Title: Orc in Ithilien
Author: Draylon (draylon@hotmail.com)
Pairing(s):Faramir / Shagrat
Rating: NC17
Summary
An Author's Note and warning: here are the first instalments of what promises to be a 
long and rambling sequel to the story ‘Captain of Mordor’ (also available on LoM), in 
which Faramir of Gondor finds himself slashed with Shagrat, an Uruk, once again.


Orc in Ithilien

Chapter 1.  At His Majesty’s Pleasure

“Give over, your Highness,” Shagrat panted.  “You – you can’t mean to do that to me 
here.  You know I won’t be able - oh.  Oh!  Don’t!  Stop doing that –“

“I can’t have caught you quite right,” the Prince of Ithilien murmured, halting the 
rhythmic, stroking movements that Shagrat claimed to be objecting to.  At the same 
time he tightened his hold around various salient portions of Shagrat’s anatomy.  
Shagrat, who was a large Uruk-hai Orc, could often be quite a handful - actually, in 
surprisingly more ways than one: the Prince for example was certainly finding that he 
had both his hands full at that particular moment.  He was gratified to note Shagrat, 
for all his protests, shoving himself nearer, leaning in closer, for more of his touch.  
Slowly, he began to move his hands again, caressing languorously, in a way that he 
calculated would be quite irresistible to Shagrat and for a few seconds the Orc moved 
with him, pressing in and pulling back, grinding his hips against him. 

“I didn’t catch you right,” the Prince repeated.  “Did you say ‘don’t stop doing that’?

 “No!” Shagrat protested, wrenching himself sideways, with a recklessness borne of 
desperation (given the nature of the hold his companion had on him) as he tried 
ineffectually to retreat.  The Prince followed after, and soon had him cornered again, 
up against one of the bookcases in his study.  Shagrat shot him a desperate, wild-eyed 
look, which the Prince summarily ignored, while his hands returned to the Uruk’s 
groin.  He carried on with what he had been doing. 

“That’s not  – it isn’t what I said,” Shagrat gasped eventually, collecting himself after 
another long moment.  “I meant, someone might see!  What if someone catches you 
fumbling about in here with – oh.  Oh!  Faramir, no!  What if – what if someone –“  

Shagrat tried half-heartedly, once again, to pull himself away.  Evidently however he 
had already passed his point of no return, as Faramir intended he would, for at that 
point his body began to spasm uncontrollably in the Prince’s persuasive grip.  The 
Orc’s head dropped forwards and his teeth closed round Faramir’s shoulder, as he 
tried to stifle an ecstatic, shuddering groan.  

“’What if someone comes,’” Faramir finished for him.  He felt the sudden, 
disconcerting pressure of Shagrat’s fangs pricking at him through the fabric of his 
tunic when he said it, as with a convulsive movement, the muscles in the Uruk’s jaw 
clenched then unclenched rapidly.   More or less though, he trusted that Shagrat 
would not bite him.  It was quite unlikely that Shagrat would deliberately set out to 
injure him.  Not seriously, at any rate, he thought.

Shagrat sagged against him, weak in the knees, cursing at him fluently in Orcish.  
During the weeks since Faramir had acquired him, from a travelling circus in which 
Shagrat had been a most reluctant exhibit, the Orc’s health had improved immensely.  
But Shagrat had been more dead than alive when Faramir found him, and his physical 
condition was still far from being satisfactory.  He was lame in one leg and had lost an 
eye, and there were other, more serious injuries that Faramir suspected, but which 
Shagrat invariably downplayed, or insisted on dismissing entirely, in a blasé, utterly 
infuriating manner.

Faramir helped him to sit down, suddenly feeling contrite.  Shagrat kept his hold on 
him, and obligingly, Faramir knelt in front of him, while the Orc moved his head, to 
butt and nuzzle at the base of Faramir’s neck.  The sharp points of Shagrat’s teeth 
grazed against his flesh, scratching slightly.  Faramir hoped they would not leave a 
permanent mark.  He felt a slight frisson at the thought of this; fear, mixed with 
excitement, as he usually did when dealing with Shagrat, for the Orc, no matter how 
well-intentioned, was equipped neither physically or by temperament to conduct 
himself with any degree of forbearance or restraint.

“This can’t go on, your Highness,” Shagrat muttered, in a muffled voice.  “You 
forever after me, like this.  Chasing me about willy-nilly, like I’m one of your 
blushing serving maids, or some such.  It’s not right, you know.  Anybody could find 
us here, any moment.”

“And then what,” Faramir asked him.

“Anyone could come in, and then what would they think.  They’d see you with me, 
wouldn’t they.  They’d see!”

