Note: Thanks for the reviews! Sorry, events in this chapter do not actually include torture, except for some mental trauma.

Incunabulum 18: Torture

The armies in the valley were moving out, and Etwol had to fight against traffic to get back to Mordor. About four miles in, the road he was on crossed the main Mordor road running north to the Black Gate and Etwol had to stop at a red light that lasted nearly half an hour while a long line of Haradrim and elephants went by. He got through at last and ran on down the twisted, rutted road. Ahead loomed the dark tower of Barad-dur.

He arrived at the door out of breath and rang the bell hurriedly. The door swung open on its automatic hinges and Etwol entered, stopping before the orc behind the desk. The orc was looking at his clipboard.

"Message?" he said.

"I want to go up," said Etwol.

"I don't see you on the schedule. Can't see the Great Eye without an appointment."

Etwol cudgelled his brains for a suitable excuse. "The Mouth told me to come up sometime."

The orc flipped a page on his clipboard and, glancing down the columns, found an entry in the Mouth's neat handwriting:

Etwol – orc – unlimited access

"Ah, yes," he said. "You're all right, then."

Etwol got into the lift and pushed the button for the top storey.

The waiting room at the top was deserted. Etwol went quietly to the torture chamber and poked his head in, but all was dark and silent within. He opened the door to the roof and stepped through, but he did not go up the steps. He could hear the Eye and the Mouth talking up above.

"Come on, why not?" said the Mouth. "You never do anything fun anymore. You're getting too stressed out."

"It's a waste of time," said the Eye. "I have more important things to do. You do, too. Just give him to Shelob."

"What? Waste a perfectly good elf? And I already put him through psychological conditioning. I could bring him up here, if you want, and then you wouldn't even have to go down."

"Read my lips," said the Eye. "N-O."

Etwol slipped back through the door and once more entered the torture chamber. The prisoner was not on the roof, so he must be in here somewhere. He felt along the wall for a torch and suddenly heard across the room a scratching, scrabbling sound and a faint grunt.

Holding his glowing hammer warily, Etwol crossed the room. To a low table against one wall was strapped an emaciated elf. Somehow he had gotten one arm free and was tugging weakly at the straps that held down the other. His nail broke and he dropped his hand over the edge and onto the floor with a muffled groan.

"Valar," he cursed.

Etwol held up his hammer to get a better look at the elf's face. The elf, suddenly aware of him, shrank away.

"Back, filth!" he cried. "Get away, you foul creatures! I tell you I don't know anything."

It was Elvisir, but Etwol was only sure because he recognised the voice. Sixty years had not made as much of a change in the elf as the last six hours. He was bleeding freely from multitudinous surface wounds and his eyes were glassy with pain. His hair was still immaculate, but elves' hair somehow never seemed to get tangled or dirty no matter what happened to them.

Meeting his old friend gave Etwol a queer feeling. Not that he still considered Elvisir his friend—Etwol could not even think of elves and friends in the same train of thought—but seeing an elf again suddenly brought back even more sharply his own elven past. He felt not the slightest spark of pity for the hapless elf. He had come all that way simply to find out if it was Elvisir, but now his curiosity ran most strongly along the channel of discovering what it would be like to torture him.

There was just one thing bothering Etwol as he stared at Elvisir. Elvisir had once set him free from a cage and Etwol owed him a debt. Owing and paying debts was one of the few moral obligations that orcs understood, although generally it was the sort of debt where somebody knocked you on the head so you owed him a knock back. This was different—but not really very different.

Etwol reached down and unfastened the strap that Elvisir had again begun to pluck agitatedly.

"I ain't going to hurt you," he said. "Get up!"

Elvisir got slowly and painfully to his feet. "Where's the other one—the one with the mouth? He's not here, is he?"

"He'll be back," said Etwol. "You might want to get away before then."

"Get away..." repeated Elvisir. "Right. But oh, Elbereth." He reeled and toppled to the floor. Etwol reached down and jerked him upright.

"Sorry," said Elvisir. "My legs feel funny. I feel awful, in fact. That jolly with the helmet—oh, my belly…and my head, too. Horrible. That fiend with the ugly scars—he was seriously messed up…criminally insane. Ow."

