The cave yawned wide before her like the mouth of some slumbering beast. Deorla stepped into its gullet with blade in hand and eyes sharp in the dark. The scent of old fire, unwashed bodies, and rotted meat clung thick to the air. This was no mapmaker’s den. It was a nest.
Orcs. And not few.
She moved quickly, soundless as a cat across stone. A narrow side passage gave her cover and from there she watched, waited. The interior was deeper than she'd guessed from outside—clearly once a mining site, now repurposed with crude iron pikes and cloth dividers hung from old support beams. It was half-camp, half-lair.
At the far end, beside a broken anvil, a hunched figure paced: an Agmarin and uruk of significant size, armor cobbled together from Dunlending and Isengard remnants, a battered helm hanging from one shoulder. His voice barked sharp orders at a pair of lesser orcs, who scrambled to obey.
Deorla crouched, watching, calculating.
She could kill them. She had done it before, and with joy. But this time… there was a greater prize in patience.
She sheathed her dagger and stepped forward.
Not into light. Not into view. But into their path.
She dragged a length of broken chain behind her, letting it scrape just loud enough.
An orc turned, snarling. “Who's there?”
She shifted her tone—thick, Dunlending accent, rasped by smoke.
“A whisper from the East,” she hissed in Westron, low and mocking. “From the fires that fell. I've seen the weakness. Riders growing fat on their victory. The Gap is soft.”
The uruk turned his head, nostrils flaring. “You dare enter here, witch?”
Deorla smiled behind the shadows. She never let them see her face.
“I dare tell you this—ride west at moonrise. Strike the Rohirrim where their horses sleep. And you’ll find no swords ready. The Riders watch the north now… they’ve forgotten the teeth of Isengard.”
That name—Isengard—still held weight among these stragglers, orcs left behind when Saruman fell.
The uruk stepped forward. “And why help us?”
“Because men forget their debts,” she said. “And the fire still burns in me.”
She let a piece of broken white cloth fall from her cloak—it bore a faint sigil, one she’d taken from a slain scout, its origin untraceable. It looked real enough.
They bought the lie.
The uruk grunted, suspicious but eager. Victory was a promise no orc ever questioned too long. Orders were given. Steel scraped. The preparations began.
Deorla slipped back into the dark, unseen and silent.
By the time the first howl rang through the cave—some orc stirring his brethren to violence—she was already moving toward the surface.
Deorla emerged to moonlight and stillness. She expected voices, or perhaps the flicker of campfire embers where the two people had waited.
But there was nothing.
No sound.
No shapes.
No sign of the riders who had shared her path.
Not even hoofprints marked the earth in clear direction.
“They left…” she muttered. “And not in haste.”
She circled the clearing, checking for signs—any trace of their departure—but the ground was too rocky, too scattered with old prints. It was as if they had vanished.
Vanished… or chosen to disappear.
Her hand tensed on the edge of her belt. A subtle pressure built behind her eyes—not panic, but calculation.
Had they recognized her?
Had they followed her into the cave, watched from shadows?
Or had they simply vanished by design, puppets cut from their strings?
Whatever the truth, Deorla was alone again.
She turned south toward the Gap of Rohan, where the orcs would soon spill like a plague across the grass. They would die, of course. That was their purpose.
A distraction… a message.
She walked with a quiet satisfaction.
Let the Rohirrim believe it was an old grudge from Isengard.
Let them ride north in confusion.
Deorla’s blade moved far ahead of her now—and the path beneath her feet had already begun to burn.
