Warg's Tail - Part One: The Packlands

Author’s Note:

Because Tolkein’s world is huge and scary and complicated beyond what I can handle for one assignment, I’m mostly going to be using the LotR movie-verse. Hopefully this will make the story more accessible to everyone and easier to follow.

On-Site Journal of Erin Berenger

Rhovanion dig-site 5, east foothills, Misty Mtns

Thursday, August 12, Year 2010, Seventh Age

We found the denning caverns today. Toby and Clem have just begin to chart the striations in the walls and compare them to the cavity earth, but from the look I got today I’d say we’re dealing with Third Age excavations for sure.

Can I just say, it’s really exciting? I mean, here we are finally getting answers about a species that lived so many thousands of years ago and died out over two millennia before our grandparents were born. It’s astounding.

I almost forgot, I didn’t have time to put this in yesterday, but Sadie and her team have been getting closer to something resembling a translation on the script we found on some of the stones up by the cavern mouths. Some of it reads like back-ally graffiti, but there are also records of what looks like fights, maybe? Wins and loses of some kind anyway.

There are also names that have been scratched out, quite violently, it looks like. Anyway, it’s mostly so eroded that we can’t tell whether it was done with a knife or a chisel of some kind…but there’s this one name, right, and the scoring that crosses it out is really, really deep. Deep enough that there are still bits of whatever made it stuck in the gouge-mark.

Sadie pulled it out, analysed it…

Keratin protein. As in, claws.

Both the name and the scoring came up positive as being made by a claw or set of claws. Put that together with the reconstruction we’ve been doing, measuring what we can from those remains we found frozen in the glacier over at Mount Caradhras, I’d say we’re looking at a quadruped capable of not only using speech as we understand it, but some kind of written language system.

If we prove, it could change everything.

And it’s all thanks to “Ralph”.

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Eastern foothills of the Misty Mountains, Rhovanion

Years 3007-3010 of the Third Age

He began as a scrap. As a piece of something – fluff, tiny cries – to amuse and entertain.

His mother kept him to win a bet with the bitch in the neighbouring den. After all, seven whelps were better than six, even if one was so small and malformed that he couldn’t battle his brothers for meat. His mother found it funny, watching him writhe and fall, and cry when he was bitten. She wuffed and laughed, and gathered him close to sick up meat into his waiting jaws.

He grew and learned to speak, and later to hunt (even as small as he was, he was quicker than his brothers, and could catch tender rabbits before the fled to their burrows). His mother watched, waited for his shape to correct itself, but it never did. He stayed long, and lean, his gaits fine and smooth like a horse’s.

“There is nothing solid to him,” Úlfa complained. “Wind off the mountains might blow him away.”

“Then let him be blown away,” her mate muttered. “It’s not as though you’ve named him.”

The she-Warg tilted her head guiltily. “He is Ralph,” she said, and Hemming scoffed, jaws wide.

“That is rich,” he said scornfully. “Though it doesn’t matter. The others are strong, promising. With them we’ll feast on horse-flesh, on man-flesh, soon enough.”

The years past, and years do, and Ralph got bigger, though never as big as his siblings. His mother remained disappointed, though she kept it to herself.

The packs shifted, migrating as their food did, and kept their ears open for signs of change.

And change came.

Marrok came back to the Packlands one day, blood on his paws and a harness upon his back. One ear was torn nearly off, and his teeth were darkened at the gums with pungent gore.

“The call has been put out by the Orcs,” he told them. “The White Wizard adds his colours to the banner of Mordor. The Orcish are his creatures now, and if we are too, there will be man-flesh for the taking. Feasts of it!” He licked his chops for emphasis.

“I don’t smell man-flesh on you,” Hemming said, all suspicion. “Just Orc. Where’s the one whose straps you’re wearing?”

Marrok shrugged, harness rings rattling. “I was hungry. He was very annoying, but rather tasty. What say you? Do we run for Isengard?”

Hemming smiled, and his smile was terrible…

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