Note: Special thanks to the good folks at Geobra Brandstätter, whose handiwork proved indispensible in the blocking of this chapter.

Chapter IV: Mercy in Mordor

Aragorn moved swiftly, his left shoulder brushing against the rock wall at intervals to keep him oriented. This was the worst part of the manoeuvre, or at least he sincerely hoped that it was: the mounting anticipation, the way that the mind ran through every possible scenario and lighted upon all the bleakest outcomes. He focused his attention on the moment, on the sound of the orcs far ahead, on the feel of his blade – his woefully inadequate blade – in his hand. In battle there was no time to dwell upon possibilities, or even probabilities. One had to exist in and for the moment, with the senses and the mind focused only upon what was happening in the immediate present.

The orcs kept up a great pace, and Aragorn followed, fleet and sure. He had been about such business for three score years and ten, but somehow he never quite lost the thrill of primal fear that preceded such conflict. Over the long years he had learned how to master it and to channel its energy into his sword-arm.

He halted his pursuit as he realized that he was gaining on the orcs. He stood unmoving, head cocked to one side as he listened. Over their grating voices he could hear the whistling of free air against the stone, and the orcs' words did not reverberate as they had before. They had reached the end of the passageway.

'There: I told you we wouldn't find anything,' Fifth Voice snarled. 'Waste of time.'

'Can't trust nobody these days,' grumbled First Voice. 'Watchers ain't what they once was.'

Aragorn's teeth gritted involuntarily against one another. So his passage had been marked after all. He had seen no strange birds, nor any sign of spies, since leaving the fertile lands behind. Could it be that in his weariness he had missed them, or was the Enemy now using some unseen sentry to guard his borders?

'Here, bring that light closer!' snapped Third Voice. Apparently his compatriot did not reply, for he repeated again, more viciously; 'Bring it closer!'

'What, fancy yerself a tracker?' Second Voice sneered. 'P'raps they're wastin' your talents, setting you to prowl in the hills with the likes of us. P'raps you ought to be back in the valley, hunting tark. P'raps they ought to send you to Nûrnen to chase down runaways.'

'Don't take a tracker to see this,' said Third Voice. 'Look: blood. Something climbed up here, all right.'

The surge of vindication that his judgments on the third orc were correct was swiftly overridden by self-castigation. How had he been so careless as to leave behind such obvious traces? His abraded hands must have left all manner of residue upon the stones as he scrambled up onto the path. Aragorn shook his head grimly. The stakes of the impending assault were higher now. He could ill-afford to alert the whole of Sauron's border-watch to his presence in these mountains. Until a moment ago, a silent withdrawal had at least been one of his options. Now, he had no choice but to fight.

'So the thievin' water-rat's back, then,' groused Fifth Voice. 'That's just what we need.'

'No,' Fourth Voice argued. 'Gimme that rock.' There was an unpleasant slurping sound, and the orc smacked his lips. 'It's man-blood. Whatever climbed up here, it wasn't the little sneak.'

'Man-blood, eh?' Suddenly Second Voice sounded quite gleeful. 'Well, well. That might solve our bread problem nicely. Who needs maggot-food when you can taste a nice, tender bit of man-flesh?'

Aragorn quite fancied stepping forward to offer the opinion that it would in fact be a lean and stringy bit of man-flesh, supposing they could get past the man's teeth and claws, but however perfect the opportunity, he could not strike yet. He wanted to hear what the orcs might say next. Thieving water rat? Little sneak? Could it be that fortune had at last smiled upon him, and offered him news of his quarry?

Third Voice cut in. 'If it's a man, where did it go? We haven't seen any signs of men about, not 'til this minute. Can't have loose men running 'round.'

Abruptly they were all squabbling again, debating whether they could have loose men running around after all, or how old the blood was and were they sure it was man-blood, or whether they oughtn't just turn around and go back. Not a word was uttered that Aragorn wanted to hear.

Then Fourth Voice growled, 'I've 'ad enough of this. There ain't many hours left 'til sunup. It's time to start back.'

The Ranger swiftly slipped his pack from his back, setting it silently upon the ground. It would not do to be hampered with such a weight: he had little enough in his favour as it was. He flattened himself against the left-hand wall in the convex of the turn – the very place where he had expected a foe to be lurking when he had taken this path himself.

