Incunabulum 9: The Sign of the White Hand
Saruman stepped into the lift at Orthanc and pressed the button, chuckling to himself in a sepulchral tone. He shot up to the top storey and entered his room, glancing about as he did so to make sure everything was as he had left it, and humming snatches of one of his hit tunes.
"Ah, my little Palantir," he said, approaching the table on which it rested. "Did you miss me while I was gone?"
He put his hand over the black spheroid and closed his eyes. In a moment the Great Eye was fixed on him.
"Well?"
"I shook them up a good bit," said Saruman with a snigger. "It never entered their heads that one of their number could join the orcs."
"What did you find out?"
"I had the room bugged—a new invention, by the way; remind me to show it to you sometime—and I heard everything they said. They think it's one of Thranduil's people. Just what I would have expected myself, knowing that reprobate. They won't go looking for him, though; they're far too occupied at present. I'll have ample opportunity to find him first."
"Well, hurrah for you," said Sauron drily. "And what happens when you find him?"
"If an elf is working for the orcs, why not for us? He'd be useful here. I could use his genes for my patent-pending uruk-hai."
"I wouldn't advise it. It would only weaken the strain. But I'm working on the Mirkwood problem right now and he might provide useful information. Have him interviewed when he comes in…if you find him, of course, which I think unlikely."
"That just shows how little you know of my uruk-hai," said Saruman loftily.
"Oh, get over yourself," said Sauron.
It seemed like any ordinary day in the Misty Mountains until the strangers showed up. They arrived about noon—seven hulking figures that looked like something dragged out of a cave troll's den. They all carried old-model orc swords and had white hands plastered on their faces.
"Who's in charge here?" asked the foremost of them, which was always the first question an orc ever asked a stranger.
"I am," said the uruk chief. "What do you creeps want?"
"They want to see the sword-maker," said the snaga sentry who had guided them in.
"Flea! Louse!" cried the captain, taking a swipe at the sentry. "Did you tell them he was here?"
The Misty Mountain orcs had made great profit off of Hrothmar's (or Grobber's) work over the past few decades and they kept his whereabouts a great secret, lest he be stolen by a different tribe.
"We heard it from a dwarf," said the uruk-hai, "but you can't believe a word they tell you, so we came to see for ourselves. They say you have an elf making swords for you."
"And what if we do?" said the captain. "This here is Sunday and we're only open during business hours. You'll have to come back tomorrow if you want any blades."
"We don't want blades; we want to see this elf for ourselves."
"What do you think we run here—a variety show? Move along, you slobs!"
"Ha!" said the lead uruk-hai. "It's just as I thought. You haven't got any elf smith at all. You're making it up."
"That so, eh?" said the captain. "Then where do you think I got this?"
He drew his sword from its scabbard and held it up to the light. It shone with the white of steel and for an instant along the blade's edges ran a glitter as of water in moonlight. The orc captain dropped it back into the shadows but still it could be seen faintly with shapes and shadows moving over it like ripples on a stream. The uruk-hai had to admire it in spite of themselves.
"Well," said the leader, "you might have stolen that."
"The ghash I did! I was the one who got the stinking elf in the first place!" cried the captain. "I know what I'm saying, you muckworts! Do you want to know what this blade feels like, too?"
"Prove it, then," said the uruk-hai, with his arms across his chest.
"I'll prove it all right, slimeface. Just wait!"
He gave a sharp order and several small orcs scurried off down a dark tunnel. They were gone for a long time. When they reappeared they were dragging something by chains—something that seemed very unwilling to follow them into the orc hall. No wonder: Hrothmar's infrequent visits to the upper caves were always enlivened by racks, whips, thumbscrews, and other instruments of torture.
He came out at last, but the uruk-hai found to their disappointment that there was very little to be seen of him. He may have once been well-built for an elf, but he was now skinny even for an orc. Through the various gaps in his grey clothing his bones could be seen with only a thin layer of skin stretched tightly over them.
"This ain't no elf smith," said the uruk-hai leader. "This here's the leftovers from Sunday dinner. You couldn't boil him up and get a pint of broth."
"He can make swords, though," said the captain proudly.
"How much do you want for him?"
"He's not for sale."
The uruk-hai began to list ascending amounts of money, but the orc captain was not to be bought over.
"Listen, he's mine," he said. "Get out."
The uruk-hai were losing patience. "Who's to say he's yours? We've as much right to him as you have. Did you take him prisoner?"
"Yes," said the captain.
"No," said one of the other orcs, then ducked as the captain swiped at him.
"There. You see? You took him, so we can take him."
"Go ahead," said the captain.
The next minute he was very sorry he had said it. The uruk-hai drew their swords and began slashing in all directions and the orcs, though not entirely taken by surprise, were appalled at the skill and energy of these foreign life-forms. All of the Misty Mountain orcs who were not killed retreated shrieking up various tunnels, the captain among them, leaving their slain comrades behind.
"Get up, snaga," said the uruk-hai chief to Hrothmar, digging him with his toe.
Hrothmar got shakily to his feet and looked about him. "I'm not a snaga," he sniffed, rubbing his nose with the back of his hand. "I'm a full-grown uruk."
"Come on," said the uruk-hai. "You're coming with us."
As unpleasant as his life had been in the orc dens, Hrothmar was suddenly afraid to leave it and enter into the strange, big world he had forgotten.
"I don't want to," he said sulkily. "Look what you've done to my friends." He had never thought of them as his friends before, but they had been his only companions for sixty years and he was already beginning to miss them.
"You don't have no friends. Now look sharp, before the rest of the lot come back."
