Note: I've waited the whole book to write this chapter! There will probably be only three or four more chapters after this one, so this is almost the end. Thank you to my faithful reviewers!

Incunabulum 20: What Can It Be?

Another shriek echoed through the trees. Etwol cowered and slipped to the side of the road. He could smell it approaching—warg scent. They were after him and gaining fast.

It was so unfair. He hadn't even done anything wrong—except letting Elvisir go and that wasn't what they were chasing him for. He'd never betrayed his friends; why would he do a rotten thing like that? He stumbled on feeling more and more sorry for himself.

Suddenly he remembered that he had betrayed his friends…long ago when he had told the orcs where the elves were encamped. Maybe all this was to pay him back for that.

There was a pattering on the road behind him and Etwol dove into the underbrush. Looking out from beneath the leaves he could only see four huge hairy paws planted on the dusty highway. Something sniffed heavily. Inexplicably the paws vanished, and as Etwol was still puzzling over this anomaly he heard a whooshing sound and something huge and heavy came down almost on top of him.

He screamed louder than he ever had before and rolled over, too panic stricken to run. In another instant the warg had him by the throat and was shaking him like a terrier shakes a rat. Etwol gasped and gurgled. He managed to grab hold of the animal's ears and give them several good tugs. Then he and the warg tumbled down into the ferns.

Etwol managed to shake himself free and began to scurry away beneath the low hanging branches. He heard a savage growl behind him and turned just in time to see the warg poised to leap at him.

But it did not leap. It stared at him for an instant and then put its head on one side and whined. Etwol stared back, confused. The warg lowered its head and came snivelling up to him, trying to lick his hand which Etwol studiously kept out of its reach.

With his Sauron-instigated memory recovery, Etwol slowly recognised the huge, white warg as the one he had ridden for no real reason a long time ago in Mirkwood. He put out his hand tentatively and touched its head. He had always wanted to be a warg rider at Isengard, but he had never been allowed to be one.

The unearthly shriek again erupted overhead. Etwol made up his mind hurriedly and jumped on the warg's back. They were off like a flash of white lightning, down the northward road.

"This is totally disgusting, man."

"No it isn't. It's vegan."

"It's green."

"Yeah. Isn't that good? I mean, earth friendly and all that stuff? You like it, don't you, elfy?"

"It's...all right. I guess. And don't call me elfy."

Etwol peered over the edge of a low bluff at the party seated round a campfire below. The elf was Elvisir. The other two people were the rangers he had met on the way to Mordor...or more accurately, Mirkwood.

They had not seemed to be aware of his presence, but suddenly Elvisir leaped up and pulled out a glowing knife.

"Ware!" he said, assuming a cautionary stance. "There's orcs about."

"Where?" asked the vegan ranger repetitively.

The ranger of Ithilien pulled out his bow and notched an arrow. "Come out slowly with your hands up!" he said. Seeing that he was pointing the arrow in his direction, Etwol cautiously emerged with his hands on his head.

"Who are you?" began the Ithilien ranger, getting down immediately to his favourite art of interrogation.

"It's the orc who saved me from Sauron's creepy lieutenant!" exclaimed Elvisir. "I owe him my life. You will not harm him," he said sternly, looking most pointedly at the ranger of the North.

"Orcs don't save elves. You must have been hallucinating."

"I need your help," Etwol cut in. He was in a great hurry and he didn't trust these people not to kill him before he'd gotten a chance to deliver his message.

"We don't help orcs," said the ranger of Ithilien. "What do you want us to do?"

"Behind me," began Etwol dramatically, "is an army of orcs, wargs, and other nasty fings. If they find you here," he paused for inspiration. "You'll wish you'd never been born!"

"Then let's get out of here," said the ranger of the North. "I told you we shouldn't have hung around. We should have tried to get back to Gondor."

"And how could we have done that?" demanded the other ranger. "We can't get through Osgiliath. If we try to get to Minas Tirith now we'll only run into the back of Sauron's army."

"I told you we shouldn't have chased after that oliphaunt," said the ranger of the North.

"You brought them here to slay us!" cried Elvisir. "How could you? I trusted you!"

"They aren't after you, elf brain!" said Etwol, using the most insulting epithet known to orcs and thinking that in this case it was singularly fitting. "They're going to join the forces from Dol Guldur and invade Mirkwood. You've got to go to Loflorien and warn Galadriel and Celeborn."

