The One That Got Away

Drizal was a prudent orc. He didn't make himself a nuisance when the bosses were in a snit. He only went after a tark when he had backup and a good reason, never when he was alone and felt the instinct to make trouble. If another orc was putting on airs, Drizal stepped aside and let him pick fights with someone else. When he was assigned a wife, he made things as pleasant for her as he reasonably could, and most of his cubs had survived long enough to die in battle instead of being eaten in the nest.

He survived the fall of the Eye by keeping his head down and running the other way from orcs who were panicking. And now, when he turned a corner in the tunnels he kept his back to the wall and a knife in his hand, and when he saw bright eyes ahead he stopped where he was.

It was no great surprise to him that Shelob's Sneak was still alive, or that he looked like he'd been eating well. The Sneak was a scavenger, after all. Drizal had run into him once before, gnawing on a body he'd been assigned to carry off to the pits. A brisk shout and a wave of the sword had cleared him off.

Drizal stepped forward now. "Get out!" he said gruffly.

The Sneak's gaze was flinching but stayed locked on his eyes. Instead of scurrying off, he spoke, in nasally Orcish. "Bloody afternoon, most violent of butchers."

"Speak Common. You're embarrassing yourself," Drizal grunted.

"O very well," said the Sneak, and his Common was even worse, "we was just wanting to be friendly, but this is easier, yes." He glanced at the knife in Drizal's hand and the sword at his hip- it was a fine sword, taken off of a captain who had been too stupid to use it to save himself.

"Get out," said Drizal. "This patch is mine."

"Sss, sss." The Sneak backed away, but instead of leaving entirely he sat his skinny shanks down in the dirt. "We won't fight him, no, nice Orc, don't want his tunnel. Nice tunnel. Very reasonable, asking us first and sticking us later. A very fine Orc!"

Drizal spat in the dirt. "I didn't tell you to flatter me, did I?"

"No, sss. I won't be staying, but the Men are coming. Men from Gondor. They are collapsing the tunnel. I am checking it for Orcs. I've found one, eh?"

"You? With the tarks? Am I supposed to think they're that desperate?"

"Yes," said the Sneak. "They can't fit down here, can they? They needs us. They took us in after the War. We surrendered- yes. They have all kinds of meat and they shares. You might talk with them, or you might go; or stay here and be buried, if you wishes it."

"Talk with them? I'm not as dumb as I look."

"That's a help to him, isn't it? Very well, then. Is anyone else here?”

"Would I tell you if there were?" Drizal asked him.

"Of course not," the Sneak said amiably. His nose had been twitching rabbit-fashion throughout all of this nonsense and Drizal suspected he knew full well that no one else was around.

Drizal pulled his sword out just far enough to show a glint of the blade. He had already decided the Sneak was not worth the trouble to chase- he looked like a picked-over corpse already, but Drizal wanted the twisted thing to know he wasn't welcome.

The Sneak backed up a little farther away, and said with an air of finality: "I'll hold them off- a bit. They won't wait long on account of us bellyaching over nothing, so he had better run quick. I hopes he has a back-door."

He darted off.

Drizal considered that there were plenty of other vacant dens in Mordor these days, and whatever reason the Sneak wanted him gone, staying may not be worth the trouble. He decided to take his things and go for a little walk. When he came back, he saw a collapsed tunnel and tarks stomping all over. He made himself scarce.

It was hard marking time in these days with no captains and no orders, so he was not sure how much later it was when he encountered the Sneak again. Weeks, maybe. This time it was a ruined guard tower. Drizal had been living in the basement. He came up for food one day and there was the Sneak, looking even sleeker and better-fed than the last time.

Drizal had not been faring as well and the Sneak greeted him with the customary phrase for a low-ranking soldier. "It is a good afternoon to run fast on, little slave."

"Common," Drizal grunted. It was bad enough having the Eye shut and His lands going to rot and to Men without Orc-talk being mangled by an idiot on top of it.
It was tempting to run the little rat down where he crouched, and stab out those big blinking eyes of his, but that would not be prudent. Not yet.

"Common-talk, then, if he likes, yes,." The Sneak seemed not to realize they'd seen each other before. He probably thought all orcs looked alike.

"This here's my spot," said Drizal.

"That's a shame, then," said the Sneak, keeping an eye on Drizal's sword, which he wore at his hip, like always. "We don't want this place ourselfs, do we? We won't give you any trouble, but the- sss- what you'd call tarkses are about."

"I wouldn't call 'em tarkses."

The Sneak looked briefly confused, then dismissed it. "The Men. They wants the tower. Who knows why they wants it? They are Men. And they will have it." He glanced up at the big hole in the ceiling. "The Men of Gondor will not be stopped by one Orc. No, and they won't slow down, either."

"Suppose I have a warband with me?"

