Chapter Seventeen
Alfgard's Holdings
The rain pattered liquid darkness against the windows, but lanterns and a warm hearth kept the chill of the storm outside. However, it could not warm the chill that gripped the hearts of those gathered in the main hall of Alfgard's house.
"I can't believe it's happening again," sighed Erin, elbows on her knees and her head in her hands.
On the settee beside her, Linnet wrapped a motherly arm around the hobbit's bowed shoulders. "Try not to imagine the worst," the Rohirrim woman said gently. "Your friends are determined men, and Captain Tarannon's Rangers are the best in Gondor. They will find Sevilodorf."
"I hope so." Erin raised haunted eyes to watch the rain drizzle like tears down the darkened panes. "I surely hope so."
At one side of the great hearth, Russ' massive form hunched in grim stillness, while beside him Nik worked at a bit of whittling. Judging by the growing pile of shavings at the little Uruk's feet, however, his mind was not on creativity.
At the other end of the hearth another figure sat, Horus slim and dark. He clasped his fingers loosely between his knees as he watched Darien pace, then halt, then pace again before him. Finally, he cleared his throat meaningfully. He lifted his eyebrows when Darien stopped and looked down at him.
"You cannot help what is, my friend," Horus said, the liquid accent of Harad gentle in the tense quiet. "You must trust to what is being done."
Darien sighed and ran one hand through his already untidy hair. "I never thought of what it must have been like, the first time. When I was the captor and Mistress Sev's friends waited thus. Now … I can think of nothing else. I started this, Horus. I started all this."
A wordless rumbling from Russ' end of the carefully fitted stones suggested at least one person agreed wholly with that assessment.
"I wish I could help," said Nik, and his shoulders slumped as he looked down at the heap of pale, curling slivers at his feet. "At least last time I was there to help her."
Horus, however, stood and with a light touch on the shoulder turned Darien towards a nearby cushioned chair.
"You do not govern the hatred of other men," Horus stated firmly. "You are everything this Margul is not - foremost, a man with a conscience."
Darien sank into the chair, but then dragged both hands slowly over his face. Through his fingers he said, "If they do not find her - if she is -."
Quick brown fingers flashed before Darien's face in warding, startling him to silence. Fiercely Horus hissed, "Do not! You must not speak the ill you fear!" His expression then gentled and he added, "Trust her friends, Darien. Trust the fortune that has carried her thus far."
Yet the anguish that shadowed Darien's eyes did not lessen, and Horus dragged a wooden chair over to sit beside him. Where words of comfort failed, perhaps the silent company of a friend might help.
Moments later the front door thudded and footsteps thumped in the hall. Alfgard appeared, growling in distaste as he shook the hem of a rain-sodden cloak.
"All quiet," he reported, and shrugged off the cloak. There he scowled about him while he tried to find a safe place to deposit the wet garment. "I doubled our lads on guard, and Tarannon's fellows are all on alert. Cullen is not a happy boy, but he is a well-guarded one."
Erin looked up, eyes wide. "You gave him the extra blankets, didn't you? And the pie and buttermilk and cold chicken?"
Alfgard cast a wry grin. "Aye, lass, he's had supper twice over, and he is snug as bug."
She tried to smile, even though her brow crimped in worry. "Well, then he should be safe and warm tonight. Margul is only one man, anyhow, and if Cullen just stays quiet -."
"Don't worry, lass," Alfgard said, as Linnet rose to relieve him of his wet cloak. "Unless Margul is bringing a battalion of crazed orcs and mad Haradrim - due respect, Master Horus - there is no way he is getting to anyone here. Not even that blasted orc, Odd-nuts or whatever you call him. Now I hope we've some mulled wine about, as I'm chilled through."
Letting Linnet shepherd him, still muttering, Alfgard stumped away towards the kitchen. He never made it.
The front door slammed with a heart-stopping crash, and one of the stable boys slid into view. Barely keeping his balance at his sudden halt, he stared wild-eyed through strings of wet hair.
"Master Alfgard!" he cried. "The barn is on fire! Come quick!"
xxx
Guttural curses greeted the shower released from overhanging boughs by an errant breeze.
