Monologue: Uglúk

In my defense, nobody said there were four of them. Alive and as captured, was all he said; no spoiling. And then he gestured me out, and I don’t mind admitting that I went posthaste, because the last person who asked him for clarification had wound up on decauling duty in the birthing pits. So I went downstairs and got a group together; it took a bit, because we had to stop by the armory and then slap on each other’s facepaint (you know how it is, impossible to get the right angle if you’re doing your own), but we were on the road in record time overall. That’s the thing about being molded by means of the fell and nameless arts to run as well under the noonday sun as you do under cover of night: you work all hours, because he knows you can. Nobody ever asked me when I think my peak productivity hours fall in the circadian cycle, but if they had, I would have told them I’m pretty solidly a night owl. I find that’s when my hewing and cleaving are at their best.

I do feel bad about how the whole thing worked out. It’s hard not to. But I try not to beat myself up too much—you couldn’t have known in advance, Uglúk, nobody’s perfect, they can’t expect you to do a job they haven’t trained you for, I know, I know. It just doesn’t feel great when you set out in your first ever leadership role—outside of goading underlings in the smelting hall, which doesn’t feel like it counts—you know, your first real responsibility. And it winds up with you not only taking the wrong prisoners but then losing them into the bargain, and getting your entire group, plus the whole supporting group the other org sent to help you out, slaughtered by angry horse breeders. And then you get home, after mentally rehearsing your apology the whole way and half-wishing the horse breeders had finished you off as well, and realize that you’re not going to need it because the prisoners you weren’t supposed to have taken in the first place have escaped, recruited some local riffraff to help them, and absolutely laid waste to the whole establishment. I’ll never forget the moment when I came around that last corner before the road opens out to Isengard, and saw the whole place flooded and smoking. You’ll never work in Rohan again, Uglúk, I said to myself then. After this, you’ll be lucky if anyone will hire you on in Near Harad or Khand.

But, I mean, come on. When I really take stock and look at the big picture, I was set up to fail. I’d never been to the Shire—nobody I knew had ever been to the Shire, or much of anywhere outside the pits around his tower—or even heard of it. How was I to know what a hobbit looked like, or how to tell them apart from each other? It was that dickhead Grishnákh who said we were looking for smallish people, and that they wouldn’t put up much of a fight because they came from someplace where everybody spent their time gardening and eating snacks. (I wondered what their peak working hours were, if they even had any. Grishnákh certainly didn’t.) And he was the one who hinted that they might have something valuable, outside of whatever information they were carrying in their unassuming little heads. Not that he knew what it looked like, or anything actually useful. It was just like Grishnákh, to be brimming over with hints that made him look like an orc of the world, as if he had some kind of vast and superior knowledge. Snide asshole, Grishnákh. Not much of a loss there.

So anyway, we charged into the woods by the river, up at the top of the Falls of Rauros, and caught two of the hobbits—as far as I knew at the time, the only two hobbits—easily enough. There was an armored lout with them who gave us some trouble, but in the end we broke his noisemaker in half and turned him into a decent simulacrum of a pincushion. We hit the prisoners over the head, tied them up, and set off again right away. I was already imagining how it would be when we got back to Isengard: well done Uglúk, here’s a double ration of man-flesh and a promotion. And what time of day did you say you worked best at?

In hindsight, I should have known that things were going a bit too well when I managed to keep Grishnákh from cutting off pieces of them to eat for two or three days in a row. Collaboration has never been my strong suit, and I was feeling overly pleased with myself for having pulled it off. Who knew those horse breeders could move around in the night? I’d always thought humans were more or less useless after the sun went down, but so much for that.

Still. Things didn’t turn out too badly for me, in the end. I like the Shire just fine—I didn’t wind up with a promotion, exactly, but prodding hobbits up the road to the factories is lighter work than splitting armored heads in twain. And there’s no birthing pits here, or at least not yet. I’m sure he’ll take care of that eventually. The nice thing about being the sole survivor of something terrible—say, a marauding troop of horse breeders—is that nobody can contradict your version of events, so I don’t think I stand too much of a chance of being assigned to the new birthing pits, whenever he gets around to building them. And, that Elvish weapon is that Grishnákh was going on about? It doesn’t seem to have done their side much good. I mean: I’m here, aren’t I?

No, I don’t worry about what happened to the pair I was supposed to catch. It’s a big world—a lot can happen between the Falls and wherever it was that they thought they were going. But sometimes I give their cousins an extra shove when I’m walking them up the hill to the smelter, to remember them by.

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(Post image courtesy of Caroline Attwood on Unsplash)