One: Death Walks

Talion woke from death atop a Haedir in Gorgoroth, as he had countless times before. But unlike those others, this time the resurrection was incomplete, imperfect; his body was weak and weary, his lungs still filled with ash from the eruption of Orodruin. He inhaled fresh air, only to cough it out again, shoving at the stone of the tower to roll onto his side and spit up the dust.

An age seemed to pass before the coughing died, but his throat and lungs still burned like they were full of knives even though he was a dead man with no need for breath save in speech. He staggered to his feet and braced himself on the Haedir's central pillar, then looked out over the plateau.

The fortress below was in ruins, walls crushed and towers toppled and buildings wiped away by Orodruin, molten rock still cooling even on the bitterly cold plain. Where once it had been the liveliest fortress in Mordor, closest to the Dark Tower and therefore also the most populous, now Ghâshgôr stood silent and broken and empty, towers toppled and buildings burned. The bridge to Barad-dûr, where he had met his fate, was half-buried in cooling lava and ended sharply in midair as if cut by a knife. There were no scavengers picking at the ruins for anything that had survived the mountain's fury, and the Haedir itself felt unstable under his feet.

Talion looked further. Doom was quiet now, not even belching great clouds of ash and steam to blot out the sun the way it usually did. He felt a wave of concern, wondering how Núrn would fare now that it could no longer rely on the mountain's ash to enrich the soil.

But the sky was clear of smoke and cloud, and he felt sunlight on his face for the first time in… he did not know how long. Anar's rays were no longer searing agony on his dead flesh and cold mind, and he basked in them for a moment before turning away. He needed to find someone, anyone, and learn what he had missed after his fall.

But first… He reached out into the wraith world, along spirit-bonds recovering from his long captivity. Celebrimbor? Eltariel?

There was no answer from either Elf, and his lips went tight. He peered over the edge of the Haedir, then jumped, landing hard on his feet and setting off another burst of coughing. This seemed to clear the last of the ash from his lungs, at least, so he allowed his irritation to be carried away by the chill wind. Yet his leap was also the final straw for the already precarious tower, and he darted out of range as it groaned, crumbled, and crashed to the ground, now a broken heap across a mostly cool lava flow. The crystals at the summit of the tower shattered in a flash of pale smoke and silver-blue light when they hit the ground.

Talion briefly grieved the loss. With - he looked around - two of the three Haedir swept away, it would be that much harder to oversee Gorgoroth now. Assuming there would be something later to oversee.

He set out with the utmost care, refusing to linger where the solidified surface was only a thin skin over still-fluid and red-hot rock below. There were no survivors in the fortress in Gorgoroth, but further afield he thought he had seen a flicker of color in the Unseen World…

The first Orc he stumbled across was one of his own. Not directly, not branded, but still loyal, and she nearly tripped over her own feet in her haste to introduce herself. "Name's Skûn, Gravewalker, Mystic Tribe; can't tell you how happy I am that you're still with us. Ishmoz and the others're holed up nearby. Come on, I'll show you."

Ishmoz - Ishmoz the Deep Seer, one of the Five. In many ways, it had been an accident that had led him to follow Talion. The Man had been rescuing slaves without thought ages ago, in the final days before the Outcasts departed Mordor for the last time, trying to get as many people out as he could, and he had killed the Orcs leading a group of five in chains - only to find that the slaves he had rescued had not been Men at all, but other Orcs. But still more Orcs had heard the fighting and come to investigate, so instead of cutting them down, he had told the former slaves to run, to get as far away as they could as fast as they could.

And later they had returned, each a powerful captain in their own right, to fight by his side. Ishmoz the Deep Seer of the Mystic Tribe, Mozû Iron Arm of the Feral Tribe, Nákra the Anvil of the Machine Tribe, Ghûra the Venomous of the Dark Tribe, and Skoth Gold-Fang of the Marauder Tribe. They called themselves the Five, sometimes the Gravewalker's Hand, and they had been loyal to Talion without branding, becoming Overlords of Mordor under his command. With them as proof that even the lowest Orcs could rise high under him and live without fear, others had flocked to his banner without being branded by any Ring and stood against Sauron for every reason under the sun.

It was good to know at least some of them had survived.