It was obvious that Elvisir was not going to get far. And there was still the orc at the desk to get past. Etwol considered and hatched a hasty plan of escape.

"Here," he said, picking up a pile of chains from the floor. "You'd better put these back on. Then I can carry you out of the tower."

"Won't I be too heavy for you?" asked Elvisir.

Etwol considered some more and thought that he might. "Then I'll drag you," he said. "But you'll have to put the chains on or someone might see that you're escaping."

With some help from Etwol, Elvisir donned the chains once more and the two of them made their way back to the lift. They sank back to ground level and Etwol stepped out, dragging the pile of chains down the red carpet of the lobby. The orc at the desk didn't give them a second glance. Elvisir could not be seen at all through the chains.

Once outside the tower, Etwol stopped and took the chains off.

"But how am I going to get out of Mor—" began Elvisir.

Etwol thrust a bottle into his mouth and poured some orc draught down his throat. "Swill that down," he instructed. Elvisir looked as if he was going to be sick, but obeyed.

"That ought to fix you for the moment," said Etwol. "That road there leads to the Black Gate. They open it regularly and you can get out when the next lot of Haradrim come in. You can borrow my armour, so's they won't know you're an elf."/ppElvisir put on the eye-stamped armour, shuddering at its touch. "It fits perfectly," he said. "Isn't that fortunate?"

There was a sudden screech as a nazgul passed overhead. Elvisir shuddered again and took off running along the road. He was soon swallowed up in the rest of the traffic.

Etwol had no idea where to go, so he went back to Camp 14. Now that the army had left, the camp was dead and silent. Etwol wondered what would happen to him for letting a prisoner of the Eye go free. The Eye would probably kill him, but this did not bother him as much as it might have bothered someone else. He had never been very afraid of repercussions; perhaps because all his life he had suffered so many of them.

He had thought the camp was completely deserted, but as he wandered past the kitchen, he heard voices and went inside. Nazgul #7 was sweeping the floor and talking to Ghashbug, the little tattoo snaga, who sat on a barrel in the corner smoking a pipeweed cigarette.

"Hello, you're back," said Ghashbug. "I fought everyone had left. I got here too late to go with the army."

"How was the family?" asked Etwol.

"Oh, not so good. Since my last visit I've lost free brothers, a sister, two uncles, a granddad, and fourteen cousins of various degrees and removals."

Etwol expressed sympathy.

"Every time I come back it's like that," said Ghashbug. "I'll be glad when the war is over and we can do what we want instead of what we're told all the time. When the war's over, I'm going to open my own tattoo parlour. What about you?"

"Eat a big pizza," said Etwol. "Remember the pizza at Isengard?"

"Yes, garn, that was good. After Middle Earth is won, let's go to Isengard and order a lot of pizza together. You like pizza?" he asked, looking at the nazgul.

"Yes," said the nazgul.

"Then you can come, too."

"You won't have a job any more after the war, will you?" asked Etwol, sitting down on a table. "What will you do?"

"I don't know," said the nazgul. "I'll stay here with the Dark Lord, I suppose."

"Why?"

"He has the rings."

"Well, why does that mean you have to stay here with him?" asked Ghashbug.

"I want my ring back!" said the nazgul, dropping the broom and clutching at his hood. "He wears it all the time and I can't stand to see him with it. It's mine! He gave it to me for my own. It's not fair!"

He seemed so genuinely distressed that the orcs tried to console him, but it was useless.

"Then when the war's over, we'll help you steal your ring back," said Etwol.

Ghashbug looked rather uncertain because he was an honester orc than Etwol, but the nazgul seemed comforted.

"I don't believe a word that Borg says," said Sauron impatiently. "He's been on my case about the Mirkwood guide ever since I assigned it to his force. The orcs are always fighting with each other over questions of seniority, and I don't mean to encourage it by giving in to them."

"He says he has proof," said the Mouth.

"I've no time to look into the matter," said Sauron. "Relegate it to the Witch King."

An orc runner found Etwol wandering about watching the traffic go by on the road and formally escorted him to Barad-dur.

"If I were you," he said, "I'd be thinking up an alibi. The Eye's not happy by all accounts."

