Hi, everyone -- I hope this chapter will explain a bit more about Lynneth's reaction to Ulfakh. Thanks for all the lovely reviews -- I honestly hadn't expected to get even this much in the way of a response to this story!

III

The next morning dawned cold but clear, the storm of the night before apparently passing with the darkness. Lynneth pulled the covers closer to her chin and shivered, but whether she shuddered from the cold or the memory of her actions of the night before, she couldn't be certain. Really, where had she ever gotten the nerve? Although she had always been counted the bolder of the twins, with her sister preferring to stay indoors and work at her embroidery or sewing while Lynneth showed all the regrettable hoydenish behavior of a tomboy, even she was a bit startled by her audacity. To have invited an orc to sit down to supper with her, and then to have the temerity to give him instruction in table manners! Even now she could feel her cheeks flush as she recalled the way she had spoken to Ulfakh.

Perhaps it had merely been the knowledge that he had saved her from the boar. Surely if he had meant her any harm he wouldn't have come charging to her rescue. It would have been easy enough to let her die, after all. What would he have cared?

Indeed, that was the question that continued to trouble her as Lynneth reluctantly pushed back the blankets and felt the chill air strike her through the heavy linen of her sleeping shift. The water from the basin in the corner of the room felt almost freezing, but at least it helped to wake her as she splashed it against her face and then gathered up her gown and a clean shift from the carved wardrobe that sat against the far wall. The act of brushing out her hair and then braiding it for the day's tasks helped to calm her a bit, and after she was done Lynneth set down the brush and lifted her chin, feeling better able to face the morning -- and Ulfakh.

But when she looked into the smaller chamber where she had told him to sleep, she saw that he was gone. A mess of blankets and sheets on the floor revealed that he apparently had passed the night there instead of on the bed, but she could hardly blame him for that. The bed was a narrow, rope-suspended affair, and no doubt it had proved far too small for him. That didn't explain, where he had gone, however.

As Lynneth ventured into the great room, she thought she heard the familiar sound of an axe striking wood. She stepped to the front door and opened it, looking out into the clearing in front of the cottage, and immediately spotted Ulfakh.

He stood with his back to her, but there was no mistaking what he was doing. Even as she watched the heavy axe swung upward, then came down in a smooth arc against the great tree trunk Lynneth used as a platform for splitting logs. Immediately the large chunk of elm he had placed there shattered in two, and he gave a grunt of satisfaction as he bent over and added the pieces of wood to the impressive pile that had begun to grow a few feet away from him. She could see the steam of his breath in the icy morning air, and watched the sweat glisten on his massively muscled arms as he worked.

It was impossible not to admire the easy economy of his movements. Of course she had known he was inhumanly strong, but she knew just how difficult it was to split wood in such a way -- her own back and arms had ached for days after the first time she had been forced to attempt the task herself, after Timon had died. And her accuracy had never been that good.

After Ulfakh paused for a few seconds to wipe at his brow, Lynneth spoke. "Are you ready for some breakfast?"

He turned, and she barely kept herself from taking a step backward into the relative safety of the cottage. In the dimness of her firelit home the night before he had been frightening enough, but the morning sun was unrelenting in tracing every alien line of his face, from the gleaming reddish eyes to the sharp fangs that seemed to pull his mouth into a continual snarl. But she forced herself to remember that there was reason behind that bestial visage, and that he had slept beneath her roof and done her no harm.

"Yeah," he said, and leaned the axe up against the tree stump. Bending down, he retrieved a generous armload of wood and began to walk toward her.

Not wanting to wait until he had come close, Lynneth ducked back into the house and went on into the kitchen. She had banked down the fire for the night, but Ulfakh had apparently stirred it to new life before he went out to the yard to split wood. The flames danced happily at the hearth, and the room felt warm and comforting after the chill air outside. It was the work of a moment to fill the kettle and swing it on its trivet back over the fire.

Even as she was straightening up from her tasks Ulfakh entered the kitchen, going directly to the wood basket and dumping the freshly chopped logs there. His bulk still surprised her -- somehow he seemed to fill up the small room in a way that Timon, tall as he was, never had.

"Thank you," she said. "It was nice to come in and have the fire already going."

He nodded, but still with that half-puzzled look on his brutish features. Perhaps such pleasantries were as alien to him as his face and form were to her. But he had voluntarily gone out into the cold morning to prepare more wood for the fire, and he had gone quietly, without waking her. It was the sort of thing Timon might have done, once upon a time.

