It was not how it was supposed to end.

When Gondor’s archers had cast down their bows, arrows spent, it was time.   He had signaled Lugnashk.  The shouts went out to the captains and the host, one thousand strong, rose from concealment, howled like wolves and began a mad dash down the shallow slope towards Gondor’s exposed north flank.

They had been seen.  Swiftly Gondor rushed men from the battle line with the Balchoth to their exposed flank.  But they were two battalions of exhausted men, wearied from yesterday’s bloodletting in the Wold and what would be a last stand today.  With savage glee Bagrish had led his men snarling and slashing into Gondor’s line.  Back and back they had driven them, stepping over their chain mailed corpses.  To his right and down along the river the Balchoth were pressing hard.  The Steward’s banner was now just over a hundred yards away. 

Then the horns sounded.  Distant, then louder.  He’d looked south across the Limlight.  A great wave was pouring into the rear of the Balchoth line, slashing great rents in the formations.  Men were shouting, screaming.  Bagrish had seen them before when he was young, lurking in the far northern mountains near Gundabad.  The yellow hairs, fiercely defending their farms and families in the lands between the Langwell and Greylin.  He could not fathom what sorcery had brought them to this battle, this day.

He had wasted little time on speculation.  He’d known that this was death on horseback.    

Bagrish did what any sensible orc would do.  He turned and ran, leaping over the bodies of the dead, scampering back up the slope to the northwest until he fell, gasping for breath in the tall grass.  He’d risen slightly and scanned the battlefield.  He saw the horsemen envelop the line of the Balchoth, forcing them into a vise between their hooves and the resurgent men of Gondor.  Caught in those jaws were most of his fellow orcs though he’d seen stragglers desperately clawing back up the slope where he lay.

Now their fate seemed sealed as well.  A company of horsemen detached from the main left wing of their attack and charged up the slope, trampling most of them.  Those who resisted were quickly dispatched by spears or sword strokes.

Bagrish flattened himself into the ground, cowering.  The earth trembled as the cohort of riders swept up the slope.  Then just yards short of him they stopped.  Horns had sounded summoning them back to the melee with the Balchoth.  There were wild men escaping to the west.  Off they galloped.   He would live.

Bagrish waited til dusk’s grey blanket cloaked the sky then rose and began the long jog back to the Misty Mountain hideout.  There would be no booty, no fancy swords from Gondor to display and no Lugnashk to berate.

No, this was not how it was supposed to end. 

And once the Master received the news of the day in Dol Guldur, Bagrish’s own end might be far less savory than that of his soldiers at the hands of the yellow hairs.