"Suppose, eh? But you don't have one. It is only yourself. One poor Orc all alone with no one to help him. The Men might feel pity, if he asks. They are fair Men. Orcs do not have many choices, do they? Couldn't have done different, could you?"

"So you think I should walk up to the Men and beg? 'Oh pretty please, give me a steak?'"

"And why not, eh? He might try it," said the Sneak. "As long as he doesn't ask for manflesh or something foolish like that. They are not like the Men who worked- sss- here. They are not slavemasters. It won't hurt you to talk to them, will it? Or if you would rather not, you may leave again, but this time you had better go farther. They are coming for all of it. All of His lands. They say nothing will remain."

"Again?" Drizal asked.

The Sneak glanced at him submissively. "I thought I remembered you. Does he remember us?"

Drizal did not comment. "Get out of Mordor, eh?"

"Yes. Quite away. Go under the mountains, go deep underground."

"And eat what?"

"I don't know. It would be very hard, yes; but it is that, or talk to the Men, or die."

Drizal's jaw tightened. He could hardly say the Sneak was wrong. And he was a prudent orc. He knew when he was beaten.

"Huh," he said, and spat on the ground. "There's more Men outside the mountains."

"O yes. Swarms of them. Like hornets," the Sneak agreed. "Men everywhere. It is the world of Men now, they says. And why not, hmm? What use do Men have for orcs? They can kill each other, they don’t need you. You will never win, if you fight them. The Eye is gone, the White Hand is gone."

"The White Hand was bollocks to begin with."

"Probably so," the Sneak said diffidently. "I don’t know about him. But I knows about not being wanted… yes, yes, no one wanted us to begin with. No, but the Men took us. They take what is lost, even if they do not really want it either."

"Can't see as I have much of a choice. You lead."

The Sneak nodded and opened his mouth as if to start another argument, and then it dawned on him what Drizal had said. His round eyes got even rounder. "Yes! Yes!" He skipped about as if someone was putting a torch under him. "Come, Come! Follow us! Follow! He will see- he will see! Yes!"

In a kind of frenzy, he scurried up ahead. "He must come, come quick. They will look for us if it's too long. Will they? No. I told them not to. Dangerous. But they may. They don't always listen." He stopped short in the next doorway, his nose quivering. "But! The nice orc, the very clever and beautiful orc, he is wearing a sword. The Men will see it right away, and they will tell him he cannot have it. It is better- perhaps- he will not want to leave it. But it is better to be without it- eh? Isn't it?" His voice was cautious, pleading, stammering.

Drizal indeed did not want to leave his sword but as there were four knives hidden on his person, he didn't truly need it. He put it down on the ground with only a hint of regret.

The Sneak cried out in delight and clasped his bony hands. "Yes! Very good, very nice orc. Good, good! Follow me!"

He led Drizal into a broken hallway. "Good orc," he cooed. He was still keeping a careful distance between them. "Sensible orc, very smart." He lapsed into Black Speech, or something perhaps a little older and very stuffy-sounding. "Sharp-bladed butcher, thou spearer of piglets and Manlings!" He switched back to Common before Drizal could demand he do so. "He has done well, o yes he has- still following? Yes?"

"If you want me to keep following you," said Drizal, "you can stop running ahead. My leg's not so good after the war."

"Not so good, eh? Poor orc! The Men may help, perhaps, yes, not so fast, precious. Ha, ha! We can be patient, can't we?" He was trembling. Did he suspect something? "They'll heal you, and feed you, and give you new clothes. O! I had - I had- I hoped- gollum! Yes, even I, my precious. Follow me!"

Drizal needed no invitation to follow him. But the slippery thing was still skipping on too far ahead.

"Hoped for what?" he grunted. 
"A-ah!" the Sneak said, as if he had a pain. "Not to see- all of the orcs gone. Not all. Not all of them, every last one, even the whelps. And only a mad old Halfling to say how they had been when they were not fighting. It is a hard world, a cruel world, gollum, and it is nastier for orcs, isn't it?"

"Don't you eat orcs?"

"I used to," the Sneak whispered. "I was horrid."

He had stopped looking back at Drizal, and he had stopped glancing to his sides and over his shoulders.

There were standards of the Eye in this hall; they had been intact when Drizal had last passed through but now had been clawed and spat upon, by something small that could only barely reach the bottoms of the banners.

The Sneak had reached a doorway. He paused, staring up ahead, quivering all over. They were mere feet away from exiting the tower, and Drizal could smell the tarks waiting outside.

"Which way is it now?" the Sneak mumbled. "Was it up or down? Both lead out, don't they? It may not matter."

"It doesn't matter." Drizal slipped the knife from his sleeve and lunged.

The Sneak felt or heard him coming and rolled aside before Drizal touched him. Drizal pitched after him and caught the thing by his ankle. The Sneak whipped around like a striking snake, and then the two were rolling, spitting, kicking, biting. Drizal tried to bring down the knife and found his wrist caught in a grip much stronger than he'd anticipated.

