Faramir Fiction Archive

Captain of Mordor (NC-17)

Written by Draylon

29 July 2004 | 21204 words

3: Alone in the dark

“Oh, Goldilocks,” Shagrat breathed into Faramir’s ear. He groaned with pleasure, and eagerly, Faramir shifted under him, bucking up to push harder against Shagrat’s stomach. Hot, fervent kisses rained down on his shoulder, his neck, his cheek, and he twisted his face round so that Shagrat would be to reach his mouth properly. Shagrat hadn’t known a lot about kissing, before, but Faramir had shown him what to do, and now he was getting good at it. Shagrat was getting really very good at it indeed. He kissed Faramir repeatedly, reaching round to pull him close.

“Goldilocks – love –“ Shagrat moved his hips again in the way that made Faramir wriggle ecstatically under him. He could feel Shagrat’s body quivering against him as the Orc shuddered on the edge of his climax. Snarling out suddenly, he fastened his mouth round Faramir’s shoulder in a passionate love-bite, growling and panting helplessly, deep in the back of his throat. Shagrat’s hands, one of which was fixed at the back of Faramir’s neck, and the other at his groin, clutched and stroked him possessively. At once, Faramir felt his own orgasm beginning to build.

“Shagrat,” Faramir gasped, at his moment of crisis. His voice seemed to him to ring oddly in his ears, and feeling an uneasy sense of disorientation, he opened his eyes. He was lying alone in his rooms at the Tavern. It was quiet outside and it was dark.

Horrified, Faramir leapt up, clearing the bed he’d been sleeping in and jumping to his feet, in one, great, bound. He leant back against the door of his bedroom, trembling with revulsion, cold sweat dripping off him.

That never happened, he reminded himself. Thank all that was holy, but it had never, quite, come to – that. Shagrat had let him go – no, Faramir reminded himself, daringly, he had escaped from Shagrat – before things had ever gone that far. Knowing it was a small comfort to him however. Through the long years since he’d last seen the Orc, Faramir, dearly and secretly, had often wished that there had been some sort of resolution to the dubious, unorthodox – but mercifully brief – association they’d shared. Perhaps if they had done – that – he wouldn’t be finding himself in the situation he was in now, for despite Faramir’s best efforts, he’d never been able to erase the memory of Shagrat completely from his mind. Over the years, he’d taken a number of lovers – and he’d tried, with men and women both – but sooner, more usually than later, he’d find himself less than contented with these relationships. Faramir rarely acknowledged it to himself, but he knew that this had to have something to do with his experiences with the Orc. Shagrat had turned out to be a very difficult act to follow indeed, and worse than any of that, to his shame, on nights such as this one, even Faramir’s own body seemed set to betray him. The front of his nightshirt was damp with fresh-spilled semen and Faramir realised that his response to his dream of Shagrat had been real enough.

Wearily, Faramir realised that further sleep would be impossible, now. If he had been occupying his state rooms in the city, or his summer residence in Ithilien, Faramir would have retired to his personal library, where he had collected books enough to distract him, and there he would have immersed himself in his studies of the history and genealogy of his country, until his troubled state of mind had quieted itself. Had even the great library of Minas Tirith failed to engage his attention, there were always the ever-bustling streets of the lower City, where hawkers and food sellers and street-merchants plied their trade all through the night.

In his younger days, Faramir had loved to lose himself in the nighttime lower City. It had not taken him long to learn to blend with practised ease into the wakeful throng, for the knack of deliberately avoiding notice was a skill that Faramir had been cultivating, consciously or unconsciously, for almost all of his life. In seeking to avoid adverse comment – on his actions, attitude, behaviour, deportment and so on – Faramir had taken to effacing himself, in time succeeding so well at this that ultimately, his presence had tended to be noted by almost no-one at all. The deaths of the few remaining members of his family in the Ring War had however changed that. Thrown into the spotlighted position of Prince and Steward Apparent, it had become quite impossible for Faramir to escape attention. He was now admired and celebrated, irrespective of his actions and unconditionally, wherever he went, in what he found to be an exact, complete reversal of his earlier life-experiences. That had certainly been the case during his improvised tour of the town and the surrounding countryside earlier in the day. Faramir, as a soldier and ranger had survived years of bombardment from countless Orc-hordes. He had led guerrilla attacks against Haradrim invaders, held City defences against air-borne assaults from winged Nazgûl, and been a leader of men in a time of despair. He had even at one stage briefly been tempted by, and rejected, the lure of the One Ring. Despite all that, the relentlessly aggressive fawning upon his person to which Faramir had recently been subjected, by the Town councilmen, their wives and their daughters still had to count as one of the more daunting experiences he’d ever had to face, nonetheless.

