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Old 08-20-2007, 01:40 PM   #21
Olmer
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17. A "Ratcatcher", or, literally, "fighting with rats". Seems this name was given, when the "Ratghaur" was a puppy. "

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Old 10-26-2007, 12:26 AM   #22
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13.
The sky above the Misty Mountains was gloomy, covered with bluish-black globs of clouds with fiery veins of lightnings. Now and then the clouds were gathering into spinning balls, or were spreading into an even endless veil, and were shimmering with all shades of black, gray and dark blue. I can’t find words to express a sensation from this bewitching game of gloomy colors. The white peaks of the mountaintops were piercing this curling, pouring into itself billow and were getting lost in it.
It was visible as the tops were cutting through the hooked to them clouds, leaving a trace of white breakers splitting apart in the blue-black raging sea. The dark-gray sky is being exposed momentarily through the breaks of the clouds. Sometimes the lightning, on such distance is tiny as a spark of flint, was flashing between the clouds and the tops, and after a long waiting time the thunder would come. It was coming like a prankster-wizard, exactly at that same instant when you already ceased to wait for it.
Suddenly from nowhere there was coming a roar of a huge rock fall, and it seemed, as if the thunder-storm roars not on a hardly visible western edge of the earth, but directly here, above the head, in a cloudless transparent sky. When the thunder was leaving, an echo still was repeating its playful peals for a long time.
The Misty Mountains were majestic and menacing. Even a far rising sun, whose patches of light could be noticed sometimes on the bottom edge of the black clouds, did not make them looking more pleasing.
The mountains were breaking the sun beams, hiding them in a turmoil of curling clouds, blocking with shoulders of huge rocks, reflecting by mirrors of eternal ices, and continued to be as they are, majestic and hostile, wildly gorgeous with a gloomy protogenic beauty of the first day of creation. Probably, just like this, the world was magnificent and intimidating when Iluvatar (18) has embodied the song of Ainur (19) and has told them: "Look at it! "

The Mountains became visible exactly a day after the at-a-ghan abandoned the hill, leaving behind hundreds of human’s and horses’ corpses for ravens’ feast.
It was the first fight of many, which I have happened to see in my life. Since then many years has passed, many roads are remaining behind, I saw many fights, and I participated in many, but in my memory that day has never fade away. I remember the ripped wound on the chest of a proud rohirrim, bubbling with pink foam, and white as a chalk splinters of bones tangled in gray wolf’s hairs, which were sticking out of the orc’s chest shattered by a hoof. I remember how stained with blood fingers of the other horseman were trying to close a throat, slashed by Uragh’s blade, and how the оrc’s body with a shuddering scarlet plumage of arrow, sticking under the shouderblade was twitching on sharp stakes.
I remember the ruthless, killing all sanity footfall of the multitude of hoofs, and the mad shine in the eyes of horsemen. I remember a joyfully merciless singing of the arrows flying from the bowstrings, and a ferocious grin of the archers. I remember miserable, agonal neighing of horses, and triumphant, terrifying howls of wargs. I remember everything. Because then for the first time in my life I have seen so much of death. Such close and ruthless death.

But enough about it. To tell the truth, I have started to recollect this fight much later. At that time I, simply, was not up to that. The pleasure from the ride on a huge wolf was great, but, unfortunately, not infinite. The Wargs have left the at-a-ghan around noon, and in the end Ratghaur has licked Ghash all over again, but the bitch, cautiously looking back on the gray friend, just trusted her wet nose into a palm. And after that I, again, had to experience all charms of the on-foot march.
Ghash told that it’s one and a half day run to the Mountains. Correctly, the one and half day оf orc’s run. And to be even more accurate it is the one and a half day for a "wolf‘s" at-a-ghan. The decent hobbit should not run like this, if not run at all. I already said it. It is a pity that nobody has asked for my opinion what is necessary to do.
Uragh has simply put me on the ground and has silently brought a fist to my nose, probably considering it as a sufficient explanation and a reminder. He was right, I did not need any more explanation. His words that he will find the way to make me more speedy quickly came on my mind, so I was running as everybody else. Even better, considering that I had to run only when the orcs were switching to a stride, but when they were running I had to fly over the ground, because at that time Ghash and Uragh were firmly holding me at my shoulders, and it was nothing left to me as to run in the air.

Ghash drove the at-a-ghan almost without stops. We even drinking and eating on the move, and in this case what you dropped - you lose .
It is not in habits of hobbits to chew on the move. A decent hobbit should sit down at the table, tie up a napkin, solidly rest elbows on a tabletop and eat using a knife and a fork, it is absolutely unacceptable to grab pieces with hands. Because the process of eating does not tolerate hurriedness, as all taste of the dish is getting lost. You can never enjoy the taste of food if you will be grabbing the pieces of it, hastily chomping them on the move and swallowing half-chewed.
However, what am I talking about?
It is impossible to enjoy the taste of orc’s marching food. It would be good if you manage to distinguish on the run is it bitter or sweet-tasting, or, maybe, salty. I even I shall not mention about a necessity to protect your teeth. Even an orc can break his tooth on a piece of marching cracker. If it happens with you, than you can blame only yourself. From all оrc’s healers the tooth-yankers are the most ruthless.
So it is not surprising, that for a one and a half day I have happened to eat almost nothing. And I had barely managed to get a few gulps of water.
I dropped the canteen with water twice, and if at first time Uragh has kept silent, simply having accepted it from someone running behind, on second time he has angryly bellowed, called me a ‘hollow-handed“, and has given such clip, that I outrun him on a few steps ahead, and, again, bit my tongue.

At the end of day, during the "wolf’s time " Ghash has made a big, probably on three hours halt. I think, only because the wounded men began to collapse. Two of them have been carried through all the way, but by the end of the day other four have fallen down also. I too have fallen down straight on the wet ground, as soon as had sounded the order " Stop! ", and right away has fallen asleep. And almost immediately has been woken up, as I think you have guessed, with a kick to the side. By the brightened sky and beams of rising sun in the distance you could guess that probably three hours have passed by.
Just then I really saw the mountains. Their ominous look preoccupied me from thoughts that it would be less suffering if I would die under Ghashur‘s knife.
Uragh has distracted me from the mountains observation and a desire to fall asleep again not by the next kick, no. He has put before me a firmly filled bag and told: "Stuff yourself as much as you can get, it won’t be any halts up to the very mountains. Ghash is afraid, that the horse-eaters again will sit up on our backs ".
Having collapsed beside with me on a buurgha, - turned out that I was sitting not on the ground, but on the buurgha, - he untied the bag. In the bag were wrinkled pears. Dry and sweet.
We ate them together, by turns washing it down with water from the canteen.
Apparently Uragh did not know how much could get into the hungry hobbit, because, once again having put a hand in the bag and having found out that it is empty, he bewilderingly first looked on me, then on the bag and said: -" You are darn good at eating, the little rat! It was the stock for five days! For me only. Where all it goes into you? "
I believed, that this question does not demand the answer and therefore kept silent. To tell the truth, anyway the mouth has been busy.

There is no need to describe of the afternoon way up to the Mountains. The walking transitions differ a little from each other and, in effect, they are as similar, as blades that came out from under oghr’s hammers. I shall tell. only that Ghash has had a reason to afraid of another meeting with the rohirrim. A new eored has appeared at the western side, and it was visible that the horsemen were following the trail left by the at-a-ghan, but at this time we already laid in thick bushes of a mountain slope.
It was a halt before a throw upwards. I was so tired that don’t even have any more strength to fall asleep. The orcs, laying beside, had gray from weariness and dust faces, and I have thought you couldn’t so overstrain yourself even under the treat of death. In fact to die sometimes could be easier, than day by day to force yourself to do a heavy and necessary labor.
After the halt the at-a-ghan was climbing uphill for all the rest of the day. The stick adhered to a marching bag, which I considered as a pole for a tent, has appeared to be used also as a mountain staff. At that time it was astounding me to find out that Uruuk-hai’s things have a lot of different, sometimes absolutely incompatible applicabilities. It was not any togha (this’ how the stick was called) for me, and I had to climb without it, constantly falling on all four and grappling at slope‘s stones. Then the rain has begun to drizzle, the slope became slippery, a few times I was loosing footing and falling, and once have fallen so badly, that I would reach the foot of mountain, if was not the chain tieing me with Uragh .

Ghash lead us to a cave. As it’s usual at orcs, the entrance was hidden so, that any outsider will not find it. Instead of an entrance there was a huge, seemingly unyielding boulder, covered with gray lichen. Actually, the boulder would rock on the base from a palm’s pressing, opening a narrow and long passage. The Orcs began to crawl into this hole one by one, pushing theirs marching bags before themselves. For me the entry was reasonably wide, but Uragh, had to pull himself in, scraping his skin on the walls.
When I have got out of the hole into a rather narrow and low passage, the torches ahead were already burning. Uragh, having got out after me, has tried to straighten up in a full height, but knocked his head on ceiling and had intricately sworn. Then for quite long we went on through a winding passage, from time to time turning off into dark branches, seemingly the dead ends, at the ending of which invariable there were doors hidden from an outsider’s eyes. All this very much reminded the vaults of Barrow-Downs, only the walls were not covered with mould, but it was more of dampness. The walls of the pass have got widened, the ceiling has risen, forming, not so wide, but still a space.
- " Halt! -Ghash has bellowed ahead. - Uurtak - behind, Gardzogh - ahead, change will be after an hour, the others can sleep ".
All have dropped down on a stone floor, and only the two have picked up torches and run out in different directions.
They have run not so far, because a light of torches was visible, but in this vague light a little was possible to make out. Even in a half step away from laying orcs you can’t distinguish their bodies from the heaps of stones.

My guard and I were laying side-to-side, leaning on the damp stones of the wall. Uragh was restlessly shifting and noisily puffing.
- " Drives, drives, will drive us out soon, - he hissed. - Ghash! The little rat will die if we will run like this! "
- " Will die - you will answer with your head, - came from darkness. - Or you have forgotten? If he can’t run, you will carry on hands. We need to get out from here fast while the Bearded have not been brought here".
- " The Dwarves, - I thought. - They afraid of dwarves ".
And shifted into a more comfortable position.
- "Do not fidget, - has warned Uragh, - or you will catch it. I was ordered to drag and protect you, but nobody forbade the beating .. Just to deliver alive to the place "
And again hissed to himself: " The Bearded, damn shaggy creeps… but it is necessary to have a rest too, we will die if we will be running without food and water ".
I moved, and he pulled the chain.
- Why are you twitching?
- I want to ask, - I have answered.
- Whoa! - he has got amazed, - you are, the rat, also able to talk, I thought you are mute. Ghash, the midget wants to talk.
- Is he beginning to get bored at you? - a tired laughter came from darkness. - Well entertain him, talk about something. Only in whispers, for your growl is audible even in Gundabad.
- Speak, - Uragh has permitted me. - Only quietly, if you will try to shout - I’ll tear your tongue out.
-Are you afraid of them? - honestly, I did count on an answer.
-Whom?
- The Dwarves.
- Sh-sh-sh.. - has scowled Uragh. - Do not say this, call them the Bearded.
-Well, I am sorry, I did not know, that... not allowed to call the Bearded ... the way I called them.
- Not allowed, - he has confirmed. - Our guy would be already got beaten for this word. It wouldn’t hurt to hit you once. But I am kind. But if you will say that one more time - you will get it for sure!
- Why they cannot be called by their name? - it was absolutely unessential for me, but I wished to find out, whether it is possible to meet the dwarves here. Probably, someone from them remembers the campaign of Bilbo Baggins and the thirteen dwarves.
- Why, why, you might call them up here, this is why!
-And can they be here? - I was holding my breath, very much hoping for Uragh to answer "Yes".
- And who knows them... These are our underpasses, not of the bearded‘s, the locks here are ours, signs. Only who knows them, they could accidentally find an entrance. Searched for theirs damned gold and have found.
- And we can meet them?
Uragh has struck me so, that in my eyes became dark, though it seemed before that in here couldn’t be darker. The orc’s mouth pushed close to my face, and a stink from a throat has hit into my nose.
-Do you want to call them on our heads? Shut up, or I will sew up your lips with a rope. If anything, I myself will strangle you. Then let Ghash to cut off my head, if we will be alive.
- Sorry, I did not know. It that dangerous?
- Dangerous? You, little rat, have not learned what a danger is for all life is living in your hole . In Shelob’s nets is not as dangerous, as here now. Understood?
.- No. But here it is a lot of you. You are strong.
- Against the bearded can’t be too much. If we will meet just ten of them, half of ours guys will be mown down, as they will go on wielding theirs mattocks.
- And why you are at the war with them?
- Is not we - with them... It ‘s everybody at war with us. Whenever we will settle, everywhere somebody lives. Nobody wants to share the place with us, even simply to live nearby. Everybody kills us. Only under the ground is possible to get shelter. But under the ground are these. The bearded murderers! To us they are eternal enemies! Understood?! Eternal! We will get on with people, the pointy-eared eventually will leave, but with the bearded it won’t turn out this way. Or we will kill them, or they us. Do you know, what they shout when attacking?!
- Yes. I have read. Axes of Dwar... - I have had a time to slam a mouth and corrected myself. - Кhazad Barukh.
- Not axes, ratty, not axes, - Uragh agitatedly wagging his head in two inches from my face. - Not axes! Mattocks! And it sounds not like this at all. Not like this... You are learned, read books, but this should be heard with ears...
And suddenly he deeply inhaled, opened widely the mouth, and a heart-rending cry has begun to bounce of the stone walls : "Кhaza-a-a-adBаааru-ukh!!! "
The whole aт-a-ghan, as one person, at once hurled up from the floor, and I was amazed how fast the orcs turned out to be, how much strength they still haves after that mad, almost two day’s run .

Just a moment ago a heap of rags were laying on the stones, and now the passage already got blocked by a wall of shields. Curved blades and short swords were brought above my head and the head of my guard, and near us Ghash has already turned up.
A footfall reverberated in the passage, everyone became tense, but there was only one orc-watcher with a torch. The footfall thudding came from another side: the second guard has come running. The light of guard’s torches has covered a rather narrow hall. Certainly it was not any dwarves around, and everyone slowly eased up.
Everyone except for Ghash.
-Who shouted? Who?! - Ghash spattered saliva almost into my face; I had never saw him like this. - Speak, midget, who has yelled in here?
I turned the head toward Uragh.
- What for? - Ghash already was asking the orc, his voice was unusually quiet and almost tender, and a revolting Ghashur‘s smile has unexpectedly glimpsed passing through the face.
- Ghash, - has whined Uragh. - You have told me to entertain him! We were talking about the bearded, and, well, I have shouted, as they shout. I did not mean anything at all... Just wanted to show him... Ghash...
- So, you have shown… have entertained the small guy... And do you know that for such jokes there could be gaps in your teeth?
Ghash suddenly and sharply, without any swing, kicked sitting Uragh right into a face, and he has spitted out blood.
- I am denying you of the name. You even won’t be called an "uragh", the one who will want to address to you, will call you simply a "gha". I deprive you of the sword; you are not worthy of carrying it. Right now at us any hands are accounted for, therefore you will hand down the sword when we will reach the place, but from this minute you are deprived of the right to a duel.
He kicked the stooping and shivering Uragh one more time and walked away.
The Orcs, one after another, began and come to the guilty, and each was kicking him. It was neither a rage, nor a hysteric in there. Simply a silent give the business execution. My guard was not even shielding himself at all, only was spitting the teeth, if the impact had happened on them. Sometimes the kicker has got in a solar plexus or in a groin - Uragh was bending, and then the next torturer patiently waited for the victim to unbend. There was something awful in this silent efficiency. It would be easier to me to see all this if the orcs would yell, raged, but they were just silently coming one by one, and everyone was stricking the blow. And I felt a pity for Uragh. A kick, a snivel, a kick, a snivel, a kick, a snivel...

I have not heard a shout right away. First there was a pain in the ears, as if a rusty drill has got bore into a skull, and then a high, hardly heard sound cut through: "Kh-a-a-za-a-d! " - nothing in this shout has resembled of a heart-rending cry of the orc, nothing. And right away, without any moment of a break, without any inhalation the ringing note was replaced by another, the same hardly audible, but low, like a sound of rolling on a huge drum stone: " Ba-r-r-r-r-ru-u-kh! "
The sound has growled above heads, bending necks, got reflected from stone walls, has jumped into ceased to breathe chest and has seized the heart with icy fingers of fear. The heart has stopped for some instants, but then got loose, bouncing inside the breast cage, and, eventually, fluttered somewhere at the throat.
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Old 11-03-2007, 02:21 PM   #23
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18
Iluvatar is - "The Creator of all reality ", whether on Sindarin, whether on Quenya, but in general on any of elve’s languages.
19.
Ainur - the helpers of the Creator, also called Valar. According to elve’s legends, they were singing a song for the Creator, and then he embodied it into reality. So the world has been created.
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Old 12-19-2007, 11:20 PM   #24
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14.
In a flash all rather narrow space between the stone walls was filled with a shrill clang and grate of clashing blades. I do not know, how many of the attackers have been here. During those mad moments it seemed to me that they are everywhere.
My guard has slouched on a damp stone‘s floor violently hacking and spitting. Around, growling and howling from fear and pains, the orcs were fighting with the desperation of doomed. In a light of the thrown on the ground torches black gawky shadows were bouncing off the walls and faces, but I was sitting, being petrified from an unexpectedness and fear, leaning to shuddering from the cough Uragh.
The Death was coming towards me, low and wide, almost equal in both: in height and at width. The darkness gazed in the eyes fissure of his helmet. A brush of the braided beard was swinging on an iron chest, casting a silver light, and a crimson hue of wavering torchlight flowed like blood on the polished metal of armor.
The death was coming, confidently clearing the road for itself with heavy swings of the beaked mattock. It was coming, stepping over the corpses. Orcs were blocking its way, shielding us with theirs shields and bodies, shoving it with togha and trying to strike with the swords.
But is it possible to stop the Death? It went slowly and inevitably, with each step leaving behind bodies, which were alive just an instant ago. The last on its way orc has sprayed splinters of the skull, part of them and whitish clots of his brain has got on me, and the Death has made one more, the last, step. Slowly, intolerable slowly, the mattock has soared up above my head and also slowly and certainly began to fall, aiming with the blood stained beak right in the crown of the head.

Hobbits are peaceful people. We like neither: to be at war, nor to fight. "A bad peace is better than a good war", - so they say at us. But there are moments when a courage wakes up in the heart of the most clumsiest, placid and cowardly hobbit, when the reason for peace give in to a white fury of the soldier.
We like neither to be at war, nor to fight, but just like in old days of ancient fights, as soon as the hobbit learns to walk, he is being taught to dance a springle-ring. We are teaching both, boys and girls, teaching, not looking at bruises and bumps, on footsore to the blood legs, not being skimpy on punches and flogging for lazy and inept. Teaching to dance alone, in pairs, and in a round dance, with a beechnut twig and with an oak club, or simply with empty hands. Teaching, remembering, that not always the springle-ring was a merry, lively dance, and nowadays not always remains as only the dancing.

All has happened as in the springle-ring, by itself. The body went into a habitual, memorized by years of practice roll. The chain on the neck, fortunately, did not get in the way, and the mattock, passing by in inch from my hair, has cut sparks and chips from the stone.
One of soles has connected with a rough stone floor, and the second already flew up in a wide breadth of the"sweep". It bore down into the foe's anklebone covered by a rough leather boot, and I had heard the crunch even in a surrounding us muffling any sounds clang. My adversary was still falling, when I have sprang up above him. Sprang up, as my father and grandfather have taught me, as if in a daring high-spirited jig in pair with Теddy, and a heavy handle of the curved blade goodness knows from where came in my hand.
I hacked with the blade like I used to slash with the beechnut twig, putting in this blow all weight of my landing, all animal fury that bubbled in me and an unfamiliar until now ecstasy that was burning in the chest. Seldom I would manage "to spot" the partner in our usual dancing, but this opponent was enclosed in the iron from top to bottom, and did not possess an evasiveness of the hobbit. A blued steel cut into a polished, the blade screeched , scattering burning crimson sparks, and has got torn out of my hands.
A long and narrow crack has appeared on the mirror of other's armor. Something black, warm, sticky and salty has splashed right into my face, pouring over my eyes. For a few moments I have ceased to see, and when I again unglued my eyelashes, the enemy, letting go of the mattock, was convulsing in agonal spasms on a wet and slippery from the blood stone. And I have understood, that I just have killed the dwarf, and my ecstasy is an ecstasy of the murder. I fell on the floor, hitting the head, and barely remembered what was going on after that.

I remember, that in the darkness of caves someone tried to drag me by the hand, but I could not go, and I have been carried on hands. I remember of laying curled up on a cold, draining the rests of heat from the body, stone and someone howlingly wailed over me, or loudly yelled out the terrible damnations without any holding back, or quietly whimpered. And in a total darkness the booming echoes mournfully howled, swore and sobbed in resounding voices.
I remember, that someone's cautious, ineptly-gentle hands put into my mouth bits of something tough, but edible and were giving me water, or some burning drink. I was obediently chewing and drinking, not distinguishing the taste, and again and again I was drawn through the dark, without a single gleam of light passes. Every now and then the stone walls would ran up wide apart (and it was possible to guess that they are still around only by the ringing with distant echoes sound of shoehorned boots’ footsteps ), or would get compressed so close, that the heart was getting pressed by an unclear heavy feeling of a rock’s thickness above the head.

But all THESE sensations and feelings were only vaguely sliding over the surface of my dark as caves mind. Again and again in twilight of my memory there were an expanded, surprised eyes behind a platband of the solid dwarf’s helmet. In an unblinking stare of these eyes was the same puzzled question, as it was the face expression "What for? "on the chopped off head of the unfortunate orc at the well of the Folds village.
Palms were burning from a sensation of the rough and warm hilt of orc’s sword, and the face was itching under a sticky crust of stranger's blood. I was having an urge to tear, to scrape my skin off, but for one moment, for only one heartbeat to get rid of this creeping in its reality itch.
But my hands did not obey me. The memory, obliging as an executioner, pictured all new and new, overlooked earlier, details, and with the same obstinate determination of the executioner over and over again was asking the distraught mind of one and the same question: "Me - the killer?”

I do not know for how long it has been going on, should be for some days. I came back to my consciousness from the sun shining into my pupils.
We were in the wood. Uragh and I. Alone. Uragh sat next to me, huddling, clasping with long hands his knees in a shaggy goat’s pelt. His eyes were dry and red, and the motionless dead gaze has been looking past me into somewhere in the depth of the ground, or, maybe on the contrary, he was looking deep into himself.
I tried to sit down, but couldn’t do it: the body obeyed me badly. Uragh, probably, has heard the rustle. Has turned on me an indifferent, dead stare, has hesitated, and then with difficulty, leaning on the ground with hands, has risen up and has went with an uncertain, shaky gait, as if was drunk. What else had left to me to do? I started to crawl after him. We have been fastened to the same chain.
It proceeded all day long: he was walking unsteady ahead, I crept behind. When I was flopping on my back to lie down and to give a rest for my weakened hands, he was not pulling the chain, but would sit down on the grass, patiently waiting. I would rest, coming to the senses, and we again would go on walking-creeping in this still, silent wood.
So monotonous was our way , that I even have not noticed how the sun has touched the edge of earth, and dark blue freakish shadows were condensed under crowns of trees. Only then I have felt, that I cannot creep any more, and wanted to call Uragh, but only a hissing sound came out from a throat. Uragh has looked back and at once sat again on the grass, and I fell into a merciful, without any memories, slumber.

Upon waking up I found myself laying on the laps and in hands of Uragh. He was quietly lulling me, as if a mother soothing a child. Having seen that I have opened the eyes, he has cautiously rose up my head and has brought a hand to my face. From the deep, cupped, huge palm came out a tasty sour smell of a rye bread. It was a mash of soaked crackers and crushed berries. Nothing tastier than that I ate neither before, nor after! I have picked everything from the palm, up to a last crumb, and only then have understood that I left nothing for Uragh. The look which I gave him was, probably, very guilty, but he did not pay any attention to it, simply splashed on the palm a water from canteen and brought to my face. Like a cub I was lapping up the water from his hands, and feeling that the strength comes back to me. I even have tried to get up on my legs, but became lightheaded, the knees were buckling, and I had to start on the further way on all four.

Strange was this forest. Strange and terrifying. Strange because you can’t hear any birds in it: neither of titmouse’s chirping, nor of cuckoo’s sound, or a cry of an oriole, or knocks of a woodpecker, not even croaks of crow. Nothing was breaking its virgin silence, except for whispers of a light breeze and consonant with the leaves rustle of grass. It was no any animals in this wood either. Squirrels were not mocking on the branches, hares were not dashing on the glades, wild boars were not grunting in distant bushes. On our way we even did not come across any animal‘s tracks leading to a watering place. Grass, bushes, trees…
Our ridiculous duo was the only non-vegetative beings in this wood.
Even mosquitoes were absent in this wood, what to do there where is no one to drink the blood from.
The sun stood high, and the sky was clear, cloudless, but in the wood - deciduous, not evergreen, - was gloomy.
Dense insolent, absolutely independent and totally indifferent to the movement of the sun shadows stretched out under the crowns of the trees. Sometimes I was catching myself on a thought that it seems to me, as if some of them are running after us from a tree to a tree.
Ancient trunks, covered with gray-haired lichen and green moss were evoking the memories about colorful shags of mold in the vaults of the Barrow Downs. Here were no torches, and the trees did not change an expression on the "faces", but, instead, it was a sensation that the lichen manes are hiding stares of spiteful and watchful eyes.

For a long time it seemed to me that Uragh goes without any aim and sense, at random, but then I have understood, that we go along a complex, winding, imperceptible to an eye footpath, avoiding the large trees. We were squelching on marsh’s bogs, breaking through very tall, above Uragh’s head, sedge on the margins of streams, crossing whole glades of strange plants with sticky flowers, which were catching accidental insects, but we were not coming near the trees, and were trying to bypass the bushes.
My hands have been cut to blood by sedge, the grey sackcloth, a substitution for clothes, has got thoroughly wet and stank of algae, the face, bedaubed by burning sticky juice of carnivorous plants, has been burning, and gradually became covered with blisters. I condemned these woods, gloomy as the Old Forest.

We were moving along the edge of a small bog when Uragh suddenly sat down right into a liquid mud and has told: " Further you will go alone ".
A Fear. The first feeling, which I have got at the sound of his voice, was the fear. And the second feeling too.
I have got used to Uragh during this strange journey through the woods. I have started to feel towards him something like friendship, even if it seem too strange to you. And how could we part if we have been fastened to the one chain?
- " I will leave to you the kughri, - he has pointed on his curved blade, - and all the rest, it will be useful to you later, but do not ever think to use anything here. You cannot make fire, or to cut the trees in the wandering woods".
The vague guess flicked in my head, whirled in this and that way, and has turned into a confidence.
- Uragh, are we in Fangorn?! - I have been stunned. I read in the Red Book that orcs cannot come into Fangorn!
- Do not call me like this, I am deprived of the name, and you should name me simply a "gha". Yes. We are in Fangorn. Outside it, - he made a circle with hands, - the Bearded and the Horse-eaters are catching the rest of us. I have decided, that here will be more safe, it is possible to survive here, if know how, and the Bearded and the Horse-eaters are not coming deep into the woods. Afraid. But they are happen on the edge of the wood.
-And why you don’t want me to address you by the name? - even now I still think it’s strange, that the question really troubled me. I did not know then, what IS the name for Ur-uuk-hai, and what means to lose it, but guessed that behind the severe custom, executed in a cave, was concealed something sad and important.
- I don’t have name any more, call me "gha", - answered Uragh, carefully trying to be indifferent.
- Is it a new name? - now I regret, that I tortured him with these questions. I was causing him a pain.
- No, this is not the name. It means a subject, a thing. They call so everyone who has not deserved the name. Or has lost it, as I am.
- They what, have turned you into a thing?! But this is cruel! - and even now I think that it is cruel. But now I also know, often it happens that too difficult to distinguish what is more cruel : justness or its absence.
- It is right. The one, who has no brains to think, cannot carry the name. Keep silent. I have to prepare and explain to you what you will do further.
- Why you are releasing me?
- Ghash has ordered to release you if we will get separated from others. Earlier, when we were being chained. I was watching whether you could move on your own. You can, I am letting you go.
- And how you will do it? We have nothing to unfasten a chain, - I, really, did not understand that, and what had happened then would never entered my head.
- Keep silent! You are interrupting me all time and do not allow me to speak! If you want to leave the woods, keep on the midday sun, will come out into grassland. And further on - as you wish, the Horse-eaters are snooping around there all the time, and you do not have the reason to be afraid of them. But keep in mind, they can strike you with a spear first, and then will be figuring out who you are, if they will want to. If you want to reach the marge alive, and not to get into a maw of any wandering stump, go as we went before: do not come near anything that is stronger than grass! Do not ever think of grabbing nuts or berries from bushes! You can eat everything that grows on the grass. You can dig out roots of water lilies, there are edible grasses if you know which one.
You can eat ants and their larva, earthworms, here is a lot of them. Sometimes frogs have happens in bogs , and in streams you can come across fish. Any water here is good to drink, even in the marsh. Do you understand?
- Understand, - this orc’s speech, long, hurried and, the main thing, proper, without usual roughness, has confused me. I almost retched from the thought that I’ll have to eat ants, earthworms and frogs.

Also I was burning with a question of how Uragh is going to break down the chain.
He did not touch the chain. First he gave me the belt with a scabbard for the sword, bags and a dagger. Then the canteen with water. Then, contorting with pain, has pulled steel rings off the big fingers, and has put them in the one of belt‘s bags. After that he cut with the blade the left side of the fur sleeveless jacket, took off the turned out cape with a hole for the head and has put it on me.
He had a beautiful body...Our Waymeet’s smith was muscular too, but he was...say, more beefy than Uragh. Not only the ropes of muscles were clearly visible under the dark from dirt skin of the orc, but, also, the separate cords of the muscular fibers, especially well noticeable on round powerful shoulders. The big, ugly, cross-eyed head with uneven teeth, sticking out behind the never clothing crack of narrow lips, was an alien growth on this body.
- "When you will go, leave my hand to me ", -Uragh has told a puzzling phrase, has lifted up the blade and...
A curved edge cut into the dark skin of shoulder, slicing twisted around the joint muscles and sinews. The black metal greedily gnawed an alive flesh, from the wound came out a white end of the joint, and Uragh has shrilly hissed through clenched teeth. Blood was shooting upwards in a forceful, high jet, and its droplets were settling on my hair and face.

It is a lie when they say that оrc’s blood is black. It’s look black in an unsteady light of torches, in the darkness of caves under mountains, or when it is getting baked on stones and grass under the bright, burning sun. Actually, the orc’s blood is RED. As in all of us.
The hand, tinkling with chain, fell down in a mushy, brown sludge. Uragh grabbed a sword at the blade and stretched out to me.He did not want to drop it in marsh muck.
The blood did not throb in jets any more, but simply flew in waves down on Uragh’s side, flooding all space between us in a red spreading puddle.
The hand was shaking with a great quiver, and the hilt of the blade was waggling before my face, but on its overlay’s leather I saw clearly the smallest roughness on the scales of an unknown to me animal. The amber eyes under slanting eyelids were looking at me, and the life was flowing away from these eyes.
And then I stretched out the hand and took the kughri - the orc’s sword from the hand of orc.
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Old 04-07-2008, 12:52 PM   #25
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15.
I know, many of those who will read these lines, will condemn me, being strongly disapproving because I have cried. Bawled without any abstains, choking and swallowing the hot salty tears. Cried, as a man should not cry. Especially for the enemy. The orc. But I cried. And I am not ashamed of these tears.
It is not customary among Uruuk-hai to cry for the dead, for "only alive need a compassion", but at that time I knew neither rules, nor customs, or adopted by orcs ceremonies. I simply cried, as we are crying over passed away friends or relatives in our Hobbiton. Because a crying for dead is also a display of compassion to alive.

Uragh has not been a friend to me. I even did not like him at all. He was awakening me with kicks, he rudely laughed, throwing in racy jokes when he drove me "to do a businesses". He has been dragging me on a rope or on a chain, as if a caught animal, ruthlessly forced me to run under a scorching sun, not paying any attention on my buttered to blood legs.
He did to me many other unpleasant and insulting things.
But he shared his bread with me, and killed himself to give me a freedom.
Who would ask him of how he has carried out the order here, in the middle of an ancient, covered with gray moss thicket? Who, at all, would learn has he executed it or not? But he decided, that my life and freedom is more valuable than his, even much worthy that his own life for himself. This is why I had been crying.

But I began to cry not right away. First, for a long time I was simply sitting in a brownish-red muck and looking at the huge body spread in a muddy swill. Barely tolerable up to that time gloomy and grim wood around became more insufferable and more sinister. It seemed that the trees have moved more closely to the fenny edge of the marsh.
The sun became cheerless, shyly hiding behind dense dark-leafed crowns, leaving alone rather impudent wavering shadows. And the shadows, being delighted with an unexpected freedom, have slowly pulled theirs thin some -translucent, some -dense lilac-black greedy trembling paws to the edge of the bog.

Uragh has lain stretching out in a full extend of his considerable size, resting his only hand on the chest, and for the first time from the moment I saw him his face was calm and peaceful. The death has smoothed wrinkles and folds on the cheeks and the forehead, and the face of huge orc now was looking like the face of the runabout boy fallen asleep from the weariness. Even the flattened, as if broken, nose, uneven teeth and the short, cleft "hare lip” did not shatter this impression.
Just then, for the first time in my life, I have thought of how I have to correlate to Orcs.
Before I considered them as enemies, the evil without any clauses. Though, those orcs, that were around me, resembled a little of the wicked creatures described in the Red Book, but all the same I was involuntarily looking for the very worst in them, which would justify my mental impression imprinted since a childhood.
I was searching for it and, surely, was founding. If you want to see only bad in those who are around you, you will see it for certain.
But the death of Uragh has broken something in me, in the very depth of me. His deed contradicted to all my ideas about orc’s nature: before I thought that in no way this cross-eyed monster could feel a sense of duty or a nobleness. I was more ready for my own death from his hand, than to what he has done.
And now his hand, shackled to the opposite end of my chain, was lying in the marsh apart from the body.
This meant, that my freedom was paid by his death. The death that he has chosen by himself. After that I couldn’t just walk away, leaving his body to rot on the edge of the bog, and I decided to bury him.

But it turned out to be easier to decide, than to do.
Have you ever tried to dig a hole in a bog? To dig in a soft mud is not that difficult, even if you are using a kughri and a dagger instead of a shovel, but the edges are dissolving right in front your eyes, and the dug out hole is getting filled up by the water.
I have made some attempts to find more dry places, but none of them was good enough. Only my strength was diminishing with each attempt: I was still very weak.
Then I have decided to dig a grave on the firm ground, but I abandoned this idea after having another look at the trees coming close to the very edge of the bog.
Fangorn or not Fangorn, nevertheless I extremely disliked this wood. Especially when recollecting Treebeard’s words that there are places in his wood where he himself is afraid to come by.
It looked like I am just in the one of such places. The look of surrounding vegetation was too spiteful and, I would say, carnivorous. Probably, all my fears were only a creation of my worn-out by the events of last days mind, but they were not becoming less terrible because of it.

And then I had begun to cry. That else was left to do, when you can’t even bury the one who died? Such feeling of despair and hopelessness has gushed over me, that I howled, as the grieving wolf on the winter moon.
Only no moon was on the sky, and an indifferent sun was interested in neither the dead orc, nor my inconsolable cry. It was carelessly glancing on me through a gray-haired shaggy mane of ancient crones, and burned in all force, so a sweat with salt and dirt from the forehead was continually filling my eyes.
Sometimes the sun was hiding for a short time behind a drifting past cloud, and then at once the forest was becoming gloomy as in the catacombs of the Barrow-Downs. But it was not draining my tears, and come to think of it, what is the crying of a small, confused hobbit in the middle of a boundless ancient thicket to the sun? My crying had no value for it.

But as for me, probably, the crying was what I needed. The confusion has left together with tears, and the despair has flowed out into the bog.
After having cried, I have thought that it’s not necessarily to dig the grave. There is no animals in this forest, and no one will dig out the grave to eat the meat, which means it’s no need for the pit, it is will be sufficient simply to cover the body. And this is already much easier task.

Grandfather Sam used to say, if you have to do something very difficult, almost impossible, you need to forget about it, to move its difficulty and impossibility on the far edge of the memory, remembering only a direction to what you wish to achieve, and to make a small step. And then one more, and one more…
you are getting short on your strength, you need to make a halt for a while, and then go further. And, in the end, it will appear that there was left a one small step to what once was the impossible.
It is a few in the world who were able to do the impossible, but anyone will find enough strengths and patience to make a one small step. You simply have to be able to walk and not be afraid to rise up after each failure, just as small feeble children are getting up after each fall.

First of all, I needed to return to Uragh his hand. Up till now it was dragging after me on a chain, because I was afraid to touch it. But now the fear has gone, and instead of it there was an abstracted confidence that I will manage to overcome all of this.
Came to think of it, how the cut off hand could frighten me? By threatening me with a crooked, bedaubed in dirt and blood finger? So what? What is it to me, who has been hung on a torture stake, who has seen the eored’s attack, and who with own hands has killed the armored dwarf, who was about to kill me. In comparison by what I went through for the last ten days, the touch of dead hand simply meant nothing.
A gentle homebody, a hobbit, the lover of clever books and good beer, could be frightened by such thing, but the one who has accepted a sword from the dying orc, can’t let to be controlled by a childish fear, and, above all, to let his fears to get in the way of carrying out what must be done.

I have pulled Uragh’s hand more close, stepped on the chain, steadily grabbed the wide cold wrist and have pulled with all my forces.
I would say, with too much force. The hand was stuck in the chain not too tightly. The chain tinkled, slid of the stuck out bone, and I flopped backwards in a marsh swill, being choked with it in an involuntary cry.
It is not the most pleasant feeling to get drown in a swamp, even in a rather shallow place. All has happened so quickly; the mouth got filled with sticky and smelly marsh dirt so suddenly, that from unexpectedness and fear I almost have inhaled all of it. And I would certainly done it, if I would panic, and you wouldn’t read now these memoirs.

The dead hand of Uragh has rescued me. It was... As if he held me, and not as I was holding it. This is how it was!
For some reason the sense of solidity and reliability of the wrist of this hand has kept me from the panic and a frenzied thrashing in the mud.
With my brains I understood that the hand is cut off and there is no body on its other end, but somewhere in depth of my mind it seemed, that it is Uragh himself has stretched to me his powerful, sinewy paw. I have come up and, leaning on the hand as on a pole, crept out of the waterhole in which I fell. Then for a long time I was coughing up and thoroughly cleaning eyes and ears.
Good thing I had nothing on me except for my sackcloth robe. All equipments and the weapon have been heaped on a large hummock, so I have drowned nothing.

I did not succeed in attaching Uragh’s hand back to his shoulder, and I have simply put it on his chest, holding it down with another hand, and then I have begun to cut grass and reed.
I should tell, that cane’s weaving has never been of my strong side. Certainly, I am able to do everything what a decent hobbit should be able to do. Would I just try to shirk when I was taught! A conversation of adult hobbits with hobbits-children, which do not wish to study something, is short and severe: flogging birch rods are being soaked in every hobbit’s smial.
But to some training you can put all your efforts, or to remain indifferent. I studied eagerly the Springle-Ring from both grandfathers, and the father, and from many others… But the making of baskets and mats has never hold any attraction to me, and above all, was not of my every day’s hobby.
In addition, we, Тooks, are rather well-to-do, and in our big household is always somebody, besides me, who can do it.

So I spent the rest of the day on weaving of pair cane’s mats.
In any wood darkens quickly, but in this one is dark even in a bright, sunny day, and an impenetrable darkness is coming up even before the sunset, when the sun just neared the unseen edge of the earth.
I have ceased to distinguish my own fingers, because it was hardly any light coming from the sky on which even stars have not appeared yet. The body reminded of itself with a tidal wave of weariness and eyes were closing by themselves. So I have pulled the cane’s mat under myself, got covered with the unfinished second one and fell asleep, huddling close to a shaggy pant of Uragh.
If you do not believe that it is possible to sleep peacefully almost hugging with the dead body - it is your business. As about me, like a baby, I have slept without dreams, hallucinations and worries till the dawn. Mosquitoes, if they had been around, did not bother me.

I woke up hungry and energetic when the sun stood already high. A wet root of a water lily is not the best meal in the world, but there was nothing to choose from, and I have ordered to my stomach not to be fussy.
" Eating and sleeping is a pig‘s business". Gash was right when has said it. Let mollycoddles enjoy a tasty meal sitting in cozy holes. For him, who stays on the path of the Adventure, it is enough that the food simply subdues a hunger. I have already begun to understand that selectiveness is being born from satiety.
I had to drink water from the nearest water hole. The water smelled of ooze, but was cold and a thirst -satisfying. To me it was not needed more than that. Having finished with breakfast and having splashed the face and hair in the same water-hole, I, again, turned back to the funeral of Uragh.

Whether fingers, at last, have recollected, how it is should be done, whether the night of a quiet rest has helped me, but I finished weaving the mat marvelously fast. Much more time has been spent on moving the weighty body of orc. Somehow, with a great difficulty, but I have done it too.
The rest was quite easy. I have covered Uragh with the second mat, weaved edges together, and the body has appeared in a bag made from a cane’s mats.
To cover the bag with dense mud was a business of a quarter of hour.
The day was hot, the sun was scorching mercilessly, and pretty soon this mud’s coating should turn into an entire rock-hard crust.
I also have thought of what I should put on this "tomb", but it was not anything suitable at hand, besides I did not know, how orcs mark burial places of their soldiers. So the last shelter of Uragh stood "as is", without any signs.

It turned out that Uragh’s belt was fitting me almost right. It is in height he was twice above me, but not much surpassed me in a thickness of stomach, though for the last days my tummy has got quite downsized. I had to make just a couple of holes in the belt.
It was much worse with other inheritance. And the worst of all was the matter with weapons. It has been made for a fighter much more larger than me. A dagger, which Uragh carried on a hip, I had adjusted with some difficulty to the belt. But where to put the two-foot kughri?
This blade by its size was suited me as a two-hands sword and, in addition, it turned out to be quite heavy, much heavier than a sword from the Barrow-Downs. Besides the significant part of its weight seems was moved forward, to the edge, so it looked as if not a sword in the hands, but a heavy woodcutting axe.
It was absolutely impossible to fit the kughri to the belt, but I did not have any desire to part with the deathbed gift of Uragh. Eventually, I have decided to carry it on a shoulder, as woodcutters are carrying theirs long axes.

A buurgha became another problem. I already told that it is heavy enough even when is dry. You can imagine how much weighed the thoroughly soaked in a bog buurgha, made for Uragh‘s size. With big difficulties I have hardly raised this covered with dirt bale.
At the beginning there was an idea to throw it out, but after giving some thoughts, I have decided, that it’s not known, where I will turn up and where next time I will have to spend the night. You can make a tent from buurgha, I already saw how, or you can sleep on the ground by simply having turned in it. In my position it was unwise to throw out what can be benefiting in some way. So, I had to unwrap the bale, putting a panel on already dried up coffin of Uragh, squeeze the water out it and let it dry out.
All of this consumed a lot of time and efforts, but it was paid off: a rolled up anew buurgha turned out to be twice lighter. Now I managed to adjust it to the back.
His bag Uragh has lost, probably, in the caves, thus relieving me from this worry, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to leave for much longer.
I have decided to look into containments of belt -bags and pouches of shoulder belts when I will find a drier place.

Having wound the free end of chain around the body, I hoisted the scabbard with kughri on my shoulder and, after glancing for the last time on the tomb of Uragh, have got under the way.
The sun stood at midday, and it was not difficult for me to decide on where to go. The difficulty awaited me in other matter. I have never done much walking in a forest. Especially, in such forest.
It would be easier, if it would be some track on which you could stay on. But there were no any tracks, and the sun, an unreliable assistant, moves on the sky, and if you follow the sun all the time - you will walk in circles.
I understood it, but did not know how to prevent it. So I got lost quite soon and for a long time. Several times I was coming back to the damned bog, and over and over again was walking away from it.