Shagrat’s extreme modesty in this respect had been quite unexpected, but had turned 
out to be a great source of harmless delight for Faramir.  The Orc, it seemed, had not 
the slightest ability to resist the even vaguest of approaches directed at him by the 
Prince; he could not help himself from responding to Faramir’s overtures, but at the 
same time he retained – or had somehow acquired – a keen sense of decorum, and 
suffered pointless agonies of guilt and embarrassment over what he obviously saw to 
be the awful impropriety of their situation.  Persuading the now, astonishingly demure 
Shagrat to overstep his own limits of good behaviour had quickly become one of the 
Prince’s favourite recreational pursuits – although in truth, it was never a particularly 
challenging pastime.   But the Orc seemed genuinely agitated this time, and so 
Faramir tried his best to ally his anxieties.  

“I think,” Faramir said, biting the inside of his cheek, to keep the smile out of his 
voice, “that the household staff - those of them who have chosen to remain with us - 
have by now accepted for the most part, that anything that may be going on between 
us is….going to be going on, regardless of what they, or anybody else, thinks.  It 
really isn’t anyone’s concern but yours and mine, since I’ve made it clear that when 
I’m with you, I am not to be disturbed under any circumstances.  So you must 
understand, Shagrat, that there isn’t any chance of anyone - seeing.”

Shagrat sighed mightily, his great, rough paws dropping down into Faramir’s lap, as 
he lifted his chin up to rest on Faramir’s shoulder. “Well then, your Highness,” he 
said, growling softly into Faramir’s ear, “I suppose in that case, Goldilocks, there
wouldn’t be so much harm in us carrying on with what you’ve started then, would 
there?  Not just this once, eh?”  His hands began to rove back and forth, stroking up 
under Faramir’s shirt and at pulling the waistband of his breeches.  “Since you’re sure 
everyone’s clear they’re to keep out our way, for a bit…” 

The Orc’s voice tailed off abruptly at that.  With a hurried movement, his body tensed, 
and he jerked himself backwards.  Faramir gave him a bemused look.  It was not at all 
like Shagrat to stop short in the middle of things like this, but the Orc, his expression 
quite unreadable, was staring with awful intensity at a point some distance behind the 
Prince’s back.  

Shagrat swallowed, and licked his lips. “She clear about that too, is she?” he said.

Faramir turned to follow the Orc’s gaze.  The main door to the study had quietly been 
opened, and when the Prince looked over his shoulder and saw who was standing, 
framed in the doorway his mind went blank from panic, as all the blood drained away 
from his face.

“This may not be what it appears to look like,” Faramir said, feeling his throat 
beginning to close up with fright.  

“There hasn’t been any funny business,” Shagrat heard himself blurting out, almost 
simultaneously.  

Neither of them received much in the way of a reply however, for the incomer, the 
Lady Eowyn, Faramir’s wife – was it seemed, still much too shocked and horrified by 
the tableau she’d seen being played out before her to even be able to speak.


Chapter 2.  Trouble and Strife

It was worse, far, far worse, than Eowyn could have imagined.  Her husband was 
stooped down on the floor, kneeling unashamedly before the beast.  Faramir’s fair 
hair was ruffled, and his tunic, shirt-front and shockingly, his breeches were open, for 
he had obviously been disporting himself brazenly – in broad daylight! - with – with 
the fell creature.  The pair of them were in a wretched, disgusting, state of dishabille.  
Though Faramir’s face had blanched, taking on a dreadful look of dismay the instant 
he’d seen her, she knew she had not imagined the rosy, excited flush that had been 
covering his face and upper chest, or the highlights of merriment that had been 
sparking in his eyes.  He looked happier than Eowyn had ever seen him, and even 
through the anger that suffused her as she gazed at the awful tableau being played out 
between Man and Orc, she felt a queer, heart-sick pang at the thought of it.

And as for the other – the monster!  Until the moment when she’d first seen for 
herself, she realised that even after all she had heard, she hadn’t quite believed the 
awful rumours that had reached her.  But it was every bit as bad as they had said.  A 
black-hearted Orc!  Neither hale nor whole, the beast looked sick and was riddled 
with corruption.  White-faced with rage, breathless with indignation, Eowyn turned on 
her heel, rushing to get away from them, and slammed the door behind her.  

It was an incomprehensible situation.  Her husband had always been correct, 
courteous and considerate in their marital relations, conducting himself with the 
utmost tact and delicacy.  With if anything a little too much tact and delicacy, Eowyn 
found herself thinking, although she squashed that treacherous thought almost as soon 
as it occurred to her.  But there had never been the slightest suggestion that Faramir’s 
inclinations lay in anything other than the accepted conjugal association between 
husband and wife.  And even then, if he had chosen a worthier partner for himself, she 
could easily have turned a blind eye, for what he was doing was not unheard of in 
Minas Tirith – far from it.  Though it was a standing joke among the Rohirrim that the 
Men of Gondor had invented sport of that type, even in the furthest backwater 
provinces of Rohan, it would be rare to find a horse-lord who had not enjoyed at least 
one tumble with a stable-lad at some point during his youth.  Those kinds of 
association, whether between man and man, or woman and woman were not 
especially frowned upon, and indeed with an Elvish Queen and coterie of Elves in 
Minas Tirith, such relations had become rather fashionable, and quite the done thing.  
More than a few of Eowyn’s acquaintances at Court had a same-sex partner; several 
of them had more than one.   But nobody she had ever heard of – no one in living 
memory - had ever taken an Orc as their lover, before.

