3

The rider hocked gobs of black blood pouring from his nose and down the back of his throat from the impact of Frushkul's brick of a skull. Yet, despite the pain, he gave Frushkul an unexpected, lopsided grin.

"Bleedin' sod! Yer still alive?!" He ignored the slaver's murderous glare, "I thought fer sure ya would'a been killed before makin' yer way back ta the ship. 'Ad no idea ya made it outta them woods!"

Now stripped of his eerie disguise and lit up by the fires cooking the dead slavers around them, the rider's identity was blatantly obvious. The thin, sallow-skinned orc before Frushkul was marked by scars that mirrored his own; long cords of melted flesh frozen in place like a grotesque oozing statue that ruined half of each orcs' face; a reminder of the incident that had once nearly killed them both and bound them as comrades; that was up until the rider's betrayal only a few months prior.

All of those suppressed memories suddenly pressed at the edge of Frushkul's mind, vying to boil up within. He could practically taste the anger he had experienced the night they had parted ways, growing in the back of his throat like a sweet mouthful of raw flesh.

"Don't speak ta me like ya weren't spewin' shrakh last I seen ya!" Frushkul snarled, blade held at the ready, eager to let it taste the rider's blood once more. "I said I never wanted ta see ya agin, ya good fer nothin' traitor!"

"Come on..." The rider gave Frushkul an exasperated look, and held up his only hand disarmingly, "Ya wouldn't gut me, would ya?"

Time had not softened the slaver's anger in the slightest and he spat his distaste openly, "Give me one good reason ta not run ya through like a stuck pig!"

The rider's congenial grin faltered, "After all the times I saved yer bleedin' hide? Don't be such an arse, Bar—"

"That ain't my name anymore, Snake-Tongue," Frushkul interjected and took a menacing step towards the rider, poising his blade for striking at the first opening he saw. "Or should I be callin' ya Gulkoth now?"

"Ah, ya've heard o' my new title then, eh?" The rider answered Frushkul's movements knowingly by shifting his stance; reading his moves as one would a long-time sparring partner. However, disarmed of his crossbow, he would be at a severe disadvantage were the slaver to make the first move.

Frushkul's hackles prickled lifted as he watched a pale blue light crawling around the rider's crooked, bloody nose as well as his arm, where the slaver's own whip had constricted and buried itself like fangs into the rider's muscle, "Ye would come up with something tha' pompous. Always expectin' folk ta juss worship the ground ya walk on juss cuz of yer elf devilry!"

"Nah. Can't say it was my idea. Ya let one bloke escape an' suddenly there's all kinds of rumors bein' tossed about." As if reading Frushkul's mind, the rider raised a stump of a right arm, and from it, tendrils of energy crept forth, twisting and binding together. At first, it was just a formless mass of light, but then, from the etheric chaos, materialized a ghostly visage of a clawed, orc hand.

The crackle of magic, leaving the same scent as lightning in the air, made Frushkul freeze up. Everything about the rider's reappearance had the slaver on a knife's edge; from the ambush itself to the unnatural cloak of darkness he had worn, to the reeking stench of Mokob-hai that clung to his person, and especially the magic sparks that leapt and coursed across the rider's wounds. It fussed over his injuries as though it had a consciousness all its own.

He hissed with disdain, "Wraith-claw, my arse..."

The rider let out an amused snort and wiggled the apparitional fingers in mock emphasis; still hopeful he might defuse the tension between them, "Orcs ain't really an imaginative bunch, are we? It's a bit too on the nose fer my tastes.

Taking the whip in his ghostly hand as he spoke, the orc began to carefully unravel it from his corporeal limb. Anyone else might have grimaced at the pain of tearing the metal hooks free, stealing bits of tough tissue with its departure, but it was thanks to his scar-ridden, nerve-damaged flesh, the orc barely found any need to grit his teeth. Rather than giving Frushkul the satisfaction of knowing the extent of the damage he had done, the rider put on a nervy smirk; the injuries didn't last long anyway as little blue sparks knit the cuts back together with ease.

The coursing energy was both captivating and rotten at the same time, to Frushkul's orcish sight, like some terrible hypnotic power that held the slaver's attention, distracting him despite his better judgement. He wanted nothing more than to snuff it out like a candle, "Ye always were a self-centered prick."

"Yeah, per'aps. But yer one ta talk... I heard tell of some orc down this way, trying ta carve out his own little dominion from scratch. Lordin' over a bunch of vat-fresh globs too stupid ta know any better!" The rider cast a cold eye over the carnage he had wrought. Corpses littered the ground around them; one or two still moaning at death's threshold as fire boiled into their flesh. "Never dreamed in an age, I'd find my old boss traipsin' around, callin' 'imself somethin' as pretentious as The Whip... Gulkoth's better than Frushkul anyway."

An indignant growl filled Frushkul's throat at the callous mention of his now-slaughtered underlings and snapped back to himself. He knew he mustn't let this orc weave his mind-warping influence. Given the opportunity, the rider was sure to put the slaver under a spell, to tame him like some brainless scum.

