"Now, my pretty ones," Anguelen began, teeth reflecting the light of the moon oh so unsettlingly, "I am going to have you run a little errand that I find you particularly well suited for."

Shumaukuz looked rather skeptical of Anguelen's belief in him, but dared not argue with someone who had just called his band of rugged Orcs pretty. "...what errand?"

"The moon will be shadowed soon once more, leaving the world below dark to eyes more mortal than ours," Anguelen practically chanted, turning his eyes to the clouds and Tilion overhead. He took a dramatic pause, back in character, before turning his eyes back to the nervously waiting Orcs. So filled with the light of the heavens they were that it was as though they had drunk deeply of the shine of the moon. "You have Wargs. Go now, and obscure our tracks to the true Rangers that might blemish these lands, that we may flee hence undeterred."

Shumaukuz barked out an incredulous laugh. "Go out there where the Rangers are? We might very well die to the last Orc!"

"Well, obviously that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make," explained Anguelen, already tired of his character. "But just think how well it will work. Your Wargs are so heavy they can easily make our presence undetectable to any Rangers or other trackers who will come poking around in that site of slaughter. Actually, you should rob the corpses to make it look like it was your work in the first place!"

"...is he an Elf or some sort of Orc in disguise?" pleaded Shumaukuz, seeking some measure of reassurance from Thraknash, the decidedly less cracked one of the pair.

Thraknash took a moment to consider this. He hoped the fond feelings this exchange had awakened in him wouldn't be too obvious to the ones surrounding him. "He's my monster," he finally said, voice proud and irritatingly unsteady with some deeper emotion he hadn't been able to quite squash.

"Mate, this is ridiculous! Bleeding ludicrous! Here we walk the valley of the potential fucking death, and you two can't even bring yourselves to care!" Shumaukuz himself was starting to sound rather emotional, come to think of it. "Mate, friend, fellow Orc, how thick is your head?"

Thraknash let out a deep sigh. Having walked with this band for some time now, he knew how these openings worked and hoped that humouring this pillock would make him go away faster. "Thicker than your dick. There, are you happy now?"

"That's not what I wanted to hear! We're not like you lot, whose skulls are probably thicker than a Mûmak's..." Shumaukuz dragged his hands across his face, groaning like a wounded door. All of a sudden he tore knives and other assorted weapons from his belts and began to toss them in the air. Impotently they hit the ground around him without hitting anything important. "All right! That's right! Sod the Rangers, sod our safety! So what if we survived the war in one piece, let's go skewer our heads on the swords of our enemies just because some sort of Elf wants it!"

"Well now that was silly," Thraknash pointed out, gesturing at the discarded weapons. For a moment he was actually able to forget about the direness of the circumstances, thinking how a shared love of these unhinged theatrics were probably the reason Shumaukuz worshipped Krazum so. "Now you'll have to pick up all your things and you'll have changed nothing about your situation."

"Thraknash, he's even more uptight than you," Grishtakh inserted all of a sudden with genuine-sounding awe, mercifully smoothing his tunic back into place. To Thraknash's sobering horror, he then licked his hand clean.

"I suppose someone has to be," Thraknash managed without the shuddering corrupting his diction too much. "I couldn't be the master for the rest of my life. There'll always be someone better out there."

Grishtakh nodded with admiration. "Good thing Anguelen loosened you up."

Just a month or so earlier Thraknash would've been incredibly embarrassed about this remark, especially in front of strangers. Now he only saw an opening to widen the crack in his new sparring partner's mind, maybe make a remark about Anguelen broadening his horizons by 'this much' while holding his hands apart... but this really had gone on far too long as it was. "Grishtakh. Clean that hand properly, you animal-fucking fucking animal."

"Well don't hold it against me," Gristakh grunted, but he went to find a skin of water anyway like a good little goblin. Clearly letting off some cream had done him some good, even if it hadn't sorted out his attitude.

Taking some satisfaction and comfort from this, Thraknash turned his attention back to his adversary. He found Shumaukuz awkwardly collecting his weapons off the ground, helped in this task just as awkwardly by his band-fellows. "Good, you've come back to your senses already. Are you leaving soon?" Shumaukuz turned his face up first and crouched there a moment in dark contemplation. Just as he began to stand up, clearly gathering strength, Thraknash pressed on. "I mean, the quicker you leave, the quicker we'll get your commander to safety from these damned Lone-Lands."

As Shumaukuz still spent a moment in stunned contemplation and utter defeat, Anguelen came forward. "Indeed. Serve us well in this and survive, and you'll be able to find us and see Krazum again."

Thraknash turned a bit to nod at the general direction of the Misty Mountains. "We're heading east. Maybe you'll find us on our journey."

"Also, should you come across any Rangers out there," Anguelen added, "try to let them come as close as possible before you kill them. That way you'll get to the corpses much faster and cut down on precious looting time."

With a frantic wave of his hand, Shumaukuz put a stop to the talks before he could get any more advice. He accepted the last of his knives from one of his band-mates as gracefully as he possibly could. "Fine, fine. For Commander Krazum, then, and no one else's sake." Still a bit tired, he made an admirable effort to look good and leaderly to his men. "Boys... we're leaving. Be alert."

"Ride on," said Anguelen.

"Right on," said Thraknash.

Shumaukuz glanced at the pair one last time as he was mounting his Warg. "Whatever. You'd better see to it that nothing happens to him."

Thraknash nodded, suddenly very serious. "We will. For his sake and his little one's."

The sharpness in the Warg-Riders' glares softened considerably, though they remained grim before this task set before them. Well, most of them did. The as of yet nameless Warg-Fucker threw one last leer at Grishtakh, and, more disturbingly, both he and his Fucker-Warg winked simultaneously. Grishtakh responded with the two-fingered salute. Then the band took off, almost immediately beginning to direct their mounts in a way that helped replace any other tracks with theirs. The moon fell under shadow once more, leaving them to do their terrible task almost unseen to Man-eyes.

"Now that was taxing," Thraknash commented as the riders disappeared from sight. Clapping his hands together in celebration of it being over at last, he turned to the rest of his own, superior, band. "Time's up, maggots! Pick up all our things and prepare to leave as quickly as orkishly possible! With some effort and a bit of luck, we'll shake off both the Riders and the Rangers."

Anguelen gave one of those sinister smiles that made Thraknash's heart flutter so. "But if we don't..."

"Then you'll do what you do best." Thraknash grinned, picking up his usual packs and some of the new sacks. Glancing over at Krazum, he could see Moglurz already preparing to carry him. None of them could guess what their future would hold, not after such a shocking interlude to their journey, but now they could make an effort to put some distance between it and their goals. As one band they ran across the darkened lands of Eriador, more vigilant for threats but once again hopeful.