Sometimes a despair was surging up and it was beginning to look to me as if I will never come out of this ancient twilight. I do not know what kept up my desire to walk, but definitely not the memories of the homeland. For some reason, together with the house, Nastursia Furfoot was coming on my mind. Probably, I was driven by fear.
The fear of this gnarled, covered with lichen wood.
The woods of Hobbiton are totally different: light, sunny, with its bright-green glades. And the most important - they are safe. Even wild animals in them are not terrifying, because they are afraid of us, hobbits.
But this wood caused a strange feeling of danger surrounding from different directions. Strange, because there were no visible reasons for it. Well, how dangerous can be the old trees? Even if it is covered with moss?
It’s no animals in Fangorn, but the vague feeling of danger did not pass. Probably, the silence was the reason. Fangorn is a very quiet place. You understand, what I’m talking about . More silent could be, perhaps, only in a tomb. And even in the Barrow-Downs crypts some sounds were audible.
I tried to yell, but the ancient wood suppressed any sounds, and I hardly heard my own shouts.
I do not know, whether words of Uragh about a behavior of the "wandering stumps " were true, or they have been caused by orc’s fear of the ancient wood, but I have preferred to not test them and firmly followed everything, that he has told me, thus I did not come near the trees and did not make a campfire.

For four days I wandered in the forest, slept, having turned in a buurgha, and ate what I could get.
For you it is better to not know what I ate. I shall tell only, that by the end of the fourth day frogs have begun to look to me as an ultimate meal of my , and wood nuts - the food of Valar.
If on my way any attractiveness came across to me, I have not noticed them.
Any way I doubt that in Fangorn there is something, except for twilight and lichens. The lichen in it is more than enough. The dust from them hangs in a motionless air of the forest and it is impossible to breath without inhaling some of it. I have tears in my eyes from this dust, the skin was intolerably itching, and the nose was continuously runny. Maybe from the lichen's dust, or maybe from the lasting for many days starvation, you are beginning to see what is not there.

On the morning of fifth day, once again having woken up on the edge of the bog and looking at the "sarcophagus" of Uragh, I have understood, that I will go mad if in the evening I will, again, come out to this place.
Sometimes us, Tooks, are being teased as "brandycracked", but I have got an opportunity to become the first to whom such thing can actually happen. I did not know what to do, but have firmly decided not to go any more by the way I was walking.
What ‘s the difference to me, will I loose my mind, will I die from starvation or will somebody eventually eat me? In any case the outcome will be sad.
I've decided not to be afraid any more. If there are any dangers in this wood it is better to meet them face-to-face.

And I went west, having judged, that on the road to a home I have to pass the Misty Mountains for sure, and they are - on the West, and, probably, after a day of walking I shall see the peaks.
I did not see the Mountains in that day, to tell the truth, and on the following day too. But there has happened something else.
I have so weaned from sounds that from the beginning have not understood that I am hearing something
There was a midday when I have stopped to take a rest and to drink water from my canteen. And I have heard a sound. It was a murmur of stream! I sprang forward to the sound taking no notice of what is on my way, having forgotten about all warnings and advices of Uragh.
In four last days a stream has never came across, and it meant that, after all, I managed to break through that confined diabolic circle of wanderings. The streamlet turned out to be insignificant, one and a half step in a width and up to the ankle in a depth. Bushes and trees grew too closely to it, but all of it was unimportant. It was running from the direction I was going to go, from the West. I have got the Road.

I went along the stream for almost two days. Now it was no problem with drinking water, and I only had to look carefully on either sides lest not to pass a possible food.
The hunger has won over the fear, I ceased to be afraid of trees and bushes, and now I have had nuts. Besides along the stream grew quite good berry-bushes. Though it was, certainly, insufficient, and I had to pierce a pair of more holes in the belt.
If somebody has seen me now, doubtfully in this lean creature with hollow cheeks he would recognize a hobbit, which should be with chubby-cheeks and plump. Also two blades and orc’s marching harness atop of gray clothes would only strengthen everyone’s opinion, that I am not a hobbit at all.

When you are walking through the forest for a long time, your senses are gradually growing dull. You are ceasing to pay an attention to anything what is around; you are, simply, looking under the feet trying not stumble on something, and holding the direction. This is why I almost hit with my forehead a huge boulder blocking my way.
The stream came out right from under the stone. The boulder was approximately in twenty foots in height and even greater in width, and the same mighty stones adjoined it on the right and on the left, fencing an extensive enough space.
I did not find the entrance right away while walking around a hundred-foots stone circle . It has been a narrow enough and shaded by several young ashes, as if they were planted here for that.
The leading me stream was also on the opposite side of the circle, fenced by these rocks, goodness knows where from has been brought to the middle of the wood. Here the brook, on the contrary, dived under the blocking its way boulder.
I could go further on along the stream, but had an urge to find out what inside there. Behind the stones. One must agree you won’t meet such construction every day.

Curiosity kills the cat. It was nearly ruined me. As soon as entered, I have understood at once that I have come across an Ent’s dwelling. And what else it could be?
A small pond in the middle of the circle. A huge stow-bench, about fifteen foot in length and in my two heights, with a lot of dry grass on it. Even greater, really a giant table, and two huge stone jugs on it.
Having seen these jugs, I forgot about everything: orcs, ents, all of it. I just remembered that the ent’s food is being stored exactly is the jugs.
For some reason it even did not come into my head, that the jugs could be empty. The hunger overcomes not only a fear, but also a common sense.
It was impossible to jump on the tabletop. The height of the table is thrice exceeded my stature. But it was possible to get on a table from the bench, and I tried to jump on it. But it, too, was unobtainable to me: I was too weakened from a lack of food and wanderings.
Then I have thrown orc’s harness off myself and repeated the attempts. And this was an unsuccessful also.
But what can withstand the persistence of a hungry, who is trying to get the food?
The stow- bench has been made of roughly squared stones in which were more than enough of ledges and cracks.I did not succeed in jumping on it, but I managed to climb up, and from it I have got over to the adjoined table.

The jugs were filled up to edges. Both. In one there was something sour and gelatinous, and in the second - transparent, as water, but sweet-tasting, fizzing with bubbles of air. I drank from both, right over the edge, with difficulty inclining to myself a stone bulk of the jug. Drank up, supped, scooped with palms as a serving spoon, licked dirty fingers and could not stop.
My strength was coming back, I felt it by each and everyone part of my body, with every suddenly curling up hair. The blood under the skin fizzed with bubbles, as if boiling. The bulging muscles were getting back their strength. A delightful sensation of satiety, which I had not felt for a long time, has overflown my stomach. I do not know how I have not bursted?
I fell asleep, curling up right near the jugs, and to me the stone tabletop felt more soft than a down feather-bed. How sweet can be a nap after a good meal!
I was woken up from an ear-splitting roar :"Burraruum!!!"
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Old 10-11-2008, 12:32 AM   #26
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For some reason it seems to me that Ents and Trolls are related. It can be a some distant relation, similar to like Elves to Orcs. I won’t be surprised to learn that Trolls have been descended from Ents. Probably, something went wrong when Firstborn awoke trees, and trolls are simply the product of their first unsuccessful experiments. Seems they have too many similarities with Ents, except the Ents are not turning into a stone from the sun.
And the ents do not love much the bright sun too, but among the trolls I had happened to meet no one to be turned into a stone, even though I saw once a couple walking in a broad daylight. Probably for that you need something else besides the sun.
All ancient races: Orcs, Ents, Elves, Trolls, Dwarves - are having a quite tense relation with the sunlight. It’s understandable why trolls and orcs, the thoroughbred orcs, are afraid of the sun. The sun burns their skin and blinds eyes.
The Firstborn, too, for some reason, prefer twilight; though they can easily walk at the sunlight. But Uruuk-Hai love the sun as , as people do. They even brag that they are not afraid of the sunlight.

Why the trolls came up to my mind? Because the creature, who was staying near the stone -table, to me looked like a troll .
The fixed on me eyes were nasty, and sticking out of the mouth teeth were evoking unpleasant suspicions. Can somebody explain, what for the Ents need teeth, if they do not eat at all, but only drink? It seems to me, that they are not telling the whole truth about themselves to the accidental travelers.
However, during those moments I did not mull over on teeth and a possible relationship of trolls and ents. I contemplated on nothing at all.
I was dodging out, rebounding between jugs as if an unaware mouse when being entrapped by a cat. Believe me, it is not very easy to dodge, when huge palms with seven fingers are trying to catch you. Especially when each trying to catch you finger is in the length of half of your height, and you just woke up, and have a full stomach. Why I had to eat so much? A quarter of what I poured into myself would be enough to get satiated!

The creature was continued to growl his “Burraruum!“ and so hard clapping its huge palms on the , that the jugs were jumping up and stone crumbs have been flying to all sides. Probably, the jugs were jumping up not only from his claps, but also from his shouts.
If I’ll get under the impact of the palm, with me would happen the same, as with a mouse which has got under a horseshoe. If you have never happen to see it, I shall tell, that in that case from the mouse remains very little, and it is very unpleasant to look at this little.
I kept up as long as I could, but the cat always wins in the game of cat and mouse. Especially, if the mouse can hardly move from overeating. The Ent would slam me without any problem, but he, probably, was afraid to damage or overturn his jugs, therefore for some time I was managing to hide behind one of them, or behind another.

The stone crumbs, flying from under his palms, cut my face to blood, and I could see almost nothing, and couldn’t hear because of Ent’s deafening shouts, therefore I did not realize right away, that one of the jugs has disappeared. The Ent, not ceasing to clap on the table with one hand, with another has cleverly moved the jug aside, to the edge of the table. So I, once again dashing to that place where it should be, suddenly found myself on an absolutely bare surface.
From above on my head was descending the palm in the size of two tabletops of Meriadock the Magnificent’s desk, which still stays in Buckland. In a slowed down time I felt like a fly under a fly swatter. And just as the fly, I have escaped this impact in the last moment. By a miracle. The enormous palm hit the stone tabletop several inches from me. I was knocked down by dense air blown out from under the palm, and head -over- heels rolled over the table. But then, at once, have jumped on my feet and rushed to the edge of the table.
I was intending to jump off and run with all my might to the exit. However, my quite naive desire was not destined to come true. The free end of the chain, about which I absolutely have forgotten, has remained under the ent’s palm, therefore my desperate dart has only led to that with the another end of a chain, which was encircling my neck, I almost torn off my head . The stop was so unexpected, that my legs have run out forward, advancing the body, flew up in the air, and I got plastered into the table-top’s stone with all my back. An instant later the back of my head has hit the stone too.
How many times since that memorable friendly drinking party on the Brandywine’s bank I have got hit on my head by somebody or by my own carelessness? It is good that hobbits have strong heads!

When I came to the senses, I found myself fifteen foots above the floor. The creature, which tried to slam me, held up the free end of the chain, thus I was dangling before his eyes.
Fortunately, the chain’s loop has been made as not for tightening, has been firmly fastened, but, nevertheless, it was difficult to breathe, because , the loop will presses on your neck any way, when you are suspended on the neck at such height .
The creature was about seventeen foots tall and most of all resembled an animated ash. At this point I have guessed, that this is not a troll at all, but the ent, because before that I did not have a chance to have a close up look at him.
The Ent was thoughtfully looking at me and, seems, contemplating: whether to spin me up on a chain and slam into the nearest stone, whether simply grab my legs and pull apart, and then, for sure, something will come off: either legs, or a head. The Ent’s eyes were already not spiteful, but, more likely, surprised.
I didn‘t want to be slammed, or to be divided into parts. I like myself entirely in one piece. Grasping the chain with both hands, I pulled up to weaken the pressure of a tightened loop, deeply inhaled and started to scream at all my might: " Fangorn, Galadriel, Elbereth, Gilthoniel, Legolas, Elrond, Gil-Galad, Elessar ", - and ten more elven’s words, which I have read in the Red book, or heard from grandfather Sam.

The eyes of the Ent became even more surprised, and then an interest has flashed in them. He slightly hesitated, and uttered a long melodious phrase.
It has sounded like a real music to me, because within the recent past I was, basically, hearing a hoarsely barking speech of orcs. Obviously it was a some question in elven speech.
- I do not understand, your highness, - I have told, and for extra persuasiveness shook negatively the head as much as I could in my suspended position. - I do not understand absolutely.
- You do not understand… - after some consideration has told the Ent in Common Speech, - then what for you said the words of the Firstborn, if you do not understand their meaning?
- To show to your highness that I am not an orc, - I have answered to him. - You took me for the orc. And I am not the orc at all.
- How do you know what I was thinking of you? - said the Ent a little bit offensively, - I was not telling you.
- But you, your highness, yourself were shouting "burraruum". It is "orcs" in your speech.
- Hm-hm, - the Ent has frowned, - Do you know the speech of the Ancient Wood? From where? Have you been here earlier? When? And from whom you could learn?
I always thought that Ents are little bit slow creatures, but this one was asking questions very quickly.
However, it is better to answer the questions, than to be flattened out, or torn apart for nothing.
- No, your highness, I have never been here, and I do not know your language. I know only some words, because someone from my relatives was here. However, it was a long time ago. They were talking here with Fangorn, which is Treebeard. You are, probably, that same Treebeard?
- Hm-hm, - the Ent perplexedly hummed again, - Treebeard. No. I am not Treebeard, and you’d better to not meet with Treebeard now. I am being called Fastwit in a Common Speech, but I won’t tell you my real name. It is a dangerous business - to tell your real name to the first you meet. Even if you are not the “orc“. Too short is the name for this "burraruums", - the ent grimaced. - And who are you then?
- I am a hobbit, at your service, your highness, - I have answered politely, a conversation is keeping a pace, and slamming and tearing apart are being postponed. - The hobbit, from Took‘s family. My grandfather, Peregrin Took, has happened to be in yours wood together with a second cousin Meriadok Brandybuck, that from Buckland over the river.
- Wait, wait, - said the Ent, - not so hasty, - and has mulled over for almost five minutes. From time to time he muttered something under his breath. For me, still hanging in the air, these minutes have seemed like a torture.
- “Halfgrown Hobbits, the hole-dwellers“… - the ent said suddenly. - I remember. I myself have met the hobbits. Recently. When we went to break the lair of these darn burraruums. Isengard. It was two of them. Only their names were different, so short, and funny.
- Pippin and Merry, your highness, - I said and thought to myself: " Some “recent time” - a hundred years ago!". - In young years they used to be called as Pippin and Merry. And it was my grandfather with Meriadock the Magnificent. Only, your highness, from those times has passed hundred years.
- Hundred years, - the ent was not surprised at all. - So I am saying - recently. What is the hundred years for this wood? It stays from the time of creation of the world. It remembers the coming of the Firstborn. Hundred years - it is recent. Yes. I remember those hobbits, and their ridiculous names I remember too. So you are related to then? And how you have got here? Why you are on a chain? And why you are dressed like orc?
- If you, your highness, will put me on a floor, - I asked, - I will tell you everything in details. It’s too hard for me to talk while I am dangling like this. It’s too difficult to breathe, and my hands already got tired.

The ent again fell in deep thoughts, swinging me a little, as if measuring up, so I even have got a cold sweat, and, finally, sad:
- All right, I will lower you down, only not on the floor, but on the table, and I will be holding the chain. Maybe you will deceive me; maybe you are not the hobbit, but the orc. We, ents, are often getting deceived. People of Rohan swore to us of an eternal friendship, when they wanted us to help them in their war with "burraruums", and now they themselves are cutting our woods. Even worse than it was done by orcs of Isengard. With my own hands I planted a Sentinel forest by the Isen-river. And where it is now? You can’t find even stumps. All was uprooted and the ground has been plowed. And there were all young trees, very young; nobody from them has lived even to an adolescent. So , I won‘t let the chain go. I will get it loose later, when I’ll see that you are not deceiving me. Understand? "
- Understand, your highness, - I have nodded as much as it was possible to me. - I am not deceiving you.
The ent put me on the table. If you have never hung in the loop, than you won’t understand what a pleasure is to stand on your own legs. To tell the truth, my legs were buckling under, I do not know, from fear or from something else.
- Can I sit down, your highness? - I have asked the ent. - From the fright somehow my legs are badly holding me.
- Sit down, - nonchalantly permited the Ent, and so winded up the chain on the , that it slightly stretched . - The orc you are or not the orc, any way our conversation will be long. It is so boring in our forest. Seldom something occurs, and recently there is nobody even to talk. All old ents prefer to stand silently by themselves somewhere on the bank of a stream or a river, except for moving from one spot to another a few times through the summer. And they do not wish to talk at all. They are considering, that all the important had already happened a long time ago, and there is nothing to talk about. Some of them became to be like horns. Or how to tell it in your way? In the old age you are becoming a huorn ... Getting tree-ish! For them I speak and think too fast. Even the Treebeard now is not the same. Sometimes he has an attack of the black depression, and during such time it is better to not to come close to him, if you wish to survive. The saddest thing is that every year it’s happening to him more and more often, and also lasts longer. What will be with the Ancient wood, if he will eventually go mad? - the ent has saddened - And now tell. So you are saying that you are the hobbit?
- Yes, your highness, - I nodded and cleared a throat. The chain did not squeeze the throat any more, and a voice has ceased to stifle, - the hobbit. Look closely; if you saw my grandfather then, probably, you can distinguish the hobbit from the оrc.
- Huм-hм, - seems, it is a favorite sound of the Ents, - your speech is polite, what you can hardly expect from the orc, and you, really, are looking similar to those two kids with ridiculous names. They had the same furry legs, only they were more well-fed. But you are dressed like orc. The clothes of those two was not like this.
-It is, your highness, because they have been dressed, as hobbits usually do. The Orcs took my clothes, when they have taken me in a captivity, and gave me these rags. This is why I am dressed like that.
- In a captivity, - the ent became silent again for a few minutes. Seems he was thinking about something, and it looked like his skin on a forehead, resembling a young bark, moves from that deliberation - In captivity… Is it a war now?
- No, your highness, - I have replied. - As long as I know, it is no wars around. Of course, our Hobbiton is a place staying at some distance from the big cities, but, any way, if it would be the big war, we would know about it. No. It’s no war. I even did not know that orcs still remain on the Middle-earth. I was captured, when I had a peaceful merry time with my friends.
- So, they wanted to turn you into a slave, - concluded the ent. - I have heard the orcs were capturing slaves and made them work in their mines. Did they take you to the mines?
- No, your highness, I have not been in the mines .
- Then why is a chain on you? Nowadays all kind of beings are often roaming the forest.... In orcs clothes and in some other covering. Rohan’s horsemen are driving people in the same chains as yours to the eaves of the forest to cut trees. We have tried to drive them out, but people of Rohan shoot at us with burning arrows, and those, who in chains, chop us with axes. A few of young ents have been already lost in this way, - the ent aggravatedly rubbed his shoulder. - Have you been driven to cut the trees too?
- No! I did not cut the trees! And the chain has been put on me by orcs, not by Rohans. I have got in this wood accidentally, and most of all I wish to get out of here. I want to go home.
- Accidentally? - the Ent looked at me with a suspicion. - And you did not cut the trees? But if you were in the captivity of orcs, then why you are free now? And from where you have got an orc’s weapon? You are trying to deceive me.
- Your highness, - I have put hands to my chest for persuasiveness (seems too mistrustful became the ent’s stare), - Let me tell you from the beginning and in the order of time, then you will understand that I’m saying a sincere truth and not deceiving.
- Tell, - the ent was slightly softened, - I have a lot of time, and you cannot run nowhere while I am holding the chain.

And I began recounting all from the beginning, from the quarrel with my father. From time to time the ent was interrupting me, saying something like: "You have to go into a greater details, be more particular. For instance, who is Nasturtia Furfoot? Be more descriptive about her! " He liked very much to know about everything in the details.
He has even questioned me on how differs brandybuck’s brald from Bree’s pale ale and light "Tookborough" beer. Apparently, it’s, indeed, very boring in the Ancient forest, if the ents are so eager for details in the stories of casual passers-by. In fact, these wooden giants are extremely ingenuous, and somebody else would pull the wool over Fastwit’s eyes without any efforts. But I have no need in it.
I just came up to the circumstances of the capture, when the ent has stopped me.
- Will be enough for today, - he has yawned, - It’s getting dark already. Need to eat and go to bed. You will tell the rest tomorrow.
He approached the table and raised one of the jugs, that with jelly:
- " Did you drink from it? "
I nodded:- " I was very hungry, your highness, and it was nobody around I could ask for a permission ".
- It would be better to you if you would not drink from this jug, - has grumbled the ent. - This draught makes bones stronger, but you can get woody. You should be drinking from the second, then you would grow up.
- From the second I drank too, your highness, - I have told a little bit horrified, somehow I was not looking forward to become woody.
- Yes? - the ent has glanced in the second jug. - Perhaps, you are, really, the hobbit. Your relatives, too, were not fools to drink something tasty. Do not worry, if you drank from both, you will not stiffen. But drink less next time. This draught is hard to do now. The Magic of the Firstborn is leaving the wood, all of us feel it. Even to provide the food is getting more and more difficult. Something is happening in the world, that we can not understand and can’t correct.
He drunk from both jugs, and, groaning, - for him it was difficult to bend, - lowered himself down on the stow-bench. I arranged myself to rest nearby on a heap of dried up grass.
So, this way, side by side, we have slept together through the night. If I would want it, I could easily cut his throat, while he was sleeping, because he even has not thought at all about my rolled near to the stow-bench weapon. I only needed cautiously to wind off the chain from his palm, then I could easily reach the kughri.

It is strange, that such ideas were coming to my mind. I left Fastwit two days later, having been repeating my story twice before that. The ent was listening to me with an open mouth, constantly requiring the "details".
Looked like he was learning my words by heart, because sometimes some of them he himself was repeating aloud. Especially he was interested with the incident in the Old Forest, and for a long time he was inquiring about the forest, where it is located, and whether I saw ent-wives there.
I honestly told him everything, that I knew, but, in my opinion, it has left him a little bit disappointed. By the end of the first day he has released me from the chain. However, not completely. The Ent did not touch the collar, having explained, that he afraid to break my neck together with the chain.
-We are very strong, - he has told. - I won’t notice at all as you will die, so let you to remove this at your home, and I will help only to get rid of the excess, so it won’t bother you.
He took the chain into his hands, the chain mournfully tinkled under his long fingers, and in no time on me there was only a chain loop around my neck with a few dangling links. So for the second time I was repeating the story not as a captive, but as a guest. The ent with pleasure would listen to me for the third time, he was not aware of the time passing. Came to think of it, the ents live so long, that a few days for them, as a one minute for us.
But I have begged him, and he has agreed to help me to get out of the forest, which I never learned to like. Fastwit refused to go on the south, to the steppes of Rohan, and to the crowded with people places. He has rubbed his shoulder and declared that he doesn’t want to meet with the fiery arrows and sharp axes. But on the north and the east I had nothing to do. We have agreed, that he will carry me to the West, to the mountains.
I thought, that going along Misty Mountains will be difficult to get lost, and thus it is possible to reach the trading thoroughfare laying south of the mountains, and from there, together with traders, to get to the beloved Hobbiton. I tried to not think about how many days will take this journey, and what I shall eat these days, and therefore not to frighten myself ahead of time. But, if I have reached the Ancient wood and came out alive, than I shall manage to reach my house alive too. Besides the Ent has supplied me for the road with a full canteen a bubbly drought, though it was visible that he was unhappy to part with a precious drink. But he was kind. I do not know, whether it’s possible to tell the same about all tree-people, but I am grateful to Fastwit not only for food and help, but also that, in comparison with other ents, he is a very curious and thinks fast, as he himself has told me. Otherwise I would be already dead.

At midday of the third day after the meeting with the ent I was going south on a trodden by someone footpath.
With washed off lasting for many days dirt, in the clean clothes, slightly getting heavier, with the weapon and in a good mood, I went home. And a house always remains the House, even if in there you are being expected to get engaged with Nasturtia Furfoot. To tell the truth, I have hoped that she has not waited for my return and became engaged to somebody else. I would forgive this to her with pleasure.
To the right of me a grassy slope with scarce trees and frequent boulders was rising upwards to sharp frozen peaks. At the left and below, at a sole of mountains, was spreading the black-green sea of the Ancient wood. Fastwit was not too lazy to carry me far away from the margin of the forest and farther up in to the mountains, so that I won’t stumble upon a casual huorn.
For the whole day of my traveling nothing unexpected or even simply remarkable came across. I even began to get tired of the monotony of surrounding and already was thinking whether I should to make a stopover somewhere, when I saw birds. The ravens.
Their flock was wheeling above crowded in heap boulders, which were somewhat ahead, and a little bit off my way. The birds, spreading out their powerful black wings and shrilly croaking, were diving down to the stones, and perching up on them, or would fly up from them and circle above something unseen among the boulders.

How many times, then, I was cursing myself for my curiosity, but still couldn’t honestly answer to myself, would I go there if knew what the black scavengers are showing to me?
When I drew near to the boulders, it appeared, that between them is a small, only just to squeeze in, crevice. Someone was in this crack. Alive. From time to time a branched stick was showing above the edge of a nearest to me boulder, and mutedly banged on a stone, and then the ravens, which took up stones all around the crevice, would lazily fly up and began to circle slowly in the air.
After getting around the nearest boulder, I cautiously glanced behind the stone and saw the one, who was knocking with the stick. He laid, leaning against a gray side of covered with bird’s dropping boulder, all wrapped up in a buurgha, so only the head was sticking out. The face in the color of a well-bleached cloth, covered by large drops of sweat, has turned to me and for some time looked at me with brown unseeing eyes. Then the gaze became comprehensive, pale-gray lips were parted in tired crocked half-grin, baring yellow teeth, and the familiar voice hardly audible croaked:
- “Hi… Lost all hopes to see you again”.

Last edited by Olmer : 10-11-2008 at 04:45 PM.
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Old 01-02-2009, 11:55 PM   #27
Olmer
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Everybody, eventually, comes to the time in his life, when you have to make a choice: to weight up everything you love and value, and decide to do what you, and only you, consider to be the right. Because nobody’s opinion will matter, except yours, and only you will decide were you right or not, and also The One, who has created the world, when you will stand before him.
The time of the choice is a severe time, because often there is no way for return after only a one step. And sometimes it happens that you should manage to do this choice in the time between two impacts of your heart, otherwise the life will make the choice for you, and you will have to go on a disparate, painful and senseless road of your life.
Do we want it or not, but every our action is meaningful. And often some hidden significances, of which we did not even think, conceal themselves behind our acts.
In Hobbiton they do not like to think of a high purpose of life, they prefer to talk about things that are simple and clear. About a crop of barley and a taste of beer, about ways of pork legs‘ cooking, about sunken meadows and close and distant relations. Many of us have lived and finished the life in this way, believing that they had lived it sufficiently and correctly.

Many years have passed since that time, and many times I was thinking about the choice I have made.
I could run away. But even to run was not necessary, I could just turn around and simply leave, calmly and easy, not looking back at the circling in the sky ravens. And then live all my life wealthy, content and cozy in a well-equipped hole in the middle of a prosperous homestead.
For this you only need to leave the dying to die without your help and consolation.
What’s more, the dying was not a hobbit at all, but the orc, as I used to think by then, the enemy and the eternal collaborator of the Immemorial Enemy, and my personal enemy also. It is the fact that because of him I have turned up so many leagues away from my house.
It was very easy to turn around and leave. But I stayed. I came out from behind the stone and in confusion stood in front of Ghash, not knowing what I have to do now. In the Hobbiton we are seldom even getting sick, and I have never had to look after the wounded. I, simply, did not know with what I can help him.

The edge of buurgha has slipped down, and from under it has been seen a barefooted leg in a torn shaggy pant. The leg was purple-gray, ugly swelled, with a roughly broken nail on the big toe.
Gash has steadily staring at me, and it was noticeable of how much efforts cost him to keep himself conscious. Having tracked the stare, I understood, that he looks on the canteen with ent‘s draught. But I was a little afraid to come nearer to him, though he seems looked as absolutely weakened. Then again had not he has enough of strength to frighten off the ravens?
Having unfastened the canteen from the belt, I cautiously stretched it out to him, being ready at any instant to pull out the hand if he will try to grab me. Ghash has let out his thick knobby stick and unsteadily draw out a trembling hand to the neck of canteen, which was full and, therefore, heavy. When his fingers have clasped on the neck, I have released it, but he did not have enough strength to keep it. The fingers unclenched, and the hand together with the canteen has dropped on his knees. A little of liquid has got splashed out right on the buurgha. Ghash jerked, grinded his teeth, got the second hand out from under the buurgha, and slowly have dragged the canteen to the mouth.
I was afraid to help him. Three times he was stopping and resting, pressing the precious flask to a body. I thought, that he will drain it all to the bottom, when he, at last, managed to touch the neck with his parched lips, but he has made just a few small sips and slacked off.
- Guess, I will live one more day, - he said unexpectedly. - I have thought - today... And now it turns out - tomorrow... - and sipped a little bit more from the canteen. - Water ended yesterday ... - he spoke as to himself. - Or the day before yesterday... I do not remember.
- I would go and get it, if there is water nearby, - I said.
- There, - he has shown with eyes to the side, - a small stream. Take from under buurgha...
Still being anxious, I have raised the edge of buurgha. From it came a heavy stench of old, foul filth.
His canteen was laying by his side.

I easily have found a streamlet. It was about thirty steps above on the slope. Ghash, probably, crawled to it: the track has remained on the grass. The stream was small, in a width of half of mine palm, and flowed on such open place, that at once it became clear to me why Ghash has preferred to remain between the stones. They gave at least some protection.
Having got drunk an icy to a teeth ache water, I have filled up the canteen and came back.
Ghash was sleeping. He slept with a childishly half-open mouth, softly snoring and pressing a canteen to the chest, like a favorite toy.
The black ravens imposingly got settled around on the boulders. It looked like they have decided to not wait for Ghash to die, but were going to peck him to death while he is still alive, and now enthusiastically croaked, as if deciding on whom to begin.
I scared the ravens away, put the canteen with water beside the sleeping, and cautiously freed from his hands mine with the ent’s draught.
The wounded, in a sleep, has rummaged around with hands, found nothing and just pulled the buurgha on himself, wrapping himself again up to his eyes. His forehead was hot, burning the palm, and I, having cut off a strip of fabric from my sackcloth wear, made a wet bandage on his head. In a dream Ghash made a contented smacking sound and tried to turn on the side, but couldn’t make it.
I have stayed with him till the evening, changing drying up bandages. So fast they were drying up, what even all water in Ghash’s canteen has been used up, and I had to run to the stream one more time.

Ghash has opened his eyes when the sun has got hidden behind the tops the mountains, and disappointed ravens have scattered away in a search for a night’s lodging on the neighboring trees.
- You are still here. - He has asked without any surprise. Has simply asked, not demanding the answer. And what you can tell him?.
- Can I have a little bit of your drink? - The voice was not as hoarse, as in the afternoon.
- Certainly, - I have answered and gave the canteen to him. - Drink as much, as you want.
Actually I was feeling regretful for sharing the ent’s draught. The upcoming journey was expected to be long, and who knows, whether the food will get in a way. But since I did not leave right away, it was silly to say “no”.
- Do you have a flint? I would make a campfire.
- No, shouldn’t make a fire, - Ghash was drinking from the bottle with small, short gulps, - it is visible too far. Do you want to eat?
- I would chew on something, - I have told.
It’s not because I wanted to eat, the ent‘s draught was very nourishing, but when you are only drinking for three days in a row, you would want something to chew on.
Ghash has dug his hand under the buurgha, searching for something, and brought out a small beech-bark cup.
-There is nothing more, - he has told, - only this.
I cautiously surveyed the cup, it smelled sharp and unusual.
- Don‘t afraid, - Ghash thinly smiled with corners of lips, - It is grated nuts with mountain honey and different herbs. We eat it when have to run for a long time. Only eat a little, and make sure to wash it down with water.
“A little”. He should not even say that, there was less than one third, and the cup was small.
I have cautiously put a finger inside, collected from the sides a few drops of viscous greenish mass and licked. The taste was more likely bitter, than sweet, but pleasant.
I was seating on a rolled up buurgha not far away from Ghash, licking the green stuff from fingers, sipping the water and ruminating, what does it mean "the long run ". Whether it meant that before the orcs did not run for long, because up till now I did not try this, which does taste absolutely not like other things. Or they were not giving it to me, because it’s too valuable product?

Being engrossed in such thoughts, I have not noticed how "the valuable product " has ended. I became embarrassed; Ghash asked not to eat much. I have turned to him, intending to apologize, and felt as inside of me becomes an intolerably hot, as if someone has kindled in me an unrestrained fire. It seemed that the blood will start to boil right now, and the red steam will break through the skin. The consciousness has grown dim, and the eyes, overflown by blood, saw almost nothing in a surrounding crimson fog. The booming thuds in the ears were muffling all sounds, and each impact was reverberating in the head, causing a burning pain.
I looked at Ghash, trying to understand, what for he has poisoned me. He, leaning on hands and trying to rise, was shouting something. Ghash’s mouth was getting open in a silent, soundless for me, yell, and mine half-burned mind, trying with every effort to keep above the surface of a flaming storm in my head, has understood by the lips movement: " Move!!! Move, the fool!!! Move!!! "
With a difficulty, as if breaking own bones, I moved my heavy, like filled with a fused lead, hand. The movement of the other hand was even more difficult. But the mute, torn in shout, lips demanded:
"Get up, shorty! Rise! Move!"
I was slowly drawing myself up, as if carrying a mountain on my shoulders, clinging at bumps and cracks in the boulder with waxy, melting from each movement fingers. The mind has already refused to think, and only through eyes a command was penetrating into a withdrawn from an intolerable heat brains: " Come on, shorty, come on! Do something! "
My body has got drawn sideway, I hardly have had a time to do a step with badly obeying, heavy legs, and some mocker inside of my head derisively said: " Like a cow who jumped over the Moon! ", and sung with a thin creaking grandfather Sam’s voice: "The cow in the garden madly pranced”…My legs uncertainly stomped three steps. "And the little dog chased his tail! " And the legs themselves have carried me around the boulders, dancing and habitually adjusting to tune of this plain song.
"And the drunken cow danced” - the voice in my head has fervently continued, - “step to the left and step to the right, jumping forward and jumping back! "
And I have got carried on! It is a pity that nobody from the Hobbiton saw this Springle-ring! But, maybe, it’s good that nobody saw me dancing. I doubt my wild stunts would please the strict judges of the dance. You can’t achieve an accuracy of the movements when boiled blood runs in your veins, and I have been contriving something ridiculous instead of well-defined pas.
They were as unpredictable as a dance of a forest fire. I felt like I have turned into a scorching, unrelentless brush fire, and I am leaving behind a charred grass. If anyone will happen to be on my way, I would not notice it, mowed him down from the road, burned up, as a ruthless fire burns.
And then I have lost a sense of reality, fell in a crimson darkness, and only Ghash knows what else had happened around those boulders. But no matter how many times I was asking him, he keeps mum about the details.

I have come to my senses from loud clangs of my own teeth; they were knocking at each other with fine frequent rap, muffling any sounds around. Instead of a recent heat, the body has been seized by an icy, stinging cold. No wonder, because I was sprawling across a waterway of the rivulet, where I have been getting the water for Ghash.
The water has risen on the left side, as at the dam, and flowed around me in all directions. The clothes up to the last thread have been soaked with icy water.
I have tried to sit down, and the body, chilled all the way through, has unwillingly obeyed.The water, which collected around me, has joyfully rustled and escaped downhill.
The sun still stood low and gave not much warmth, but it shined on a “scenic” clearing between the brook and the boulders. It looked like a herd of wild boars grazed over there for a whole week. Seems that none of alive grass-blades do remain on this trodden and scoured space.
- Get out of the stream, - Ghash’s voice has told. Found out that he was sitting at the stream on a slope just below me. Without pants, just in the sleeveless jacket. He was laundering his pants. - Or need a help?
I negatively shook my head, and on all four crawled to him. When I have reached him, he put a canteen into my hands and said:"Drink! "
I, again, shook the head in refusal, the very least I wanted is to drink. More likely on the contrary. Sometimes it happens from being cold.
-Drink, I have told! - has yelled Ghash. - Want to die? You have lain in this water for three hours. Soon will cough with blood. Drink! I do not know, where have you taken this potion, but it can put a dead back on its feet, - he has shown his leg. - See?
During the night the leg has lost its livid shades and became simply reddish, and the swelling went down. If not for color, it would look quite usual.
- Still bends badly, - Ghash complained, while I have poured the ent’s draught into myself, - but I can already move around. And yesterday I was saying “goodbye” to life. If it will go on like this, tomorrow I will be jumping like a grasshopper. Come on, drink, - he said, seeing that I have put aside the canteen, - It is more than half in there, will be enough for both of us.
- Enough, - I have answered. - To me is already enough, - and begun to pull off my sackcloth. It should get wringed out without delay.
In truth I felt great. It seemed to me, that I am an old knife which have been thrown into a forge, have been heated up until white, and then have been reformed and have been tempered anew. Inside of me all ringed from a joyful overflowing of the body’s delight and from the sensation of a boundless vigor and strength.
- What was it with me?
- You have been told “just a little“, - sarcastically replied Ghash. - Your people are good at stuffing themselves! I have noticed it even when you were feasting with your friends there, on the river bank. What you have eaten now, would be enough to five guys for two days of a good run ... Seems it affects you more strongly. You here have made such spectacle of yourself!
- You should warn, - I chided him. - How do I know, what is “a little” to you? What did I do?
- You know better, - Ghash has grinned. - You were yelling some song about a cow, leaping above the head, cartwheeling around, went on jumping here and there around the glade, pounded on the stones with a stick … I thought, you will pulverize them and me alltogether, but the stick did not hold up, - he has nodded aside.

Indeed, on the clearing was laying a piece of that heavy knobby stick with the end reduced to sticking out in all direction tatters.
- It’s such dance at us, - I was embarrassed - The Springle-ring.
- Yes?.. - Ghash was astonished. - If you dance like this, then how do you fight? So this why you has felled down the bearded like a little baby. Maybe and Uragh too? No, without the weapon - not likely. Uragh is not such guy. When he has released you?
- I do not remember precisely, probably, one week ago, - sadness came over me: at once before my eyes has appeared Uragh, still alive. - Why did you order him to kill himself?
- Me? - Ghash got surprised. - I have ordered to release you if he will get astray from the ataghan. And what did he do?
- He cut his hand off to free me. And died.
- And where is the hand? - A silly, in my opinion, question. - And the chain?
- The hand I have buried with him, and the chain has been torn off by the Ent.
- The Ent? - Ghash disbelievingly shook the head - Is it that walking stump? You have met with the walking stump and still alive?
- They are not stumps! - I have taken an offence for the ents. - They are kind! And the drink of which you said "a potion", it’s their food. The Ent himself gave it to me. So you can thank them for your recovery.
- Am I? - Ghash shook his head and unconsciously took a mouthful from the canteen. - Is it a draught of the walking stumps? Then I am, probably, the first of our race, who have been drinking it. Now I am getting confused. Before Uragh and I have got separated, he was carrying you on hands and, I think, you were incoherent. Tell me about it in the order!
I have told, what remembered, about the cave and about Fangorn.
- Who would think…- drawled Ghash, when I have told about Uragh‘s doing. - I did not order him to do this; he did it on his own. You do not know, but it is possible to live all your life being a snaga ... Without name. This way he has proved that I have deprived him of his name mistakenly. That he is not a "ghа", but the soldier. Uragh - it’s meant "the warrior". And his name was just the same.
- How he has proved? - I did not understand. - It was nobody over there, except me, and I understand nothing of it. Even now.
-You are proving it to yourself, - absolutely puzzling, as if to himself, said Ghash, - to the others - you are convincing. There was nobody to convince, but to prove - he has proved. He did not need to cut off his hand. Could just simply release you.
- How come? - now it was my turn to be surprised. - It is the chain, can’t crush it with teeth.
- Bring the kughri, - has asked Ghash, - and any stone, or it is better - two. Come on, don‘t drag your feet! I could drown you three hundred times while you lay unconscious in the stream.

I decided that he is right, mistrust is too offensive after everything what has happening now between two of us, and quickly brought the requested.
-Lay down sideways, - has ordered Ghash, - We gonna remove the collar. It is too snug on you. Halm has overdone it, fastened too tight.
How I have not noticed it earlier? Only after his words I felt that the collar, really, is slightly squeezing my neck, although it did not squeeze before. Probably, I did not notice it because it did not interfere with breathing.
When I lay down, Ghash have drawn near, and I have felt, as a steel of kughri got squeezed between the skin and the collar.
The stone has knocked on the butt of the blade, in my ears has slightly rung out, and the collar fell off.
- That’s all, - Ghash gave me a piece of chain. - This is how it could be done.
- It is so simple, - I was surprised.
- And why it should be difficult? - Ghash, in turn, has got surprised, - See? - and has shown me the blade.
I looked at it, but understood nothing.
- Look better, - and Gash has traced with a finger along the smooth, without any notch edge. I began to understand.
- With this blade you cut the bearded almost in two. And he has been armor-clad. For a kughri this village chain is like a rope. It cuts the iron of the bearded, has been forged especially for such purposes. Understood? What has happened further?
I have told. When I spoke about the funeral in the bog, Ghash was approvingly nodding, and I was pleased that my doing has appeared really important for someone. When I have reached to the meeting with Ent, Ghash has begun to demand from me even more details than the ent used to do. Especially of what the ent was saying about people of Rohan. He has forced me to repeat exactly word to word everything what Fastwit was saying to me.
Between all these conversations, alternated by gulps of the ent‘s draught, we did not notice how the day has passed by, and it’s already a time to get a sleep’s arrangements.
We have decided not lay down between the boulders. The place stunk after so many days Ghash stood there. We settled down under some tree. Ghash’s buurgha stank too, and we soaked it in the stream, and then stretched out between two young saplings for airing and drying.

Fortunately, Uragh’s buurgha was big enough, and we could sleep, wrapping in it, together, it only needed to huddle more tightly to each other in order of not losing the heat. Mountain’s nights are cold.
- Never thought that I will sleep snagging with an orc, - I have joked, nestling close to him, but Ghash did not accept my joke.
-You are yourself an orc, - he has taken an offence. - My brother is the orc, but we are the Uruuk-Hai. We are not afraid of the sun.
- And to Halm you said that you are the orc, - I have noted.
-You are hearing everything, - muttered Ghash. - I was checking if he is trustworthy. I had to find out how he feels about us.
- Then explain, why orcs differ from you. And, if you are the Uruk-hai, then why your brother is the orc?
- Not Uruk-hai, but Ur-uuk-hai, - Ghash said, separating each sillable. - I am surprised at you. Just last night you almost conked out, and now you are asking such questions. How I can explain it all to you in a few words? Sleep. I will tell in the morning.
He yawned, closed eyes and fell asleep.
I have envied his skill to fall asleep so quickly, but closed eyes and, too, fell at once into a sleep.

My dreams were of something good, peaceful. So pleasant the dream has been, that I would be seeing and seeing them, not waking up. Only the Uruuk -Hai are accustomed to wake up an hour before the dawn.
In the Hobbiton we are too, usually, do not lie in the bed for too long, but any way, we are getting up at a sunrise, and not before it.
When Ghash has got out from the buurgha and limped to the stream, I have tried sleep a little more. But such cheerful whoops, such vigorous whistles were carried around vicinities, that it became absolutely impossible to sleep. At the end of bathing Gash also has sung. Later I have learned that it is " The Song of drunken band " (23) and its finishing words: "Treasure your freedom, you, vagrants! ", Gash has yelled right into my ear.
I sat down, shook out from my head the rests of my sleep, and scolded him:
- You did not let to light the fire, worrying that someone will see it, and now you are yelling so the mountains are shuddering.
Ghash has smiled so wide, that his molars became visible, seized me and threw in the air. He miscalculated a little bit, because, when catching me, he almost dropped me and fell off, so I have landed on a top of him.
- You are heavier somehow, - he has noticed, getting out from under me. - Earlier, seems, you were lighter. And I’m shouting, because I am glad. I was already dead! And now very much alive!
He should not tell me, I was seeing it even without his words.
-And sound is not like light, - he continued, - Here is such echo, that you will never figure out, from where it comes. Besides, there is nobody here for two leagues around, only animals.
- How do you know?
- I feel. I’m being a shaghrat for the fourth year. Do you know how senses are getting sharpened during all this time? You smell troubles for five leagues ahead. I am telling you for sure: for two leagues around it is nobody, but only us.
- What is a Shaghrat?
- Not what, but who. A shaghrat is "a fiery rat ", such as found in the Black desert, behind the Great River. It looks like a jerboa, only saber-toothed. And it is hot as a fire, you can even get a burn.
- But you are not a rat.
-Well. I am like a rat. Prowl everywhere, sniffing out. Steal what is needed. Here I stole you .
- So you are a spy. I thought, you are a soldier. Uragh, as they say?
- Yes. And if it is a lot of soldiers, then - "Uruugh". I used to be, earlier, before I became the shaghrat. You can say a"spy", if your speak in your tongue. Only a shaghrat is not just a spy. The fiery rats, they, you know what? You will stretch out a finger to it, and it will chew the hand up to an elbow. To learn, to persuade, to steal, to kill. Such is my work.
- Why did you abduct me? Dragged me off to such distance. How I would get home now?...
- I will tell you, - Ghash embarrassingly scratched a nape, - But you only will be laughing.
- That was not a laughing matter! - I objected. - You hit me with something on the head, did not even let to put pants on, and have dragged me so far off . With you I have had so much fright! At what I have to laugh here?
-Well, - Ghash has shrugged his shoulders, - As you wish… We need a burglar.
- What?.. - I have whispered, bewildered. I though that I has misheard him.
- You heard it, - Ghash again has shrugged the shoulders . - The Burglar.