Frushkul returned the rider's smirk with a sneer, "Ain't half as pretentious as Warg-rider."

"Heh," The rider laughed dryly. "Tha' weren't my idea either. Couldn't get rid of tha' mangey ol' dog even if I tried. So I figured I might as well put the bugg'r ta good use!"

As if the mere mention of the beast summoned it, the once shadow-obscured mount appeared through the haze of smoke choking the ravaged campground. It seemed it too had shed its otherworldly appearance. The creature, now corporeal, was in fact revealed by the firelight as a warg; a familiar-looking, gray-coated, behemoth of a specimen, but a warg nonetheless. The last time Frushkul had met the beast, it had tried to kill both of them.

It bore on its back a rough, patched-together mess of leather in a pitifully constructed semblance of a saddle. What one might have mistaken for horns or spines growing from its back when wrapped in darkness, Frushkul could now see were just a sparse collection of spears, holstered by straps on either side of the beast's saddle.

However, with the warg's reemergence, a pitiful sob broke the tension between the orcs.

Three beastly sets of eyes darted in the direction of the sound, to spy the slave woman who'd only just worked up the courage to poke her head out of Frushkul's tent in the eerie calm following the rider's ambush. She'd frozen in place at the sight of the warg creeping past, eyes flaring wide. The cry of terror had squeezed involuntarily from between the woman's pinched lips; too late for her to retreat unnoticed now.

Both orcs hesitated as well, but only for a moment.

The rider's gaze hardened, and with Frushkul diverted, even momentarily, glowing blue light filled the rider's pupils and he barked a single word, "Groth!"

Frushkul's attention was divided on three fronts, between the rider, the warg, and the woman. In a split moment, he watched the gray beast launch itself towards the human with a blaze filling its own eyes. The slaver let out a defiant roar, shifting his attention to the greater priority. Before he managed to take a single step, a mass of lean muscle slammed into Frushkul's back, dropping him to the ground unceremoniously.

Through the smoke and freshly disturbed plumes of dust, the slaver watched the woman stumble backwards, falling back into the open tent flaps as the huge gray warg dove after her. He could only just hear the rider's voice over the rush of desperate fury pounding that flooded his own ears with panic. He couldn't lose this one to some ravenous beast! She was the only chance! The one key that might open the pits of Thaurband to him!

"Don't tell me yer still slavin' fer Razmat! Tha' miserable iron prick nearly 'ad ya killed!" The rider grappled against Frushkul's greater strength, the element of surprise lost in a tangle of limbs.

Another feeble cry rose from the tent, then cut off, shortened into silence.

"I ain't out here fer Razmat!" Frushkul's snarl cracked as he tried to free himself from the rider's grasp. He threw his elbow backwards and felt it connect with the hard bone of the rider's chin with a loud crack.

"SKAI!" The rider howled in pain and found himself suddenly on the defensive.

Frushkul twisted to adjust his sword to thrust back past his own flank and into his assailant's gut. The steel connected with the rider's armor, threatening to find its way between the plates. Any hope of reasoning with Frushkul was quickly dwindling, and the rider still had no weapons of his own at hand.

He reached out his mind to Frushkul's, searching for any weak points that might grant the rider some semblance of influence, "Then what are ya doing? Tell me ya ain't running hunts fer the pit itself now. The Bar I knew would never—"

"No! Shaddup! Stay outta my head, ya backstabbin' maggot!" The slaver's thoughts were a fortress wall, rebuking the rider's magic forcibly. At the same moment, Frushkul tore himself free of the rider's grip, rolled and leapt upright, and lunged. "The orc ya think I am is dead!"

"I thought ya actually were dead, Bar!" The rider swung his feet at the same moment that Frushkul's blade slid past his ear, just missing his skull, but still biting into the cartilage; any deeper and he would have lost his ear entirely. The momentum of the rider's kick caught Frushkul's legs, just enough to throw him off balance, giving the rider the chance to snatch up the nearest weapon he could find from a corpse nearby.

"And yer as good as!" Frushkul regained his footing, narrowly skipping back in time to avoid having the staff of a spear whirring just past the scars lining his throat. He hefted his wrists up sharply, aiming to catch the polearm the rider reclaimed from one of his underlings with the crossguard of his sword, but the rider was faster.

The wings of the spear blade became interlocked with Frushkul's sword hilt and in the blink of an eye, the rider leveraged his weight against the spear to flick the weapon from the slaver's grasp. Metal clattered on stone, but Frushkul rushed for the crossbow that the rider had been disarmed of before, where it had fallen a few paces away.

Things seemed to slow as he dove for the weapon.

He could feel the air and smoke parted behind him by the spear swinging back to aim at him. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the gray warg backing out of the tent with the limp figure of his captive clutched in its jaws. The memory of screams filled his head and ears; black shadows tightened around his vision until it was narrowed to a singular point. His hands moved as if of their own accord, knowing he had mere fractions of a second to ready the crossbow once he grabbed it. A heartbeat later, it was in his hands; he turned to let his shoulder blunt the impact of slamming into one of the crumbling ruin walls as he braced himself against it.

