Eldehto woke up with a start in the middle of the night, immediately beginning to think how much he hated waking up like that and making himself even more awake. He got an even worse jolt upon noticing two unnaturally orange eyes staring right into his face, a glazed look of madness pulled over them like a viscous film. Trying to recall just how far away his brother was sleeping without actually taking his eyes off the Orc to check, Eldehto cringed at the feeling of his innards pulling themselves into a very tight knot of fear within him. Thoughts of rampant cannibalism and other assorted bits of Orkish cruelty flailed their helpless tentacles all over his scattered brain, and he whimpered.

"Your eyes were open," Sharrásh croaked at last.

There was a terrible silence as the Elf processed this piece of information. "They are supposed to be," he whispered, his eyes even wider open now.

Sharrásh stared at him some more. There was no telling what was going through that ancient mind of his. "But don't you think it looks stupid?"

Eldehto blinked for the first time since waking up. His eyes stung a little. "I beg your pardon?" he asked with a much louder voice.

"There is a drunk, vapid look in the eyes of Elves when they sleep. Have you not seen it for yourself?"

"Well - well I don't make a habit of gawking at other Elves in their sleep!" Eldehto spluttered, feeling very much like adding that Sharrásh ought to refrain from doing it also. "And what do you mean, vapid?"

"Don't you think Orcs look far more pleasant in their sleep than Elves?"

Eldehto frowned, looking to the side. His unimpressive mind was doing its best to glean some sort of coherence out of the Orc's rambling. Was he making vague threats or just trying to strike up a conversation? And if that was the case, why couldn't he do it without mocking all Elvenkin for their sleeping habits of all things? Or perhaps - and this was where Eldehto swallowed hard, regaining his trepidation - perhaps he was alluding to something sexual there. Orcs and Elves sleeping, eh? Eldehto squirmed slightly farther away from Sharrásh before sitting up, grabbing his blanket and pallet and lumbering off to the Elf he knew to be sleeping with an Orc. Fortunately, Anguelen was using a blanket for once; he looked to be naked under it. Letting out a peevish sigh at the whole situation, Eldehto finally stopped throwing glances at Sharrásh and arranged his pallet on the ground until it looked comfortable again.

As luck would have it, Anguelen had been sleeping lightly and woke up almost immediately when he felt his little brother snuggle up to him in search of safety. He turned over to look at the silly boy. "What's this, then?"

"I don't want to be ravaged in my sleep by that mad Orc," Eldehto explained.

"Nienna wept, Eldehto! Which Orc is it this time?" Anguelen looked over the prone form of his brother and noticed Sharrásh still crouching by the last embers of the campfire. Anguelen waved at him, and the Orc raised his hand awkwardly, as though trying to remember how to perform this gesture, and then slowly waved back. "He isn't going to do anything to you. Sleep."

Eldehto sat up again, looking incensed. "How come you don't even care when something bad is about to happen to me? What kind of a brother are you?"

"A sensible one, apparently, just the kind you need," muttered the older Elf.

"Just admit that you hate me and would be happier if I had never been born!"

Anguelen closed his eyes very tightly for a while. "Fine, Eldehto. You want me to show you that I care about my little brother? Lie down and I shall tell you a bedtime story that our dear cousin once told me when I was very young."

Eldehto did not lie down. "Is this the story about the bleeding hair again? I don't want to hear it!"

"Silence!" Anguelen cleared his voice and began. "Once upon a time, there was a young Elven boy who had a very small brother. This brother was born of once high and noble parents, but that did not stop his nose from getting runny and his whining from being annoying."

"Disgraceful," Eldehto muttered.

"Once when another day ended - as days are wont to do - the younger brother found it difficult to fall asleep," Anguelen continued.

Arrogant sniff. "He probably had a good reason."

"The older of the brothers told him to not worry, for he had learned of a way, better than any lullaby or whimsical tale, to make anyone sleep."

"I can tell he was a nicer brother than someone else I might mention," Eldehto said.

"The younger brother wondered how this was possible, for he had never been very bright. Simple, told the older brother, closing his hand into a fist; this will make anyone sleep, regardless of whether he is a king, a pauper or a Hobbit."

Eldehto said nothing.

"And so the younger brother shut the fuck up, lay down and lay still until he finally fell asleep." Anguelen looked at his own brother and raised an eyebrow. "The end."

Eldehto still seemed to have trouble finding the right words, so after looking slightly miffy for a while, he lay down once more, lay still and pretended to sleep. Anguelen, satisfied that the moral of the story was not lost on his brother, turned over again and waited for sleep to come to him as well.