Last edited by Olmer : 01-03-2009 at 02:10 PM.
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Old 12-12-2012, 12:08 AM   #28
Olmer
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In the evening of the same day, when Ghash and I were camping for an overnight rest, I, again, have listened to myself: maybe something inside will begin to protest.
Maybe my conscience will say that I am wrong.
Maybe all of the sudden my guts will ache or groan from a bad premonition.
Nothing! My inner voice kept mum. My body quite obviously was enjoying life.
However, at the beginning, back then in the afternoon, when I have told Ghach that I agree to be a burglar, someone inside me, timid and hesitant, has begun to whine: "What for? If he is letting you go, then leave as fast, as you can, while he has not change his mind. It’s not hobbit’s business - the breaking in. And for the sake of what? You should go back home!“
But it whined only for a short time. Someone another, rough and arrogant, probably the same, who at the bog has ordered to a hungry stomach not be too fussy, cut short the whining: "Stop it! What was decided means it is decided! "
After that I went on my further journey as the Burglar, being employed by the Shaghbuurth of Uruuk-hai people.
The Shaghbuurth, in general, is "a community of fire". I was about to define it as "a clan", but Ghash proclaimed that those, who has never had any relations, commonly live in a buurth too, and so, if I so insistent on a right translation, there will be - a "community", though it is inaccurate and inexact.

And so it has been written down. Yes. We wrote it down.
Because I am a common, ordinary hobbit in a sense, and the ordinary hobbit will not get employed without a written contract, especially for such dangerous work. Especially, to work for such unreliable employers, as orcs. In spite of whatever Ghash has been telling me about being the Uruuk –Hai, I did not see the big difference then.
As you understand, we did not have paper or parchment, therefore for the contract we tore out one more piece of my sackcloth sleeveless jacket. Now my outfit was looking like one of my juvenile brothers’ bib, but I did not feel any remorse about it, I was still wearing Uragh’s wolf-fur vest.
We wrote the contract with blood. Don’t be frightened, and do not look for a special, ominous meaning. We did not have an ink, and the blood was not mine, and not Ghash’s. It belonged to one faltered raven which I had hit with a stone.
Yes, me. Because Ghash, with all his shaghrat’s expertise and skills, couldn’t manage to come close to the ravens without scarring them off, let alone to hit one of them.
Under the contract I had agreed to open a certain door, which will be shown to me in due time. Accordingly, the Shaghbuurth should provide my daily livelihood, treatments, if I’ll get sick or wounded, and a protection up till my return home, and, also, to pay a reward in two hobbit’s ponies and such amount of silver in coins and bullions, which the above mentioned ponies can carry away. If I would not manage to open the specified door, my compensation will decrease down to one pony and quantity of silver, respectively.
We agreed upon the contract for one year. And I have insisted that if the required door will not be shown to me within one year, my full compensation all will be duly paid to me anyway without regard to this sad fact.
Is not it a quite good agreement?
Uruuk-hai can’t bargain at all! Even such Uruuk-hai, as Ghash, who is rather proud of being the shaghrat, and all his work is based on dealing with the outer world.

Obviously, we came to bargaining terms not right away.
After Ghash has told this word - the "Burglar", I sat for some time, as if I have been suddenly hit, and stupidly looked at him, like a ram on a new gate.
Thinking.
Do you understand what I am talking about? Ghash doesn’t resemble the kind grandfatherly wizard Gandalf, no matter from which side you look at him. He even doesn’t look like any kind of grandfather, or a nice or mean wizard too. And to tell the truth, I am not that trusting as was Bilbo Baggins. I, if you remember, came from the family of Тooks, and the Bagginses are our distant blood relation.
Besides on Ghash’s face was such naughty grin, that I could not understand is he talks seriously, or just jokes.
If he jokes, then what for?
Does he, possibly, know the story of Bilbo and thirteen dwarves?
Actually, after his words I was getting back to myself for almost a quarter of hour.
For a whole this time Ghash has not uttered a single sound, only looked at me. I couldn’t understand at all what his eyes were expressing and I do not understand even now, but he does not wish to tell me what he was thinking about then.
- I am a hobbit, - I have uttered finally, - What kind of burglar you can find in a hobbit? For this, as I understand, you have to have a skill to open locks. Without the key. But in Hobbiton we don’t have locks at all. If we are closing the door, it means the dwellers of the house went somewhere. Sometimes they would stake the door with a stick to keep from accidentally swinging wide, and to let others know that nobody home. Whence in Hobbiton you can find the burglar? For this you have to look in Fornost, or even better in Minas-Tirith. In there, probably, are handymen of all kind.
- We have our own handymen, - Ghash has told in boring tone. - Oghrs, you know, can do such great iron work! They will open or make to you any lock. There was a time when they picked up the keys to Isengard’s tower. This is not the matter. We need a special burglar. Do you understand? The BURGLAR. - he singled out the last word.
- I do not understand, - I shook my head. - Why - a special? We don’t have such in Hobbiton. We don’t have any! I am explaining to you, we do not lock the doors. We don’t have the locks. Nobody will think to break into the house, if it is no answer to the knock. Couldn’t you find a better place to look for the burglar?
- O, yea? - Ghash chuckled sarcastically. - And isn’t one of your guys broke into the Dragon’s Lonely Mountain hundred and fifty years ago?
As it appears, he heard about Master Bilbo.
- They say inside the mountain was filled with gold up to the top. Then there was such brouhaha that in Khazatbuurth for fifty years there was nobody to cry for. In our parts up till now they are telling tales about this event. The scary ones.
And seems that same guy has abducted ten captives of bearded, right from the pointyeared’ dungeon in the Mirkwood. They say that he made off with them straight from the throne hall.
It is a lie, of course.
And what about hundred years ago? At the time when Lugbuurth have got destroyed.
Is not two of your people have walked by Shelob on the Pass of Cirith Ungol in the Mountains of Shadow? One of them had so fondly treated the old woman, thus after that she did not live even to eighty years.
And who has entered the fortress of Cirith Ungol? By himself. He passed by the two Stone Watchers, as if they were house cats at a doorstep, but not the Guards, who have been bewitched by the Nazg-krimpatul.
Let alone that later no one alive have been found in this fortress.
There were two full ataghans - more than one and a half hundreds guys. And believe me, there were not some snagas, but the Uruugh, each and everyone. Shaghrat, Gorbagh - you can’t get such names for nothing!
So don’t tell me the tall tales here. “They don‘t have the Burglars“... But you have an enormous luck. We all can’t amass that much as what is given to you. In all these days you have walked so many times on death’s edge that it was enough for the whole my ataghan. From seventy guys I am only one alive, and only because you did not walk past me. I did not believe in all this stuff, when they were telling me all about your good luck. And now, after dealing with you, I know, only among yours people it’s possible to find a burglar like we are looking for. Anyone other will not do the job.
- But why me? - I have asked. - Me personally. Why?
- It‘s not about you, - Ghash shrugged the shoulders, - From the beginning we wanted to abduct nobody. Too many hassles. We wanted to employ somebody. Doesn’t matter who, he was needed not for a skill, but for a good luck.
I was in Bree, has stayed there for a whole last summer and a half of fall. How much beer I have drunk - ten our guys won’t drink so much in all their life! They won’t smell it even. I became fat, as a wild boar on a pasture, and all to no avail.
The fat-bellies were coming, but it was nobody to talk with. All conversations are about food and about prices on the market. I am offering silver to them, and they, as will hear that it needs to go somewhere further than Bree, at once turning their faces away, saying that silver is good, but is it possible to do the job somewhere close by. You will say: it is impossible - and that’s all conversation ends. It is not accustomed, they are saying, for a decent hobbit to be dragged to the other end of the world. And where you will find the indecent one?
I have met one in the autumn, very young looking, younger than spring grass. Such a chipper guy. You know him. You had walked on the shore together with him. He has Rohan’s name and the last name like "shaghu", only on your way.
- Brandybuck, - I said gloomy. Anywhere you spit - Teddy was already there! - Theoden Brandybuck.
- Exactly, - has confirmed Ghash, not paying attention to my gloominess. - I sat down at his table, and after few beers we began to talk. I said, would you, mister hobbit, be interested in some mischievous affair?
- Swine Teddy! - I have thought. - Has not mentioned even a half-word about it!
- And he answers me, - Ghash continued in the meantime. - And what is that affair?
I am whispering in his ear: "They say, hobbits are masters in breaking in. There is one door nearby. What about to walk to it? I am just looking for a company for that, and I would pay a good advance to a good master. And if somebody would give a hint to whom to turn with such delicate matter, I would reward him too.
I saw as an eager light has begun to shine in his eyes, but he regretfully looked at me, saying that he would love to, for he likes walks in a good company, but he did not come to the age, yet. If he will leave, his father will take away his inheritance. And there is nobody to recommend; such kind of employment is too rare in this region.
I, probably, would talk him into it, but he has been called. Obviously, his daddy has finished discussing his business with Butterbur. And then they have left.
In the tavern I asked people around; to whom by buying a beer, who wants to chit-chat - just start asking.
I have been told a lot about these Brandybucks: they are this and that…. Their grandfather in youths went somewhere up to the very Rohan. Absolutely indecent hobbits.
Well, I thought, to us he is just right. I have found out where they live, and have decided that in the spring we will take this Тhеоden, and then we will come to an agreement somehow.
- And what for you have taken me? - for some reason it very much angered me, that for a burglar was chosen not me, but Teddy.
Why Teddy is always the first? He is not better than me.
So what if his grandfather went up to the Rohan . And where has been my grandfather at this time? Side by side with his grandfather!
And it should be seen whose grandfather was more brave then, by the way!
Not to mention my grandfather Sam!
-It is my fault, - Ghash confessed - I have not told to Ghu-urghan after whom we are. I have thought that it’s no need to get into details.
A snaga is a snaga. Half of the ataghan is like him; for the first time went on the trek to get names to themselves.
I took him just for the heck of it, for not to get bored by crawling alone in there, on your river bank. If I would foreknow what kind of wood over there, I would pick up someone experienced. So, I have asked, who will go, and he was the first to volunteer. To me it would be not too tedious, and it’s good to him to get some experience in an uncomplicated affair.
We watched the household for a week.
The big household.
Some our farmers, looking on such things, would hung themselves from an envy. You even do not know from what side to approach: the dogs in size higher than owners are running everywhere. The paling is as in a good jail.
Workers by dozens are running here and there in the court yard. Evidently, that the master of the homestead is ill-tempered. It’s unthinkable to come close to the house in the afternoon, but at night it is even more dogs.
So a week has passed without result.
Then, lo and behold, our handsome has gathered buddies on the shore’s grass. For the first time for a whole week he has left a court yard.
A stroke of luck!
I said to Ghu-urghan : "We should take one of them. I will be on this side, you - on that". But I did not warn him not to get ahead of himself.
Your company already was preparing to leave, but an opportunity to take Theoden had never come about. All the time he had stayed with the others, got drunk as a skunk, but never stepped aside.
Suddenly I hear Ghu-urghan is giving a signal: the job is done. I was wondering what was going on? And he took you.
What was I to do with that? To kill you and to tell him that he is too smart for his own good?
It‘s my fault, the guy is trying to earn a name, going out of his limbs. I should explain to him the details.
On the other hand… Do we need a hobbit? Then here is the hobbit. What the difference - who? So it happened to be you.
- By the way, - I have told, hardly having listened to the end of this story, - my grandfather too... - and I unloaded about grandfather Peregrin everything that I have remembered from the Red Book.
Ghash sat blinking, bewildered, and with a slacken jaw.
- You are not lying? Aren‘t you? - he asked, when I stopped to take a breath. - Does not happen like this. Well, that both of you... Who would believe?
- Oh, yeah? - I was offended - You spoke here about Shelob and the Pass of Cirith Ungol in the Mountains of Shadow. To your information...
And I took up on the tale about Grandfather Sam.
All, from the beginning and up to the end.
It has finally done him in.
On the contrary, I have got keyed up, drawing on the ground for him a lineage tree of relations between Тooks, Brandybucks and Gamgies, explaining who the Thains of Shire are. Told about the invention of golf by Brandobras Took, here for some reason Ghash’s face has darkened slightly, and also told about many other things in the Red Book.
I do not know for how long I would go on, but he has interrupted me.
- Wait a minute, - he has told, - I have already understood, that of all guys, who I could choose in yours backcountry, you are the most suitable. That no matter how long I would be searching, I have found the best, and that guy, Teoden, he is nothing to compare with you.
Listen. I am an Uruuk-hai the Shaghrat of Shaghbuurth, my name is Ghash. And I am telling you we need the breaker in. Will you undertake this business? At your free will?
I hated to drag you around on the chain, but the importance of the mission did prevail.
And now, when you have pulled me out of the grave... I won’t force you. If you want to go home then go home. I cannot see you off up to doorsteps, but I will walk you to the Southern highroad. It is a straight road, you can’t get lost. We will find someone another to ourselves. We are patient people.
- Conditions? - I have asked.
Ghash again has opened his mouth. Then he closed the mouth. Then opened it again, and run into a state similar to which I have been shortly before that.
Seems, the idea of conditions of our agreement has never came into his head.
But in my opinion this is a normal thing. If you are hiring a hobbit for a dangerous and important work, then the first what is necessary to discuss is about conditions.
Besides I did not doubt at all that work will be important and dangerous; it should be a damn good reason, if seventy soldiers were got wasted for the sake of one person - me.
However, for some reason it seemed to me, that all this will be less dangerous, than the marriage to Nasturtia Furfoot, but, for certain, more fascinating.

Not every hobbit dreams of an Adventure. To tell without preambles, it is difficult to find such dreamer among hobbits.
Actually, it is impossible.
We love our small cozy Hobbiton and we do not have an aspiration to leave it.
And I am a very ordinary hobbit. If somebody in the Hobbiton would approach with the offer to become a burglar, I would only burst out laughing. It doesn’t matter who he would be: a hobbit or a Big Folk. I understand that Ghash was pretending to be the Big Folk, when talked to Teddy. He wouldn’t be drinking beer in Bree in orc’s outfit.
Even for Gandalf it would be hard to persuade me on such thing.
But now how can I just turn around and go back, given that I ended up in such unbelievable distances from the dear home and fate has brought me on other side of the Misty Mountains?
It is not that I felt I had not had enough of hardship in days of my captivity and in the subsequent days too. But that was the captivity and the despair of loneliness, and, at any rate, the captivity can be considered as the Adventure only when it will end. It is pleasant to recollect, but not to endure, and therefore it’s pleasant because it’s only a thought about the past.
My captivity, fortunately, has ended, and now I was free to choose roads by myself.
Since the road has got me so far, then why not to walk on it a bit more? The Bagginses are not better than the Тooks.You can consider my choice as a surge of Took’s blood.
The concept of making an agreement with the orc did not bother me at all.
It is not in the matter of distinction between Uruuk-hai and Orcs. Right now I know, that for Uruuk-Hai duty calls are above own life, and Orcs are appreciating only momentary aspirations of theirs capricious lust. The fact that they can be borne by one mother, as Ghash and Ghashur, changes nothing.
I did not know it then, and Ghash’s words that he is not an orc, but the Uruuk-hai were empty phrases to me. But I had happened to watch Ghash in different situations, and, believe it, or not, I liked him.
I began to like something in him in that an unimaginably far-away first day of my capture on the shore of a small lake in the wood.
Besides it became to me simply difficult to leave him: we are easily forgetting acts of kindness made to us, but we remember for a long time good deeds made by us, because they boost up our self-esteem. For me it was difficult to leave someone to whom I save the life, even if it came as involuntarily and not counted on.
But it wouldn’t be in hobbit’s custom to set on a farther journey and did not bargain out something for himself.
And it wouldn’t be in Took’s custom too. If the Adventure has destined to fall on me, what has happening to someone from the Tooks once in two generations, then why not to get some benefit from it?
Ultimately, all hobbits, known to me, who went through the Adventure, have got a lot from it.
Except for master Frodo Baggins, perhaps, but he was always somehow strange, or so they say. It was, probably, because he was spending too much time with wizards and Elves.
It is a known fact: tell me with whom you hang out and I will tell who you are. And the wizards are such… they are having their own agendas and care not about our little troubles…

We were writing the contract for the whole day.
First, Ghash did not want to write it at all , but I have insisted. Each part of the deal has been discussed long and in details, and Ghash, clapping himself on the thighs, was continually exclaiming:
-What it for? No, explain, what for you need to write it down? Is not it already apparent?
And I had to explain.
I can’t imagine how Uruuk -hai can do without written agreements.
Of course, they are often putting in writing what they had agreed on. But it does not mean anything, it obliges to nothing. For Uruuk-Hai such record is not a contract, but more likely a note, a record-reminder on what precisely they have agreed, because a very record for them is only a cause for further negotiations, explanations and contracts. Any agreement has never happened to be a final.
To me this is one of the odd peculiarities of Uruuk-Hai’s life.
Among them, if you wish to achieve something, it is absolutely essential to consider, continuously, a dozen of different opinions, even of those who, apparently, were not connected with your pursuit by any way. For the real Uruuk -Hai, I mean for the one, who was born and grown up in a buurth, this kind of skill comes naturally, as if it was absorbed with mother’s milk. They even did not think of it at all.
This rule has only one exception: the leaders of military groups, ataghans, seldom waste time on explanations and discussions.
More often at war you don’t have a time for it. Soldiers know it and trust the one who gives orders, especially if you take into consideration that they are choosing a commander by themselves.
But when an ataghan is just getting formed, its future leader will be into a lot of explanations what for he needs a squad.

Even now continues to amaze me a degree of Uruuk-hai’s trustfulness to "theirs kind", just as a degree of distrustfulness to "another's". Sometimes it seems to me that they do not comprehend at all how it is possible to have a deal with those who you do not trust.
Saying "trust, but be on guard" for them only mere words. The Uruuk-hai trust heedlessly to whom they consider as " theirs kind".
The most amusing that it is not too difficult to become of "theirs kind " for them.
To anyone who openly does not cause them harm, soon enough they start to relate as to "our guy" . Everyone, who has not demonstrated himself as "another," has an opportunity to become for them "theirs kind", which is extremely appealing for everyone who managed to know them closer. And I am not talking only about myself.
This trustfulness also distinguishes them from orcs.
But be wary to deceive this confidence.
For Uruuk-hai there is no crime more heinous then the deceit of trusted, therefore the "wolf’s" аtaghans ruthlessly and without remorse are slaughtering orc’s free gangs.
The pure orc, from Mordor for example, or any undisguised enemy can count on mercy. But here is no life for traitors, the one who became the orc at its own will. For them there is only death.
But with all that the Uruuk-hai themselves often enough are using trickery and all sidesteps.
At war. But this is the nature of the war - the tactics of deceit.
- "Enemies should be cautious, - once has told Ghash. - If you are an enemy to someone, then it is your responsibility to be on lookout and not to get yourself deceived. And if you have been deceived, then you have to blame only yourself. The enemy should be sly and mean ".
But, apparently, I again have going ahead of myself.

The drawing up of the contract took a lot of time.
Therefore we have decided to get under way on the next morning, and for now to sort out of what we have and better distribute a load between two of us.
Ghash spread out mine buurgha and shook out on it everything that was in Uragh’s harness.
It was a lot of stuff.
To my shame Ghash found half-a-dozen crackers in one of the bags. It was disappointing that for all these past days I did not bother to found time to look at what I was dragging.
If I would find these crackers earlier, all my story, maybe, would go on another way. But I did not found them.
On the other hand, I even did not look for it, what was probably all for the best.
Also two dozen of various tips for arrows and a box with feathers and three spare bowstrings have turned out.
Ghash chuckled with satisfaction and asked whether I am able to use a bow and was very much delighted, when I told him that I had been shooting from the bow and even hunting with it.
In addition an unfinished beech-bark cup with poison from which I almost got burned down had lain on the buurgha.
Ghash sniffed it, looked at me and declared that henceforth I shall use this stuff only under his personal supervision.
I said nothing, but to myself have thought that without an extreme need I will never put this muck in my mouth, with supervision or without it
On the buurgha were cups with multi-coloured clay for a war paint, and a familiar mitten with iron rim, - a "mole’s paw ", Ghash has explained to me, - and an empty bottle of shaghy, and many more various trifles: from coils of different threads with a set of needles up to those steel rings that Uragh has removed from big fingers before death.
Rings, as it has appeared, served not only to pull up a bowstring of bow and to direct an arrow, but also as a sparker.
Ghash has shown it right away by striking the ring on the right hand with the ring on the left - it gave a generous amount of sparks.
Also the tinder was stored here in a small leather bag.
Among others was a thin rope, more likely as a cord in my little finger’s thickness. Same that Ghash had been tying me up with. The cord was plaited in a thick braid, and turned out in length of almost twenty foots, when Ghash unraveled it.
- A Spider-thread, - has told Ghash, weaving it back into the braid, - There is such grass, very rare. Inside of its stalks are fibers, thin as a cobweb and as just the same strong. You can hang a mumak on this rope, and it won’t break.
A purpose of some other things that were left on the buurgha was unclear to me, like several wooden tubes and flat dishes, not simply tight covered, but also smeared with pitch around the cover, so that eliminates any holes.
Without any explanations Ghash took these things into his possession. When I have got affronted and demanded to tell me what is this for, he hesitated and then answered, that it is a “smoke”.
-To give a signal, - he hesitated a little more and added, - Or to smoke someone out. You don’t know how to use it, anyway, and to teach you takes a long time..
I have thought to myself that the smoke, probably, poisonous, and, as later it turned out, I was not mistaken.

Packing of all this goods has taken away some time too, mostly because Ghash was also explaining where and what should be stored, and why. Then he carefully adjusted shoulder belts to my height, forced me to jump a few times, and fiddled with some bag, which is, in his opinion, too loudly banging against my hip.
At the end he has shown the right way of folding a buurgha for being carried, and how to fasten it to belts on the top and on the bottom.
Also he gave me his buurgha, saying that it is lighter, and has taken mine.
We were ready to move on. But the sun already was about to roll behind the mountain peaks, and we took to the road on next morning.
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Old 04-14-2013, 03:38 PM   #29
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19.

The mountains. I’ll never love them. It is nice to admire them from a distance, especially during sunrise or sunset. At that time theirs gloomy majesty brings thoughts of eternity. The low sun, while going down, paints icy, wintry fangs of tops in all shades of red, from softest pink to dark-purple. The sun slowly moves and eternal glaciers are changing imperceptibly for an eye: pastel pink gradually turns into bloody-scarlet and crimson becomes almost black, nobly maroon in order that the tops of the mountains in the same subtle way could wrap themselves in a dark blue moiré of night.
At the sunrise a first timid glimmer appears at the very ends of the tops. It doesn’t give light to anything, because the sun is still far beyond the horizon, and this ray is only a harbinger of new day, but still it is not a declaration of that day. Stand still and rest your sight at this ray and you will see how hypnotizingly-slow the stained with blood fangs of the mountains creep out to light, moving apart darkness of the night. Look at them, do not tear your sight away and, maybe, you will get fortunate to catch that moment, brief, as a blink of eyelashes, when the blood will run down from the glaciers in violent streams, merging in neighboring gorges, and the pinnacles will blaze with blinding, dazzling-white light.
Now till the sunset they will be glowing above the world with its pure silvery, glassy and chilling armor, and indifferently watch how two-legged creatures, as tiny as grains on boots, are busily moving about under the feet of their massive monoliths, solving theirs also tiny business, as the real, not painted by sun, blood densely stains the ground. But what’s all for these unapproachable mountaintops? They won’t grow higher from such irrigation, nor will they dry up.
I like to look at the mountains during sunrise or sunset, but sometimes I am being visited by a strange feeling, that it is not the sun paints glaciers in red color, but it’s simply just thawed out blood that soaked these mountains for countless thousand years.

I like to look at mountains, but I hate to walk on them.
On sunny slopes as scorching hot, as on a frying pan, or as on grates of grill. The sun is like an executioner, who out of boredom ruthlessly amusing itself with driving in nails of the beams in the same point - in an unevenly pulsing spot on the right temple, just above the corner of the eye.
When the sun is having a rest, hidden behind clouds, all of the sudden from nowhere rushes an icy, damp wind. The air become so chilly, that teeth begin to ache just from one gasp and a frenzied-spitting cough would come up from the chest. Then the sun appears again, and you again start to feel like a chicken on the grate. A lame chicken.
Try to walk all day on the steep slope of the mountain and you will understand what I am talking about. All the time your left leg is above the right, and a step of it is shorter. You are painfully desperate to do even steps and put legs on one level, but it did not come well without a long time practice. You start to sway from side to side trying to put legs as straight as walking on tightrope. Eventually at some moment you will swing a bit more forceful than it is necessary, and it’s good if you will tip to the uprising side - you won’t fall too far… Or you will stumble over own leg - and you will have a painful nosedive.

Each step is getting more difficult as the sun is getting closer to zenith. By now for a quite while the soles of my feet were bruised and bloody. Each talus slope awakes a dull melancholy about soft, sandy paths around my house.
Also you begin to understand, why uruuk-hai were wearing heavy boots with a thickest outsole, and why in the bottom bag on a left shoulder belt are getting stored spare sole’s metal plates and nails. Feels like, you would get them out and attach straight on your own heels to give legs several moments of relief.
Sweat, caustic, as acid with which Waymeet’s smith removes scale from horseshoes, eats out eyes for already a long time, and they see, if anything at all, just a spot of a grey fur on an unremittingly swaying back ahead of me. Not greens of grass, nor blue of the sky or whiteness of clouds, it is only the grey as a stone swaying spot.
Sweat is still pouring, getting in the eyes, and in order to see something, at least even this grey spot, I constantly have to wipe it away. But the sweat is not stopping, and it is nothing to do but simply to close eyes and go on a sound, because all day long the grey back is droning in undertone the same over and over again and after having finished, at once starts to repeat anew. Words of a hoarse voice fall down under the feet, and their meaning is terminally fusing into a consciousness, like a nazgul sword dropped into a soft from underground heat stone on a slope of Mount Doom.

Under battered heels of our boots
Marshes, sands or a path in the woods,
Stones of mountains that reach for the sky,
Grass of fields, where the wind freely flies.

We can look at the sun not just once,
But it gives all its warmth not to us.
Unafraid to be harmed by the light,
Still we move through the darkness of night.

We were looking in lands far away
For our destiny, our place to stay.
We were walking on many footpaths,
Where kids are being frighten with us.

We didn’t find our land West and East
Everywhere being chased like beasts.
Heavy boots threading dust on the roads
Bear eons of fruitless search loads.

There is no sign of where else to go,
Where to find other way, other road,
But eventually we will discover that path
To the land that is retained to us.
Under battered heels of our boots…

And so on day after day. Day after day. You start to feel like you are going crazy, because only a madman can voluntary subject himself to these tortures. But blessed nights come between those days. You are collapsing on a spread out buurgha and drifting off even while falling, oblivious to almost nothing. Only a pungent smell of black ointment disturbs nostrils and someone's careful fingers softly tickle your foot. At some time in the morning you are discovering that legs are densely redressed with the rests of my sackcloth wear, that the bottom of the wolf’s west became shorter and there is a pair shaggy leather loafers with rope tie-ups next to you.
From a tiny campfire is wafting out the smell of fried bird, forcing a stomach to constrict spasmodically from delight and anticipation. The half of a mountain pigeon, dripping with juice, baked in coals and torn by hands, a cracker, water from a mountain stream, a mouthful of the ent’s draught before setting off, and a new day is beginning…
Somehow, suddenly, you notice that sweat does not eat eyes any more, and you even not perspiring as much, as before, that feet are walking softly, and your eyes see not only grass and sky, but also places where is better to put a foot. Where there should be a pride of hobbit, a tummy, there is a waist, and the waistline belt should be tightened up, but shoulder belts, to the contrary, should be adjusted on a longer length. The skin, exposed to the wind, and darkened whether from the sun or from dirt, became rough and not afraid any more of neither heat, nor cold, and under it on thighs became visible a twine of muscles, hard and as taut as strung ropes.
Only Ghash’s song does not change. One time, at a night halt, I have sung to him " The Road goes on ". Ghash has approved the song, but told that it is too sad for a trekking, and still continued on humming the "Road of Uruuk-hai". To be honest, to me it does not sound more cheerful. Later I learned that this song has been written by a well-known wise orc’s folklorist and bard Gimbagh.
-Listen, Ghash, - I asked in his back on I do not know what day of our march. – Where are we going?
-Everything in its own time. - has answered Ghash, stopping to sing, but not turning around. – Under the heaven there is a time for every task. When the time comes, you will know.
-Why not to tell now? – I was affronted. – Am I the Burglar, or not? Should I know where is that door which, by the way, I have to break in?
- What for? – Ghash waved away. – At the door you will see where it is. But how to get there is not your problem.
- Mine, - I firmly answered. – Are we a team or not?
Ghash has stopped so suddenly, that from unexpectedness my nose bumped into his back, looked at me top down and said:
- Is it not enough that we have the contract with you? I can tell you where we are going, but you might run away.
- What for? - his doubts have made me laugh. – I did not run away till now, I am not planning on it any more. Earlier I was intending to do so, because it was so oppressive to me. Were you planning on to wear me out?
- O, yeah, you will tire out. - grinned Ghash. – I was just checking you up on toughness. A long and hard road lies ahead for us. - and he derisively sung: -

“In a Black desert
At the midst of black sand
The Tower blackens
To scare everyone”.
-- To the Black desert? - I asked again.
He nodded, and I became terrified. – To the Mordor?
- I do not like words of Pointyeared, - frowned Ghash. - To the Black Country. Why you are turning pale?
- You are mistaken, - I told firmly. – If to the Black Country, then to the Black Country. I have dreamed for a long time to take a look at it. My grandfather was there, and I was not. So, and I, too, shall visit. What we will be looking for?

- Sit down, - said Ghash instead of the answer, - anyway we have stopped. Let’s not uselessly tire legs. The rest. - and he has thrown off and unfolded the buurgha without waiting for me. – Come on, sit down ... You are asking what we shall look for? We will rummage around cellars. Nobody now lives there.
Hundred years ago, during the war, an eruption of Mountain Doom has happened. Whole city of Lugburz was buried under ash. Only the Tower of the Red Eye still sticks out, but there is a possibility to get into a city’s underground through it. All vaults in there are connected, and we need to get precisely into these vaults.
- And what for? - I asked, carefully pushing deep down my fears. - What is there? Gold?
- Gold? – Ghash was surprised. - It is Bearded who are ready to get into a dragon’s mouth for the sake of gold. Maybe, it is there. I do not know. Should be. A treasury was, too, somewhere in the underground vaults. The city, they talk, was buried in two days. Should not be enough time for plunder, because, simply, there was nobody to do it. It was such air during eruption, that half of living creatures in a desert have got expired. I am not even talking about dwellers of small villages. We will find the gold in there, if it is so important to you. But we are looking for something different.
- Don’t drag your feet, - I became angry. –Why you are beating around the bush? What shall we look for?
- Books, - Ghash simply answered
- Books? - I asked again. - Magic?
- Who needs that magic! – Ghash waived away. – A good blade could be made without any magic. The magic is a toy for the Pointyeared. But even with it they have finished badly in that war. No, there are other books.
-What kind of?

Instead of the answer Ghash pulled out of a sheath his kughri.
- You see, - he said. - This is not mine blade. It only belongs to me. And the buurgha is not mine. And clothes. And wives, all six, are not mine. A house, back there in the north, everything in the house – all of this is not mine. It only belongs to me, because all of this can be taken away and possessed. Believe me, on this account our people have an extensive experience. Do you know what is impossible to keep hold of?
- No, - I shook my head, not understanding what he is drawing to.
- It is impossible to keep hold of that I know, - Ghash answered the question. – You cannot retain my skills and knowledge, it is impossible to possess my feelings and my experience. It is my life and it cannot be own.
- But you can be killed, - I objected.
- I can be killed, - Ghash easily agreed. – But it is impossible to have my life. The one, who kills me, will get neither my knowledge, nor my thoughts. He won’t get my life. I can pass what I know, I can tell about my feelings and memoirs. I can teach what I am able to do myself. I can share the experience of my life. I won’t become poorer from it. Knowledge, skill, feeling, memoirs – it is all the experience of life. It’s only ours, without any leftovers. It cannot be taken away. For it we pay any price, regardless of what the destiny would demand from us. It is impossible to refuse this payment.

- And books? - I have reminded.
- Books... - Гхажш sighed. - The city of Lugburz stood for many thousand years. All this time it’s been inhabited with sometimes more population, sometimes less, but still inhabited. All this time they were writing books.
The shaghbuurth has lived in Isengard for only sixty years. Or the whole sixty quiet years without a constant watch of the horizon: whether murderers from Rohan are coming? Without scrutinizing the greens of bushes: whether a pointyeared is hiding? Without pinning ears back in darkness trying to perceive whether the iron of bearded rattles?
There were many books in Isengard, but ten thousand uruukh were lost under roots of the wandering woods, and now it is a swamp on the place of Isengard.
We extricated these books from mud one by one. By a page. By a half-page. Up till now they are digging and diving in there. The books are almost impossible to read. But someday we will read all of them. We are of patient types.
So, what we have to do until then? It is bad, when children learn about the past of their ancestors from songs of these, who has killed their fathers. There is a book-depository in Lugburz. Nobody knows how many books in there, but they were collected through thousand years. There is the past of all Middle-earth. There is an experience of hundreds generations lived before us. Not only of Orcs, but of People too, and of Pointyeared, and of Bearded. There should be their books too. We need those experiences, because we are young nation, and we have to learn everything anew.
- Are you sure, that there is no lie of the Dark Lord in these books? - I asked.
- Certainly, it is there, - he agreed easily. – Do you know how the word "Lugburz" translates on Westron? The Dark Place, or the Realm of Undead. In general it is the ground where they live and reign according to their rules. How else to name a buurth governed by nine undead? It is a lot of lie in those books, falsehood and evilness, but not in all of them.
There are also other books. We have some, and there is many in Gondor’s book-depositories... There are songs. Legends. Tales. We will compare and we will assess. We will filter them word by word. We will try all of them... The useful we will keep.
- And do you need me just for the sake of it? - I asked.
- Yes, - he answered. - For the sake of it. I am familiar with the book about the Ring. I read it in Gondor, in a royal book-depository. Two guys from your folks have reached the Mountain Doom and did something that nobody believed in. You, probably, yourself do not know about it, but your kinds have a capability to do unbelievable things. The things in which nobody have a faith. As well as my kinds are capable too…
Once old women of several orc’s buurths came to Isengard, where was resided the White wizard Saruman – the leader of the five great mayar, who came to Middle-earth to contest Sauron and to remove the remains of his sorcery, and have made an agreement with him.
For sixty years we bought and stole little girls, raised them up and gave in marriage to our men. Nobody, except for us, believed that something good will come out of this idea. Even the White wizard.
But the old women were persistent; they did not abandon what they have begun. Before dying they have found those who agreed to carry on the task. For sixty years all babies, who resembled orcs more, than people, were being killed. Girls sometimes are getting killed even now. And still we are kidnapping and buying too.
For these sixty quiet years we have given ten thousand lives to the White wizard when he has asked. And five times more lives were lost in Isengard, when the Wandering woods had come. Only a few hundreds families have managed to flee.
But we have achieved what we wanted. We won’t become elves once again, but we have destroyed the magic of the First Liar. Now each of us can choose who to be: orc or uruuk-hai. This campaign is a small possibility for our people to become better. Very small. Because on this way it is much easier to die, than to walk to the end, and let alone to return. But we have got used to fight the death.

When he finished this speech, I was silent long for a long time. Very long. So long, that twilight had time to get condensed into nightfall. I was mulling about it.
Ghash did not disturb me in my thoughts. He was busy with an accommodation for the night.
-Ghash, - I asked, finally. - What is in there for you? Why you want to become like people? Why all of a sudden orcs want to turn into people?
- Not suddenly, - easy answered Ghash, continuing to kindle sparks in a small earthen depression fenced by stones. -Do you know, why elves hate orcs so much?
- They consider them evil, - I shrugged shoulders.
- Aha. And they are pure goodness, - has grinned Ghash. - They hate them because can see into who can turn a noble Firstborn. Because the orcs are their descendants. As well as I am. The Elves eternally proud of being the Firstborn, as if it makes them better than others, born after them. They consider as The Great anyone who carries even pair drops of their blood. As the present king of Gondor. But in orcs flows the same blood, as in elves... Orcs - a malicious First Liar Morgoth's mockery of the elves pride. The First Liar knew what he was doing; he himself is full of self- conceited arrogance and does not take lightly his own derogation.
- And people?
- People, and only them, are creation of Eru – The Impartial One, no matter what elves fibs you have heard.
They have the Gift of Eru – the right to create the world at their own discretion. They decide for themselves who they will be and for that they will pay with their lives.
Because Good and Evil are not outside, they are inside of us, and though all your life you have to separate them and decide which side you are on. All the others... orcs, elves, dwarves…are false notes in the chorus of Ainur.
For that reason we wish to become people.
Lie and Death will not disappear from the world up to the end of the time. And up to the end of the time they will be at war with Truth and Life. But in this war we want to make choices by ourselves
- But what about me? - I exclaimed with despair. – I am a hobbit!
- So what! - smiled Ghash.- If all would be as sad, as you have now thought, Orcs could never become Uruuk-hai. It is not blood what matters, but the Road which you have chosen. Simply you have to go on proving with all your life that the Gift of people is intended for you too. As well as me. As well as any of us. That's all.

Last edited by Olmer : 04-14-2013 at 03:54 PM.
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Old 10-23-2013, 11:59 PM   #30
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20.

For the following few days we almost seldom talk.
What to talk about, when all has been said? Only once Ghash told me that it is time for us to descend from the mountains and to veer to the east, into a steppe, to bypass the southern borders of Lothlorien. He called it the Golden wood.
Gradually between us was established a division of labor, what always happens to travelers on a long journey. The provision of food was laid down on Ghash shoulders, while I was engaged with its preparation and arrangements for lodging for the night.
Thought, from the beginning Ghash was making a fire by himself, not trusting me in such delicate business.
The trick is that neither fire, nor smoke should be visible. For this purpose the fire is set up in an earth pit connected with a shallow groove, therefore a flame is not visible and through the groove the air is flowing directly to the fire. For an achievement of the absence of smoke, the firewood should be of dry brushwood or of wind-fallen trees. If all was done properly, such fire is possible to detect only if you are being close by, or by the smell, or if the wind blows from your side.

At first we did not have any difficulties getting the firewood because close to the mountains the steppe was dotted with small groves, where we were usually having stopovers for the night.
We were stopping before dark: Ghash told me that we don’t have to exhaust ourselves without an extreme need.
After having chosen a place for a halt, he was dumping his harness and, having taken a bow, would go on hunting and search of water, leaving me to care of firewood and a shelter. The bow and arrows, whether it was of a maple, or of ash, were made by Ghash way back in the mountains. This bent stick with a bowstring is hardly reminded a fighting weapon of orcs, and the arrows were flying haphazardly, each in its own way, but quickly enough he has got a feel for it, learned to shoot a groundhog from thirty steps away with the makeshift bow and almost never came back without a game.
To my surprise, groundhog meat has appeared not just edible, but even tasty, kind like fat chicken meat.
- Why wonder, - answered Ghash, when once I have expressed this surprise aloud. - The groundhog is not a pig, won’t eat any dung, therefore the meat is tasty.
I took a little offense for the pig because in Tookborough we have never feed the pigs with "dung", and bacon, in my opinion, is quite a good food.

On one occasion I uttered my regret that rusks have been finished for already a long time ago. Ghash declared a halt for a day. He went away in the morning, having taken both bags for rusks storage, from which we have already shaken out even rusk’s dust. By noon he came back with bags full of unfamiliar to me wild cereal grain.
- "Have dug out a groundhog’s hole ", - he explained and showed a former owner of these stocks.
The rest of the day was spent on crushing of the grain and making flat pancakes.
It is not an easy job, I should say, when there is not even a small hand mill at hand, and grain should be crushed with kughri in linden bowl hastily made by Ghash. Instead of flour it came out as a coarsely pulverized mix of grains with fine shavings of a wooden bowl, and flat cakes turned out dry and fragile. But tasty. Especially with a soup made from the groundhog and a handful of those same grains and some herbs.
Ghash contrived to cook the soup in a big birch-bark cup, like the one in which I have been given a grassy broth at the beginning of my captivity. We both had such cups.
I thought that the cup will burn down in the fire, but nothing happens. The cup, filled with water up to the rims, stood in the middle of fiery heat, cheerfully gurgled, splashing boiling water on glowing coals, and was having no intention to get singed. Only it became heavily covered with soot. It was so delightful to drink a piping hot, thick potage after so many days of dry meals!

In general, we did not starve. My tummy, truthfully, has not grown again, but I grew fairly taller and became wider in the shoulders. Not just I have had such unexpected revelation, but Ghash also has been greatly surprised by the consequences of the use of ent‘s draught. The drink itself has ended back in the mountains, but its action has not stopped at all. Both of us were growing quite quickly enough, it could be noticed by many small changes.
- I don’t understand, - Ghash told me on one occasion, taking off his boots in the evening and examining calloused feet. – I had to extend belts, then the wolf vest became too constrictive, and now my boots began to rub.
When I told him about the ent's draught aftereffect, he was surprised and complained that at home nobody will recognize him and now he has to sew anew all his clothes.
But, seemed to me, he was not too saddened by it.
Eventually, he had to remove his boots, but they happened to fit me almost right.
However, it took some time for me to learn how properly to wrap the feet with pieces of fabric, intended to absorb sweat and to protect legs from being chaffed. Two spare pairs of these cloths were, too, in Uragh’s inheritance. One evening spent in training under Ghash supervision, a few stops next day on the trek - and I ceased even to think about it.
On a long journey you are learning basic essentials quite fast.
To himself Ghash has made loafers from groundhog’s skins, like the one he has made for me in the mountains.


And so we were continuing to walk in a north-east direction. When we walked far enough from the mountains, and entered a dry, devoid of any trees steppe, we moved a little to the north, closer to Сelebrant-river because trees and small groves grew along its riverbanks. But we did not come very close to the river, kept walking at a visible distance from it, because Ghash was worried about Lorien’s pointyeared.
-They say the pointyeared now are not like in the days of old. - He told me.
– Not many of them remain in here, and seldom they are getting out of the wood, especially on this side of the river. But I do not want to get a poisoned arrow in my back from some unforeseen idiot. It is impossible to go to the south now, the horse-eaters are happening to frequent these areas. We won’t be able to get away from them in the barren steppe.
So, we had to steal along a shrubby border of river-plain and a dried up field.
When we finally bypassed an enormous vastness of glooming on the other side of Celebrant woods, and moved quite a distance away from it, only then we came close to the shore and started to walk along the river. It was convenient because in these areas Сеlebrant flows almost precisely to the east.

When the tops of the elf’s woods totally disappeared behind the horizon, Ghash announced that further down we will sail.
-We still will have enough time to get a footsore, - he said something like that. - Slow sailing is better than fast walking. If water flows, so let it work for us.
I was not wild about this idea. I am not of those hobbits that are afraid even to approach the water. In Hobbiton we, Tooks, have a reputation of reckless heads. But, anyway, wherever it had been seen to use water instead of a pony? I do not know anybody from hobbits, except for Brandybucks, of course, who would have the guts to do such things.
I argued a little with Ghash, giving him a lot of sensible, in my opinion, reasons why it is better for us to go on foot, but Ghash only chuckled and asked:
- Are you planning to cross the Great River by foot too?
I did not find a good argument on it, and had to give in.
After all, both my grandfathers were travelled by boats, and nothing had happened to them. Though, they sailed on elven creations, but you could hardly call a boat the thing that Ghash has constructed. It would be better identified as a bundle of cane and brushwood.