But even with every ounce of speed he could muster, Frushkul didn't have enough time.

The spear slammed into his gut, shredding through muscle and organs alike, pinning him against the wall as the blade found a gap in the stonework. He would have howled if the shock and pain hadn't stolen his breath.

The rider stopped his mad charge, dropping his grip on the spear as soon as he realized what he had done. The blue light blurring his vision, clouding his own judgement, faded slowly. His lungs turned to stone and for a long moment, he couldn't speak.

When he finally found his voice again, it started low, and questioning, before growing into a demand, "I don't understand. If yer not juss blindly followin' Razmat's orders then why're ya doin' this shrakh still? Why then?!"

"Oh, yer so bloody noble..." The slaver rasped with sharp, shallow breaths through gritted teeth. Frushkul hadn't believed the rider actually had the nerve to run him through like that. Shock rippled through him, dampened only slightly by the adrenaline of the fight. Oh, how Frushkul hated this other orc, hated everything he embodied; it was his turn to laugh. A snide, reproachful hiss filled the slaver's throat with inky viscera, coughing each word, "None o' this slavin' business bother'd ya before that bloody sharlob got in yer 'ead—"

The rider's face dropped. He stared with hard eyes at the slaver, trying to ignore the rivulets of black starting to trickle down the bricks of the stonework Frushkul lay against like some sort of hunting trophy.

"I got in HER head, ya daft bastard! I saw what 'appens ta 'em," he waved his ghostly claw towards the warg holding its prey, half-fainted, in its teeth. "What happened ta Alaes—"

"YA DON'T KNOW ANYTHIN'—" Another bubble of blood made the slaver wretch violently. His hands clutched desperately at the spear embedded in his stomach; claws scraped up splinters into the tips of his fingers, as if he was debating trying to pull it out or perhaps bracing for it, but he didn't have the leverage to budge it. "Spare me yer two-faced preachin'! Yer no better than I am. Willin' ta kill good orcs fer doin' what they need ta survive, but Eye forbid ya sell some nameless shara ta Thaurband."

The rider's face twisted briefly to a look of revulsion, then morphed before Frushkul's eyes into an otherworldly façade; his hideous scars now overwritten by a mask of perfect elvish complexion. He turned away, ignoring the slaver's agonized snarls, to meet his warg, "There's juss no reasonin' with ye..."

"NO!" Frushkul watched as the elf-looking orc took the faint woman from the warg's jaws; the slaver helpless to stop the rider from stealing what he had rightfully captured.

"Come on, lass. Let's getcha outta 'ere..." The rider pointedly ignored the desperation growing in Frushkul's voice. He didn't even spare tilting his ear, which was knitting together with a faint blue glow, in the slaver's direction.

"I need tha' snaga!"

The disguised orc scooped up the woman into his arms, muttering soft words of reassurance to her as she struggled to regain her composure. The shock of being snapped up into the teeth of the warg was surpassed by the fact it had not crushed her, nor broken her skin with those terrible fangs. But even more shocking was the captivating visage of her savior; was this really an elf, in Mordor of all places?! In command of such a terrifying beast?! Her senses muddled and conflicted with one another, but she only knew one thing; how calm his presence made her, how she felt compelled to trust him without a second thought.

"Snake-Tongue!"

The rider pressed onward with his goal, lips drawn taut in silence. He lifted the woman upon his warg's back, settling her into the saddle, and holding her upright until she regained some sense of balance of her own. He'd find out where she hailed from later, once he had gotten her away from the bloody, scorched mess of the camp.

"I WAS DOIN' IT FER SELGA!"

The slightest hint of hesitation made the rider's resolve waver just as he was about to heft himself into the saddle behind the woman. A breath caught in his chest, trying to unravel the slaver's intent.

No... It didn't matter what he meant...

"ZATHRA!" Frushkul's voice cracked in desperation between splatters of his own blood crawling up his throat.

The rider climbed onto his mount, blocking out anything else the orc had to say, and with one small spark, spurred the warg to depart.

He couldn't bring himself to look back at the orc he had once believed he knew.

***** Translations: *****

Shrakh - Dung
Gulkoth - Wraith-Claw (A title/name given to Zathra by others)
Mokob-Hai - Orcsbane (A plant with poisonous/flammable qualities)
Glob(s) - Idiot(s)
Frushkul - The Whip (A title/name taken on by Barbaurak as an alias)
Groth - Gray, short for Grothraum meaning Gray Storm, (The name of the warg)
SKAI! - DAMN!
Sharlob - Human (Female)
Shara - Human (Male or Female)
Snaga - Slave

***** Author's Note: *****

I apologize for the delay in posting. I lost my dog, my best friend for half my life, a couple weeks ago, and it hit me really hard. I appreciate your patience as I get back into the swing of writing.

Don't want to wait for more? Read chapters as soon as I finished writing them on my discord! Link in my bio! If you are enjoying WTAWTAW, please consider leaving a comment! It really makes my day to hear what my readers think!