The morning was by no means a bad one to wake up to, but Krazum clearly tried to make it one by using the impressive array of disdainful expressions at his disposal. Rolling his eyes to the awakening sky, Thraknash fastened his belt and headed straight for his nemesis. As usual, his calculations were correct; his proximity wiped off Krazum's sneer and replaced it with annoyance that turned it into Thraknash's victory.

"Do you have to sit so damned close? You reek of spunk!"

Thraknash pretended to pick pubic hair from his teeth to make it worse. "And you don't. Am I right in assuming that's why you're in such a wonderful mood on this lovely morning?" When no burst of hate came his way, Thraknash was forced to take his turn conceding defeat by actually looking at Krazum. The snaga breathed in the slow rhythm of one who was about to surrender to spiteful sleep.

"I'll say one thing to you, Uruk," Krazum finally replied, eyes on the fire Ghâshsag was lovingly bringing to life. "We walk in broad daylight only because you and your pet Elves can't see shit in the dark. We do this because being nice to you kills us less than having to guide you through the night would." Krazum glared at Thraknash, and it was then that the Uruk saw that today the whites of his eyes provided a rather lovely pink backdrop to the red of his irises. "So if you have any interest in being a partial bastard instead of a total one, how about you at least let the rest of us sleep at night?"

Thraknash regarded the snaga with suspicion. "Why would I not want to be a total bastard?"

With a long-suffering sigh, Krazum stopped a yawn. "Because quite frankly you might come to regret it."

"What, will you regale me with more tales of your adventures with Commander Grilták? I'd like to see you try now that Moglurz is with us." Feeling a bit curious, Thraknash let his eyes sweep over the camp and found Gutbrúg among those who still slept. "Why didn't you just let your pet goblin do you a bit if listening to other people have fun got you so hot and bittered?"

Krazum's eyes lit up with a glimmer of madness that complimented his red glare. "Look," he said, "not all of us get off on doing it under the creepily watchful eyes of a bunch of giggling lunatics with nothing better to do than ruining things for everybody else when they could spend their time more productively getting off amongst each..."

"Morgoth's arsecrack, Krazum, breathe!" Thraknash stared at the snaga-Orc with not a small amount of astonishment. "How do you even do that?"

Stunned into a fleeting moment of silence, in his confusion Krazum actually pondered the question seriously. "I don't... know?"

"Well I guess you're at least good with your mouth," Thraknash admitted, still too amazed to add his quite different opinion on Krazum's brain.

"Hm." Being sleep-deprived must have unexpectedly done Krazum some good, for he recovered almost immediately. "Only the best for Commander Grilták, you know?" He looked Thraknash straight in the eye and seemed to find a victory there, and his teeth crawled out from under his lips in a terrifying mockery of a smile. "But you don't want to hear about my obsession with his cock, do you."

Although he badly wanted to pretend he was too mature to grace that with a serious answer, Thraknash was too disturbed by the sudden appearance of the Orc Krazum had been before the war, and felt a twinge of pathetic gratitude when Anguelen's voice filled the silence of his helplessly open mouth.

"Your pet Elf requires your presence," Krazum said through uncharacteristically parted teeth. "Heed his call, will you?"

Luckily, Thraknash stood up too quickly and was able to tear his unintelligently staring eyes off Krazum due to feeling somewhat dizzy. He lingered on the spot for a moment, trying to at least think of something cutting to say, and then recovered his brain for long enough a moment to realise he had to give up and bugger off.

Anguelen sat on the pallet, combing his hair with his fingers. He cast a thoughtful glance in Krazum's direction, then another at his awkwardly approaching lover. "Are you sure you don't want to pork him or something?"

"He'll hear you!" Thraknash hissed and nearly tripped over his feet. To his chagrin, he couldn't prevent himself from looking over his shoulder to make sure Krazum wasn't watching. Little Gruzlak, may his little heart be spared from the ravages of the world, had woken up and immediately stolen Krazum's attention. With great relief, Thraknash sat down beside Anguelen and glanced at Eldehto. "How long has he been there, by the way? Elves do move quietly if he didn't wake me up."

"Since before dawn. " Anguelen swept some hair off Thraknash's face. It fell back immediately. "Did I drive you too hard last night? You look tired, you see."

Thraknash smiled and leaned his head on Anguelen's hand. Apparently Krazum was still busy talking to Gruzlak, as not a single groan came from his direction. "It's certainly a more pleasant way to build stamina than what our captains came up with back in Mordor."

"And obviously you're not too tired if you've got the strength to bully old friends this early in the morning," Anguelen chuckled, stroking Thraknash's cheek with his thumb.

"Friend? He wouldn't like being called my friend, I'm sure, although I knew him before we started to work under Grilták." Thraknash grimaced. "Like I said, he in more ways than one... but I changed troops a couple of times and didn't see him for a while. I'm still not sure what happened there. He was better than this."