Having left the pair of them, her husband and his vile companion, Eowyn, still 
shaking with agitation, paused to collect herself in the sitting room that adjoined 
Faramir’s study.  A moment later her husband followed after.  Red in the face, he 
smiled weakly at her.

“It’s a pleasure to see you Eowyn,” he said, “though - as you must see -  I had not 
thought to expect you.  Have you had a pleasant journey?  What brings you back to 
Ithilien so soon?”

That he dared to speak such pleasantries to her, affecting a normal tone of voice, as if 
nothing untoward had happened, made Eowyn seethe with rage.  And after the scene 
she had just been forced to witness!  

“What else but news of your infamous conduct, my husband?” she replied.  “Your 
friends at Court have done their best to suppress it, but it must soon be the scandal of 
the kingdom!  I have had it whispered low to me, as a thing no decent person could 
speak of aloud!” 

Faramir thought that was overstating the case, and said so.  “I can understand that 
people might initially be a little –“ he paused, evidently searching for the right word -  
“squeamish,” he continued, “but there’s no reason for that.  Really, I can’t see it as 
anything other than a matter between Shagrat and myself.  It shouldn’t concern 
anyone else, because –“

“Squeamish!” Eowyn shouted.  “Squeamishness, you call it!   That everyone knows 
you’re slaking your lusts in such a low, bestial fashion!   Shagrat!  Is that what you’ve 
named him?  And why not – it suits him well enough!  What you’re doing is but a 
small step from bestiality – worse, perhaps, since that foul creature shares and abets in 
your  perversion!”  Eowyn turned away, white-faced and shaking, feeling horrified.  
She had not meant to say so much.

With an edge in his voice, Faramir asked whether the problem was that he was slaking 
his lusts in a supposedly low and bestial fashion, or that everybody knew about it.   
Eowyn did not deign to answer.

“As I was saying,” Faramir continued reasonably enough, “it’s nobody’s business but 
his and mine.  We’re all adults, aren’t we? He is single.  I am unattached.  You 
remember of course that I am unattached, do you not, Eowyn?”

“You’ve done this as a ploy?  As a trick to bring me back and bind me to your side?”

Faramir shook his head sadly.  “No, Eowyn, I had not thought, and would not think of 
doing such a thing.   But you can agree then that since you and I have separated, the 
matter concerns myself and the Uruk, only?”

Regardless of that, Eowyn insisted, no right-thinking person could ever accept it.  
Faramir did not immediately reply and pushing what she perceived as being her 
advantage, she continued, making many good and reasonable arguments against the 
folly of forging alliances so completely with dark, corrupted creatures such as Uruk-
hai from Mordor.  The more the Lady talked however, the more obstinate Faramir 
seemed to become. Once his wife had talked herself out, he replied to her quite calmly.

“We’re in love,” Faramir said.  He spoke quietly enough but there was a slightly 
crazed and antic gleam in his eye.

Eowyn snorted with disgust.  “Love, you say.   What could a creature like that know 
of such emotion?  I would have never taken you for a fool, Faramir.   Have you 
become so eager to receive ‘love,’ so despairing of its receipt through any normal 
channel that now you seek it, abjecting your person in the most hateful ways to the 
pursuit of it, where it cannot possibly exist?  You must realise that you are deceiving 
yourself.” 

“We’re in love,” Faramir repeated through his teeth. “We’ve decided we want to be 
together always.”

Eowyn gazed at him in wonderment, as if she was seeing him for the first time.  How 
could she have failed to notice before now that her husband had gone demented?   But 
really, was it any surprise?  Because there was madness enough in that line.  Was it 
not said that Faramir’s brother Boromir had been consumed past all sanity with greed 
and lust for the One Ring?  And considering the stock from which both brothers had 
come: their Father’s conduct as Steward of Gondor was notorious, and he had himself 
perished in madness at the end of the war, in a shameful bid to take his own life and 
that of his younger son.   The despair that had come upon Denethor – Faramir never 
spoke of it, but with a feeling of dread, Eowyn recalled what she had heard - that it 
had begun with the death of the old Steward’s wife.  Eowyn swallowed down her 
anger, as a terrible thought occurred to her; that she herself must have played some 
role in causing Faramir’s present derangement.  It was her desertion that had left 
Faramir unhinged, so that a filthy Orc had been able to make easy prey of him.  Her 
poor, poor husband!  He was to be pitied, but he was not to be blamed in any of this. 

With an effort, Eowyn composed her features, suppressing the disgust that she now 
must feel whenever she considered her husband’s recent conduct.  “Come, Faramir,” 
she said soothingly, reaching for his hands.  “Let us not fight.”