"He could've left us the fire," grumbled Ursak, cradling his bandaged stump.
"Nar, by now all the tarks'll be searching for those two." A second orc picked absently at a bloody ear, before drawing a taloned hand over various seeping scratches. "Boss is looking out for us."
Ursak sneered, "Not what you said the other day, Trog, when you were sucking marrow out of lizard bones. He's not doing this for us. He's only interested in that miserable Odbut."
The third orc shook his head. "Don't hold with that, I don't. Maggot got himself caught, he ought to stay caught."
Gnawing absently on the cleanly picked rib bone of an unlucky rabbit, Trog retorted, "You're a right daft chuff if you think the boss has gone to fetch him back. He's gone to make sure the bloody fool don't spill his guts to the tarks. Boss don't have no use for lads who can't do their jobs." He stared pointedly at Ursak's stump. "Something other folks ought to keep to mind."
"You'll eat them words!" Ursak snarled.
"Make me," growled Trog, flinging his bone into the darkness.
"I don't have to do nothin' the boss doesn't say."
"Dunghill rat."
"Lizard eater!"
A quick, hard-knuckled exchange of blows ended swiftly, when maimed Ursak broke away and scurried out of reach.
Still tied and miserable beneath his own small tree, Lugbac hunched his shoulders as a thin trickle of rain found its way inside the collar of his tattered shirt. Though cold, the orc welcomed the snuffing out of the fire. Darkness made it easier for him to rub the ropes joining his hands against the rough bark of the tree without being noticed. Still, he felt disappointed that the argument between Ursak and Trog had ended without a real fight. If these orcs got busy fighting amongst themselves, they would almost forget their prisoners. The less notice orc guards took of their captives, the better off those captives would be.
Keeping his movements slow, Lugbac continued rasping the rope up and down. He would not need to wear completely through, only enough so that he might break the cord. The silver-eyed man had been right: living among the tarks for the past few years had made him soft. Once he would have snapped the necks of that rabble in an instant, but he had tried to be good, and Sev had been caught. Lugbac froze as anger made his movements jerky. No, no, he must be careful, very careful while Sev remained within their reach. Gubbitch said not to let Sev get hurt, and Lugbac intended to fix it so these lizard eaters would never have the chance to hurt her.
The old one who died had called him Sev's pet; but that was not true. A pet was like Gubbitch's enormous toad. Something you kept around because you liked it, even though it didn't have any use. He wasn't a pet; he was a friend. Erin the Hobbit said so, and she also said friends were people who helped each other. He helped Sev. He picked plants and carried things for her; and she taught him to remember things and traded the stones he found for blankets and food. When they got away from the silver-eyed man, he felt sure she would help him trade for a new shirt.
The orc curled his upper lip at the thought of their captor. The man was bad. He would hurt Sev like he hurt the red-haired one. The man liked to hurt. Lugbac could tell by the way the other orcs looked at the man out of the corner of their eyes. The man told lies too. He had said orcs did not need friends.
Careful not to shake the tree, Lugbac resumed his task. Soon, he would be free. Then he would take Sev and go back to the stables where a warm fire, hot food and their friends waited.
xxx
The stable hand's cry of fire drew instantaneous reaction. Alfgard wheeled and snatched his wet cloak out of his wife's hands, Nik leapt up and exclaimed, "The horses!" while Darien and Horus sprang from their chairs. The three men stormed for the door, Horus and Darien grabbing cloaks as they went, leaving Nik to bounce in anxious confusion as he turned to his Beorning friend.
"Teach, hurry! We have to help!" he cried.
"Aye." Russ rose to his full height, his movements filled with vast calm. "But there is no need to blunder about in mindless haste. Come, and stay close to me."
Russ' composure seemed the only coolness in the entire stable complex, once they got outside. Men rushed about shouting in spattering rain, doors slammed in the barracks across the yard, and the soldier guards milled in confusion, while ruddy light flickered angrily within the dark bulk of the barn where rightly no light should exist. Someone flung open the barn doors and a chaos of glowing, roiling smoke burst forth.
