User:Belsaia/en/Ijsbok/story

	Master of Storytelling honorary title bestowed by Oakheart on May 25, 2021

■■ A grumpy dwarf ■■

o folks, I'm going to tell you something about my life. Of course I'll do it myself! It would be even nicer if others wrote about my life. Those scribblers would just twist and distort everything. Besides, I'm not so well known that I would appear in the bards' songs. Which, by the way, I don't think is wrong at all, as a trader it's often better if you're not immediately recognized by everyone. But I should probably start from the beginning ...

Childhood in Mordor

o I'm in Lugbûrz ... Oh no, they don't say that anymore. So I grew up in Barad Dûr among all the riff-raff of orcs, goblins and black Numenoreans. What you call growing up. As a slave in the Black Tower, you rarely have a long life and it's certainly not a good one. I don't remember exactly when I was born. When I was separated from my mother at the age of three, I had no idea about calendars and years. My father was already in the mines of Udûn at that time, from which no dwarf ever returned. The years trickled by. In the beginning I had to carry buckets of orcish food, clean dirty tables with a stinking rag and put up with the orcs' nastiness, along with a few other equally young dwarves. When there was no work to be done, which was rarely enough, we were locked in the dungeon, where at least we had some peace and quiet from the orcs and got some sleep. But after a few hours, we were fetched again and the drudgery began all over again. As we hadn't been allowed to leave the tower in all those years, we didn't know the sunlight or the change from day to night. We had no sense of time and just dozed along. For many of the growing dwarves in the tower, at some point it was only desirable to escape this horror by dying quickly. But the butchers of Barad Dûr did us no such favor. Each and every one of us was kept in a state for as long as possible, which made the torment tangible, but not more bearable. After an infinite number of years - I couldn't say in retrospect whether it was five or fifty - those who had survived until then were sent to the lower levels to the forges. Here we had to prepare the shapeless swords and axes for forging. In plain language, this meant that the rust had to be removed with an old rag or bare hands. We were always exposed to the sweltering heat of the forge furnaces. If one of the cleaning slaves fell over from hunger or because of the heat, the guards simply threw him into the forge fire. For this reason alone, there was a fierce battle for the few places that were further away from the furnaces. One or two young dwarves also lost their lives. We were treated like animals and behaved like them.

Later, when my beard started to grow, I was given new tasks and with them more freedom. I now had to carry barrels of rusty swords to the forge and back to the casemates. This also gave me access to the higher levels of the tower, which were just below the surface. We were no longer so strictly controlled and were able to move relatively freely along the permitted paths. At one point, I managed to pocket a small rusty dagger that had probably fallen out of one of the barrels. I hid this, my treasure, under a large pile of garbage at my sleeping place and used every free minute I had to grind and polish the good piece. I didn't know at the time what use the dagger would be to me, but I had the vague feeling that I had to keep it hidden from the eyes of the orcs and guards as well as the other dwarves.

Youth and escape

he corridors between the forges and the orc warriors' rooms were like a labyrinth without an exit. That's why the orcs let us walk around unguarded. On one of the tours with the heavy barrels, I met another dwarf who was about my age and called himself Voci. He claimed to know a shortcut and led me into a side passage I had never used before. Here he told me to put the barrel down and sit down. Voci explained to me that there were more secluded corridors that the orcs never entered. Some were shortcuts between the start and finish points of our errands, making the slog a little more bearable. Others could serve as a retreat for battered dwarves. However, it was not without its dangers: if you took the wrong corridor, you could get hopelessly lost. Those who were not attacked and eaten by giant rats in the dark abysses often only had the less comforting prospect of starving to death in the dark. Nevertheless, we used these corridors as often as we could, as it was the only way to escape the nastiness of the orcs, at least temporarily. But now I had a completely different problem: Voci wanted to know what my name was. But I had last heard it from my mother and had long since forgotten it. So Voci decided to call me Little, because he was a finger's breadth taller than me. I was fine with it because it was the first time I hadn't been called maggot, scumbag or heyda and - it felt good.

I'm not sure whether we gained the trust of the guards despite our »excursions« or whether they simply ran out of slaves. In any case, we were allowed to surface after a while. On the slopes of the Ash Mountains we had to collect stinking roots, which were needed by the Alchemists of the Eye for their black magic. Later, we also had to collect rusty swords and shields from long-forgotten battles on Orodruin and Gorgoroth to feed the blacksmiths. As time went on, a certain restlessness spread among our guards. We also sensed that changes were imminent, but none of us could say what this would mean for us.

Then something happened that we thought would never happen. The Dark Lord showed fear of the power of good. Or if not the All-Seeing Eye itself, then its minions. There was a flurry of activity in Mordor, troops were moved towards Morannon and new armies of Eastlings were recruited. Many new fighters also need many new weapons. And so it happened that we lowly slaves were suddenly put to work outside the Black Gate. Our task was to find old weapons and armor under the rubble and debris of the slag heaps and take them to the forges for refurbishment. During the few free hours, we were locked up in the dungeons of Udûn. It was here that Voci and I hatched a plan to escape. When the opportunity arose, we would overpower our guards, who had recently been made up of not particularly strong Eastlings, and then flee to Ithilien. The plan may not have been fully developed, but the courage of desperation would guide us.

