Uruk-hai, or the journey there...

[Olmer]

Here I decided to put on your judgment a beginning of my translation of a story about orcs, hobbits and other familiar characters.
I am doing it just for my friends, so bear with my English.

All rights on this story and its translation are RESERVED.

Uruk-Hai, or the journey to there…
by Alexander Bayborodin


Foreseen, but not imprinted way,
And the footpath is twisting...

Instead of the Foreword
This won't be the tale about Hobbits, to be exact, it will be about them too, but, basically, not about them...

I
The sunny hills of Hobbiton. They are covered with soft silky grass. They smell of honey and caress eyes with gentle shades of meadow flowers. Heads of cream and white clovers are scattered over a dark green carpet. Little suns of daisies are shining here and there. Cornflowers are nodding their clear-blue heads. A lungwort joyfully opens deep violet flowers towards diligent, unhurried, heavy bumblebees and to hasty bees. An imperceptible shepherd's purse, all covered with little white flowers, luxuriates under an easy breeze. Soft whisks of broom-grass are bending and caressing a face. You can lay in this grass for hours! The wind rumples hair and brings smells and sounds: sweetness of flowers and bitterness of wormwood, rustling of grass and hum of insects, smoke from a distant fire of a charcoal maker's kiln, squabbles of children playing under the hill and a distant creak of wheels.
The sunny hills of Hobbiton… It's been a long time since I saw them.
Probably, since that fateful day...

I quarreled with my father at that time. Quarreled, because he decided it’s time for me to get married. I just have turned thirty-three, and ,as they say, have already “came of age”, so the father resolved that it is time for me to have a wife. To tell the truth, hardly having left “tweens“, I did not want to marry at all, but he did not ask me.
In any way it is not in hobbit’s custom. It’s been a traditional practice that spouses for children are being chosen by parents. In our small population almost everybody knows each other and almost everyone is connected by complex relations. For that reason, the parents, while choosing, for a long time are tracing who the groom and the bride are to each other. But for even longer time they are determining of what would be the bride’s dowry, and what kind of a homestead will have the groom. If the parents will decide that the bride and the groom do not fit each other, then the young people will never get married.

I think that Grandfather Sam would have never married to Grandmother Rose, even if they loved each other. Who was he? The son of a gardener who even did not have his own garden, when the Cottons family was prosperous. But Grandfather got lucky. They say, that the old Cotton, giving the consent to a betrothal, thought that Sam has returned from a journey not as a poor man, just like it have been with the master Bilbo Baggins, who, undoubtedly, was not poor even before the voyage. Contrary to his believe, my grandfather, upon returning from the distant lands, couldn’t lead an idle, lazy life, not working at all, as Bilbo has lived.
So, Cotton has decided that Grandfather Sam, too, has brought a chest with coins on the back of his pony. Daddy Cotton was mistaken about that then, and was regretting his decision, but to terminate a betrothal is almost like to take away a wife from the house of her husband - it would be against any customs.
Anyway it happens that Cotton did not have to have regrets for long. Grandfather Sam was not dumb. The Grey powder, that the Elven queen has presented him, made him both rich and respected. Everyone wanted Sam the Gardener to work over theirs grounds. And when King Elessar, all of a sudden has arrived in our remote areas and politely asked the Elders to select a Mayor from someone of his friends, the old men have thought not for long.
After an overseas departure of the master Frodo Baggins, Grandfather Sam has remained the most senior and the most sensible of all three friends.
Certainly, I do not remember it, for then I was not born yet, but in his advanced years Grandfather Sam used to chat with grandsons. The events, described in the Red Book, he recollected infrequently, and did not like to do it, as well as the Grandfather Peregrin, by the way. On questions about those times both of them were saying that the master Bilbo Baggins already has written it all better than they can tell.
But often Grandfather Sam was telling how he married Grandmother Rose and how they have started to live together. He liked very much to recollect it.
It was understandable. No matter if you tell or write about whatever heroic feats have been done by the grandfather in another lands, only gullible little kids will believe in it, and only until they reach “tweens”, and then they will begin to laugh too, just as adults. Or even worse, they might cease to respect , because wandering in the distant lands is not a respectful hobbit’s engagement. Of course, they will not say it straight to the face, but will gossip a great deal behind the back .
A history of marriage is another matter. My grandfather has managed to marry a girl whom he loved and who loved him. Up till now many of young hobbits, and not only the young, speak about it with envy. Obviously, with the secret envy. Who would speak openly about such thing? You can talk about it only with close friends, and in whispers. But all in all, many were envying them secretly.

