Shadows Laid Before the Sun by Idrils Scribe

Chapter 2

The corpse lay but a stone’s throw from the road, a noisy cloud of blowflies buzzing about it. 

A small mountain Orc dressed in rags, prone and spread-eagled, its face pressed into the grey grass. 

The scouts barely thought their find worth mentioning, but Maitimo insisted on seeing it with his own eyes, and so his entire staff, Carnistir included, veered off the road, their horses snorting and prancing beneath them from the charnel-stench, and gathered around the carcass. 

 “Turn it over,” Maitimo ordered, and swung himself down from his destrier. At once his esquire leapt forward to take charge of the wild-eyed stallion. Erestor, too, dismounted to stand beside his lord and study the Orc, his face rapt as if the corpse were a precious gemstone. 

Carnistir sighed inwardly. Erestor was Maitimo’s chief counsellor, like he had been Fëanáro’s before him, but he was also a loremaster of the Lambengolmor. If the old bookworm took an interest they might be held up here for hours. 

Carnistir did not like the feel of this place. Something pulled at his mind, something in the distant valley beneath the mountains, and the touch was foul. 

“No need to concern yourself with the Orc, my lord. It is dead already.” The scouts’ captain resorted to stating the blindingly obvious in her eagerness to be away from this place. 

The sun rode low and red on the western horizon in a roiling wrack of cloud, and a strange, oily mist crept across the moors. None of them relished the thought of setting up camp here. 

“Clearly,” said Maitimo, his lips tight. “But there is no blood. I wish to know what it died of .” He pointed his one hand, scarred and ghostly pale in the dying light, at the corpse in an impatient gesture. “Turn it over,” he repeated his order in a low, clipped tone. 

Maitimo never needed to raise his voice. At once the scout leapt to, and in her eyes stood something much like fear. Unwilling to touch the decaying body even for Maitimo, she reached out with the flat blade of her long-shafted glaive, wrenched it beneath the Orc’s chest, and flipped it over.

Maggots rained down from the nose and mouth in a scatter of writhing white, but that was not why this crowd of battle-hardened warriors drew backwards with gasps of dismay. 

The Orc had eight eyes.  

Sheer were the precipices of Ered Gorgoroth, and beneath their feet were shadows that were laid before the rising of the Moon. Beyond lay the wilderness of Dungortheb, where ... horror and madness walked.

The Silmarillion, Quenta Silmarillion, Ch 19, Of Beren and Lúthien

Chapter End Notes

Welcome back, my spooky friends!
A shorter one today, because there simply wasn't any other spot to cut it, but the next chapters will be a lot meatier.
Writers run on coffee and comments, and I'm dying to hear what you think is going on in this creepy valley we've wandered into. A comment would make me a very happy scribe.
See you tomorrow,
IS