Etwol followed him in a brown study. He thought the Eye was probably mad at him for letting Elivisir go, but he didn't think there was a good excuse he could give for his action, so he didn't bother too much trying to think of one.

At the moment he was undergoing suicidal depression brought on by having met an elf and not killed it. Being suicidal was new for an orc. Orcs did not fear death—their life was so unpleasant already that death was simply another nasty moment—but they were always ready to live as long as conveniently possible. Even elves never committed suicide. They would sometimes do crazy things that led to their deaths, but the act of taking their own lives was foreign to them.

The only creatures in Middle Earth who ever committed suicide were men, who actively incinerated themselves or flung themselves over precipices for no more apparent reason than the pure devilry of the thing. Etwol could not claim to be quite that deranged, but he was beginning to wonder exactly what suicide felt like and if it might not be rather fun.

At Barad-dur he met the Mouth standing outside the door.

"The Witch King will be along soon," said the Mouth. "Then we can get started."

Etwol saw Borg sitting on a bench by the base of the tower and sat down to wait himself.

"Things don't look very good for you, my friend," said the Mouth, smirking. "I still think you'll be a lot of fun to torture, though. I had a new machine to try out on the last prisoner that escaped, and I think I'll try it on you."

"Do you ever feel like killing yourself?" asked Etwol.

"Why would I want to do that?" asked the Mouth, taken back.

"You're a man, aren't you?"

"Well...yes."

"They say deaf was a gift to men from Iluvatar."

The Mouth stared at him.

"That's silly."

Just then the Witch King arrived on his dragon and took the chair.

"All right, speak your piece, orc," he said.

Etwol opened his mouth but Borg stepped forward and spoke first.

"I been suspicious of this one from the first," he said, pointing unnecessarily at Etwol. "You can't trust anyfing they send you out of Isengard these days. All wizard's work, is what they are."

"Not me," said Etwol.

"Silence," said the Witch King.

"That's what you are, and I'll prove it," said Borg. "An elf dressed up like an orc to infiltrate us."

"Maybe I stepped out of the ranks," said Etwol. "But I was coming right back. I couldn't help it you left wivout me."

"Desertion is the least of your charges," said Borg. "What about the attack in Ifilien?"

"What attack?" said Etwol.

"Rangers wiped out a whole troop of Haradrim. They had inside information, or they wouldn't have known they were coming. And—" Borg paused dramatically, "you gave it to them."

"No, I didn't," said Etwol.

"No? What about that spy you set loose yesterday?"

"I didn't—" Etwol began, but the Mouth cut him short by holding up a crumpled sheet of music smudged with yellow fingerprints (Etwol had been painting graffiti, too).

"Found this in the tower," he said.

"That spy was helping the rangers," said Borg. "And you knew him. You was friends with him."

"I'm no friend of his," said Etwol.

"Never seen one of these before, have you?" said Borg, taking something from his pocket and holding it up. It was one of Elvisir's good luck charms.

Etwol forgot to deny it. He simply stared in confusion at the charm. The last one he had seen had been the reason why he was an orc at all. There was a long silence and Etwol felt the Eye on the tower trained suspiciously on him.

"One more thing," said Borg. "A snaga said you were captured by rangers on the way here and made to talk. And you killed the uruk in charge so that he wouldn't tell anybody what you'd told them."

"Well, let's hear your defence, if you've got one," said the Witch King.

Etwol opened his mouth and said nothing. There was nothing at all to say. Besides, he felt the Eye boring into him and reading everything inside him. He wasn't even sure any more whether or not he was guilty.

"Come on," said the Witch King. "Or else I'll say you're guilty. But I'm going to say so anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter. We can dispense with the formalities, then. You'll have to find another Mirkwood guide, my lord." He shouted this last sentence up to the top of the tower.

Etwol was not listening. Now it seemed almost as if the Eye itself was inside him, and the burning inside had grown too dreadful to bear. He squeezed his eyes closed to shut out the terrible, probing Eye, but it was no use. He shrieked orcishly and ran down the road towards the mountains.

"Get a troop of runners after him," said the Witch King. "He'd better not escape."

"He won't," said the Eye.