Anguelen smiled in one of his worrisome ways. "Clearly."

Thraknash pondered this reaction awhile. Was that another devious plan he could see hatching and springing to hideous life in the Elf's eyes? "If I tell you something..." he began, taking a step into the unknown with little hesitation. It seemed to be becoming a habit now that he was with Anguelen. "...will you... you know..."

"Use the forbidden knowledge for something perverted? Of course, if only you wish me to do so."

"Well that's a relief," Thraknash laughed. "But you won't tell anyone, will you?"

Anguelen nodded. "Usually I'm not known for being able to keep my mouth shut, but I can keep a secret."

"All right then." Looking over his shoulder to make sure Eldehto was still asleep - which wasn't easy to tell as he sometimes had that vacant look even when he was awake - Thraknash took a deep breath and began. "So, I got that arrow in my leg during the war as we were retreating."

"The one Krazum dealt with?"

"The very same." Thraknash looked down at his legs. "It hit me in the thigh, actually."

Anguelen blinked. "...damn. That's a dangerous place for an arrow. You're lucky it didn't even leave you with a limp." He too looked down at the spot he had seen quite a few times uncovered by now. "So that's where the scar comes from?"

"Yes, it's the only thing Krazum couldn't fix about it." Best to get it over with quickly, Thraknash thought, as silly as it sounded. "And while he was fixing it, well, I suppose it's because I'd just survived Sauron's fall and I simply felt... alive... and because his hands were right next to my..."

"Oh, Thraknash," Anguelen gasped, fighting the laughter that threatened to bubble right out of his mouth along with the words. "Did you have a bit of a reaction there? Got hard, did you?"

Thraknash had to laugh a bit as well, even as the memory made him squirm. "...hardish. I still don't know if he actually noticed. Just in case, I quickly insulted him for something I can't even remember so if he did see something, that took his mind off it. Damn, he was angry." He cleared his throat and prepared to let the rest of the shameful secret out. "And what I suppose makes it so hard... er, difficult is that back in Mordor he wasn't so... he was..."

"A bit of all right?" Anguelen helped.

This time Thraknash laughed so hard it could definitely be heard at the campfire. Sod them, he thought, and went on with the story as soon as he was able. "That's not the description we would have used in Mordor, but something of the sort," he was eventually capable of saying, shoulders still shaking.

"And when you met again after the war..?" Anguelen encouraged with keen curiosity, sliding his fancy Elven bum closer to Thraknash.

"Well, he was much the same as he's now. Didn't like anything or anyone, except that little runt he dotes on that he brought with him from the war. He wasn't very sunny to begin with, when I knew him in Mordor, but now..." Thraknash sat a moment in a contemplative silence, selflessly deigning to ponder Krazum's motives. "Although I suppose I'd be that way as well if I had to take it up the arse from bloody Grilták."

Anguelen nodded understandingly at this, a spark of Elven wisdom coming to life in his eyes. "So now you do some kind of Orkish equivalent of pulling his braids. Oh, Thraknash... I'm sure being nice to him would work much better."

"Anguelen!" Thraknash sputtered. "This is Krazum we... have you not noticed what he's..." He gestured wildly at the futility of his denial as words forsook him for a moment. "...well, maybe a little, back in Mordor," he finally admitted, very quietly. He didn't know what to do with his body in this moment of awkwardness, but he at least set his hands to the task of pulling at the frayed edge of the blanket. "I don't think being nice would have helped, though. Most of the time it just makes him angry."

"Ah well," said Anguelen, his Elven eyes gazing into the mystical expanse of the sky as though in the shapes of the clouds seeing what could have been between the two Orcs. Subsequently he shook the image out of his head and laid a hand on Thraknash's shoulder. "I, on the other hand, am quite friendly as you may have noticed."

And in that moment Thraknash was possessed by such fondness that his very Orkish nature screeched and tore at the seams as it tried to defend itself against an onslaught of emotion that had nothing to do with filth or fury. He had a feeling that he might have another 'bit of a reaction' right now, and he knew that this time there would be no need to hide it with petty insults.

"Anguelen," he breathed.

"Thraknash," replied the Elf, his grin like a crack on the face of the risen sun.

"Anguelen..."

"Thraknaaash! Quit trying to slip him the old Mordor blood sausage, we're making breakfast!" hollered Grishtakh, interrupting their tender moment.

After a moment of reflection, Anguelen shrugged. "That was not completely unexpected, I have to admit."

"No," Thraknash agreed. "It's probably for the best this time since we can still walk."

"Breakfast, then?"

"Absolutely."

