It smelled like a slaughterhouse, the old man thought. No. It was worse than a slaughterhouse. At least they wouldn't set flame to the meat they couldn't find a use for. "And...that makes eleven!" Was this a turning point for us? Eleven of our scouts... where did we go wrong? Were we too careless or too shy to make our advances? If this keeps happening from a monthly bases from now on we will be out of muscle when the year is out. "Boss! Said that it were eleven." The old man looked at the erected pyre close by, at the foot of the hill-fortress of Ost Alagos "I heard what you said. How many of you are still standing?" the old man asked the half-orc that just took care of the last body that was found. He took a long time to calculate his response: "Well...we have eleven bodies on the burning pile. I and five other sentries that were on a patrol are now here with the surviving twelve. Might be some boys that are still in the wild or captured yet I do not know tha-." The sentry was cut short when the two scouts returned from their search in the ruins above. One of them, quite a small fellow with an eye patch, looked up at his superior. The man called Greenhand towered over the half-orcs on his black steed, his presence all the more threatening thanks to the two broad and strong looking uruks that both stood on one side of the horseman. "We found some arrows. Blood that was too red to be of ours...Most likely rangers prowling about. Also..." The half-orc looked kind of worried when he didn't completed his sentence. The old man looked down upon the scout, asking in an almost scolding tone: "And? Anything else they left behind when you were too incompetent to open a gate?" The half-orc held up a bag that he had clutched in his hand. The bag looked of average make yet there were some burn marks on it here and there. The old man nodded to the scout, saying: “I will take it with me to Bree. Any word about that hammer-wielding brute, wasn’t he the leader of this rabble?” The other half-orc now shacked his head, saying with quite some anger in his tone: “They killed him too. Took the orders with them as well it seems. Also that report we…acquired from that odd band.” The horseman looked down upon the orc before looking up at the sky in thought. Those reports must have been only for the Lone-land outposts…the ones from the orcs and goblins were in the tongue of Mordor. The one of the half-orcs was a concern yet not for the operations in Bree and the Shire. All seemed to be manageable yet something was still uncertain to the old man. “Tell me all about this ‘odd band’.”
I closed the door to the store, that also functioned as my office, in rage. Who dared to leave me in the dark like a child that couldn’t keep a secret? Ignoring the shopkeepers that gave me a friendly greetings as I walked up the stairs to my bookcase. After throwing some of the many tomes and books on the bed, I found what I was searching for. Something written by myself in the utmost secrecy. The writing was poor and lackluster yet it suited its purpose at the time. My finger went over the many names of things belonging to the old kingdom of Arnor. Cities, flowers, people, building-styles, language, kings, artifacts. Artifacts…Weapons, armour, rings, circlets, tomes, sceptres. Sceptres. The sceptre of Annúminas. No, powerless. The Sceptre of Númenor? No, lost at sea. The list had a few other sceptres on it too yet they seemed to be of little use. Ceremonial pieces, possible replacements, forgeries made when Arnor fell apart. Nothing here seems to indicated that this my-. A footnote…since when do I put footnotes in my own work? A grin came upon my face when I read the small written letters, almost not making it on the bottom on the page. “It seems that those 'rangers' will be in a lot of trouble.”
It was the middle of the night. A fire was erected in the wilds of the North-Downs by a rather 'odd' group of orc-kind. Even the shadows could not find them if they wanted to, nor could the shade keep a secret from them. They would roam these lands like the wind. Coming through every creak yet spotted by none. Yet for now, they were seated around a fire. The only sound that was louder than that off the fire came in the form of a song. Yet no song like you or I would sing. I wasn’t loud or even cheerful in the gruesome ways of the orcs. The song was merely a whisper to you and I. Yet for the keen ears of these orcs, it was as clear as a war drum:
Smell, smell, do you smell that smell?
Boar, hare, no that would do no well.
Our feet might hurt, yet the scent is fresh.
At the end of day, we shall eat their flesh.
Blogkun-Hai, Blogkun-hai, Blogkun-hai.
Our eyes are as sharp as our knives,
Yet our bows shall end their lives!
We give our lives to the hunt and the kill.
Burguul Kurtil, Burguul Kurtil, Burguul Kurtil.
Blogkun-Hai, Blogkun-hai, Blogkun-hai.
