Broker of Darkness
Chapter 4
Unexpected Visitation
He stared at the scroll's contents, comparing it to the scrawling on another. Torrad let them both drop onto his table, shuffling over to the next pile of scrolls that had been sent down to him. Dozens of scrolls that were currently in the process of conquering every available space he had. They overflowed on every horizontal surface, turning his bastion of tidiness into a disorderly heap. He had to be careful to not tread on the trailing manuscripts, filled with orcish scribbles.
Torrad opened up another scroll and skimmed through its contents, putting it in a pile whose mental label had become dubious. He scanned through scroll after scroll, placing them in different spots, rearranging their positions and, the more he thought about it, not achieving anything at all. The bookkeeper groaned in frustration, slumping down into the only chair not covered in missives from the rest of Mordor. The human's hand found their way into his scalp, running them through shorter hair. Not as fashionably long as the Southern Kingdoms liked their manes, but long hair was more of a hindrance when you were staring down at paper all day. He kept it short enough to not require grooming quite as often but not long enough to be shaggy. For practical reasons of course.
He looked forlornly from behind his hanging locks. The mountains had been moved, but he had nothing else to show for the days of work that had already been wasted. The human had had less sleep than usual lately and the strain could be seen in his slightly disheveled appearance. He heard a commotion outside his door, followed by a harsh rap.
"Come in," Torrad said, dreading the visitors. His chamber door opened with a bang, releasing a gaggle of goblins that flooded in. They each carried a collection of scrolls in their spindly arms, jabbering away in their ugly tongue. The diminutive orc-folk immediately moved toward the closest surface, dumping their parchment in heaps on top of the already enormous stacks.
"Wait- don't-" His objections were drowned out by the goblins shrieking as they deposited their loads and tumbled back out the door, slamming it behind them. In the silence left by the creature's sudden disappearance, his ink well came to a rattling halt.
"AAAAAAH!"
He screamed, letting loose a cry of frustration his lungs had never known. He sucked in a massive breath and let loose another roar of absolute rage. A group of papers were scattered across the floor, flung about by his wind-milling arms when his cries were not enough to alleviate the absolute vexation crushing his chest. The parchment fluttered to his feet, his throat scratchy from the outburst, chest heaving as he let the red mist fade from his eyes. He looked at the fallen sheaves, bemoaning his outrage.
"There, there, I didn't mean to do that," he told them, picking them up with renewed reverence. He set them down and nearly collapsed into a chair, absolutely done with it.
"Oi, you dead in there, man-swine?" The door opened with a whoosh, Lurgaz ambling in without another prompt. "Still in one piece. Good to see the goblins didn't rip you to shreds. They looked extra hungry today," he said, waggling his patchy eyebrows with a leer. He glared back.
"Not today, please. I have to many problems already," the human muttered darkly. The orc rolled his eyes, pantomiming his compatriots head with gnarled hairy fingers. Lurgaz shuffled towards the nearest pile of scrolls with an air of superiority, picking up one and then another that had just been dropped off. He tapped a claw against a few lines that had been scrawled across the yellowed paper in some horrific combination of Black Speech and Common.
"Here's your problem: too many gitz reporting from the same places." He began to shuffle the scrolls around again, reorganizing for what must have been the umpteenth time. "Lot of them double reporting." He squinted at one parchment. "What in the name of Morgoth-"
"I just needed a job," Torrad mumbled. "That's all. I wasn't trained for all this kind of work; I was trained to be an accountant. Military supplies and army logistics are so far outside my skillset that my teachers would be appalled. Besides the obvious reason. All I wanted was to support myself in a way that wouldn't make me feel trapped or a way that would prove my father right. I am NOT qualified enough to do all this stuff I'm being asked to perform and would you PLEASE STOP SHUFFLING AROUND THE DAMN PARCHMENT!"
Lurgaz flinched at the yell, whirling around to face the human it had come from. A mixture of shock and offense was painted in the orc's craggy features. "What you yelling at me for, man-swine?"
"I can't think straight with all that scraping and shuffling your doing! Let me complain about my life without providing background music that would drive a Nazgul insane!" he shot back, fear giving way to anger.
"I wouldn't use that name if you know what's good for you," the orc grumbled, a hint of wariness in his voice.
"What's good for me? What's good for me?! It would be good for me if I had some help from Mordor's resident 'expert' rather than taking on this monumental task all by myself."
"You think I've been letting you do all the work?" the orc asked, eyes narrowing. Torrad pushed his common sense aside as it warned him about angering the deadliest occupant in the room.
"I think you would absolutely leave me to do the heavy lifting so you could keep stealing my spices. Yeah, I know you snagged all of my gruel last week. I'm still upset if you weren't aware." Lurgaz didn't respond to his outburst, instead leaving the room with heavy footfalls. He was still catching his breath when the thought occurred that perhaps the orc had gone to get a real weapon.