Still yawning, Gutbrúg stirred a vile-looking concoction in a small pot above the fire. "Is Gundabad far from here? We could take a detour, see some sights."

Krazum had been preparing strips of meat for the fire, and these words of Gutbrúg's made him pause. "Gundabad. What is there to look at in Gundabad?"

"Hwît and I were actually born not far from Gundabad. From what I can remember, it should not be a wholly unpleasant place," said Burzum.

Krazum fell silent again, his brow creasing with something resembling uninvited pity. The feeling seemed to make him as physically uncomfortable as the thought of taking yet another detour. "Somehow that explains everything," he finally said with an amount of sympathy.

"Are you planning on making this trip even longer than it has to be?" Thraknash demanded as he reached the fire. He was about to sit down next to Moglurz now that they were together again, but an unwanted memory of his own youthful foolishness suddenly slapped him across the face from last night and made him hesitate. What had he been thinking when he said those things? What in the great fuck's name had made him think he could take on a veteran? Thraknash stared at the empty spot stupidly until he thought to turn to Anguelen, the only one who would not laugh at him for this failing, and ask him for aid. "What about your brother?" he pleaded with the genuine desperation of one who was young and silly and feeling humiliated over something entirely trivial.

"Oh, right." Anguelen glanced at the still sleeping young Elf. "Perhaps you could wake him up? He won't dare complain if an Orc does it." As Thraknash stomped over to his lover's brother with gratitude, Anguelen quite happily took the spot next to Moglurz. "All this and he makes my life easier, too," he said.

"You cover well for him," appraised Moglurz. His spoke quietly, but his tone was casual enough that the surrounding Orcs didn't think to listen in hopes of hearing mortifying secrets. "I take it that the brat is embarrassed after last night." The old Orc grinned at the apple he was slicing. "After a mere week of rutting, he fancies himself the master of the art. I always liked him; he's adorable, in a way."

"Isn't he?" Anguelen said, grinning as well.

There was a short silence as Thraknash fetched Eldehto, still rubbing his eyes tiredly but not daring to complain, and returned to the fire to sit with Anguelen. Moglurz gave them a curious look from the corner of his eye. "Anguelen," he said, "is not a very typical name for a young Elf, is it? Nor is your brother's name, for that matter."

"How do you mean?" asked Anguelen. He, for his part, only had eyes for the spiced meat Krazum was roasting.

"I'm obviously not a scholar of the Grey-Elven languages, but yours sounds different from what little I have heard of them."

Anguelen turned to Moglurz, surprised that this observation should come from an Orc. "It is different since it's quite a bit older. When have you had the opportunity to listen to Sindarin, then?"

"Probably when he frolicked in the woods of the Elven-folk in his distant youth," Thraknash dared to mock from behind Anguelen.

Moglurz cheerfully gave the Uruk a rude hand sign for that. "In my experience, Elves can be quite wordy," he explained, "even as they lie dying."

Anguelen nodded, eyes starting to light up at the prospect of getting to complain about other Elves. "You should hear the stories my father tells. I'm amazed how many of our folk had the time and strength to compose laments of their own death before they deigned to perish! My father is so full of..."

"Brother, don't start that again!" Eldehto hissed, finally awake enough to interact with the world.

"I don't even use my father-name because he's so bloody nice to me," Anguelen pressed on. "My mother is not much more pleasant, but at least my amilessë makes sense."

"Yes, and so you think it's perfectly all right to let everybody use your familiar name," groused Eldehto.

"What does it mean, then?" asked Thraknash, barely even registering Eldehto's protests.

Anguelen smiled. "Snake star. Because I'm radiant, but I coil around mortal hearts like a serpent."

Thraknash processed the information for a moment. "It does make sense."

"And there you go, Eldehto."

"You're a lout!"

"So I am!"

"Don't be!"

Moglurz closed his eyes as he covered his laughing mouth with his steepled fingers - rather needlessly as he always laughed silently, but the habit of hiding was older than the habit of suppressing, and so hide he did. It had been in his nature, he recalled, long before it became necessity... but never mind that, and the aberrative local Elven culture for now; he would have plenty of time to satisfy his curiosity later. Right now they were at the beginning of a new day, and what a new day in their particular circumstances needed was some careful planning.

"If I'm not completely wrong, we're getting closer to potentially hostile settlements," he said with a quiet but authoritative voice. "We must decide which path to take from here."

"Oh! And we'll ask old Sharrásh!" cried Ghâshsag, jumping to his feet. "He can draw a map for us and that'll give him something to do!"

Moglurz frowned thoughtfully; Sharrásh looked as though he had disappeared in his own little world again. "Perhaps I should do it?"

