[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

As his companions dispersed to begin the noble business of looting everything of value from the suddenly empty fortress of Minus Moreghoul, Earnur was looking for its erstwhile mistress. Their brief reconciliation demanded of him some hopelessly self-indulgent display of emotion, but convention also required that he give vent to his feelings over the body itself, the intuition of modern audiences being what it is (not that there would be an audience, modern or otherwise, because as I said this is serious history and not some tuppenny-ha'penny parody).

With this goal in mind, Lord Etceteron entered the fortress, possessed as usual of the heroic conviction that anything can be found without recourse either to a map or a set of directions. Logic and common sense dictated that he would thus wander pathetically around the fortress until he died of old age or the building collapsed on him, but fortunately common sense was on holiday and logic had been called away on business, because he found what he sought at the end of the very first corridor that he tried.

The fortress had been abandoned with obscene haste. Freed of their mistress' iron grip her guards had simply abandoned her in the guardroom before fleeing, although what it was that they had fled was somewhat unclear. The room was well supplied with weaponry, which hung in racks on the wall, and Vinaigrettiel the Fair lay on a huge rough-hewn oak table from which the remains of a substantial if somewhat simple meal had been swept to the floor to make room. Her ludicrously overstated make-up and odd fetishistic clothes served to enhance the illusion that she merely slept, and the Lord of Dun Sóbrin was overcome. He remained by her side for some time in a rather clichéd orgy of self-pity and belated remorse, which I shall gloss over on the grounds of taste.

Arising after he knew not how many impotent heroic vows of revenge and declarations of eternal remembrance, he grabbed at random a discarded sword and thrust it into his belt, gathered her up in his arms and carried her from the fortress to the rocks beyond. On the side of the hill he found a small white sapling growing in exactly the spot he desired, so he uprooted it and threw it away before beginning to dig a deep grave with his newly discovered weapon. He was shocked and dismayed at a complaining voice that cut through his somewhat overstated misery with unwarranted harshness:

Do I look like a spade to you? I don't know, you sit around completely unused for years and then just when you think things can't possibly get any more humiliating some idiot mistakes you for a common shovel. I'm an ancient and powerful weapon, you know; not some die-cast lump of Orcish junk. You heroes these days have no respect for decent ironwork. I despair of the lot of you.

This complaint was echoed in a thin, tinny voice from the bag of pieces that Earnur still carried:

You fink you've got it bad, mate? Look wot 'appened to me: one minute livin' the life o' Riley in a nice skirmish, next a pile o' Monopoly pieces.

Earnur groaned, not at the gratuitous anachronism but at the realisation that he now had two rather annoying swords on his hands, albeit that the Yob that was Shattered was easy to ignore in its fractured state. The newcomer continued:

And what thanks do you get for wearing out your edge in their service? Dumped in a rack without even a decent lick of oil to keep out the chill! It'll take years of polishing before my blade's back to what it was!

Well, I'm gonna need more than a bit o' bleedin' polishin'. They'll probably reforge me and then give me some stupid poncy name so no-one'll know me from that prat Andëskil...

"Shut up!" screamed Lord Etceteron, driven far beyond the restrictions of heroic language by this mind-numbing barrage of complaint. "I'm trying to bury my girlfriend here, if you don't mind. It's a deeply solemn moment and I don't want your moaning ruining it."

Ha! And you call it a funeral? What sort of a cretin am I lumbered with this time?

You're tellin' me! I 'ad ter put up wiv this cross-eyed berk fer donkeys' years! Just when I fort I'd finally got rid of 'im 'is bleedin' missus takes me out and smashes me bleedin' quillions. Death's too good fer 'er: bloody sword-'ater!

"Right! That's it!" shouted Earnur, grasping the bag firmly and beginning to wind up his arm. "This one's for the old school XI!"

And with that he flung the bag of pieces as far from himself as he possibly could, which was no small distance. To continue his analogy, the pieces went out past the slips and into the ranks of Wisden readers before it even landed, and when it did its contents were scattered to the four winds (or would have been were it not for the law of gravity). The mighty sword Wylkynsion, the keenest blade of Beleriand, would trouble its master no more.

"Hast thou more words to bandy with me, O my brand?" he asked softly, but answer came there none. Lord Etceteron continued digging.

When at last the hole was dug he lifted Vinaigrettiel gently and dropped her rather unceremoniously into the hole, jumping in to rearrange her more decorously. She seemed to have put on some weight since that day at Careless Gardenhon. When he had climbed from the pit he stood by a pace. He said "She has a lovely face; Eru in his mercy lend her grace." but he was reminded of onions and couldn't continue for tears.

So it was that Earnur came to terms with his new and rather more tiresome weapon and buried his beloved, marking her grave with a simple cairn of white stones. They say that it stands there still, although now it bears the phrase "Wot if shed repentd and not bin hit by the lory? Cudl she go inot the wste? lol" written in green crayon. Orcs will be orcs, whatever the age.

[ April 02, 2003: Message edited by: The Squatter of Amon Rûdh ]