[The Saucepan Man]

The Saucepan Man and LinGalad watched Diamond disappear towards the powder room.

“An appropriate destination for one covered in powder” commented Saucepan, eliciting a half-hearted smile from LinGalad.

Saucepan had enjoyed himself immensely, despite the battering that his best party pans had taken. Fortunately, they were still in fairly good shape although he noted ruefully how dirty they were, what with his earlier scrabbling around under the stage in search of the Feastpot and the gunpowder stains resulting from their recent table-raising experience. He removed from one of his pots some polish and a linen cloth and sat there polishing his outfit as he talked with LinGalad. Shortly after a quite vigorous outburst from Iarwain, which fortunately resolved itself as suddenly as it had started, a young Elven lady walked over and introduced herself as Lëowen.

They conversed happily for a while until Saucepan, his pans restored to their pristine state, decided that he needed to take a breath of fresh air. He took his leave of his companions and made for one of the side exits. Opening the door, he stepped out and into the gardens beyond. It was not long before a strange growling sound reached his ears. Absent-mindedly, he rubbed his stomach, but then recalled that he satisfied his hunger quite recently. With mounting concern, he strained to locate the source of the disconcerting noises.

Suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, an enormous beast sprang out from behind a nearby bush, landing only feet to the side of the metal-clad man. Another appeared at the top of the slope to which he had been heading and prowled menacingly towards him. Despite the fact that they resembled neither Hyenas nor Lemmings, Saucepan recognised them as Wargs. Their eyes glinted evilly in the dim lights scattered about the garden as they hungrily looked him up and down.

“Looks like we’ve found ourselves some tinned food here, son” remarked one to the other, his enormous canine jaws opening to reveal lines of unfeasibly large and jagged teeth.

Saucepan quickly decided that he did not really need to take the air after all and turned back to the door, only to see two burly Uruk guards barring the way and grinning in anticipation of the sport that was to follow. Summoning up all the resolve that he could, which was not much given the circumstances, Saucepan untied from his garb a hefty iron frying-pan and a solid steel saucepan and stood there with one implement in each hand awaiting the Wargs’ attack.

“At least I’ll go down panning, if not punning” he thought to himself.