Maukurz crouched in the ferns, watching the Dunlending settlement. Women were scraping hides and butchering meat as anyone did. Children played as Maukurz hoped to see Luka play, once he was bigger. Men, back from their hunting, threw knucklebones or lounged in the shade. A few drank and sang. Try as he might, Maukurz could find no essential differences between the way he lived, and the way they lived. He thought, perhaps, they could simply learn to live together one day.

And yet, his mouth watered for the taste. His blood felt hollow without it. He ought not to have torn into the scout who'd shot him. He ought not to have-

"What's that?"

Maukurz glanced back to Narzum. "What's what?"

Narzum simply jerked his chin towards the distance, towards a root-tangled, rocky mountain slope, covered well with craggy old pines. For a moment, Maukurz saw nothing. Then his eyes focused, and he saw quite clearly: other Men, crouched on the opposing slope, as Maukurz and Narzum were crouched on this one, watching the settlement.

"The fuck?"

Narzum shook his head. The wind changed around, and both Uruks felt the sudden urgency in the air, the shuddering tension, the nerves of warriors pulled taunt and held like bowstrings, both begging for and dreading the release.

"Shit," Maukurz whispered. He leaned forward towards the settlement, his senses locking by instinct on what he understood, a moment later, to be the prey.

And then a chilling battle cry came from the opposite hill, and band of Dunland warriors rushed down on the settlement, on their own kind, swinging axes into everything, sparing neither woman nor child.

Narzum snatched Maukurz by the arm; without knowing it, Maukurz had risen from the ferns, his entire self called into the beautiful and horrible carnage.

"Easy, big brother," Narzum whispered.

Maukurz growled softly, bracing himself against desire. He squatted down again, feeling the wound from the arrow he'd taken to the calf days before, the wound that suddenly throbbed as if begging for further vengeance.

"Fall back," Maukurz commanded, breaking himself away. The last thing he saw was the village, overrun now as badly as any village Maukurz had ever attacked, being put to torch by the band of Dunlendings who'd slaughtered their own.

"What does it mean?" Baiurz wondered in Black Speech, staring into the cold dead pit where once he'd allowed them to have a fire.

"Skai, what does it matter?" Uliima the Orcess asked. "So long as they butcher themselves, they don't trouble us."

"Because it's strange," Maukurz said.

"Nar," Uliima hissed. "Easterlings and Southerlings and Corsairs kill their own all the time. Just as we might. Killed females, sprogs, all the same to them. I fought in Osgiliath. I know."

"But Dunland doesn't do that," Maukurz retorted. "They might raid, but they don't wipe out entire villages. Nothing was left."

He frowned thoughtfully and added, "Nothing was left to tell the tale."

"Fetch the woman," Baiurz commanded.

"Ai! Shatauz!" Uliima barked. Her own rank had been just above a pizurk in Mordor, and she'd slipped quite easily into the social order of the cave. "Bring your sweet out!"

Shatauz came out a moment later, the woman Bregun hiding behind his shoulder. Except, Maukurz thought, she didn't smell like fear, for all she postured it. Baiurz glared at her, motioning to a seat by the dead fire pit; Maukurz merely stared, wondering why her scent and her body didn't match up, and what she was hiding behind her dark eyes.

As soon as she and Shatauz sat, Baiurz switched to Common Speech. "Your folk are all dead," he told her, and still, Maukurz found the woman unreadable. She raised her chin a bit, absorbing whatever loss she might have felt.

A moment later, she said, "Not my kin. My husband's kin. He'll be dead now too. Yes, yes, he must be."

At last, she smiled, and Maukurz felt a chill along his spine.

"What's it all mean?" he demanded. "Dunland is Dunland, I don't know one clan to rub out another. Make sense of it!"

"How could I?" she replied. "I wasn't there. I didn't see it."

"Yes, you did."

Maukurz jerked his head up. They'd put the sheet back up, and now Halla stood at it's edge, holding Luka in her arms. Maukurz jumped up immediately, every thought in his mind gone for the moment but that she was up, certainly before she was healed. He took the baby from her arms, his face awash with worry, his heart beating in his throat with pride and hope and fear for her. "You are not in pain, ashgaz?"

Halla bowed her head slightly. "I fear I have no more time for pain, Maukurz," she murmured. She turned her eyes to Bregun and said, "But you. You told me you had the Sight, or some form of it. And I can hear the lie in your voice. Now speak sense to us: what has happened here?"

Bregun swallowed slightly, and looked down at the ground. "I… I couldn't be sure. What style, what sort of clothing did they wear?"

"I say we eat her," Uliima suggested, spitting into the dead fire. Shatauz growled low in his throat, Uliima's eyes flashed at the challenge, and Baiurz silenced them both with a hiss.

"Bear furs," Maukurz supplied, his attention still fully on Halla. "Will you sit?" he whispered.

"Ah," Bregun whispered.

Halla, meanwhile, nodded. Maukurz, cradling Luka in one arm, used his other arm to help Halla to the firepit. She gasped as she sat, but swallowed it and said to Bregun, "Ah? What is ah?"

"My kin after all," Bregun confessed. "My cousin's clan. I don't know why he attacks my husband's people, I thought that grudge had gone cold, at least for Cormick, now that he's Chief. Tying up loose ends maybe."

"You'd have been a loose end to your own clansman," Uliima pointed out, grinning. "Men are ruthless, eh?"

"She saved your life," Shatauz reminded the Orcess.

"Maybe," Uliima said. "But not for my sake, ain't that right, wench?"

Bregun shook her bowed head. "I-"

"Why would he tie his loose ends?" Baiurz asked, irritation plain in his voice.

Bregun looked up finally. "Power," she told Baiurz simply. "It's all he knows, and he wants more."

"Power over who? The other tribes of Dunland? The other clans?" Maukurz asked.

Bregun shrugged one shoulder casually. "That too."

Then she smiled at Halla and added, "Perhaps over Rohan. One never knows. Not all old grudges have gone cold, have they? But I don't expect you'd care, having turned on your people."

Halla stared at Bregun for a long, appalled moment. "You are saying your cousin means to make war on Rohan? Do you know it? Or do you foresee it? Can you untie your tongue and speak honest sense for once?"

"He will make war," Bregun said. "And war, and war, and war. And you should be glad of it: he means no harm to Uruks, to Orc-kind, so long as they don't get in his way."

Uliima laughed aloud, delighted. "They'll tear each other apart now!"

Luka gurgled in Maukurz's arms, flashing the Orcess a gummy grin, sharing in her pleasure without understanding any of it.

"Eh, you like that, lil sprog?" Uliima cooed, wrinkling up her nose, flashing a fangy smile at the baby.

Baiurz nodded thoughtfully. "I like it on the whole," he decided. "And maybe, they'll be so busy with fighting each other, that we'll be left alone."

But the other Uruks, and Halla, all exchanged a glance. Maukurz cupped Halla's cheek in his hand for a moment, until the meeting around the pit broke apart. Then he murmured in her ear, "I'm going to warn Edwyn."

"Please be careful!" Halla begged, taking Luka back, and turning her face up for Maukurz's kiss. She kissed him fiercely, terrified for him, especially after he'd been shot by a scout.

But she did not beg him against warning Edwyn.

Baiurz, knowing they all owed the Rider and the woman Ailith two lives, pretended not to see Maukurz go.