Alfgard jerked to a halt, wide-legged in the middle of the yard, and bellowed to the world at large, "How in all the wide earth did this happen?"
"We don't know, sir!" one of the boys cried, dashing past with a sloshing bucket of water.
"We were all inside for the evening!" shouted another man. "Nobody was in the barn!"
With a growl, Alfgard resumed stomping towards the smoke and fire. "If I find someone left a lantern burning …"
Yet in moments, all concerned realised this could not be an accident. The reek of spilt lamp oil underscored the stink of burning straw, and smoke-wrapped flames leapt from a half-dozen points at the rear of the barn.
Darien stopped abruptly and turned to jab a stiff finger into Horus' chest.
"You're in no shape to get into this muck." As Horus' mouth opened to protest, Darien's tone sharpened. "Stay back, arm yourself, and help keep the watch. If someone wants a diversion, they've hit on the perfect tactic. Go!"
With a sharp nod, Horus spun and dashed back to the house.
Meanwhile, inside the barn a stable hand jerked open the grain room door and a burst of flame belched over his head. He shrieked and threw himself aside, but not without the loss of his eyebrows. A piercing whinny shook the smoke-shrouded rafters, and was echoed thrice over.
"The horses!" shouted Nik. "Teach, come on!"
Half a dozen men plus Nik and the Beorning plunged into the chaos, bitter smoke raking their eyes and clogging their lungs as they scrambled to unlatch stall doors. Other men ran past to heave buckets of water towards the flames, but the choking smoke and heat of burning straw forbade any but the hardiest to get close. Horses whinnied and flung themselves blindly around their stalls, some kicking the walls in their terror and confusion. Those nearest the door bolted to freedom the instant their doors were opened, but further inside the barn, smoke and fear bedazzled the frightened creatures' senses. One man tried to drag a panicked horse out into the aisle, but the animal wrenched free and dove back into its stall.
Human voices added to the cacophony, crying out in command, anger, frustration. Then from the roiling smoke, a huge figure emerged, Russ laying one massive hand on a stable boy's shoulder and moving him aside. Fumes wreathed his great body as if he stepped from Mount Doom itself, but his movements were calm and deliberate. He stepped into the stall and spoke quietly, commandingly, and the horse halted to eye him in trembling fear. At his voice, the animal snorted and jerked its head up and down, almost as if nodding in comprehension.
When Russ backed away, the horse followed on nervously mincing hooves. The stable hands fell back as down the aisle the Beorning went, opening the next stall door and the next, each time speaking to the animals within. Although men continued their frantic race in and out of the barn with buckets of water, the horses filed forth in orderly fashion.
"Follow them," he said, and pointed to Alfgard's wide-eyed, soot-smeared twins. "They will take you to a safe place."
The boys gaped an instant more, then wheeled and fought their way through the smoke towards the door. They glanced back only once to see that the horses were indeed trotting quietly after them.
xxx
If Horus trusted in anything, he trusted in Darien's instincts. In other days, the Silverbrook lord had led them into danger and peril many times with never the loss of a man, at least not until the tragedy of the cave. That turned to disaster mainly because the cave-in sealed Darien away from trapped men when they most needed his leadership. In Horus' mind, the entire situation could have been averted; Grady's lapse in sanity, his attack on Sev, Landis' death and Nik's subsequent killing of Grady. If the men had listened to Darien, many things would have turned out differently.
But they had not, and fate marched on. Now Horus prowled cloaked and hooded in a black October rain, with the weight of his curved Southron sword hanging at his hip. Ill chance moved out there in the dark, even beyond the deliberate firing of a stable master's barn and the attendant risk to men and animals. He could feel it, and Darien had felt it.
While in the yard, men ran and shouted and hurled water on the flames, he slipped as a shadow among shadows and the rain pattered down. The soldiers detailed to help safeguard Alfgard's notable guests did the best they could. Keen-eyed and alert, they kept moving about the perimeter of the stable property, watching the dark, soaked lanes and houses beyond. But they were a visible presence and that could prove less a deterrent to mischief than they hoped. A foe that could be seen was a foe that could be evaded. So Horus made sure he became almost invisible.
