~0~0~0~
Gorluk scanned his eyes over the grassy hills and chewed his bottom lip in deep thought. It had only been a few hours since he and Faroth had started trudging beside to border of Fangorn forest in hopes of catching up to the remnants of the Fellowship, and so far they had no luck. As night began to fall, Gorluk wandered back to the night before when the patrol of Orcs that they had followed had been attacked by those strange men. Who were they? Were they natives to this country, or had they been tracking the Orcs like they had?
Gorluk stopped as Faroth suddenly began to sneeze repeatedly. "I-can-smell-a-fire!" Faroth explained between sneezes. The Orc peered up ahead and saw black smoke rising in the distance. It seemed to be coming from a small campfire, but he knew that he wouldn't be certain unless he came closer for a better look.
He glanced at Faroth, (who had found a way to restrain his sneezes by holding his paw against his nose) and two simple nods were all that was needed to tell what the other was thinking. They sank into the tall grass and began to crawl as quietly as they could towards the direction of the smoke.
Ten minutes later…
"GORLUK! IT'S THOSE HORSES AGAIN!"
"Be quiet Faroth, those men will hear you!"
Gorluk muffled Faroth's screams of terror by placing a hand over his mouth, and had to sit on Faroth's body when he made another attempt to run off. Thankfully they were hiding fifty yards away from the one hundred men who miraculously couldn't hear the commotion that was going on between the Orc and the Warg, but Faroth couldn't care less about the men because they were only ten yards away from the nearest horse. The Horse that stood close to them lifted his head only for a moment to stare at them, and then continued to munch on the grass.
"Calm down, that horse isn't even running!" Gorluk whispered. "You have absolutely no reason to fear them!"
"hrmp! Grphgbr bff wrsmn prmp grmph frth!" Faroth managed to growl back.
"C-can you repeat that?" Gorluk asked. The Orc removed his hand away from Faroth's jaw and allowed him to speak.
"I said that I have plenty of reasons to fear horses!" Faroth repeated.
Gorluk narrowed his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest. "Name five."
"Well…" Faroth began, trying to think. "First of all, most of them are twice my size and have gigantic and powerful hooves to trample me with!"
"…But you have much more powerful jaws that you could use to snap their necks in half, like you did to that Orc back at the Anduin river," Gorluk said.
"That was different; he was as big as I was!"
"But he also had an ax with him. Horses can't carry weapons."
Faroth huffed and tried again. "My second reason is that…. Ummm… my second reason is…"
Gorluk smirked. "Can't think of anything?"
"Look, I may not have a reason, but I can't help it!" Faroth wailed. "Maybe I was just born to fear horses the same way you were born to have a good heart!"
"But that's different—!" Gorluk began, but was cut off by the sound of horns. With a jolt they ducked further into the grass. Even though it was pitch dark, Gorluk very timidly lifted his head over the tall grass to see what was going on. Men were shouting and running toward their horses, but the atmosphere didn't seem at all frantic; some were calmly packing up tents and setting out fires with no hint of urgency, and didn't act as though they were being attacked. Gorluk was quick to guess that the horn had simply been a signal to move on.
Within minutes, all of the men were on their horses and were ready to ride off. The roar of hooves beating against the ground almost made the earth shake, and the voices of the men as they broke out into song seemed to echo through the hills. Gorluk stood up in awe as he watched the men ride away and fade into the night, not daring to breathe until their voices faded as well.
"Who the heck are they?" Faroth gasped in bewilderment.
Gorluk shrugged. "They're probably a different species of men or something. I've never seen anyone else like them."
Only for a moment, Gorluk and Faroth glanced at each other in the eye and made a silent deal to forget the argument that had happened moments before, and that it was no one's fault. Then Faroth smiled and trotted off into the field to scavenge for any food that the horsemen had possibly left behind.
But Gorluk stood where he was because he had something on his mind. After musing for what seemed like a few minutes, he called out, "Faroth?"
Faroth came running to him with the remnants of a chicken bone still in his mouth. "What is it?"
Gorluk shifted his feet uneasily. "I… well, it's just that… I have a slight feeling that we should follow those men for a while. Just to see who they are."
As Gorluk had guessed, Faroth was immediately jumping up and down, howling "NO NO NO NO NO! THERE'S NO WAY THAT I'M CHASING AFTER HORSES!" and ran off to the top of the hill.
"Faroth, get back here!" Gorluk shouted, and ran after him.
It was a good chase that lasted for several minutes, and eventually Gorluk caught up to Faroth and body slammed him to the ground for the second time that day. As they wrestled, none of them seemed to notice that they were in front of someone's small house, nor did they notice a red glow that was burning in the night and heading straight for them.
But as the ground began to shake, Gorluk and Faroth froze and saw the red light. The night air seemed to grow colder as they heard the cruel shouts and war cries of many men, and heard the clash of metal against metal.
