At the sound of Common Speech-and a female voice!-Halla was so astonished she tried to sit up. Her reward was immediate, stinging pain in her lower back. Baby, interrupted from his endless nursing and snuggling, squalled in complaint. Halla grit her jaw and blinked the blurry tears from her eyes. "Hush, little Luka," she crooned, settling back in her horizontal prison. Whatever this was about, she'd have to wait to be told.

An argument erupted in Black Speech almost immediately, a sound that even now could make Halla cringe. Lukmadurz, called for his rare free birth, widened his eyes in interest. Baiurz was roaring about something, and only her mate dared to brave his anger. Halla could hear Maukurz persuading, keeping his deep voice low and respectful, as befitting a subordinate. The Uruk-hai even in freedom could not shake their hierarchies, and would not know how to live without them.

"Skai, flagitu! She is a trick, a betrayer! And she will not leave us now, no, not in body! But she will not stay!"

Horrified, Halla dug her fingers into her baby's fur blanket and cursed her immobility.

"I would not risk us, sir. If it's impossible, I will sneak away. As for Bregun, she should have her chance as Halla did."

"It's worth nothing to us! And she is not worth the risk to all of us, your son included!"

"Commander," Maukurz said softly, "When Ghuribal came, I put my own dislike aside, because it is best if we stick together now, as much as we can. I believed you, and now I don't feel right sleeping comfortably while one of our kind is help captive."

"You're blood's runnin' hot and you long for another mission," Baiurz accused. "Don't dress it up in nothin' else. You all are not going! The woman can stay with Shatauz for now. If I catch the scent of a scheme in her, she's finished. Now leave me to my meat. You all ate well enough, I take it?"

"Shatauz," Makurz said, and Halla heard the sound of something like a leather pack hitting the Commander's hands. "Your taste, sir."

Baiurz grunted. A moment later, Maukurz peered around the curtain, a cool smile on his lips.

Halla could only shake her head.

"I found a friend for you," he said, pausing for a moment to enjoy the sight of his woman and his son. The fur blanket had strayed down to her hips, her pale hair hung like a screen over her full breasts, save where his dark little son-plump and full of life-clung to Halla's chest. One dark little hand had taken a hard handful of Halla's soft hair. Commander had been wrong: his blood was not running hot at all, he was calmer than he'd ever been, and a haze of well-being had been settled on him for days. His only sorrow was that Halla suffered, but he was a hardened creature, and she wouldn't die. One day quite soon, Halla would be healed, and he would walk in the sun with his woman and his baby.

But she was upset now, near speechless. "Maukurz, what is going on? Missions, a woman for Shatauz? A risk to our son?"

Maukurz dropped to knees and fingers and crept to her bed, sitting beside her. His closeness always had the same effect on her: his body was a flawless work of hot iron. His hard face was framed by stray locks of thick black hair, slipped from the cord that bound it behind his neck. His slanted golden eyes, so foreign and so intimate, revealed all he felt for her. The idea of him in danger made her sick. "What have you all done?"

"Baiurz is-as you know-most cautious, ashgaz. You have nothing to fear. We'll watch Shatauz's new woman, and hopefully she'll work out."

"And-and if she doesn't?"

"She will, Halla. But it would be better if you helped her. Talked to her. She's... I don't think she meant it when she decided to come with us. I think she just wanted to get away."

"I don't understand you," Halla protested. "How did you come upon her at all?"

She was so worried! And so beautiful, breathless with emotion. Maukurz cupped Halla's face in his hand. His eyes strayed down to Luka, and he grinned. His son's green eyes were peering brightly sideways to Maukurz, but the little imp was too greedy to abandon Halla's breast. "Knows what's good for him, that one," Maukurz laughed. He leaned forward, kissing Halla softly, loving the way she tasted. He made a little face and asked, "You think I'm out there hunting women?"

"Of course not. But what I heard..."

"Don't worry about a thing. I'll let Bregun tell you her story."

"Bregun? What sort of name is that?"

Maukurz laughed against her lips. "That's part of the surprise."

Halla frowned, and then she guessed it. "She isn't..."

"Uh-huh. Should be fun. Too bad I have to let you two thrash it out alone. I'm gonna have a little talk with Shatauz."

"Is she kind? What sort of a woman is she? I cannot imagine..."

"She's the only kind of Mannish female I knew before you: the hurt sort, and a little shifty. Like I said, I get a feeling she don't know what she's gotten herself into, though that might not be it. I don't think she's trouble. But I do want her to mate with Shatauz, and have whelps, and be happy. So, you talk to her. Seeing you and Luka will comfort her. Especially after Baiurz threatening to do away with her."

"The poor woman must be scared to death! Yes, bring her, Maukurz. I'll speak with her."

Maukurz breathed Halla in, closing his eyes briefly. "Good. Thank you. I knew you'd help her. Just think," he whispered, "Luka will need companions. Best if she joins us in her heart, you understand me?"

