[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

Baklava was bored. No, "bored" was an understatement so vast as to defy all description sufficiently punchy to work in a paragraph of this nature. He was mired in a morass of equine ennui that sprang from the risible requirement that he stand completely still in a thoroughly unimaginative and under-written clearing awaiting the return of the Mariachi singer in the cheap Mexican bar of stupidity himself, Lord Earnur Etceteron. Baklava had already listed his top-100 pet hates about being Earnur the Egregious' horse three times, and had started listing the different ways in which he would like to thrust the Dashing Dipstick's teeth down his own gullet when the Orcs entered the clearing.

This was a welcome change. There were two of them: enough to make things interesting, but not enough to necessitate any undue effort on his part. Baklava reflected that he liked those odds, and proceeded to pretend that he hadn't noticed them. Vogonwë clearly hadn't as he was still leaning over Pimpiowyn, trying ineptly to wake her. Thank Heavens for the unique eyesight of the Elves, thought the sarcastic steed. If the Bumbling Bard had managed to kill off one of these approaching Uruks then he would have been in serious danger of dropping off to sleep. One Orc just wasn't enough to keep him interested these days.

The two rather unimportant Uruks, their shirts ensanguined to the point of being completely crimson, strode up confidently; sniggering about the complete absence of alertness demonstrated by Vogonwë, who was thinking of a poem about how Pimpiowyn looked sleeping thus. Her mortality shone through at moments such as this, and he was inspired to utter:

O lovely girl with crumb-decked skirts
Whose eyes delight in nice desserts
I wish I had a world of time to think
Of something that rhymes with "think" but isn't "brink"

Mercifully at that moment Spudgun and Skunthawp, for so were the two aggressors named, although in a feeble piece of characterisation they'd been given no lines whatsoever in which to reveal this fact; necessitating the frustrated intervention of the omniscient narrator, made their rather sad and predictable move. They approached the mighty steed, noting that he could keep them in meat for a month, and in that moment Baklava casually reared up and dashed both of their skulls in with a pair of well-aimed hooves.

Curses, he thought; now he was bored again, and whichever sickly muse it was that inspired Vogonwë had been about her misguided and inept business again. As the horse-lord finally gave up and went to sleep, his ears were full of the Wood-elf's whining nasal screed:

O Pimpi fair
I love to wear
A bit of straw
Within thy hair
Let's be fair:
There's grass to spare...

Thankfully, the rest was silence.

*******

On the other side of the mighty, sweeping spinney of Workmud the Okay-I-Guess, Lord Earnur Etceteron was striding manfully back, laden with obscure herbs. Some of these were actually required for Merisuwyniel's ill-fated curry, but the rest were, well, more recreational. As he walked, he sang an ancient lay of herbal lore:

Pick it, pack it
Fire it up: come along
And take a hit from the bong.
Put the blunt down, just for a second
Don't get me wrong: it's not a new method.
Inhale, exhale - I just got an ounce in the mail.
I like a blunt or a big fat cone
But my double-barreled b...

Suddenly his amazing dashing-hero sixth sense told him that something was wrong. That and the mighty Uruk standing in his path pointing a crossbow directly at his face.

"Stand aside, foul Spawn of Souroune." declaimed our half-baked hero tritely. "None, be they Uruk, or Skwerl or Opus may face the Black Sword of Dun Sóbrin and live."

The Uruk looked at Lord Etceteron as though he had suddenly grown antlers. His eyebrows huddled together for security against the sudden wave of confusion that was sweeping across his ill-prepared cranium. Eventually he managed to articulate his incredulity.

"Wot are you on, Sunshine?" said the great, heavily-muscled creature, waving his crossbow gently in case Earnur was in some way visually impaired.

"I say unto thee, foul fiend of Udûn: you cannot pass."

"I ain't tryin' to pass, mate," said the crossbow-orc. "You are. And since this is a Mark XII double-crank mini-ballista, the most powerful handbow in the world, what you have to ask yourself is 'do I feel lucky?'"

Earnur did feel lucky. Even before his hand touched the hilt, he knew exactly which two vertebrae were about to undergo an unexpected trial separation, and the great sword Wylkynsion sang a song of pure joy as it swung in a perfect arc, almost faster than the eye could see:

Erewegoerewegoerewego
Erewegoerewegoerewego-o

The Uruk's expression didn't change, but the position of his head did. It went from sitting on his shoulders to sitting on the ground in a very familiar-looking pile of goat droppings.

Stitch that announced the sword, and Earnur strode on, reaching the clearing much more quickly than he expected. Nothing much had changed: his horse was still asleep, so was Pimpiowyn and killing the dragon was still not allowed. Stowing his special herbs in an oilskin pouch, he got out his pipe and began to load the bowl with some pungent green leaves.

Pulling out his flask, Lord Etceteron sat down to await his companions.

[ February 22, 2003: Message edited by: The Squatter of Amon Rûdh ]