That thought disturbed her, so Lynneth turned from the orc and instead moved to the larder, where she retrieved the leftover bread from the night before, as well as some cheese, along with apples she had picked from a wild orchard only a few days earlier. The night before Ulfakh had shown no inclination toward anything but meat, but she thought she should try and see if he could vary his diet at least a little. Hesitating, she gathered up the last two of her precious eggs; her hens had never been very good layers, but lately they had been performing worse than usual, and Lynneth as yet hadn't been able to figure out why. She had been saving the eggs, but they wouldn't have lasted more than another day, and she thought Ulfakh probably needed them more than she did.

"Do you like eggs?" she asked.

Warily he looked from her to the pale brown ovals she held in her hands. "Bit slimy," he said, after a pause.

"Well, I would cook them!" she retorted. Really, did orcs use fire for any purpose except burning things down?

Again that watching silence. "I'll try 'em," he finally said.

"Good," she replied, and lifted the now-whistling kettle off the trivet to prepare a pot of tea. Like so many other things in the cottage, the tea had been a gift to Lynneth from Mirwen, her twin; Lynneth could not have afforded such luxuries on her own.

Ulfakh sniffed at the air as aromatic steam began to spill out from the heavy earthenware teapot. "What's that?"

"Tea," she replied, even as she reached up to retrieve her skillet from the rack that hung above the hearth.

"Never heard of it," he said, giving her a suspicious look.

That didn't surprise her; somehow Lynneth couldn't imagine a band of orcs sitting down for a spot of afternoon tea. But she said only, "Well, it will be ready in a moment. Then you can see if you like it."

And she busied herself with the skillet under the watchful eyes of the orc, all the while wishing she had some bacon to offer him along with the eggs. There were so many things she should have stocked against the coming of the winter and hadn't. She hadn't thought she would need them, living alone here with her misery.

The eggs were crackling away happily, and Lynneth turned to pour out the tea into the two deeply glazed brown mugs that matched the teapot. With a pang she thought of the last time she had done so for Timon. She had used up the last of her previous store of tea to give him a proper send-off. He loved it so, and she had thought that if by some unspeakable chance the world were to fall into shadow, a lack of tea would be the least of her worries. Even then she had not allowed herself to think what would happen if her husband never came home.

She handed the mug to Ulfakh, who sniffed at it, his broad nostrils flaring even more as he did so. "Smells like dead leaves," he said.

"It is dead leaves," she replied. "Just a special kind. Be careful -- it's quite hot."

He gave a grunting sound that might have been his version of a chuckle. Probably an orc's mouth wasn't as sensitive to heat as a normal man's. Hadn't orcs been bred by Morgoth in the bowels of the earth, lit by subterranean fires? But she noticed he blew on the liquid several times before taking a cautious sip. Then his heavy brow wrinkled. "Tastes like dead leaves," he commented.

Well, what had she expected? "It helps to wake me up in the morning," she said.

"Orc draughts're better for that," he replied.

Lynneth started to ask what an orc-draught was, and then thought better of it. She feared he might offer some to her if he had any on his person. Instead, she took a few sips of her own tea before setting the mug down on the kitchen table. Then she went to the skillet and removed it from the fire, and slid the eggs onto a plate. "You should have some bread with that," she added, as he took the plate from her.

"Stinkin' elf food," he said, his lip curling a bit.

"That's the first I've heard of it," she retorted, and went to slice herself a piece. She slathered it liberally with butter and took a generous bite. "Men and halflings and dwarves eat bread. I daresay even the men of Harad and Rhûn eat some kind of bread as well."

"Hmph," was his only reply, but he did not protest as she cut another piece of the heavy wheaten loaf and laid it on his plate. As she watched out of the corner of her eye, he picked it up, gave the slice a quizzical look, then began to use it to sop up the egg yolks from his plate.

Barely suppressing a smile, Lynneth took another sip of tea, then asked, "Have you been in the woods ever since -- " She faltered, wondering how she should refer to the defeat of the Dark Lord in front of him. Then again, did an orc even have sensibilities to be offended? " -- since the War ended?" she finished, feeling slightly foolish.

"Afore that," he replied, and took a gulp of his own tea. "I fought for the White Hand, not the Red Eye."

His words puzzled her, until she remembered the rumors of the orc legions the rogue wizard Saruman had gathered at Isengard. "So you were not with the armies of Mordor?" Lynneth inquired, feeling inexplicably relieved. If he had not fought in the Pelennor Fields then certainly he could have had nothing to do with the battlefield death of her husband.