One gloomy day, the time had come. We had nothing concrete planned when we once again had to dig for rusty weapons on the slag heaps. Our guard consisted only of a company of Eastlings, who we already knew were sometimes inattentive. Voci and I were working with a troop of inexperienced dwarves on one of the outer slopes when the ostling guard who was supposed to watch over us lost their footing due to carelessness and slid down the slope. Voci shouted out the previously agreed watchword and our young sufferers started a wild brawl. All the Eastlings immediately ran there and tried to restore order. Our guard was still dazed on the ground and another Eastling was about to push us towards the others when Voci courageously pushed him down the slope and landed on his shoulders with a bold leap. Judging by the crash, quite a few bones must have been broken, as the guard remained motionless on the ground. In the meantime, I used a stone to ensure that the other, unwary guard remained calm. Then we fled in a southerly direction, towards the swamps.

Even though it may sound like it, we did not act selfishly. We would have liked to take our cousins with us, but we all knew very well that any fugitive who was caught would face worse than death. And so the lot fell to Voci and me, with the task of informing the inhabitants of Gondor of the impending attack and asking them for help to free the dwarves.

Surprising turns

ur escape was soon noticed and a troop of Eastlings prepared to pursue us. But we had anticipated this and so we waited for them in a hollow path that we had already scouted out a few weeks earlier and chosen as the first waypoint for our escape. Our pursuers were not prepared for an ambush and so we were able to overpower them quickly and easily. I neutralized the first one with a well-aimed stone throw. We overpowered the other two together and tied them up. As neither Voci nor I are particularly prone to violence, we only gagged them and tied them to a tree. After all, they were only Eastlings and not orcs. Once both of them were properly tied up, we set off in the direction of the fenfield. Once we had reached it, we thought, we would be free of our pursuers and free at last.

Under the cover of the reed thicket of the fen field, we slowly fought our way south. We made slower progress than expected on the boggy ground and dense reeds, but eventually we found a way to make progress with as little effort as possible. Small humps rose out of the boggy ground all over the fen field. These were not only dry, but also not overgrown with reeds. So we were able to move quite quickly, jumping from hump to hump, and soon reached the southern edge of the fen field despite the zigzag course. This is where the Moonland began, which belonged to Gondor but had recently been ravaged by the Dark Lord's troops. So we still had to be on our guard.

Just as I had told Voci this, one of the two Eastlings we had left tied up and the captain of the guard squad stood in front of us. Grinning, he poked me with the tip of his sword. »You've come up with a fine idea, you fat maggots. Nice try, but now it's back to half rations for three weeks. You've definitely got too much strength.« While I was still feverishly thinking about how we could still escape, the grin on the main man's face faded and as suddenly as they had appeared in front of us, they both fell forward. The wounds in their backs and the bloody daggers in the hands of two green-robed, ithilic rangers spoke for themselves: our pursuers were dead as a doornail. The two of them motioned for us to follow them and we reached the green, fragrant landscape of Ithilien. They led us along secret paths to their hidden resting places, where, in addition to a hearty meal, we were also given a safe place to sleep. For two days, we hiked undisturbed in a southerly direction. Voci and I were hardly able to stop marveling. Green forests, clearings full of flowers, birds, bees, butterflies and animals that didn't chase us and a forest floor that gave way with every step so that it was a pleasure to walk on it was something we had never experienced in Mordor. Everything there was dried up and hard or dead and even nature was hostile.

Just as we turned west to get to the hiding place with the boats, exciting events occurred again. I'm not talking about the discussion with our companions about whether we would be able to cross the river. The question was perhaps meant in a caring way, but hello! We grew up in Mordor and survived the Dark Tower for decades, so what could a river do to us? The Rangers had hidden several boats a short distance north of Osgiliath, which they intended to use to cross the river. To get to this hiding place, we had to take the road south to the large crossroads and then the path west towards Osgiliath. This was not without its dangers, as orc patrols were always passing by, but it was still safer than the path through the rugged mountain country with its dense wilderness. Anborn, one of our companions, told us about steep cliffs that suddenly appeared behind a bush and either presented an insurmountable obstacle or sent the unsuspecting hiker plummeting into the depths. We had just reached the crossroads and made sure that there were no orcs nearby when someone completely unexpected stepped out of the thicket. A dwarf who had managed to escape over the pass of Cirith Ungol. The poor fellow was obviously a cousin with the same goal as us.

When I saw him like that, sweating and hungry, in torn rags, dirty and with blood-crusted scars that you didn't know whether they were from the thorns on the run or the whips of the orc guards, I had a rough idea for the first time of what a miserable picture Voci and I had made just a short time ago. On the first evening, the rangers took us to a place where we could clean ourselves under a waterfall. I had to trim my beard a bit because it wasn't possible to remove all the felt and dirt from Mordor. Then they gave us clean clothes that fit perfectly and didn't stink of excrement and dirt. Voci laughed when he saw me with a trimmed beard and said, »You look much younger like that. Anyone who didn't know you would send you to mother in the kitchen.« I threw an apple at his head and laughed myself.

Ingtan, as the newcomer was called, briefly explained the circumstances of his escape and assured the Rangers that he was certainly not a spy of Mordor, which I immediately confirmed to Anborn. No dwarf who had to live as a slave under the orcs' thumb is capable of such a thing. After some back and forth, during which a few loud words were exchanged, they finally agreed to let Ingtan travel with us. We crossed the Great River the very next day. It was actually only two days' walk to Minas Tirith. But as there was an open grassland between the river and the city, we only moved on under the cover of dusk and only arrived at the gate of the White City on the fourth day.

PART II