"Skai, how beautiful are you?" Maukurz whispered. He held his weight carefully on his knees—which freed his hips and back up quite nicely—while running a finger over the delicate, lovely bones in Halla's face. "You giving me Baby?" Maukurz asked, endlessly amazed.

Halla could hardly open her eyes. Her head was tilted back, and she sighed when his mouth moved down her graceful neck. She could never know when a soft kiss would turn intense, piercing, shocking her all the way down her spine and intensifying the delicious invasion. Now at mid-winter, with her belly rising, her Uruk lover was entranced. His big, strong hands smoothed over the hard roundness where his baby grew, and he couldn't help grinning and laughing with breathless excitement. It ain't supposed to happen for me like this, he'd recently confessed. Life was hard in the snow-locked cave, but Halla lived in the bliss of the adored.

That the pregnancy was so hard on her body managed to be rather unimportant. Maukurz took complete care of her. She ate plenty meat, even fresh meat, because he would dig his way through the high snows to hunt for her. Maukurz wanted nothing more from her but for her to love him when he came to her, which was easy and pleasing. When she washed, the Uruk-hai Captain often took the washrag from her and wrung it out, then ran it over her limbs with reverent tenderness. Halla watched his face carefully then. You were so lonely there, she said one night, interrupting the warm silence. Maukurz had lowered his gaze and thought about it, then nodded his head. But I'd never have known it, he admitted. Not until I had you. Now I could never go back.

Now he tightened his hold on her, closed his eyes and lost awareness of things outside of them for a while. Maukurz could be drowned by everything he sensed and felt at this moment. Her scent—body and hair and arousal—was one thing, the sight of her lovely face flushed with pleasure from him another. Feelings, most of all, as he came inside her… but thoughts too. If I have her forever, I'll never tire.

But withdrawing, he smelled blood. He looked carefully at Halla's face: her lips quivered a little, and she had to catch her breath… but her bright blue eyes were hard and shining, and her sigh was one of content. She had no pain. Maukurz lay beside her and drew her into his arms, as if nothing was wrong. At the same time, he cast his eyes down their entangled bodies… and saw a smear of red on his belly, his cock… and blood on the insides of her thighs. His body tensed fearfully. Maukurz closed his eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath, knowing that he'd had more good luck than anyone he knew, and likely a whole heap more than he deserved. Surely sometime it would run out. This was followed by a horrific thought, and his body cramped up in gut terror, as he wondered if he'd managed to kill Baby by fucking Halla. If he'd managed—after being so fucking careful—to kill her finally with his endless lust.

"You're bleeding Halla," he said quietly, trying to stay calm for her sake.

"What?"

Alarmed, Halla looked at the blood on her thighs. She jumped up, kneeling with her arms around her belly and horror on her face. Am I losing Baby? "But I feel no pain," she cried quietly. "If I was losing him, wouldn't it hurt?"

"I don't—I don't know—" Maukurz felt terribly helpless all of a sudden, helpless and ignorant and desperate for Halla and Baby to be well. She was looking to him with such fear; he was supposed to fix it for her, but how? "Lie down," he said, taking her in his arms and lowering her to the furs. It seemed a reasonable thing to do. When hurt, rest; when bleeding, stay calm and quiet. But was there truly nothing more he could do? Maukurz stared wretchedly at Halla, a creature so lovely and beautiful she might have been from a fever dream, and she'd given herself gladly to him. And he had imagined Baby so often it felt like he knew the little one already. Nothing in his short life had prepared Maukurz to face such a painful loss as threatened now, both the woman and the baby.

Halla was crying. Maukurz sat beside her, brushing her tears away. His lay his warm hand on her little round belly, willing his strength into his tiny little whelp. He watched Halla's body with feverish intensity, waiting for Baby to come out of her in a rush of red and black blood. But after a while, he realized her bleeding had stopped, and Maukurz felt intense gratitude. But does that mean Baby lives still? If only there was some way to know for sure! Maukurz lay down again, drawing Halla close and kissing her teary cheeks. They stared at each other with naked eyes, finally seeing just how foolish and rash they had been. Who could know what the consequences would be now? Having a baby was a desperate frightening thing and he was powerless in it. The Uruk wrapped his arms around his woman, ran his hands through her pale messy hair and pulled her fine face to his. He stroked her cheeks and kissed her mouth, and when she finally fell asleep he stayed, holding her, committing every part of her to memory, because he thought that no matter what his intentions had been—or become—towards the beautiful little female, surely he had killed her all the same.

Finnan pulled his kerchief over his mouth and nose. This part had always been distasteful, but the bodies needed burning. It had felt good to join full battle, though, after a month of killing stragglers. Haldren had gotten information out of one of those stragglers, which led them to a large camp in a remote, craggy pocket of mountain. They hit it at daybreak, just as the Orcs were settling into sleep under the shabby three-sided tents, some made from their own ragged cloaks.

Finnan had set himself against a thick knot of large, black Orcs, who reminded him of the Uruks of his home, and thus were the best target for his rage. They had fought desperately, but some had lacked even weapons and had to parry Finnan's steal with rudely constructed clubs. Yet they were vicious all the same, perhaps more-so for the new light of hunger in their eyes. Finnan had lost his senses for battle fever, a thing he'd not felt since being so surrounded at the Black Gate.

"Give you a hand," a knight from Gondor said, his words muffled by his own kerchief. The blaze had been lit, and Finnan stooped to grab the legs of one of those big Uruk-looking monsters. Together with the Gondor lad, Finnan carried the Orc to the rising inferno, towards the hot-burning pyre reeking of melting flesh and fat. They tossed him into the devouring flames, on a pile of his fallen brothers—if Orcs could be said to have such things as brothers!

Work went far faster with help, and Finnan thought he'd gotten most of his vanquished opponents into the flames. Still, there were many more bodies.

Now the rancid smoke stung at Finnan's eyes, blurring his vision. Blinking tears, he watched as the Gondor knight seized a pair of brown arms and began to drag another body along the ground. Finnan bent to grab the ankles—and blinked again, in shock, as the Orc's crudely wrapped clothing tore away, revealing a large pair of breasts and the soft, rounded belly that Finnan's mind immediately associated with a pregnant woman. The young Man from Gondor grunted slightly. Again, they swung and heaved, and Finnan was spared the thoughts forming in his mind as the pregnant Orc flew into the fire, to be forgotten.

On the next body, Finnan grit his jaw. This one was quite obviously female, even if her head was all but severed, and she was face-down. She had a plump, rounded backside; long, thick black braids; and soft, slender limbs. "Up!" the Gondor knight said, lifting the arms. They carried the dead Orcess only a few strides before some part of her fell to the ground, just before Finnan's feet.

It was a baby, fallen from her unraveling cloth sling.

"Shit!" Finnan spat, stumbling in horror to avoid stepping on the little thing.

"Don't even look, brother," the Gondor lad warned, but it was too late. Finnan had seen too much, seen the plump black baby who seemed to have taken no other injury but being crushed to death beneath its mother when she fell.

"They aren't human," the Gondor knight said firmly. "Would have just grown up to be one of those big black bulls. Better to kill it now, before it can do harm."

Finnan wanted to agree, but found that his throat was closed and his tongue was thick. By the time he opened his mouth to try to speak, a hard wind blew, and even through the kerchief the thick, fatty smoke assaulted his lips and tongue. Bile rose quickly, and Finnan manfully denied it. But by the time they returned to the corpses, someone, he saw, had taken the baby and tossed it carelessly onto the pyre.