[Kransha]

Brór walked slowly, dragging his feet, which were feebly garbed by withered rags and threads, along the cold, rock-solid earth beneath. Fresh air was not unknown to him, though the vile air of Mordor bore a furious, deathly stench as if a smoggy haze had descended on the tower and interspersed parapets, the cloud working its way down with a insubstantial, slow speed as it pulled itself over the land, groping as the clawed digits of orcs would…or the rough a multitudinous legs of the beast that waited for its prey just outside the shadowy tower. Brór’s eyes shifted up, with a threadbare hint of anxiety in them. He was struck, as he saw the billowing clouds wafting through the sky as ominously as ever, by a disjointed paroxysm of fear, and then of hope, and then of both together. It was a strange, lancing feeling that jetted through him, but was whisked away by the passing wind, the first breeze Brór had ever felt in the land of shade.

He glanced around as his pace increased, still weak and tediously wrought, but with some notion, though vague, of vigor, which he had not let attach to him in fifteen of his nineteen imprisoned years. Beside him, as the trio of dwarves hurriedly ascended into Cirith Ungol’s high depths, were two others of his kind. One was less than half his age, by the look of him, and the other barely that half. They both seemed older than they doubtless were, an effect which leeched life from all those imprisoned, but Brór’s quick thought told him the summer’s they’d seen. As he threw his feet, one by one, up the jagged, chipped stone of the stairs to the next level, he turned from them, moving in front. Most knew that many weapons would be found in on the higher levels above the courtyard and overlooking it, since many orcs congregated there from time to time.

“This forsaken place is rank with orc stench, even after they are gone.” Said one, the second oldest, who Brór knew to be called Dorim, with disgust evident in his tone. Brór looked at him icily, his gaze as cold as it was years ago, unchanged by anything, even this new possibility. Dorim kicked aside a body, colored dark as coal and decked with jutting prongs of misplaced steel, which lay in a twisted, wrenched position on the stairs. “It is the stench of death,” Brór corrected quietly, “not of orcs.”

“Death and orcs share the same jagged blade.” Retorted the one called Dorim, with the same flat, unemotional treble that Brór bore in his gravelly voice. He leaned down, not hesitating to heave the orc over onto his back, sending the knife which was there embedded deeper in. The orc, though dead, gurgled and twitched violently, but the dwarves remained unfazed. Dorim inspected the corpse for weaponry and, finding none, instead flipped the stiffened husk again and yanked the rusty, crimson-soaked blade from his back, buried hilt deep. He examined it too, and clutched it in his hand.

“It would seem not,” interjected one who Brór did not know, a younger dwarf, “if one blade has crushed the other here.” Dorim nodded astutely as he wiped the blood from the knife on his rags, almost delighting in it. Brór nodded as well, walking forward across the open, cracked stones, examining the many lifeless carcasses, cast aside as useless puppets might be from their masters’ hands. He looked at their battered forms, the blood that stained the earth beneath, the wreckage and debris spread around. Limping unconsciously, he leaned down and drew one of the more intriguing, and pain-inducing weapons from beneath an orc, a crude mace, with spikes and points welded upon it to make it formidable. In some dark, horrible way, it reminded him of the ax he’d once sported in the days of his freedom. He hefted it onto his shoulder.

“Yes, crushed and broken indeed. We’ll be lucky to find a weapon intact.” He looked relieved to have what he had, which was still very unruly a device. Most blades were broken, shattered into metallic splinters on the floor. “I have my own” the young one shot in swiftly, but still pessimistically, “…this.” He drew out a small glinting object, a knife or dagger of some sort. Brór looked at it dismissively and turned, prodding the last jerking bodies with his new weapon. “That won’t do against the mistress of the pass. One slave thought, in the foolishness and youth of his heart, that he could take the spider with a knife he stole. The orc who saw him off said he’d been struck down before he neared her, and that he’d made a great meal.” Brór considered momentarily the thought of being unceremoniously devoured by that dark being, that spawn of Unholiant, who inhabited the pass so nearby, the pass that must be taken. His mind winced, flinching from that fate, but his heart, wanting death whenever it could come, did not. His heart invited it instead, and his arm swung the mace he held just to illustrate his purposeful dedication to his rebellious thoughts.

“We have numbers, at least,” remarked the youngest dwarf, “and we can take the fiend with us.” Brór nearly smiled at his defiance, but the facial expression could not creep across his wizened, pain-ridden face. “I know not if we can,” his voice sounded all but mournful, as it should, for it seemed that he might even be happy to go down beneath the tendrils and venomous fangs of the spider, “but we can try as we may.” Now he paused, his narrow eyes widening to let the sight of sky seep into every niche of them. He turned to the young one, “What is your name, lad?” He queried, the new tone in his throat somewhat refreshing and the words of greeting like water in place of dirt.

“Dwali.” He replied, extending his hand slowly (the one that contained no knife). Speedily Brór shook it, but no excitement could be told by that gesture, since he did the task as tiredly as a man bereft of life. Both hands retracted as Dorim watched behind, still looking over the field of battle. That dwarf, Dorim Stoneweaver, still drew up more supplies as he could, but seemed as much a pessimist as the other two.

“I am Brór, Brór Stormhand.”