The Tale
Shagrat is antsy. He and his
lads from Cirith Ungol were called out an hour ago because the Nazgul were
uneasy and spies were feared on the stairs.
Gorbag tells him that two
days ago their ‘Silent Watchers’ around Minas Morgul (perhaps the invisible
eyes that Gollum feared; perhaps evil spirits bound to the stone of the statues
guarding the bridge to Minas Morgul) were uneasy too. But with the Witch-King
leading the army out to attack Gondor the higher-ups were too busy to pay
attention to the reports. But what was Shagrat up to? Wasn’t he supposed to be
guarding things anyway?
Shagrat retorts that they knew
funny things were going on: lights and shouting and all. But Shelob was ‘on the
go.’ They saw her and her Sneak.
What is the Sneak? A ‘little
thin black fellow; like a spider himself, or perhaps more like a starved frog.’
Gollum, of course. Shagrat reveals that Gollum was let go from the Dark Tower
years ago, and they were ordered to let him pass. And he seems to have some
sort of bargain with ‘Her Ladyship’. Anyway, Shelob was very active. Perhaps
her ‘Sneak’ had brought her a present. The Orcs didn’t dare interfere. Nothing
gets past her when she’s on the hunt. And she got the spy in the end.
Got him? Gorbag asks. That
little guy? There’s obviously another one that was with him and is still at large.
Somebody cut the cords, and somebody ‘stuck a pin in Her Ladyship’. Someone is
on the loose, worse than ‘any other damned rebel that ever walked since the bad
old times’. Shagrat asks him what he
thinks it is.
‘By all signs, Captain
Shagrat, I’d say there’s a large warrior loose, Elf most likely, with an
elf-sword anyway, and an axe as well maybe’ … ‘Sam smiled grimly at this
description of himself.’
Shagrat thinks Gorbag is
taking too pessimistic a view of things. Anyway, his job right now is to take a
look at the fellow they have got. Gorbag thinks they won’t find much on him.
His companion just went and ‘left him lying: regular elvish trick.’ He claims
dibs on him if there’s any ‘fun’ to be had with their find. But Shagrat has his
orders. ‘Any trespasser found by the guard is to be held at the tower.
Prisoner is to be stripped. Full description of every article, garment, weapon,
letter, ring, or trinket is to be sent to Lugburz at once, and to Lugburz only.
And the prisoner is to be safe and intact, under pain of death for every member
of the guard, until He sends or comes Himself.’
‘Stripped, eh?’ said Gorbag.
‘What, teeth, nails, hair, and all?’ No, he’s to be kept safe until Lugburz can
have him. What good will that do? asks Gorbag. He’s dead; he might as well just
‘go in the pot’ for supper. Shows how much you know, retorts Shagrat. Shelob
doesn’t eat dead meat or drink cold blood. When she binds her victims with
cords, she means to have them later. But first she gives them a dab of poison
to stop them from struggling. This fellow isn’t dead!
Sam reels at the news, as if
the world has been turned upside down. He chastises himself for the mistake,
for not having enough hope. ‘Don’t trust your head, Samwise, it is not the best
part of you.’ But what can he do now but listen to find out more?
The same thing happened to
old Ufthak, Shagrat continues. They found him hanging up, awake and glaring.
They left him there; no sense meddling with Shelob’s prey. The ‘little filth’
will wake up feeling a bit sick, but otherwise alright … if Lugburz would leave
him alone. Gorbag laughs. If they can’t torture him themselves, they can at
least torment him with tales about what awaits him.
Sam’s fury is growing, both
at himself and at the ‘filth’ who have captured Frodo. ‘Never leave your
master, never, never: that was my right rule.’ He bangs at the door with Sting,
to no avail, but by its blazing light he can see a dark blank space above the
stone door, a way over it’s ponderance, only about twice as high as himself. He
leaps up and scrambles over and rushes down the tunnel, weariness forgotten and
sword blazing.
He hears the two Captains
ahead, and they sound quite close. Shagrat says that he’s putting the prisoner
right at the top of the tower. He doesn’t trust all his lads, or any of Gorbag’s,
or Gorbag either ‘when [he’s] mad for fun.’ He’ll be safe there.
Sam yells that they’re ‘forgetting
the great big elvish warrior that’s loose!’ He races around a last corner but
finds he’s misjudged the distance. The orcs are still some ways ahead of him,
just silhouettes in the red glare beyond. The path runs straight up at last, to
great wide double doors at the base of the tower. The others have already taken
Frodo in, and Gorbag and Shagrat are almost there. There is a burst of blaring
horns and clanging gongs and harsh voices singing. Sam’s shouts are drowned
out. The orc captains pass the threshold.
‘The great doors slammed to. Boom. The bars of iron fell into place inside. Clang. The gate was shut. Sam hurled himself against the bolted brazen plates and fell senseless to the ground. He was out in the darkness. Frodo was alive but taken by the Enemy.’
‘Here ends the second part
of the history of the War of the Ring.
The third part tells of the
last defence against the Shadow, and the end of the mission of the Ring-bearer
in THE RETURN OF THE KING.’
Bits and Bobs
There is some speculation
about whether the ‘Silent Watchers’ near Minas Morgul are the same sort of
thing as the Watchers at the gate of Cirith Ungol, which we will see later, or
simply unseen presences. There is some later example in the Legendarium with
how the Druedain (Woses) can place a kind of awareness in a statue, with their
Watch-stones (see Unfinished Tales).
Here we have confirmation
that, despite what Gollum himself believes, Sauron let him loose on purpose,
perhaps to just let him do some mischief, but more likely to be followed to see
if he would lead them to the Ring. That Gollum was able to elude his trackers,
however, is a tribute to his craftiness.
Some have speculated that
Gorbag talking about the ‘bad old days’ of the last great Siege means that they
might have been alive since then, and that therefore Orcs live as long as
Elves. But it seems to be just a way of saying things, as we might say “It was
the bloodiest battle we have known since Gettysburg.” And Tolkien has stated
elsewhere that Orcs actually live shorter lives than the lives of ordinary Men.
For the Orcs, of course, ‘Elvish’
is the worst term of calumny. Elves are traitors and rebels. To leave Frodo lying is a typical ’Elvish
trick’, even though they have done the same thing with ‘old Ufthak’, though he was still obviously alive. Tom Shippey has noted that Orcs do have
morality: they just don’t pay attention to it or apply it for themselves. Like
a lot of humans.
Gorbag judges what the ‘warrior’
must be like by the damage that’s been done, and rates Frodo by his size. This
leads him into some seriously wrong evaluations.
The Orcs use two Cockney colloquialisms:
‘Garn!’ (‘Go on’ with you!) and ‘Nar’
(never).
Sam needn’t have berated
himself: if he had stayed with Frodo, they would have both been captured, and
the Ring found. I wonder if the fact that Shagrat’s instructions explicitly mention
to look for any rings is significant. Might Sauron have had some inkling that a
new Ring-master might sneak up and try to attack him? I also wonder if Sam’s
tricky hearing of how far away the Captains were has something to do with the augmented
hearing the Ring has been giving him.
At this point Tolkien wrote
to his son, Christopher: “I have got the hero into such a fix that not even an
author will be able to extricate him without labour and difficulty.”
And that brings me to the
end of the ‘labour’ and difficulty of The Two Towers. Looking back, I
see I’ve been working on this stretch (from ‘Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit’ to ‘The
Choices of Master Samwise’) for about six months and ten days. I’m going to
take another break again, until the end of July, I think.
And what is that figure behind Sam? The idea of 'the great elven warrior'?
No comments:
Post a Comment