And thus, when he passed around towards the rear of the barn, he spied the pale stone shape of the icehouse, its pallid expanse marred by the dark slit of a partially open wooden door. Here the captive orc, Odbut, remained imprisoned in an inner room, and here the man Margul might well have secret business. Horus dropped immediately to a crouch and scarcely breathed, trying to reach beyond sight and hearing. Bitter smoke tainted the air on his tongue and the tumult continued on the other side of the barn. Above the shouts of orders and warning, a brief thudding of hooves marked more horses freed to safety in the training field. From his own vantage point he could see fire flickering through the boards of the barn, but the fact it had not yet broken through the roof perhaps meant the battle went well.
Eyes on the icehouse, he sank lower and waited in perfect stillness. Two of the soldiers passed by and never saw him. Nor did they notice the icehouse door stood ajar. For a long moment nothing else moved. Slowly Horus eased his curved sword from its scabbard. Low and stealthy as a desert cat, he crept forward.
The door stood ajar, but within, he heard nothing. Cautiously he pushed the door further open. It creaked slightly. Listening, he still heard only hollow, empty silence. He knew then that Odbut was free – but to do what?
His breath caught sharply and he spun and ran light-footed around the barn – towards the smokehouse where Cullen had been housed.
xxx
No one noticed when Nik joined the lads in their efforts, picking up yet another group of horses as Russ sent them outside. Following the stable boys' lead, he jogged his little group of charges to the exercise field, and there let them gallop off into the clean, rain-scoured darkness of the paddock.
Nik grinned and watched them go before turning and running back to the barn to see what other good he could do. He had no inkling that unfriendly eyes observed from the smoke-thick shadows.
"Watch him," breathed a dim shape crouched in the dripping gloom. "The next time you see him alone, you finish him. Make no mistakes."
"I won't, boss," growled a misshapen silhouette.
The man's hand shot out to seize his comrade's ratty shirt. "Foul this up, Odbut, and I'll have your guts for garters. Hear me?"
"I got it." The orc nodded jerkily, flinching from the Morgul sheen of silvery-green eyes. "No mistakes."
"All right." Margul released him. "We'll take care of our other loose ends. When you're done, disappear. Let no one see you."
Odbut growled assent, then slunk off into the rain-dark night. Margul and the two remaining orcs crept the other way.
xxx
The smokehouse door remained locked, so Horus set himself deep into the shadows, downwind of the fire's reek, to keep watch. Perhaps this Margul would be content with reclaiming his orc, but the Haradrim's instincts insisted that much more lay at stake here. That instinct kept him silent when a hunched figure crawled between outbuildings then inched towards the smokehouse.
The creature gestured in silent excitement as he discovered the locked door. Then further shades appeared cautiously out of the night – a second orc and a man. Horus knew it must be Margul.
"Excellent, Grom," the thin shadow whispered, revealing a flash of teeth and pale eyes. "If my young friend is here, we can repay him and leave. Odbut will take care of the Uruk. With those problems out of the way, we can take our full measure of entertainment from our delightful guests back at camp then move on to pastures new."
Though his mind remained clouded by illness, Horus realised instantly what these words meant: a third orc lurked somewhere nearby. Nik was in immediate peril; this trio intended to kill Cullen; and Sev and Sira would suffer horrendously if Margul escaped tonight.
What to do? Horus struggled to find the precision of thought that had eluded him since agreeing to be 'ill'. If he confronted these enemies here and now to save Cullen, he would probably die in the attempt. Yet such a death would not serve its full purpose, if Nik remained elsewhere imperilled and unawares. Nik should be warned, but if Horus sneaked off to alert the others, Cullen would be dead before help arrived. Horus needed time - not a lot - but enough to cover two places at once and stay alive to alert the others.
