CHAPTER TEN

On the third-to-last stair, much too late to stop herself, Eicys glanced up and found her field of vision completely blocked by a scarred metal breastplate. She locked her knees in a frantic effort to brake, overbalanced, and toppled down the remaining two steps to crash face-first into a veritable mountain of muscle, claws, and steel. It was the same uruk who'd awoken her that morning.

Eicys made a noise best recorded as "eep!" She staggered backwards and fell hard, spilling most of the medicine that hadn't already sloshed all over the uruk. He looked down at himself irritably, and started towards Eicys. She threw an arm over her head to ward off the blow – sending what remained of the slop straight into his face.

There was a dead silence as the creature grimly wiped sludge from his eyes and reached down a hand yet again.

And pulled her to her feet.

Eicys blinked. "Um," she said, hastily smearing medicine off her front. "Um, sorry – I'm sorry. I didn't mean to – I… Um… You're not mad?"

He shrugged, tasted some of the goop, and spat it out again immediately. "Morgoth – tha's worse'n th' sludge they serve up in th' mess hall." He spat again, lips peeling back from crooked fangs in disgust. "What is it?"

"It was for the wargs," Eicys said faintly.

"They put you in th' warg pens?" he asked, eyes narrowing. With nothing else to do, Eicys nodded. "Huh," grunted the orc, and shrugged again, looking uncomfortable.

Eicys wasn't paying him a lot of attention, though – glad as she was to discover she was going to stay in one piece after that little fiasco, she'd lost the medicine she was supposed to be delivering. "The cook is gonna kill me," she mumbled aloud as she surveyed the mess.

"Yeah, probably," he agreed.

Eicys realized he was completely serious. She bit back a moan.

"But even if he doesn'," the uruk added, "y' won' las' long in th' pens. Y're too little. Tha's practic'ly a death sentence."

"Oh," said Eicys.

After a long pause, the uruk asked, "Aren' y' goin' t' say anythin'?"

"Thank you," said Eicys hollowly. She gathered up the empty buckets. "I'd better go," she said.

"Stop," he said. Eicys looked up. "Give me those," said the orc, and grabbed both buckets out of her hands. "C'mon."

With no other choice, Eicys followed. To her great annoyance, they reached the exit in less than two minutes. To her greater annoyance, they kept going right on past it.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Th' dungeon guards change shifts righ' abou' now," he said, nodding at a descending staircase. "If we catch one, you c'n – hey! You!"

An orc was coming up the staircase toward them. Eicys' companion darted forward and grabbed it by the collar. "Don' give me tha' innocen' look," he snarled. "I know it was you."

"It wasn't!" the orc blurted reflexively. "I didn't do it!"

Something gleamed in the big uruk's eye: an emotion that was not triumph, amusement, or disgust, but had decided elements of all three. "Yeah, y' did," he countered. "I know all abou' it."

The smaller orc shrank back, nervously licking its thin black lips. "How?"

"Are y' interrogatin' me," asked the uruk, "or beggin' for y'r life? 'S y'r choice, 'f course."

The orc stared at him. The giant rubbed a thumb up and down the hilt of his scimitar, wearing an expression that would make a shark look like the winner of the Most Charming Smile Award.

"Whaddayawant?" the orc muttered at last.

"Y're a dungeon guard, righ'?"

"Yeah…?"

"Y're workin' in th' warg pens from now on." And without further ado, the uruk plucked the spear from the erstwhile guard's grip and dumped both buckets into his arms. "Go ask th' cook for another batch 'f medicine."

"Wha – but – "

The uruk folded his arms, tipped his head to one side, and said nothing. In the most threatening way possible.

"Yeah," the orc mumbled, staring at the heavy cords of muscle in his adversary's arms. "…Yeah. Right. Wargs. Uh – so ya won't mention…?"

"Get goin'!"

The orc fled, clutching both buckets to his chest.

Eicys cleared her throat nervously. "What… what did he do?" she asked.

"I haven' got th' faintest idea," said the uruk.

He quirked a bitter half-smile at Eicys' expression. "Th' thing abou' orcs," he explained, "is tha' they've always done something they don' want y' rattin' them ou' for. I haven' found one yet who hadn'."

"Oh," said Eicys, bemused. "Well. Um, thank you."

He paused, and looked at her in suspicion and surprise. "…Yeah," he said. "I mean – Here's y'r spear. Y're a dungeon guard now, righ'?" Eicys nodded obediently, dazed by her sudden good fortune.

"An' y' owe me a favor," the uruk added, the way someone might tack on a meaningless social nicety like "please," or "my, this roast is really excellent, Mrs. Barlowe."