The orc did not look for danger. He came stumping around the bend, out of sight of his fellows. Quick as a stinging insect Aragorn struck. His knife found its home between chin and coarse mail, severing the vocal chords before the orc could cry out, and cutting a clean path to the jugular vein and the thick, ropey carotid beneath. Hot blood flooded forth, running over the knife and down onto Aragorn's hands. With a shudder of revulsion he withdrew his blade and thrust his shoulder against the weight of the dying orc, bending his knees to ease the carcass to the ground as the heart sent its last spurting fountains of gore from the severed artery. Despite his best efforts the orc's mail rasped as it struck the ground.

'Eh, what's that?' demanded First Voice harshly. 'Did you 'ear something?'

'Nothing,' Fifth Voice growled. 'Let's go.'

'Wait—' said Third Voice, but the others did not listen. Aragorn leapt nimbly backward over the body of the fallen orc as lumbering footsteps drew nearer. His eyes strained into the gloom – an effort that proved unnecessary as the sickly lantern-light glinted off the rock wall, casting an immense orc-shadow high above his head. He withdrew another pace into the darkness behind.

Fifth Voice was drawing nearer. 'That's the trouble with you City filth: you're cowards. Why, I wouldn't trust you in a tight place if I had orders straight from Lugbûrz to—'

He cut off his tirade with a sharp oath as he rounded the corner, a looming black mass in the approaching glow of the lamp behind him. There was a rasping noise as he moved to draw his scimitar, but before he could complete the motion Aragorn lurched forward and tried to intercept the clawlike hand with his knife. Steel met bone, and red eyes locked with grey.

'Tark!' the Uruk shrieked, raising the alarm. His left hand flew up behind his head, and a long blade appeared. Aragorn thrust up his knife, his off-hand flying up to brace his right as it bore the full force of the orc's blow. The shock of impact radiated down into his elbows. As his opponent recovered, he was obliged to dance to his left to avoid an eviscerating swipe from the saw-toothed blade.

He could not lose his ground. For one there was the cliff, his one tactical advantage. If he drew back too far, he would forfeit any benefit. For another, he realized as he almost stumbled over a leaden leg, there was the corpse beneath his feet. He could not mind his hands, his head, his legs, and a fallen body all at once, in the dark with the lantern-light blinding him. Screwing his eyelids into slits against the sudden onset of brightness, he dropped his left shoulder and launched himself against the orc's broad barrel of a chest.

Fifth Voice let out an enormous expulsion of foul air as he overbalanced, crashing against the orc behind him. For a moment there was chaos, and in that moment Aragorn pressed forward, regaining the distance he had forfeited. He tried again to strike, but this time the orc deflected his blow, even as the hob-nailed boots scrabbled to regain their footing.

The orc behind had dropped the lantern, and it was lying on its side now, sputtering and wavering. Aragorn ducked under another swipe of the serrated blade and kicked the lantern. It shattered against the stone, and the sour-smelling fuel spilled out, flaming briefly across the ground before plunging them all into darkness.

It took only a moment for Aragorn's squinting eyes to relax and readjust, but the orcs had been in the light longer than he, and despite their naturally superior vision in the darkness, they were briefly stricken blind. In that moment his knife found another throat, and the large orc from the Barad-dûr tumbled to earth.

The one who had been holding the lantern had his sabre drawn, and Aragorn was obliged to drop to one knee to avoid decapitation. He scuttled forward as the orc drew back and struck again. Steel rang against stone where his left ankle had been a moment before.

A booted foot caught him on the left flank. He rolled into the pain instead of away, tripping up the driving boot and thrusting upward against his assailant. The knife sunk deep into something soft and fleshy, and the orc roared in pain. Aragorn scrambled to his feet, swaying a little as he tried to regain his bearings. The orc with the sabre was behind him now, and the wounded one before him. He could hear the whistle of a blade in the air, and he crouched instinctively. There was a noise of rending bone and the scimitar sunk into the rock wall, having smitten off the head of the other orc.

Three were dead and therefore two remained, but Aragorn was only aware of the erstwhile lantern-bearer who had wrenched his sword free from the stone. Any effort to parry the heavy blade with his knife would likely break the Ranger's arm, and so he dropped his Elven-wrought steel and groped frenetically for some longer and weightier weapon amid the strewn bodies. His hands closed on a hilt wrapped in hair, but though he tugged with all his strength it would not come free. The weight of its fallen owner had pinned the scimitar in its sheath.

