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the land of shadow 1211
‘You come back,’ shouted the soldier, ‘or I’ll report you!’
‘Who to? Not to your precious Shagrat. He won’t be
captain any more.’
‘I’ll give your name and number to the Nazgûl,’ said the
soldier lowering his voice to a hiss. ‘One of them’s in charge
at the Tower now.’
The other halted, and his voice was full of fear and rage.
‘You cursed peaching sneakthief !’ he yelled. ‘You can’t do
your job, and you can’t even stick by your own folk. Go to
your filthy Shriekers, and may they freeze the flesh off you!
If the enemy doesn’t get them first. They’ve done in Number
One, I’ve heard, and I hope it’s true!’
The big orc, spear in hand, leapt after him. But the tracker,
springing behind a stone, put an arrow in his eye as he ran
up, and he fell with a crash. The other ran off across the
valley and disappeared.
For a while the hobbits sat in silence. At length Sam stirred.
‘Well, I call that neat as neat,’ he said. ‘If this nice friendliness
would spread about in Mordor, half our trouble would be
over.’
‘Quietly, Sam,’ Frodo whispered. ‘There may be others
about. We have evidently had a very narrow escape, and the
hunt was hotter on our tracks than we guessed. But that is
the spirit of Mordor, Sam; and it has spread to every corner
of it. Orcs have always behaved like that, or so all tales say,
when they are on their own. But you can’t get much hope
out of it. They hate us far more, altogether and all the time.
If those two had seen us, they would have dropped all their
quarrel until we were dead.’
There was another long silence. Sam broke it again, but
with a whisper this time. ‘Did you hear what they said about
that gobbler, Mr. Frodo? I told you Gollum wasn’t dead yet,
didn’t I?’
‘Yes, I remember. And I wondered how you knew,’ said
Frodo. ‘Well, come now! I think we had better not move out
from here again, until it has gone quite dark. So you shall tell