"Why should we do that?" said the ranger of Ithilien, who asked questions merely for the sake of asking them.

"I can't!" said the ranger of the North, suddenly growing hysterical. "I'm not even supposed to be here! I'm supposed to be helping Aragorn go through the paths of the dead."

"And I'm supposed to be helping Faramir make a suicide attack on Osgiliath," said the other ranger.

"Well, you can't. So you might as well go to Lothlorien," said Elvisir. "I for one will warn my people."

"What good would it do? Celeborn's probably too stoned to do anything about it, and if Galadriel's mirror hasn't told her what's going on, what makes you think she'll listen to us?"

"This is different, lice," said Etwol. "It's a sneak attack."

"Well, it doesn't sound like Lothlorien is in any danger," said the ranger of Ithilien. "Why do we have to warn it?"

"To make them come help the wood-elf scum," said Etwol. "Get them to bring out their army."

"They don't have one any more," said Elivisir. "They sent it to Helms Deep and most of them were killed." His face assumed a stoic cast. "Our captain, Haldir, was slain as well."

"Well, get them to send out whatever's left. Or the wood-elves are frew."

"They must be warned, too!" said Elvisir. "We cannot leave them to their fate."

"I'll warn them. Don't worry."

"How do we know you're telling the truth?" said the ranger of Ithilien, looking suspiciously at Etwol and toying with his bow and arrow. "Give us some sort of proof."

"There's no time for that!" said Elvisir.

"It's some kind of trap. They're probably planning to ambush Lothlorien. I wouldn't trust him."

"Just chill, man," said the ranger of the North. "Orcs aren't that smart."

"OK, fine," said the Ithilien ranger. "Just one question, then. Why are you playing mr. nice guy and going around saving elves? That's not normal for an orc. What's your game?"

"He saved me," said Etwol, pointing at Elvisir. Elvisir looked surprised.

"No, I didn't," he said. "I've never helped any orc. I wish I had, now. I wish I'd so much as said 'Good morning' to one when I met it on the street; but I never did."

The light suddenly went dim and a huge shape passed overhead, while at the same time a horrible, piercing cry shattered their eardrums. The rangers and the elf jumped and put their hands over their ears. When the shadow had passed they found that Etwol was gone.

Etwol, mounted once more on his warg, was tearing northwards with the horror of that great shape pursuing him like a shadow. The nazgul had not found him, but he would not be so lucky a second time.

Up ahead he could see the dark mass of Mirkwood growing closer. He had said that he would warn the Wood-elves and the elvenking, but he began to wonder just how he was going to do it. First he had to get past Dol Guldur without being caught by his own erstwhile-comrades-but-now-turned-enemies, though this would not be too difficult using the secret elven paths. Then he would have to convince the elves that he was a friend, and they might not be so gullible as Elvisir was.

The dark forest closed in over him like the black fumes of Mordor so recently left behind, but Etwol pursued his course undeterred, tearing through the close clinging underbrush. He went as if in a dream, navigating by subconscious memories that flitted through his mind like bats. He kept no track of the miles, but he knew he had passed Dol Guldur and was entering the northern part of the forest.

Without warning a horrible pain shot through him ('shot' is the correct term) with a force that toppled him from the warg's back. He struck the ground writhing while the warg paused and looked back at him. Etwol lay flat on his back gasping and clawing at an arrow sticking out of his shoulder. The warg came snuffling slowly back but suddenly it too was struck by an arrow and with a yelp and an attempt to bite the nasty thing stuck in its flank, it turned and fled through the underbrush, its howls fading away into the distance.

"You missed," said a voice.

"I did not miss. I meant only to maim it."

Etwol blinked and saw through a haze of pain two tall elven forms standing over him.

"It would have been kinder to kill it. You know what he will do to it."

"It is not often an orc ventures this near our domain. It must be questioned. Besides, orders are orders."

The elves broke off the arrow shaft, leaving the head in the wound. Then Etwol felt himself lifted none too gently and placed on some sort of branch-woven conveyance that was dragged painfully over the ground. He was bumped along in this fashion for some time until at last the ride became a little smoother and he noticed, just before losing consciousness, that he was inside the elvenking's palace.

He did not remain in a coma for long because as soon as the elves noticed that his eyes were shut they started performing CPR on him. CPR when performed by elves quickly rises to the top ten most traumatising medical procedures. Etwol regained consciousness screaming at the top of his lungs.