A half-demented bellow of rage gave warning that the orc was going to strike again. Aragorn flung himself backward, a loose stone driving painfully against his right kidney as he landed flat upon his back. A spray of blood misted his garments and his face as the sabre sank into the body he had been attempting to loot. Heart hammering in his breast, Aragorn somehow managed to roll onto his knees and launch to his feet. All hope of finding his knife again seemed lost, and he cursed his stupidity for casting away his only weapon without surety of gaining another. Unarmed and alone in the darkness, with an enraged assailant swinging blindly for him, he did the one thing that he still could.

He ran.

Hoping frantically that he was moving in the right direction, Aragorn fled. He had not gone more than six strides when he struck something hard and heavy that drove the wind momentarily from his chest. There was a howl of rage and alarm as Aragorn's momentum drove both himself and the object into which he had collided to earth. He landed atop the heavy mass, and long, nimble claws began to paw at the tender flesh under his arm and to tear at his hair. He had found the fifth orc.

The lantern-bearer was fast approaching, his hob-nails ringing against the stone. Aragorn threw both of his arms around the writhing orc beneath him in a frantic parody of an embrace, and with all the force in his long legs he rolled the both of them to the right, shifting so that their bodies fell almost perpendicular to the walls of the passage. His knees were bent at an excruciating angle in order to achieve this position, and it took every shred of strength to keep the orc from bucking him off.

Then a foot blasted into his ribs, and all memory of breath was driven forth. For an instant he was in another place, in another time, and he tried to prepare himself, waiting for the boot to be withdrawn so that it might strike again.

Instead, the other foot drove deep against the unprotected flesh of his abdomen, and the orc lurched forward. In his haste and his rage he had not reacted swiftly enough to the fallen bodies in his path. He tripped over them now, falling with arms outstretched to break his descent.

But Aragorn had judged the distance well. When the orc's knees struck earth, arms and torso did not. The edge of the path struck him in the midst of his great, knotted thighs, and his body pitched down, over the edge. There was a sound of impact as he hit the scree slope below, and the last ululation of shock and fury echoed in the valley as the body tumbled down, down, down onto the unforgiving rocks below.

Aragorn had no time to enjoy his moment of success. There was one orc alive yet, and it was trying to tear the very scalp from his skull. Claws scrabbled at his temple, and sharp pain shot through his head. Aragorn bore down with his legs upon the struggling body while his right hand seized and twisted the assaulting wrist. There was a noise of tendons straining, and the orc let out a howl of anguish.

'Let go! Let go!' he wailed. It was Third Voice.

Aragorn's left hand found the creature's wart-crusted throat and he squeezed. 'Be still!' he hissed, his voice hoarse from exertion and want of air. He got his knee under him, pressing down on the orc's abdomen. Still the goblin struggled. He was indeed smaller than an average Uruk; wiry and lean. There was a hump on his back, and even supine as he was Aragorn could tell that he walked with a pronounced stoop – possibly a mark of his breed, but more likely a sign that he had not always been a patrolling soldier. Orcs who rose through the ranks were not unheard of, but it was rare to find one who had won his way out of the mines or the slag-pits. He was clever indeed, then, and resolute – and perhaps determined to live.

'Be still,' he repeated, reefing more violently upon the wrist. 'Be still or I will break your arm.'

The flailing legs went limp. 'Let it go! Let it go!' the orc choked, forcing the words out through the painful pressure on his vocal chords.

'No.' Aragorn's voice was stronger now, and hard as the rock-face before him. 'I will loose my hold on your throat if you do not attempt to move, but I will not release your hand.'

The orc tried to nod, but the motion made the pressure on his neck unbearable. 'Yes,' he breathed instead. 'Yes. I ain't going to move.'

Aragorn relaxed his fingers, which were beginning to cramp beneath the blistered skin, and let his hand rest across the goblin's clavicle, where it might resume its vise-like hold at the least provocation. 'Put your other hand against your breast,' he ordered. 'Just below mine. Do it.' To emphasize his point, he twisted the pinned arm a fraction of a degree further.

Panting in pain, the orc obeyed. He had not survived whatever it was that he had survived by defying those with a clear advantage. 'What do you want?' Third Voice growled.

'I heard you speaking,' Aragorn said. 'You and your fellows were speaking about the blood on the rocks.'

'Yer blood, from the look of things,' the orc grunted, something like defeat in his voice.

'That's right,' the Ranger hissed. 'My blood. They also made mention—'

'Tarks don't understand our speech,' the orc said shrewdly. 'What sort of man are you?'

'A man who wants answers,' Aragorn said curtly. A falsehood would have served him better, perhaps, for even the orcs feared the Black Númenóreans who served as captains and executioners in Sauron's legions, but that price he was not willing to pay. 'They made mention of a "water-rat" and a sneak. Of what were they speaking?'