Eicys nodded again. It was suddenly dawning on her that everything was working out perfectly. She wanted to hug somebody – but since the big uruk was the only person around, that wasn't really an option. She beamed up at him instead, and clutched the spear against her chest. "Thank you," she said. "This is great."

"Er," he said, looking more surprised and suspicious than ever. "Yeah." He stared at her intently, as though waiting for some kind of sign. Eicys abruptly remembered his earlier comment about her eyes, and drew back in alarm.

Just then, there was a deep, hollow thump, and then three more rapid beats.

"Food's up," said the uruk, as the drum sounded again. "C'mon, or we won' get any."

Eicys did not point out that this was perfectly all right by her – partly because she was trying to blend in here, and partly because her stomach was by now so empty she felt like it was trying to strangle her spine. Maybe she would find something to choke down, if they got there fast enough. So she crammed her helmet a little further over her eyes and hurried after the uruk, her armor clanking as she ran.

"Slow down – wait for me."

"Can't y' go any faster?"

"Hey, we can't all be eight feet tall," said Eicys. "Be nice to us vertically challenged folk."

He raised his eyebrows. "Vertically challenged?"

"Well, what do you call someone too short to keep up?"

"Hungry," he said, picking up the pace again.

Eicys grumbled to herself but sped up, too, only stopping when they hit the scrum around the door to the mess hall. Orcs jostled, shoved, and shouted. Once or twice someone screamed. Eicys stared at the press of foul, stinking, heavily-armed bodies, and took a long step backwards.

"C'mon," said the big uruk, waving an arm. She tipped up her head to look at him nervously, and was surprised to see him draw back. Making eye contact was obviously not a valuable social skill among orcs. But he kept staring at her, with a kind of puzzled, irritated expectancy. All he said, though, was: "Jus' stick close behind me an' y'll be fine."

Eicys scooted hesitantly closer. The uruk nodded, turned, and plunged into the crowd. It parted hastily in front of him: for an eight-foot-tall uruk, traffic congestion was something that happens to other people. Eicys, almost stepping on his heels, managed to tag along in his wake with a minimal amount of jostling. Safely inside the mess hall, she turned and grinned at him. "Thanks," she said.

The uruk grimaced, waving his hands in the sign universally recognized as shut up! Eicys blinked, taken aback.

"Hey, hey, hey!" said a gravelly voice. "Lookit yew playin' nursemaid! Isn't that sweet, boys?"

The mess hall erupted in raucous laughter. The uruk's face set into a stiff stone mask.

"…Oh," said Eicys apologetically.

The first orc spat. "Proper liddle whiner yew've picked up there. Hand an' Eye, yer as useless as they come. Still can't figure out why the master didn't get rid of yew, ungrath."

There was the faintest shadow of a wince from the massive uruk at Eicys' side; he looked down at her as though expecting some sort of reaction. But she was busy bracing herself: from the tone of the orc's voice, that last word had been an insult about as deadly as they come, and she was wondering at what point things were going to get ugly.

…Uglier.

But he only growled, "Ah, shove it, Sorbak," in a tone more resigned than threatening. That was ridiculous, in her opinion: he topped every other orc – even the uruk-hai – by six inches at least. But he just shoved his way through the crowd to the front of the room, Eicys close behind, while insults bounced off his thick hide with renewed vigor, half in the Black Speech and half in a mutilated Common that was almost worse. As her companion filled two plates with a grotesque greyish slop and shoved one in her direction, the insults grew steadily more creative and obscene. Eicys tried desperately not to listen, but orcish shouts can be… penetrating.

One word stood out – that first insult in the Black Speech, ungrath. It made an appearance in nearly every comment, and every time it was thick with irony and malice, and every time Eicys' companion would jerk a little, his face blank and hard. The other orcs were almost howling at this point, and a few of them had begun throwing things. There would be a brawl any minute now. Why didn't he just –

Wham.

Eicys' companion had an orc by the throat. The rest of the barracks slowly settled back, smiling eagerly. Weapons that had been half-drawn at the uruk's sudden movement slid back into their sheaths.

"Evenin'," said the giant pleasantly – for him. "Wha's your name?"

The orc gurgled.

"Huh. Tha's almos' worse'n mine. Y' know my name, snaga?"

He opened his fist a little, enough for the orc to wheeze out, "'gra…"

"Tha's righ'. An' y' know wha' Sharkey was experimentin' for?" With terrifying ease, the uruk swung the smaller orc out at arm's length, so that its feet were kicking the air two feet above the ground. It clawed at his wrist and gasped for air. He regarded it a moment, his face clouding over with weariness and disgust, and then dropped it. Disappointment rippled through the crowd. The big uruk turned on his heel and slammed out of the room.