The instant he appeared, Ishmoz lashed out with his staff and tried to break his kneecaps. But that, too, was a familiar greeting, and Talion leaped back to avoid the arc of the mace-like head. He drew Urfael to block a further strike when the Orc lunged for him, and with his other hand he whipped Acharn from its sheath, the dagger's point slipping through the Uruk's guard and stopping just short of his throat.

Ishmoz grinned widely despite the blade at his neck. "Welcome back, Gravewalker. Good to see you haven't lost your edge."

"I've lost many things, but that isn't one of them." When the Uruk pulled his staff back and planted it in the ground to lean against it, Talion returned his own weapons to their sheaths. "What news?"

"Hm." The Uruk gestured for the Man to sit on a vaguely seat-shaped rock and scratched his chin thoughtfully. "Well for starters, you've only been gone about five years."

Still a long time, but not nearly so long as he had thought.

"We broke up like you said we should," Ishmoz continued, "went undercover to cause trouble when we could get away with it, but don't know how much good we actually did. Don't know how many of us are left either - Sauron sent most everyone out against Gondor and up north. I've got a few watchers on what's left of the Gate and in Ungol, and they say stragglers are starting to come back, but not many."

"The rest of the Five?"

"Still kickin', though Ghûra lost a few bits in the fighting around Minas Tirith. Nákra's already made her a new hand, but nothin' to be done for the eye."

Talion hummed, already turning things over in his mind. If there truly were so few Orcs left, then it would be a more personal war this time: him directly against the other Seven instead of army against army. Even if that was not the case, the next option would be guerilla warfare as he had done before raising his armies, small forces striking hard at vulnerable points to cripple the larger whole, even just for a moment. Time would tell.

"Do we have any other confirmed survivors?"

"Ratbag," Ishmoz answered, rolling his eyes hard enough to hurt.

"You're joking."

"Not even a little. Damned fool's got more lives than a caragor."

"Well he certainly never seemed to have a brain, so I suppose Eru had to make up for the lack somehow."

A few snickers rippled through the assembled Orcs. They were few, thirty if that and more than half of them newcomers with nowhere else to go and no idea what to do now that Sauron was thrown down, following Ishmoz and now Talion for lack of better options. They needed a safe home that was not a cave, no matter how livable they had made it; they could not house all the survivors here for more reasons than one, but mostly because one hard strike from the Seven would kill them all at once.

"How are Moonshadow and Coldharbour? The other fortresses?"

"Still intact as far as I know. Sauron used those two more as waystations than fortresses like the others, but I don't know who's got 'em. But most everyone calls Moonshadow Graveshadow now."

Talion sighed, much to Ishmoz's amusement. The necromancer knew very well the reason for the change. But thinking of Mordor's fortresses made a plan start forming. "What about Cirith Ungol? Is the pass clear at least?"

"There was some infighting there, but last I heard it was completely empty. I can ask some of the dead."

"Do that. We'll start there, then." He rose and stepped out of the cave to check the position of the sun. "Cirith Ungol and Minas Morgul are our first priority - reasonably safe, easily defended, and a solid vantage to see if Gondor is making any moves toward us. Once we're entrenched, we can worry about other things, including moving to other fortresses."

"You say that like there's something to worry about. What's going on?"

Talion looked down at his hand, extending his fingers. Isildur's Ring no longer glowed with an evil crimson light, but he could still feel its power thrumming through him, now more familiar than ever: the New Ring. Its echoes bled through from wherever Eltariel was hiding. "I am not the only Ringwraith that has come back out of the dark."

Murmurs rolled through the other Orcs, but Ishmoz was silent, waiting.

"Even though the Dark Lord himself is now gone, I do not doubt for a moment that the others are still his creatures, instruments of his will - to dominate, to destroy all that we have made, and rule over the ashes," Talion said, turning back to the Uruk. "I beat them once, and I mean to do so again - this time permanently."

Ishmoz grinned in satisfaction. "Then let's get started. Still got a few hell-hawks here; I'll send 'em out, tell everyone else to meet us at Ungol and to keep an eye out for your girl."

Talion knew immediately who the Uruk meant. "Daerwen," he said quietly.

"Yep. Far as I know she's still around too. Don't worry, Gravewalker; we'll find her."

