The children of this Third Age sing often of our brethren. Oh yes, their fair faces and clear voices and keen arrows. For all the singing and passing of tales, these children are forgetful. For they do not sing of us. They do not remember how we came to be. They do not remember that we are as immortal as our brethren. We are harsh and ugly, and nobody wants a song about that. So I'll tell you a tale in my harsh voice. The tale of an orch.
I sit in the black iron bunker, staring at the wall. I don't want to think. If I think, through the haze of pain and darkness, I can remember. The rust looks like a sword…like a star in the clear night of my childhood. I'm remembering again.
Olden squats next to me. He hands me a miserable stale piece of bread. The bread we had in my childhood, I think my mother baked it, or my wife, if I was married. I don't remember. I can't. Good. It was so light and filling…remembering.
"Eat it," he says, pushing it into my hand.
I listlessly let it drop the floor.
"Damnit, Ancient, eat it!" Olden says in frustration.
"The wheat of this accursèd land is as choking ashes in my mouth."
"And lembas would be too, now, but you have to eat something and this is what I have."
"Don't remind me of what I am. I was remembering the way it tasted."
"Stop remembering! You'll die of your fantasies!"
"I can't remember. Only the way it smelled. I can't remember how it tasted. I don't want to."
Disgustedly leaving me to try to forget, Olden tucked the bread under my tunic so nobody would steal it and walked off.
The cursed rust reminded me of before the rust, before Olden. I was the first, the Ancient. The walls were shining black iron, and I was shackled to them. Alone before Morgoth. A hell of pain, and darkness, and bursts of saturnine fire. Olden felt some kinship with me, from the days when he and I were shackled side by side in hell. But he was not there when I was alone. I think he has forgotten all of his days under the stars. Our kinship is the only thin that sets him apart from the legions of yrch.
I stare at the rust. It looks like rust, and nothing more. Good, I have forgotten whatever silly glimpse of my past gripped me. I sit staring and thinking of nothing. There is a mighty clattering all around. I smile halfheartedly. It doesn't remind me of anything. Olden grips my tunic and pulls me to my feet. He shoves a helmet lopsided onto my head, shoves the slice of bread into my mouth, and tightens my fist around a pike.
"There is a battle. Get into formation." Olden said tersely.
I dreamily stumbled to where I was pushed, and ambled vaguely forward as the others began marching. Marching. I stared at the billows of ash in the air. They didn't remind me of anything. The sky was gray and starless. I thought perhaps it should be another way, but then forgot about it. It seemed like the kind of thing that might bring up memories.
With a cry of trumpets and a hellish scream and clatter, I was plunged into the chaos of battle. Men, elves and yrch with their faces transformed into inhuman masks of fury yelled and swung their swords. Made inhuman noises when they were hit. I stood forlornly, wondering what I should do. I didn't really care.
Suddenly I saw a face, then looked away in shock. More memories were flooding into me than I had known since I was unchained from the iron wall. A fair elven face. Familiar.
"Prestanneth! Brother!" I called. He looked up, confused. I strode towards him. "It is me, Awarth, your brother! I have found you, my brother! I thought you long dead!"
He saw my face, and then his face too was twisted in rage.
"How dare you! How dare you profane the name of my brother!"
"No, I am Awarth." I lifted the silver elven brooch than I kept under a fold of cloth, unable to part with it but unwilling to look at it and its memories.
"You! Foul orc! You defile the beautiful name of my brother as you defiled and plundered his body! You shall die this day!"
"Mother baked more bread than we and all her friends could eat. We fed it to the birds of the would. We could run forever in the eternal twilight of the dawning of the world. Elbereth's scythe were my favorite stars."
He looked incredulously at my twisted lips and scarred face, my flattened, bent nose and lumpy flesh, the filth upon me.
"My brother!" He embraced me. Tears were in his eyes, and it was with love that he slipped a knife into my back.