And then, THEY appeared; at least a hundred, running up the hill. They were men with wild hair, and deep, sunken eyes. They wore ragged cloths, and thick fur boots (which to Faroth's dismay, was probably made from the fur of wolves and possibly Wargs). In their hands they carries swords and spears, and a few that were in the lead carried torches that burned with fire. As they came even closer, Gorluk and Faroth realized that they were shouting out words in their own barbaric language. But to Gorluk's horror, he could make out a few of the men yelling cruel words in Orcish. He understood then that whatever they were here for, they wanted blood and death.
"RUN GORLUK!"
Gorluk looked up and saw that Faroth was already dashing off. He slowly rose to his feet and tried to follow, but he stumbled and fell to his knees. He felt sick. He hadn't heard any words in Orcish for months, and to hear them again brought back harsh memories, memories of when he was certain that his comrades would kill him for making a simple mistake, or failing at a certain task, and they would loose their temper and raise their swords, shouting in Orcish, ready to strike down… but always a miracle would happen, a strange twist of luck, and Gorluk would live another day. But as he saw the army of men run closer and closer with each passing second, he knew that there was no possible luck in the world that could save him this time.
But strangely enough, he rose to his feet with a sudden determination. The men were only twenty feet away, and already a few of them had noticed Gorluk and were pointing their swords at him with wicked grins. Running was useless now. As he became nearly blinded by the bright fire that was rushing towards him, the small whispers of his thought that said he probably wasn't ready to die yet scurried to the back of his mind. He decided to face death straight on, and not try to run from it like his cowardly self would do.
But then his mind was filled with instant regret as one of the men crashed into him and stabbed him on his side. With a choking cry, he fell to the ground and felt someone stomp on his forehead. As he slowly began to loose consciousness, his last thought was that he hoped that Faroth was ok.
~0~0~0~
*Gorluk and Faroth awkwardly shuffle onto brightly lit stage*
GORLUK: *clears throat* "Ummm… I know what you're all wandering… we haven't done this before, but our author is forcing us to deliver the author's note to all of you viewers, as a way to provide comic relief…"
FAROTH: "And because she's too lazy…"
GORLUK: *slaps Faroth's head* "STICK TO THE SCRIPT! Anyway…" *Takes out a sheet of paper* "First off, she wants to apologize for not updating for several months… she says that she was having a lot of emotional problems early in the year, but is now seeing a therapist every week, and not to worry…"
FAROTH: "Yeah, and she's been listening to that 'let it go' song from the movie frozen at least twenty times a day through her IPod, as a form of inspiration to get through the healing process… which I really don't understand since that song is so dumb, and so is the movie!"
GORLUK: "You're just upset that she compared you to Sven."
FAROTH: "Well Sven the reindeer is dumb too! But at least that's better than being compared to Olaf the snowman!"
GORLUK: "Well I happen to like Olaf! Now can we please get back on topic?"
FAROTH: *mutters* "Sure thing, Olaf."
GORLUK: "Ok… It's still uncertain whether or not she'll be busy over the summer, but she promises that she'll try to update more often. And she apologizes for the strong lack of updates on her other two fanfiction stories, and will have those two updated BEFORE she starts making chapter 24 for this story."
FAROTH: "Well she better update fast, because the ending to this chapter is probably the biggest cliff-hanger she's made so far!"
GORLUK: "What do you mean?"
FAROTH: "You haven't seen it? It's right above our dialog."
GORLUK: *looks up and reads the bottom half of the chapter* "WHAT!? IS SHE TRYING TO KILL ME?!"
FAROTH: "No, I think she just did."
GORLUK: "She- she can't do that! The whole title is about me! The whole story was only supposed to be about me, but after a few chapters she threw you in there because of writer's-block! If she were to kill me now, she would have to rename the story 'The only Orc that was promised a happy ending, but eventually got killed off by the author because she's a hypocrite, and now his best friend is the main character'!"
FAROTH: "Ok, ok, so maybe she will let you live… can I announce the rest of the author's note?"
GORLUK: *crumbles piece of paper and tosses it over his head* "You might as well start taking over from here since I might be dead."
FAROTH: "Ok, great! Now, she's changed her profile in case anyone might be interested in checking that out, and will be happy to respond to any private messages or reviews. And the last thing is that even though she did promise to have this story finished by September, she's almost certain that she won't be able to finish by that deadline. Now, any reviews?"
*audience member raises hand* "YOU GUYS SUCK!"
GORLUK: "Who the heck was that?!"
FAROTH: "Oh that was just a guest review."
*other audience member raises hand* "Tell Tatharwen good luck with her writer's muse!"
GORLUK: "I know who that is!" *waves hand* "Thanks BrightWatcher! Your reviews mean a lot to us!"
*Fangirl squeal from audience* "GIVE ME THE ADORABLE BABY WARG!"
FAROTH: *Blushes* "Oh… hi Saren-Dipety…"
GORLUK: "Ok, that's all the time we have now! Hopefully you guys will see us in a week or two!"
FAROTH: "Or they might be seeing ME in a week or two since you might be dead…"
GORLUK: "SHUT UP!"
~Gorluk and Faroth
P.S.- Sorry that this chapter had to be rushed, I was doing everything I could to make up for lost time. And everything that my two OCs mentioned above is entirely true. I don't know if that should scare you or not…
Please review or PM your opinion on this chapter and the dialog.
~Tatharwen