Chapter 3. Orc in Ithilien

Shagrat stared out of the window and down into the palace grounds.  It was so foggy 
outside that night seemed to be falling early, and darkness was already creeping out 
from under the branches of the trees, and settling through the chilly, greyish dusk.  A 
dank tendril of mist skeined its way in through the open casement and past the 
unclosed window-drapes, before it evaporated in the comparative warmth of Shagrat’s 
bed-chamber.  

The royal estate in Ithilien was, in the Orc’s opinion, sited in a wholly godforsaken 
spot.  The estate was comprised of a narrowish tongue of land, east of the river and 
west of the Mountains of Shadow, sandwiched between the two, in an unfortunate 
placement that meant it was subject to a cloying miasma of heat, damp and humidity 
for most months of the year.  There were altogether too many trees, and they 
encouraged an intolerable diversity of wildlife – the night-time exuberances of which, 
from the nearby summer swamps, were almost too noisy to be borne.  

There was however something Shagrat was finding to be even worse than the 
incessant frog and cricket noises.  Now that the seasons were changing, and autumn 
was on its way, the air was filled with the wailing cries of water-birds, which called 
mournfully all through the day and night, as they passed over on their way to the great 
river delta in the south.  Their haunted, eerie notes, so similar to the lamenting cries of 
forsaken prisoners, would rouse Shagrat from the depths of sleep, and send him down 
paths of dark recollection, scaring up dismal memories that his Orcish mind would 
sooner forget.  And it was growing cold, there was such a chilly dampness to the place 
now in the evenings and the mornings, that Shagrat fancied he could feel it in the 
insides of his bones.   

Just Goldilocks’ luck to get landed with such a second-rate billet, Shagrat thought to 
himself.  Story of the poor bleeder’s life, really; he’d never been exactly what you’d 
call a fortunate son.  Second best at everything from the outset; everybody’s stand-in 
choice, perennial winner of life’s consolation prize.  And as for matters of the heart, 
he’d made some truly dreadful choices there, too – but with that the Orc sighed 
mightily, and shook his head, being unwilling under the circumstances to keep 
pursuing that particular line of thought. 

It was time to light the lamps indoors, but Shagrat, ordinarily, would not have 
bothered about that.  He didn’t trouble himself with that sort of thing because usually 
at about this time, Faramir would turn up at the Uruk’s rooms for a visit.  He’d arrive 
under the pretext of making sure the lamps were lit, or that the fire was banked.  He 
would find some general excuse to sit with Shagrat for the rest of the evening, and 
then more often than not he’d stay with him, all through the night.  It was a 
comfortable charade that had been replayed every evening without fail, since he first 
began travelling with the Prince.  The old Orc had resolved to try not to wonder what 
– if anything – all this might have meant.  

The first time it happened, Shagrat knew, or thought he knew, exactly what 
Goldilocks wanted from him.  What else but sex - for the time had come, he’d wearily 
surmised, for him to sing for his supper.  Given previous events between them, and as 
far as he could tell, sex was the foundation of the only real kind of relationship that he 
and Goldilocks had ever had between them.  Other than that, there was nothing else 
Shagrat could think of that would explain Faramir’s interest in him.  The Orc was not 
a particularly fine-looking fellow – quite the reverse, if truth be told - and moreover at 
that point, he had been in an especially ruinous physical state.  The long months of ill-
treatment that Shagrat had endured at the hands of the travelling showmen had 
weakened him, and the hours spent travelling on horseback had worsened those 
effects, leaving Shagrat so sore and exhausted in body and spirits that at that point, if 
push came to shove, he doubted whether he’d have been able to raise even so much as 
a smile.  In Shagrat’s experience though, those sorts of details had never deterred any 
prospective sexual partner of his in the past, and so he’d tiredly prepared, if not 
simply to lie back and think of Mordor exactly, then at least to feign every appearance 
of enjoyment - in a royal command performance, as one might call it.  

Quite frankly he’d expected to be buggered senseless whether he wanted it or not, and 
in anticipation of this, Shagrat had begun to prepare himself as best he could.  He 
hadn’t realised how much his shoulders had hunched and his hands had shaken as he 
made himself ready, or how dejected he’d looked - but Faramir, who had planned 
nothing more than to check on the well-being of his companion, had noted it all too 
clearly.  It was a measure of the changes that had been forced on the Uruk, and 
Faramir had been taken aback, thoroughly shocked, to see how meekly and with so 
little attempt at protest he had prepared to serve himself up for further abuse.  At that 
moment, unbeknownst to Shagrat, Faramir had resolved to devote the bulk of his free 
time for the foreseeable future to caring for and cosseting the Orc.  

