if you doesn’t like it, of course.”

The thing’s gaze had something of the Master’s Eye in it, and the ugly and pathetic quality of the being that gaze was set in only made it burn brighter. Rashnol wanted to answer to it; he also hated it. Nazsnaga, eh? ‘Ring-slave’, he’d called himself. He didn’t look much like one of the Nine. What was he?

“You will leave, you say,” said Nazsnaga. “It is not so easy to leave. Yes. It is hard to get in, they says, but they doesn’t talk about getting back out again. Have you ever been out at all?”

“No.” Rashnol glared at him, and felt as if he looked like a sulky cub. “Have you?”

“Yes! I have. I have been far.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Nazsnaga gave him a fond smile. Rashnol picked up the crossbow, but didn’t aim it.

“The Men will let you surrender.”

“Never,” said Rashnol.

An exhalation of damp stone, dark earth and rot wafted over his face. It was cold.

“Why not?” the thing asked. He was crouching on all fours now. “They can afford to let you live. They have a thing they call honor, a thing that may sound silly, but it means they will let you live.”

“I don’t want to be let to live. I have a right to live,” Rashnol growled.

“Do you?”

“I say I do. It’s by the Eye’s will that I live, they told me. And he’s gone. But I’m still here. It wasn’t his will after all, was it? I have a right!” His voice was rough. “I won’t take a cell, and lick the Men’s boots!”

“The boots don’t taste so nasty as you think,” the creature mused. “Very well; you escape over the mountains. And what is waiting for you, what is there?”

“I’ll go South.”

“South are more Men. Do you think in the desert lands they are friendlier to orcs? Perhaps they were. But they wanted you for your Master and He is gone! There is only the Sun there, burning, burning.”

“Then I won’t go South. Happy?”

“You will flee into the dark,” said Nazsnaga, “into the deep places, away from Sun and Moon, and you will find things that were there before you. You can never be alone. In the light you will find Men, the shining Men of the White City, the horse-lords, the rugged Woodmen in their furs. And in the dark, you will find nothing; something will find you first.”

A cold touch at the side of Rashnol’s neck. He jumped to his feet, away from the thing on the ground.

“And you will still go?” the monster asked.

“I’m an Orc of Mordor,” Rashnol roared. “I have no bosses anymore. I’ll go free until something eats me. And by the Eye they’ll have to catch me before they eat me, and they’ll have to fight me before they catch me.” He drew not his crossbow but his dagger and showed the Old One the point of it.

“And will you kill Men?”

Rashnol spat on the ground. He saw, to his fury, that Ghaugbor and Graushnut were gone. They had snuck away. Maybe this damned frog had scared them off, and therefore Rashnol would refuse to show that the frog scared him too. “I don’t want to fight Men unless they start it.”

“Not even for food?”

“I won’t give them the satisfaction! But if they start something,” Rashnol added, “I’ll end it!”

“Very well,” said the Creeping Thing. “That is fair enough for us. Then you must go, I suppose.” His voice was soft and almost tender. “There is a passage out. I found it. I find so many things! Shall I show it to you? Shall I?” It made a disgusting, hungry sound in its throat.

“No!”

“Ha, ha! He doesn’t want to follow Sméagol, of course, no, my precious. I will go away down it,” said the Thing. “And you will wonder, and a clever orc like you will follow my trail. There is a way out of these lands where the Men cannot find you. It is by Her Cave. And She is sulking. A hobbit hurt Her and she is sulking. She may not find you. But your time is short.”

With those words the thing that was not an orc disappeared into dark too deep even for orcish eyes.

Graushnut and Ghaugbor slunk back a little later, pretending as if nothing had happened, and found Rashnol scratching himself all over as if he had fleas.

“Where’s the creep?” Graushnut asked.

Rashnol almost lied and said he had killed it. He wished he had killed it.

“Escaped,” said Rashnol. “I’m going to find where it went. There’s a way out. Has to be. How’d it get in here? Those Men wouldn’t let it live if they saw it- it didn't come in where they could see it.”

Graushnut and Ghaugbor followed him simply, as if he had been a Lieutenant. He made sure to keep them where they couldn’t plunge a knife into his back.

“How long shall it take for his return?” the other man asked, glancing across the rubble.

“Tis an honor to have Sméagol along for a guide,” said Anborn.

They had been rangers of Ithilien long, and said much more with glances and tones, both of them saying It is needful for someone to babysit Sméagol and his intelligence is of enough use to make it worthwhile and indeed it is an honor after a fashion, but it is not a pleasant honor and the sooner he returns the sooner tis finished, and what a shame no power of Men can make him return any sooner! And what a shame that our Lord Faramir has a sense of humor and chose Anborn for this particular very great honor- in large part because Anborn once mistook Sméagol for a squirrel.

They had lapsed enough to take attitudes of lounging- so much as Rangers lounged, but now Anborn snapped upright. He saw an orc limping towards them. A small one. He raised his bow, and others of the company had raised their own before he could so much as signal.

The orc’s gait was swift, alarmingly so, but hobbled. Anborn had a fleeting thought that Sméagol may have tried to kill him and left him injured. He said: “Halt!” but the orc had halted almost before he spoke, and raised trembling hands, long white hands with crooked fingers. Anborn began to recognize Sméagol by his hands before he spoke.

“Don’t shoot,” he cried. “Don’t hurt us!” He gobbled in his throat from panic.

Anborn lowered his weapons and signalled the others to do the same. He walked closer. Sméagol trembled, his hands still raised in surrender.

“Why are you dressed as an orc?” Anborn asked.

“An orc? An orc? O my precious, we had forgotten, yes, we looks very like an orc.”

“Happily you do not sound like one. In future you should identify yourself when you return in disguise.”

Sméagol took off the outsize orcish helmet and looked up at him with huge eyes. His hair stuck to his face in wisps. “If I had been an orc, would you have killed me?” he whispered. “I was surrendering.”

“May I ask a question first? Why are you dressed as an orc?”

“Thought I heard one, ahead. So I took the clothes from a dead one, a disguise! Master did it too,” he said. “And Sam. They disguised.”

“I deem they were not as convincing orcs as you are.” Sméagol’s features had softened from good feeding but were still orcish in cast. The look upon them was not. Anborn knew not what he would do were an orc to turn upon him such a wretched gaze. “Are orcs present?”

He looked around. The Rangers had been gathering the corpses that still lay in heaps among the ruins, and burning them. Sméagol gazed at the ashes. “No, none are there. None. I was frightened, frightened of orcs, but you have come closer to slaying me than any orc today.”

Anborn dropped to one knee to look Sméagol in the eye. “Let us stay to our business. Is there anything in that hovel we need to know about?”

“No,” said Sméagol. He picked up the orcish helmet and placed it back upon his head.