It was the oldest trick of all, he mused wryly as he scooped up a handful of dirt. But enemies throughout the ages had recoiled from the scratching of a rat then paused and waited to be sure that it was no more than a rat.
xxx
At the gate of the paddock a chill, damp breeze gusted in a spray of unseen rain, but the air thus brought was sweet and clean. Nik coughed to clear the acrid smoke from his lungs and inhaled deeply. Heavy bodies jostled anxiously at his shoulder and a big muzzle blew warmly and shoved at his back.
"Be patient, now," he said and flung the gate open wide.
Nik grinned at the release of another pair of horses, which fled in a glad drumbeat of hooves into the haven of darkness. Between Teach's uncanny way with animals and the quick actions of all helping, the last of the horses was now safe, and the little orc had never felt more proud.
But his smile fell as an all too familiar smell reached his nostrils, and a shiver of ice shot down his spine. He spun in time to see the blade coming towards him.
xxx
In a quick motion Horus flung his handful of dirt and pebbles to rattle upon the path beside the smokehouse. Instantly the shadowy figures of Margul and the two orcs crouched and froze in place. He waited. They waited. The Haradrim grimly smiled. So, these thought their resolve a match for his, did they? The breeze still blew from them to him, carrying his human scent away from the orcs.
Stealthily he scooped up more pebbles, and watched until the pale oval of the man's face, yonder, turned to look the other way. The second handful he threw harder, and shrank almost flat against the muddy earth when they spattered in the darkness beyond the little building. Horus looked on as the orcs flinched and sprang upright, blades glinting dully in their hands. More calmly Margul eased back from the smokehouse, hissing a low command that drew the orcs after him.
Horus averted his eyes and lay, belly-down in the muck. 'Think like a rock', Evan or Neal might have said, and this he did, in the perfect stillness of a Haradrim warrior. Even without looking, for a direct gaze might draw their attention, he knew the orcs scanned the shadows with their preternatural night vision. Thus Horus remained prostrate with mud soaking through his clothing from beneath and rain pattering from above, and barely breathed.
xxx
Nik had fought, oh yes; he had fought, for survival or meat or a chunk of bread in those bleak, hopeless days Before – before Teach, before a warm hearth and a barn full of sweet hay and kindly dogs to lay at his feet in the evenings. And Nik fought now, tooth and claw, elbow and knee, rolling over and over in the muck and the rain whilst the rank odour from his attacker's thrashing body assailed his senses.
The other outweighed him by two stone or more, hard muscle and brutally tough sinew that bore him down and struck with bludgeoning effect. But Nik was strong and he surged into his foe with desperate fury. Black blood soured his tongue as he bit down on cloth and flesh, a foul-breathed snarl blasting his face when they rolled over again, and always he wrenched that jagged blade away from himself. Death trembled at the end of that sinewy arm, rusted steel jamming into the dirt beside his shoulder as he flung his wiry strength hard into the other orc.
Nik had fought, he still knew how to fight, but one dreadful question remained: would he be strong or clever enough this time to win?
xxx
On the other side of the barn Horus heard continued activity, shouts of encouragement and direction. Closer at hand he perceived fainter sounds, the scrape of soft footsteps in wet earth, a brief, muttered rasping of voices, one human, two orcish. He lifted his head and from his badger's-eye view he saw Margul and his two minions lifting into a crouch and moving toward the rear of the smokehouse. Silently Horus picked more pebbles out of the muck, and then rose just enough to hurl them with all his strength – this time to clatter in autumn debris behind the unsavoury trio.
The orcs sprang forward and wheeled in opposing directions, weapons ready.
"Something's out there, boss!" one of them hissed.
"Stand fast, fools!" spat Margul, although the pallid gleam of his face shifted to and fro in the rainy darkness. "It's nothing but -."
Horus' fingers found three egg-sized stones and he rose up, threw them with all his strength and was rewarded with the triple-whack of stones hitting wood. The orcs leapt off the ground and reversed their directions – and Horus let out a scream that pierced ears for half a mile around. Up from the muck he sprang, and still screeching the terrible Haradrim war cry he charged, curved Southron sword flashing in the rain.
xxx
One of Alfgard's twins stumbled across the yard with the burden of two buckets of water, his wiry form gallantly bending to the effort even as a burst of hacking coughs shook him. A pair of enormous hands reached down and plucked the buckets from his grip.