"Silence that filth!" said someone. A light cloth made of some elven material that burned his skin was tied over Etwol's whole face. His pain level was rapidly shooting up the chart.

He was taken off the litter and dragged up endless staircases and down labyrinthine hallways until at last, several stubbed toes and carpet burns later, he was thrust to his knees and the cloth taken off his face on a raised dais in the middle of a torch lit room.

Directly in front of him stood a well remembered personage: Thranduil, the elvenking - formerly his elvenking. Thranduil gazed at him with undisguised loathing and at the two guards who escorted him with undisguised annoyance.

"Why did you bring - that - here? It ought to have been put with the others."

"The orc was travelling alone not more than a league from here," said the guard who had captured Etwol. "A warg rider. Possibly a messenger."

"From Dol Guldur?" Thranduil began to circle Etwol so as to inspect him from all sides.

"We haven't questioned him yet."

Up to that point they had been speaking Sindarin, and Etwol had found that he could understand it. Thranduil now addressed him in Westron.

"Who sends you to the presence of Thranduil elvenking, spawn of darkness?"

"No one," said Etwol, refraining with difficulty from calling him "louse" out of habit. "I came on my own account. To warn you."

The two guards glanced at each other.

"The orc lies," said the one who had shot Etwol.

"You feel no fear," observed Thranduil, ignoring the guard.

Etwol growled sturdily in reply. He was usually terrified of elves, but somehow it seemed hard to be frightened of a place and of elves that he knew so well. However time was running out. He was all too aware of Thranduil's methods with orcs and he knew he had only a limited time to deliver his warning.

"Mordor's planning a surprise attack from the souf," he said. "They'll keep Erebor tied up fighting Harad and attack you from Dol Guldur."

"Are you here to demand a surrender?" asked Thranduil drily. "I was aware of the facts you've presented."

"No," said Etwol insistently. "They're sending a fird army to ambush you."

"It lies," said the guard. "It's a trap."

"When Mordor intends to terrify, they send a nazgul, not an orc," said Thranduil. "But no deserting orc would come of its own will to the elves."

He snatched a sword from a guard and balanced it in one hand. "We have no need of deserters and traitors. An orc is not to be trusted."

Etwol struggled in the guards' vice-like grip as he saw the bloodlust in the elvenking's eyes. As angry as he had on occasion made Thranduil, he had never expected to be killed by him. And suddenly he realised that if Thranduil knew who he was - had been - the elvenking would listen to him. He would know that he wasn't lying.

"I'm not an orc," he said feverishly. "I'm - I'm not."

It was a lame defence and Etwol saw that the suspicion in Thranduil's eyes only grew stronger. The Sindarin! The elvenspeech. If only he could speak to them in it, it would prove he was not really an orc. Etwol tried wildly to recall even a simple phrase, but the words, so long unused, ran from his mind like balls of string unwinding as he tried to pull them to him.

Thranduil raised the blade to his shoulder, ready to strike. Etwol, in desperation, opened his mouth and spoke words that seemed to come to his tongue on their own.

"Namárië! Nai hiruvalyë Valimar. Nai elyë hiruva."

There was dead stillness in the room for nearly three minutes after he had spoken. All the elves stood frozen in shock. Thranduil recovered first and broke the silence.

"The high speech of the Eldar should burn the tongue out of your head, orc," he said. "How came you to learn that song?"

Etwol found that he could not answer. For a long moment Thranduil regarded him. At last he lowered the sword and, taking a step forward, looked probingly into Etwol's eyes.

"It's not possible," he whispered. The two elven guards holding Etwol looked at each other in perplexity.

Thranduil drew back again. "Guards!" he called.

From the bottom step of the dais, two guards holding spears turned and hurried up the stairs.

"Not you!" said Thranduil, pointing one of them back to his post. "You!"

The second guard continued his ascent, though more slowly. He reached the dais and looked quizzically at the elvenking.

"Look at him," said Thranduil, motioning towards Etwol. "Do you know him, Halrodil?"

Etwol started and stared at the tall elven guard. His brother had grown more mature-looking: Etwol would scarcely have known him for the gangly young rookie from the orc wars.

Halrodil looked confused, but turned dutifully to Etwol and looked him up and down. He drew his brows together and was about to turn and shake his head when suddenly his eye caught Etwol's. For a moment he stared, as if slowly remembering something. Then his eyes grew wide in horror.

"Do you know him?" repeated Thranduil.

Halrodil did not answer. Instead he fainted.