That was one hand. The other turned up just then on Drizal's throat- cold, heavy.

A light haze began to intervene between Drizal and the sight of his opponent's huge, angry eyes; his head ached. First he clawed at the Sneak's wiry arm with his free hand, but then cooler thought prevailed, in the waning seconds of his life, which desperation slowed to clear long slices of time. He withdrew another knife from a pouch along his side- for his arm was free- a hand on one wrist, a hand at his throat, and none to catch his other arm.

First, the grip on his throat suddenly released, with a shriek that came with a smell of rotting fish, which was the Sneak's foul breath. Second, after this had happened, the knife hilt was in Drizal's hand. He brought it up, as he gulped in air, and it swiped through Sneak's flesh as he fell over sideways and curled into a ball. 

Drizal stood, gasping and coughing. His knife was red. The Sneak's blood looked and smelled shockingly close to Man-blood. Drizal licked the blade of the knife- it tasted like some cross between Man-blood and orc-blood.

He ought to drive the knife down into the thing that had just tried to choke him. That had been the plan to begin with, after all, but looking down at it crying there on the floor, Drizal remembered suddenly the rot it had been talking about it being a cruel world for orcs, and he stopped at spitting on the Sneak and kicking him away. Then he would have liked to run, but when he looked up, a group of tarks had appeared in the doorway. They held crossbows and swords.

Drizal dropped his knife and raised his hands in surrender. "Go on," he said. "He claimed you'd be fair."

"And so we shall," said one of the Men, looking at the Sneak on the floor, bleeding and carrying on, and then looking at Drizal with coldly flaming eyes. 

They tied Drizal up, took his knives, stuck him on a wagon, dragged him miles under the Sun to their city and then tossed him in a cell. When they put him in the cell they took off the ropes. It was a dark roomy cell, with no one else crowding it or stinking it up. They gave him a meal of raw pork.

“When’s the questioning start?” he asked when he could bear the suspense no longer.

“When we are ready,” said the Men, which was no answer at all, and then they left him alone for a while. Drizal did pushups.

A Man turned up a while later and started asking questions. Drizal answered as much as was reasonable. He would not tell them anything that would help them destroy the remains of Mordor, and he could honestly say he had no idea where the other orcs were and thought they were all probably dead. What had he done in the army? What he was told. Mostly dig latrines. 

“Why did you put a blade to our scout?” the Man asked quietly, calmly.

Drizal thought this over, and the Man did not hurry him. This was only the first round, after all. “I didn’t like your scout,” he said.

“Did he attack you?”

Drizal considered this, decided the answer would be brought out of him one way or another. “We attacked each other.”

“You struck first.”

“He came into my home and told me to clear off. Said you Men were going to pull it down around my ears. I didn’t like that.”

“I see.” The Man watched him a moment, and said: “You will remain here for the time being. You have harmed a citizen of Gondor, and that merits a long span of imprisonment. It is well that you did not kill him, or things would have gone worse for you. I know you do not know our customs. I will allow you to ask questions if you wish.”

Drizal though this all a little too high-and-mighty for his tastes, but he knew when to keep his head down. “When’s the real questioning start?”

“Never. We do not torture.”

Drizal quietly disbelieved him. “Is the Sneak a citizen of Gondor? Doesn’t much look like one.”

“He is not a citizen by birth. He made an agreement with us to abide by our laws in exchange for the rights of a citizen- among other matters which are not your concern. And he is not called the Sneak here, but he has asked that you not learn his name.”

“Was he supposed to be making friends with orcs?”

“That is no business of yours.”

"Are you going to put me to work?"

"No."

"Why not?" asked Drizal. "I'm a good worker. Strong."

The Man showed no emotion. "Are you saying you wish to work?"

"For you? Not much; it's a waste to leave me in a cell, that's all."

"Perhaps we will find work for you at a later time."

"Are you going to keep feeding me?"

"Yes. Unless you are released someday to fend for yourself."

"Released?" He raised one hairy eyebrow. "How likely are you to let me out?"

"That depends a great deal on how you conduct yourself," said the Man. "You must serve a term of imprisonment for harming our citizen, as I have said, and beyond that, it would be unsafe- for you as well as for anyone else- to simply let you go free in the city. If you are released, we will have to find a safe place to take you to. But we do not plan to keep you imprisoned for life merely because you are an orc."

“Right. Thanks, then. I don’t need to know anything else,” said Drizal. “I’ll find out.”

He was taken from the room and returned to his comfortable cell.

It seemed that, in his way, the Sneak had not been lying. He must have wanted to be on Drizal's good side or something like that. 

Drizal did not feel sorry for stabbing him. That wasn't an orc's way, and besides, the Sneak was repellant.

However, he decided, calmly, that it would not be prudent to stab him again or to stab anyone else for the time being- and that was a bit of a relief.