The orc barred his teeth, and the stench of rottenness exuded by his body intensified. Aragorn clamped his lips over the rising bile. 'Why should I tell you? You'll only kill me like you did the others,' Third Voice snarled.

'I will kill you if you do not answer,' Aragorn argued; 'and it will not be pleasant.' He twisted again upon the orc's wrist, bracing himself more firmly upon his captive's abdomen.

'Set me free, and I will answer your questions,' the orc said, malicious eyes glinting.

'Answer my questions, and I will consider your terms,' countered the Ranger. His fingers brushed threateningly over the orc's windpipe. 'What is this "water-rat" of which they spoke?'

For a moment there was silence, and Aragorn realized with sickening dread that he might have to make good his threat. The thought of killing any creature, even an orc, that was so utterly in his power repulsed him – and yet he could not risk having the goblin run back to its masters with news of a rebel tark who understood the Black Speech hunting in these hills.

But Third Voice did not wish to die. He had survived too much to cast it all away keeping worthless information secret. 'There were a thief in these hills,' he said. 'We never saw it, but it were stealin' things. Food and things. Supplies. Liked the pools under the mountains, it did. Water-rat.'

Aragorn's pulse quickened. 'When?' he demanded. 'When was this? How long ago?'

The orc tried to shrug his deformed shoulder. 'Two year, maybe three,' he said.

'Where did it go? Which way did it go?' There was desperation in his voice, but Aragorn would have been unable to mask it even if he had possessed the presence of mind at that moment to care. Without realizing it, he twisted upon the orc's wrist. 'Tell me where it went!'

Third Voice let out a thin, sharp yowl of anguish. 'I don't know!' he wailed. 'I don't know! The thievin' stopped one day, that's all! We thought maybe it'd come back when the watchers brought news of a climber! I tell you I don't know where it went!'

Remorse bit into Aragorn's soul and he let go of the orc's arm as if it had changed into a fiery brand. He straightened his back, withdrawing the threatening hand from the goblin's neck. 'Where was it hiding?' he said, his voice low. It took all of his resolve to force an imperious note into it now. 'Where are the pools that it liked to frequent?'

'Seven-eight day march,' the orc snivelled. 'Take the left fork, northward. I don't know any more.' He cringed wretchedly. 'I promise I don't know any more.'

Orc-promises were not worth the breath it took to utter them, but Aragorn had the information he needed. Trying to retain his dignity even through the rending shame born of his lack of self-control, he lifted his knee from the orc's abdomen and climbed slowly to his feet. A sharp pain lanced up his left side and he clutched his ribs, inhaling harshly over the discomfort.

'Very well,' he panted. 'We had an agreement. I will spare your life, but I cannot have you following me. If you lower yourself carefully over the edge, you will not fall to your death. Go. Begone.'

The orc stared at him, dumbfounded. Even in the darkness Aragorn could make out the faint signs of disbelief upon the misshapen face. The wretched creature had not expected to be set free.

'Over the edge,' he repeated wearily. 'Go.'

'Aye,' the orc yipped, scrambling to his feet, long arms dragging against the stones. Though the Ranger did not know it, there was a light in his eyes that could not be disobeyed. Fear and awe drove the goblin as he lumbered to the place where his compatriot had fallen. 'Aye, I'm going...'

Aragorn watched as the orc first knelt, then lay down on his belly, lowering his legs carefully into the black abyss behind. For a moment the clawed hands gripped the stone. Then they released their hold. There was a sound of shifting debris and a sharp yelp, then a low noise of shuffling and scrambling as the goblin navigated the long slide down into the valley. For a moment there was silence, and then Aragorn thought he could hear gleeful laughter far away below.

His blood ran cold. Mercy in Mordor brought only ill ends, and he did not doubt that he would one day be haunted by the fruits of his unadvisable clemency, but what else could he have done? To slay the helpless wretch would have cost him his decency, and that was a sacrifice he was not yet willing to make, not even for his life.

He sank slowly to his knees, keening softly as the pain of his as yet unknown injuries began to throb in a discordant symphony of suffering. There was foul black blood congealing on his hands and his clothes, in his hair, on his face. He had spent his strength in battle and in the impromptu interrogation. He had none left now to go pawing in the dark, looting the corpses for useful gear. He would wait a while, he told himself, and the claw-wounds on his scalp throbbed with the thrumming of his heart. Then he would see to that chore and resume his hunt. In a little while. Only a little while.