Chapter Text
It was dragged from the warm fetid nothingness of the grave not remembering its name. The thing that was not yet a man was carved and hammered and shaped into a form with arms, legs, and eyes. Forged, not born; Uruk-hai were made for war. Whoever it had been before would have been overwhelmed and broken by the hellish pits of Isengard. It was easier to bend its neck and obey, setting its monstrous strength to carrying and building and endless drills. The thing in —nearly— the shape of a man could not speak in those first days, and didn’t even know why it might ever wish to.
It took him a long, long time to return to himself, and then he kept his mouth shut for other reasons.
Instead, he leaned on new knowledge, innate in this strange, strong body- the harsh language that did not need to be learned, the ease and economy of movement. He had always been good at making things, at seeing how the pieces should fit together, but now it was as though his hands had their own instincts. The body continued on almost without his mind, even when he wanted only to stop and rest.
He'd been someone else before. Someone who had lived in a kinder place, where this world was nothing more than a story. He held the memories of sea and sunlight like they were glass. With awareness came realization: ‘I am going to die.’ It wasn’t accompanied with terror, the way his first death had. Instead it was a lump of dread and something like acceptance that lodged in his thoughts like a stone in a shoe. He was going to die. If he fought, if he ran, if he hid. Death would find him on the end of a sword. Likely by the Uruk-hai next to him if he showed signs of wavering. There were no allies here, no friendships to be had. He didn’t even have a name of his own- recognition was earned through killing, here.
Still, desperate to find a way out before the coming bloodbath, he’d kept an ear out for anything- anything that led away from Rohan. Luck had saved him then. Something had the Orcs boiling down from Moria, agitating their fellows up and down the Misty Mountains in the process. Raiding of Dunland and Rohan had sharply increased- and worse, it had affected supply lines. The White Hand had few enough resources to spare from the war, but it didn’t take many Uruk-hai to make a point.
It wasn’t a popular post. They were the fighting Uruk-Hai, top of the Orkish pecking order (which mostly consisted of insulting terms for those beneath them) sent to fight hole-grubbing Goblins. It had been easy to ensure that he was one of them, even if his no-name status relegated him to carrying most of the supplies. So he kept moving in lockstep with the others, heavy iron-nailed shoes pounding the frozen ground without rest or respite, ill-fitted armor clanking and pinching at his joints. No one was fool enough to take it off.
Things had started going wrong not long after they had Methedras at their backs. The Mountain Orcs knew their warren-riddled rock best, and had expected them. They were all but unfindable during the day, while a steady stream of arrows by night had picked off the less well-armored. Their expected cohort of Mordor Orcs didn’t show their faces. It snowed.
Luck finally turned their way when their last surviving tracker managed to pinpoint where the Mountain Orcs were coming from. Moving in daylight, they each scaled the side of the mountain until they reached a cave entrance so low they needed to bend double to enter. If the last several days hadn’t been so grindingly miserable, perhaps they would have noticed that they were being watched by more than Goblins. If more of their scouts had survived, perhaps they would have seen the signs of Dwarven camps in the mountains. Perhaps not- the camps were cleverly hidden, downwind and with nigh-smokeless campfires.
The Goblins guarding the entrance died quickly, but not quietly. Their shrieking roused their fellows, who came boiling up like enraged ants from countless small tunnels, only to be easily routed before Isengard steel. They died so easily. He did not want to be there. He didn’t want to kill anyone. He wanted to run, or hide, to never look at another person again and see only their vulnerable points.
The activities of the mountain Orcs had not been noticed only by Saruman. The Dwarves of the lonely mountain and their kin had not turned a blind eye as war marched on their doorstep. Even as the Uruk-Hai had hunted the Goblins, the Dwarves had followed behind. It was thus that they found themselves beset on all sides. The Dwarves were fewer in number, but they were fresh and well-equipped from the armory of the lonely mountain itself. The Goblins, half-routed, now lashed out with the ferocity of cornered rats. The rest of the Uruk-Hai laid about them with their swords, striking down all that came into their grasp. But he- nameless, unimportant, quiet- he ran. Not out the way he’d come, but farther in, down into the dark.
He ran through tunnels so low he was nearly bent double, around blind corners with night vision half-destroyed by torch light, working on scent and that other sense that was bound up in it that he had no word for. An ambush lay ahead, he knew, could smell the filth and heat of gathered orcs waiting for him to pass. In such close quarters, he did not have the space to swing his sword, and their thin daggers would find the weaknesses in his armor. He was not one to keep them waiting, though. He swerved abruptly, driving the door to splinters with a blow from his sword’s pommel and a final stomp. He hefted his wickedly hooked sword, knowing that while he would not make it out of these cold and damp caves, he would not die here, to these-
Children.
The sight left him frozen, despite the sound of battle coming ever nearer. Orc children. Knobby-kneed and wretched, caked in excrement and ugly as sin, staring back at him with wide and hollow eyes. The biggest didn’t even come up to his waist, but clutched a crude knife. It charged at him, and he backhanded the knife away. It went skittering across the floor, and its owner immediately cowered back, putting the younger orcs between them in an attempt to prolong its life by even a few seconds. He heard the clash of sword on shield grow louder as he looked down at these malformed things that had already proved themselves as murderous, cowardly, and weak.
He made the only decision he could.