Halla kissed his sharp, angular cheek softly. "I do," she told him. "But-this other thing. This mission?"

"Ah. Don't worry about that, either. Baiurz forbids it. I wanted to rescue an Orcess that Bregun says is captive in her camp, but he says it's not worth the risk."

"Well..." Halla sighed. "I hope she isn't trying to set you up. I can understand why Baiurz would worry! Yet... as much as I don't want you endangered, I don't like the idea that a female... any female... is held captive. Wouldn't another female be valuable to us as well? A mate for Baiurz or Narzum?"

Maukurz ran his hand over Luka's crop of tough black hair. "I doubt it. Uruk-hai were bred to want sharlobu only. We might ... if none of your kind were around... play around with an Orc. I keep imagining a female Ghuribal: not to my taste at all. Narzum might be interested... but of course he's busy dreaming about Edwyn."

"Edwyn! My Edwyn! He would never lie with an Uruk."

Maukurz hissed softly through his teeth, grinning. "Don't be so sure. I could have had him the first day I met him."

"You are a terror!" Halla cried. "And I miss you."

"Painfully," he agreed. "But soon enough for that. Talk to Bregun now."

"You are a woman of Rohan!"

As soon as the young woman-shapely and full breasted with a shock of fox fur red hair-appeared around the curtain, her brown eyes flew wide. Halla laughed gently at her shock, for she shared it as well. "And you a Dunlending."

"But how is this possible? You are enemies!"

"Not anymore," Halla said firmly. "At least, not myself and this camp. Although the world outside this cave has not yet caught on to my sentiment."

"So they are not killers," Bregun sighed, more of a gasp. She dropped to the floor where she was, unconcerned it seemed for her simple hide dress on the dirt floor. She looked up at Halla, a fey light in her eyes. "I had thought to be dead by now, going off into the woods with three Uruk-hai. But here I am, and here you are... And a child?"

"My son, Luka," Halla said with quiet pride. The baby was sleeping now, cuddled against Halla's warm skin. She wrapped the fur up, remembering her modesty only then, though the Dunlending woman didn't seem to mind. "If you thought you'd be killed, why would you come at all?"

"You still love life, then," Bregun said darkly. "I would have welcomed death, without the courage to seek it myself. Now I see I will live, as my sister Sula did, with an Uruk. He says he won't beat me. Sula's Uruk carried her from the raging waters, and they were attached by breath. Have these half-Orcs somehow turned kinder than Men?"

Halla watched Bregun with an empathetic eye. "Some must be kind, and some must be rotten, and all in between. Once they left Isengard, they could become what they were meant to be free of the wizard's control. But Shatauz is kind, and quiet, and clever."

Bregun thought of this silently. She nodded, as if confirming something to herself. When she next looked to Halla, Halla indeed noted the shiftiness in her eyes, like a dog who'd been struck too many times. "The dark one with the gold eyes and Orcish face, that's yours," Bregun said, more of an observation. When Halla nodded, Bregun asked, "How did that come to pass? Sula was my twin, and our Da sold her to Isengard for a breeder. So she had one in her belly, natural for her to go with an Uruk who would want it. And I fear them, but you, I think, you should hate them. I know what they did to your kind."

Halla didn't hesitate to explain her feelings. "Most of my people do hate them. But I found Maukurz after the War, injured in the forest. I decided to care for him... until I could not stand to be away from him."

"In love?" Bregun asked, like a girl who'd never known it.

"Very much. But what about you? You've just met Shatauz. Will you share a bed with him tonight?"

Bregun could not meet Halla's eyes. "I s'pose that's the price, isn't it? To stay alive and be fed?"

"Dammit," Halla swore under her breath, wishing she wasn't stuck lying on her side, propped by rolled up furs. "Bregun, of course not. It's hoped for-greatly-but you're not a piece of meat. If Shatauz wants you, he has to win you."

Halla worried her lip a little, wishing Maukurz hadn't sprung this on her. What was he-and the others-thinking? This wouldn't end well, if Shatauz thought he could simply take a woman who didn't want him. But what else could this whole thing mean? Halla knew one thing, and it was frightening: Bregun couldn't leave. If she hated Shatauz, and he thought use her, she would have no choice but to endure it or fight it. Either way would bring trouble.

"Is that what he thinks?" Bregun asked knowingly, and Halla couldn't honestly respond.

Shatauz made himself scarce after his dressing down. Maukurz found him by a small seasonal river, chilled in the late spring air from melting snowpack. At Maukurz's footsteps in the mud, Shatauz lay down the elk bone he was knapping into arrows, and set the smooth rock at his side.

"What you down here for? Your girl's up top."

Shatauz grunted slightly.

"You can do better that that," Maukurz said. The more dominant Uruk had a tendency to invade the space of underlings and strangers, and now he stripped out of his buckskin trousers and stepped into the water where it pooled behind fallen rocks. Not waiting for an answer, he began to wash in the icy water.