"No, it's fine. You sit there and rest your old bones." Ghâshsag scuttled over to Sharrásh, who was already quite happily resting his, and dropped down to a squat in front of the old Orc to stare into his empty eyes. "There he goes again, adventuring alone inside his head. He's supposed to adventure with us every now and then! You really coddle him too much, Moglurz."

"It really wouldn't be wise to..."

"SHARRÁSH!" shrieked Ghâshsag with a voice that could have echoed in a room made out of quicksand.

The old Orc's eyes flew wide, his right hand flew to his left flank, and there was a deadly flash of light as his knife flew to Ghâshsag's undefended throat. He breathed heavily, as though trying to recover from all this sudden flying. "What is it?"

"We need a map!" Ghâshsag said cheerfully, completely ignoring the sharp tip of a shivering blade pointed at a very vulnerable part of his body.

Sharrásh blinked like a lizard baking itself in the sun. "Map..." Some measure of normality returned to his eyes, and when he smiled, it didn't look like he was doing it with somebody else's stolen mouth. The knife returned to its sheath with a motion like a dead leaf falling. "I like drawing. Which area? This one?"

Handing his friend a long stick, Ghâshsag smiled back. "Do you remember which area this one is?"

With suddenly very sharp and very sane eyes, Sharrásh observed his surroundings. "Somewhere between Annúminas and Fornost, where Men of Arnor live."

"Lived," said Eldehto.

"Good," muttered Sharrásh. He drew two circles in the ground and with his fingers raised small hills around them both. "Hills of Evendim, North Downs," he said, pointing at the western area first and eastern second. He then added a larger circle to the area northeast of Fornost. "This is where the Witch-king rules Angmar."

"Ruled," interrupted Grishtakh. "He took a sword in the face just two years ago, by the way."

Sharrásh pondered this bit of news for a moment. "Typical," he said.

"Wait, so we have just left the Núminas area?" Anguelen asked, looking baffled. "It was that close to the forest all along?"

Eldehto coughed nervously. "It was full of ruins, anyway. No one has lived there for..."

"But I've always wanted to see more ruins! I've stared at a bloody forest all my life, I like the sight of old dead buildings!" Anguelen stared at the small circle on the ground as though expecting it to compensate for three hundred extremely sheltered years. "If we had gone south instead of wherever we are now, we could have seen an entire dead capital city."

"And most likely ended up in the Shire, had we continued on that road," argued Moglurz. "Halflings," he added for the benefit of the curious Orcs that had gathered round to watch Sharrásh actually do something. "Put Brandywine there, love - yes, like that - now, we should reach the river soon. It leads to an old forest whose name escapes me at the moment..."

"It's actually just called the Old Forest," Eldehto said sheepishly.

Moglurz blinked at the sandy likeness of Brandywine on the ground. "I didn't know halflings were such a creative lot." He shook his head sadly. "Nevertheless, we may be able to fetch supplies from the forest if we can avoid being seen. I think we can, considering what the forest is like."

"What is it like?" asked Thraknash, both hands prepared for slapping his forehead or pinching the bridge of his nose depending on the severity of the answer.

"Bloody evil. No bugger would go there just to frolic, so we should be able to avoid detection quite nicely."

Thraknash simply covered his entire face in frustration.

"And near the forest, Bree." Sharrásh put a dot on the map east of the forest. "Men live... lived there, yes?"

"They still do," Eldehto corrected gently.

"Would you listen to this little swot who has memorised every single history lesson in his life! Pity you didn't learn geography as well," Anguelen said with a sneer, still staring at the circle that represented lost Annúminas. "Aren't the Grey Havens somewhere in the west? Do I at least remember that much?"

Without hesitation, Sharrásh added a dot southwest of the Shire. "And the mountains go like... this..." His fingers worked quickly and steadily, raising a tiny mountain range of sand north and south of the Grey Havens, a much longer one in the north, and one that bled down the eastern side of the map. Moglurz appeared to have an abrupt coughing fit, and after a while of wondering what could possibly be wrong, Sharrásh remembered and smoothed down most of the northern mountain range. "That's right, not anymore."

"Those are the Misty Mountains in the east, aren't they?" Eldehto asked, frowning at the remains of the northern mountains; something about the fact that Sharrásh had made them bothered him, but soon enough his need to shine with his knowledge prevailed and he squatted down next to the Orc. "There is Rivendell, or Imladris, somewhere in the..." Sharrásh nodded and drew a circle in the mountains. "And south from there, Moria." Another circle appeared. "I don't know much about the details of the land by the mountains. Apparently much of it is wilderness, so crossing Loudwater and Hoarwell, or as Sindar say, Bruinen and Mitheithel..." Sharrásh drew two rivers that flowed away from the Misty Mountains until they eventually ran into each other and disappeared somewhere outside the map. "...might be difficult if we can find no villages. There is a bridge and a ford on the way to Rivendell..." Sharrásh drew small lines over the rivers. "...so if we cross them, we can then walk south from there until we reach Moria."