Anyway, my father has decided to get me married, and I had no reason to count on being lucky enough, just like my grandfather, to pick up the bride by myself.
It’s not that I was grieving too much about it. I have been around young girls, but none of them has touched my heart, and I even thought, that it is not that too important of who of them will become my wife.
But my father has chosen Nastursia Furfoot for my wife! I cannot deny, that Nastursia has had not simply good, but an excellent dowry - a part of Furfoot’s grazing land in the Brandywine’s river meadow. Far not every hobbit’s family, even a very respectful one, has the meadows in Brandywine’s grassland. The Brandybucks, for example, have it, but us, the Tooks, don‘t. Everyone knows that from a sunken meadow one could get three times more grass, than from the usual one. Which means that you can have more livestock.
The Тooks are far from poor, but even to us it would be unacceptable to miss such riches.
So the dowry after Nastursia was outstanding, and a relationship between us was very distant, almost none. In prosperity the Furfoots almost conceded the Тooks. And that fact that the Furfoots are less prominent than the Тooks is even better for a marriage.
All it so.
But for a whole life to tie myself up with this stupid old broad, whose face is even more repelling than her attitude, and whom so far nobody wanted to marry despite of all her dowry?!

When the father declared to me, that in a week we will have an introductory dinner party with Nasturtia and her family, in a half-year - an engagement, and in a year - the wedding, I unloaded on him everything what I thought of Nasturtia and his decision, slammed the door and, since a pony has been saddled and stood in a court yard, has jumped in a saddle and was gone.
If I would know then in what it will result, I would remain at home.

From time to time fidgets are getting born among us, the Tooks, who at the first suitable occasion are ready to go off into the blue, just like Grandfather Peregrin. Because of this, all the others consider us not as quite levelheaded hobbits, though don't speak aloud about that.
But I’m not like that. I am the most ordinary Hobbit, it would never come into my head to leave the beloved Hobbiton and our comfortable hole-house. I have been mad at the father, but, honestly, deep inside I understood, that Nastursia is not the worst choice at all .
Yes, she is not that clever and utterly unattractive, but unwise the one who searches for brain in the woman, and beauty is a thing, that spoils quickly. As for a bad attitude, they say, that such thing often happens to girls, whom for a long time nobody wants to marry, but it changes, when they will get a husband. Besides there is the dowry…

But I jumped in the saddle and raced my pony on a dusty well-trodden road. The pony was fast and fresh. It flew over the road, and his for a long time uncut mane fluttered like a banner. The hoofs are spiritedly thudding, raising up clouds of dust behind.
And in this thudding, seems, was heard as the road itself cheerfully calls out: "Away, away, away!"
The wind forced to squint the eyes, bushes and trees on the roadside were flashing by, and the dirty ribbon of the road was twisting way away to a horizon. A far! Seems like it called up to go where the sun is arising, where the wind is swooping over, and where, still, many more roads unbeknownst to you.

Truly the old folks had a saying: "Be cautious, choosing a way when you step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where it might lead to.“
I was heading towards another river bank of Brandywine, to my friend Teddy Brandybuck.

In Brandybuck’s family they love stately names like Fortinbras, Meriadoc, - and, since returning of Meriadoc the Magnificent, they have grown fond of Rohan’s names. So, Тeddy is short for Тheoden, but his regal name is hardly correlates with him. He is an impulsive and high-spirited guy. For certain he would have liked to be in my present place.
They all, the Brandybucks, are like this. Even thought that us, the Tooks, have been considered not quite levelheaded, the Brandybucks far surpassed us in this irrationality . Some even call them " Braldabecks" behind the back, hinting that they are perpetually drunk from theirs dark “brald” and therefore, accordingly, have such characters. But to call like this somebody from the Brandybucks in the face, means to get severely beaten for sure.The Brandybucks do not forgive insults. You have to be a swashbuckler to dare on such bravado, but we don’t have the swashbucklers in the Shire. Of course, if you won‘t count the Brandybucks themselves as the swashbucklers, but then again, who would dare to say it aloud about them.
Then, just to think about, would more respectable and conscientious Hobbits be able for fifteen generations protect the borders of Hobbiton? Everyone can sow wheat or to shepherd goats. But how many can live at the very Hedge, every year moving it further and further into the Old Forest?
How many, when troubles come, without wasting time on unnecessary doubts, can take axes and bows, and fight without any regrets about their life? The Brandybucks can. It has happened many times in all existence of the Hobbiton.
Much is already forgotten, but everyone remembers that the white wolves of the Long Winter have been stopped by the Brandybucks. Also a fight with Orcs, in time of youth of both my grandfathers and Teddy’s grandfather, is still alive in folk memory.