Eicys was left all alone in the middle of the hall, clutching her plate. The semi-strangled orc wheezed pathetically at her.

"No kidding," she muttered, and edged unobtrusively for the door.

LCLCLCLCLC

Taras was pacing.

Four steps, turn. Four steps, turn. Four steps, turn. Four steps...

His progress was marked by nothing but the faint clink of chains. Taras hadn't taken off his boots since the morning he'd discovered an enterprising rat chewing its way through the left one, and by now they were so worn down that even stamping his feet produced next to no sound.

Four steps, turn.

The guard would be changing again soon. That meant sound, voices. And there would be light – twenty-eight seconds of it. If it was the guard with the crooked leg, there would be thirty-five.

Four steps, turn.

The second bar was almost ready to come out. He'd need the light to see exactly where to pull, how to heave the iron free without leaving any telltale marks on the frame.

Four steps, turn. The rasp of metal on stone, the shuffle of straw, the feel of the icy, uneven floor under his feet. Four steps, turn.

Four steps right to left and left to right. Four steps front to back – but slightly shorter steps, because even though the cell was square, Taras never went close to the front wall unless he had to. He hated the tug of the manacle against his wrist even more than he hated anything else about this place.

They'd chained both wrists to the wall at one point – so tightly that when he sat down his hands hung awkwardly above his head. But he couldn't reach the food they threw in, and none of the orcs dared enter the cell to bring it closer; and since Saruman insisted that Taras remain alive, a whole gang of the foul things had been shoved into his cell one day to add more links to his chains. Starving or not, chained or not, he'd managed to break two knees and a neck before someone had the sense to club him sharply over the head.

Taras found out later that the sensible someone had been executed for taking such a risk with a valuable prisoner.

Four steps, turn. The chain scraped faintly along the floor.

He had woken up with a raging headache, a broken toe from the knee-snapping trick, and two chains that were long enough for him to reach his cell door – barely.

Four steps, turn…

They'd compensated for the added freedom by fitting his legs with manacles as well. Taras had compensated for the loss of freedom by spending two solid months scraping a single chain link against the floor until it gave way. Now his left wrist was the only one chained. Two months on that, another seven or so on the bars, and…

Four steps…

It would be difficult to get out with his legs chained together. He couldn't run very well. But he intended to do a lot more fighting than running, anyway. He wished – he longed, prayed, begged the Valar – to escape Isengard altogether… to see Dol Amroth again… to run a sword through that –

Taras stopped pacing abruptly, gritting his teeth in an effort to stop that train of thought. He wasn't going to get out, he wasn't going to see his family, he would never have revenge – or even justice. He would die here, in Isengard.

But he was going to take as many of these Morgoth-spawned vermin with him as he could.

A muffled yell snapped him out of his reverie, and he froze, one foot still in the air. That was no orc – that was a human, a woman. His foot slammed into the ground – three – and he darted to the barred window set into his door, ignoring the twist of pain from his shackled arm. It was dark as Sauron's heart except for a faint red-grey smudge at the far end of the hallway. Sound travelled much better than light in the black stone caverns beneath Orthanc.

The shouting resolved itself into words – very uncomplimentary words. The orcs were cursing, and someone was screaming in Rohirric. Her voice was raw with fear and fury, and it was punctuated by thumps, clatters, and shouts of orcish rage. Taras' fist closed around his length of broken chain. It was probably another Rohirric drudge, kidnapped and enslaved and eventually discarded. The last one had gone mad after only a few weeks, and had screamed for three days together – a faint, harsh noise that filtered through the halls and echoed relentlessly in Taras' head until it was abruptly cut off. He assumed a guard had lost its temper and been inadvertently merciful.

As girl's shrieks faded away, Taras leaned his head against the door and closed his eyes, pointlessly.

Everything was pointless. His world was sixteen paces square, dark as the depths of Mirkwood, unchanging except for the occasional sickening reminder of his own uselessness.

Don't worry, said Maenadan in his head. I've taken care of everything. You'll always be useful to me.

"Shut up," said Taras, and jumped at the sound of his own voice. Valar, he was losing it. He needed to do something: work on the loose bar, wear down the link on his chain, go through a few sword drills.

He ran an absent hand through his hair and went back to pacing, his head full of far-off screams and the voice of the man who had put him here.

Four steps, stop, turn.

Four steps, stop, turn.

Four steps…