A/N: Spoiler Alert! With this chapter, I begin The Two Towers, M*A*S*H style.

Hawkeye was still searching for BJ, but he suddenly heard the great horn Winchester carried. That horn could mean only one thing—trouble. Though Hawkeye, Mulcahy, and Scully rushed to his aid, they arrived too late. He had been pierced by many orc arrows; his sword and horn were broken. Hawkeye ran to him, but quickly realized that nothing could be done.

Winchester, though weak, spoke, "Hawkeye. I'm sorry. I've failed all of you. I tried to take the Ring from BJ by force. The orcs took Klinger and Trapper, but I think they're still alive. I'm sorry. I said that Gondor need no king, but I was wrong. Forgive me, my king. Send my love to my sister…" With that, Charles Emerson Winchester, III breathed his last.

Hawkeye took his death hard, and started to cry. Mulcahy gently pushed past him to close Winchester's eyes and speak a quiet prayer. With no other burial option, they put the body in one of the boats, with his sword and horn, and the weapons of his enemies. Both Hawkeye and Mulcahy spoke a few words in eulogy, then they sent the boat over the falls. Despite the grief, life had to go on. Hawkeye found the knives the Hobbits had carried as swords, and Mulcahy gathered arrows. Among the carnage, they found markings of FB.

"The moment I get my hands on that Ferret Face…" Scully spoke for all of them.

"I don't know about the rest of you, but I for one am ready to go after those orcs and get Klinger and Trapper back! I am not going to leave them to the tender mercies of those orcs!" Hawkeye spoke. The others couldn't have agreed more. The three of them, Man, Elf, and Dwarf set off, hunting the orcs on foot.

After a time of hard travel, Hawkeye spotted a brooch from an Elven cloak, such as all the fellowship wore, and also Hobbit-sized footprints. The sign, small though it was, gave them encouragement to keep going, despite their exhaustion.

A few days later, they came across riders. They stopped beside the road, almost hidden in their Elven cloaks, better even than camouflage. The riders approached. There were many of them, all armed for war, but also three empty horses. Hawkeye said, "What news, riders of Rohan?"

It was only then that the riders saw them, and their Sergeant dismounted and approached Hawkeye. "Who are you, and why are you here?"

"I am known as Hawkeye. We're here hunting orcs."

"You're poorly equipped for hunting orcs. You've got a pretty motley group there, in any case. An Elf, a Dwarf, and a Ranger. Why are you clothed like Elves?" The Sergeant was obviously trained as an interrogator.

"We've come from Lothlórien. Our clothing was a gift from Lady of the Wood."

"We've heard she is an evil witch. And who are these two silent ones?" The Sergeant was referring to Scully and Mulcahy.

Scully, offended by the way the man referred to Soon-Li, replied, "Tell me who you are, and I'll give you my name, and then some…"

Hawkeye intervened before the argument could come to blows, for both the Scully and the Sergeant had their weapons ready. Mulcahy had an arrow trained on the Sergeant, ready to defend the Dwarf. "At least hear us out before you start fighting."

"Very well, but tell me your true name." The Sergeant was still suspicious.

"Only after you tell me whether you are friend or foe to Mordor." There was steel in Hawkeye's voice.

"We serve only the Lord of the Mark, Howitzer Al Hoolihan. We do not serve Mordor, but we are not at open war with its forces, either, and we would like things to stay that way. And who is it that you serve?"

"I serve no one, but I do hunt the servants of Mordor wherever I go. I know more about orcs than you think, and I don't travel this way out of choice. Two of our companions have been taken captive, and we are pursuing their captors. As for who I am," he said, drawing his ancestral sword, Andúril, I am Benjamin Franklin Pierce, heir to the throne of Gondor." As he said this, Hawkeye seemed to grow and become taller and more noble. Though the Sergeant was himself a large man, suddenly he seemed to shrink before Hawkeye. None could doubt that Hawkeye was, indeed, born to be a king.

"Legends seem to be appearing out of nowhere," The sergeant muttered. "I will tell you what I can." Hawkeye learned that though the riders had slain a party of orcs, they had not seen the hobbits. The riders offered three of their spare horses, though reluctantly, making them swear to return them, but Scully refused to ride until Mulcahy offered to take him on his own horse. At this, the three set off on two borrowed horses.