The whole day was spent on its manufacturing. I participated in the work as helping-hands: give, bring, cut off, remove…and other tasks which did not require any skills and brains. All important work Ghash was doing by himself - that is to tie up sheaves.
Whole boat was made from different size bales of cane sheaves. Only for the bottom Ghash used thin sheaves of brushwood and willow rods.
- For the strength, - he explained.
The work, indeed, was challenging because in the end it has turned into something really looking like a boat, more likely as a canoe, twelve feet in length and three of widths. Then, with a double cord we have tugged the ends of the boat-bundle closer to each other, so it got curved, like a bow, inserted stretchers-stick between cords, and fitted both sewed together buurgha over this entire thing .
From outside Ghash coated them with that greasy war-paint clay and a rough overlapped seam on which I had to work for a half-day, he covered especially carefully not only outside, but from inside as well. He has used all paint.
He also was not too lazy to shoot another groundhog in order to melt its fat and to smear the seam with it one more time.

When we have put this construction on the water, to my surprise, it has not gone down and started to rock lightly on a surface of the river. From far away you would take this brushwood bundle for a real boat, for you can't see that the bottom of a boat made of cane and brushwood, and it has fabric sideboards. The main thing - the boat not only kept afloat on the water itself, but also assuredly held both of us.
All first day when we were sailing on it, I had been quite fearful. I even was afraid to get into it, to say nothing of to travel by it. But the Burglar cannot shake with fear in front of the employer. I had to pretend of being brave, and I did not regret it. The boat did not sink, nor overturned and even did not leak the water. Almost.
I wouldn't say that in a day we were covering a distance greater than what we were used to cross by foot before. The current of Celebrant was not fast, and Ghash did not risk without oars, just with a push pole, to depart far from the riverbank, but now everyday's journey was taking less efforts for us. I even started to get some enjoyment from a lulling sway on the waves and an idle observation of slowly passing by shores.
We have crossed Anduin on this "boat"! Though, it did not come easy because it is a small pleasure to row with a "mole's paw ". The wind was blowing over Anduin making waves almost above the boards of our boat, and gave me enough of worries.
I sighed with relief when I felt a hard ground under my feet, but Ghash only chuckled and began to remove buurghas and cords.
- This is it - he said,- now up till Mirkwood we have to hide from nobody. The horse-eaters are not getting over to this shore.


But carelessness is a costly pleasure.
The steppe is deceptive, especially near the river, it only looks like empty. I'm not talking about all kinds of living creatures that in abundance dwell near the water.
It is not animals that are dangerous to lonely travelers. It is people.
We were walking on the bottom of a huge, extending for many miles ravine. Ghash have chosen this way because at this time of the year sun did not, yet, dry out a streamlet flown in a gulley.
Whether by miracle the stream has got preserved since spring snowmelt, whether it was a messenger of a creek from somewhere in a distant upper part of the ravine, for us the main thing was that we were not wasting our time on search of water, which is hard to find in a steppe during summer. Besides slopes of the ravine were covered with a dense growth of brushwood, which gave us a shade and a place for a lodging for the night.

But the same ravine, so pleasant for traveling, turned out into a trap for us.
The main ravine was branching out into a set of small flood gullies, and we just bypassed one of such, when behind us we heard a long and shrill whistle, and same predatory sound has answered up ahead.
- Upwards, - at once has ordered Ghash. - Upwards of the slope.
We were blindly breaking through the thicket without any concerns of being heard or not.
- Faster! - Ghash hurried me. - Faster, we should get there before them.
On the top edge of the ravine he has toppled me down on the ground and uttered in a hot faltering whisper in my ear:
- Go back to the river along the upper rim of the ravine, not along the very edge, but like twenty steps away from it. If anything - jump in a gully or run into the steppe, but not too far, or you might get lost. Better hole up somewhere. At the river go to the place where we have left the remnants of the boat, I shall find you there.
- Who is this? - I whispered to him.
- I do not know, - he has answered. - An unfamiliar whistle. But it is a lot of them. Go, no time for explanations.

And we have got separated. Me - to the west, him - to the east.
Pursuers, that were chasing us in the ravine, I have bypassed easily. They whistled, shouted at a whole might, trampling the brushwood...
When a noise came closer, I laid low in a high grass, but no one showed up at the top of the ravine.
After having waited for a little while, I resumed on moving further, but within a short time my way got blocked with that shallow flood gully that we recently passed by, and I was too lazy to go round about it, for it was stretching away as far, as I could see.
Having gone down in the flood gully, I have looked around, but the little you can make out in dense bushes.
Besides, the simplicity with which I managed to deceive the pursuers made me careless. I am a hobbit. And who can find the hobbit in such impassable brambles? And who else can steal as silently as he is?
I have thought so then. But such self-assurance is always getting punished. There are no exceptions to this rule.

Someone's powerful paws grabbed my ankle bones with a painful squeeze, I have got a hard push below my back, and sprawled out on the ground entirely covered with damp last year's leaves. Half a second later someone's overly heavy butt got landed on my back.
It has happened so quickly that I even had no time to utter a scream. Besides, the weight which has fallen on me, has squeezed out all air from my chest.
I have tried to turn a head, but the nape got clasped with rigid fingers and my face got shoved deep into rotted leaves. It looked like the one who held me did not feel my resistance at all. The heavy weight on my back was moved a little lower, and I felt as the wrist of the right hand has got squeezed as if in a vice. My arm was twisted behind my back, but the nape, thus, was still in a firm hold.
I could not breathe, let alone to resist or fight back.
- Another one, - croaked a rough whisper. - The second hand, filth, or I will break up this one!
It was easily believed in such threat.
The right hand crackled and cracked, and it seemed a little more and an elbow will touch my nape. I obediently have brought my left hand to the back and the fingers that held my head, have released me.
I raised my head and inhaled, but didn't have time to exhale because deftly, as if by itself, a rope got winded twice around my neck. Then the rope has entangled wrists, stretched out - and I have got tied up in a very uncomfortable position. Any movement of the twisted and tied up behind my back hands was pulling a loop on the neck.
The one who sat on me has got up and by grabbing my hair, easily, without any efforts, put me up on my legs.
- You won't hide in bushes from a woodsman!

I was amazed by his look. I have never seen anybody like him, did not even imagine that such as he could exist.
He was as wide as he was tall. A mocking expression like this one is often used to describe dwarves - they are very wide for their stature. Only this one was of Uragh's height, but much heftier, harder and wider in the shoulders. Next to him Uragh would be looking fragile.
Also, one more thing has astounded me: his naked to the waist body, overlaid with rough layers of muscles, was entirely covered with curly, chestnut colored hair.
On short thick hands the dense curly hair rose from wrists to shoulders, and then, turning to a rough brush, extended to a chest and a stomach. Later I saw that the back is looking just the same.
But if on his arms and chest through all hairs could be seen a swarty skin, then his face was overgrown up to the eyes without any glints. Only a small part of the cheeks, a nose and a low forehead above growing together eyebrows have been open. I guess that his ears were the same hairy, but on both sides of the head two thick braids with colored strings in them were hanging down up to the chest, therefore I did not see the ears.

The Hairy with one hand pulled up my tied together wrists, so at once I took a position so memorable since vaults of Barrow-downs, with the second he picked up a kughri from the ground and dragged me to a junction of ravines. In there another one was waiting, same powerful, hairy, short-legged and short-armed.
He was leaning on his spear, which was also short, hardly above his height, but a shaft was of such thickness and a spearhead of such length and width, that's just the look of it was prompting a respect.
They have conferred about something on unfamiliar to me grumbling language, and then the first one seized me by the belt and the vest and has thrown up across the wide shoulders. I had a feeling that he simply is not noticing my weight.
At first, with me on the shoulders, he ran downwards the main ravine, and then sharply, as if he has seen something, turned on a slope to the left .
He was going uphill skillfully and quickly, not touching any branches and without the crackle of the dead wood under his feet.
Even me, the hobbit, have envied his skill to move so silently in this intertwine of branches with a cargo on the shoulders in addition.
The hairy was sliding between the bushes, as if he was on very familiar, but invisible to an outsider, road.
When he has stopped, I did not understand outright - why, but a slight breeze, which has blown along the ravine, has brought a barely perceptible smell of smoke, and I have guessed that they have a lodging nearby.

It has appeared to be directly in front of me. Only an inexperience in such things has prevented me to notice it right away because the dwelling of the hairies was hidden, quite negligently, from accidental eyes, but not from the one who looks for it.
When a woven door has opened, I understood that a long hillock, extending along a slope, is their dwelling.
It was something like a hobbit's smeal covered by turf, only was more roughly made. From under the turf were sticking out intertwining rods, bear a resemblance of the tree-earthen uruuk-hai's strengthening, but this hairy did not look like an uruuk-hai, let alone the hobbit.
He dragged me into a cool twilight and carelessly dropped down on an earthen floor.
On the right side, a little light was coming through covered by rods small windows and, when my eyes gradually have got used to the dusk, I could look around.
The dugout was long, an earthen elevation, like a stove bench, carved, probably, directly out of the slope and covered with pelts was stretching along the left wall. In the middle there was a row of columns propping up a ceiling. The fireplace, the smoke of which I had sensed, was deep inside on the right, and before it on an elevation sat, warming up, someone huge and shaggy, who in a twilight was looking like a bear.
The Hairy dragged my half-suffocated body to the center, unbuckled my belt and turned me on a stomach. The rope became looser and right away I could breathe easier, but the feeble hands were hanging down.
He ripped off my marching harness from my shoulders and threw it aside. With a jerk he put me up on my feet, forced to embrace a column and once again tied up my wrists, but this time he did not put a loop on my neck.


So I stood, hugging a column and looking at the fire.
The one, who was warming up at the fireplace has turned to me shaggy face with grey streaks in chestnut hair, deafly coughed and said in a hoarse guttural voice:
- What will you say, oroc?
- I am a hobbit, - peeped I, or rather have tried to peep. The voice, which still has not gotten over from an acquaintance of mine throat with a loop, was hoarse.
- I don't care, - the shaggy smirked , - To me is no difference how you are nicknamed. I don't need to know yours dog calls. Will you talk? Or should we burn the iron?
- I am not Orc, your kindness, - finally I have cleared a throat, - Vainly for you to consider me an orc .
- Not the Orc? - the shaggy noticeably cheered up. - Then I am a Rohan horse. You should lie better, and to us to listen will be more entertaining. Right, Born?
- Ugu, - the hairy grumbled behind my back .
- If you are not the orc, - continued the shaggy, - than who? But I'll say right away - lie amusingly that should look like a truth because otherwise it will be boring . If you will amuse us with your lies, then with listening to you we woun't get to an iron for a quite some time. If you please us with a good and entertaining tale, then we, maybe, even will set you free. Right, Born?
- Ugu, - Born hooted again .
- Your kindness, I am telling you I am not an Orc! - I pleaded with him. - The hobbit is not my name and not a nickname. It is how our people are getting referred to - the Hobbits. I am the hobbit from the line of the Tooks! Our kindred is known even in Gondor.
- Again a coin for honey, - the shaggy sighed. - You are bad fibber. I have never heard about any hobbuts. Gondor added up... Gondor has never cared about any orc's clans. You are lying badly .
- But I am talking not about the orc's clans, - I was trying to persuade him. - My people are not hobbuts, but the Hobbits .. And my grandfather, Peregrin Took, was the knight of the Royal Guards of Gondor.
- Pe... What? - the shaggy asked again and laughed so loudly that my column got vibrated. - What nicknames they are giving! Too embarrassing even to say it around women . - Learn, Born. He is telling lies so brazenly that honey goes sour, and he does not even blush. Guess, he himself believes in it. I told you, oroc, lie amusingly .
- Your kindness, - I cried in despair. - How many times I have to tell you ! I am not an orc! Our people are Hobbits, and in Gondor they call us halflings .
- Halflings, - thoughtfully said the shaggy. - In childhood I heard a fairy tale about a halfling. But, again, it is a disagreement in your story. According to the fairy tale those halflings dwell far away from this land, behind the Misty Mountains. To get to there takes not one month. Also, do you know, why are they called halflings? Because they are exactly half the height of normal humans, you, although, short, but still are up to my shoulder and not to my waist. Your height is just right for orcs. Even if your face is not of the orc-like, you have orc's weapon and clothes. If you are a halfling, then how come you turned up in this area?
- Not by my own will. - I answered and faltered. Why "not by my will"? In this territory - for sure by my own will.
- Ugu...- the shaggy drawled. -We were watching you from the very river and it was not looking like you were dragged by your companion. Besides, what kind of captive goes around with a weapon? You are lying through your teeth, deary.
- Born, - he said suddenly with voice from which I got goosebumps in size of a field mouse.
- Where is the second one?
- They were divided, - answered Born. - This one was alone.
- Here you see, - lazy and relaxed notes have disappeared from the shaggy voice. - Who is getting from an ambush separately with the captive? Born, prepare him. We have chatted, had fun, it is time for a real interrogation.
Harsh fingers seized a collar of woolf vest, yanked and a durable leather fell apart as if rotten. I was staying almost naked.
- What a life I am having, - I have thought gloomily. - Again to the pole, again will be a torture, and I, yet, have not forgotten the last time.

At this instant the door in the dugout swung open, and the crowd of half-naked and shaggy hulks barged in.
At once it became noisy and crowded.
Two of the newcomers dragged up to the center up a lifeless Ghash's body, as if a sack with an oat, and dropped it with a bloodied face up next to my column.
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Old 01-08-2014, 02:05 AM   #31
Olmer
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Join Date: Mar 2004
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21

- Eat, Halfling, eat! The first thing to a soldier on march is to eat till you will get satiated. Eat, do not be shy" - Shaggy was persuading me as groom's parents would cajole a shy future bride at an introductory dinner.
Don't know why he was bothering with it.
What hobbit would refuse food? Maybe just that same shy bride, and even she would do it only once.
I was not the least bit shy and was enthusiastically scarfing everything to what my hands could reach.
And they could reach for a lot of stuff!
In front of us on an old coarse canvas sat down abundant gifts of the gruff but generous hospitality.
Salted pork fat, tender, pinkish - white, with red thin streaks of meat, it was so tender andmelting on the tongue, that Cottons with their bacon would become green with envy.
And smoked sturgeon from the upper Anduin. There are no words to describe it! Before I used to think nothing can taste better than trouts from our Stockbrook...
And prairie bustard's eggs in size bigger than my fist, baked in the sand under the fire, brown with irregular black spots on a shell, cracked from the heat of a campfire .
And a lot of other varieties of simplier food.
From the pile of laying in front of me vegetable roots and greens I was able to recognize only bright red heads of radish and a purple peeled onion. Both in a size of a good apple, but with a taste sweeter than of some apples.
And here was the bread. The real tasty bread, not throat - scratching hiking crackers of Uruuk-hai. Its smell alone was bringing the home on my mind and chasing away a fatigue accumulated over many days of the trekking. This, an unusually colored gray loaf, weighing approximately twelve pounds, was cut in thick, soft slices.

Also from the common pot they brought to me and Ghash a deep wooden bowl with soup and two, also wooden, spoons.
The size of the bowl has a dimension of a kitchen washbowl at home.
I gave a belch and had thought that we together with Ghash won't manage to eat it all, because it was no space in the stomach anymore. But the soup smelled so homely great, it had such amazingly attractive ruby-red color with gold spangles of fat floating on the steaming surface, that I could not resist taking a spoonful. And then another one. And another one.
Ghash was not far behind: when there is a possibility, one uruuk-hai eats for three hungry hobbits.
When we finally finished off the soup, we even did not have a time to say " thanks", as in front of us has appeared barbecued, smoky, piping hot pieces of some prairie game's meat on the ribs.
Slowly we were chewing it , savoring and sucking soft, bendable ribs and licking our daubed with juice and fat fingers.

Frankly, I did not gorge myself like this since the day of the memorable binge drinking on Brandywine's shore.
Unfortunately there was no beer. Neither - dark or light . Nothing.
It was honey-mead instead of the beer, transparent-yellow, viscous and sweet, and, as the honey supposed to be, without any herbs so commonly used by Uruuk-hai.
But the catch was still there.
When I took a sip from an offered to me wooden cup, I suddenly realized that the world around, attractive as it is, became really quite merry and joyful, and the hairy faces became smiling and very welcoming .
Also I wanted to sit back, relax and fall into a leisurely nap under an unhurried and quiet conversation of Ghash and Berol.


Berol is that same gray and hairy, who was interrogating me.
He's a chief of Beornings. Not of all Beornings, but the chief of the unit by which we have been "captured "

When Ghash was brought in the dugout and thrown down at the fireplace, Berol did not immediately draw an attention to him.
At first he irritably growled about something with those who brought Ghash.
Only then he looked up and at once bellowed like an uptight bear. Immediately a tub of ice water was dragged from some corner of the dugout and poured on Ghash. All of it. Well, almost all, because it got on me too.
Ghash startled, shrunk into a ball, then sat up with his back to my post and tried to wipe his face, but nothing happened - his hands have been tied up. Then he just shook his head like a drenched puppy, and swore.
I was just thinking that he cursed, because some of the words sounded very much like those he spoke at the Barrow-Down, next to Ghashur's headless body.
- Spark - Shaggy quietly asked from a seat at the fireplace. - Is that you?
- Can't you see yourself ? - Ghash snapped angrily.
- I am getting old - Berol sighed - The eyes are just not the same. Besides under such appearance it is hard to make you out immediately even under the sun. I recognized you only by the voice. Now I see - it is you, but before - just oroc. Clothing, arms, even swearing in their language. Why are you dressed like that?
- So, will you just go on asking? Huh? Berol! - Ghash asked instead of answering . - Or maybe you will tell them to untie my hands first? Or will I go on sitting in the pool tied up?
- Untie! - Berol ordered, what was immediately done. - You excuse me for such treatment. Boys were catching orocs. Who could know that it's you.
- Boys ... - Ghash muttered, gently touching his forehead with his fingertips. - Your "bears" almost cracked my skull. Forehead got cut with something when I was falling, blood is still going ...
- The forehead will be tied up - Berol boomed calmingly . - Skin, that is, will heal. My boys are truly good, not "bears " yet, just "bear cubs", goosey, but good. How is your head? All in place?
- In place. What will happen to it? - Ghash waved. - Only booming after the impact, like an empty vat. With what they hit me?...
-It is well-known with what - Berol grinned. - With a fist. We have never had such habit to hit with something else than the fist when taking a prisoner. You could kill if will strike with an open palm. What for you need a stiff? How you can interrogate him? But with the fist you cannot kill .
- You cannot kill with the fist - Ghash mimicked . - Thanks for a small favor. What brought you here, Berol? Did you come here to hunt orcs?
- What oroks are here! - Berol grumbled. - You are the first. Have not seen any others. Is that right, boys ?
The animal-like "boys", hearing the whole conversation in stunned silence, amicably purred something concurring. It looks like they respected Berol .

-Ye-aa... - Berol continued. - You were the first. Funny how it came out. We were catching oroks, but captured a Royal Ranger.
This is, boys, - he turned to his own people - Spark. You love him, in Gondor for a whole year I was with him in the Royal Rangers prowling woods and mountains. Now has happened to meet again.
I thought you were dead then, - he turned again to Ghash, - After the ambush. Do you remember?
- How could I forget - Ghash nodded. - Mordor's orcs put us in a pretty good pickle. I managed to get back to our people - got healed. Doctors are good in Gondor. The king himself does healings. You've probably heard.
- I've heard. I 've decided to return to the service to our Beoring's king. The pay is not big, but it is less hassle. The rank was given. You see, here are my boys .
- I see - Ghash looked at huddled around overgrown with wild hair people that looked at him with frank and eager curiosity. - Good hunters you grew .
- For two years I was picking them up, one by one - Berol smugly puffed. - You see yourself, can snatch out the Royal Ranger. Exeptional boys. Is your companion also a ranger?
- What do you think? - Ghash teased.
- What to think about? - Berol groaned and made himself comfortable on his pelts . - Is that so he says to me he is not an orok and his grandfather was the Knight of the Royal Guards .
- Who? - Ghash asked puzzled .
- Who "who"? - Berol surprised. - A friend of yours. Turn around. He is behind you at the pole with his mouth agape, so attentively listening .


Ghash sprang up off the floor like a frightened partridge and stared at me, blinking stupidly. I just noticed that he has long, thick, almost girlish eyelashes .
- But he went the opposite way! - Ghash shook his head probably hoping that I will disappear, fade in the air.
- So what - Berol said placidly. - We too were not found yesterday under a beehive . Been there seen that. We know, as well, what is an "oroc's spread". Or did they teach badly you and me in the Royal Rangers?
Ghash palmed his left thigh, but the dagger was not there.
He stood there bewildered, then it was stirring in the crowd of shaggy hunters and somebody's hand held out the hilt.
Ghash cautiously took the dagger, glanced at the amiably grinning Berol, at many eyes burning with curiosity, habitually hooked the rope with a tooth on the blade and freed my wrists.
The fingertips immediately got stabbed with tiny needles.
- So, what you were telling about? - Ghash asked me, smiling. But only I could see how quiver constrained corners of his lips, and how gently his left thumb strokes the blade of a dagger .
- That I am a hobbit - I said, flexing the wrist. - That we are called Halflings in Gondor, and my grandfather is a knight of the Guards of the King of Gondor.
- That's it? - His lips silently asked. I shrugged my shoulders.
- Yea-yea, so he said - a hobbut - Berol confirmed from the stowe bench. - How could I know what is that - a hobbut. I have never heard of them. Only when he called himself a halfling, I realized what it was about.
There , you see, we have a tale of a halfling and seven dwarves. But that is a fairy tale, and here is a real person.
Besides, he looks like oroc, but not by much, therefore I have got a doubt. Then I decided that he is lying when he mentioned about the Royal Guards. Don't I know what grand lads are in the Royal Guards? They wouldn't let such shorty to come closer than the mile's length. Or your grandfather was taller ? Huh? Halfling?
I opened my mouth to answer, but Ghash was ahead of me .
- His grandfather was even shorter - he said . - They took him in the Royal Guards not for the height, but for a valor and a personal service to the king. Get it?
- It is an understandable - Berol shrugged. - Courage, as everybody knows, does not depend on tallness. Say, you are, too, not that big, but showed yourself good in action. Are you kind of grew up? Previously you were lower. Come here.

Berol, groaning, climbed down from the earthen elevation, stood next to approached Ghash and scratched his head in an amazement .
- It should not be. - He said, puzzled . - Seems you taller on a head and a half, not less. Before, you were looking in my chest, and now - in the eyes. Amazing!
- It is three years have passed, Berol , even three and a half , since you saw me . So I changed a little bit.
- A little bit ? .. - Berol still looked puzzled. - Am I beginning to grow down? - He looked around. - No. Boys did not, like, got shorter. It is you who got taller and more mature. No wonder I did not recognize you immediately. How to recognize when you're looking not like then. Maybe it 's not you? - Berol cautiously moved away from Ghash, and " bears" around, on the contrary, tightly moved close up .
- It is me Berol, me - Ghash reassured him and smiled to others. - If you in doubt, I can tell you all about how you and I have served in the Royal Rangers. About me growing up ... in fact I was short of seventeen years when we broke apart. Besides, doctors in Minas Tirith fed me with something. So I have grown due age and a treatment.
-Yes, - Berol muttered, calming . - You just get in the hands of the healers - they will " heal" you! But without them is not good too . Some malady got stuck to me, for a third month I am lying on the bed, can barely walk, and nothing is helping. Good that is no need to run around, then it would be a trouble . Let's go, dear friend, on the open air. I am sitting in the den for too long and need to get out in the sun . Born!
- Here! - Born said, still standing behind me.
- Give him something to put on, since you tore all his clothes. And send the boys on the hunt, and tell to prepare the table. Guests came to us, we will feast .

He and Ghash went out of the dugout, and everything around me began to spin and whirl, obeying the short orders of Born.
Instead of my clothing, which perished under Born's hands, the "bears" have found for me an elk leather pants, a linen shirt and a jacket of coarse canvas.
All of a bleak light gray color.
The pants were a foot longer than the legs, and I just drowned in the jacket and the shirt. But large is not little, and, as Aunt Lily says, " You won't fall out of a large thing."
It was somewhere tucked up, somewhere tightened , and when I put on returned to me belt, it turned out that the new clothes sit quite comfortably, and the soft shirt even caresses the weaned body .


Then Born has escorted me to the upper edge of ravine.
There, Berol and Ghash were talking, lounging on spread out animal pelts.
- No, he's not the ranger, - I heard coming up the voice of Ghash. - It is his grandfather was a Royal Guard. But he has never been in Gondor, so don't even ask him about it.
- And how I can call him? - Berol said .
- Call Halfling. They have such names you won't be able to say it right away .
- That's right. I almost choked when he told me his grandfather 's name. How one could come up with such names? What has brought him here with you as a partner? Not just with anyone a Royal Ranger would be walking in an orc's disguise.
- You know it yourself, so why you are asking. We are not on a meaningless journey. We travel on a royal's business, and the orc's disguise is safer in some places. Who would know that we will meet you on this shore . Carrock is not close by.
- That's true. We already are sitting here for half a year. Boredom is killing us. Neither of fresh honey or beautiful women. What to talk about beautiful, now some hag would do as a beauty. Soon my "bear cubs" will be throwing themselves at steppe's goats . Getting wild from the boredom.
Because of the boredom ,too, we began chasing you.
It's been told to us not to show ourselves here, not to give a trouble to anyone, even to oroks. But it is just boring.
What a difference in Carrock ! Not such great city as Minas Tirith, and yet it is the city. In there are places to have fun.
Here all the fun is hunting, but I am sick, so I can't even go to hunt.
A week ago the ship was brought a fresh provision and honey.
Now, since I've met you here, we will have a party, have a good time. Then, again, a boredom for another six months.

I came out of the bushes, and Berol interrupted himself .
- Sit down with us, Halfling , - he said. - My boys are nimble, soon put together food for the feast, lay the table . Meanwhile we will talk.
- What are you doing here ? - By snatches of conversation I realized that Berol and his " cubs" are Beornings and decided to play along with Ghash. Besides, I really found it is interesting what they are doing so far south of their home. - It is a long way to Carrock, if I correctly remember a map.
- We are here at war - Berol waved his hand. - At war with Rohan .
- Fighting? - Ghash perked up. - You have a good war, if it was ordered to touch no one. Rohan is on the other shore. How is it possible to fight with them?
Over here are the orcs of Mirkwood and the Wainriders in the steppe, but they seldom come to the Great River. So far this's only factors Gondor cares about.
- A... - Berol again frustrately waved his hand. - I myself know it all. What you have to do if you are in a service? What bosses have ordered, what stupidity was not devised, you have to do it.
We have here a fort.
One of the governors, you see, have decided that Rohans can cross over the River and come north along the edge of Mirkwood to the beoring's domain. No warriors are in there up to Carrock. So we are being stuck here in the ravine, feeding mosquitoes.
The order was given not to show ourselves, watch over the steppe, and to send a messenger to Carrock, if the rohans will cross over to here. Like the messenger is faster than the horses of Rohan.
Only it is all stupid. Why the rohans would go along the Mirkwood getting under oroc's arrows? In there is no water for a large army, no food, let alone for a cavalry.
If they decide to go on this side, they will make their way along the river. Only the bosses are having their own ideas. Here we are, sitting, watching the steppe.
- Over what Beorings are fighting with Rohan ? - Ghash asked.
- It is a well-known reason. - Berol grinned. - A land. Because of it is all these perturbations.
Our king is not a fool, can count the money in his treasury. Not for nothing Carrock was built at the ford across the River. On the trade route. Right now any way you go, from west to east, by the roadway, or from north to south, by the river, no one can pass Carrock, therefore can't avoid the royal taxes too.
Also merchants are merry and rich people, and like to amuse themselves. How much more silver will they leave at the inns and some jolly places? All of such places levied with a quite hefty king's tribute. Again the king has profited.
- And where the war comes? - I did not understand.
- Here ! -Berol didactically raised a finger. - The dwarves of Erebor once again decided to recapture the Under-the -Mountains realm from the orocs. They have gathered an army. It, probably, already departed while we are sitting here.
They pledged, as three hundred years ago, to burn out all of the orocs from from Methedress to Gundabad, shouting "We'll make them to recall a battle of Burnt Dwarves and the death of Dwalin " .
The dwarves, they're retentive on an offense, for them three hundred years is not a long term.
- Now we have got the dwarves - I said. - I do not understand a thing .
- You are, Halfling , so hasty. - Berol muttered reproachfully - Do not interrupt. I will tell about it.
If the dwarves are stirring up such a thing , then the King of ours determined to grab all land that lay between the mountains and the River, up to the very Celebrant .
I do not know how he came up with such idea, maybe somebody suggested, but it is a good thing. If the dwarves will take the Under-the-Mountains kingdom from the orocs, inhabitants, that live between the mountains and the River, would remain abandoned.
Until now they were paying a tribute to the foothill's orocs, but if the orocs will be gone, then who will collect taxes from them? Our king would love to get occupied with such tasks.
Then again, if the dwarves will take the Under-the-Mountains Kingdom , then it will be the trade.
Dwarves are not like orocs, can not live starving. And they are famous masters.
Esgarots are having a large profit on a trade with Erebor's and Iron Hill's dwarves. Such income can not hurt and our king.
The West gates at the mountains, they are saying, is blocked, it won't be dug out soon. So, all trades will go through the Eastern gates. Therefore, that who owns the land near the mountains will be collecting fees from the merchants.
Again, who would bring grain and honey to the dwarves?
Those with whom they in alliance.
Why to deliver a merchandise from Carrock, when you can simply move growers closer to the Mountains. There is plentiful of a free land.
Because of this land we have the war with Rohan. They, you see, suddenly remembered that it is their "ancient land." As if they were moved to Rohan from these areas. A thousand years they did not remember, but now came to the realization.
- You have a strange war , - Ghash said thoughtfully . - We have been there on the other side, south of Celebrant . Have not seen any riders of Rohan.
- It's no problem that it is strange - Berol cheerfully laughed. - For sitting in here I'm getting a pay three times more than during a peaceful time. In such way you can have the war. And the king is not keeping us starving here, every month sends the ship with provision.
- Exactly this is strange, - Ghash repeated . - We had seen the dwarves at the Misty Mountains, just much farther south of Celebrant, almost at the headwaters of the Entwash. They are catching orcs in there. Together with the rohans.
So vainly your king is having hopes for the alliance with them. I do not know with what the king of Rohan have bought the dwarves, but it looks like they are fighting together, and seems will go together to the north, past Celebrant, too.
- Interesting - Berol mused . - What's the reason for dwarves to be friends with rohans? Rohan is much more on south from the Kingdom Under the Mountains . How can they help to the dwarves ?
- They can - Ghash answered gloomily. - If they let them though a Southern troughfare to the other side of the mountain ridge.
The Western entrance to under the mountains is blocked, but not as badly that the dwarves could not dig it out fast, let alone from the outside, not from the inside.
The orcs do not live near it. For them it is nothing to do there since they're coming outside through the Eastern exit . And the tribute of grain and meat they are getting from the villages on the eastern side of the mountains.
So, it comes out that the dwarves can unexpectedly enter under the mountains, where nobody is waiting for them.
Rohan also can help them with food. Maybe with infantry too, since it is not far from the Isen Fold.
When the dwarves will clean out the Under-the Mountains kingdom, then Rohan will start to fight with you. They - from the south, and dwarves - from the west, from the Mountains, will put your army between two fires. Rohan, too, needs a trade with the dwarves not less than your king.
Maybe the dwarves themselves will not go to fight with you, they are bad warriors on the surface, but would let the fold's infantry to pass in your rearwards .
And maybe not just the infantry. Maybe the riders too. From the east gate to Carrock not very far away.
If your army is stationed on Celebrant, then even the infantry of Rohan will get faster to Carrock. I don't think your king will be glad when its capital will smoke up.
- What are you talking about? - Berol vigorously waved his hands. - Is it turning out that the dwarves are deceiving us?
- No, not the dwarves - Ghash calmly replied. - The dwarves wouldn't think up something like this. Aule, The First Smith, gave them a lot of strength, but not much brains. This idea is not for the dwarf's mind. Think who will benefit if Carrock won't be collecting the duty.
- What is there to think about? - Berol shrugged. - No great mystery. Everybody knows who is paying that tolls - Esgaroth merchants when going to Fornost, or going out of it.
- Here, you yourself said whose heads have worked here - Ghash grinned.
- Well ... - Berol scratched his head . - You have pieced together everything. All, as is, placed in their order. But ... How much of the forces could pass through under the mountains?
Carrock is not a village . It can not get burned so easily. The walls are wooden, though, but very high and moats are wide. And bulwarks are steep.
The men in the town militia are not weakling, can't be that easily overtaken.
It will take a good deal of time and efforts to seize the town.
Meantime our army will come up. I doubt that Rohan's infantry will hold out against ours. Here, with me, are just the "cubs", but in the army are the real "bears", will stomp anyone .
- Won't come up. - Ghash said - Your army won't have enough time to come with help to Carrock. Rohan will convey under the mountains just a small part of the army , but the main force will be circling the steppe against your army. They are on horses, you are on foot, who will overtake whom?
They even don't have to fight with you, just to drive away from the river. Summer in the steppe is waterless. For a small outpost water can be found in the ravines. But where will you get it for a large army?
Also, think about it. What if one smaller army will come to Carrock from the west , while the other one, bigger, will arrive from the east ? From Esgaroth.
For how long Carrock will stand?
- You are talking about dreadful things, Spark. - Berol said and plunged deep in thought.


While this conversation was going on, the beornings spread a tablecloth and piled up on it all kinds of edibles.
Being busy with food, we could not talk for a while. Just from time to time Berol was asking me to help myself.
Only after the first mug of honey Ghash and Berol again started a serious conversation.
I listened to them for a while, looking how they are drawing with twigs something on the ground, and soon realized that right now I will fall asleep under their measured and subdued discussion.
But on the tablecloth remained a lot of food and the honey-mead still was not drained up.
What kind of hobbit will allow himself to fall asleep at the table? Especially when it was so much of merriment in there.
So I opted to dance instead of sleep.
I did not want to dance alone, and Teddy was not here to keep me company, so I decided to teach Born.
Oddly enough, he readily agreed. It is a pity that he sang badly, clearly, he has wooden ears from the birth, and none of the moves of springle-dance he could repeat also.
But it does not matter. Instead he was jolly enough echoed with song and stomped .
He finally realized why I also gave the rod to him when for the third time under the deafening cheers and laughter of the "cubs" he received a whack with a rod below his back. Then he put me in a tight spot. Born, roaring, was advancing on me with such force, that at times it seemed as if he is a real bear. He waved his rod so masterly and the rod is so deafening whistled in the air, that he, perhaps, would chop me in half if he had hit me even once. Fortunately, he kept on missing me.

After we had embraced, I have got a lot of volunteers to dance with me, and I could not turn down anyone.
By the third round the "cubs" have learned the song and with delight bellowed it together helping themselves with a rhythm by rapping mugs and clapping their wide hands on her thighs.
I danced , probably with a good dozen of beornings and none of them could hit me . After the dance they were embracing me with such feeling and so happily clapped on the back, that almost bumped me off .

No wonder that by the end of the feast I could barely stand on my feet . Was the blame here on the springle-dancing , fatigue from a long march, beoring's friendliness or the honey-mead, I do not know.
Probably all together.
Good stuff the beoring's honey .
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Old 02-09-2014, 03:12 PM   #32
Olmer
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Cunning thing is beoring's honey-mead. It is easy to drink and it greatly jollies up, but after that is a real torture to wake up the next morning. All body is slackened, you don't want to move even a muscle and the head is empty like a mug after a feast. When you are getting a sideways push, it feels like ringing copper balls are rolling in the emptiness of the head.
- Get up!- Ghash pushed and shook me. - Wake up.
- Get lost. - I told him and have tried to turn over onto the other side. It did not work.
- Get up, get up! - Ghash, encouraged by my response, has doubled efforts, - The sun is already close to noon. You overslept breakfast, will oversleep lunch also.
It would not be desirable to oversleep lunch, and with reluctance I opened my eyes. In the twilight of a dugout Ghash face looked quite crumpled.
- You look awful, - I told him, sitting up with difficulty. - Like somebody sat on your face.
- You should see yourself. - Ghash responded good-naturedly. - Your people not only to eat, but also to drink are great masters. Do you know how much you have drunk yesterday?
- No, - I answered. - Did not count. It seemed to me that not too much.
- This is why the "bear cubs" have grown fond of you. - He grinned. - They themselves won't drink more than five mugs of theirs honey. Falling off their legs. And you have mastered maybe four mugs, when sat with me and Berol, and later drunk a mug for a friendship with everyone with whom you danced. They are now composing a tale about the Halfling - Royal Ranger that has drunk fifteen mugs, outdanced ten people and went to sleep on his own legs.
- Fourteen, - I corrected.
-What?- Ghash did not understand . - What fourteen?
- Fourteen mugs, it turns out - four with you and ten more when danced.
- Means, the fifteenth they thought up to round figures. Come on, get up! Or you can not? Is the head hurts?
- Empty. - I complained. - Empty like a dried up nut. Rings.
- Then drink, - Ghash handed out to me a familiar canteen with shaghu. - One sip: not much left.
- It's unnecessary. - I pushed away his hand. - I don't want. Want water. Cold.
- It is outside, as much as you want. Should I help to walk you off? Or will you reach a stream on your own?
I tried to rise up. Legs, against expectation, held well and, though I felt lightheaded and was swaying from side to side, to the bottom a ravine I have gone down by myself, never fallen off.

My appearance at the stream on my legs and without support has caused a joyful roar of approval from the "bears". It looked like all beorings, except for Berol and, maybe, two-three others, stayed here, cooling burning throats with cold water. While I was washing and drinking, they lively purred about something among themselves. Probably, putting in their tale my next "feat".
- You can see a weathered warrior right away. - Berol's voice sounded behind my back. - Learn, suckers. You can't even get up after yesterday's party, but Halfling is ready for a march even right now. Am I right, Halfling?
I nodded, not wanting to offend him, but, actually, just a mention of the road was giving me a shudder. I have hardly reached a dugout, let alone to go somewhere else.
- You are all right. - Ghash estimated my appearance and once again has handed out a flat flask. - Take a sip. I need you alive.
With disgust I took the shaghu and, overcoming a spasm in a throat, poured a half-gulp in myself . For some time nothing has happened, but then a warmth began to spread through the body, the ringing in the head has ceased, and, in general, I started to feel better.
- Similar treat with similar. - Ghash noticed in tutorial manner. - For the future I shall tell you to drink less of unfamiliar drinks, and the familiar do not misuse too. You like fell upon it. Got loaded up to a pig's squeal. To eat and sleep is...
- Pigs job. - I have finished for him. - I got it. Why you gnaw at me like a bad wife? I don't feel well even without it.
- I am chewing on you now, that next time you won't feel worst . - Ghash grinned . - We are on a journey and not on a party. What if you, while being drunk, would say something uncalled-for? The "bears" are simple. They can tear you in pieces alive. Or will expose you to bees, prior smearing with honey.
- What kind of bees is here! - I waved away dismissively.
- The wild one, - Ghash answered unexpectedly harshly. - As well as wasps, bumblebees and hornets. Do you think if Berol accepted us as dear guests, he does not watch us? He is a weathered man, sly and knows which side one's bread in buttered. He was a pathfinder in the Royal Rangers, reading and unraveling traces in the woods. If he would be getting any doubts, then my acquaintance with him would not help. So whip up, we are having a dinner, with gratitude saying goodbye and taking to our heels, while our legs are not getting pulled out. With "bears" it is easy, their nature is such: today they would drink with you and hug you, tomorrow will tear up your throat. When we will have the dinner, sit silently and do not drink any more, pretend, that you are suffering from a hangover. Understood?
- Understood, - I drawled sadly, having thought, that to me it won't be too difficult at all to "pretend".

The dinner put up, as before, on the top edge of the ravine, was not so magnificent, as of yesterday's feast, but nearly as plentiful as before. Honey-mead was there too. Since I was "pretending" to be sick from a hangover, I resisted Berol's persistent persuasion and drunk only a half-mug.
Ghash looked reproachfully, but said nothing. He himself has refused to drink at all, having told, that today we have to walk quite a long distance. No matter how hard Berol was trying to persuade to stay with the old friend a day or two, he firmly stood on, mentioning the promptness of the royal service.
Eventually, Berol gave up and stopped to persuade us. He even ordered Born to equip us for the road. By Born's care each of us has received a bag with provisions, a keg of honey-mead and clothes for Ghash. His own looked on him like from somebody's shoulder.
In the afternoon, after a lot of hugs, smiles and bent downs, we took to the road. At the bottom of ravine for some time the company of "bear cubs", led by Born, were seeing us off. Berol very much regretted, that because of an illness he cannot see us off by himself, but, as well, did not want to let us just go, without an accompaniment.
Ghash did not refuse them, only remarked, that soon enough we will have to turn into the steppe, on a southeast, and it is better to the beorings not to show up in there, as not to break the order of their king.

Anyhow, finally we were left alone. And from here Ghash took off, as if let off the leash. We have never run so fast before. I shall tell you it is not easy to run in the afternoon steppe under the scorching sun, what is more after yesterday's drunken party. To me it was so hard, that I did not pay attention to anything, just simply tried not to lag too far behind Ghash, and from time to time just was noticing, that the sun is now ahead of us, now at the left, now behind the back. After some long enough time Ghash stopped and sharply sat down, and then even laid down. I followed his example.
- Look. - Ghash whispered. - Pay attention to what you look at.
I began to survey the expanse of the land. We were lying on a small hill, below, under us, the steppe spread out, silvery from swaying whisks of feather grass. In the distance a few black moving spots were visible above the silvery surface.
- Did you see? - Ghash asked .
- I see, - I answered.- Them?
- Yes, - Ghash spat. - Them. Something caused Berol to doubt. He did not believe us up to the end, but did not want to detain us too. Seems decided to check us up, so he has sent the minders.
- What we shall do now? - For some reason I recalled Born's look when he had put me, bound, up on the feet.
- We shall try to throw them off. Pity, that now is such heat, so the grass is badly rises after us, and they can catch a scent almost like dogs. If it won't work to throw them off, we will have to go to a southeast. I lied to Berol, that we are going to the Sea of Rhun, on a royal business. Have to make them to be sure. Let's go.

Eventually we have "dropped off" the beorings, but for this we have had to run quite a lot. While the "bear cubs" went on the loop made by us, we have come out behind them on already walked by us track, ran on the track left by them well visible in the high grass, and made a "slip". Just in the same way as a hare does: a few big jumps aside. The main thing is to jump higher, so not to leave a path of crumpled grass. Also the jump should be made in the direction of the wind, that the smell will get carried away from the place you leapt on.
Obviously, we were jumping not from one place, but each from a different location in order not to make a double trace. After two loops and "slips" Ghash told that we, apparently, came off. Seems in the steppe the "bear cubs" turned out to be not so skillful in "stealing of the royal rangers ", as they were in thickets. But, despite of it, we have not stopped for a break even after a sunset and continued to run southeast, doing from time to time loops and "slips".
Only closer to dawn, when I was already about to drop down from weariness, and for each a swallow of the remained water was left at the bottom of our canteens, Ghash stopped at some hill. Even, more likely, a mound.
- Let's get some sleep. - He told. - During the night the grass will rise up, they won't catch up with us from now on. I strewed some of the umbar's pepper over there. Let them sneeze .
- What if they will catch up with us? - I asked. - What then?
- Then we shall smile from ear to ear. - Ghash answered. - Or fight. Depending on the circumstances. Maybe, it is not Berol who has ordered, maybe it's Born himself has decided to run after us. He did not serve with me in the Royal Rangers, therefore he was watching covertly and minding our steps. Maybe have noticed or overheard something.
- Is it true that you served in Gondor's in the Royal Rangers?
- Yes. One and a half year. That is, I served for a year and a half year was being treated in Мinas-Тirith. You sleep. In the morning I will tell you, if we got off. There, under the hill, is a creek, so we will stay for the day.