But ever since Faramir’s return to Ithilien with Shagrat in tow, the royal household 
had been severely under-staffed, for the arrival of a former servant of Mordor as a 
permanent houseguest had provoked an immediate, mass staff walkout.  Even those 
attendants who had found themselves able in principle to tolerate the Uruk’s presence 
had refused to have any kind of direct dealings with him.  It had fallen to Faramir, 
then, to tend to Shagrat day to day, and he had lavished care and attention on the Orc, 
taking pleasure in treating his new companion with such kindness and consideration 
that Shagrat, at first deeply suspicious, and then thoroughly bemused by his host’s 
attentiveness, had eventually had no choice but to blossom under it.

That was all over and done with now, though.  The Lady of the House had made that 
clear enough.  Shagrat had listened in on a bit of it, the dialogue between Goldilocks 
and his Lady, after he’d been given his marching orders earlier that afternoon.

“Wanted the chance to speak with her husband in private,” her Ladyship had 
announced.   As it turned out, after catching them at it, she’d stormed off not very far 
at all – only to the next room in fact, into which Goldilocks had – of course – run 
chasing after her immediately.  She’d not been speaking to Shagrat directly, and so 
Goldilocks, blushing as he said it, had asked Shagrat if perhaps he couldn’t see him 
later on, in his room?  She’d given poor old Goldilocks a proper tongue-lashing after 
that, once she thought Shagrat was out of earshot, and though the Orc hated to admit it, 
what she’d said made a kind of sense: the shame and disgrace that would be heaped 
on Faramir, when news of his sordid, unnatural association with Shagrat became 
public - how no right-thinking person could accept it, that it would never be justified.  
And so on.

She wouldn’t rest till she’d managed to talk Goldilocks into seeing her point of view, 
Shagrat was sure of that.  No doubt Faramir would be persuaded round to his wife’s 
way of thinking soon enough because in all honesty, the Orc was under no great 
illusion about the strength of the Prince’s attachment to him.  After all Faramir had – 
apparently, with not a second thought or qualm of conscience - abandoned Shagrat to 
an uncertain fate on more than one occasion in the past, and his regard for Shagrat 
could at best be said to come and go.  No, Shagrat hadn’t really expected that 
whatever he and Faramir had between them would ever last, but painful as the thought 
of separation from his beloved Goldilocks was to him, that was not what was 
worrying him especially at this point.   As things stood, it seemed unlikely in the 
extreme that he would be allowed to continue on his way.


Chapter 4. Moonlight Flit

Gloomily, Shagrat glanced out of his window again, at the same time drawing his 
breath in a series of deep, careful sniffs.  The fog and gathering dusk had long since 
obscured the figure of the Rohirrim esquire who had been set to watch this part of the 
building, but Shagrat could tell from the faint tang of horse-sweat and unwashed body 
parts that occasionally wafted downwind towards him that the man was still standing 
guard in the shrubbery, where he had first concealed himself several hours previously.   
The inside of the house was being watched as well; there was a heavily armed, straw-
headed pair lingering just down the corridor from Shagrat’s bed-chamber.  It seemed 
clear that steps had been taken to ensure that Shagrat would not be leaving Ithilien 
intact.  In fact he seriously doubted his chances of surviving the night

Moving as quietly as he could, Shagrat gathered his few belongings together on the 
bed.  There wasn’t much to take.  A walking-stick, given him by Goldilocks, which 
concealed a rapier-thin blade in its shaft, an empty wine-skin which would serve as a 
water-flask at a pinch, and a heavy woollen cape.  Shagrat had also at one point made 
himself a leg-brace.  When it was fitted in place he was able to stand properly and 
even walk distances if he was careful, though in all honesty, he’d hoped that he would 
never have any cause to use it.   Since their arrival in Ithilien Faramir had managed to 
inveigle only one medical man into seeing him.  The fellow, who Shagrat suspected 
was more usually a horse-doctor, had muttered that in cases of this sort, the best 
option for treatment was usually a sharp blow to the head with a blunt instrument, but 
at Faramir’s insistence, he’d done his best to re-align the breaks in the Uruk’s ankle.  
This had been painful, and had not done a noticeable amount of good, so in the end 
Shagrat had spent an afternoon hammering the brace roughly into shape – in true 
Orcish fashion – from various second-hand pieces of leather and metal plate he’d 
scrounged for, around the Royal Stables.  The farriers and grooms there had for the 
most part seen active military service, if not during the Ring War itself then as 
members of the local militia during the preceding years of hostilities.  And yet for 
some reason these men seemed to view the Orc with substantially less aggression than 
the household staff.  Like so much of human behaviour and the motivations that drove 
it, this was a mystery to him. 