Ulfakh shook his head. "Me and a couple of the other lads as survived the attack by the forest moved to the south, thinking we could pick up with some of the Dark Lord's troops. But we never made it that far before we heard the War had ended."

"So what happened to the other orcs?"

He gave her a scornful glare. "Uruk-hai, not orcs. Saruman bred us special. You ever heard tell of an orc who could stand the sight of the sun?"

No, she hadn't, and perhaps if she'd been thinking clearly Lynneth would have considered that as she watched Ulfakh chop wood in the thin light of a November morning. "Uruk-hai?" she repeated.

"Special orcs," he said, mopping up the last of the yolk from his plate and giving the clean surface a slightly regretful look. "Taller, stronger, smarter. Better," he added, in a somewhat belligerent tone that discouraged any further argument.

Lynneth wondered how much better they could have been if they'd been defeated before even joining in the great battle before the gates of Minas Tirith, but she held her tongue. Instead she asked, "And your companions?"

Ulfakh made a disgusted sound low in his throat. "Kordash got himself caught in a bear trap in the woods. Stupid sot. And then some bloody whiteskins caught sight of Muldag and me in the highlands about two days' march from here. Bastard looked like a porcupine from the arrows he caught, and I took off."

By "whiteskins" she could only infer that he meant men of Gondor. No doubt a hunting party had seen the fugitives and done their best to dispatch the two Uruk-hai. "So you've been hiding here ever since?"

Without meeting her eyes, Ulfakh nodded. No doubt for a warrior such as he skulking in the woods for such an extended length of time would be considered shameful, but she couldn't blame him. Alone, separated from his kind...what other options did he have?

Clearing her throat, Lynneth said, "And you told me you'd been watching me? All this time?"

"Past few months," he admitted. He lifted the mug of tea and drank deeply, despite his earlier comment about the liquid tasting like dead leaves. Perhaps it saved him from having to elaborate.

But she wasn't about to let the matter go so easily. "Why?"

He lifted his strange reddish-amber eyes to hers. "Heard you, once. You were going down the forest path, and you were singing."

Cheeks flushing slightly, Lynneth recalled that she often had sung to herself as she made her way through the forest. Her voice was sweet, if perhaps not suited to a king's hall, and she had sung to keep herself company and to keep the pain from overwhelming her as she went from her cottage to the tiny hamlet of Rinalduin to obtain the meager supplies she needed to get by. The old ballads had forced her to concentrate on remembering the words instead of feeling the absence of her husband as a constant throbbing ache, like a wound that had never really healed.

But if Ulfakh had watched her all that time, a savage Beren to her mortal Luthien, then it seemed as if her one refuge had been taken away. Even the woods she had thought could shelter her and keep her safe from the world had instead betrayed her by concealing Ulfakh's presence. How could she have not known he was there? True, she had sensed something, but only lately, not through all the months he claimed to have been hiding in the forest.

She wanted to weep. Instead, Lynneth forced a smile and said, "I'm surprised my unskilled voice didn't frighten you off."

Immediately he replied, "It was pretty," and then looked vaguely surprised at himself for saying such a thing.

His comment startled her as well; she wouldn't have thought an orc -- an Uruk-hai, Lynneth corrected -- might be moved by something as trifling as an old ballad sweetly sung. Then again, he had constantly surprised her from the moment they had met, so possibly it was time to revise once again her expectations of him. Perhaps it was somewhat disturbing to think that he had been observing her for so long, but he hadn't lifted a hand against her...only against the boar that had tried to take her life.

"I'm glad you were watching," she said swiftly, and was rewarded by that odd uplift of his mouth which must have been the orcish equivalent of a smile. Feeling awkward -- wasn't it strange that she should feel so at ease around this brutish, alien guest? -- Lynneth added, taking care to keep her tone light, "although I'm sure the boar feels differently."

At that comment he laughed outright -- a harsh, snarling laugh, perhaps, but a laugh nonetheless. Lynneth managed a smile, even as she wondered at herself. Odd as it seemed, she suddenly felt safe around him, and she realized that the resolution she had made the evening before to see him on his way after he had spent the night had faded like mist in sunlight. Perhaps there would come a time when Ulfakh decided to move on, but for now she knew there would be a place here for him as long as he wanted it.

She leaned forward, and took the empty plate from his hands. "If you're done splitting wood, there's a broken bit of the sheep pen that could use some tending to."

For a moment he gazed at her, seeming somewhat taken aback by her words. Then he said, with a gleam in his eyes, "Show me."

And she knew he wouldn't be leaving for a long time...