The thought came to Faramir, quite unbidden, that of all the people he had been close to in his life, only his beloved older brother Boromir, and – incongruously – Shagrat, the Uruk Captain of Mordor, had ever looked at him without some level of prior expectation, making no demands of him other than that he be himself. The notion that his adored, dead brother and a filthy, misbegotten Orc could share any sort of common ground between them made him deeply uncomfortable, however, and Faramir paced around his room restlessly, and cast his mind here and there, trying to find something – anything – else to think about.

It was very late, but on pushing aside the drapes at his bedroom window, Faramir saw that the public bar of the Tavern downstairs was still open for business. He dressed himself quietly, and stole out past the doors of his aides, who occupied the rooms on either side of his own. He made his way quickly to the barroom.

In the dim light provided by soot-blackened chimney lamps that hung from the rafters and were fixed to the walls of the public bar, Faramir recognised the gap-toothed, smiling face of Shagrat’s Barker. The Barker greeted him heartily, then asked for Faramir’s opinion of his Uruk captive.

“Most impressive,” Faramir said, briskly.

“He didn’t say ‘owt to you, did he?”

Faramir assured the Barker that the Uruk had not.

“What, nothing at all?” The Barker’s brows knitted together in an ominous frown.

“Well of course he – did tell me a number of blood-curdling tales. Said he’d like to grind my bones to make his bread and so on,” Faramir fabricated, a little desperately. “Swore at me lot. All in all I found it was a most worthwhile exhibit. Very authentic Orcish experience. I’d highly recommend it.”

Placated by this, the Barker nodded approvingly.

“How did you come by such a creature?” Faramir asked, by way of making conversation.

“Ah, therein lies a tale, waiting for the telling.”

Faramir waited politely. The Barker looked wistfully at his empty ale-pot. Faramir quickly attracted the attention of the Barman and ordered a round of drinks for both of them. Drawing down a large pull of foamy beer, the Barker smacked his lips and belched to himself, sedately. He leaned comfortably on the bar and began to speak.

Interlude: The Barker’s tale

“They was moving south through the mountains, and he had a falling out with his own gang, by all accounts” the Barker said. “He’d no weapons, or armour, or anything left by the time I caught him, them other Orcs must have had the lot. He was out for an easy meal, I reckon, but the snows came early again that year, and the livestock was moved further down the valleys ahead of time. Me, I’d set a spring-trap up near the tree line. There’s lots of bears, and I was after a cub for my next dancing bear act. If you get a she-bear, late in autumn, she’ll still have this year’s little ‘uns with her before they all go down for their winter sleep. Cubs is easier to manage but I fetched up snaring that big Orc instead. Spring-trap got him by the leg and then a he-bear came and had a go at him – well, they had a go at each other far as I could see. Never heard of a bear being throttled with its own tongue before – and I still couldn’t tell you how he managed it. It was dreadful – a dreadful sight. Orc wrecked the trap breaking free, and left the bear lying dead behind him – but not before he’d eaten a fair chunk out, fur, skin and all. Must’ve been pretty desperate. Ruined the pelt while he was about it, but I couldn’t have that, not losing the trap and a bear both. I’ve got my overheads to think of. So, I tracked the Orc to where he was holed up – left trail as clear as anything he did, black blood was spoutin’ out of him everywheres. He did try a few tricks – doubling back, wading through water and such, so he must’ve known I was on his trail, but at last he went to ground in a summer sheep crib, in the next valley over the other side of the ridge. Didn’t put up much of a struggle by the time I found him. All the long bones in his leg was broken in the trap and he was nigh-on frozen, and half starved to death. Since then, we found it’s better if he’s on short rations, and between you and me that’s how we keep him in line these days. Surly so and so gets – you know, stroppy, otherwise. He tried to cut and run back in the spring a couple of times. Nearly made it back as far as the mountains, once, so after I’d fetched him back the second time we took the splints he’d made off him and I sorted his ankle out, so he won’t get far again. A lot of the fight went out of him after I fixed him like that, and he became much easier to manage. Best thing I could have done, when you think about it.”

Faramir digested all of that, in silence.