There is a book about those times in Buckland, and Тookborough both. It's called the Red Book because of its red soft leather cover. Teddy and I often would take ours or theirs book and run off onto the hills, and up to darkness read it aloud to each other. Mesmerizing has been this reading. Heroes and magicians were rising up from pages, and it was strange to come to realization that our own grandfathers have been among these heroes. When all around you just a peaceful land and pastures, you don’t want to contemplate that somewhere there's a fire and blood. And it is absolutely impossible to imagine that hands, which gently stroked you head in the childhood, once had held a sword, and that the one, who rocked you on the knee, is the warrior and the hero.
While Teddy and I had been in “tweens”, it amused us very much, but the time goes by, and one day you are realizing that you are already an adult, there are no any battles around, and, simply, you have to live as everybody lives.

Тeddy was my friend. With whom would I share my grief, if not with him?
But that evening Тeddy was more cheerful than usual. His father, the same as mine, has declared to him about an impending marriage. But for a wife for him has been chosen Lukretsia Sackville-Baggins, from those Sackville-Bagginses that now live in the Bag End, the former Bagginses manor. And Lucretsia is the one-and-only heir of all manor, what is rarely happens in Hobbits families, as we, usually, having lots of children.
Besides, the matter was not only in the dowry. Lucretsia and Теddy for a long time have been “making eyes” to each other, and at every casual and not casual meeting were attempting to squeeze in together somewhere away from somebody else's eyes.
I already told about how we choose brides and grooms, and the fact, that the choice of Teddy’s father has matched with the choice of Теddy himself, could be a smile of fortune. Could be, or could be not. The Brandybucks often behave in a way different from the others. So, Теddy was very cheerful or, to tell more correctly, " fairly tipsy ", and did not share my grief .
Anyway, we took a pair of kegs with beer, a considerable quantity of snacks from a pantry, loaded all this on my pony so its legs began to buckle, whistled for a company to about a dozen of lounged around young Brandybucks and Boffins and went to the grove on the river-bank on the bachelor party.
At the Brandybucks they are always winking at the frolics of young hobbits, and therefore, on the occasion of forthcoming of mine and Teddy’s engagements, nobody interfered with our party, and such thing as a small loss of beer, in any way, won’t affect the extensive Brandybucks stocks.

Perhaps, you know, that Hobbits are extremely thorough people, and everything what we are doing we are doing thoroughly.
We drank thoroughly too, and one of the young Brandybucks had to ride to the pantry on my pony twice .
We have begun with a light beer from Bree, because it was the mildest. Then we have given due to our Light, from Tookborough: it’s darker than from Bree and has more tart taste, but does not differ at all in its potency.
But, obviously, most of all we drunk the dark Brandybuck’s brald. And I shall tell you, it is rather a virile beer. It’s dark in color, same as Brandywine‘s water, for what it jokingly sometimes called as Bralda-wine. On taste it is bitter-tart, but pleasant. As for a strenght... We have got used to it. Usually Hobbit’s stomach quickly digests everything what has got in it . But it will quickly make a head spinning for the one unaccustomed to such beer. I, once, still being in “tweens“, was with Teddy and his father in Bree, and in there I happened to see, how one of the Big Folk got knocked down off the bench and under the table from just three mugs of “brald“. We, at that time, have brought the beer to the Butterburs for their "Prancing pony ". Recently Bree is growing out, as a dough in the kiln. More and more of the Big Folk are moving in, and all of them are not fools to drink. So, the “Brald” brings to the Brandybucks a considerable share of their income, and to us, the Tooks, our “Light “ brings too.

By a sundown the beer was already sloshing in me somewhere up in between ears, and I was afraid to bend, being worried that it will pour out. Teddy was even “better“. He started to celebrate the future marriage even before my arrival. The young Brandybucks and Boffins also barely stayed up. Somehow, it imperceptibly darkened around: it was a time to go home.
And right at that time I felt an urge to go to the bushes. You know, how it happens when you are drinking too much beer? And we, also, have eaten a lot .
I walked away, but the light from the fire, which has been kindled by one of the young Brandybucks, extended far enough from the glade, and I walked away a bit more. Probably, if I would be more sober, I would notice that I walked too far from the light, but I was hardly seeing through the beer in my eyes, and, besides, when you are sitting with lowered pants, you won’t look around too much . I have already started to button up, when something have crackled behind, and I got knocked out cold with something heavy...