Unfortunately for Shagrat it was this leg-brace that was his undoing.  When by his 
reckoning it was dark enough outside for him to make his escape, he bundled his few 
possessions together in Faramir’s cape and managed to lob the package out of the 
window quite quietly, but when he tried to swing his legs over the windowsill, the 
unaccustomed weight of the brace made him clumsy.  He caught the edge of the open 
window-frame heavily with his foot so that the casement shattered, and then there 
came a prolonged racket of breaking, falling glass.  At this the doors to the bed-
chamber burst open immediately: the Rohirrim guardsmen were there, shouting, 
fitting bolts to their crossbows and taking aim, and at that Shagrat, galvanised into 
action, heaved himself off the window-ledge, reaching for a large, woody-stemmed 
creeper that was scrambling its way up the outer wall of the house.  His claws 
scrabbled through the foliage and scratched masonry as he desperately tried to find a 
purchase against the rough stone and branches, and in this way he fell rather than 
climbed most of the way down, but the creeper slowed his descent and he arrived at 
ground level badly shaken, but otherwise unhurt.  Collecting his belongings, he began 
moving at the fastest hobble he could manage, heading across the open space of the 
palace lawn towards cover.

Once again the Orc had miscalculated.  As he hurried through the dark, a whistling 
rush of arrows passed him by and he realised he was being shot at - shot at, but not by 
the Rohirrim guardsmen in his room two stories above.  Jinking and dodging clumsily 
he risked a look back over his shoulder and saw the esquire who’d been set to guard 
the palace gardens running full tilt at him, rapidly closing the distance between them.  
But when he was no more than a dozen or so body-lengths from the fleeing Orc, 
another patch of darkness seemed to detach itself from the wall of foliage surrounding 
the lawns.  It bowled across the grass with frightening, bounding speed and connected 
with the running Rohirrim, knocking him down and rolling with him, over and over.   
He gave a horrible, terrified scream at the same time as Shagrat, bellowing commands 
in Orcish at the top of his lungs was turning in his tracks, lurching back towards the 
fallen man as quickly as his one good leg could carry him.

By the time Shagrat reached the Rohirrim his attacker had gone.  The esquire was 
lying on the ground on his side, not moving but he was at least still breathing.  The 
youth was not uninjured, for his assailant’s claws had raked him from shoulder to 
waist on the left-hand side, shredding through his long leather jerkin as if it was fine 
crepe, and gouging a series of deep wounds.  The Orc probed them briefly with his 
claws and was relieved to note in passing that although ugly, the marks did not seem 
severe enough to be life-threatening; presumably the man had fainted through shock.  

Quickly searching the unconscious man’s body, Shagrat relieved him of his torn 
waistcoat, belt and side-weapons.  At this point the young man began to revive, and in 
spite of whatever horror he had been subject to before Shagrat’s arrival, his face 
contorted with terror and revulsion when he saw the Orc looming over him.  The 
sharp, sudden scent of the Rohirrim’s fear and the reek of fresh blood that rose so 
sweetly from his wounds made Shagrat’s head swim, and in a reaction that was 
natural for him as breathing, his mouth started to water and unconsciously he licked 
his lips.

Though he had not spoken and had scarcely made a move towards him, the Rohirrim 
reacted immediately to the change in the Orc’s attitude, and trembling with fright, he 
began to squirm backwards away from him.  Shagrat watched intently for a moment 
as if entranced, then shook himself.

“Call for help before you bleed to death,” he snarled at the man.  There were lights 
already kindling in the lower level of the lodge, and the Rohirrim guardsmen would 
no doubt be arriving very soon.  But even so, Shagrat hesitated.   It would have been a 
different matter if he had been able to steal away undetected, but Goldilocks would 
undoubtedly think the worst if he was to leave like this, and there was little enough in 
the world that Shagrat cared about other than the Prince’s good opinion of him.  It 
was that and that alone that had stopped him from attacking the Rohirrim a moment 
previously, and he wondered for a heartbeat if he could not stay and try to explain.  
There was perhaps a chance – against everything else – that Goldilocks might listen to 
him.  But Shagrat’s decision was already being made for at that point two things 
happened in rapid succession.  First of all the injured man began to set up a great 
clamour, yelling for help at the top of his voice. 

“The Orc!” he shouted.  “It has savaged me!  Help me - here!  The beast is here!”

Then there came out of the great house behind him the faint sound of voices, shouting 
loudly and far away. 

“Shoot the Uruk, on the Prince’s express orders - shoot him!”

Shagrat stared back at the house for a moment, aghast.  With the best will in the world, 
he couldn’t say that he hadn’t entirely been expecting it, but it still took the heart out 
of him (or rather ripped it open, squeezed it dry and left a ragged, aching void in his 
chest) to hear that from his beloved Goldilocks.  But with an effort, he pulled himself 
together.  Moving to the best of his ability, and with scarcely a glance over his 
shoulder at his erstwhile lodgings, the Orc turned his back on the royal palace of 
Ithilien and legged it off into the night.


Chapter 5. The Powers Behind the Throne

“He was beside himself!” Eowyn cried.  “When he spoke to his men he was beside 
himself  – raging!  I have never seen him so.  And he would not listen to reason, 
insisted that he was going to follow – and retrieve! -  that creature.  I had to act.  But I 
wish that I had not had to -” she broke off, hiding her face in trembling hands.