Instead of a sharp, pointy blade to run him through, the other bookkeeper returned with yet another mountain of scrolls. He stepped just inside the doorway, looked at Torrad, and dumped the pile of parchment on the floor.
"You ain't the only one who's got a lot of messages to get through," the orc said to a dumbfounded Torrad. "All of these are reports about what cities and areas are producing what resources for the Big Bosses war machine." He marched up to the human, looming over him to make sure he had his undivided attention. "Shut your gob and gather up all your papers. We've got to get em' done before the week is out and I'm tired of your bellyaching."
"What happens after this week?" Torrad asked weakly.
"They kill us and replace us with someone who can do the work."
"Oh."
"No no no, you daft tark, the surrounding tribes reported less than 2,500 grunts, there's no way that Khagukhor is supplying the same number."
"What do you mean? It's the biggest fortress in Seregost, it could absolutely raise that many recruits. We've seen it with Cirith Ungol, Sharkburz and Darz-Gurum, why would this one be any different?"
"Because most of Seregost's grunts come from the local orc clans. If they was giving us 2,500 more boys, then there wouldn't be anyone to work the forges!"
"You don't know that with absolute certainty, just from what you've heard. I'm more inclined to think that the greenski- er, people at the fortress have more of an idea what's going on within their own ranks than the equivalent of a rural farmhand."
"And I'm telling you you're wrong pink-skin."
Torrad threw up his hands. "Then what in the name of the long lake are we supposed to do? None of these reports are lining up with each other and we can't even come up with a concrete basis to go by anything." He stomped over and began tearing through a mountain of missives that had grown steadily the more the two coin-counters had worked. He had dubbed it Mount Failure. Lurgaz preferred 'pile of grox manure'.
"I told you, when all else fails go with the smaller number. Thinking you have less military strength than you actually do is better than thinking you have more and its our necks on the line." The orc used a piece of charcoal to scratch out a number on the sheet in front of him while he gears in his head worked overtime.
"We can't just go with whatever number we like more, that's not how it works." The human paused in his tirade as the door to his room burst open with another delivery via goblin horde. "Hey! No! Don't you dare put those- get out of here, we don't need any more until we're finished with these ones!" His words were drowned out by chittering of the diminutive creatures as they deposited more and more scrolls all over the place. They rushed out the door again.
"You tell whoever you report to that I want to speak with someone right now!" he screamed after the fleeing horde. He slammed the door shut and fumed silently. When he focused back on the present, Lurgaz was watching him carefully from across the sea of paper. "What?"
"Careful what you ask for, man-swine. Never know who might be listening." Torrad scoffed.
"We are literally drowning in contradictory information. I'm going to do something about it before I lose my head or my mind, whichever breaks first in this accursed land." Before Lurgaz could comment again, there was a sound at the door.
Torrad turned around, his brow knitting in confusion. Someone being polite and actually knocking? He pulled on the handle to reveal a tall man with sea-grey eyes, clothed in a close-fitting robe of black with red trim. He watched Torrad with a keen, hawk-like attentiveness.
"You wished to speak with someone about the reports you have been receiving." The soft-spoken voice sent a chill down his spine, but it was thawed by the rage that flared up at the reminder of his current woes.
"Yes, I wish to file a complaint about the accuracy of these messages we are receiving," he said, puffing out his chest. "We can't do our jobs if we have to make wild guesses about the number of soldiers and materials." From behind him, he could just barely make our a mumbled "don't lump me in with you".
"I see," the black Numenorean hissed. He paused a moment, searching Torrad's features. "And do you have a system in mind to replace the current one?"
"System? If you call a lack of any structure a system, then my father was a hornfish. This is absolute chaos, and I can't make a report on Sauron's armed forces with information that is at best wrong and at worst grossly exaggerated." He didn't notice the other human's start at the mention of chaos. When he finished, the black Numenorean crept minuscule closer, as if doing a more thorough inspection. His proximity didn't begin to unnerve Torrad until it had dragged on for a few moments.
"Very well. I shall speak with my superiors about this matter." The Numenorean swiveled on the heel and strode away, black cloak billowing with his speed. As the bookkeeper closed his door, softly this time, he felt a strange sense of relief and dread at the human's departure.
"Great Glaurung's gizzard, what did you just do?" It was a tone filled with such fear that it nearly stopped his heart. Lurgaz was glancing back and forth between the door and him with mouth agape, revealing rows and rows of jagged teeth.
"I complained about a serious problem we're having." Lurgaz looked at him as if he had grown a second head before pushing the chair back and getting up.
"I'm out," was all he said as he left. His feet left creases on the papers he stepped on.
Deep-rooted confusion took hold of Torrad as his coworker disappeared into his own chambers. When a pair of massive uruks appeared on his doorstep hours later, he knew why Lurgaz had reacted like that.