The Two Towers (The Lord of the Rings 2)

‘Halt!’ yelled Uglúk.

There was for a moment turmoil and confusion. Pippin sprang up and ran. But the Orcs were after him. Some suddenly loomed up right in front of him.

‘No hope of escape!’ thought Pippin. ‘But there is a hope that I have left some of my own marks unspoilt on the wet ground.’ He groped with his two tied hands at his throat, and unclasped the brooch of his cloak. Just as long arms and hard claws seized him, he let it fall. ‘There I suppose it will lie until the end of time,’ he thought. ‘I don’t know why I did it. If the others have escaped, they’ve probably all gone with Frodo.’

A whip-thong curled round his legs, and he stifled a cry. ‘Enough!’ shouted Uglúk running up. ‘He’s still got to run a long way yet. Make ’em both run! Just use the whip as a reminder.’

‘But that’s not all,’ he snarled, turning to Pippin. ‘I shan’t forget. Payment is only put off. Leg it!’

Neither Pippin nor Merry remembered much of the later part of the journey. Evil dreams and evil waking were blended into a long tunnel of misery, with hope growing ever fainter behind. They ran, and they ran, striving to keep up the pace set by the Orcs, licked every now and again with a cruel thong cunningly handled. If they halted or stumbled, they were seized and dragged for some distance.

The warmth of the orc-draught had gone. Pippin felt cold and sick again. Suddenly he fell face downward on the turf. Hard hands with rending nails gripped and lifted him. He was carried like a sack once more, and darkness grew about him: whether the darkness of another night, or a blindness of his eyes, he could not tell.

Dimly he became aware of voices clamouring: it seemed that many of the Orcs were demanding a halt. Uglúk was shouting. He felt himself flung to the ground, and he lay as he fell, till black dreams took him. But he did not long escape from pain; soon the iron grip of merciless hands was on him again. For a long time he was tossed and shaken, and then slowly the darkness gave way, and he came back to the waking world and found that it was morning. Orders were shouted and he was thrown roughly on the grass.

There he lay for a while, fighting with despair. His head swam, but from the heat in his body he guessed that he had been given another draught. An Orc stooped over him, and flung him some bread and a strip of raw dried flesh. He ate the stale grey bread hungrily, but not the meat. He was famished but not yet so famished as to eat flesh flung to him by an Orc, the flesh of he dared not guess what creature.

He sat up and looked about. Merry was not far away. They were by the banks of a swift narrow river. Ahead mountains loomed: a tall peak was catching the first rays of the sun. A dark smudge of forest lay on the lower slopes before them.

There was much shouting and debating among the Orcs; a quarrel seemed on the point of breaking out again between the Northerners and the Isengarders. Some were pointing back away south, and some were pointing eastward.

‘Very well,’ said Uglúk. ‘Leave them to me then! No killing, as I’ve told you before; but if you want to throw away what we’ve come all the way to get, throw it away! I’ll look after it. Let the fighting Uruk-hai do the work, as usual. If you’re afraid of the Whiteskins, run! Run! There’s the forest,’ he shouted, pointing ahead. ‘Get to it! It’s your best hope. Off you go! And quick, before I knock a few more heads off, to put some sense into the others.’

There was some cursing and scuffling, and then most of the Northerners broke away and dashed off, over a hundred of them, running wildly along the river towards the mountains. The hobbits were left with the Isengarders: a grim dark band, four score at least of large, swart, slant-eyed Orcs with great bows and short broad-bladed swords. A few of the larger and bolder Northerners remained with them.

‘Now we’ll deal with Grishnákh,’ said Uglúk; but some even of his own followers were looking uneasily southwards.

‘I know,’ growled Uglúk. ‘The cursed horse-boys have got wind of us. But that’s all your fault, Snaga. You and the other scouts ought to have your ears cut off. But we are the fighters. We’ll feast on horseflesh yet, or something better.’

At that moment Pippin saw why some of the troop had been pointing eastward. From that direction there now came hoarse cries, and there was Grishnákh again, and at his back a couple of score of others like him: long-armed crook-legged Orcs. They had a red eye painted on their shields. Uglúk stepped forward to meet them.

‘So you’ve come back?’ he said. ‘Thought better of it, eh?’

‘I’ve returned to see that Orders are carried out and the prisoners safe,’ answered Grishnákh.

‘Indeed!’ said Uglúk. ‘Waste of effort. I’ll see that orders are carried out in my command. And what else did you come back for? You went in a hurry. Did you leave anything behind?’

‘I left a fool,’ snarled Grishnákh. ‘But there were some stout fellows with him that are too good to lose. I knew you’d lead them into a mess. I’ve come to help them.’

‘Splendid!’ laughed Uglúk. ‘But unless you’ve got some guts for fighting, you’ve taken the wrong way. Lugbúrz was your road. The Whiteskins are coming. What’s happened to your precious Nazgûl? Has he had another mount shot under him? Now, if you’d brought him along, that might have been useful – if these Nazgûl are all they make out.’

‘Nazgûl, Nazgûl,’ said Grishnákh, shivering and licking his lips, as if the word had a foul taste that he savoured painfully. ‘You speak of what is deep beyond the reach of your muddy dreams, Uglúk,’ he said. ‘Nazgûl! Ah! All that they make out! One day you’ll wish that you had not said that. Ape!’ he snarled fiercely. ‘You ought to know that they’re the apple of the Great Eye. But the winged Nazgûl: not yet, not yet. He won’t let them show themselves across the Great River yet, not too soon. They’re for the War – and other purposes.’

‘You seem to know a lot,’ said Uglúk. ‘More than is good for you, I guess. Perhaps those in Lugbúrz might wonder how, and why. But in the meantime the Uruk-hai of Isengard can do the dirty work, as usual. Don’t stand slavering there! Get your rabble together! The other swine are legging it to the forest. You’d better follow. You wouldn’t get back to the