Nothing happens until the morning. The pursuers were thrown off the scent, or simply have left, once made sure that we really go to a southeast.
Shortly before noon Ghash woke me up and, instructing me to watch closely all around, turned in himself and has got up only in the evening. We had a dry supper, washing it down with a spring water and giving thanks to Beorings for a hospitality. They suspected us or not, but in the bags it was more than enough of food. Only Ghash ruthlessly poured the honey-mead out on the ground, and then also rinsed the keg, noticing that honey is an excellent thing, but it weakens you. And he was right. At supper I reminded him of the promise to tell about his service in the Royal Rangers of Gondor.
- There is nothing special to tell about it. - Ghash said, lazily leaning on his back and putting hands under the head. - Served like served. I told you that I am in the shaghrats for the fourth year.
- And how have you got there? - I asked. - Is it Uruuk -hai are getting accepted in the royal service just that easily?
- Of course not. - Ghash unbuttoned the beoring jacket tightly stretched on a stomach . - In Fornost I have got a guard job in the excort for merchants from Minas-Tirith. Together with them I have come to Gondor. In Minas-Тirith I came to the royal guard house, told them that I was living and hunting in Arnor, now have decided to see the world and wish to serve the Great King Elessar. They asked, how I have got in the city, I honestly told them about merchants. The merchants have been questioned of what they know about me. What can they know about me? Only what I have told them. So they told how I was employed, and how I have conducted myself on the way. Аrnor is considered as a dominion of the king, though the king has never do get around to it. So I have got enlisted in the Royal Rangers "with a salary of the royal subject ". They are taking in Royal Rangers any riffraff, but only king's subjects are having bigger salary, others are having less.
- Why?
- What why? Why the salary is different?
- No. Why they are taking any riffraff ?
- Because Gondorians are not too wild about fighting in the war. It is considered that there is a peace now. No war anymore. But the Royal Rangers are always on the war. On the borders. Ithilien, Southern Gondor, Emin Muil, Ash mountains - all "cheerful" places. A wild border zone. Gondor's appetite grew with present king, he wants to get back all of the old territories, but hands have not grown enough. They did not clash, yet, with Rohan over Arnor, but on the south and the east they are at war with everyone. With Khand, with Umbar, even with Harad. Naturally, with Ihtilien orcs. Gondorians are not so eager to die in a foreign land, so they are taking the riffraffs for a good salary and for a piece of land after the service. Volunteers interested in it are more than enough.
- For it, probably, needs so much gold and the land too.
- Not as much of it, as it seems. For how long the royal ranger lives? The year, two at most. Seldom who stays in a service for ten years. Their salary the rangers are leaving in royal taverns squandering on drinks, when they are getting the break. Where else you can put it? You can't drag it around with yourself, for somebody to clean you out when you dead. So they are drinking, betting who will pour it more into himself. Wine and beer are being sold only in royal establishments, and army brothels, too, belong to the King. Those, who will break this rule, have their head chopped off without mercy, as for counterfeiting of a royal coin, so all gold comes back to the King.
To those, who has served for ten years, they are giving fiefs not near Minas -Tirith, but somewhere past Minas-Ithil, closer to the Ash mountains, just in the areas where the Royal Rangers are hanging around all the time. The places where you have to hold a plow in one hand, and a sword in the other. The King is not losing here too.
- And what did you do in the Rangers ?
- I was an orderly at our detachment chief. When I was sent to the detachment, right away I came to him. Excuse me, I say, Sir Captain of the Royal Rangers, I am a northerner and do not understand local affairs, could you give me an advice where to put my royal's salary instead of spending it on drinks. He began to take my salary for a safekeeping and I became the orderly, to laundry his pants and to squash his lice.
- What for you were doing it? - I was surprised. - Catching somebody's lice for one year and a half .
- What do you mean what for? - Ghash in turn got surprised. - And where I would see how Gondorians fight? It is the Rangers who are able to fight in a war. The Royal Guards can only stand on the walls, but the rangers are year round in the field. On the war. It is any riff-raff in the Royal Rangers, but the heads at them are the most prowessed in the battles war chiefs of Gondor. The nobility. Those who in the tenth generation commands of the armies. Seldom, very seldom someone from regular rangers can rise to a captain. On a military council who is standing behind the captain's back, gives him maps and all kinds of papers? The orderly. When master chiefs are drinking, who pours wine to them? Again the orderly. In fact on drunken parties they talk not only about women, even more often the talk is about business. Who sees the servant? Nobody. Who will pay a notice to him? Also, nobody. The servant is like a shadow: it is here, but nobody is noticing it. You only have to watch and listen. And, also to think.
- Weren't you getting disgusted?
- Yes, it is disgusting. But if you wanted to be a shaghrat, then - endure. Could simply to be an uragh. But everyone can brandish the sword, even snaga, however, my work needs to have the head. Uragh, - I have not understood at once, that he meant Uragh and not any soldier. - Would not able to do it. He was never good at restraining himself, therefore he got succumbed to your talks back there, in the cave.
- I did not want to, - I was ashamed. - I did not know.
- It is not important now, - Ghash told . - Having the enemy, you should be circumspect. We were enemies and Uragh should think better. But he did not. If it would be just us, I would not deprive him of his name, but guys believe that you can call forth the bearded and I am not able to suspend their superstition. So I did it for the sake of them... To say nothing that he did call forth the bearded just the same. - Ghash was silent for a while...- They waited for us. Waited.
- Whence they could know, where we shall go? - I have begun to doubt. - Where they, in general, came from?
- From Erebor, from the Lonely mountain that is. They were not waiting for us in particular, but just for orcs who will go through the mountains. They knew that we won't go through the Redhorn Pass during spring thunderstorms. It is for a certain death.
- Where from they could know that some orcs will go through the mountains ?
- From the rohans. The horse-eaters have posts with dovecots at them along the Great South road from the Fold on the other side of the river Isen and up to the Edoras fort. While we were running up to the mountains, on the other side they have already knew that we are coming. If I would know, that there will be the bearded, we would go north, to the Ghazat-buurth.
- Is Ghazat-buurth - Moria? - I asked.
- Yes.
- But the Gate of that place is blocked.
- It is already fifty years as it has been dug out. And that creature in the lake has been finished off.
- You told Berol it was blocked.
- What for I have to tell him everything? It is not our problem - to rescue the beorings. Anyway, they will lose this war.
- Why?
- Because they are between two fires. While king with the army will be catching the horse-eaters at the Celebrant, the Esgaroths will burn the Carrock. Sooner or later army supplies would end, and to be left without water and provisions at summer-time in a dry steppe it is a sure death. It's just two of us can live on groundhogs and drink from a brooklet, but where you can get that many groundhogs for a big army? Force them away from the rivers and that's all. They all will die from starvation, thirst and illnesses. Good, if one in ten will return back home.
- I pity them, - I, really, felt sorrowful, when I imagined the shaggy fans of honey-mead dying of thirst .
- It is a pity. Their king should think before what to do to prevent an agreement between Rohan and Esgaroth. Should find the friends to himself. He did not want to. Now the beorings will pay for his stupidity and greed ... Seems we are spending too much time talking. Are we going to sleep? Tomorrow we have to walk again.
- Why we should go in a daytime under a soaring heat? Maybe, we can walk at night?
- Do you want to spend a second day here? It is dangerous to remain for a long time at one place. Here is the steppe, can bring anyone.
He wrapped himself into a buurgha and has fallen asleep. Slept for a half of the day and once again hit the sack without any troubles. I couldn't get to sleep for some time.
In the morning we took to the north, not hurrying up any more and not straining body with run. Nothing remarkable happened during those days while we were going up to the Black forest, or the Mirkwood, as Ghash has named it.
Once far to the east I have noticed clouds of smoke.
- It's Wainriders. - Ghash answered my question. - Providing the meat for themselves. This is the way they hunt: setting afire grass in the steppe, so animals will run from the fire. They are arranging their wagons into a chain, blocking off a half of steppe. The animals are getting shot, as they reaching the wains while escaping from the fire.
- Won't the wains burn down when the fire will reach them? - I asked.
- No. - Ghash burst out laughing. - Before putting the wagons, they burn the grass down at that place, and the fire has nowhere to go.
- Did not we get in their round-up?
- No. It is far and the wind is blowing from our side.
With that our conversation has terminated, and the rest was uneventful.

The Mirkwood was meeting us from afar. At first small shady groves have appeared - a greeting of the big wood. Almost in each was a creek, which made them to be convenient places for our overnight camps. We moved from grove to grove. With each day intervals between them were becoming shorter, and at some point I have simply noticed, that we are not any more going on the steppe, but walking in the woods. The usual deciduous woods, light and affable. I even marveled, why it was named with such gloomy name and asked Ghash.
- Soon you will see yourself. - He muttered, looking around. - We should find a path, or we will keep on wandering here till the rest of our lives..
He has found the path. That is, I did not see any track, Ghash simply noticed some tree-stub, hardly rising above the grass, and rushed to it as fast as one can go. He carefully examined the stump from all sides, very carefully, except, maybe, did not sniff it. Then he walked some steps away from the stump, wandered a little between trees, again returned to the stump and, facing the stump, began to walk backwards.
- Follow me. - He has ordered. - That is - before me. Well... Walk and see that I won't get stumbled on something.
I looked at the stub. A stub as a stub, old already, split on one edge by an axe of an inept woodcutter. What is special in it? But Ghash was walking away and there was no time to solve riddles, so I sighed, caught up with him and walk slowly beside. After about hundred and half steps there was a mossy boulder in the grass. In here all has repeated with only difference, that this time Ghash moved much more confidently, and we had to go in another direction.
So we kept on walking like this, meeting on the way or a tree stub, or a stone, or a tree, broken by a storm, or a freakish snag, or even a simply old, covered by grass, hole in the ground. For me, for some years, it remained a mystery of how Ghash each time determined in what direction we should move. From a bush to a bush and from a tree to a tree we were moving for a long enough time. So long, that eventually I started to understand, for what these woods was named the Mirkwood: trees around us got crowded closer, extending thick brunches upwards, and have almost closed the sky. It became darker, the grass has disappeared, given up the place to thickets of ferns and rotten last year's foliage. In ten steps was so dark, that the surrounding area was hardly discernable.
Therefore, I did not realize right away, that we are already for a half an hour walking on a common, well trodden path, and Ghash walks beside me in the very usual way and not backwards

- I have got tired while I was walking backwards like a crawfish. - He said, stopping. - It is evening already, the track had found, so let's make a halt and in the morning we will go further. Only do not try to go off the path - I won't find you after. Maybe your bones, and even that is unlikely .
At this moment from somewhere nearby emerged a loud screeching sound, as if someone rubbed a knife against a knife. My back at once became cold, and a shiver run through.
- What is it? - I asked Ghash, trying to keep my voice from quiver and, just in case, putting my hand on the hilt of kughri.
- Do not pay attention. - Ghash answered, spreading the buurgha right on the path.- It's a spider. It won't get on a path: afraid of the light .
It has not calmed me down, light on the path was almost non existent.
- And at night? - I have asked. - What will be at night?
- Nothing will be. - He answered, lying down. - Hear, it screeches, it is from a rage - means it's alone. For one we are a too big catch. Alone it will not attack two of us. They are cowardly and small. Below your knee.
I shuddered, imaging the spider hardly below the knee.
- Lay down, you! - Ghash told. - It's nothing scary in there.
Sighed, I have decided to believe him, really, if it would be something dangerous, he wouldn't be so calmly making a place to sleep. But I have hardly laid down, as there was a new hazard. A new sound. Somewhere at the depth of the ground something was making muffled strikes, hard and measured, and all body shuddered when the sound of impact was coming.
- What is it? Ghash! - I even jumped up from an unexpectedness, but the air around was silent and motionless.
- What? - He did not understand. - I have told - a spider.
- No. - I, once again, put an ear to the ground and waited a little, after a while the ground has brought an echo of new impact. - Something knocks. Under the ground.
-A...- Ghash yawned.- It's oghrs hammer. Far from here. Almost a day of walk. Tomorrow in the morning we will be in their sentry village .
- Let's go today. - I made a solicitation. - While is not getting completely dark.
I had no desire to spend a night in the woods with spiders .
- Do you want an arrow with black pitch to get below your back? - Ghash murmured . - Arrow's self-shoothers are put along the whole track, at night they are not visible.
I had to arrange a place to sleep next to his. For the purpose of more security I nestled to the shaghrat more tightly and muffled in a buurgha over my head.
- Ghash, - I have decided to ask one more question . - How is this place called? To where we are going now?
Ghash murmured something inarticulate, kept silent for a while and added, drowsily stretching words: - And you call it Dol Guldur.
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Old 03-18-2014, 08:30 PM   #33
Olmer
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23.

How proper someone has thought up a name "Mirkwood" to this grim, frightening forest. The despondent wood, where shadows live.
You will hear such name and, at once, just from the name, you will understand, that there is nothing for you to do in such place. Unless, if you want the meat on your bones to be removed as soon as possible.
Without Ghash I wouldn't go in this damn wood for anything in the world.
Can't imagine how Bilbo Baggins was walking in there! Though, he was much more to the north, in the areas where elves dwell. Maybe over there is not so gloomy.
The Black forest is also a bad name, but it doesn't reach deep into your soul. It is enough of them, the black woods. Fangorn, for example, you won't call the light wood. Or the Old Forest. Though they all will be quite lighter.
Over there the woods are simply semi-dark from twilight shadows of the boughs, but in the Black forest the darkness is more oppressive. Seems that even to breathe is difficult, until you will get used to it.

It is in the afternoon, but at night...
At night, it is not only pitch-dark, so you can't make out own fingers in an inch from the nose, but you are hearing such sounds around, that you would want immediately to sew up your ears for just to hear nothing of it.
The screech of a lonely spider is a garden variety, like a sound of a children's rattle.
The hooting of owls, in general, is not an unnerving sound, too. Perhaps, you will be frightened only for the first time, until you will understand who it is.
But when someone shrilly and lingeringly burst out laughing, as it seemed, directly above your ear... I have got goose bumps as large, as fall's apples. Then the second has joined the first laughter, and then - one more, and more... Soon everything around was laughing and squealing in different voices. Such voices they were, that seemed to me my hair was rapidly growing grey.
I would not fall asleep, if not for Ghash, peacefully snuffling nearby. The shaghrat's sleep was relaxed, without any signs of concern or desire to wake up. Eventually I fell asleep, because it is impossible to be afraid and stare into darkness with heavy eyelids, when someone next to you is having a sweet sleep.

My dream, also, was as restless, as a reality. All night long I dreamt about various spiders: from monsters up to my waist to a small fry in size of a golf ball. The spiders were circling around, gnashing their fangs and trying to throw loops of twisted web over my neck.
I was rushing about between them, getting mad from impossibility to break out of a spider besiege and was hacking them not worse than Bilbo. Only, instead of the elvish "Sting", I have had the uruuk-hai kughri, and have not got even a most pathetic ring during all my travel.
Of course, if you not count Uragh's rings for getting fire. They also have some other practical applications, but they do not give invisibility. So the spiders saw me quite clear, and I only could envy Bilbo.
By the morning spiders efforts scored a success.
I stumbled, and some swift, small spider, only about my fist in size, has jumped up on me and bit in a shoulder. It was not painful, but the hand has ceased to obey, and grown dumb fingers have let out the hilt of kughri. At once other spiders rushed at me and I closed my eyes in order not to see a furious shine of eyes and carnivorously moving fangs at my last minutes.


When I opened my eyes, the spider's fangs were moving about in one and a half foot from my face.
Ghash was right, the spider was not that large. The trunk was no bigger than my head, even smaller, and was covered with dense short hair, seems stiff like boar's bristles. To be it almost up to my knee was allowed by long large-boned paws, with which it was comically flailing.
The eyes of spider did not have a shine any more.
All its movements were convulsions of the bug on a pin.
On the pin, because the spider was pinned up on Ghash's hand-made arrow. It has been thrust into the ground near me, and the spider was dangling at its very plumage, powerlessly thrashing its legs.
- Is not it a beauty? - asked Ghash, who sat on the ground behind me. - I shot it for you. You, probably, never saw such as this.
- You told me, it won't go out on the path. - I said, sitting up and kneading the lacking sensation hand, which has become numb from an uncomfortable lying
- I did not shoot it on the path. - Cheerfully answered Ghash. - I gave a shot on a sound and has got a hit. Only at five steps, even a five years old won't miss.
- Who laughed so loudly at night? - I was trying to look toughened and indifferent. - All night long was disturbing my sleep.
-A.. - Ghash waved his hand dismissively. - These are frogs. It is a marsh on both sides of the path. Here is more frogs, than mosquitoes. A mating time at them now, so they are laughing at night.
At the first time, when I had heard them, I got scared like a sucker-baby. Where I live, we don't have such like it, they can be found only here. Here is one sits, have a look.
I looked where he pointed at, and almost choked from unexpectedness.
I wouldn't dare to name this creature "a frog".
What was sitting at one step from the path, covered with brown-green pimply slimy skin, had the size of a good dog. The creature's muzzle was haughty and cocky, as of Teddy Brandybuck, who in mischief has stolen something from somebody's garden and getting ready to prove his innocence to its owners.
- Let's feed the poor thing, - told Ghash, rising.
He pulled the arrow from the ground, aimed to a frog and thrown the still slightly twitching spider, as if a stone from a slingshot.
The marsh creature has not stirred even a paw. It just wide opened a mouth and carelessly waved in the air with a long tongue. The tongue flew from the frog mouth with precipitancy of an attacking snake, twisted the flying spider and drew back.
The creature contentedly shuddered, swallowed and rolled up its transparent protruding eyes, having closed them with a whitish, muddy film, and froze on the spot, only a leathery bag under a throat, deflating and inflating with air, was giving out that it is still alive.
- What are they eating here, such big... - I said, dumbfounded, - When nobody feeds them?
- It is them are being eaten by everyone. They are tasty, - answered Ghash. - And they eat that same spiders, small birds, some other teensy living creatures. They are harmless. They even don't have teeth. Catching only what they can swallow whole and escaping from the rest .
- How quickly it runs? Jumps?
-Not fast, it is heavy, hardly dragging its belly, but it swims well and can sit under the water for a long time. If you want, we can shoot it for a breakfast, while it still sleepy from the meal. We will fry it.
- I ate more than enough of frogs in Fangorn. - I informed him. - I am getting nauseated even from recollection of it.
- You ate them raw and small ones. - He grinned. - If I will cook this one - you will lick your fingers.
- Leave it alone, - the slippery creature looked repelling and did not evoke an acute desire to eat it. - Let her jump around.
- Then let's go. The sentry village is close by. We will eat in there.
And we set out to the village.


"Close by" in uruuk-hai's understanding is sharply differs from hobbit's perceiving. I already knew it, therefore I was not surprised, when the village has not appeared after five hundred steps, and after the one thousand, too. And it did not appear in an hour of our walk.
During all this time of walking with Ghash I was looking around and trying to make out something ahead or on the sides: a light or signs of a gleam between trees, but in the twilight of the dense forest it was visible only in ten steps ahead.
If I would dare to walk from the path and to depart from it further than ten steps, then, I afraid, I would never find the way back. However, there was no need to walk off the path and, besides, I had no desire at all to do it.

All the time Ghash was watching, that we are walking in the very middle of it. He was constantly reminding to me that I have to be careful not to touch ferns or any undergrowths on the edges of a footpath, if I do not want to disturb a cord leading to the sentry self-shooting bows.
Constrainedly, you had to be cautious.
Gradually the track was narrowed up to three feet in width, trees and bushes receded below the line of visibility, and the sedge and canes have risen up at both sides. But there was definitely lighter, it would be passable to affirm it, if not for the grey evaporations of a surrounding swamp, hiding and deforming all around.
Even the sun appeared through a grey mist as a hardly visible spot.
But still it was difficult to breathe. The pressing weight of night's darkness was replaced by a rotten moisture of marsh fog.


Then the track has disappeared, dived under a marsh dirt.
Ghash stopped, has thought a little and gave a thin singing whistle of some small bird. When he repeated the singing for the third time, it have been answered.
The fog concealed distance and a direction, and I even did not understand, from what side came the whistle, and how far was the whistled.
- All right, - Ghash unexpectedly said in a full voice . - We will wait.
- Ghash. - I scratched on his back. - Is it a watchman?
- Yes, - he answered. - the guide will come soon.
- Why nobody was coming here till now?
It is really intrigued me. Dol-Guldur is a fortress, and , as I think, the road to it was inordinately deserted.
- What for? - with a question to a question answered Ghash. - On such bogs only the pointy-eared can walk, but now it remains too little of them to dare to come here. Local creaters don't love the poiny-eared. These same frogs will kick up such racket...
The big army of people won't be able to walk on this path, and if will try, they will be audible for league. While they will reach even this place, the "meeting" of them will be already organized. And how will they go further? In here even the small company of spies, like us, without a guide will get drowned and, if not drowned, then will get lost. The track winds, and now along it stand not only self- shooting bows. It is a lot of unexpected "surprises" have been hidden for unbidden comers... Here is our guide has come.

The gude has appeared in the bog in ten steps from us. Through the fog I could not make him out it clearly, only outlines were visible in grey damp mist.
- The name, - the guide asked with a rattling, nasal voice, and I have not understood at once that it has been told on Westron.
- Ghash, shaghrat shaghabuurth globatul, - when Ghash speaks in Black Speech even the voice changes, becomes sharp and harsh.
- The second? - this time I understood.
Ghash gave a thought for a couple of seconds and answered: - Chshaem, uragh shaghabuurth globatul.
- He should speak for himself, - has reached from the fog. - Let him say it.
Ghash turned to me and noded in an encouragement, but told me nothing, only glanced over around.
I have diligently cleared the throat and, trying to utter a word in the same way as he did, lisping and stretching, said. - Chshaem, uragh shaghabuurth globatul.
- He speaks badly , - pointed out the guide and even I felt a doubt in his voice.
- Yes, - unexpectedly easily agreed Ghash. - His mother was not an urr-a-ghoi. He was born in the people of Halflings, therefore he badly understands the Dark speech and speaks even worse. So it is better to talk to him on the Westron. But he is a soldier of fire and carries a name. I am the witness to that.
- There were no soldiers from other people among Uruuk-hai, - the confusion was distinctly heard in guide's voice.
-Many of us have mothers who were not born a-ghoi, - answered Ghash. - But they became one of us. What is possible for one, is possible and for another.
- Not for me to decide. -The guide said after a painfully long contemplation. - You have told, he carries a name. How he has deserved it?
- In the fight he has killed a bearded. He accepted a kughri from the one made a sheopp and decently disposed his body. He got a magic potion of vagrant trees and with its help has pulled a shaghrat out of the edge of death. Is not it enough?
- For any of us - yes, - now in a guide's voice was obviously heard a relieve. - The rest will be decided by those who are knowing more than me. I will lead you. But it should be more of you. We were waiting for a "flying wolves".
- Their wives should not cry any more, - answered Ghash. - The Wolves will not return.
The guide kept silent for a little, and then said
- We will send the messenger to pass to their wives, that they can look for other husbands. You will follow me. Keep no less, than five steps from each other and from me. When you will reach the place where I stay now, take the poles to check the road infront yourself. Put your foot only on the firm, otherwise you will be sucked into a quagmire faster than somebody will have time to say "Farewell!". If one of you will stumble, he shouldn't be helped, so that both won't be lost. Understood?
- Understood, - we answered in chorus.
- Let's go.
I went first. Ghash waited, while I will walk five steps, and moved after me.
I have reached without difficulty the place, where was a pair of poles, because the track under the marsh swill was firm, and I felt it well with my legs. The guide did not wait for me, and slowly, cautiously stepping on invisible hummocks, went aside and it became very difficult to follow him further.
The path has disappeared and only by means of pole it was possible to grope the firm islets under a surface of a seeming impassable quagmire. If these hummocks were visible, I would jump from one to another without any difficulty, but all your body opposes to each next step, when before the eyes on the place, where you should step, sways a viscous brown swill.
There was a distance between the islets in just one step, besides this, a damn fog was around. I even was afraid to look back in order not to get distraced and incidentally lose a sight of the guide.
The guide was walking on a bog much more confidently, than I, and in addition, often was changing a course, or, to tell more truly, the track under the bog was winding, changing a direction.
Therefore I did not see how Ghash is doing over there. Only by a dull champing sound of steps it was possible to guess, that he does not lag behind. Sometimes, when the track was taking the next turn, it was possible by the edge of the eye to make out in a fog the movements of his pole. From time to time we were coming across forks and then the guide would show with a gesture where we have to go, and only then he himself was moving in that direction. He was also looking back, checking, whether I have chosen the right road.

There are no bogs in Hobbiton. From all of not quite hobbit's doings I had been engaged, the walk on marshes is, probably, the most unhobbit's thing. I hate walking on the mountains, but in comparison to what I feel to the bogs, this hatred fades, as colors of woods in a late fall.
If I would be offered a choice: to walk on a bog for a day or a month, or on the mountains, than I will prefer the mountains. Over there, at least, the ground does not go from under your feet and it is impossible to sink in where you stand.
I felt more confidently even in the cane boat on the fast current of Anduin. There was a honest water around. But the marsh is neither water, nor the ground, just a continuous treachery instead of the ground under your feet.

I can not say precisely for how long my tortures were lasting. Long enough, or, maybe, it seemed to me so, but at some point our guide has stopped and told:- You can come closer, the path is solid further on. From now on you will go on your own.
He has shown the direction with a hand, waited, while Ghash has reached us, and walked back on the track .
- Where is he going? - I asked Ghash. The voice was shaking and interrupting from the weariness and pressure of dangerous walking .
- To a sentry post, - answered Ghash. - We passed it by for three times. I thought, you have noticed.
- I did not see anything. I was looking under my feet. Is he lives in there for all the time?
- No. They are changing shifts every week. You could loose your mind by living in the swamp for all the time. Let's go, soon we will get on a dry ground.

Sticking the poles on the sides of the path, we continued to move in the direction pointed by the guide, and in about twenty steps the path has come up to a surface.
Though it was still narrow, but even a comprehension that I see, where I'm putting my foot, gave me a huge pleasure. Besides, the fog above the path got thinner, and with each our step it's becoming noticable lighter around . The sun, earlier visible only as a grey spot above the head, became brighter and, eventually, looked out through a damp haze's hole and happily began to bake the tops of our heads.
The path under our feet became wider and wider, untill it turned into a road, paved with black wooden boards. The wood around, against my expectation, did not get denser, but remained a usual deciduous wood, almost the same as groves of Hobbiton, not darker at all.
- We what? - I asked Ghash. - Have passed all the way through the Woods? When it began, it was just like this.
- No, - burst out laughing Ghash. - The Black Forest is vast, in several days of walking across. The ancient trees stay only at the forest's outskirts. They are circling around all southern part of the forest, up to the road from Beornings to the Long Lake. Then - a swamp, and in the middle - the island, big, too, more than ten leagues - from the north to the south, and about six leagues from the east to the west. We are walking on it. In here the trees are usual. The ancient have been cut down a long time ago. There are also other islands in marshes. Smaller than this. People live on them too.
- Is Dol-Guldur here? - I stumbled and slowed down.
- Once it was, - Ghash, too, slowed down. - But this fortress was razed fifty years back. Now here is an oghr's city. You heard their hammer.
- Who are the oghrs? - by a sound that was coming through the ground, the hammer was huge, and I imagined the oghrs as some kind of trolls, huge and spiteful creatures.
- Oghrs are those who do "ghr", - perplexingly answered Ghash. - It is difficult for me to translate. "Ghr" refers to any thing which makes you stronger, kughri, for example, - he allocated a sound in the middle of the word.
- They do the weapons, - I guessed.
- Not only, - Ghash slightly frowned from my obtuseness. - They do other, different instruments too. For farmsteads. Ploughs, for example, harrows. Anything. Even boots, that on you. In fact, in the boots your feet are not so easily get chaffed from long walking, which means you are becoming stronger.
- So they are simple handicraftsmen, - I drawled disappointedly. - You should say so.
- No, - Ghash shook his head. - At one time, perhaps, they were the handicraftsmen. But now it is alltogether different. I do not know how to explain to you. At other folks I did not see people who could be named oghrs, therefore I do not know the word on Westron to give an appropriate name to them. You will see yourself, it is easier, than to explain... The village, - and he has shown in front of us.


The village has been surrounded by a wooden paling.The usual pailing, like you can see all over Buckland or Bree. The space around was tilled for vegitable plots and on these patches were working women! Many women. A few dozen.
My mouth itself went agape in astonishment. Deep inside I knew that it should be the women at uruuk-hai's places. Besides, in a conversation with master Halm Ghash mentioned, that he has even six wives. But it was unusual to see at once of so many uruuk-hai women.
Though for the women our appearance was nothing of unusual. Probably, they see every day the soldiers walking by a wooden road to the village. Only a few of them unbent backs and looked at us from under a hand, barring the blinding sun, just like curious busybodies in the Hobbiton scrutinize an accidental passer-by.
While walking, I was twisting and turning my head, trying to make out somebody in better details, but Ghash, as to spite, quickened his pace, hurrying up to the gate, and I did not manage to have a good look.
I have only noted, that the majority of women are dressed in simple garbs made from uncolored homespun canvas. At us, in Hobbiton, only the poorest are wearing such clothes, those, who do not have its own plot of land. But in the Hobbiton you won't find many of the landless and, let alone, poor.
After the King Elessar has given the Westmarch to the Hobbits, almost every family have a piece of its own land.


The gate of the village was wide open, and nobody protected them.
- Where is the watchman ? - I asked. - Why the gates are not locked?
- There is nobody to lock from, - waved away Ghash. - At night they will lock, so bears won't get in, but in the afternoon there is nobody to lock out. Let's go faster.
We almost ran along the street with long and low houses built out of huge logs and covered with turf, and came out on the round square.
In the middle of the area stood a huge, more than my hight, mossy log well, and, once again, I have thought that the oghrs, plobably, are the giants. To the top of the well lead a flight of stairs. The bucket, approximately containing not less than ten or fifteen pails, has been adhered to a well winch by a chain. Ghash ran up the stairs, glanced in the bucket and, uttering a short curse, with a shoulder pushed the bucket into the well. The chain thundered down, and we heard a powerful splash .
- Get in the wheel, - ordered Ghash, and only now I saw, that instead of the handle to the winch attached a huge wooden wheel with steps inside.
- Come on, hurry up, - hastened me Ghash, - while the curious have not gathered up. Troubles can begin.
I obediently got into the wheel and started to move from step to step. To my surprise, it was quite easy.
Together with the wheel also was turning a well winch, hoisting the fifteen- piles bucket. When it has shown above edge of the well, Ghash pulled out a rope with an iron hook at the end and has hooked it to a ring at a bottom of the bucket .
- There is the handle above you in the wheel. Pull, - he asked.
I looked upwards, saw the wooden handle and pulled, something clicked, and the wheel ceased to shake under legs.
- Now go to the stairs. - he continued. - There is the trench sticks out of the frame, stand under it.
I have left the wheel, went around the log well and positioned myself under the trench.
From the gate somebody was walking to the square down the same street we just rushed through .
Above my head has creaked a winch, and a stream of icy water crashed down on me.
- Are you out of your mind? - I was indignant. - It is cold!
- It is necessary, - satisfactorily answered Ghash, jumping off the log well. - You are new guy here, unfamiliar, it is better be safe than sorry. Anything can happen.
I didn't like this his remark.
Ghash looked on coming close individual and added: - Behave politely, greet. If anyone will threaten you, say that you are here under a protection of water. Understood? I will be back soon.
Not waiting for my answer, he ran away, rising up behind a cloud of dust.

I wistfully watched him go until someone's shadow has covered my boots.
Before me stood a stocky, round-headed, sturdy fellow, hardly taller than me.
He stood, widely placing legs in short boots, crossing on the naked chest his powerful hands, same like Uragh's intertwined with muscles, and scowling his broad-browed shaved head on a short neck. For some time the Sturdy closely studied me with gloomy sight of slanted eyes, and then put his hands on hips, as if I should admire the set of his wide shoulders and flat, firm stomach, and uttered.
- You don't look much like one of us, - he generalized his observations.
- Hello, - possibly, it was not the best answer, but it is inconvenient to begin a conversation without greeting, and Ghash has ordered to be polite.
- What are you doing here, a rat? - seems, my politeness did not make any effect on the Sturdy and he decided not to reciprocate.
- I am standing here under the protection of water, - I answered obediently. - Only I am not a rat and not a rodent, period. I am the Hobbit, if you know this word. And if you don't, then you can call me a halfling.
- The halflinged Rat ... - the Sturdy scornfully muttered through his teeth, then bent and pulled out of his boot-top a small, with a blade not wider than my palm, kughri, played it between fingers and asked in ominous whisper.
- What if I will trim your ears now?
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Old 07-31-2014, 10:36 AM   #34
Olmer
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You never know where you can find, where you can lose. If I would know then, at the well, how it all will end ... However, I think that I am abusing this expression too much. I did not know about many things then, but I won't get ahead of myself and will tell all by the order of events. The Strudy, who wished to "trim" my ears, somehow looked entertaining, maybe because of his belligerence. Or, maybe, because of a confidence that he can do it with his toy-kughri, despite the fact that I'm armed. By the hobbit's standarts this fellow would be just "coming of age", not by years, but by life experience. With an adjustment for a difference in our lives's length he can be my contemporary. He stood before me, all so fit, stocky, ruffled like a rooster, only without a sticking up cookscomb on his shaved head, looking so funny that I could not help but smile.
- What for you are grinning? - Strudy immediately got cross with me. - Is your teeth asking to get out? I can help.
- I'm trying to be civil, - I told him. - The one who left me under protection of the water, ordered me to be polite to the locals.
On this Strudy did not know what to say, but the second mention of the "water protection" probably piqued him. He began to pace in front of me, agitatively shaking head and looking askance at me, but, however, did not come closer.
- I will sit down - I told him and sat on the step of well's stairs. - Give a rest to feet. Besides it's easier to talk while sitting. How do they call you?
- Call?!! - Strudy has stopped and for some not particularly long time kept on opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of the water.
- For this "call", the overgrown rat, I will trim not only the ears, but your tongue also! - And not only his face, but a shirtless torso, too, slowly began to get covered with large red spots.
- I'm sorry if I said something wrong - I tried to pacify him. - I hardly know the local customs. I did not mean to offend you.
- Who? You? - Strudy laughed with his mouth wide open. His teeth were so smooth and white, that I even envy him. - You? Offend me? It's me who will offend you! The protection of the water is not forever. It will end. And then I'll so offend, that you have not seen, yet, such grievances! Got it, stuffed scarecrow?
At this moment he looked not funny, but rather scary. If we were in Hobbiton, he would have, perhaps, frighten me.
- What are you two talking about? - Ghash have such capability to appear suddenly, as if from nowhere.
- About my ears - I snitched. - He is promising to cut them off.
- Not cut, but to trim, - muttered Strudy looking at Ghash upwards. Since Fangorn's time Ghash grew up on one and a half feet and became noticeably wider at the shoulders, which has impressed even Berol, who himself did not look small. - Explain the difference to that rat.
- I will explain, Ghai, will explain... - Ghash said amiably. - But if you want to hear my advice, then I would suggest you to look after your ears. This guy right in front of me without any weapons knocked the bearded off his feet and then picked up somebody's kughri and cut him in a half. Along with all iron things on him. If it comes to trimming the ears, most likely yours will suffer. But he forgives you. Is that right, Chsham?
I was not immediately aware he was talking to me and, when realized, just nodded.
- I do not need anyone's advice, - Strudy muttered again, but now he did not look so arrogant. - I have my own head.
- So, use it. - said Ghash. - We are being awaited. Let's go Chsham.
And we left the strudy fellow pensively standing at the well.
- Why do you call me Chsham? - I whispered to Ghash when we walked away.
- I did not call, I named, - he corrected . - They "call" those who have no names, only nicknames, get used to it, please. And do not even think of saying to anyone "I am called... ", with this you put yourself in the position of snaga, or even worse. Only - "My name is ..." In the swamp I said that you have a name, and you're a warrior of Shaghbuurth, otherwise I would have to drag you here as a prisoner, bounded. And in here you would be treated as a captive. Believe my words, it's a little pleasure in this. It's better that you will have a name. Shaghbuurth is far away and I myself can grant the names to my fighters, or refuse the name, without asking for a permission till return back home. I decided to accredit to you the name Chsham .
- What does that mean, Chsham? - It was hard to pronounce without a practice.
- You pronounce it good - said Ghash. - How do I know what does it mean? It's yours grandfather was named so, not mine.
- Mine? - I was amazed. - I am sorry, but one of my grandfather's name is Peregrine, and the other is Semius, or Pippin and Sam.
- We have a legend - Ghash stopped at the door of a low log house - about a guy from your people, who wore the Ring of Power. The one that defeated Shelob and trashed the Cirith - Ungol fortress. You yourself boasted that it was your grandfather.
- It was my grandfather Sam - I tried to explain to him. - Semius.
- And in the legend - Chsham - said Ghash . - And take my word, every one of our people, who will hear the name Chsham, will have a much greater respect to you, than if you would be somebody named Semius. This is simply no one will understand. Each of us had heard a legend of Chsham, even back in an infancy. Come in. - And he pushed the door open.

Inside the house was dark, stuffy and hot. Air and light barely penetrated through narrow slits of windows . On the left of the entrance from behind of a thin wattled partition was coming sounds of soft mooing, grunting and smell of manure. It seems that the owners are living under the same roof with their cattle.
On the right, in the back of the house was towering a structure, in which I did not immediately recognize the stove. It was too huge. In Hobbiton we do not have such stoves, we prefer open hearths and fireplaces. The ceiling in the house was so low that Ghash had to duck, however, for hobbits low ceiling is a usual thing. What struck me, even at first glance, it's just a general wretchedness of an interior decoration.
There is nothing has been spread on the earthen floor. Narrow windows were not closed even with a bull bladder, and of all visible things of furnishing my attention attracted a sole, very broad, low platform along one side of the wall, made of half-logs, and a low and narrow table, the same made of half-logs, which I, at first, took for a sleeping bench. At the table was no chairs, apparently it was supposed to sit on the ground. Compared to all this, the poorest hobbit's smial would look like wallowing in a luxury.
Despite the summer heat, the stove in the house has been fired up and near it a very young woman in a simple dress with an apron and a kerchief on her head was doing something. Quite an ordinary looking young human woman. With the height I grew up, calling her as one of the Big Folk would be just stupid. I did not notice in her nothing special, "orcish ". In my opinion, she had quite an attractive appearance .
When we walked in, she stopped her work for a moment and said something to Ghash.
- We have to wait - Ghash translated her words . - They all will come soon .
Who "they all" he did not explain. Instead, he took off his bag and gave it to the girl, and then threw a rolled out buurgha on the ground, sat on it, legs folded up and confidently leaned on the table. I followed his example. The sitting has not been comfortable, all the time I wanted to lean on the back of a nonexistent chair.
The girl pushed aside a flap of the furnace mouth, took an oven fork and dragged out on a hearth a huge crock pot . Though she did not look fragile, it was evident that it is heavy for her. I jerked to get up and help, but Ghash shook his head and I remained seated. Meanwhile, the girl took off the lid of the pot and hot, dense and spicy smell drifted around the house. A minute later she presented us with a bowl of porridge, put two wooden spoons next to it and separately, on a small towel, a half-loaf of rye bread. I must tell you that fresh, still warm rye bread - is not the same thing, than boring hiking crackers. A hot buckwheat porridge flavored with herbs, vegetables and small pieces of fat was simply delicious.

We were still eating, when old women began to walk in the house. The ordinary old women, comely as aunt Lily, only wrapped in shawls to the eyes and in more scruffy clothes, and every single one with a buurgha. The old women one by one were scuffling past us to the platform, unrolling their buurghas and making themselves comfortable, who is sitting, who - reclining. They did not interfere with our meal, just silently and attentively watched us.
It is quite unpleasant when someone is so expectantly looking at you, while you are eating. When the girl brought tea of stewed berries from the oven, I started to drink it fast, in order to finish sooner this silent waiting, but Ghash almost imperceptibly shook his head. I began to drink just as he was doing it: slowly, steadily, constantly blowing on the surface of the liquid. It was a necessary precaution, as the stewed fruit tea in a wooden mug was bubbling hot.
When we finished with hot drinks, Ghash waited until the girl got removed our dishes and whisk crumbs from the table. Then he turned around to the platform, leaned on the edge of the countertop, as on the back of the chair, stretched his legs and, with a nod, indicated me to do the same. All this time the old women was silent and watchful. When I got settled next to Ghash, one of them opened mouth and croaked something questioningly.
- He does not understand, ghoy-iteremi - Ghash said. - We'd better speak on Westron.
- Why he did not understand the Dark speech? - Asked the old woman, but it seemed to me that they already knew the answer. - He was not born in the buurth - calmly replied Ghash, but I already knew him too well to see that he was worried. - He was born and raised in other nation.
- But you said - the old creaked - that he is "uragh shaghabuurth globatul." And he repeated it.
- Yes - Ghash confirmed, nodding. - I said so. And ready to say it again.
- The soldiers of Uruuk-hai have never been born outside of the buurth. - The old woman said accusingly, and the rest nodded their heads in an agreement. - Once there was not Uruuk-hai themselves. - Ghash said. - But if one who was not born a ghoy can enter the buurth and bear warriors, then the one who was not born a ghai, may enter in the buurth and become an uragh.
- Uu-ghoy are coming to the buurth when unable to walk or talk. - The old woman smirked, again others nodded in agreement. - How he came in?
- I'll tell you - I thought that Ghash was a bit hasty to say it.
- No, - the old woman shook her head. - Now you will be silent, let him tell. - She looked at me.
- Who are you? - Chsham, uragh shaghabuurth globatul, - I replied.
- No use to say the words, the meaning of which you do not understand. - The old woman bared her chipped teeth in an unpleasant smile. - Who are you? Where were you born? How met him? - Her finger pointed at Ghash. - And how you became the uragh? Tell me everything from the beginning.
- I'm a hobbit, ghoy iteremi, - I said. - People call us Halflings. I was born in the far west, behind the Misty Mountains, in the country which is called Shire. - I've heard of Halflings. - The old woman nodded . - I hate that word, because it sound somewhat humiliating for whose who height is less than human. Therefore, as we speak, we will refer to you as a Hobbit. - She looked around, and the rest of the old women nodded . - Do not get offended by old women quirks.
- I am far from being insulted, ghoy - iteremi - I shrugged . - That's what we call ourselves. I mean that is how my folk are being referred.
- You are striving to be courteous , - Said the old woman, and it seemed to me that for a moment a derisivenes flickered in her eyes. - A rare quality for a warrior. You'd better say "u-u- ghoy", because you are talking not only to me, but to all of us .
I simply nodded.
- And how are you, Hobbit of the Shire, became the "uragh shaghbuurth"? I thought over and looked at Ghash in a hope that he will give me some sign. But Ghash motionlessly sat cross-legged, with back unnaturally straight and hands laying on hips. His eyes were closed, only the face, whiter than a birch-bark, stood out in the gloom.
- Do not look at him, - the old woman advised. - He won't help you. You have to tell yourself.
- It's a long story, u-u-ghoy, - I said. - Very long. - It's o-key. - The old woman chuckled, and others too smirked with the corners of their mouths. - We outlived the years metered to us and we were in no hurry. And we still do not know whether you should rush. Tell us.
I looked again at the pallid Ghash, breathed in deeply and began to recount everything, beginning from the day when I, offended by my father, jumped on a pony and rode out on the road.
It was the long story. Long and difficult. The ent Fastwit with its " more, more" was far less inquisitive that these old ladies. At some moments they were asking me almost in unison, and often they were getting occupied with details which was not settled in my mind, like how many ravens was sitting on boulders around dying Ghash.
They made me to tell about Ents draught not only what I have experienced myself, but everything I read, heard or thought about it.
Several times I was interrupted and returned to what has already been told. For example, when I mentioned how I was tied to a pole by beorings, they stopped me and made to tell again about Ghashur and a torture in the Barrow-downs underground. I did not stop until they pulled out of me everything: that I felt then and what I was thinking. They let me finish only when I lead my story to the door of this house.