Their troop doubled in size by the time they reached Cirith Ungol and found Nákra and Skoth waiting for them. Their own forces were several times larger than Ishmoz's; other regions of Mordor had not been hit nearly so hard by the One Ring's destruction, even if they had all been equally devastated by the War of the Ring. Even so, twenty-five hundred or so Orcs did not an army make.

But they were not alone. Survivors of the Easterling and Haradrim forces had taken shelter in Mordor after their crushing defeat, and Talion recognized some of them, too.

"Masego," the Ringwraith said, greeting the Haradrim man who winced as an orcish healer poured grog over a seeping wound on his arm.

"Su cuy'gar, Gravewalker," Serka's youngest grunted. "Welcome back to the land of the living."

Talion took over treating his ally's wounds. After Baranor had brought Serka over, Masego and the rest of his family had spent many years resisting Sauron's dominion in the lands to the south, and they had been in contact - and even something approaching friends - for a long time. "How bad was it?"

The Man shrugged, then winced again when that pulled at the gash, already raw and stinging. "Not so bad as it could have been," he answered, holding still as the wraith threaded a needle with steady hands. "You told us to submit to lighten the punishment for rebelling in the first place and we did, though we still lost people to Sauron's mines and armies. But he never sent you to root us out completely, so I suppose we can call it a win?"

"Better than the alternative, at least." Over long years of patching others' wounds, Talion's stitches had gone from embarrassingly slow and horribly uneven to quick and neat, and he had Masego's injury sealed up in short order. "What about the war itself?"

Masego's lips went tight, and he shook his head, swept his uninjured arm out to encompass the thousand or so Haradrim men in the fortress of Cirith Ungol. "So far as I know, unless others have already started for home, we are all that remains - not just of the army that came to fight, but of most of the adult men in the southern lands within Sauron's reach."

And the Maia had had a long arm indeed. So many people - the Harad lands would be devastated by the loss, utterly upended more than they had already been by the departure. And that was assuming they were not taken over by further-flung nations in the Hither Lands across the Inner Sea who had had no part in the War of the Ring - or the Corsairs of Umbar, who fielded smaller but more specialized forces. Talion grimaced. "How about you, Xiuying?"

"The same," the Easterling woman, Fan Xiuying, answered, seeming to materialize out of the shadows nearby. "We had more fighters, but we have lost women as well as men and so the end result is the same, if not worse. Near an entire generation lost - maybe more than one." She knelt next to him and laid her bow across her thighs.

Talion's grimace deepened. Though it, too, had been devastated by the fighting, if Gondor decided to seek recompense for the War of the Ring, there was little any of them could do aside from sue for peace and mercy, not without Talion revealing himself and provoking a very violent answer from the West and the Far West. The Eastern lands were better protected with Mordor in the way, but Near Harad and even Far Harad and the Hither Lands were just a few months' march down the road that bore their name.

Now he was almost glad that Shelob had called him back to Middle-earth. He would have done all these people - including his own - a grave disservice by leaving them behind.

"The only advice I can give is to return to your homes and make peace with the West as fast as possible without compromising your people," the Ringwraith told them. "Blame as much on Sauron as you can and make it clear that there were those who resisted his dominion. Mention Alatar and Pallando if you need to; they won't mind. I cannot promise I will stand openly with you against them - we cannot let them use meas an excuse to attack us all- but I won't let them march against you unjustly."

Both of them nodded and gripped his forearm in affirmation. "Neither will we let you stand alone if they come for you," said Fan Xiuying, "but now answer me this: why have you returned? The few times we spoke in person, you said that you would accept your final death when the time came."

"If only it were so easy as that," he said quietly, tying off the bandage on Masego's arm, and told them about the other Ringwraiths.

"Haar'chak," Masego murmured when he had finished, and Fan Xiuying cursed in her own tongue as well. "We will never be at peace, will we?"

"I doubt it will come in one lifetime, or perhaps even several," Talion answered honestly, "but without Sauron here to cast his long shadow over our lands, this is more hope than we've had in a long time."

AN: I'm using Mando'a for the Haradrim language, because I'm not Tolkien with the the training and time to go around inventing languages for fun. But this will be one of the few times you'll see it in the fic, so pls just roll with it.