Finally Shatauz grumbled, "I don't know what to do. I don't want to fuck it up. I want what you have. But I don't know how to do all that... all that touchin' and playing. I never went down to the pit. I know no more than what any fool did in the raids, and I'm pretty sure none of that goes on behind that curtain."

"Well I ain't fuckin' yuh, pizurk, no matter how nice you ask."

Despite his nail-chewing anxiety, Shatauz laughed. Maukurz grinned and let his hair down, washing out the traces of human blood. He stood again, ringing his hair out, then left the water, snapping his pants up from the ground and tugging them on. "Didn't get much of that after a fight, during the War."

"No, you'd have whipped us to shit! Stop and bathe!"

"I'd have been whipped right behind you, for allowing it."

They sat for a moment, both thinking back to Isengard. "I was always eager to get into the forges, not the breeding pits," Shatauz said. "Or the armory at least. Now I wish I'd tried harder to get at least a few days down with the breeders."

"Nar, Shatauz, that wouldn't do you much good with Bregun."

"How'd you get Halla, then?"

Maukurz shook his head helplessly. "I don't know how. She just came to me, and I was lucky enough to be busted up. I couldn't take her, but I wanted to. I didn't expect her to want back."

"Master said they wouldn't. The white-skinned women wouldn't want us, we had to take from them. But he made us to want them, bad as water or meat. Worse. And I didn't care, no one cared, that they screamed and fought. But now, you make me care. You and Halla. Now I want to be wanted, and I don't know how to make it happen. Don't know how to make her want to lie down, don't know how to make her glad she did once we're... you know. Fuckin' stupid, right? I should just have a go at her, and if she likes it she likes it. She can't leave, after all."

"No!" Maukurz said quickly. "You don't want to do anything like that. You want to learn about that woman, you want to take your time with her."

"Like you did, in the pits."

"Forget the pits. I wasn't even sure other creatures had any feelings when I was down there; at least, not feelings like I had them. Those women were just playing in my world. I didn't understand how wrong I had it until I saw Halla: as a person, as someone who I wanted to look at me and decide she wanted to stay. Master didn't teach that you'd crave that: not a captive, but an equal, someone who stayed by your side, and shared your bed, out of desire. I don't know if you can fuck, but I know you can treat her with the respect you ought to give the woman who'd have your whelps. You saw what that was like! Treat her as your equal, someone who deserves respect, and she'll come closer to you."

"And then...Once she does, I think I'll break her, you see? I've seen... I've done...hurt them bad before. Seen 'em broke."

"You won't break her," Maukurz said dryly. "Be careful. Control yourself. You ain't racing, or trying to eat her all up before the rest of the bullpen gets a sniff."

"And all that-that hot scent Halla has? Those... those sounds?"

A low growl rumbled from Maukurz's throat.

"I don't mean nothing by it, but I want it."

"I don't have a year to tell you how to get it," Maukurz said, fingering a smooth rock before skipping it down the swift water. "Look... just... Enjoy her. If she lets you. Slow. Taste her, watch her. And don't push her. You wouldn't believe me, but Halla slept the night with me before I ever really touched her. It was... maybe... it made things better for us later. If Bregun trusts you, she'll let you... How can I say it? She'll tell you her secrets. Her body will tell you its secrets. And then... Well, then you'll be happy."

Shatauz nodded, thinking it over. But a few moments later, they both heard footsteps.

Commander Baiurz had followed them down the trail. Shatauz held his breath. Maukurz was relieved to see that his step was strong once more, though there was a good deal more silver in his hair this spring. The creases in his face were deeper, giving the Commander a perpetually grim appearance. Maukurz and Shatauz stood up promptly.

"I've been giving it some thought," Baiurz barked gruffly. "You're right, Maukurz. And I don't think the girl is setting us up. I've listened to her talk, and while I have my doubts about her, I think she's telling the truth about the Orcess. So: if we can get close to the camp, if she can be snatched, we'll do it. But here's the thing: it'll be Narzum and me going down after her."

Maukurz opened his mouth to object, but Baiurz raised his hand and said, "You've got your whelp and your woman. Shatauz, you too, with any luck and some work on your part, you'll have a future as well."

"But you are our leader," Maukurz protested. "You're worth ten of us."

"If anything goes wrong, you'll do just fine in my place, Maukurz. You were a good Captain in the War, and since you've got yourself a woman, somehow you're growing up enough to survive peacetime. You'll do just fine. But I'm coming back! And it's been long enough since I've seen some action!"

Maukurz didn't dare object again. "Good huntin', sir."

Baiurz spun on his heel, marching back up the hill. Maukurz and Shatauz exchanged a wary glance.

"Don't s'pose there's a way to stop him," Shatauz said grimly.

"Even if we could," Maukurz replied, "It'd be like cutting his balls off."

"Then I sure hope he's still got it."