The windows were dark. I felt wet, like a mouse in a beer, and exhausted as a mug of Waymeet's blacksmith at the end of the binge .
- Shaghrat! - The chief of the old women called Ghash . - Are you here or still converse with the Impartial One?
- Already here, - after a pause, replied Ghash, slightly relaxed - Ask, uu-ghoy.
- I beg your pardon, ghoy-iteremi if I behave inappropriately - I interfered, - but I would like to go out for a while.
- Go - The old woman nodded. - In the barn there is a door to the backyard. See him out! - She told this to the girl, that all the time during my story was sitting as quiet, as a mouse. - Do not be long, Hobbit of the Shire.
The girl led me out through the barn with two calves and a pig and pointed to a wooden building at the corner of the yard. I rushed to there, silently cursing all these talks, all stories, the asking and re-asking.
When I came out, having regained the ability to sense the environment, the moon, as green as an eye of varg, shone in the sky and large, like walnuts, stars are glittering above. After the stuffiness and the heat of the house the air was cool .
A shadow got separated from the wall of the house, the girl came up very close to me and, looking slightly upwards, peered into my eyes.
- You're amusing. - She said suddenly and lifted a hand and stroked my cheek with her thin fingers. - And strong . Pity if the old women will sentence you. I would like to have a husband like you. Let me give you a kiss . And .. she kissed me! Right on the lips!
I ... I do not know how to tell about it, I thought that I am experienced in kissing girls. Even now, when I recall it, I still feel thrilled and languished inside, and I want to fall down and squeal with a puppy delight.
Seems, I looked silly and very embarrassed when I returned to the house, because at my appearance the old women started knowingly to smirk and exchange glances. Even Ghash, glancing at me with cold eyes, slightly raised corners of his lips .
- You can go to sleep, Hobbit of the Shire - The ghoy - iteremi pointed me to the corner. - We will be having a long discussion .
It's been said in such tone that I did not dare to object. I wrapped in the buurgha and fell asleep on the dirt floor under a monotonous talking of Ghash.


When I woke up, a red glow of dawn was penetrating in the windows, the old women in the house were gone, and Ghash was sitting at the table, slurping some brew.
- Go wash up and sit down to eat , - he said glumly . - The washer is behind the stove .
I walked around the oven and found a jug with a long spout suspended on a rope. Under the jug was a large tub with some dirty water on the bottom. Nearby, on a shelf, lay a piece of gray soap root, and a canvas towel. It was no washbowl in there.
- Where is a washbowl? - I shouted to Ghash. - In what to wash?
- Under the jet - sounded from behind the oven. - It's not Gondor, in here you wash under the spill. The jug has a cord on the spout, pull and it will bend over.
I pulled the cord, the pitcher obediently tilted and water flowed from the spout.
- Food is in the oven - Ghash said, when I again has appeared before him, fresh and clean. - Bread - on the table. Don't fill your stomach too much, it can be a hindrance.
- And where are the old women? - I asked, sitting down next to him. - They went to ask Ghai how you bickered with him at the well.
- I did not bicker with him, - I replied. - Very politely talked.
- That's what you think - Ghash mused. - I wonder what they think ...
- All done? - He asked, when I finished with the soup. - Put on the harness and let's go to the well. We were told to wait there.
- What about porridge? - I tried to argue. - I have not eaten the porridge.
- Without porridge! - He snapped. - If you won't be stopped, you will eat till evening. Get ready quickly! I had never seen him so nervous. He looked calmer even when Berol told him that I was caught too.

At the well we saw a big tumultuous crowd, mostly of women and children. The crowd of men was smaller, and they stood alone. When we came closer, the noise got hashed and the crowd parted to give us the way. In silence followed with wary glances we walked to the well. I tried to find a familiar face among women, but did not find it. Ghash, too, was looking for somebody, but among men.
- Ghai, - he said, when they saw the one he was looking for. - What is it over there? - I do not know - said already familiar Strudy, briefly stepping out of the crowd. - They did not ask me much. Now are arguing between themselves, - he looked somewhat embarrassed.
- Did you hear what is about?
- They're talking on Black speech so quickly ​​that I cannot understand them. I am not a ghoy. There Mavka helps them at the table, maybe she tell when she will come.
Ghash nodded and told me:
- Sit on the steps! Let your feet rest. And relax.
It is easy to say - to relax. But how? I did not like all this it all. I did not like an increasing silence of the crowd, and the strudy Ghai, who is covertly casting on me scrutinizing glances.

The sun managed to climb over the tops of the forest on the whole fist, before the old women have appeared
- They quickly came to an agreement - Ghash frowned. - Go down the stairs, give them a way.
Groaning, the old women climbed to the top of the well and the oldest stepped forward. - Take off your weapon, Hobbit of the Shire, - she said, suddenly, with pealing voice and its sound spread out over the area. - and come up to us.
I unbuckled the belt, gave the harness to Ghash and went upstairs.
- Listen everybody. - Still loudly proclaimed the old woman. - Listen and watch. In front of you is standing a comer of the country called Shire from the far west beyond the Great River and beyond the Misty Mountains . He was born and raised in the hobbit people that live in this country, and at the beginning of this summer had not heard anything about the people of Uruuk- Hai. Shaghrat shaghabuurth took him as a prisoner for the cause of which there is no need to talk. And the same shaghrat shaghabuurth brought him here, free and with weapon , and he vouched by his name that the Hobbit of the Shire is the fire-warrior named Chsham .
The crowd below us growled menacingly. The old woman raised her hand, waited a moment and continued .
- I know what you are outraged. - She said. - Never before the stranger was becoming a warrior of Uruuk-hai. We have questioned the Hobbit of the Shire and the shaghrat for a long time and then deliberated also for a long time. Hobbit of the Shire was captured as an enemy, and striving for a freedom, he escaped from captivity. He was caught and put on a chain, but when all his guards were killed and he became free again , he did not walk past the dying shaghrat. Cunningly, he lured the wandering tree into giving him a magic potion that heals wounds and brought shaghrat back from the edge of death. Who of you can manage at least to survive upon meeting with a wandering tree? Who of you will be so merciful to save the live of dying enemy? The Hobbit of the Shire did not pass the uragh test, but his kughri he had received from the hands of one commiting sheopp. Each of us knows what does it mean to have such a gift. In his first fight Hobbit of the Shire has killed the bearded .
Who of you can brag with the same? Hobbit of the Shire, being free and armed, voluntarily agreed to help to shaghrat in the mission, important for all the people of Uruuk-Hai. He did not give out the shaghrat when the two of them were captured by descendants of the Bear, even when he was at the pole, prepared for a torture. And he knows what the torture is , because without a groan he stood at the torture pole of urruugh u-at-a-gha, traitors and enemies of our people. Anyone, who wants, can find traces of their knives on his chest. - The old woman paused and looked into the crowd.
Nobody rushed to look at my chest.
- I told you everything I know about the valor of the Hobbit of the Shire. But never before the one, who was born not in the buurth, was a warrior of Uruuk- Hai people. We, uu-ghoy, who are standing in front of you, have discussed about it. - The other old women came forward from the back . - And came to an agreement. Hobbit of the Shire ... we recognize you as an uragh.

Dead silence fell over the crowd. I saw Ghash became less rigid and leaned the shoulder to the well's frame. And I, honestly, was greatly relieved too.
- Hobbit of the Shire, - the old woman continued. - When yesterday morning you stood under the protection of water, did the warrior named Ghai approached you?
- Yes, ghoy-iteremi, - I replied.
- Did he promise to trim your ears?
- Yes, ghoy-iteremi.
- We recognize you as the uragh. You have to act like uragh and let the Impartial One to decide if we're right in your decision.
It was a mystery. I had to do something and I did not know what. - Can I talk to my friend? - I asked hopefully, fearing even to imagine what will happen if they will refuse.
- You can. - The old women have a compassion.
- Ghash, - I whispered to him, after running down the stairs. - What should I do?
- He promised to trim your ears, - said grimly Ghash. - Uragh can not forgive such thing. You have to challenge him to a duel.
- And what does it mean about the ears?
- Slaves got the ears trimmed . - Snagas? - I asked stupidly. - Or gha?
- Snagas are not slaves - Ghash winced. - Where did you see a snaga with trimmed ears? They are commoners, workers. Those who have done nothing to deserve the name. And gha are not slaves. They're just living things that do not have their mind, like the innocent children, for example. Gha may become snaga and earn the name. A slave will always remain a slave. This fate is worse than death. - And if I did not challenge him? - It's hard to come up with more stupid question, but I must have been at my best.
- Then you're not the uragh, he will do what he promised, and I would be, at best, expelled from the island without a guide, and at worst - drowned in a swamp with your ears.
- Understood.- All this made ​​me very upset. - How do I challenge him?
- Take off your boots, undress from the waist up, come to him for five steps, point on him with the blade and call his name, then wait, not dropping hands to the sign of the fight. Then fight .


In Ghash's explanation it seemed easy. Very simple. I only had to do it. Just do it. And I began to take off the boots. The crowd immediately spread out, leaving lone Ghai a few steps away from us, who also was hastily pulling off his boots. Barefooted and half-naked, I flexed slightly to relax the muscles. I have to do it. Have to. Just do it. It is so easy: walk five steps, raise kughri and say one little word. Step. Another step. And another. I raised my outstretched arm, guided the tip of the blade to a someone bare chest and said " Ghai ." My voice never wavered . Only the hand was slightly trembling .
The guy threw aside his stuff and pulled his hand back, someone ran out of the crowd and placed a handle of kughri in the open palm. Ghai took two steps, stretched out his hand in front of him, and our blades touched - subtle rattling resounded over the area.
- Listen, - The old woman's voice rang in the ears. - You'll fight until someone's blade does taste the blood. And no matter how much it will be. The winner decides if he will take the life of a loser or trim his ears. Be prepared and start when you hear the cry of the warrior.
-" U-u-u-u-u... " - the crowd began a familiar monotonous note, and I looked into Ghai's gray eyes. They were empty.
- Do not look into them - Grandfather Sam's mocking voice came to life inside of me - You will get drown. Look through.
I dutifully looked at the crowd through Ghai. Momentarily something flashed in his eyes, and then they become empty again. But not so scary .
-"R-r-r-agh!" - breathed out the crowd and Ghai rushed to me like an airborn onagh's stone. It is now I know that the stone thrown by the onagh almost invisible in the fly. Then I just found Ghai is not where he has been and the tip of his blade is within an inch of my body. If not for a natural agility of hobbits, he could have my chest ripped open with this first move.
Good thing, that at the breakfast Ghash did not let me fill my stomach. I did hot have even a moment to move aside, I just bent sharply back and stood on my forehead. This one is of the most difficult moves of the springle-ring dancing. It's good, that I have had a sufficient practice with beornings, otherwise I would break my back.
Ghai could not stop the motion of his jump and slid over me by a sweaty fish. I saw how he rolled on the ground, but when I straightened up and turned to him, he already was sneaking to me, holding the kughri in front.
- You're good, Hobbit of the Shire - he hissed. - But you did not have a time to bar the blade. So you are not very good.
- The guy is right. - The grandfather 's voice has got involved in a conversation . - If you would put out the sword, he would cut himself open from a throat to his ... - Grandpa meant groin.
Ghai again rushed to me, and I managed to dodge again, but this time he almost got me and I did not get him. The kughri was just hindering me. It was made for Uragh, and to me, even already quite grown up, it was heavy.
- You will die, Hobbit of the Shire - continued to hiss Ghai. - Your tricks will not help you. Your first blood on my blade will be your last .
He rushed, our swords met, and mine, ringing, flew over the heads of the crowd. The crowd burst out in different directions, like a flock of frightened sparrows, opening the way for me to the fallen kughri, but Ghai had interceded the path. I did not have time, just jumped back from the blade swished in font my face. Between me and Ghai was five steps .
- That's all, Hobbit of the Shire - grinned Ghai . - You are jumpy. They say, such jumpy rats are living in the black desert. But you're not born there, RAT. I still think I should trim your ears - and he started to move towards me with a slow, smooth pace.
The sharp line of his black blade glinted in the sun, and I imagined how my blood will run over this blade.
- Do not look at the sword! - Said anxiously grandfather's voice. - Hacked to death! Look at your feet and get ready. You will have only one chance. When he will rush at you .
Ghai rushed. I guess he expected me to jump aside or run from him. But I ran to him ... dove under the flying in strike blade and, sprawling in the air, put the elbow in front of me.
I have never done this thing in a full force and with such rapidity, especially for a partner, who has not had a time to stop the movement and hovered on a tiptoe, leaning forward. Hobbits , when dancing with me the spring-a-ring, usually have a time to dodge. Ghai had not. When the elbow hit him under the ribs, he exhaled, released the hilt from a weakened grip and flew five steps backwards.
The crowd gasped. I picked up a kughri, slowly falling in the air, like an autumn leaf, grabbed the handle and unhurriedly moved towards lying Ghai. It was absolutely no need for the rush. Ghai could neither breathe nor move. He is just powerlessly digging his bare heels in the ground trying to crawl to where my sword lays. The crowd kept the way open, but it was useless. He even did not crawl a step, when I approached him .
- "Now decide yourself" - Rustled inside grandfather's voice and got silent. And I so needed his advice now! I looked around and found Ghash. He was almost next to me.
- Put out. - Silently whispered his lips. - Put him out.
Ghash stood near the girl, who kissed me. Probably of all directed at me stares only in hers could be seen kindness and compassion. Ghai has ceased his futile attempts and only looked at the blade in my hand with haunted, doomed stare. I slowly raised my left hand, then the blade, and, slowly, move the blade across the forearm.
I did it too much, because the blood flowed immediately and abundantly. Spreading the arms to the sides, so everyone could clearly see how blood flows along the arm and dripping from the blade, I said:
- His sword tasted my blood! - The voice echoing pealed over the silent crowd. - He won! You can decide: to kill me or trim my ears. I did what I wanted, and I do not wish other. I , CHSHAM, URAGH SHAGHABUURTH GLOBATUL! "

Last edited by Olmer : 07-31-2014 at 10:53 AM.
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Old 10-10-2014, 11:39 PM   #35
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I said and, dropping my hands down, threw the kughri into the dust near Ghai. Blood run down the forearm and the palm and started to drip from fingertips on the ground, curling up in the dust into wet, sticky black lumps.
Everyone stood around in stunned silence, not moving, and seems not even breathing. A completely implausible quietness spread over the area. Seemed I was hearing the sound of fused heartbeats of others, hollow and frequent, but could not get the understanding of what lies behind this silence. Some thought was spinning on the edge of an empty mind, not materializing, as if afraid of something.
-Your word, Ghai, - pealed over the area from the well. -Your word!
Ghai could not talk.
In boy's fights I had been hit like this, in the guts, though not with such force. I know that in such situation you are not up to the talks. You would be a happy to inhale a small fraction of the air.
Ghai could not speak, but, with difficulty, first slumping on his side, then - on his knees, he managed to get up. He stood in front of me, hunched over, hugging himself with his right hand between the chest and abdomen. He glanced at me with an expressionless look gasped for the air, struggling, straining muscles, to push it into his lungs, and held out his right arm back and to the side, same as he did before the fight, when he asked for his sword. A moment later, the handle my kughri laid in his palm, almost like the kughri itself got out of the dust and flew through half of the area. With his free hand Ghai grabbed my grazed left arm just above the elbow, raised his sword and slashed the blade across his trembling forearm. A few drops got splashed on me, and Ghai tried to say something. He couldn't, but I understood the meaning of his mumble and took his shoulder just as he held mine. Our wounds touched.
Everyone around roared!
- "Now I will be torn on hundreds little Chshams" - I thought: so many hands immediately reached out to us.
But nothing happened. Dozens of hands tossed us into the air and raised above their heads. The air trembled and rippled from a jubilant, enthusiastic roar.
I do not remember how I came up on the well. Perhaps they were just thrown me up here. I was slightly dizzy, because the blood from the forearm is still dripping, and no one thought of stopping it. Ghai was sitting right there at my feet, leaning shoulder to my knee and still gasping for air. He was oblivious to nothing.
The ghoy-iteremi raised her hand and the crowd quieted down almost immediately. For the mayor of Hobbiton with all shiriffs of Shire it would take much more time to calm down such crowds.
- You did not get your name in vain, Hobbit of the Shire, - the ghoy-iteremi said slowly, drawling. - Just like a warrior of the legend, you know how to distinguish good from evil, light from darkness, and truth from falsehood. You can find the ways, even where it was never existed, and your wisdom is beyond your age. You are - truly Chsham. Listen all! Henceforth: as she, who was born outside the buurth, can be a mother of uruuk-hai, then he, who was born outside the buurth, can become an uruuk-hai, if desires it. We, uu-ghoy-iteremi oghrbuurth said so!
Again the crowd downstairs roared something ecstatically joyful.

Later I sat under the well on a concaved wooden trough for livestock watering and, diligently holding funneling consciousness, watched as THAT girl, joyfully smiling, was putting a bandage soaked with black ointment on my forearm. She was doing it easily and deftly, as if she has been learning it for a half of a lifetime.
- What is your name? - I asked her. The voice for no reason became unexpectedly low. Almost hoarse.
- I have no name, yet, - she said, smiling. - A ghoy gets the name when her first child is reaching one year old age. And I have no children and no husband yet. She carefully looked me up and continued:
- But I think next spring I will have children.
She giggled into a fist, looking straight in my eyes with bated mischief. I even choked and coughed in order not to show my embarrassment.
- And how can I refer to you? - I asked her. - While you do not have the children.
Now she got embarrassed.
- You can call me Mavka, - she said. - It means "living in the lake."
- Nice, - I appreciated. - Take me to the house where we are staying, Mavka. I lost quite a lot of blood and now, going by myself, I might get lost. And can you tell me where is Ghai and where has disappeared Ghash ?
- Ghash is talking to Ghai's father, - she said, helping me up. - Ghai's brothers are blowing the air into Ghai. And I'll certainly help you to get to the house. The ghoy-iteremi instructed me to look after you, but I would have done it without her order. I like you.
- Really? - I asked, dumbfounded. In Hobbiton it is quite different and a hobbit-girl would never say such thing so easily and openly.
- Really, - she said simply, throwing my hand on her shoulders. - Hold on tight, and let's go. You're interesting and strong, even more than I thought.
The shoulders under her dress were round, hot and unexpectedly firm.
- Will I offend you, - I asked cautiously - or break some customs, if I'll say that I like you too?
- No, - she said very seriously and intently. She tried to step up with me, but it turned out bad. - You won't break and won't offend. I will be very pleased.
- Then I'll say - I breathed in deeply, trying to calm the racing heart. - I like you very much too, Mavka. Especially kissing.
- Yes? - She beamed, as if I really said something very pleasant, and, without removing my hands from her shoulders, turned to me, so we were standing face to face, almost touching noses. - Really?
- It is true - I tried to nod, and we bumped heads together. Not much, just touched.
- Then ... - she ran her fingers through my hair and pulled my head a little closer to her. - Since you like ...
I have been already dizzy, but now ... all around flashed and swam before my eyes. I found myself lying on my back in the dust.
The rest of the walk to the house we have done swiftly and silently, maybe a little faster than it should be for the wounded warrior hanging on the shoulders of a pretty aid. To tell the truth, I was hugging these shoulders a bit harder and closer than it would be expected from the "wounded warrior." In the house we somehow have quickly forgotten about everything.

- Wow! Well you do! - I did not even hear how Ghash has entered. Mavka squalled in fright and flew off to somewhere behind the oven, on the run adjusting a dress on her shoulders. - We're here not even a day, you just almost got killed, and already you are kissing with the girl. With the most beautiful on the island, as well.
From behind the stove came a satisfied giggle.
- Where have you been? - I asked, because I had to say something, and because I wanted to distract Ghash. - I am bleeding, you even did not help me to bandage.
- I saw that you are in good hands, - Ghash grinned. - and decided not to interfere. Somehow you're not looking like one who lost a lot of blood. Mavka, how is he? Did he bleed a lot? Can he move?
- He can. - squeaked behind the oven. - Can barely stay on the feet, but the hands are moving all right .
- Here you are! I see you are not wasting your time, - Ghash chuckled. - And the girl likes you. When did you manage? That's right, Mavka, a guy like him will not come to your swamp for another hundred years .
- Ghash, - again, I tried to distract him. - Will I have such interrogation in every village now? And will I have arranged fights?
- No, - he said, sprawling beside me on the platform. - By the evening everyone on the island will know your name. In other buurths it will be as it comes, but if you have got the oghr's acknowledgement, than in other places you will be accepted too.You are even not realizing how well you did it all. In here a tale about this will be recounted for another hundred years. Maybe even longer. Mavka, you will feed us?
- All in the oven - Mavka said, coming out and shrugging.
She put her white hair under a headscarf, got washed and stood fresh and beautiful. Slightly swollen lips not a bit spoilt her looks.
- Cooked for three days .
- We are waiting for guests - said Ghash, sitting up. - Come on, look after us, the rough men. Is one pot of porridge will be enough for fifteen people? Or is our guy bad? - He nodded at me.
Mavka grunted, lifted her nose and went into the yard. For some reason I did like how Ghash talk to Mavka. I even wanted to say something hurtful to him, but nothing came up.

And then the door got opened, and a half dozen men barged into the house. Armed.
This was nothing strange. I've already gotten used to the fact that everyone in the village carries weapons, even women and children. Even the old women. Even on Mavka's chest hung a small double-edged knife, like a wide willow leaf, on a thin cord threaded through the hole in the handle.
The strange thing was that all men were staying leaning their hands on the hilts of swords, and among them was Ghai. For some time the newcomers stared at me grimly and silently, then a thin gray uragh, who stood to the left of Ghai, raised his arm and with all his might dealt him such a cuff on the nape of his neck that Ghai even swung forward.
- At least bow, stupid, - said uragh. - And thank him. Such a warrior took you as a blood brother.
I did not understand what it's all about and looked at Ghash. He showed no concern and frankly enjoyed the scene, while his smile, in my opinion, was stretching up to his ears.
- It's still has to be seen who took, - Ghai grumbled, rubbing his head. - I could not let his blade to drink my blood.
Right away he got the another slap.
- Then, I would drown you in the swamp with my own hands from a shame on my gray head, - the uragh barked. - Forgive this fool, frea Chsham, - he turned to me. - Junior he is at us, from my third wife. Six times she gave birth, but then a miscarriage, then gave a birth, but the child won't live even an year. On the seventh time she was given a birth to this blockhead. Seems spoiled this fool in a childhood, did not flog him enough while he was running without pants, so such a dolt grew up. I am a father of this idiot. Tulagh is my name. And here are my sons, his brothers.
All nodded.
- We have come in here to thank you for being merciful to this fool. You saved him while you yourself was walking under the death. When I saw how you dodged from him at the first time, I thought my guy have done with running any more. His mother next to me gasped, thought you will play with him and then slaughter for his stupidity. But you turned everything in such fine way!
He bowed to me low and the rest of them bowed too. I felt my ears got flushed.
- Please, sit down, - I invited them at the table. - It is no good when the guests are standing at the threshold.
- Thank you, - Tulagh confidently walked up to the table, sat down at the very center and from somewhere behind put on the table a voluminous clay bottle encased in a leather weaved holder. - Do not disdain our food. Smoked frogs, salted fish, mushroom salads. Our women are diligent.
Others too, having sat down on buurghas around the table, began to put on the various edibles from theirs bags.
- We won't disdain, Tulagh, won't disdain, - Ghash intervened, rising from the lounging platform. - Will try everything. Come on, Chsham, sit down at the table. Mavka, will you at least give us a bread? Or in the guest-house we won't find the bread for our guests?
- Not only the bread, - Mavka said at the oven (When she has time to come back?)
- You do not drink this stuff - she pointed at the bottle, wrinkling her nose, and beckoned to the one sitting at the edge of the table. - Come on.
While I was making myself comfortable at the table sitting between Ghash on the left and Ghai on the right and thought about where Mavka took that man, she has already returned. The man was holding two generous loaves under his armpit and on his shoulder carried a small, no more than a half-bucket, keg, all covered with dried brown mud.
- Wow - Tulagh said, looking at the barrel. - Where is this from?
- This morning the ghoy-iteremi ordered to get out of the swamp, - Mavka said with an audible superiority in her voice . - Even before the fight, and said to give it to you, if you'll come here.
- Wow - repeated Tulagh. - And for how long it has lain in the swamp?
- The ghoy-iteremi said, - Mavka answered with all the same superiority in her voice. - For forty years.
- Wow! - All said at once, not excluding Ghash. - I have not drunk anything older than five years, - Tulagh looked at me with undisguised respect. - And here is - forty. - Ghash, will you pour?
- I'll pour without spill, - Ghash said. - Let's get it in here.
He took the barrel from the guy, smartly hammered a dagger into the bottom, turned it a few times and, without removing the blade from the holes, bent the barrel over a large dipper that Mavka had time to put under it. In the dipper, right over the dagger blades, flowed dark like swamp water liquid, and around the house floated a thin aroma's mixture of peat smoke, tar, oak leaf and ripe cherry.
- Here you go, Chsham. - Ghash handed the dipper to me. - Today you're the first .
I took the dipper and thought that I should probably say something, but nothing came up, so I just saluted to the others by lifting the dipper and then took a couple of sips. The liquid had a nice taste: tangy, with light resinous tartness.
- Send around, - Ghash prompted and I passed the dipper to Ghash.
In the head and the body I found a familiar effect of shaghu. Only without his nasty taste on the tongue. While I was listening to my feelings, Ghai said something, and then, too, took a sip and handed the dipper to the next. So the dipper went around the circle, followed by short speeches in my honor. It was nice and quaint. What did I do to deserve this celebration? I did not kill Ghai. I did not see it as a merit, and don't see now.
The swamp shaghu of forty-year of age produced a strange effect. I did not feel drunk, but with each round was getting merrier and the head still remained clear. It was slightly spinning, of course, but, rather, from the blood loss and from those glances that Mavka threw at me from the stove. She sat there on some stump, not coming to the table and not interfering with our conversations, and only occasionally was glancing askance at me. From each of these glances I was going then hot, then cold, they were piercing me as with an arrow. Through. I would love to quit this feast and ran with her somewhere away from prying eyes. Once I even caught her eyes , jerked to get up, but Ghash casually putting his arm around my shoulders, easily pressed me back into the place, and Mavka almost imperceptibly shook her head.
So this is how have passed the rest of the day: in a futile absorption of food and listening to drunken praises of my non-existent virtues.
I felt relieved only when Tulagh and sons were gone. Just then a deceit of easy to drink, pleasant to taste swamp's shaghu has got revealed. The head only seemed to be clear, but at the first attempt to stand up it betrayed me. The eyes and the thoughts fled in different directions, all around got fogged, started to spin and I realized that I can not move on my own, and inside of me left the only desire - to sleep. And I fell asleep.
I dreamed that on my hot chest, on the heart, lies a cool and narrow girlish hand.

I woke up with the sunrise, on the bed and wrapped in buurgha. Boots were under the stove bench. The head, surprisingly, did not hurt, but it was empty and sonorous. No one was here.
- Do not look around, - Ghash said , coming from the back of the oven and wet to the waist . - She is not here.
- Will I see her again? - Maybe it seems silly, but for me it was important.
- You'll see her. - Ghash nodded, rubbing his wet body with some cloth. - But not today, at least not during the day. Now we would have a breakfast and will go to the oghr's workshops. Also, today we must see someone in there.
- Is today so imperative? - I did not want to go anywhere.
- Are you going to spend here all your life? - He replied with a question. - We are on the march. Do you remember? We will get equipments, stock provision and will hit the road again. To Lughburth we still have a lot of land to cross. Go wash and get ready.
Saddened, I trudged to the back of the oven, just like Ghash washed myself from the waist up, but it did not improve my mood. Breakfast too. In addition, I found that the shirt was gone.
- Do not look for. - Ghash said, when guessed the reason of my tardiness. - It 's in the laundry. Do not put on a jacket and a harness too. Simply put a dagger into your boot and a kughri in a sheath on your shoulder. Let the girls to admire your scars. Also, at oghrs you'll be looking cool.
So I went outside naked to the waist and with a sword on my shoulder. To tell the truth, no one was admiring my scars. Not when we walked through the village, nor when we came out of the gate. The village was empty, and past the gate, if one of the women pulled herself up from the vegetable rows, it would be just for a second.
- Are we going to the city? - I asked Ghash, when we were far behind the gates.
- The city - is the whole island, - he said. - All villages, shops, gardens - all this is the oghr's city.
- What? - I did not understand. - Are all those people, who live in the village, oghrs?
- Not all, - said Ghash. - This is the village of sentries. Only few becomes oghrs from here . They are mostly warriors. Those one, who have names. But most of the population prefers to live as snagas. Less hassles.
- Wait a minute, - I did not understand again. - Is Oghr the name of the people? Like Uragh? I thought they were like trolls.
- No, - Ghash laughed. - Trolls are ologhai. They are by themselves. They have no cities, no villages. Live like savages . The oghrs are the same ghai, like me, only they have a different job. You will see everything by yourself. The pond is visible already. Do you hear?
Ahead of us, really, shimmered a blue surface of the pond and in the air was rolling out that same sound that till now felt only though the earth tremors - a thumping sound of a huge hammer.
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Old 11-22-2014, 10:54 AM   #36
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Mist over the marshes can be beautiful. In the moonlight it spreads multicolored pliable strands: pale-greenish, or violet, or sometimes whitish. These colors do not mix, but split into many small threads, intertwining with each other and forming bundles and clumps of completely unimaginable, indescribable colors. All of this colorful splendor is twisting into a slow, barely moving swirls, dancing over the brown bogs and enchants you to a complete stupor. Mist over the marshes can be beautiful. Especially when you sit fifty paces from it on a spread out buurgha hugging the girl's shoulders, hot even under the dress, when should just turn your face and your lips would be happily greeted with girl's lips, soft and submissive, or greedy and demanding. I won't talk about it any more. There are things that a man should keep quiet about. Some secrets should remain secrets, even when they were known to everyone. Besides, it has happened late in the evening or early night. Whatever. Before that was a long and hectic day filled with varieties of totally different occurrences.


The oghr's hammer was really huge. The handle was thicker than the girth of my hands, and I could not say, even approximately, how much weighed the head fitted on it, which was longer than my height and in the width of the length of my open arms. An anvil was matching the hammer: a low, rectangular granite boulder, covered with enormously thick iron top.
If I were an elf, I would compare this room, full of red-hot air, flashing crimson glow of the flame, with smells of iron's calx, coal smoke and sweaty bodies, with dungeons of Udun. If I were a dwarf, I probably would bring to mind a memory of the forge of Aule - the First Blacksmith. But I'm not an elf or a dwarf, the first thing that came to my mind is a comparison to the Waymeet's forge. With my mouth open I have spent many hours in there, looking like deft and strong hands of the blacksmith turn rough pieces of iron into useful for a homestead things .
Here, in the workshop on the marsh island, everything was almost the same. Except for a size. Everything in the oghr's shop was made for giants, not only the hammer with the anvil.The furnace was huge, immense air bellows, moving as if by themselves, even the blacksmith tongs were more than my height, they were suspended in the middle air on a thick chain from the tremendous in the thickness ceiling beam. But not even a single giant was here. The people in the workshop were solid, thickset, but in appearance or size no one looked even like a troll. Rather, they much resembled our Waymeet's blacksmith - lean and muscular and in leather aprons on sweaty half-naked bodies.

When Ghash and I have entered the built with ancient logs workshop, where was as hot as in the oven, nobody paid attention to us. All of them were too busy getting a bursting with white heat bloom from a huge furnace.
Four sinewy uu-ghais jumped to hanging on the chain tongs, clung on both sides of the handles and, by turning them towards the forge, opened up its gripping jaws. The piece of crude iron was in size no less than myself, and I thought that they would not be able to cope with it. But the workers, without any procrastination, grasped the red-hot piece of ore with tongs, piled all the weight on the handles, and the bloom slowly rose over the hearth table, majestically swinging in the air.
Without even a moment of delay uu-ghais again turned the tongs around and began to push them in the direction of the hammer and the anvil. The chain, wretchedly screeching, was sliding along the beam, and very soon the dripping with slag and strewing calx in all directions iron chunk was under the hammer striker. When it was laid down on the anvil, a short, stocky guy, who stood nearby, leaned on some lever and the hammer crashed down.
A low humming sound filled the entire space of the workshop, reflected off the walls and got wrapped around our shoulders. It felt like a war cry of the Dwarves. Under the impact of a gigantic weight the chunk splattered fiery drops all around and got flattened.
The stocky moved the lever to the other side, behind the wall something began strainingly creaking, and the hammer started to rise again. The workers with the tongs made an effort and turned the piece on the other side. The hammer struck again.
This was repeated seven or eight times, and then the oghr at the lever gave a piercing whistle, waved his hand, and the piece of iron, which got reduced in size on a half , again was dragged to the furnace.


When we walked out from the dry heat of the workshop and into an open air, it felt like getting out of the steamy bath and into an icy water. From all this creaking and thundering my ears got clogged as with ear wax. This is why I did not immediately hear that somebody is talking to me. It was the stout guy, that stood at the lever controlling the hammer.
- Hi, - he shouted in my ear, seeing that I did not catch it the first time. - You Chsham, I know, and I ...
He said something very long and tricky. I shook my head and tried to repeat, but broke down somewhere on the third syllable. -No one can, - the Stocky laughed satisfiedly. - Even him. And he pointed on Ghash.
- You can call me just "Oghr". I like it.
I nodded. Three of us have moved away from the workshop and sat down at the edge of the pond. The pond was not very large, maybe a little bigger than the Bywater Pool. From the place, where we were sitting, it was clearly visible the rotating wheel of the mill. Probably, it is setting the hammer and bellows in motion .
- Listen, Oghr, - began Ghash, - We need to reforge the blade for the guy. It's heavy for him.
- I cannot - responded Oghr. - Would do, if you would order to make five hundred of cart axles, even better - a thousand. But the blade - I cannot.
- Come on, - waved Ghash. - The work for a half - hour.
- I cannot, - repeated Oghr. - We don't do weapons in here, the iron is bad - from the swamps. We are doing all sorts of junk: axles, bolts, sickels, plows, all sorts of farm tools. But we do not do the weapons. It is on the Oghr's plateau or in Ghazatbuurth.
- What's the difference! - Ghash was amazed. - I'm not asking you to do a thousand blades. Just one to reforge. Like you don't have a hand smithy in here! - We have. But it won't do any good, - said Oghr. - To reforge a blade, it needed to remove the hardening. Then to temper. And I do not know how they do the quenching on the Oghr's plateau, there they have their secrets. I'll reforge it, but it won't cut the iron. The blade will get notches after each impact. Do you need like this?
- No, - thought Ghash. - We don't need like this. And what you can offer?
- I can give a new one, - shrugged Oghr. - We have a stock from Ghazatbuurth. We can pick up the one suitable for him.
- No, - I interrupted their conversation. - I do not need another.
- I understand - agreed Oghr. - Sheopp. Can, also, try to put fullers on this to make it lighter. But it takes five days : while we will pick up the right swage and while we will put on the fullers. Then, would be needed to even it out, all of this has to be done on the cold steel - so much hassle. Will you wait for five days?
- No, we will not, - said Ghash. - Already so much time got lost. You, Chsham, better to exercise your hands in wielding this kughri.
I shrugged, of course Uragh's kughri was heavy for me, but I was not going to trade it .


- Okay, Oghr, - spoke again Ghash. - It is a small thing. Are you going with us?
- As we agreed, - calmly replied Oghr. - I have everything prepared. Appointed who will be doing my job . Only left to do is to go home to tell the wives and on the road.
- You better think again, - warned him Ghash. - A lot has changed since the time when we agreed. The "Wolves" will not be with us. Consider just three of us will have to go, no one knows what is waiting for us in there.
- Don't take me for a fool, - steadily replied Oghr. - I know without your warnings that all has changed. Only you intention to scare me is futile. I will go anyway. Another chance like that I won't get in my whole life.
- Well then, - it seemed to me that Ghash became happier. - My job is to warn.
- Consider, you warned me, - waved Oghr. - Tell me something, is Ughluk going with us?
- I do not know - said Ghash. - I have not seen him yet. I do not even know whether is he on the island.
- He is on the island, - confidently said Oghr. - Of course, no one would tell me about this, but I have seen his thrall with my own eyes a week ago. In a trading village. When we were delivering our forgings.
- Are you also trading? - I was surprised.
- Of course, - said Oghr as it's something self-evident. - We ourselves don't need so much of that iron junk. There is a Market village on the north of the island, from it to the edge of the forest made a channel in the swamp, and from there it merges with the Swift river. By this river all our work is getting carried from the Market Village on barges.
- To whom are you selling all this? - It's not fitting my head, that Uruuk-hai can trade with someone .
- It depends, - shrugged Oghr. - Wainriders need various things for carts and horse harnesses in exchange for meat, leather, wool, and dried milk. Esgarots prefer to pay with silver. They, basically, take different tools for farming, horseshoes and ask to put on the stamps of Erebor's bearded. We do not mind, since it sells well. Beorings bring grain, lard, honey and coal. We need a lot of coal. And the foodstuff too. Only a turnip grows well on the local sand, no matter how hard our women work.
- And the Beorings too? - I was amazed. - What are they buying?
- Axes, plows, heads for arrows and spears. Half of theirs troops walk with our spears. We don't care. We are forging what will be ordered.
- And you said you do not make weapons in here...
- We don't make OUR weapons, - Oghr emphasized the word. - The weapons which can cut through the bearded's iron. Here is the swamp's ore, no matter how long you gonna forge the bloom, you won't get rid of all dross.
Our hammers are heavy and even from the local iron a lot of goods can be done, but we can't make such weapons as in Ghazatbuurth or at the Oghr plateau. There they are mining pure mountain ore and their black rock coal gives stronger heat than ours charcoal. In there oghrs are treating billets with soot without air and then forging almost cold. And I do not know in what and how they are quenching it.
We have been doing a lot of different experiments, and I, and other oghrs before me, but never succeeded in making the blades of such strength. This is why all kughri on the island, small and large, have been brought from Ghazatbuurth.
But for the Beornings seems and our iron is good enough, if they are buying. With their hand-forges, even if you force all blacksmiths in Carrock to work from morning to night, still it will take two years to make weapons for their army. Whereas we have made in two months five thousand spears, the same amount of knives and fifty thousand arrowheads.
However, the Beoring's king thinks it is the work of the dwarves from the Iron Hills. But we don't mind, we are not a losing and the merchants also got their profits.
- What about the merchants? Do not they know with whom they are trading? - That was a silly question.- How do they trade with orcs? That is, I wanted to say that they have to take you for the orcs.
- They know, - Oghr laughed. - All of them know. It's no fools among merchants. Only which merchant will refuse an additional gain? If he knows that the product is good, sold cheaply and he can sell it for twice the price he bought , will he refuse such profit? If he will, he is not the merchant. Between themselves they keep it under the wraps, but just whistle ...
- Aren't you getting offended? - I asked. - To give such goods for a cheap price?
- It depends on how you look at it. - Oghr grinned. - For our iron we are getting so many of different things, that here on the island, it can ever be made or grown. I am not an expert in bargaining, my business is iron making, but at the trading village already fourth generation is doing that. They are considering that while in the hand smithy the blacksmith forges a one horseshoe, in our workshops we would do a hundred.
- But the blacksmith is one at the forge, - I said, - or with an apprentice, and here are so many workers.
- There is even more of us. - Oghr said. - You just saw a bloomery workshop, but below the creek are still many ponds, and at every of them is the smithy. The same on the other streams. Almost the entire city works with the iron.
Only the matter is not how much we have. The matter is that, while elsewhere a one horseshoe is being done by the smith, we would make ten, or even more. Therefore, we can sell it three times cheaper the regular price and still won't lose.
- I do not understand - I confessed. - How it can happen?
- It is needed to be seen, - Oghr shrugged. - I cannot explain on fingers. - Then go and show, - bored Ghash intervened in the conversation. - I'll go to take care of the equipment and food for the road. Keep him entertained, since you love to talk about your iron things and he is curious about it.
- I love my job, not the iron's things. - Oghr said. - My job requires keenness. It's not like swinging a sword and running around the steppe .
- Everyone has its own job - Ghash said peacefully. - Someone has to wield the sword, so you could sit peacefully with your hammer. Chsham, do you want to see the shops?
- You're asking? - I was surprised. - I have never seen such things. Did not even know that it existed. Of course I do!
I was not pulling the wool over eyes by saying that. Since my childhood I loved to sit in the Waymeet's smithy and look at the iron red from the heat . Sometimes the blacksmith even was letting me to help him a little. But that, what I saw in the oghr's smithy, surpassed all my imagination, and since I have got an opportunity to see more, perhaps just no less exciting, I did not want to let it slip away.


The rest of the day I spent with Oghr, and I was not having regrets about it. I have seen as through a complex web of wheels and chains the power of falling water is moving hammers and forge's bellows.
I saw as a huge crude iron ore, perforated like a piece of cheese, is getting converted into a tight iron ingot under the blows of the hammer. And then this brick turns into tens or hundreds of different goods, from an axis of the horse carriage wheels to the tiny nails.
Oghr was not lying or joking, I saw with my own eyes that while the waymeet's blacksmith would make a one horseshoe, in there would be made a few hundreds. And the matter was not in the power of the water. It did not surprise me. After all, there are water mills in Hobbiton. The water turns our millstones, but here it was also used for a variety of other things. But that was not the main thing.
The most exciting and surprising for me was that how oghrs organized their own folks. I even can not find the words to tell about it. The waymeet's smith in his smithy was doing everything by himself. He had a helping hand, who did the same as the blacksmith do, when have been ordered. Oghrs are doing it differently.
In here, each employee is doing something particular.
In the knife production shop even sharpening of the blade is being done by ​​two different worker! One is sharpening the blade from one side, and the second - from the other. It was about fifty of them in there. Fifty of still very young snagas, almost like boys. The first one takes out of the delivered to him box the small, elongated iron ingots - the future knifes - and puts them on the furnace table. The last one with a chisel imprints a stump on the finished, burnished and sharpened knifes - a sign of a swamp lily - and threw them in the box. Seemed like they all were a one alive many-armed instrument, in which each pair of hands is occupied only by the certain task.
I was in the knifes shop for just a few minutes, and during that time at least a dozen of ready knives fell in the box. Oghr showed me the one, that's when I saw the stamp.
It's funny, but in the Tukboro kitchen there are several of such blue-black knives with the lily at the end of the hilt. Only everyone believes that it is work of the dwarves.

I saw that day a lot of surprising and unknown to me before. Not just once I thought to myself that if I would be born uruuk-hai I would be an oghr.
- I think, this is for you, - Oghr said, when we came out of the next workshop.
Not far from the door stood someone tall, with a shaved head and in awkward rags. The awkward, because that rugs, in which he was dressed, were in complete discord with a noble bearing and a strict turn of the head. Seeing us, the skinheaded took a step in our direction and bent into a humiliating bow . We got closer, and I flinched, because I had not seen anything like it before. The skinhead's ears very accurately explained the meaning of the expression "to trim." They were not cut off completely, but trimmed, shortened. Simply put, all of their upper part was cut off. Such mark was impossible not to notice on the shaved head.
The skinheaded looked up, and I startled again. It was an elf.
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Old 12-20-2014, 04:48 PM   #37
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You recognize an elf immediately.
I do not think you've ever seen the Firstborn, now is so few of them in Middle-earth that it is easier to meet a bear at your own home. But if you still happen to see the elf, then you for certain will understand who it is, no matter how he looked and whatever he was wearing, even if he does not make any sounds. Just simply look into his eyes.
The eyes in which there is nothing of earthly care of this world. Only a detachment and depth, which are some people considering as an indifference and emptiness.
Uruuk-hai and others, as far as I know, afraid to look into the eyes of elves. For me the elf gaze does not cause a fear, but still I feel something what may be called a light trembling.

When the bowed before us elf straighten up and turned his gaze on us, I felt it a tremor. The tremor of the skin. Not just the body, only the skin. Oghr, seems have been a lot worse. He managed to contain a shiver, but cheeks and shoulders were covered with perspiration, and his fists clenched involuntarily.
- What do you want, ghama? - Oghr hissed in a drawl, stubbornly not taking his eyes off the endless pupils' depths of the Firstborn with trimmed ears. The Elf again lowered eyes down and said in a voice low, but melodic:
- Can I speak with someone who has the name Chsham?
Oghr took a breathe, he probably thought that he was doing it discreetly, and nudged me.
-You can, - I said dutifully.
The first shock of such surprising meeting was beginning to fade.
- I am Chsham.
- The one whose name Ghash Azoghan asks Chsham to return to a ghanaka, - the elf spoke the words of Black speech with an obvious effort, and it was noticeable as he flinches at every sound.
- What is ghanaka? - I asked Oghr.
-The guest house , - he said. Now that there was no need to look in the elven eyes, he coped with his inner turmoil. In any case, the sweat on his shoulders began to dry up, and his fists unclenched.
- Ghash asks you to return to the house where you stay.
- Understood, - I said, and looked at the elf.
He was still standing in the humiliated half-bow looking at the ground. I did not want to return to the village with him. Also, I wanted to ask Oghr about something, and I made a decision.
- Go and tell Ghash I'll come soon.
The elf bent his head slightly lower, without straightening up, took two steps backward and only then unbent and said:
- I understood, Chsham conveys to Ghash that he will come soon.
And he was gone, vanished like a mirage in a swaying stuffy haze of the late evening. Immediately became much easier to breathe.
- What is that word - "ghama"? - I asked Oghr. - What does it mean?
- It means - "left the home," - said Oghr, shivering. - Only not who had left himself , then it would be "gham", but exiled or stolen. Slaves were called so
- So, this elf is a slave? - For me it seemed astounding and impossible that the Firstborn could be a slave. With a such stare!
- Who do you think he is in here? - Oghr became amazed. - In here a living pointy-eared can only be a slave. If not for Ughluk, he even would not be a slave, but a corpse.
- Ughluk? - I asked. - I've been hearing that name for the second time. Who is he?
- You'll see - vaguely promised Oghr. - If in there this crop-eared has appeared, then you will definitely see Ughluk.
Then I parted with Oghr and went to the village, and he said that he will go home. His home was somewhere near the bloomery smithy.

