How dare they?

Rakhan snapped his sword back and ripped his bow from his back. He had forgotten this feeling in the forest: the sneering pleasure that his own power filled him with, as he drew the string taunt and loosed one of the heavy black arrows. It hit under the side of the man on top of the beauty with a hard thump, boring deep into his lungs and heart, and he collapsed on top of her as dead as if he had fallen from the high wall of Helm's Deep. The men startled like deer. Rakhan hastened down the hill, snatching another arrow and drawing it back, the creaking of the massive bow loud enough for his enemies to hear. Rakhan felt their arrogant resolve melting away at the sight of him, and he grinned viciously, and loosed the second arrow into the throat of the man who had pinned the beauty's arms.

But though the men were shaken, those left standing after the second man fell decided to fight: all the better, then. Rakhan shouldered his bow and drew his sword, advancing down the hill at an easy jog. The men began to scream and fill with their own battle lust, and they rushed down from the cave. Rakhan slowed his pace and let the fight run to him.

All battle is no more than drawing a circle in the dirt, and refusing your enemies passage through your circle, his commander Gharsh-il had taught him, and it was more of an instinct now for Rakhan than an instruction. The Dunlanders had no such refinements. Wild men, perhaps even from the horde he had met in Isengard, they rushed too drunk for blood to plan. Rakhan was a Fighting Uruk-hai, the White Wizard's perfection. He let his hooked black sword fly with ghastly speed. He took the biggest man first—a frenetic frizzy haired brute near his own massive size-with a powerful slash from shoulder to opposite hip, opening him entirely. Rakhan's sword winged up and back to the next closest attacker, who lost his head. The third took the squared point of the Uruk-hai's sword to the temple, blood seeping out from his eyes. And the fourth ran. Rakhan whipped his sword from his wrist and it spun into the Dunlandian's back. Rakhan had barely broken a sweat.

His bright eyes swept up the hill, but she was gone! Was it possible that there were more men, and he had gone soft in his time in the forest, missing them?

And then the leather, brush covered flap of the cave mouth lifted and the woman bolted out. She clutched the boy in her arms, and as she darted off the boy's slanted eyes went wide to see Rakhan standing there. "Mother! Mother, stop, look!" he screamed in the Rohirric tongue, a blow to Rakhan that no man's skinny sword could have dealt.

Rakhan took off, his heavy swift feet pounding the ground, tearing it up as he chased her. Battle fever bled off into the pursuit of the hunt, and for a moment Rakhan was propelled by instinct alone. Beneath it all, however, was the earth shaking shock: Mother? That beautiful girl-child had an Uruk son? How could it be possible?

Rakhan couldn't help it anymore, he had tortured himself with her mystery long enough! He darted through the forest, through rivers and over boulders and logs, beating down her path stride by stride. She ran with all the grace of the daughters of high-born men, brilliant golden men like those who had born down on him with the Shining One on his silver-white horse at the end of the lost Battle of Helm's Deep.

Until she didn't run anymore, that was, until her legs crumpled beneath her and she fell, and her boy flew from her arms and tumbled into the brambles.