“He says he was some big-shot in the Black Army but I don’t know if I believe it. Hasn’t much about him that I can see, and to tell the truth, he seems a sorry, broke-down sort of thing to me, no matter how good he is for business. You know, if that’s the best they could muster up on their side, well, it’s no wonder things worked out as they did, is it?”

Faramir felt a strange spark of indignation on Shagrat’s behalf to hear him dismissed like this. But then, he reflected, the Barker had never seen the old Uruk Captain in his prime. Faramir’s Shagrat, a version of him as he had been, more than twenty years previously – the Shagrat who still lived on, in Faramir’s memory – would have had a few things to say about that, and Faramir smiled to himself, thinking about it. Shagrat had proved himself to be, in the end, not much more than a paper tiger, at least where Faramir was concerned. But he had always dealt with public slights to his dubious – and frankly, worrying – notions of personal honour in no uncertain, permanent, and very violent, terms.

Early next morning Shagrat watched, squinting in the watery sunlight, until the last of the horses from Faramir’s party had been saddled up from the stables adjoining the Tavern. Up until the end, he’d thought there was a good chance he might see Goldilocks again. Shagrat didn’t hope, exactly, for anything, very much any more, but all the same some part of him, a part that actually, he’d thought was long gone and forgotten about, had been looking out for Faramir, wanting to talk to him, one last time. Shagrat snarled disgustedly under his breath, cursing himself for being a starry-eyed fool, as he realised he’d been waiting for the young man, all through the previous day and night. Now it was obvious they were gone for good, and the Orc sagged down from the painful, tip-toed hike he’d been holding while he watched the Tavern courtyard through the stockroom window, and eased himself stiffly down on to the floor. Bill Chard, the ill-tempered doorman, had with the money he’d taken from Faramir, embarked on a drinking session of truly epic proportions, a mammoth bender that had begun the afternoon before and lasted well into the night. He had not of course, bothered to check on Shagrat in the meantime, with the result that the Orc had not been fed or watered for quite some time. His right leg was throbbing viciously again and he was feeling feverish, and deathly sick.

So, in the end, Goldilocks had swanned off and left him to it – just like last time, Shagrat reflected bitterly. After Goldilocks had first gone away from him, all those years ago, Shagrat had been left to make his explanations as best he could to the lieutenants of the Dark Fortress of Barad-dûr. His chief Inquisitor, one of the lesser Nazgûl, had been vicariously thrilled by Shagrat’s memories of his time with the young Gondorian, and also vastly amused by the notion that a hardened Uruk Captain could have lost his head so completely over nothing more than a mildly good-looking human. In the interests of not much more than simple titillation, then, the Nazgûl had allowed Shagrat to survive his punishments – but in running and replaying the Uruk’s recollections of Faramir over and again, the wraith had by accident or design stripped away every bit of sweetness from his memories, till every one of them was used up; completely worn out. Seeing Goldilocks again had brought all of it back, though, as clear as day, and now without the slightest effort, Shagrat was able to recall exactly how things had been; he could summon up every detail of how the young Faramir had looked and smelled and tasted and felt. He could remember precisely why he’d reacted to the boy as disastrously as he had done, and desperately, Shagrat tried to suppress the debilitating rush of fond affection for Faramir that threatened to overwhelm him. It was a truly preposterous idea, unnatural and depraved, to think that such feelings could possibly exist in an Orc.

If only, Shagrat groaned to himself, if only it could just have been clean and simple, straightforward, lust.

The months of rain in the mountains had caused a mud-slide, that had blocked the main road south and west, so that the Royal Party were forced to cut short their visit to the outlying provinces of Gondor. Consequently, Faramir found himself once again approaching the town where he had happened upon Shagrat, not much more than a full day after his party had first left it. They had reached a crossroads, several miles out from the City Gates when in the distance, coming towards them, Faramir recognised a collection of brightly painted wagons and beribboned livestock, the bells on their harnesses jingling faintly in the damp morning air. Such a rag-tag assemblage could only belong to Shagrat’s Barker.

Faramir’s heart leapt as he rode on to meet them. He very much wanted, but at the same time didn’t want, to see Shagrat again. He quickly scanned the makeshift procession that was trailing out along the road behind the Barker. With a growing feeling of dread, he realised that Shagrat didn’t seem to be a member of their party.

“Where’s your Orc, this morning,” asked Faramir. He put a heartiness into his voice that he didn’t particularly feel as he searched the sad little caravan of cages and animals up and down. There seemed to be nothing there that could be large enough or the right size to contain Shagrat. A sensation of cold fear began to creep into Faramir’s breast.