The streets of the sentry village, lit by the setting sun, were full of people. The a day of work was over, the inhabitants were returning from their jobs and around me ran the living river of male and female bodies.
If something is making me to stand out of the crowd, it would be the height. Also, I was one of the few who is carrying a sword.
The majority were carrying knives. Not combat daggers, like mine, and not small kughri like the one that Ghai showed to me . The regular blades. Their handles were sticking out of the men's boots, from the sheath on their belts or hips.
Women were carrying the knife in its scabbard hanging on a chest.
Children were also running around with their knives in hands and most of the children's plays, that I could see on the way to the guest house , were affiliated with knives. It is nothing to wonder. The knife is the second after buurgha object that the uruuk-hai gets in his undivided ownership. And he ever does not part with it. Even in his dreams.
I was walking down the street and constantly catching somebodies stares on myself. Then hidden, then open, then scrutinizing, then friendly.
The men were looking at me askance, as if by chance, women were throwing curious glances, young girls were making eyes and kids just stared.
But among hundreds of multi-colored eyes around me I won't notice the only eyes that I would like to see.

The door in ghanaka opened quietly, apparently someone oiled the hinges. I walked into a cool dimness and stopped to get the eyes to adjust to it. From behind of the oven came a quiet conversation. I did not see who were talking, but recognized the voice of Ghash.
- I've got pretty frightened when the old women decided on the sparring, - said Ghash. - I knew that they cannot deny the guy of his name, since I declared him a warrior of our buurth. But I had not foreseen the fight.
- You cannot foresee everything, - murmured in response the old voice. - You did everything to avoid accidents. It's not your fault that Ghai intervened in it. Why was he in the village during the day?
- He came back from the swamp and should be sleeping, but obviously he slept through the night at the sentry post. Fortunately, it is quiet now. So, from the boredom he was sauntering through the village. Because of this idiot the whole project almost got screwed up. Because of him, and because of the old women.
- Do not blame the uu-ghoy. They did what they were supposed to do. They are deciding which traditions are still necessary and which should be abandoned. Thanks to them our people exist. Exactly the same uu-ghoy, as this, at one time had allowed to marry human women and made an alliance with the White wizard. If not for them, we would have remained as the "unseeing the sun."
Uu-ghoy could be difficult to persuade, but it's not because they are evil or without understanding, but because they understand their responsibility to the generation differently than we do. We're thinking about the future, but they will remember that not all was bad in the past and they are able to bind it both. I think their decision was right.
- Ghai could kill the guy and it would have disrupted our operation. Do you call this right?
- You yourself forced them to deal with this problem. By an agreement, they had to give a shelter for the "Flying wolves" and you made them to think about whether not born in buurth could be a warrior and to have a name. They had more than enough to get perplexed over.
- What could I do? The "Wolves" were killed, there was no one left to stay with him in the woods. Alone in the Mirkwood he wouldn't live even a night, you know. Anyway, I had to go here to get Oghr, and so it happened what happened. I could not drag him in here as a prisoner and then to go with him to the end.
- It is dangerous for a shaghrat to have affections.
- I know. But the matter is not that he saved my life. I just like him. You know, just like. He's a tough guy. A lot tougher than he looks. Many of our guys might learn from him.
- I understand. In my youth, I had to deal with such as he is. Therefore, I'd say to you that you blame old women in vain. You left them a chance to arrange the checking on the guy, and they used it. In the end, only that convinced the buurth that the guy has his name not for nothing.
- You're probably right. But our plan was under a danger of failure.
- It was under the danger, and it is your fault. Such things are not to be done in a hurry. Remember that, otherwise some day you will part with your head. Do you understand?
The bench creaked and Ghash voice said:
-Yes. I understood. My heart is in your hands.
- Sit down, - the old man murmured. - We need to think that we will do farther. The "Wolves" are gone. It is unlikely that we will be able to bring together a new such at-a-ghan by the end of the summer, or to call for another one from Gundabad or Carn-dum. Besides, Ghazatbuurth is preparing for a war, each blade is accounted in there.

I coughed softly.
- Who's there? - Asked Ghash.
I came out.
- Oh, it's you - Ghash was not looking surprised. - We were just talking about you.
- I heard.
- So much to the better, less to explain. Meet.
On the platform sat a shriveled, wizened old man: hunched shoulders, scarce feathers of gray hair on his head . He was looking like an old wind blown dandelion, if not for a wrinkled beastly looking face and the gaze. There is a saying - a "tenacious stare." So, the stare of the old man was not just a tenacious, but, I would say, clawed.
The old man looked at me, and it seemed to me that I felt like his pupils ripped my skin on the chest.
- Recognizing Ghashur's hand, - he said. - You're lucky kid, after him usually can be found only cut in ribbons skin.
"Kid". It is even insulting. He was not much taller than me.
- Why are you silent? - Asked the old man.
- What am I supposed to say? - I asked in turn.
- Usually a junior introduces himself, - said the old man. - You are now an uragh, you have to get used to our customs.
- My name Chsham - I said. - And please forgive me if I inadvertently offended you. I do not know well the customs of uruk-hai. I did not have much time to know them better.
- No need for apologies. My name is Ughluk. If the sound of Black speech is difficult for you, you can call me Nightmare.
Actually, as I learned later, his name means not a "nightmare", but a "reappearing dead and evil phantom" existing independently from your will or imagination. But at the same time it is not a "wraith". The wraith is an "ull" in the Black speech.
- The sound of uruuk-hai language does not daunt me, - I shrugged. - Ughluk. Am I pronouncing it correctly?
- That's right - the old man nodded. - But this is not important. Our nation has been scattered apart for a long time. What's right in here may be wrong in Gundabad or Ghazatbuurth. Do not give it much importance even if your speech will sound strange to someone's ear. What's important that you are being understood and it depends not so much on words, as on your deeds.
- Until now, - I said - I was able to find the understanding in others.
- Try to keep this way further on. You wanted to tell him something, Ghash.
- Yes, - Ghash turned to me. - Ghai is asking to go with us.
- Why you are asking me? - I was surprised. - You are the shaghrat, and you decide who goes with us. Until now you were not asking.
- He is your blood brother, - patiently explained Ghash. - He believes that now he must protect your back, this is the custom. Therefore, you must decide if he goes with us or not.
- What is your advice?
- Ghai is a good fighter, in Lughburth his blade can be useful. We can take him, if you are not harboring a bad feeling.
- I have nothing to be angry at him, let him go with us.
- Then tell him about it yourself. He is in the back yard. Flirting with Mavka .
I did not like "flirting". Perhaps it would be really better if Ghai would go with us.

When I showed up in the backyard, Ghai and Mavka sat side by side on the log at the distant fence. Ghai was lively telling something, animatedly gesticulating. Mavka was trilling with laughter.
This picture was not to my liking even more than Ghash's words.
When Ghai saw me, he jumped on his feet and Mavka stopped laughing and covered her mouth with her palm, but you can see that in her eyes still stays a remnant of laughter.
- You are going with us, - I said to Ghai. - Ghash and I have decided so. Will you be allowed to go?
- Me? - Ghai started to get outraged, but caught himself. - The old women won't mind, if my father will find a replacement for me in the swamp, and with him I already talked. He believes that it would be useful for me to see how the world looks outside of the marshes.
- It's big, - I said grimly. - Very big. So go get ready for the long road.
- I'm ready - Ghai did not get the hint. - The kughri got sharpened, the backpack my wives got prepared.
- Do you have wives? - I was surprised. I did not manage to get married even once and he spoke of the "wives".
- Two, - Ghai said as something taken for granted . - I am an uragh. Even if I would not have time to get married while being snaga, it's hard for the uragh to stay unmarried. I have the wives and they will cry for me while I'm on the road, - he finished proudly.
- Go, give a good farewell, - I advised him - So they won't start to cry while you're still here.
- What, are we already leaving? - Ghai got worried. - Right now?
- This can happen at any time, - I wanted to send him back home. - Ghash says that we lost a lot of time and we will not linger.
After these words Ghai finally realized that it was time to leave and walk away much to my relief.
Mavka and I silently sat on a log.
- Do not be angry, - she said, and patted me on the arm. - I cannot talk to no one at all while you are not here. We just talked.
- I saw, - I grumbled.
-No, you did not see, - she said and stroked my hand again. - I am a woman. Of course, I am happy when the men pay attention to me, but I do not like him. He's strong, but stupid. And you're smart, and you're much stronger than him, everyone have seen it.
- You were laughing, - I said.
- Yes, - Mavka smiled. - He told a very funny thing. He told me how he was afraid when he was fighting with you.
- Was he afraid? - During the fight I did not think so.
- Of course. You killed the bearded in your first battle, and Ghai had not even once seen them . He with his father and brothers is guarding the trail. They often have to fight with marsh spiders, with animals coming to the marshes and sometimes with people. But he had heard about the bearded only in fairy tales. We have a lot of horror stories about them.
- I got it.
Mavka continued to stroke my hand, and I already did not want to be angry at all. I wanted something completely different.
But when I hugged her and started to kiss her, Ghash has appeared in the doorway of ghanaka .
- Get distracted, - he said sternly. - There is a thing to do.
He would not listen to my objection. I had to leave Mavka alone.

"The thing", in my opinion, was not so important to interrupt me so rudely from a communication with the girl. I just had to try and fit a new equipage, which has appeared as from nowhere.
But you need to know Ghash, of course, he wouldn't be satisfied with just the fitting of new belts.
Several times he made me to lay down and disassemble the backpack and all bags, each time carefully checking whether I remember where is everything has been put. If I hesitated even for a moment, all the equipments again were being mercilessly unpacked and spilled on the platform and the assemblage would begin anew.

Mavka, of course, left long before the end of this tedious job.
By the time when I was able without hesitation to get out any nail for any boot protection plates, I was angry at Ghash as Gollum at Bilbo after the ring's theft .
But Ghash efforts were not in vain: the harness sat like a glove over my beoring's garb. I moved in it like in a second skin, feeling only an increased body weight. Everything was fitting perfectly.
I especially liked the new sheath for a kughri and its attachment to the backpack.
At first I thought that I did not have enough arm's length to pull the blade from behind the shoulder, but it appeared that someone thought about it before me. When grabbing the handle, it needs only to hook up with a thumb the loop fastened to the sheath. With a little pull the sheath flew themselves off the blade, freeing it for a fight. To put them back in the place required a little more time, but Ghash said that usually you have time to put the blade back the sheath, but it is never enough to get the sword out.
I also had to practice in getting the sword out and fitting it back into the place, so we had dinner at dusk.
- Where can I find Mavka? - I asked Ghash when we were already finishing the stewed berries tea.
- Where is the guy should look for the girl? - He answered with a question. - At the well. When you will go - leave the harness and take buurgha. Will get handy.
I followed the advice, especially since buurgha was new and just to my height. The old one, greasy, many times burned by the campfire, just has disappeared somewhere.

At the well was a lot of guys and girls, but I've noticed Mavka immediately. She was sitting, serious and concentrated, on the livestock's watering trough, and on her shoulders, like on mine, was a tightly rolled buurgha.
- Will we go on hiking? - I joked, walking up.
- Yes, - she said seriously, firmly grabbed me by the arm and led to the gate, to the exit from the village.
- Ghash said in here bears roam at night, - again, I tried to joke, when the gates were left behind and my boots began to clatter on a black wood of the road.
- They well fed in the summer, - in the same serious tone said Mavka and went off the road and along the edge of the swamp. - They will not disturb us.
From a cloudy sky the moon was winking to us with a yellow-green warg's eye. An iridescent fog was swirling over the marshes...The bears, if they were somewhere nearby, did not disturb us. We even did not think of them ... Ghash was right, buurghas were useful to us. Both of them.

The uruuk- hai's morning begins an hour before the dawn. I found about the fact that it is morning, when from the side of the road came a loud trilling whistle. The eyes were closing, I unmercifully felt sleepy , but Mavka poked her head out from under buurgha, rose and also trilling and loudly whistled something in return. After a minute between trees, like a dark ghost, has appeared a shade and said with Ghash's voice :
- Get dressed, Chsham. We are leaving.
And I began to dress up, confusing boots and not getting my hands into the sleeves in the dark and hustle . Mavka, wrapped in her buurgha, stood nearby with bare feet in the wet grass.
- Will you come back? - She asked quietly, when I got up.
- I do not know, - I said softly.
- I will cry for you.
To this I could not find the answer and only kissed her. Her lips were salty. Cheeks and eyes too.
I do not like "goodbyes". Did not like then and did not like in twenty years that passed since. I went away not even say to her a "goodbye."
- My heart is in your hands, - I've heard when I was far away. I wanted to look back, but hard fingers of walking behind Ghash, took me by the back of my head and turned the head back on its place.
- No, - he said. - When you leave, your heart should be taken with you, so it won't die of yearning in a separation.
He paused and added:
- It is good when someone is crying for you while you're on the road. This means that someone really wants you to stay alive.
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Old 01-31-2015, 09:54 PM   #38
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Ghai helped me not to die from the yearning after we have left the Swamp Island. The least of him was to expect a sympathy and he was not in a rush to show it, but he distracted me from the sad thoughts. Ghai've got occupied with "tricks" that I beat him in a fight at the well. I could not resist his spirited insistence. Through the entire first passage I had to tell him about the springle-ring dancing and to show some steps at the evening stops.
We were walking not being particularly in a rush, stopping for a camping before dark, so some energy for dancing was still remained. When I asked Ghash why we are not in a hurry, he said that it is dangerous to rush before reaching the River, but on the river we will make up for this. So it was more than enough time for my lessons with Ghai.

However, Ghai's springle-ring dancing was not coming that well. You can give him a credit for his perseverance, he was tierelessly repeating the moves, but he was lacking of flexibility and softness. I do not even talk about his jumping. The simplest capers are coming out sloppy. Ghai, nontheless, did not lose hope and bravely endured my rod's blows and taunts of the audience.
The spectators were Oghr and a dozen of young uu-snaga that on their shoulders carried two boats to the river.
Gradually the viewers got tired of just watching and they too began to take a part in our training. So it was Ghai's turn to have a good laughter.
The young snagas turned out to do better than he, though not quite well, but Oghr's dance was being so awkward and amusing, that once even the crop-eared ghama smiled with a corner of his lips .

Yes, the elf-slave also went with us. He carried Ughluk. It turned out that wizened old man with the clawed eyes can only talk on his own. Everything else - the slave did for him.
The elf carried Ughluk during transitions in a specially made for this harness, fed with finely chopped meat and bread and through a hollow straw gave him water from a flask, if necessary, carried to the bushes, and generally did for Ughluk everything what was necessary .
Every night in the camp, he was putting the sinister looking old man on the buurgha and with strong fingers kneaded, smoothed helplessly dangling whips of arms and legs, flabby back and hunched shoulders.
After finishing the elf was seating Ughluk up, leaning his back against a pair of hiking bags, and he himself would sit down somewhere nearby, waiting. A moment later it would be difficult to detect him: so much he blends with the surroundings.
At that time I really wondered why the crop-eared wouldn't simply step aside and disappear into the bushes.
Ughluk received the elf's care with indifference, like something given for granted and happens by itself. It seemed that he did not even notice the slave, giving an impression that the elf has no will of his own and act in accordance with the thoughts and the will of Ughluk, submitting to barely visible movements of the eyes, eyebrows and lips.
In the evening Ughluk was chatting with Ghash. They were talking in a special way, silently, without making a single sound, guessing words by the lip movements.
Once I tried to figure out what are they saying, but it's hard to read lips, when you are busy training a dozen goofuses, especially if you never before have dealt with this.

In a mean time the teaching of the springle-ring dancing went on as usual. The young snagas succeeded in it surprisingly quickly. They can't do sophisticated capers, a fair amount of work and time requires for their acquirement, but the simple moves they just did tolerably well.
On the second day instead of rods they took their straight chinghri, and the dance suddenly opened up a whole new, unfamiliar meaning for me.
That is, even before that I began to realize that I know about the springle-ring dancing not quite everything, but the young snagas revealed to me, that almost every movement of our boisterous dance can be deadly.
I even had a thought that they could accidentally kill each other. But the movements of swords in their hands were much more accurate and more confident than the movement of the rods.
The young uu-snagas were having fun in their carefree dance, and theirs blades, happily whistling , were drawing in the air complicated loops .
Gloomy Ghai, moving away to the side and looking at unrestrained gleefulness of the young, said that he will never learn this, or rather, to re-learn, because the whole his body resents, when he has to spend so much efforts on one hit. Upset Oghr, standing beside, only nodded with his head. At the next stop, already in the steppe, they both refused to take the next lesson.

But I managed to persuade them. I decided to try to teach them the "springle-ring" for older persons. The elderly have less stamina than the young, so in the "elderly" dance you need almost to stay in one place and do not need to jump and gallop.
The whole complex pattern of the dance comes from a combination of simple steps, turns and shallow squats. The fact that the "elderly" springle-ring does not require large strength, of course, does not mean that only the elderly can dance it. It must be deployed with a sense of movement that comes with an experience, which the young are usually lacking, because they relay on their youth and strength.
You could hardly call Ghai and Oghr the old persons, by the standards of uruuk-hai they were both quite mature men, and I was hoping that they have enough wisdom to understand the essence of the dance.
I was not mistaken. They quickly perceived the main idea, clumsiness has disappeared and the movements of both became precise and swift, and blades at the thrusts became blurred in the air.
I felt that I have suitable partners for a good dance.
We called Ghash to to join us, but he, for a few moments interrupting his silent conversation with Ughluk, said that he has enough of worries without our amusements and he already wields the sword quite passable .
We were not being concerned about anything, and at every halt the threesome of us were enthusiastically drilling the young, proving to snagas that the experience and knowledge have an advantage over youth and a brute force.

It was going on until we reached the very gullies. More precisely, that ravine.
In the forest and the steppe Ghash was not worrying about anything, but when we've got to the places where ravines were leading to the Great River, and went down into one of them, Ghash ordered to stop talks, songs and dances and keep the ears to the ground and to keep the eyes open.
In the evening we did not kindle the fire.
I understood the cause of his anxiety. The Beornings. But I only did not understand why we have chosen this path to the river, if it was possible to go through the steppe. I asked Ghash about it.
- The heat, - he said shortly. - In midsummer all springs in the steppe are drying up. The water is only in the ravines, and we still have to walk for three days .
- What about the Beorings? - I asked.
- Where you can get away from them? - Ghash shrugged. - They chose a well-off spot: you can't pass them by - the steppe is around.
- So, will we fight? - and my stomach churned up the minute I recalled the mighty shoulders of the "cubs". One thing is dancing with them, but to fight ...
- I hope not, - mysteriously smiled Ghash. - Do not worry about anything for a while.
Oh, yes, "do not worry"... I already knew him enough to see that he is concerned.

The mystery of Ghash's smile cleared up the next day.
We walked carefully along the creek at the bottom of the ravine, when flown towards us breeze brought a smell.
I did not notice it at first, just suddenly heard as walking next to me Ghai began loudly to inhale the air. I looked at him. Ghai's nostrils are flaring out and on his face registered a mixture of fear and bewilderment. I also sniffed. The weak breeze smelled of something painfully familiar.
After a dozen of steps I realized what kind of smell it was. The eternal smell of war, if you know what I mean. The smell of death. The smell of decaying flesh. Already everybody was turning their heads around, smelling the air, and some of them began to unsheathe the blades.

Only Ghash and the elf with Ughluk on his back did not show any distress.
It was clear about the elf, elves do not fear death. But Ghash's pretentious serenity, who even began to whistle, like some small bird, was irritating, especially when the smell became quite distinct and it was impossible not to detect it.
After fifty steps a sound got added to the smell. The buzz. Well-fed, self-satisfied buzz of hundreds, if not thousands, of flies. But Ghash still portrayed the absence of anxiety, although everybody already bared the swords, including me.

The bushes got rustled ahead and Tulagh, Ghai's father, came out on the path, the one I least expected to see here.
- Hi, Azoghan, - he said, scratching his hairy chest in an open shirt's collar. - Why are you all with swords drawn out? Fearing of ghouls?
- Hi, - said Ghash, but did not answer questions, and asked in turn. - What's up at you?
- Well, you saw the sign, - shrugged Tulagh. - Why are you asking, if you are walking in the ravine. It was easier than slaughtering of pigs. In here they became quite brazen, not afraid of anything, even did not put the guards down here, in the ravine, only in the steppe. For three days we were watching them and all three days in the evenings they were drinking theirs honey-mead. Last night we removed their guards in the steppe and then - quietly into the dugout. Forty- two heads, as ordered.
- Exactly forty-two? - glumly asked Ghash.- I will count.
- I am offended, - drawled Tulagh. - Five heads on each and two extra. If you want to count - go, count. They are all in the dugout. The guys wanted to bring it down, bury them to eliminate the stink, but I did not let them. I know that you would want to check the job.
- Everyone is waiting in here - ordered Ghash, looking at us.- I'll be back soon.
- I'm with you, - I called him in the back.
Ghash looked back, gave me a cold, hard look and said so that I did not dare to argue: " Not need for you." And went up the hill with Tulagh.

After some time there was a muffled roar at the edge of the ravine . The annoying buzzing almost disappeared, and the smell seemed to become significantly weaker.
When Ghash came back, with him was not only Tulagh, but another seven soldiers, laden with huge, gigantic bales.
- Have taken "bear"s food for the road, - answered Tulagh on Ghai's questioning look . - They have a great stuff. And you too will have something to eat on the River. We will see you go and then will run back. We want to grab more of theirs things on the way back. So much of goods. It's a pity to waste.
That night I refused to dance. The others too. Even the abundant dinner, very unlike of camping food, this evening turned to be somehow sad.

The next evening, when the boats already rocked on the river waves, when Tulagh with his uruugh and the young uu-snaga were already gone, and the rest of us began to settle down for the night, I sat and watched a dance of whimsical tiny lights over the coals of a dying fire. The waves were rolling on the river sand and in the darkening sky gull were screaming drawling and sad.
- Melancholic? - I have already said that Ghash can appear all of a sudden.
I did not answer.
- I got it. - With a stick Ghash stirred coals covered with gray ash, a pillar of sparks soared over the fire and the flame lit up. - Then answer me a question: are you going farther with us?
- Can I choose? - I asked instead of answering .
- No, - Ghash shook his head. - You must. Maybe you did not understand, but I think of you as the one of us. And the guys think the same. It was not easy for the oghr's uu-ghoy to agree with this, but they decided that you can be the uruuk-hai. Even Ughluk agreed. And he's older than all of us here put together, except for the crop-eared. He remembers as a hundred years ago your relatives were his enemies. But he also believes that you can be an uragh, the warrior of people Uruuk-Hai. So you have to make your choice.
- Right now?
- Yes. In the morning we will sail south. To the Black Desert. You have to decide now.
- What if I want to leave?
- We'll give you food and money for the road and help to cross the Great River. Then you have to go on your own.
- And if I want to return to the Swamp Island?
- Tulagh will be having a two-days halt in the upper ravine. You can catch up with them. On the island there is someone to be happy to have you back.
- I want to ask you something.
- Ask. I will answer.
- Was it really necessary to kill the"bears"?
- No. We could circumvent them. But it would be taking more time.
- Why did you order to kill them, if you can get around? They do not fight with you.
- Yes, - Ghash sadly smirked. - They do not fight with us. They were just hunting us, you and me. For an entertainment. Berol knew how to have fun just as well as my bastard brother. I could tell you a lot about this, but I won't.
- I have no need to hear it. I just want to know why you ordered to kill them.
- We are cruel people, Chsham. Cruel, sneaky, crafty and cunning. We are still very far from being humans, the such humans that were thought up by the Impartial One. But we also don't count as good people those, who deny us an opportunity to become better. For Berol and others like him we are just animals, which is fun to hunt. He forgot that the animals have teeth.
- Is this why you killed Ghashur?
- Yes.
- But he was your brother.
- He is still my brother. We are twins. Only he stopped growing at ten years old. I'm the same as him. We differ only in the fact that he liked to dominate, and I do not, although I'm possessing a considerable power among our people. I remember that in addition to the authority there is also a responsibility. But I'm the same as him, and sometimes for me also can be difficult to humble my whims.
- How will you open the tower of Barad-Dur, if I'm gone?
- And what for I took Oghr? Sooner or later we will do it. Maybe with you we would do it sooner, maybe without you - later. But we will do it. We are patient people.
- You all can die.
- We all can die with you too. For each of us death is behind the left shoulder, but it should not be taken into an account. Sooner or later even the immortal elves leave this sunny world.
- I need to think.
- Think. But when the sun rises, I need to hear your word.
And he got up and walked away, leaving in the sand clear footprints of his boots.
All night I was looking at the crimson embers. When the sky began to dim the stars and deepened a predawn darkness, I poked Ghash at his side.
- Wake up, - I told him. - In an hour later the sun rises. It's time to go.
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Old 04-28-2015, 09:09 PM   #39
Olmer
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-"Sun has gone down to mountains tops,
Shadows fell from the edge of ravines... "
The singer had a strong, pleasant baritone. He knew how to sing, and clearly sang this song not for the first time.
-"Time to herd cattle back to the barns. - Softly stretched the singer and hundreds of leather throats mighty picked up the song, drowning out all around:
-"Hurry up, people, from a copse to the copse
Boozed up company steals unseen."

Again the baritone came:
-"We can not be heard and we can not be seen,
Quietly slipping as bats, high on senses,
And it's not given to our preys,"-
And the leather throats again picked up:
-"To foreknow when will blaze away
Houses, roofs, walls and fences .

We are approaching, quieter pace
Heave-ho as one, tip the balance.
Burn them and fight, stand your foe face to face,
Grab more of the loot and then cut to the chase,
Folly don't take for the valiance! "

Really, the least I could expect in the Osgiliath's fortress tavern is a song of free orc gangs by the rangers of the King of Gondor!
"Who can tell, buddies, in which of the nights
Ends a happy life, free and flagrant?
So, you'd look for more fun outright... "- brought a cheerful baritone, and the hundred throats merrily ended:
- Do not feel sorry, burn life, drink and fight ,
Treasure your freedom, you, vagrants!!
A sound of clinking mugs confirmed that the "vagrants" intended to rejoice their "freedom" immediately.
That night they were yelling many other songs, but for some reason I remembered only this one. Maybe, because I already had heard it .
- I thought, - I elbowed chewing Ghash, - that it is the orc's song.
- Yeah, - Ghash did not think it's necessary to break away for the answer from pork hocks with onion gravy .
- And why do they sing it? - I nodded at the crowded with the rangers tavern's hall .
- They are singing because they like it. - Ghash swallowed a piece, wiped his greasy hand on the cape on my shoulder and reached for the mug of beer - Why not to sing? They are alive, with loot, wages received, will have enough of singing and drinking to their heart's content and again - to the war. Why they would not be happy for a while?
- Interesting, - I thought aloud. - Someone has had to translate this song into a Westron.
- Nope, - Ghash took out of the mug his nose. - The Great Gimbagh originally composed his own songs in the Westron, some of them were translated then to a Black speech, but I did not hear the translation for this one . And he again has returned to the beer.

I should mention that the beer in Osgiliath was disgusting. That swill that sells in here by that name, have in common with the beer only by a color. And even then, I would call it a very distant relationship. Brandyback's Brald is dark, but at the same time it is transparent. The osgiliath swill in color looks like Mirkwood's bog muck or a slightly diluted tar. It also smells disgusting, worse than shaghu. But shaghu is a honest drink, you cannot drink it for pleasure, but you can drink it for getting yourself drank. Besides, it does not apply to the swamp shaghu, this one with its exquisite taste can charm any connoisseur and will be even welcome on the royal table. Only the Royal Rangers could be able to have a pleasure from drinking the Osgiliath beer. For them, in my opinion, was no difference in what to drink, as long as it will give them a hangover next morning.


I've got in Osgiliath because of Ghash. Rather, because of the conversation that took place between us on the right bank of the Anduin, when he dropped me off the boat.
- Farewell, - he told me. - We probably won't see each other any more. I understand that it is difficult to be one of us. I should not have dragged you into all of this. But seems from the start everything in this liason did not go as planned. I even wonder why we both are still alive. Ughluk was right, when he said about your luck. Let your luck continues to stay with you. I won't be able to see you out. Here, take it.
He handed me a tightly packed leather pouch .
- No, - I said - I did not earn this.
- This is not a reward, - he said. - It's for the road. In the steppe you won't need it, but it will be handy when you will come to populated areas. Where will you go now?
-To the West, - I waved. - Walk around the Fangorn, come out to the southern tract and - to the home.
- It is better to go to the north - advised Ghash. - If you're going to bypass the Fangorn from the south, you can stumble upon Rohans, they are bringing their captives to the southern edge for a forest felling. In the steppe it's easy to get stumbled on a patrol. Nobody will ask you about anything, just will get you hacked, without getting off the horse, or shoot from afar. In the north you should go along the Celebrant. If anything, it is easier to hide in the bushes or in the reeds on the shore, less efforts to get food, when needed, and easier with water. The Fangorn is better to get round from the west, along the mountains. You come out right at the Helm's Deep. There is the market, people of all sorts are hanging around in there all the time. It won't be a problem for you to get a guard job at some merchants and with them with no trouble you will get to your home.
- Thank you, - I bowed. - Forgive me. It was wrong. It was no need to kill the "bears" .
- I explained to you all about the "bears" - Ghash shrugged.
- Yes, I understand, but still - it was not necessary. If you want to be good, you have to be different from the actions of those whom you consider as evil. They were not interfering. It was possible to avoid them, you said it yourself, so should let them live.
- I'll think about it, - Ghash, seemed to me, felt uneasy.
We hugged each other, I turned my back to the fiery disk of the sun and walked away. Without looking back. When you leave, your heart should be taken with you.


I was already pretty far away, when Ghash caught up with me.
- Wait, - he said with an intermittent from fast running voice. - Hold on. I thought you shouldn't go alone through the steppe. Too dangerous. Come with us by the River. I still need to go to Osgiliath on some business. This is a fortress of Gondor on the River. I'll take you with me, and from there you will get into Minas Tirith without any trouble. In there you can get hired out by merchant sat the market. It's simple and safe.
- What about the guys? - I asked. - How can I come back when I already left?
- Guys do not know, - he said. - They did not know why we were going to this shore. What are they, in general, know about you? The facts that were said at the well in the sentry village. For them you are the uragh of Shaghbuurth, came with the shaghrat and with the shaghrat went away. They do not even know why you're with us, and won't ask, because these, who are asking questions to the fiery rat should be aware of its fangs. They'll consider you as my guard. Let's go with us. I can not let you, like this, to go in the steppe alone.
- What about Ughluk? - the wizened old man with a clawed stare was scaring me.
- Oh, he will say nothing. The whole endeavor is on my head, he won't interfere. We will sail in different boats . You and I - in one, and the rest - in the other. Let's go.
And we came back.

I did not have enough of time to enjoy the beauty of Anduin's shores. Through the first day I slept on the floor of the boat, at night I managed the boat by myself, trying to stay closer to the shore and wincing at each wave, and on the next day we were already at the lake nearing the waterfalls of Rauros.
The current of the Great river only from a distance seems to be slow and gentle, but when you are rocking on it in the boat, it's carrying you faster than any horse. And, unlike the horse, it does not get tired. Travel by water is a scary experience, but it is convenient and saves energy. As Ghai said: "If we would be walking during all that time, our legs would be worn up to the armpits."

Also, I was not impressed by the giant stone sculptures of the ancient Kings of Gondor on both sides of the river at the lake, which marks the boundary of Gondor - just pitted by age stone and nothing more. In my opinion, these "guardians" are too large to induce some feelings.
Maybe once they demonstrated the power of the people who created them, but their present condition brings a thought that it is not enough to show the mightiness, it must be maintained. To me, these giant figures are the labor done in vain, a visual expression of an arrogant and proud power, bedazzled with itself , but unable to find any useableness for itself .
It would do more good if the creators of the stone kings made a good walkway to bypass the falls. To carry the boat on own shoulders, walking along a narrow path and at each step afraid to stumble and fall down from the cliff several hundred feet high, it is the job only for such morons like us. It is understandable why merchant ships are not sailing on the Anduin. Ghash, however, said that the right bank is easier for portage, but the right bank is not for us. On the right bank is Rohan and the rohirrim are not favoring strangers. Especially the uruuk-hai.

But somehow we, the four of us - the elf has carried Ughluk, dragged the boat along the left bank to the lower part of the Fall. Just one boat, for me and Ghash, because just us are sailing farther down the River. The rest had to go straight through the marshes of Emyn Muil to the Black gate of Mordor.


- You need to remove the harness and change your clothing, - said Ghash when came the time to sail away. - Your harness belts left rubbed traces on the jacket, it is enough of people in Osgiliath who have a trained eye on such signs. You can keep boots, in Carrok it is plenty of them for sale at the markets, and in Gondor many rangers are walking in such boots. The weapons also have to be replaced.
After some digging into the bales Ghash pulled out from somewhere a pile of clothes and threw to me a spacious gray-green blouson. On the faded left sleeve, just below the elbow, was a darkening spot from a removed badge, and on a stomach area was a patch of similar in color, but of different fabric.
- I used to wear this when I was in the Royal Ranger, - explained Ghash. - It is small for me now. Take the cape also. If anyone asks about clothes, say you bought it at the market in Carrok. It is a lot of beorings serve in the Rangers.
The cape was the same obscure gray-green color, as the blouson. But it had the hood and looked more like a coat than orc's buurgha. I had to leave my buurgha, also the dagger and the kughri.
I was sorry to part with the kughri, but, even without Ghash's explanation, it was clear to me that coming to the Gondor's fortress with an orc sword on the shoulder can give rise to a lot of unnecessary questions. Instead of the sword Ghash gave me a long and wide beorning knife in a sling - a heavy weapon with a dark blued blade and a handle made of moose antlers. On thick bolster blackened a familiar stamp - the swamp lily. A roomy knapsack on a diagonal shoulder strap replaced the comfortable, spacious backpack. My former belongings Ghash packed in the buurgha and, nodding on the bale, silently said something to Ughluk. He just closed his eyes in response.

Ghash also put on different clothes and have changed some things in his appearance. My mouth got opened by itself when I saw a complete stranger - a warrior. Instead of boots he had soft shoes with wide straps around the ankles and toes slightly curved up; calves and thighs were covered with a thin leather pants so tight, that I saw as the knolls of muscles are rolling under it at every step; on the torso was tightly sitting a short leather vest with a lacing instead of buttons. On the naked hands of the warrior were heavy cast bracelets: two gold - on the right shoulder and the right wrist, and one gold - on the left shoulder. On his left wrist was four loops of a thick silver chain. The same size chain, only in gold and thicker, is looping with two coils around the neck. On it a greenish round brass plaque was looking a little strange. His fingers were studded with rings of various sizes and types. The transformation completed the gold coin, that was attached to the left ear .
- Why all of this? - I asked, looking at him bewilderingly. - Seems before you managed to live without it.
- I am a Royal Ranger now, - said Ghash, braiding hair into a short, thick braid. - Rangers, the ones that save, instead of spending the royal pay and the pillage on drinks, do it in that way: they are converting everything in silver and gold and carrying on themselves.
- And chains too? - I wondered.
- The chains are to pay between each other, - Ghash bent the braid forward and plaited its tip to the hair over the forehead: it turned out into something like a hair ridge. - It is such a custom. The link on the chain weighs exactly like one coin. In a dice game, winning or losing is getting measured in the links. Count, what's needed, open links with a knife and pay off. And, if you have won, it could be fastened to the chain in no time, the metal is soft, not like iron, you can close links with your teeth .
- Then what is a coin for? - I continue to be amazed. - For a good look?
- No - seriously replied Ghash, carefully eyeing me. - Not for the good look. The coin is for the funeral.
- Is it not enough of all this? - I pointed on the bracelets.
- All this the ranger can blow away on booze, or waste his dough on dice games, or his comrades would strip off him and divide between themselves after his death. Even the wounded could be cleaned out. But no one ranger will take the funeral coin, it will go to the one, who will bury the body. Only the last drunkard would spend it on drinks, it's all the same like drinking away your own death. Although such types are happens, but they're not respected.
I could only marvel at the intricate complexity of foreign customs.

- Put the knife on the right side, - told me Ghash when, finally, finished to look me over. - Here, like I did.
On his right side hung a short straight sword in its shabby sheath .
- Why should I? - I waved. - I'm not left-handed.
- In Osgiliath all seasoned warriors are doing so, - said Ghash. - He, who knows it, will appreciate.
- And how to get it out? Inconvenient.
- Convenient. Look. - Ghash stood, arms akimbo, so that bent at the elbow right hand rested with the back of his hand on the hip . - Squat a little, the sheath is going down and you pull the handle up. Once the tip get out of the sheath you will immediately lunge with a chopping movement from the bottom up. Try! You are moving great when dancing, so you should be able to do it.
I tried. Indeed, it turned out to be an easy move.
- In Osgiliath the wild people are getting gathered, - meanwhile continued Ghash. - So won't be surprised if anyone will start to hassle you, but have no fear. It is rarely comes to knife fights. If anything will get serious - I'll stand by your side. Call me Nar or Spark, as you prefer. And now - in the boat and to sail off.
- "Right now? - I wanted to say. - Do not even say a few words to the guys?"
But even before I finished that thought, I found myself swaying on the river waves, and the flow was quickly carried us to the south.


To Osgiliath we arrived in the evening. Ghash tied up the boat to an iron hook sticking out of the stone pier, spoke a few words in the melodious language of Gondor with a sullen-eyed boats caretaker, received from him a wooden plaque with a black rune, paid for it a few copper coins and led me to the gate of the fortress.
The gates were wide open, on both sides stood two sleepy guards, rather shabby in an appearance, with shoulders propped up against the leaves of the door. A lot of people at the gate were scurrying back and forth, but for some reason the guards addressed to us.
- Who are you? - Lazily drawled the left and made a motion, as if to block our path with a spear.
- Adonar, - said Ghash and snapped his fingers on a copper plaque on a gold chain. - Eighteenth ordo, returns to service after being wounded. And my little brother with me, wants to enroll in the Rangers.
- It's funny, - I thought. - We are looking quite unlike each other. Why did he call me the "little brother"?
- Why did you come here? - Also lazily said the guard. - Why not to the guard house?
- We came by the river, - said Ghash. - From the Beorings it's easier to come here, will spend the night here, drink some beer and then - to Minas Tirith.
- Eighteenth ordo, you say, - said already the right guard. - Who is your captain there?
- I do not know now, - shrugged Ghash. - It was Brad-the-Marauder. I was heavily wounded - nearly a whole year lain in a sick bed.
- The Marauder, you say, - the right guard sighed. - The Marauder has got himself marauded eight months ago. Only the head has been found and even it was barely recognizable. Now Derg runs the eighteenth.
- Crooked? - Ghash seemed got happy.
- Yeah-ye, Crooked Derg, - the right guard deeply yawned. - Why is he "crooked"? Seems he is not a one-eyed.
- He used to govern the second platung. The "crooked" because under Cirith Ungol he got a muscle hacked on one side of his neck. Now walks all the time whith the head bent to the side, rubs his shoulder with an ear. What are you saying? Are my people in the fortress? It would be less hassles, and no need to go to the guardhouse.
- Yours are in South Gondor now. - Said the left guard. -They are haunting Khand's variags or the variags are haunting them.
- Hey, brother, - he said to me. -Where did you get your clothing?
- In Carrok, - I said, - on the market.
- I see, - the guard grinned. - Wasted your money, the King will give you the same rags, but the new ones. The cape you'd better take off in the fortress: rangers don't like when someone disguises himself as them. Could have your mug get smashed for such thing.
- Do not worry for him, - Ghash patted me on the shoulder. - The brother is experienced, not as simple as it seems. We are together walked not one league, do not look that he is anything but tall, to any thugs he could give ahead six out of eighteen.
- I don't care about that, - the guard shrugged. - I warned, and in there he can do what he wants. Two white links from him for the entry in the fortress, - he looked at the right guard, who nodded. - Two more for carrying a weapon.
- Pay, - Ghash pushed me in the back.
I took out his pouch with money and counted four coins to the guard. Seemed to me that this simple action greatly enhanced his respect for me. In any case, the guard made a thoughtful face, looked at another and then pulled out of the belt-bags two wooden plates with intricate black runes.
- The round one wear on yourself on a visible place, - he said, handing them to me, - so that the guard of the order can see it right away. The triangular - on a handle of the weapon, also in sight. The permit is valid until the end of the week. If you want to stay in the fortress for a longer time, the next plaque can be obtained from any gates guards. If the law enforcement guards will turn to you, obey their orders without question, or you will get hung high and short. We are strict on this. The law enforcement guards are having such plaques.
And he showed a copper disk- fastener on his cloak with an embossed image of, seems, the owl.
- Did you get it?
I nodded.
- He is not talkative, - said the guard to Ghash. - Right away one can see a northerner. You watch him here till the guy is getting adjusted. You know what kind of wild people are in here.
- Do not worry, - Ghash only grinned. - He can stand up for himself. You'd better tell me: is the chicken coop of fat Flea still at the "Deaf Boar"? Or did they, maybe, moved from the place ?
- What, are you in a hurry right off the road to lose the load? - The guard laughed understandingly. - The local hens will strip your dough off in no time. - And he made an inviting motion with a spear:
- Go on!


I won't talk about the fortress in details. I did not like it. Stone, stone, stone, gray, dirty stone from all sides. Stone underfoot, stone on both sides of the streets, and it seems that even above the head is the stone. Dusty narrow streets along which, in the ditches flows sewage ; crowds of drunken rangers in the same gray-green cloaks and in the air is hunging such thick smell, that a nausea rolled to the throat. This is how I remembered the fortress Osgiliath.
Much later, when I already visited Minas Tirith, and Esgarote and Umbar, I realized that there are cleaner and lighter cities. But the real city I have seen for the first time, seemed to me was disgusting.

The tavern "Deaf Boar" did not rectify that impression. Its huge main hall with vaulted ceilings and with a light of the hung around torches vividly reminded to me the underground of the Barrow-Downs. Only in here was no mold on the walls and much more torches.
A lot of people were in here. Many people were mostly dressed in a gray-green. Very many! Two or three hundred, and maybe more. They were sitting everywhere on benches at the long tables that were placed between propping up the ceiling pillars. They ate, talked, played dice, fiercely slapped on tables with some colorful pieces of paper, sang, squeezed painted like orcs bedraggled girls, and were doing a bunch of different other things.
And also they were drinking, and for them such doing was definitely the most important thing . I bet that any of the people sitting in the tavern would have easily won a drinking contest with me and Teddy. Both together. Above the tables hovered a such sustained reek of stale beer, that the street smell seemed to be just like the fresh mountain breeze.

We walked up to the bar counter in the middle of the hall, which to me was almost to the chin. Behind the counter stood a fearsome man, huge, like a statue of ancient king at the Rauros. His hairy paws were completely covered with blue patterns of intricately interwoven plants. I remembered it was the mighty oak, in whose branches tangled a few small fish.
- Hi, Boar,- said Ghash and made to him some complex movements with the fingers of his left hand. - A separate table for four at the window behind the curtain. Pork legs with stewed cabbage for two, and beer, as usual. Send someone later on, we probably will order more. He put his hand on the counter, the man silently nodded, pulled a small pliers out of his leather apron pocket and deftly removed a few silver links from Ghash's wrists.
While all this was happening, someone shoved me in the back. I turned around. Before me stood a bearded strapper, two heads taller than me. At a glance it was impossible to determine to what kind of folk he belongs. The bearded man was as hairy, as a beorning, white-haired as a rohirrim and his facial features reminded me of Ghu-Urghan - a pug nose and slightly slanted eyes.
- What for you are staying on the way, runt? - he barked and tried to push me again.
I stepped aside, and the bearded, missing, slightly touched Ghash with his broad palm, who just finished his payment with Boar.
- Leave him alone, hairy, - friendly told him Ghash. - It is not your size.
- And who are you? - The astonished bearded raised a drunk look on Ghash. - Don't you know the rules? If two quarrel - the third is not butting in.
- Your quarrel will be with me now, - said Ghash and with left hand grabbed him at the belt. He easily pulled up the drunk to his height, rested his forehead against the sloping forehead of the bearded and continued in low, menacing voice: - And you won't live it. You! Hit! Me! Right, Boar? - Boar nodded. - And I'm an incorrigibly testy guy!
- All right, all right ... - muttered the bearded. - Accidentally brushed - no big deal.
- If it's no big deal, then we will go, - immediately agreed Ghash, releasing his belt, and led me to the back of the room, leaving the dumbfounded drunkard at the bar.