"Go sit down, boy," Russ rumbled. "You have done enough."
The lad looked up, his wide eyes two gleaming holes in a face masked with soot. He coughed again and rubbed a grimy hand under his nose.
"Thank you, sir."
Russ, however, did not wait on the lad's thanks but strode into the cloudy darkness inside the barn. Of some relief was the fact that as smoke increased, the flames sputtered out. The fire fighting efforts of all were paying off, though Russ imagined Alfgard would have considerable cleaning up to do. Seeming impervious to the fumes, the Beorning walked through the miasma and heaved both buckets as if emptying teacups; another angrily glowing set of embers hissed to steamy dimness.
Turning stoically, he paced back outside, and only then exhaled the great breath he had held all that time. Truth to tell, the smoke was as hard on him as anybody, but a man after all had to keep up appearances.
Thereupon he promptly gagged on a chest-full of gunk, dropped both buckets, and bent with both hands on his knees to cough himself dizzy. While he tried his best to hack up a lung, someone helpfully decided to thump his broad back, and between choking gasps he wondered what fool ever thought beating a man would help him breathe. He decided as soon as he got some air, he would tell whoever it was what he thought about it.
"Take care, Master Russ," said Lord Darien's voice, evidently the owner of the offending fist. "You've done noble service, but we'd not want you dead from the effort. You and Nik make quite a team."
In the absence of any proper response, Russ hacked and spat black stuff and coughed once more. Then he straightened and drew a deep, cleansing breath of air. That breath stopped sharp as a crazed scream ripped from the darkness.
"NIK!" Russ shouted in a blast of sound that overrode a second hellish scream.
Someone was out there and Nik was nowhere in sight and Something Was Terribly Wrong. In one bound, Russ moved at a dead run, something nobody in that yard had ever seen a nine-foot tall bear-man do.
xxx
The pair of orcs flew from Horus' shrieking charge as if shot from a catapult, but Margul proved of another bolt of cloth. With a scarcely human snarl, Margul swept a sword from its scabbard and lunged savage as a lynx; steel slashing in a deadly cut that Horus only barely warded. Blade struck blade with numbing force then bound together and twisted free, Horus flowing into the dance of the sword by sheer instinct. Yet in three strokes he realised he had ill-chosen his match, for illness weakened him and Margul hammered into the attack with ruthless fury.
Back Horus stepped, and warded and struck and backed again – and then broke away to seize another handful of wet earth. Only a swift overhead ward deflected Margul's down stroke, and Horus flung the dirt towards his opponent's face. Margul yowled in fury but by now a cacophony of voices battered about the stable yard, and with a final curse, the man spun about and ran after his two now-vanished orc allies. Weaving, Horus braced himself straddle-legged with his sword as a cane, and silently blessed fortune that he still breathed.
xxx
Russ saw it all between one pounding leap and the next - Nik and a strange orc tumbling locked in mortal combat in the dark, trampled muck before the paddock gate. The dull flash of a rusty blade, the snarl of jagged teeth - he saw, and answered with a roaring bellow of his own. The yards between passed beneath his mighty pace like miles, but then he was upon them.
A distant corner of his mind noted and dismissed the fact it was Odbut, last seen as a prisoner in Alfgard's icehouse. The huge man never even broke stride. One great hand smote like a bear's paw, clubbing the enemy orc into the air and slamming it into the gatepost. In the next leap, Russ seized the creature in both hands and, roaring, he hurled it headlong to soar with arms and legs thrashing until it collided with solid ground. A single mighty step put him on the creature, where it scrambled desperately but far, far too slow. He slammed both hands into ragged cloth, and heaved it off the ground and airborne once more. Odbut yowled like a scalded cat ere slamming to earth again. This time the orc did not try to go anywhere. Instead, Odbut lay gasping for air that did not seem to come, while several sets of shoes and boots arranged themselves around the orc's prostrate form and torchlight flickered above.