"Aren't there golugs in this area?" Sharrásh asked, pointing at the land west of Moria. "In Eregion, that is?"

"Not for thousands of years," Eldehto replied. The scholastic shine still lit his eyes as he turned to Anguelen. "You should be able to see ruins there, brother."

Anguelen snorted. "Aren't I lucky to have such a smart little brother! I'm glad at least one of us didn't disappoint 'Daddy'." His words were harsh, but he did stop glowering at his old home and looked at the rivers instead, tapping his cheek with an index finger. "How do you propose we get to the bridge and ford, then? Just trek through Bree and use the common road?"

Eldehto frowned. "That would be silly, brother. They would never let Orcs through alive."

The look on Anguelen's face was somewhat tense for a moment as annoyance at his own inadequacies gave way to suppressed amusement. Then, as he was never one to dwell on the negative when there was positive to be had, mirth won out and he burst out laughing. "I suppose it would be," he cackled. "You crafty little bastard. But yes, we really can't go through Bree."

"Then we either pass Weather Hills in the north or South Downs in the, as you may guess, south," concluded Moglurz. He gazed happily at the familiar faces surrounding him. "I am pleased that we managed to hatch a plan as good as this. The young Elf does have some useful knowledge! And thank you," he said, his voice becoming warmer as he turned to Sharrásh, "for staying with us this long."

Sharrásh smiled lazily. "I try, sometimes."

Eldehto, for his part, blushed with pleasure as he was finally praised by someone who wasn't a relative and therefore obliged to do so. "I just... I listen to my lessons, sometimes."

Gutbrúg looked at the map with some disappointment. "So we're not going to Gundabad some time?"

With a thunderous glare, Krazum turned to the goblin. "Are you seriously telling us you want us to walk all the way from bloody here," he pointed at the area between Annúminas and Fornost before stabbing an angry finger at an area that was all the way in the Northern Waste rather than anywhere near actual Gundabad, "to fucking there?"

"Oh, it's that far away?" Gutbrúg asked, eyeing the map with some worry.

Moglurz, Sharrásh and Eldehto shared a look. They then turned to Gutbrúg in perfect unison. "Yes," said Sharrásh.

"Sod it, then. I'm not walking that far."

There were some relieved sighs as the group disbanded to grab something to eat before some other bastard could get to it. Moglurz gave Sharrásh half of his sliced apple and Krazum distributed the strips of meat sensibly, taking care to make Gruzlak's portion bigger than his own. But that was as far as Orkish consideration went; the rest gleefully stole from each other, the worst of it only slightly hindered by a few well-aimed punches from Thraknash, who soon gave up as his disciplinary measures became well-dodged punches.

"Don't enjoy your meal too long," Thraknash said as if words might succeed where fists failed against this band of cockroaches. "We're leaving as soon as possible. With the way you lot keep eating, we'll soon have to start hunting."

"You're gorging yourself too!" laughed some of the goblins, but they finished up quickly anyway.

"Perhaps if you didn't require quite so much energy for your... exploits," Krazum grumbled at no one in particular, for once without any real anger to go with his words. He slowly wiped his mouth, giving his weapons a thoughtful look. "...I hope I can still hit something with a bow. Should be fine with shooting as long as the target is not too close and someone else goes to fetch the carcass."

"We're all set then, are we?" asked Anguelen, once more full of good cheer now that he was also full of food. "Let's go out into the world."

They gathered their belongings quickly, stomped out the fire and left with quite a bit of nervous excitement. So far the land was easy to walk, uninhabited and pleasantly unforested, but no doubt that would change soon as they reached the borders of halfling-land; then wide plains would mean danger as they were visible from far away, forests might hide people who would then report their presence to others, and using roads would be right out as long as they were still anywhere near settlements. Despite all this, Gutbrúg suggested raiding Hobbit-homes for food and cheap laughs, but Eldehto, still remembering the way he got to shine, informed him that news had come after the war of Hobbits doing much damage to invading enemies. Demonstrating that even in his skull a brain of some sort dwelt, Gutbrúg shrugged and agreed to behave himself.

"Something glimmers in the distance," Anguelen noted after a while of pleasant strolling. "That'll be the river, I suppose."

Ghâshsag blinked. "I didn't even notice. You see very far, don't you?"

"Well, I am an Elf," replied Anguelen with a grin, and on a whim reached into the ring-shadow to ruffle Ghâshsag's hair. The small Orc seemed surprised but pleased with this show of friendliness. "I also see clouds gathering in the sky. It would be very irritating if rain finally fell when we're out on an open plain like this."