"I won't," said Hrothmar. The uruk-hai made a grab at him but he ducked and, taking his hammer from his belt, he flung it with elven accuracy at the chief's head. To his amazement and dismay it bounced off the uruk-hai's skull without making any visible impression. The chief roared with rage and pounced on him. He grabbed Hrothmar by the neck, raised him above his head, and dashed him down on the floor of the cave.
Hrothmar lay quite still.
"Now look what you've done," said one of the under-uruk-hai. "The boss said he was to be alive and unspoilt. You'll be catching it now."
"He's alive," said the chief, looking uncomfortable.
"Not moving, though. I'm not lugging him back."
"He can walk," said the chief, groping with his toe into the small of Hrothmar's back. Hrothmar gave a squirm.
"Get up, you slug," said the chief. "Stop fooling around. Give me any more trouble and you'll wish you'd never been born."
It had not taken Hrothmar long to learn that though orcs employ various invectives, they have only one or two threats. This does not really matter, of course, as the two most common ones fit almost any occasion.
Hrothmar picked himself up out of a pool of his own blood and fingered the broken skin on the side of his head gingerly. It hurt a good deal, but he had grown tough and was able to reflect with satisfaction that he would probably have a beautiful scar there. Like all the other elves, he had always avoided getting scars of any sort and one of his most upsetting acquisitions as an inmate of the orc dens was a growing collection of them. But he had soon learned that orcs view scars much the same way elves view their hair. They were very proud of them and were always on the lookout for a chance to get a really distinguished one. They even made medicines purposely to leave a large brown scar behind. This made the medicines more painful, but the orcs did not mind that.
Another kick to his back convinced Hrothmar that these new masters were to be obeyed. He turned and shuffled after them, still dragging his chains, which the uruk-hai had thought wise to leave on him. They turned down an exit tunnel, chasing a few fugitive orcs before them, and emerged onto the mountainside in the bright light of noon on a sunny day.
"Here, what's up with snaga?" said one of the uruk-hai. Hrothmar was writhing on the ground with his arms over his head.
"I can't go on," he shrieked. "It's too bright. It's too horribly bright."
"Stop that shrieking; you sound like a girl. You'll go on, all right, or I'll stick you like a pig."
"I can't," whimpered Hrothmar, but a hearty jab in his shoulder changed his mind. He got up and stumbled on, one hand over his eyes and the other out in front of him. One of the uruk-hai had got out a whip and began to crack it at intervals behind him. They soon struck a mountain track—they had marked it with a white hand on a tree—and followed it southwards, still unpursued by the other orcs, who couldn't stand the daylight, either.
At sundown they kept on, without any sign of stopping for supper. Hrothmar had been whimpering to himself nearly the whole time—softly at first, so as not to get hit with the whip, but gradually growing louder as he grew more crazed with pain and thirst.
"Steak. Steak. Kidney and steak. Chops, pork, liver and beans. Beef chicken sausage suet…"
"Here, enough of that," said the uruk-hai directly in front of him. "Shut up, you're making me hungry, hear?"
"No stopping tonight," said the leader. "Eat on the road." And he began to pass back hunks of hard, dark bread.
Hrothmar didn't have the jaw muscles to eat it, so he put one end in his mouth and sucked on it until another uruk-hai finished his own and took it from him. His hunger somewhat abated, he noticed that it had grown dark and, now that he could see without squinting, he looked round at the novel immensity surrounding him.
There were strange lights up in the sky, higher up than the ceiling of any cave—little lights that shone and sparkled, but not like the sparks from his forge. Something stirred in the back of his mind. He thought he had seen these lights before somewhere, but he could not remember where or how. In fact, it had been a long time since he had tried to remember anything of his past. All he now knew of his old life was that remembering it brought pain; and so he had tried to forget instead.
But the lights were familiar and not painful. They did not hurt his eyes like the sun. Hrothmar craned his neck to look up at them and fumbled in the recesses of his mind.
"Get a move on, maggot," said the uruk-hai behind him, giving him a shove and a blow from the whip for good measure. Hrothmar stumbled on and the lights were forgotten.
Meanwhile they had entered a dark gulley lined with boulders and were making their way down to the mouth of it. The opening was narrow and flanked by a stunted tree on one side and a huge boulder on the other. Hrothmar, bent nearly double so that his knuckles dragged on the ground, heard a piercing scream, jumped, and looked up just in time to see the Misty Mountain captain leap from the tree straight at the uruk-hai chief. The chief glanced up and swiped at him with his sword, chopping his head off. At almost the same instant they were assailed on all sides by orcs of various sizes all screaming and swinging swords.
The battle was brief and conclusive. The uruk-hai were well-trained and knew about forming ranks and fighting as a unit—something the orcs of the Misty Mountains had never figured out. The unslaughtered orcs soon fled howling back into the mountains, and the uruk-hai sheathed their swords and looked about for Hrothmar.
He was on the ground beside his erstwhile owner, pawing in the dirt feverishly, too intent on his search to heed the shouts of the uruk-hai. At last his groping fingers found what he was looking for and he snatched it up. It was two chains tangled together—on one hung the charm that Elvisir had given him long ago and which the orc captain had kept for years in firm belief of its possessing magical powers. On the other hung the brass button. Hrothmar tugged the button's chain free from the snarl and threw away the charm.
"Get out of that, thief," said the uruk-hai chief, grabbing Hrothmar by what little hair he had left and jerking him away. "If you need anything, Saruman will see you get it—and a lot more, if you don't look sharp. Now march!"