A table for four appeared to be a dark oak top attached to the stone pillar and completely covered with carved runes. In my opinion, in there, besides the Westron, were signs in no less than eight languages, including the Black speech . I did not understand the meaning of the most of them, and those that understood were not worth of retelling. The table was set in the nook at the wall, and surrounded on three sides by wooden benches and almost to the ceiling walls. A black curtain is isolating it from the main hall, which, however, Ghash drew aside. A small barred window in the wall did not add light, nor freshness and, in general, it was unclear why it was done in here.
As soon as we sat down, after us from the dimness of the torches came a woman of an immense thickness in a soiled apron with a huge tray in her hands, laden with a variety of dishes and mugs. Without saying a word, she unloaded from the tray on the table a dish with piled up pork legs and lots of stewed cabbage, a bowl with onion sauce, two flat fresh bread cakes, four mugs of beer and then silently went away.
Contrary to an expectation, the legs were not only edible, but even tasty. Not home cooking, of course, but close to that. I was really disappointed by the beer, but I already talked about it. However Ghash was gulping it without showing any distaste or frown.
- If you want to pass for one of them, - he told me, - do what others are doing. In my work I had to do worse things. Lower a couple mugs of beer and it will appear to you not so bad. You'd better not to wash down legs with beer, but on the contrary, eat legs after the beer. Then it will go easier. At Boar's they are cooking good of all pork dishes.
- Could not we find a more decent place ? - I asked. - Or, is all places in here are just like this?
And with melancholy I remembered the "Prancing Pony". I was there only once in a lifetime and at that time the place of Butterbeer seemed to me as a creepy and debauched place. Now I realized that to compare with the "Deaf Boar" the "Prancing Pony"is just a sample of propriety and decency.
- There are more decent places , - Ghash carefully scanned the room. - For the chiefs and just for those, who has an aversion of going to the places like this. But I a need to meet with one man, to chew the fat about something. The meeting is scheduled in here. For my work such establishment - can't to think up better. Nobody pays any attention to anyone, cannot be overheard.

He was right. In a cohesive roar of drunken male voices, constrained female screams, banging of drawing together mugs and the knives scraping on the plates hardly anyone would hear us farther than two steps from us, even if we would be shouting at the top of our lungs.
Taking the spiced pork after a disgusting beer, I was looking over the hall and thinking about how strange could be the way of life. Here, next to me is sitting an orc - a secret spy and assassin, who stole me almost from the threshold of my house, doing in here some of his incomprehensible to me dark deeds, and I have a much warmer feeling towards him, than to this gray-green army, which, seems, have to protect me from such a "fiery rats" as Ghash. I could not understand how is it turned out so, that not only Ghash, but Oghr, and Ghai, who almost killed me, and even a scary old man Ughluk suddenly become dearer to me, closer and more comprehensive, than those drunk people, which I could not even watch without disgust.


My thoughts were interrupted by a polite question, delivered on Westron, but with a Rohan accent:
- Forgive me, good freas, could I sit down with you and talk?
- You couldn't not, - roughly said Ghash, not looking up from the meal. - We've got our own company, we don't need the strangers.
- That I understand, - said a young Rohirrim with an ingratiating smile. - I won't distract you for long. You, kind frea, sorry, can't remember your name, - the Rohirrim smiled mischievously, - have been a guest in our house, when with your squad have stayed in our Fold. That young frea, - he nodded at me, - was lying unconscious in a bedroom at my dad's house.
- Yeah? - Ghash drawled thoughtfully. - Come closer. What is your father's name?
- Halm, good frea, - the Rohirrim said, sitting down on the edge of the bench. - You probably don't remember me, I am my father's youngest.
- I remember you, - Ghash discontentedly chuckled. - Remember... You served us at the table. Halm said, that it is such a custom.
- Yes, yes, - the Rohirrim became happy. - You then talked about my little sister, L'eefi, and about the blacksmith, who was hanged.
- Well, - Ghash was seriously displeased with something. - Now what do you want?
- I would like to ask you for an advise, frea ...
- Nar, - Ghash interrupted the Rohirrim . - My name is Nar.
- Nar, - dutifully repeated the Rohirrim. - You see, the matter is - the orcs passed by our village. As usual with them, they looted a little, hung the blacksmith and burnt half the village. The arsonists made our men very enraged. By that misfortune the Royal eored has happened to be nearby. In there, in our boondocks, the only our protection is the Royal cavalry, - the Rohirrim grinned. - The orcs, seeing the horsemen, fled, but not that far, only to the burial mound. We have a such one. On that mound has happened the battle of them with the eored. But, seems, it had been a lot of orcs, four hundreds , no less, and also of the warg-wolves was not less than one hundred. They slew the Royal cavalry, all as is, killed, looted and then ran away somewhere, maybe to the north, maybe to the south. I do not know.
- Just killed them all? - Ghash amazed. - The wounded had to be left.
- Nobody left, - confidently replied the Rohirrim. - That day our men went to the hill. They were very angry at the arsonists, wanted to help to the horsemen, but had found only the dead. All, all as is, the evil orcs killed and even had finished off the wounded. And ransacked all of them.
- Even the wounded were finished off, - the conversation is captivating Ghash more and more. - How come that the horsemen did not sent for a help, since saw such a force against themselves?
- Maybe they sent, - shrugged the rohirrim. - Later four unmounted horses have galloped in the village. Only ravens know where their riders' bones lie. The horses my dad kept in his stable, fed with his grain, and returned to the treasury when the Royal querier came from Edoras. For that he got rewarded, got alloted more land.
- You have a cunning father, - Ghash smiled. - Managed to get the reward. How the royal inquiry have ended?
- So I'm telling you and how it all has been, - the Rohirrim smiled too . - The Royal querier questioned my dad, since he is a headman of the village, and everything, as is, wrote down. The village got royal taxes waved-off for the year .
- Well done! - Nodded approvingly Ghash. - How did you get in here?
- Dad sent, - the Rohirrim sighed. - To find whether it is possible to sell not for a song some worthfull goods to somebody.
- Why not himself? Or would send the older son .
- Himself is the village headman. Can't leave a community without the lead. After this happening, you need to keep an eye on it, - said the Rohirrim. - My older brother got stabbed with a spear in the stomach by a wounded orc. We buried him, - the Rohirrim became sad and sighed. - So, dad sent me to Gondor with passing by merchants.
- Why he did not sell these goods to those passing by merchants ?
- It is a delicate matter, - the Rohirrim leaned on the table and lowered his voice. - Goods are rich, but you won't sell that in our areas, and if you will sell, then all the time don't sleep and watch out the gate. Best to sell it in foreign lands. But to whom? Couldn't you give an advice to whom to approach? We would sell for a bargain, if the price offer is good .
- And how much of the goods? - Seems Ghash seriously is getting tended to the affairs of the young Rohirrim. - I can clue you on who to talk to. But those people are not just the simple merchants, they won't lift a finger for one saddle.
- It 's a lot, - said the Rohirrim clearly delighted by this turn of conversation. - Just the horse harnesses are for two hundred heads. Some other small iron items, horseshoes and all, and the weapons also. The swords - two hundred and eleven.
- Wow, - Ghash thoughtfully rubbed his chin. - Even the horseshoes ...
- Of course. - the Rohirrim explained. - The iron, it is expensive. Why it has to rot in the ground. Have not left out.
- I got It. Give for a half price. From what is usually have taken on the market at Helm's Deep .
- At half of the price? - The Rohirrim seemed got upset. - What if for a two-thirds?
- The two-thirds, if you will deliver in here, there will be more hassle, but for the half price - they will pick it up by themselves.
- Dad will be unpleased, - the Rohirrim sighed. - Such money...
- He won't. For the half price a whole your village can be brought and a pair of adjacent ones. Your family will be rich.
- That is not all for us. For us is just a quarter. The rest will be divided by the community. So much of the fear we had suffered from these arsonists. Especially, when the royal questioner came. Because of the fear we stood by each other. Dad is still afraid.
- So, in order not to be afraid any more, it is necessary to sell the product quickly. Agree? It's still a lot of money.
- I agree.
- Then let's go. I will introduce you to Boar, help you to negotiate.


And they went away, leaving me to gnaw boringly at the pork legs.
Seems the talk with Boar got lingered over because Ghash was not returning for quite a long time. I had already drunk all beer and thought about to order more legs, but did not know whether it is a good idea to leave the table unoccupied. But on another hand to sit alone in this place, for which I cannot even find the name, was scary to me too. The surrounding with its patrons was looking kind of threatening.
And, my fears were not in vain.
- Hey, the hare, - came from behind and, looking back, I found the late bearded man in the company of another similar to him.
- I am not a hare, - I replied, wondering what to do now. I was not afraid of the bearded man, he managed to add more to what he had and now was "drunk like a skunk." To knock him down would be enough to not even a "whisk", but a simple "spiking" or even a "tapping". But the second one seemed to be much more sober, and hence, more dangerous.
- Hey, the hare, - continued the bearded man, not listening to me. - Why you ears are so short? Hares have to have the long one. Let me stretch them to you.And, he attempted to grab me with the gnarled paw.
- A week ago somebody wanted to shorten them, - I told him, pushing out the unsteady hand, realizing, finally, that the second bearded man was brought not to fight with me, but with Ghash. The rule: if two quarrel - the third is not butting in.
I was really hoping that the rule is always honored, but figured that if it comes to a fight, then I'll have to fight them one by one.
- Shorten? - Bearded man did not even realize that he was annoyed, and grabbed at the edge of the table. - Nope ... It is necessary to lengthen.
And again tried to grab me.
I was about to smash a heavy mug on his forehead, which would give me a time to get up from the table until the second one is figuring out what's what, but things turned out differently.
- Leave the young man alone, - someone said a pleasant voice. - It is impolite to hint to someone that his appearance is flawed. Especially doing so rude and obscene.
- W-who-ot? - Astonished the bearded man and stared at the man in a black outfit and in also black short cape-coat.
- Wait a minute, - he stopped his friend with the hand, who was trying to get in front of him . - Who are you? Why are you poking your nose in other people's affairs? How did you get here, a spring rook?
- Strain off your bark, - The Black said coldly, not answering. - Or I will cut off your tongue and sew to the tail bone. In there it will be right, where belongs.
- W-who-ot? - the bearded got absolutely stunned by such a response. - Brother, look after this hare that he won't hop away until I will be bending the beak to this starling ...
And he, putting in front of him his fists in a size of my head, menacingly moved on the Black.
The Black has neither jumped back, nor shy away or fight. He simply raised his left hand and put to the nose of the bearded a round silver badge, which is hanging on his wrist on a thin coiled cord.
The bearded man stopped abruptly, squinted the eyes at the badge and began, as if, to shrink in size, cringe. His friend also glanced at what the Black has in the palm, and, picking up the hunched tosspot by the elbow, pulled him in the dimness of the hall, out of the way. It was evident that he angrily utters something to the bearded and occasionally pokes his side with his mighty fist.
- Fat Flea said that Adonar is sitting at this table, - said the Black in not changed, even voice. - Is she wrong, or am I?
- Nar stepped out briefly, - I replied. - Sit down, wait. And thank you for your help.
- Not at all, - The Black sat down across of me, casting aside the sides of cape-coat. - The decent people should help each other in this bizarre world. All the more that the confrontation did not go farther than the exchange of words. To the east of Anduin the word is no longer has any power... And here is Nar with beer and snacks.
Ghash sat down next to me, and with him came the previous fat woman, Flea, as I understand, and unloaded on the table another dish with pork and mugs of beer.
- I really thought that today I'm waiting in vain, - said Ghash, referring to the Black. - How is our business?
- Is he's on the way? - Instead of answering, asked the man in black, nodding at me.
- Passing by, - said Ghash. - Do not scratch, the jerboa without impurities. Just a tadpole, not a bog toad. We will croak - he will be flipping the peepers.
- Get hacked!
- Let axes get hacked, - seems Ghash took an offense. - Are you going to smear a scuttlebutt or will we intertwine?
- We will rub palms, - the Black took a sip from the mug. - I am on a shaving brush, all in lather, double wheels of chinar and we will weave in the branches.
- Don't shovel! - Outraged Ghash. - Aligned on the-eyed tooth. You were shaking the rattle, what is this crap "of chinar"?
- I just croaked: when in lather, not time for a razor. - said the Black. - I almost got boiled.
- Not my diarrhea, - Ghash shook his head. - You reap as yow sow, the-eyed tooth and we will start jumping.
- On such a run the-eyed tooth won't smear, - the Black shook his head, too. - I have got a red sack from the stilt by two-bit stride. You will blush to do it without backband's dating. The double wheels of chinar like on the palm. You are swimming like a pike, croaking like a toad, shepherding tadpoles and I'll be washing peepers in hot water.
- Did not get boiled yet.
- What about washing off someone's diarrhea? Steam was already coming. A little wrong smear - and to the oak, on the spindle to sing like a fish.
- Aren't you an acorn?
- The Oak doesn't give roots if you are the acorn. He is dancing on nails before the green stone. When he will stretch the strings - if you won't sing, then you will dance: was the acorn on the oak and became a fodder in a bag. The double wheels of chinar or we won't intertwine.
- Do not shovel. The two wheels of chinar against the Grease. We will intertwine, if it will smear.
- You yawns like a pike, - the Black grinned. - The Grease slides without haze. Take a peep.
The Black took from his pocket a tiny leather pouch. Ghash reached for the pouch, but the Black jerked it away and warned.
- Peep, but don't bend the branches. First will intertwine and then you can smear even with the leaves. Ghash looked inside the bag for a few minutes, and then said thoughtfully:
- By peeping it is the Grease. What if not dancing?
- Is is dancing, - confidently said Black. - All according to croaking: char-grilled - a scratching peels off.
- The scratching? - Ghash became more thoughtful and pulled close to himself the candle. - Kid, be a friend, go get us a couple of beers.
I did not even realize that the last words addressed to me and uttered in an ordinary language. It was clear that Ghash wanted to stay with the Black alone for a few minutes. So, I was not in a hurry, and before coming back to the table with mugs, ordered and drank one at the counter.

When I returned to the Black and Ghash apparently already got agreed.
- Why are you sharpening your jowls on this ringers? - Lazily said Ghash, looking like the Black is thoroughly recounting spread out on the table coins. - You are the backband, you have a stone drum with a such rattle that for its sound the axes themselves would rip out their peepers.
- On the stone drum the oak spread its branches. - Black replied, trying on the tooth one of the coins. - For me it's not booming. All salve is on the grove, and I am only an acorn, there is, except me, a whole hog-trough. The whole ringing is on the leaves, and for me - a donut hole. You can die without dances. To wash jerboa's teeth, or to warm the nest with hens... No ringing - no swinging.
- Is three by six - not nineteen? Won't yours jerboas choke by washing their teeth with two wheels of chinar? Or are you looking for a copper nest?
- The jerboas and hens are without oiling. I want to flap my fins at midnight. The horns got rooted to the hooves for standing behind. For me the healing smears, but the oak seethes in the wind, waves branches. The entire grove from stumps to leaves is in the green stone's backband. To me it won't dance . I'll gather the rattle, then will hoof the stone and to the haireds.
- If you have already talked about business, - I interfered in their amusing conversation, - then, maybe, you return to a plain language ? You are "croaking," and I just "flipping the peepers", though I do not understand what it is.
- Oh. Excuse us, young man, - the Black bent the head towards me . - It's impolite fot the two to speak the language, incomprehensible to the third, in his presence. But the matter is above a courtesy, unfortunately. Right now I'm just telling to your friend that I was going to leave the family trade and practice doctoring in Carrock
- The family trade? - I asked, thinking to myself that in Gondor, certainly, for that kind of this Black's family trade they hung "high and short."
- What does your family do, if it's not a secret?
- No secrets, - the Black replied, smiling and hiding coins somewhere under his cloak . - I am a senior torture executioner of His Majesty the Great King Elessar.
- Ex-executioner? - I choked on the beer. - The torture executioner? Is there are special torture executioners? I always thought that here is simply the executioners and that's it. Forgive me, if I am saying something stupid, but in our region there are no executioners at all.
- You must have grown up in a terrible backwater, - the Black smiled again. - I, too, apologize if my assumption offends you. No one self-respecting kingdom can do without the executioners. His Majesty the Great King Elessar has many. There are scaffold headmen, who are the lowest rank, they are engaged in executions. There are secret executioners, they eliminate people whose existence is considered to be impertinent by the King, the highly respected rank of courtiers. And there are the torture executioners, who work on rejecting the authority of the King criminals. This is our family business for fourteen generations. Our family has served the throne of Gondor even in the days of Stewards.
- It is, probably, a profitable business ... - I said, dumbfounded. For the first time I saw a man for whom the torture is a daily trade. The family affair. Ghashur loved to torture, but still it was not his usual everyday's occupation.
- For the family - very, - the Black smiled sadly. - Especially for the head of the family. For me, as one of the younger sons - not very much. And, alas, I won't be able to become the head of the family. I have too many brothers older than me. To tell the truth, I like to heal the people much more than to torture. I find it a decent occupation for a decent man.
- Do you know how to heal? - There was no limit to my amazement .
- Of course, - for the Black this was nothing of surprising. - When from a childhood you are studying what's inside a person, you are learning not only to hurt him, but also to heal. You see, when the person dies from torture, it is considered as a poor performance in our business. Sub-standart. Therefore, healer's skills in our business is also necessary. I know how to treat wounds, fractures, and many of the diseases that happen among prisoners of the royal cellars. By the way, I noticed a scar in the collar of your shirt. Can I take a look?
- You can, - I opened the collar wider.
- Orc's ribbon stripping, - the Black defined at a glance. - Rough work, no imaginativeness, the tortured always dies. But if he is not needed alive, the method is not worse than any others. I see you have been in a quite perturbation. You're lucky to have survived. By the way, who were sawing you ? An ugly job, I would not entrust this tailor to put a patch on pants.
- Orcs, - I said, with a sidelong glance at Ghash. - They tortured, they sewed up.
- Did they? - The Black got amazed. - The scar doesn't look old. When did you remove the thread?
- I did not remove, - I shrugged. - Somehow it disappeared by itself.
-These threads made from sinews of newborn kittens, - chimed in Ghash. - They are getting dissolved by itself, convenient on the march: sew and forget.
- Very true to the orcs, - the Black nodded. - For the sake of their convenience to torture innocent animals. By the way, how is your wound?
- Fine, - shrugged Ghash. - Eating and drinking what I want, it doesn't bother me.
- Yeah, - dreamily stretched the Senior Torture Executioner of His Majesty the Great King Elessar. - That time I really pulled you from the edge of death. I think that no one else can boast of the same.
- There is another guy, - said Ghash. - Someday I'll introduce you. I just wanted to ask, why the meeting is here? Why not Minas Tirith? I was very surprised when I was told.
- The King's Executioners are in there, where the King himself, - shrugged the executioner, who wants to become a doctor. - Since the beginning of the summer we are sitting here. Something big was afoot. I teach locals to our craft, otherwise they are capable to torture a prisoner to death and still did not get an information.
- And what was afoot? - Ghash did not even hide his curiosity.
- I do not know. Prisoners, that go through us, are being asked the same question about the location of the wells past the Ash mountains. I think that our commanders are making up the map. It seem they have decided to deprive the Mordor's orcs of the water. But, in my opinion, this is a useless case.
- Maybe not, - replied thoughtfully Ghash.


That evening we sat for a long time in the "Deaf Boar."
Went away the executioner in black. Some other people, sometimes very sinister-looking, were approaching us, "croaked" about something with Ghash and went away. We were still seating, drinking disgusting beer, and my friend was becoming more and more concerned.
Ghash rose from the table when the last vestiges of light have disappeared in the small barred window.
- Be gone, slut, - he said to a heavily painted being of unknown sex, who jumped up to us, and we're swaying walked out on the street.
- I'm sorry, kid, I wanted to see you off to Minas Tirith, but I have no time now. We probably already too late. I will bring you to the inn, buy to you a pony, and then - farewell.
- I'm with you, Ghash - I replied. - I changed my mind. I'm with you.
- Do you? - It still amazes me his ability to take any events for granted, without surprise. - You will not be able to change your mind anymore.
- I'm with you.
- Well so. Let's go. Now begins a merry time . Time of dangers and possibilities. The life on the razor edge - you can run from the tip to the hilt, but also you can slip.
I nodded. And the time started to gallop.

Last edited by Olmer : 04-28-2015 at 10:26 PM.
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Old 09-03-2015, 11:19 PM   #40
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We left the fortress on the same night. Its gates are being locked at night, but it turned out that the "croaking" brotherhood in some things is more powerful than the guards of the King Elessar. We were guided out through a secret gate in the wall.
We've crossed the Anduin's channel on our own by wading and swimming, not daring to walk to the left bank through the watched over by guards bridge.
Then we rode to death two horses. Ghash bought them that same night at the inn of the fortress. The horses were more suited for a harness than a saddle, but we did not have a choice, and Ghash did not bargain.The saddles, too, were not available. I was afraid of a bareback riding on the beast in height so taller than me, even if it was far lesser than Rohan's studs. So we got together onto one horse, bareback, driving the poor animal with knife jabs in the croup.
From the offset we held the second horse on the reins, but when the first fell, then came its turn. The horse, seeing how the other in blood and foam is thrashing in agony on the ground, did not want to have such fate and tried to resist, but Ghash was merciless.

By a sunset we were running to the Ash Mountains on our own legs, leaving the second horse corpse for crow's pickings. At the same time, I've learned what does it mean - " a long run", and how much of the "green honey" you can eat at once without being killed by it. Uruuk-hai have a strange understanding of the word "long", which means "very fast, without the usual halts, and on the distance that is necessary."
To my own surprise, it turned out that in endurance I do not concede Ghash's and rather, transcending. And in the skill of climbing on the rocks too. Now even for myself it seems incredible, but by the end of the third day we were on the eastern slope of the Ash Mountains, and the Black Desert is stretching before us .


Mordor. The Black Desert has got its name during the times when Mount Doom has not yet subsided, and the sky above it was always covered with clouds of smoke and ash. In this almost nightly twilight, the desert, indeed, should look black. But, in fact, Mordor is a gray desert. It has very light gray soils, and the slightest breeze sweeps clubs of gray dust over the earth. All around is covered with that soft gray, like the newly-fallen snow, overlay. With a little sweat your hair and face are getting covered with a brittle crust of mud. In here it is impossible to eat or drink without swallowing at the same time half a pound or more of the hateful dust. It is better not to breathe with the mouth. Actually, it is better not to open it, if you did not cover yourself with a special cloth-mask. We did not have it, of course, and Ghash, with the knife, cut off two broad ribbons from the bottom of my ranger's cape.
At night I regretted about it.
Nights in Mordor are as much cold, as the days are hot. Or even colder. Warmed up through the day air rises up at night and from the mountains begins to blow chilly, penetrating to the bone wind, causing teeth to chatter and muscles to tremble.
No matter how hard Ghash and I were trying to get wrapped in a scanty remnant of the cape, pressing against each other, trying to keep at least small bits of warmth and sleep, the sleep has really failed. Only in the morning the tired eyes have got closed, seems only to make it more difficult to get up. On top of that during the night the cape got soaked with dewy moisture and become not exactly wet, but somewhat damp, when the fabric is not dry, but you can't squeeze out the water from it. It was not giving any warmth.
So when we set off again, I felt even an enjoyment, feeling how on the move warms up the chilled body. In the desert we were no longer running, but walking, and Ghash constantly looked around, choosing the direction.
- Ghash, - I asked him in his dusty back - why are we walking? Before we were running like from the fire, and now in no rush. - If we will run, clouds of dust will rise, - he said. - We can lose the road.
- The road? - I looked around. Within my eyesight nothing even remotely was resembling the road. - You're kidding, probably. I can not see the road.
- Look closely, - he paused for a moment and led by the hand. - See the brambles?
- The brambles I see, - I nodded. - So what?
- Look at them closely - advised Ghash. I looked more closely, concentrated and realized that I see a number of stunted thorn bushes, receding to a horizon. At first glance, they were the same as many others around, but if you look closely, the difference is still there. These spines are not gray-green, like most others, but brown-green. Not far from the first row was winding the second, same as the first. We were going between them .
- I got it, - I said. - Cleverly conceived. If you did not tell, I would never have guessed. The thorns like the thorns, if to think of it, just the color is slightly different.
- They are different, - confirmed Ghash. - It's not local thorns. They were brought from the south long time ago, from the oases near the Sea of Nurnen. Therefore, the color is different.
- And how can we lose them? - I asked, puzzled. - Now even I can see two rows.
- In the dust we may miss the turn, - said Ghash - or simply get confused. No one looks after this road for a long time, in some places the thorns sprawled by themselves . Anyway, we still can not run.
- Why?
- It's not enough of the water. If we will run fast all the water will go with prespiration and we will drop down from the heat and dryness. The nearest water source is in the village in which we are going. It's no others closer around here . - Is somebody living in here? - I was surprised. - Right in the midst of the desert?
- Of course, - confirmed Ghash. - Mordor Orcs live here.
- Uruk-hai? - I decided to clarify.
- No, the real orcs, who are afraid of the sun. That village, where we go, belongs to a buurth which also choose to become Uruk-hai. But for now they are still orcs. Their grandchildren will be able to look at the light, but this ones are hiding during the day. Their eyes do not tolerate the sunlight, and their skin too. - Are there others, also? - I involuntarily looked back. - The true orcs, I mean? Those who did not want to be uruuk-hai?
- Yes, - nodded Ghash. - But do not worry, they rarely wander to this part of the desert. They are living closer to Cirith Ungol, it's easier with water in there. Also, they live on the south of Shadow Mountains and in Ithilien. We are not yet persuaded them, but eventually we will do, we are the patient people. The old women solidly stand by the old way , but the young uu-ghoy begin to think what will be better to their grandchildren . Let's better keep quiet, a mouth dries from talking, the water in the desert should be preserved.


The village has appeared in the afternoon quite unexpectedly.
The desert, when you look into the distance, seems as flat as a table, but the impression is deceptive. There are vast basins in it, that you will not see until you find yourself on the very edge.
The village we were looking for was located in a such depression. I noticed it only when almost under my feet suddenly appeared the roof of the house pressed against the slope.
Other houses, same gray and inconspicuous, built of flat stones, were scattered over the whole space of the basin, at the bottom and on the slopes in complete disarray, and with an apparent absence of meaning.
Only at the bottom of a huge pit the huddled together houses spread to the sides, forming an empty space around the stone structure, in which I guessed the well.
- Ghash - I asked, looking around. - Why it is so empty around? No one, even the guards.
- The guards are there, - he said. - They saw us, but they were warned about our arrival and because of it we have not been stopped. Everyone else is sleeping now, I told you that they are afraid of the light. Toward the sunset they will creep out .

The well in the desert village was quite unlike the well of the centry village in the swamp. First of all, it was not made of wood, but of stone, and was covered with a spacious earthen dome, which , to my surprise, did not have any internal support. In addition, the well was surrounded by a limestone wall of a fair height and thickness in four steps, on top of which were blackening narrow loopholes. The inside of the fenced area was accessible only through a narrow slit in the wall, and even then you had to squeeze sideways through it.
After the midday heat in the shadow of the well's dome was cool and wet.
Near the encircled with stones hole in the ground, sat in a cross-legged position a shorter than me orc of an unknown age in a hanging like a bag spacious robe of brown wool.
The orc's face was dark and wrinkled, like sintered by the heat, and his eyes were so narrow that even the whites of his eyes can't be seen. They seemed like a black openings on the face.
He was not ugly, but for me, accustomed to very different faces, his look seemed strange.
His hands - wide-boned, hard-handed, tenacious paws with flat nails on short fingers - reminded me of the Waymeet's blacksmith. He had the same hands, wide from the daily hard work.
Ghash said to the orc a few words on a Black speech, of which I caught only the "Ghash", "Chsham" and "Ughluk." Orc nodded thoughtfully and in response burst out with a long patter in which I really understood nothing. Ghash, apparently, also not completely understood it, because for several times he was asking the orc questions about something.
The orc slightly slowed down the speed of his speech and began to show something with his hands. Finally, seems they agreed. Ghash put his hand to his chest and with a slight bow said something to the orc, seem like thanked him.
Orc pulled from under him a flat piece of leather with a rope tied to it and threw it into the well. When the orc pulled this object back, it turned out to be a folded leather bucket.
Ghash received water from the orc , again repeated the gesture and words of gratitude and took me aside.
- Now we will wash hands and faces, - he said. - And, if you want, rinse the hair and neck. Then we will go to a ghanaka.
- Honestly, I would rinse the whole of myself , - I replied. - All my skin scratches from this sand.
- Do not abuse the hospitality of these people, - Ghash shook his head. - This is the desert, the water here is precious. If you begin to bath here, as at home, it can be misunderstood and interpreted as a great disrespect.
- Are they aren't washing themselves at all? - I was surprised and looked at the pensive orc, sitting in complete immobility like an idol.
- Why? - Ghash shrugged. - They are washing. After birth and after death, after a great battle, if it's necessary to rinse off the blood, and before conceiving a child. In other cases, it is considered as a luxury. -Understood, can I drink it at least?
- Right now you shouldn't. Only the local people can drink this water without ill effect. When I was here for the first time, foolishly I drank straight from the bucket and then for a month was vomiting with blood.
- What, are we going to drink, if we can not drink this water ?
- In the ghanaka they have a supply of water for the travelers, purified with silver. We will drink in there. Will brew local thorns, it satisfies the thirst well and taste nice. And when we will hit the road, we also put silver in the skins with water, then we will be adding shaghu and you can drink it almost without fear.
- You know, after such explanations somehow I did not feel like washing the face, - I said, looking at the muddy moisture, splashing in a collapsible bucket.
- Won't die from washing , - Ghash laughed. - Since we were given the water for it, to refuse it also means to show disrespect. Bend, I'll pour the water for you.
When I was done, I poured the water for Ghash. He warned me not to pour on him all the water and to leave a little on the bottom. This tiny remnant, he poured back into the well, which caused an approving nod from the dark-faced orc.


The ghanaka differed from others huts only by the lack of the stone bench near the entrance. I decided that because of the local customs wayfarers are not supposed to sit out.
Also, our new shelter was very empty. In the oghr's centry village were at least a table, sleeping bench and stove, but in here was just a plane empty room. Visitors were supposed to sleep directly on the ground, wrapped in buurgha.
Two present strangers in the ghanaka were just doing so. Ghash went to one of them, pushed his side with the toe of his boot and, when the annoyed sleeper turned over, asked:
- Sacking out?
- What else we have to do? - Irritably said the woken up, who turned to be Ghai. - If you would run, as we did, you too would have dropped off and slept without waking up. We 're running from the very river. You can't keep up with this crop-eared , to him it's as if nothing, no matter swamp or rocks, carrying Ughluk, your stuff and still runs, as if does not touch the earth. Doesn't leave behind even a trace of his walk. Good thing that at the gate, when we have reached the desert, local guys met us and unloaded a little, otherwise we would not run up to here, would drop dead on the road. - I see, - Ghash went to the corner and took off a cover from the vast, dug into the ground up to the rim pitcher.
- Have you been here long?
- Since yesterday evening, - Ghai said, sitting up and pushing Oghr in the back .- Wake up, sad sack!
- Drink. - Ghash gave me a dipper with clear water and turned back to Ghai. - Where is Ughluk ?
- I do not know, - Ghai shook his head. - The head is buzzing from not enough of sleep. Last evening he went somewhere, did not tell us, and still has not returned . I took the water from Ghash and only with the first sip realized how much dust I have in the mouth and throat.
After rinsing the mouth, I looked around, trying to find where I can spit the dirt, found that there is no place, and spat directly on the earthen floor.
- Won't do such thing in front of the locals. - Ghash said, taking back the dipper. He rinsed his mouth, too, but, unlike me, do not spit out, but swallowed. - In here, for contempt of the water you can be put on a stake made from a thorn bush.
He returned the dipper:
-And when you gonna eat, do not break the flat bread into several parts, but pinch off small pieces of it, and always put the flat bread face up. Otherwise also could come troubles. All right. I will go to get Ughluk. Meantime, fill yourselves well with food and water. Maybe today we'll get going.
- What on earth made me to go with you? - Muttered Ghai, watching as the door closed behind Ghash. - Right now I would be sitting in the swamp, eating smoked frogs.., instead of dragging around in this awful dust. From where did you come? We did not expect to have you so soon. - We also have had a bit of running, - I said, pulling out of the corner my buurgha and spreading on the floor. - What is there to eat?
- We will find something, - Ghai again pushed into Oghr's side, who seems never woke up. - Hey, the iron craftsman, will you eat?
- Always, - suddenly and in not sleepy voice answered Oghr. - As much as possible. And a beer, please.
- Yeah, - Ghai made a disgruntled face and rose. - And the plug for the bottom to prevent it from leaking out.
- Is the beer in here? - I took off the boots and lowered myself on the buurgha, perching my legs on the bag for a better rest.
- Nope, - Ghai went to the pitcher. - Listen, Oghr, why I should do everything? You even too lazy to open your eyes.
- You're the youngest, - solemnly clarified Oghr. - Know and can do less than any of us. So for us, the elderly, is not fitting to attend you. Better you to us.
- Cultivated in here the elderly despotism. - Ghai growled, pulling something from behind the pitcher. - Maybe I even have to chew for you? Or you can handle it yourself?
- I can handle it, - Oghr laughed. - Do not grumble, did not become old yet. What's for breakfast?
- The same as for dinner. Come on, Chsham, turn on your side, let's eat. Ghuuruut, flat bread and something else.
Next to me Ghai put a semicircle of a large flat bread, a clay dishware without a handle with piled up brown balls, having similarity with goat droppings, and a voluminous flask.
- Can you eat this? - I asked doubtfully, looking at the dish with balls.
- Of course, - said Ghai, settling himself near Oghr and throwing into his mouth several of that same balls. - Never mind that it looks like goat ****. This is cheese. Not too much of taste, but it is hearty, quickly makes you satiated. And wash it down from this flask. It's better than the local water. Have you been told about it?
- Yes, - I nodded and carefully tried one ball. It was really quite bland.
- What is in a flask?
- Drink, do not afraid, - Ghai took a sip from it and handed to Oghr.
I ate a bland cheese ball with a piece of cumin scented flat bread and sipped from the flask. The taste was pleasant, tart.
- This is a sour milk, - said Ghai, making me choke. - Good stuff. I do not know how they brew it, but it's getting in the head. Oghr and I tasted it yesterday.
Oghr only nodded. He preferred not to spend time talking, but with a measured movement was throwing in the mouth first - the brown balls, then a slice of flat bread, and then chased it all down with a good gulp from the flask.
- What? Are cows in here? - I asked.
- Nope, - Ghai shook his head. - What cows will pasture on local thorns? Yesterday I've asked the locals about milk. Hardly found one who speaks Westron, in here almost all chatter only on the Black speech . They have such a beast, like a horse, but with paws instead hooves, and with a hump. The locals say this horse could not drink for a week.
- Wow, - I was surprised, thinking that Nazgul's horses, probably, looked that way. - Is that all the food we have ? Or there is more?
- What? Do not have enough? - Laughed Ghai. - We too last night at a dead run ate a bowl for each and asked for more. They gave us, but it turned out that we can't eat anymore. You'd better eat up the flat bread and drink up the milk and then you will feel that you are satiated.
I didn't believe him. What is sufficient for an Uruuk-hai, for a hobbit it's only enough to whet an appetite, but nevertheless I followed his advice. The bread was soft and tasty and milk reminded me a clabber. Satiety and drunkenness came unexpectedly. Just the moment ago I was hungry and sober and then it turned out that I am fed up and bleary-eyed. A warm languor has waved on the sore from three-day tension muscles and in an instant the whole body became heavy and disobedient. I almost fell asleep with a piece of bread in my mouth.


- Chsham, - somebody shook me gently on the shoulder. - Wake up, Chsham. It's time.
I did not want to wake up, but I overpowered myself and sat up. It was dark in the ghanaka . Outside was dark, too, judging from the lack of light in narrow portholes.
- What is it, morning or evening? - I asked and sat down. - It's ptich black in here .
- Morning, - said Ghash's voice from the darkness . - There is always like this before dawn. Ghai will light the oil-lamp now. Get ready, fast.
- Is a fire broke out or something? - I said, involuntarily closing my eyes from flashed sparks in the dark. When I opened them, a tiny flame has lit up the inside of ghanaka and my anxious companions.
- Worse.The Royal Rangers. Within an hour's journey from here.
- Are they after us? - I got panicky and quickly began to put on the boots.
- Hardly, - shook his head Ghash. - How do they know about us? Maybe, just to plunder.
- What is here to plunder? - I bewildered, changing the ranger's blouson on my usual jacket. - Such poverty is here.
- Children, women, - Ghash shrugged. - Also the cattle, but the main thing - women and children. Those who are lucky, will be sent to the Lebennon vineyards . Who are not lucky - into the mines of the White Mountains. Those who are completely out of luck, will be sold to Rohan, for forest felling, or even worse - to Umbar merchants for the galleys. Are you ready?
- Seem ready. - I checked as sitting on the shoulders of the harness. - I just remembered. We should get water.
- I did already, - Ghash gave me a heavy flask. - Fasten to your belt. Are you guys ready?
- Yeah, - said from the duskiness Ghai.
- For a long time, - confirmed Oghr.
- Ughluk is waiting for us at the well, take the skins with water and let's go - Ghash showed me on a round, looking like a huge sausage leather bag. - How we will carry it? - Grumbled Ghai, heaping on his shoulders a similar just a little bit bigger gurgling bag, . - It's heavy .
- They promised to give us a baktr, - has encouraged Ghash. - At the well we will load on it. Suffer until the well.

Outside was a bustle.
Kids were screaming, been heard women cry, someone was dragging some pitiful belongings, someone drove a small herd of skinny sheeps, a lot of people were running about without any apparent purpose and meaning, and no one paid attention to us.
It struck me that the orcs were surprisingly short. Those that I had seen on the way to the well, in Hobbiton many would consider as tall. But in Hobbiton even I now would be regarded as a huge. In here none of those whom I saw was above me.
At the well, too, was a crowd, but of a different kind. In there have gathered a hundred or hundred-and-fifty armed orcs.
Most had short spears and small bows, but some, I noticed, had blades, like our kughri, only smaller and straighter. In the morning their look, short and stocky, was quite frightening, but I already knew quite enough not to be deceived by a fearsome war paint and see fear and confusion under it.

Over the orc mob towered a crop-eared elf, from behind his shoulder was poking a head of Ughluk with sticking in all directions tufts of hair, and nearby stood a short, just to the elf's waist, old lady.
Ghash left us standing next to dropped into the dust sacks, walked over to the old woman and crouched down in front of her. They exchanged a few words, the old woman nodded and, turning her head to the side, rakishly whistled with four fingers.
The whistle did not die yet, when from one of the surrounding houses was brought to us an amazing specie of the cattle. Ghai said that orcs have something like a horse. So. If this animal with two humps and long large-boned legs is a horse, then I am a dwarf.

While we were strapping bags of water to the bactr, we were approached by a rather tall orc. The war paint was covering not only the face, but also a naked from the waist up body.
- Hi, Ghiryzhsh, - said to him Ghai. - Why are you bare? The sun will rise soon, the skin will be in blisters.
- A? - said the orc in confusion and frowned.
- Why without clothes? I say, - Ghai ruffled jacket on me, - your skin burns in the sun.
- A ... - The orc dismissively waved. - To die. Today to die. The white-skinned always come when the sun is up. They do not like the night. To die today.
- Gonna fight ? - Asked Ghai. - You won't last long in a daylight. Sun, - he pointed to the graying sky. - Eyes burn. Will hurt a lot.
- It will, - the orc nodded and pulled out of his belt a leather eye covering. - For eyes. To cover.To look through the holes. An hour can fight. Two hours to fight. One hour is not enough. Two hours - all walk away ... - The orc spread out hands at both sides. - Run away. Two hours have to fight. Then will be blind . To die today. - and he burst into a hoarse patter.
- Slow down, - asked Ghai. - Speak slowly, then I'll get it.
When orc finished Ghai shook his head:
- I'm sorry, Ghiryzhsh, I can not. None of us can.
And he turned to me:
- Chsham, you have had a beoring's knife. Where is it?
- In the bag, - I said. - On the top.
- Can I give it to him? - Asked Ghai. - We don't need an excess of the weight, but they have blades shortage. Many even have stone tips on the spears. I'll give it?
- Come on, - I agreed and turned my back to him. Ghai took from the bag the "bear's" heavy weapon and handed it to the orc.
- We cannot stay, - he apologized again. - Take. Gift.
At first the orc got bewildered, then held out his hand and took the knife in the quivered palms. He pulled the knife from its sheath, touched the blade with a finger, approvingly clicked with tongue and suddenly, pressing the knife to his chest, as if afraid that we will take it back, began to bow often while very quickly chattering something.
- No need, - Ghai shook his head . - Let it to serve you well. Good luck, Ghiryzhsh Shin-Nagh.
The orc bowed two more times, to me and to Ghai separately, and backed off.
- It's Ghiryzhsh, - sadly said Ghai, watching as the orc got surrounded by his comrades. - We met yesterday. He will be defending the well with these snagas. If they will hold for two hours, uu-ghoy with children will have time go far in the desert. Pity, only a week ago the guy got his name.
- And then? - I asked. - What will be then?
- What then? - Surprised Ghai. - Snagas will get slaughtered. Then the rest will return in a few days. They can't forever walk in the desert without water. - It won't be any "then" to them, - approaching Ghash broke into our conversation. - They will have nowhere to return. When they will come back, the well will be filled up with corpses and sand. This is how the Royal Rangers are fighting now. I explained to them that it is either way: a whole village must stay and fight, or all of them must leave. Then, maybe, at least half will survive. They don't believe me. Not me, nor Ughluk. They think it will not happen like we are warning about.
- Okay, that's enough to chew a snot! - He finished unexpectedly and irately. - We have our task to do! And it must be done! Let's go.

When we reached the top of the basin, the edge of the sun had already looking out of the horizon . In its glow was visible the orc's caravan ascending on the northern slope.
Our course lay to the east. Towards the light.
I looked back at the village for the last time, and at that moment from the well down there, came a singing.
Usually the Black speech sounds rude and unpleasant to the ear, but fifteen dozen uu-snaga sang in high and clear children's voices, and this fused vibrant sound is awaking in me discontent and regret .
- What are they singing? - I asked Ghash.
- The Song of Snaga before the fight. - He said. - Preparing to die.
- Translate, - I said.
- Later, - he said. - We have to go .
- I'll translate, - suddenly spoke the crop-eared elf, who held the reins of bactr.

"The foe is in front,
And the life is behind
We have nowhere to retreat.
Draw a bow, my friend,
Use your arrows wise,
Stand strong on your own feet
The shield - on the hand,
The blade - in the fist,
Kill and bury your own fear.
There's no time for dread,
When poison on the blade,
And the enemy is very near.
No tears and words,
The custom is -strict
Unnaimed we have to die.
But this is a war,
And it will show
Who should get the name, who - denied.
Who will foreknow,
What lot each will draw
Those, who'll survive - will opine.
They will make songs
About those who're gone
There will be a remembrance time.


The song got finished , the elf became silent, but I was still staying. Inside me with the orc song's echo sounded a high and clear call of Tuckborough Sentry horn. "Get up! Trouble! Get up! The enemy! Get up! Do not sleep! Danger!"
- Let's go, Chsham, - said Ghash. - Do not look back. Come on.
And we went towards the sun, gradually accelerating pace and shifting into a run.
We ran, heads bowed, so the rays of the arising sun won't not blind the eyes, and through a measuring tramp of heavy boots in my mind more insistently and persistently struggled a call of the horn: "Get up! Trouble! Get up! Danger!"

Last edited by Olmer : 09-03-2015 at 11:32 PM.
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