"At least then any Men or Hobbits who would otherwise be outside might stay indoors," Moglurz pointed out.

Suddenly Thraknash frowned. "Did Gorluk tell you which way the rest of the tribe is going? If they went anywhere near the towns... ah shit. You don't suppose they've gone and raided something? They'll be ready for us down there."

Moglurz took a deep breath. "I wouldn't very well suggest a route like this if Gorluk had told me he's going the same way," he said as patiently as he could, resisting the urge to mention how concerned he was about the fact that this was the first time anyone in the band had thought to ask this. At least it had been Thraknash; Moglurz had a lot of faith in the lad and liked not being disappointed. "He said he'll take the shortest possible way by the haunted ruins of Fornost," Anguelen gave a plaintive sigh at this, "then past the Weather Hills to the Last Bridge, and after that he'll use much the same route as we agreed on. He's got the best hunters and the fastest runners, so they've got a considerable head start, although they'll most likely avoid battle until they've regained some more of their strength."

"So we won't be running into Chief Gorluk on our way to Mordor?" Krazum asked hopefully.

"What's all this about you not wanting to see Gorluk, anyway?" asked Thraknash. "You seemed to tolerate him well enough in the mountains."

"Chief Gorluk!"

"Why the fuck should I call him Chief? I was only his bodyguard, and now I'm free from even that."

Krazum breathed quickly to contain his rage at such ignorance. "You may not like him, but you can at least show the proper respect! And I don't want to see him because he's a bastard."

Thraknash rubbed his forehead. "Absolutely. You're the right Orc to teach me about respect. Forgive me for ever doubting you."

"I just don't want to see him again! I spent more than my share of time with him in the war, while you quite happily frolicked in less dangerous places avoiding giving your life for the Dark Lord who even now..."

"Oh for fuck's sake, Krazum, I'd rather be humped by a saw than listen to you go on yet another one of your bloody... and what set you off this time, an innocent damned question?" Thraknash stared at Krazum in utter disbelief, in utter despair over the fact that they were heading down this road once more. "What is wrong with you?"

"You," spat Krazum, the very picture of reason. "You and every bloody Uruk in this world! All your kind ever do is take and take and take. Go stick your cock in an anthill, you useless wanker!"

On a normal day Thraknash would have shrugged at such excessive hostility, or perhaps logically replied with 'and you stick yours in the Crack of Doom' or something similar. Today he couldn't do it. Today, right in this moment, he was suddenly far too aware of the last ten days spent in the proximity of a humanoid volcano that he could not get away from, one that had vomited its fury all over much of his short life and would now do it to his new beginning as well. Today Thraknash had remembered a time when he was young and inadequate, feeling diminished in Krazum's presence, and all these things combined with the normally so ignorable sexual insult brought that hated feeling back again.

"Maybe you should fuck Gorluk when you next see him," he snapped, desperately hoping that sound just now wasn't his voice cracking. "He's certainly got something to give that can take your mind off raging about my people all the bloody time."

Krazum breathed loudly for a moment, mouth shut so tightly that his lips paled to a sort of mint green. "Are you talking about the size of his dick there?" he asked, voice almost level but already subtly trembling with the coming eruption. "Are you saying it would do me some good?"

"Buggered if I know," Thraknash groaned. This was never going to end, was it?

"Maybe if he had any idea how to use the damned thing. Maybe if he weren't a Troll-fucked halfwit who's been known to lick the wrong side of his knife when intimidating captives..."

"What are you talking about now!"

"...if he didn't have disgusting habits like filing his toenails to a point all day when the rest of us normal Orcs are trying to sleep," Krazum went on, the look in his eyes becoming increasingly unhinged, "or crying in his fucking sleep when he did sleep, even I don't do that sort of shit to a fellow..."

"What is this," Thraknash demanded frantically. "You've actually fucked him already? I ask again, what is wrong with you?"

"...soldier even if I dislike him, and I certainly felt like it sometimes when I relied on him to make me forget Commander Grilták's death and he was so malevolently bad at fucking that it should be a war crime," continued Krazum as his voice rose and rose and became more and more unstable by the fraction of a second. "We speak of a man who thinks there's nothing wrong with putting his dick in someone's arse first, mouth second! We speak of an unspeakable fiend who thinks it is enough that he's got a huge cock even though he doesn't know what to do with it..."

Krazum had stopped walking by now, gesturing out his feelings of injustice to some unseen audience with the despair of a Nazgûl in his death throes. The actual seen audience, the other Orcs in the ring-shadow, stopped as well as the need to walk was trumped by the need to stare with wide and somewhat frightened eyes at the unfolding disaster.