Growling deep in his chest, Russ stormed towards them, fists clenching and unclenching, his jaw clamped under his dark beard. He had fought too many of this creature's kind to feel the least remorse or pity; Sauron's minion it had been and in its heart, so it remained. For willingly acting as the tool of evil, the orc would die.
Or so he planned. The plan did not quite work out.
"Neat bit o' work, Russ," said a gruff voice, which belonged to one of the pairs of shoes surrounding the orc.
Russ halted and lifted his murderous gaze. Gubbitch's homely features twisted into something resembling a wry grin.
The old orc added, "While we take care of this un', tha might want to check Nik is in one piece."
Like a gust of wind through a window, alarm swept anger back, and Russ wheeled about. Nik still sat on the ground in the rain and dark, coughing gently as he fingered his throat. Anxiety clenched in his great fists, Russ moved hesitantly closer.
"Nik? Are you hurt?"
The little Uruk looked up, and for an instant torchlight painted his rough features and gleaming eyes in a fey, grim cast.
But then he flexed one hand and looked at his waggling fingers, and said, "No, unless you count almost breaking my knuckles on his head."
The sigh Russ heaved seemed to come all the way from his enormous feet, and when it blew out, his great shoulders bowed.
However, all he said was, "Get up, Nik. You'll catch your death sitting in the mud."
Nik scrambled up and tried ineffectively to brush off the seat of his trousers. "Well, at least he didn't escape." He glanced at Alfgard, Gubbitch, Darien, several soldiers and assorted Rohirrim stable hands who stared back at him. "That would have messed things up, wouldn't it?"
Russ pinched the bridge of his nose while the others grinned and shook their heads. "Nik," he said, "you could have been killed. Don't … just try to be more careful, won't you?"
The runty Uruk beamed a rueful grin. "Oh, of course I will, Teach! Now I've got to wash this whole suit of clothes."
Before Russ had to think of a response to that, another figure appeared in the torchlight – Horus, who if anything looked even muddier and more ill-used than Nik.
"Horus!" exclaimed Darien, and started forward only to catch and stop himself. He frowned and rearranged his response to say, "What happened to staying back and keeping an eye on things? Don't tell me you found another orc."
Horus shrugged and white teeth glinted in the flickering light. "Actually, I found two. I tried to stay back, but I saw Margul and two of his orcs attempting to break in and assassinate Cullen."
"That confounded -." Alfgard exploded, and flung both hands downward in furious exasperation. "I knew this wretch couldn't escape on his own. Where did you see Margul? Where did he go? Is he dead?"
Horus halted and replied, "By the smokehouse. That way. And no."
"That does it - we're finding that snake if it takes us until midnight tomorrow!" Alfgard wheeled then jerked to a halt, scowling almost nose to nose with Gubbitch. "You fellows can see in the dark, can't you?"
Gubbitch cocked his misshapen head, eyes bright. "Ah reckon."
"Good. I'm getting a sword."
"Sevi!" Nik gasped, his eyes suddenly wide. "He must be going back to Sevi - Anardil and Halbarad missed him. We have to find Margul before he gets back to her!"
"Don't you think I know that?" Alfgard growled, and grimaced at his own gracelessness. "If you and Master Russ will help, I'll be glad for it. Meanwhile, someone go check on Cullen, pat him on the head and make sure the little fool is whole. And lock this filth up!"
Alfgard shot the cringing Odbut a venomous glare, and stormed off into the drizzling dark, shouldering through a gathering crush of well-smoked stable hands and befuddled Gondorian guards. Several of the men seized Odbut and dragged him off, writhing, snarling and trying to bite their hands, though evidently too battered and winded to put up any real fight.
In their wake, Darien eyed Horus critically and reached out to flick the ragged tear in his friend's shirt.
"Next time perhaps you will watch a little less zealously, hm?"
Horus smiled apologetically and took the torch from Darien's free hand. "I could not let them murder a boy, even a very foolish one."
"No," Darien sighed. "I suppose not. And I suppose I can't ask you to stay here and recover your strength, whilst we follow them?"
In answer, Horus merely eyed his friend patiently. Darien shook his head.
"Come, you'll need dry clothes - this will be a long night."
xxx
TBC …