After a day of riding, they came to the borders of the Fangorn forest. The forest was rumored to be dangerous, and the Elves of Lothlórien had warned them to stay away from it. It was said that it was perilous to touch the trees of the forest. The made a fire, careful to harm no living tree. As they sat by their fire, an old man approached them. Though they invited him to join them, he disappeared. A moment later, they realized both of the horses were gone. Scully started to lay blame, and Hawkeye had difficulty staying calm, but Mulcahy was able to quiet the dispute. They all suspected Frank Burns, but no one could be certain.

Elsewhere, Klinger and Trapper came to, their wrists and ankles bound, in the midst of an orc camp. From conversation overheard, they knew that Burns had ordered them to be kept whole, but the matter was still a gross violation of the Geneva Convention. There were obviously two factions within the orcs, one loyal to Burns and one loyal to Mordor. The arguments came to blows, and one of the orcs was killed. He fell next to Klinger, who was able to use his knife to slit the ropes around his wrists. A master of costume, Klinger knew better than to allow it to be seen, so he looped the ropes around his wrists so they still looked bound.

Eventually, the orcs threw them over their backs and traveled at a merciless pace. When they finally stopped, the orcs cut the bonds on their ankles and gave them a little liquor that was too much even for the two master drinkers. It was worse than anything that could have come from the still; it burned all the way down. They smeared an evil-looking cream on a wound on Trapper's head. Surprisingly, it did seem to help, but Trapper didn't want to know what was in it. It smelled awful, but the wound healed quickly, leaving him with an ugly scar.

The two hobbits were forced to try to keep up with the much larger orcs. The time quickly blurred into a muddled nightmare. Somehow, during the march, Klinger was able to slip off long enough to drop the brooch from his cloak by the side of the road, far enough away to avoid being seen by the orcs, but close enough to be seen, were the others tracking them. He was roughly pulled back into the camp and beaten. When the orcs saw that they were being followed by riders, they carried the Hobbits and ran even faster. When they finally stopped, they bound the Hobbits'legs.

Klinger and Trapper had gleaned enough information from the orc conversation to know that Burns was after the ring. Klinger, ever the actor, decided something had to be done, and took it on himself to convince his guard that he had the ring. With a battle beginning around them, the guard decided to find the prize himself and started searching Klinger, the Took had his chance.

"You won't find it that way. It's so deeply hidden inside my dress you'd never figure out where it is. Obviously you've never seen a Warner Bra. You'd have no clue where to look for it!"

"Find what?" the guard snarled.

"Oh, nothing. Nothing, my precious." To make the act more convincing, he made a sound in the back of his throat, amplified by his huge nose: gollum, gollum.

"Quite a dangerous game you're playing, little one. You have no idea what you're getting yourself into," the guard snarled. What he didn't know was how good a poker player Klinger truly was.

"Yeah, well, I'll give it to you." The Lebanese used camel salesman was coming out. "But you have to untie my legs first."

Eventually, the temptation got to the guard, and he scooped the two of them up and carried them away from the battle, and sight by his superiors. Before he had a chance to get anything from them, though, he was cut down by a lone rider. The Hobbits escaped into the forest, where they observed the battle between the orcs and the Men of Rohan.

After some wandering, they encountered Treebeard of the Ents. The Ents were slow-speaking, patient creatures as old as the forest, and very tree- like in appearance themselves. Everything they did was very deliberate. He took them to his ent-house and gave them an ent-draught, and they told him their tale. Treebeard told them, among other things, that Frank Burns used to wander the forest, gleaning what information he could from the Ents, but never helping them much at all. He confirmed their suspicions, that Burns had made an army of super-orcs, able to travel in the sun and much larger than regular orcs.

"Just like him, isn't it, to make a whole army that will actually listen to him?" Trapper said. "I guess he had to create an army for any of them to listen at all."

Proving to be a great ally, though he claimed to be an ally to none, Treebeard called a council of the Ents, an Entmoot. The discussion took longer than any peace talks. Klinger found himself wishing for the purse and compact he'd lost in Moria, and playing with the girdle he was regretting wearing. Trapper was wishing for some female companionship, preferably a nurse. They would have settled for a deck of card or even boat races at the cess pool. After what seemed like ages, the Ents suddenly made up their minds and marched on Isengard. The Ents were 14 feet tall and stronger than any Troll, easily capable of splitting stone. They were a fearsome force. The hobbits were just glad to be doing something.