"...because he could never concentrate on what he was fucking doing, or fucking fucking for that matter, could he, the great big bleeding Mûmak-cocked hairless-bollocked pillock, he and his..."

"Krazum, stop!" little Gruzlak cried, not far from actually crying.

"...Balrog-sized dick wouldn't know how to please someone if his Sauron-cursed useless life depended on it, and that's all I got, all the rutting I got for a fucking year after Commander Grilták was gone was with that hideously pustulent long-term boil, when I could have been sensible and just carved a cock out of the stones of the earth and used that and it would have been less abrasive and more considerate of my needs..."

Thraknash, his annoyance now cowering in some deep, dark corner of his mind, reached into the shadow with apprehension he could no longer hide. "Krazum..."

Krazum twatted the Uruk's hand away, eyes gleaming red in the darkness. "...and I'm not exactly hard to make come, you know, it's like walking on a bleeding tightrope, lean too far in any direction and it's all over, and he couldn't do it! I've seen Trolls left out in the sun that were softer than I was on some days and he couldn't even work with that, no, he'd just hump away until I wished for death, his dick's death that is, and I just wanted it to be over and yet I went back every day like a complete fuckwit like a sad desperate git like a..."

"Enough!" Moglurz roared. He raised his voice very rarely, and even this single shouted word seemed to be too much for it; yet there was a hidden strength to it, and it struck Krazum as silent as the ones who watched, leaving him gasping for breath and shaking. Moglurz walked to Krazum and gathered his quivering mass into his arms, firmly and reassuringly. "That's enough now, lad. That's enough."

"I just wanted... some dick," Krazum almost sobbed, trembling so hard he nearly made the older Orc's arms shake too. "He was the dick. Fucking bastard."

There was a long silence during which Moglurz only stroked Krazum's shuddering back and the others could only stare. Gutbrúg, who might have been likely to offer Krazum his far better services, seemed robbed of his quick tongue in more ways than one. Burzum, normally so controlled, gaped with round eyes and a slightly open mouth; fortunately for him, Eldehto did not see him make this face as he was busy staring at Krazum with open horror, hanging on to the arm of his brother who was quite speechless as well. Grishtakh and Ghâshsag looked upset, but not as upset as Gruzlak. Even Sharrásh seemed affected by the outburst.

And after quite some time of watching the old Orc work his magic on the nervous wreck, Thraknash felt somewhat responsible for the situation and decided that it needed to be defused completely with some tact and sensitivity. "Well, since we wasted all this time on your bloody spectacle, we'll have to run if we are to get anywhere today."

Gruzlak's head turned to Thraknash, his little fangs bared. "I'll bite your ankles! Bully!" he shouted.

Regaining the last of his senses, Krazum detached himself from Moglurz's fatherly embrace and glared at the Uruk. "Don't you fucking dare upset Gruzlak too. I'm just the right height for tearing your throat out with my teeth, you know."

"Oh but Krazum, my dear long-term acquaintance," Thraknash began, his insides self-indulgently tingling at the glower this earned him now that the worst seemed to be over. "Don't you agree that we need to stay on the move? However, I'm not a monster; I do understand that we're all a little bit shaken up now, so I'd be glad to help you poor snaga run."

"For the love of the Void," Krazum hissed as more stable and more familiar anger flooded his system again.

Ghâshsag gagged. "Now he's getting all Uruky again. If he carries on, I too will bite his ankles."

"None of that now!" Thraknash exclaimed with more good cheer than was appropriate and reached for the whip on his belt. "It's been oh so long since the last time that I had the opportunity to use this. I hope you lot enjoy this as much as I do, because if you don't... oh well. And you know what they say?"

Gutbrúg stared at the Uruk. "If you're going to say it..."

"There's no point to this if I don't, is there?" Thraknash grinned. "And so, where there's a whip..."

A groan went through the whole band. "Fuck you, Thraknash!" Grishtakh cried, voice cracking.

"...there's a way! Now run, little snaga, run like you've got the horrors of Utumno snapping at your heels!"

And run they did, the snaga and the Elves and the Uruk alike. There was much swearing, much whining, and many a whiplash in the air that day as they ran. The window that had so briefly and so abruptly opened into horror was now firmly shut, and Thraknash was happy in a way he had not been since... well, ever, he had to admit. He looked at Anguelen, euphoric, and the Elf beamed right back at him and offered his hand. Thraknash took it gladly, only barely able to prevent himself from outright skipping with joy. The river glimmered before them like a stream of jewels, marking the next step of their journey.

Gratuitous reference note: "din-horde" is a translation of "glamhoth", a Sindarin word for Orcs.