Eowyn’s advisor however, seemed determined to make light of the situation.  “And if 
you had not stopped him?” he replied.  “Your husband would have run into the night 
in madness, shouting out his ‘love’ for the beast for all to hear.   The Prince’s 
reputation, his status, all would have been lost beyond hope of recovery.  You had to 
prevent it, my lady.  Someone had to protect him from himself.”

Travelling from the city of Minas Tirith to Ithilien, Eowyn had brought an escort of 
her native countrymen, a core group of personal advisors and bodyguards who now 
accompanied her wherever she went.  Though in theory loyal to the crown of Gondor, 
they were first and foremost men of Rohan, and as such answered chiefly to her.  One 
of the members of this party was an older man, Hrodgar.  He was of an age with 
Eowyn’s own father, and had been one of the late King Theoden’s trusted counsellors.   
Since her move from her home country, Eowyn had also come to rely on this man as a 
confidant and friend, especially in recent months, following the collapse of her 
marriage.  So much so that as yet Hrodgar was the only person to whom Eowyn had 
dared divulge the true and shameful details of her husband’s relationship with his Orc.

The practicalities of life at the Rohirrim court under Theoden’s rule meant that as well 
as the usual duties associated with their official title, most of his royal aides and 
advisors also carried a number of other responsibilities, and one of the additional roles 
that Hrodgar fulfilled was that of apothecary to the King.  He had been forced to 
relinquish his responsibilities in this area to Grima, son of Glamrod, early on in that 
traitor’s career, but resumed the post soon after his rival the hated ‘Wormtongue,’ had 
been deposed.  Such was the speed of Grima’s ejection from Rohan that the court 
Apothecary’s chambers, rooms that the Wormtongue had taken for his own use, were 
still filled his personal and professional effects when Hrodgar had taken possession of 
them once again.  Though the older man had been able to learn a great deal from the 
powders and potions that Grima left behind, the arcane knowledge that he had gained 
so easily had not been properly tempered with any sense of responsibility for its wise 
use.

It was on Hrodgar’s advice that Eowyn’s guards had been set to watch the Orc 
Shagrat, lest the beast try to escape the royal lodge and cause mischief far and wide.  
Eowyn had agreed the plan at once, and being determined to stay with Faramir to 
keep a personal watch on him herself, had left it to her trusted advisor to make the 
necessary arrangements with her Rohirrim escort.  As soon became clear however, he 
had taken it upon himself to secure additional back-up, in the form of some of 
Faramir’s own men.   On the subject of detaining the Orc, and the necessary force that 
could be used to accomplish this, he also appeared to have issued the guards with 
some rather controversial instructions – although none of the men that Eowyn spoke 
to later, after the fact, were clear as to the specifics of what had been said.  

Before the incident at any rate, Eowyn and Faramir had been passing a quiet evening 
together pleasantly enough.  Determined to preserve a façade of utmost normality, 
Eowyn had sent for a light evening meal for two to be served in Faramir’s sitting 
room.  After eating informally together they sat companionably enough by the fire, 
and if Faramir’s attitude was definitely distracted, his innate courtesy kept him in 
place at Eowyn’s side in spite of any inclination he might have had to be somewhere 
else.  Once an appropriate amount of time had passed he made one or two efforts to 
take his leave, but Eowyn managed to easily stall him, diverting her husband with 
tales and gossip about their mutual acquaintances at court. 

Faramir, though he listened to her attentively, contributed very little to the 
conversation, and during one of the many pauses in their talk, he noted the 
unmistakeable noises of a rumpus – stomping bootsteps, breaking glass – sounding in 
one of the rooms above.

“That must be Shagrat,” he said, quickly getting to his feet.  Hurrying out of the 
supper-room he met the two Rohirrim who had been set to watch the Uruk’s 
bedchamber as they were running downstairs.  “What’s happening?” he asked.

“We tried to stop him, Sire, but he was too far away.  I must report that the Orc is 
escaping.”

“Escaping?”  Faramir said in a bemused voice.  “What’s he want to escape for?  And 
what’s he got to be to escaping from?”  More shouting from the grounds called them 
outside, the Prince demanding an explanation from the Rohirrim as they went.

“Orc jumped straight out the window, your Highness,” the first guard said, as Faramir 
stared at him in consternation.  “We hoped the fall’d do for him but he hit the ground 
running.”

Another group of guardsmen, Ithilien residents this time, approached out of the dark 
and reported that the Orc had not been seen at the front of the house. 

“Headed cross-country, out back, the last we saw,” one of the Rohirrim confirmed.  
“Thought I’d managed to wing him, for a minute.” 

“’Wing’ him?” Faramir said, aghast.  “Explain yourself!”

“But I’m afraid I didn’t get him, Sir.  Missed my shot when we fired that first volley.” 

“Fired a volley?”  Faramir repeated, his voice rising angrily.  “On whose authority?”

“The order came from you yourself my Lord,” the shamefaced guardsman said, and 
the other, catching sight of Eowyn’s white face at the window behind Faramir added: 
“or so we thought.”