The Barker snorted in disgust. “He’s back in that last town we stopped over in, or whatever’s left of him is.”

“You all right, Sir?” the Barker added, with some concern. “You turned white as a sheet there for a minute.”

Faramir waved his questions off. “What went on?” he asked, his tone forced.

“A washout, from start to finish, is what,” the Barker said. “Trapper brought a fresh-caught wolf for me yesterday afternoon, and I thought I’d put him in with the Orc. Bit of a novelty act. Orc would’ve beaten him eventually, but it should have been a right spectacle, and no mistake. Spectacle! Hah! Folk coming to an Orc-baiting don’t pay good money to see an Orc speaking to a wolf in some funny language and then lyin’ down quietly with his neck exposed, like what my Orc did, last night. Bleedin’ washout is what it was. I had to get the dancing bear out quick.”

“The wolf killed him, then.”

“As good as,” the Barker said. “As good as. There was still a bit of life left at first light this morning, and when we were leaving, he begged me to finish him off. Though I was in no mood to do him any favours, not after what had gone on, I can tell you.”

“But he’s not dead,” Faramir said.

“Oh, he will be by now,” the Barker replied, “don’t you worry about that. I sold him to one of them council chiefs, and he had all kinds of plans – trophy-taking of some sort, I shouldn’t wonder. Even with what I got for the dead weight, I’ve still lost a packet on this. I’ll be steering clear of Orcs in future. Too much of a damn nuisance – beggin’ your pardon, Sir.” He took his leave politely, and Faramir watched dully, as the caravan moved off on its way.

Faramir stood by the side of the road, holding the reins of his horse and staring straight ahead, numb with shock. Shagrat was dead. The hood of Faramir’s cape fell back, and soon the driving rain had begun to flattened his hair to his scalp, while rainwater trickled unpleasantly down the back of his neck. Faramir didn’t notice. He kept staring into space, somehow finding himself unable to focus on anything other than the horrible thought that Shagrat was – dead. After a short time, one of the royal aides rode up beside him, and eventually his solicitous enquiries brought Faramir back to himself a little. Without a word, the Prince of Ithilien swung up into his saddle and spurred his horse away. Faramir covered the four or five miles between the crossroads and the town at a flat-out gallop. He barely slowed as he clattered into through the Town Gates, and his horse skidded on the rain-wet cobbles, and almost fell, as Faramir reined it to a stop in the square outside the Tavern.

Faramir leapt down. There was a group of people sitting at one of the tables sheltered by the Tavern’s wooden veranda. They were having a morning drink and watching the rain. Among them was one of the councilmen, the royal-sceptic, and would-be router of Orcs, from the previous day.

“What have you done with the Orc,” Faramir barked at him.

“We left the carcass round the side,” the Councilman said. “Our plan was to have him strung up at the crossroads, just outside the town gates. It should make a good warning for all the rest of those vermin to stay well away. We’d have done it before now, but the rain held us off.”

Faramir sprinted the short distance to the midden at the back of the Tavern. Shagrat’s mortal remains were slumped untidily there, on one side of the rubbish-pile. He had been stripped to the waist, but even the few clothes he’d been left were now hanging half-on, half-off him. He was dreadfully emaciated; there was not much left of him other than skin and bone. Faramir fell onto his knees in the mud and pulled Shagrat partway up into his lap. The Orc’s neck was encircled by ragged, bleeding wounds, and the body felt cold, but was not yet stiff. Faramir wrenched his cape off over his head, and carefully enshrouded Shagrat with it.

The Councilman, now protected from the rain by a heavy waxed cloak and galoshes, arrived shortly afterwards. “With all due respect to your royal person my Lord,” he said, “I don’t see what you’re so upset about. It’s only a dead Orc.”

Faramir snarled at the man, startled to hear himself spitting out the few words of Black Speech – dreadful profanities, all of them – that he’d acquired years previously, during his stay in Mordor.

The Councilman fell back, open-jawed with shock.

“I don’t expect you to understand,” Faramir told him, clutching Shagrat close. “But this Orc is my Orc, I tell you. He’s mine.”

NB: Please do not distribute (by any means, including email) or repost this story (including translations) without the author's prior permission. [ more ]

Enjoyed this story? Then be sure to let the author know by posting a comment at https://www.faramirfiction.com/fiction/captain-of-mordor. Positive feedback is what keeps authors writing more stories!