“Some of us ‘ud say we hoped,” muttered one of the Ithilien men, under his breath.

“Shoot the Uruk?  On my orders?” Faramir shouted, “shoot him?”  “If anyone –“ he 
broke off, teeth clenched, shivering with rage.  “Did none of you stop and think for a 
moment that if I was going to be giving an order of that sort, I would have given it 
you myself?”

Determining that there was another pair of Rohirrim watching the main approach to 
the palace, plus a further guard stationed at the back of the house, Faramir ordered all 
of them to be called in, and gave strict instructions that none of the men were to leave 
the house for the rest of the night.  The repercussions for their actions could wait until 
the morning; at that point the Prince had much more pressing business.

Faramir dismissed the guards curtly, utterly disgusted with them, and returned to his 
personal quarters.  He was changing into his outdoor clothes when there came a quiet 
knock at the door, after which Eowyn let herself in without waiting for an answer.  
She was carrying his wine glass from their evening meal.

“Faramir?” she began tentatively.  “What are you doing, so late at night?”

“I’m going after him, of course,” Faramir replied.

“No – stay, here with me, Faramir.  Let the others go.  There is much we ought to 
discuss.”  

Faramir replied that he wished Eowyn had been so keen for his company three months 
ago, before the summer.  “I could not get you to talk to me then,” he said.  “And you 
have yet to tell me what has prompted your strange and sudden change of heart.   I 
wonder, is it jealousy, perhaps?  You have ever desired that which another had, and 
you had not.”

So shocked was Eowyn that he would speak to her like this that she could not reply, 
and seeing her distress, Faramir sighed out sadly.

“Eowyn, I would be no company for you, or anyone tonight.  What you have done – 
please, don’t think of denying it – but we must not speak of it now.  Wait until 
tomorrow perhaps, when we both of us have had time enough to calm ourselves.  
Then we will discuss what is to be done, and we can remember to be kind to each 
other.” 

Calm talk and kindness!  She would far rather he had wanted to rage at her!

“You must not go alone, Faramir,” Eowyn persevered.  “That beast is dangerous - 
there is more to tell.  One of my guardsman was injured while trying to apprehend it.”

“Injured?  Not by Shagrat?”

Not by the Uruk’s own hand, Eowyn admitted, quickly confirming for Faramir that 
her man would soon recover.  “He was savaged by some kind of bear-like, monstrous 
creature, undoubtedly another surviving denizen of Mordor, that the Orc was 
controlling for some dark purpose.  He heard with his own ears the two of them 
talking together in the Black Speech!   It was certainly the Uruk that ordered the 
attack.”

Faramir was silent , and for a moment a worried expression clouded his face.  Then he 
said: “There’s obviously been some mistake.”

Eowyn replied that it was undeniable that the poor boy had been robbed by the Orc, 
which had stripped his valuables off him as if he had been one of the battle-slain.  
“And he was terrorised by it.  It stopped to torment him, even in the heat of its flight!  
Threatening to bleed him to death - all of us are sure that your ‘tame’ Uruk, if it had 
not been scared off, would have ripped out his throat.”

“I should like to hear Shagrat’s version of the night’s events, before drawing any 
hasty conclusions,” Faramir said.

“Hasty conclusions – that you could think of siding with that treacherous creature 
against an honourable man of Rohan!  A member of my own personal staff!”

In a mild voice Faramir commented that he was surprised to hear Eowyn accuse 
another of treachery, especially since she had so recently orchestrated an unprovoked 
attack on a guest of his house.

“’Guest!’” spat Eowyn.

“He was under my protection!” shouted Faramir in retort.  “As he still is, and ever 
will be!  Why will you not understand it?”  They stared at one another furiously, 
neither one willing to concede the other’s point.  Breaking away at last to leave, 
Faramir found his path blocked, bodily, by Eowyn.   She kept moving in front of him, 
and they dodged this way and that for a time, sidestepping together.

“Eoywn, stop it.  You’re being ridiculous,” Faramir exclaimed, exasperatedly.

“Ridiculous!” Eowyn screeched, pounding and pummelling at her husband’s chest in 
frustration.  Long used to being raged and railed at, Faramir bore the brunt of it in 
silence, withdrawing into himself while he waited patiently, as he knew it would do, 
for her anger to blaze and burn away.  Finally Eowyn came back to herself, and she 
stared at him stricken, shocked and mortified by her own behaviour.

“Stay, Faramir, please,” she choked out.  “It would be a cruelty if you left me now, 
like this.  Before you go we will talk calmly, as you wanted, we must.  Here –“ she 
reached for the wine glass that she had left on Faramir’s bureau, offering it.  

Faramir took it without thinking and drained it in one gulp.  His hand went to his 
throat for a moment, and his eyes widened in surprise as the effects of the potent drug 
that Hrodgar had administered began to take hold of him.  Even then he was able to 
take two further, determined steps towards the door before his knees folded under him, 
and then he collapsed slowly, almost gracefully onto the floor. 


TBC.