The Last Ringbearer (51 page)

When they were about knee-deep in the water, the loud call of a blue jay sounded over the creek, and at that signal a crossbow volley hit from the other side. Three Elves were either killed immediately or grievously wounded, drowned, and carried away by the stream; the fourth had his shoulder shattered but managed to get out of the water and limp back into the trees; the fifth fared worst of all – the bolt hit him through the gut and stuck in the spine, leaving him sprawled at the water’s edge. Time seemed to stop for Edoreth, trapped on the enemy side: the scout had a brief moment to spy out the crossbowmen hidden higher on the slope, even managing to count them (six), and soberly figured out the time it would take him to unlimber his bound-up sword and close in on the enemy, slipping on the wet boulders all along the way. He then made the only appropriate decision: dived back into the river and let the stream carry him away. The bolt that sped after him only dinged the top of a water-polished boulder, leaving a whitish scar smelling of singed chicken and immediately obliterated by the rain.

Lord Ereborn was what is known as ‘a young man from a good family;’ he had neither a commander’s talent nor at least a warrior’s blood-tempered experience, but he did have an abundance of vainglorious courage – a very dangerous combination. Seeing that they were dealing with a small group of bowmen covering the retreat of the main force, rather than the rear guard of that force, the lieutenant decided to bet the farm on the crossbows’ major weakness – long reloading time (two shots per minute compared to two dozen for a bow) – and ordered a frontal attack. His family sword
Dragon’s Claw
raised high, Ereborn blew two trumpet blasts and waded into the stream amidst tremendous splashing. The lieutenant wore a suit of armor of famed Gondolin sponge steel, almost as strong as
mithril
, so he did not fear the arrows from the other bank.

A moment later he fully appreciated the difference between Angmarian hunting arbalests he was familiar with and the next-generation steel crossbows developing twelve hundred force-pounds at the bowstring. The three-ounce armor-piercing bolt hit Ereborn in the lower right chest at eighty yards per second; the links of the Gondolin armor acquitted themselves admirably, preventing the arrow from digging into the Elf’s insides, but a half-ton blow to the liver will knock out anyone. The bloodless face in a silvery helmet flashed once amidst the rapids, the billowing fabric of the cloak was pulled under after it and disappeared forever – the ancient armor turned into deadweight. The young armor-bearer who dashed to the rescue got a bolt straight into the bridge of his nose, and the attack fizzled out.

Any Men, be they the savage Haradrim, the Riders of Rohan, or even Umbarian marines, simply would have used their obviously overwhelming numbers to charge across the cursed ford, bridging it with their corpses and crushing the few defenders in a minute or two. Not so the Elves – the price of a Firstborn’s life is way too high to lay them down like that on the banks of some nameless Mirkwood creek. They have really come here to hunt (albeit a very dangerous prey) rather than wage war; such attitude is not conducive to either scaling a castle wall or running across a ford under fire. Retrieving their dead and wounded, the Elves retreated under the cover of trees and showered the enemy with arrows. Pretty soon it turned out that the archery duel was not going right, either (meaning to the Firstborn). The rain was the culprit: the Elvish bowstrings were hopelessly wet and their arrows fell harmlessly, plus it was nearly impossible to take decent aim. In the meantime, Dol Guldur bolts kept finding their mark – truly a device of Morgoth!

The Elves had to retreat further into the forest, leaving only well-hidden lookouts by the riverbank. Sir Taranquil, Ereborn’s second-in-command, counted the bodies laid out in a row, black butterflies already appearing over them out of nowhere (even the rain was no obstacle!), added the four washed away by the stream, gritted his teeth and swore to himself by the thrones of the Valar that those crossbowmen, be they Orcs or whoever, would pay dearly, and to hell with the Lady’s order to capture some alive. The scouts he sent out came back soon thereafter with bad news – no better than the events of the past hour. Both sides of the path were blocked by windfalls – the domain of the giant ants – as far as the eye could see; those obstructions came straight up to the water both up and down the stream, so Taranquil’s idea to send some archers up and down the bank to make the enemy’s tiny defense force spread out was a no-go. “If we were to go back and around the windfalls – how far back do they stretch?” “No idea, sir! Shall I check?” “No!” There was no time for such exploits – much has been lost already and night was coming. There was no way forward but a frontal attack.

A frontal attack does not have to be a headlong rush, though. Sir Taranquil was a much more experienced commander than his predecessor and had no desire to cross the creek playing a target. His fighters crept up to the trees by the ford, and the sniper duel resumed. This time, though, the Elves have had time to swap in spare bowstrings, plus the rain let up a little, so their arrows sped true now; finally the Elves (without a doubt the best archers in Middle Earth) could show what they could do. The Mordorian crossbowmen fired prone from behind boulders for cover, so their corpses were not visible from this side, but Taranquil could warrant that they were down from six to two at most. Only after exploiting his advantage in fire density to the fullest did he order another attack. The other bank responded with a drawn-out and imprecise volley – but from six crossbows once again! Are these Morgoth’s tricks? Did they get reinforcements?

CHAPTER 64

S 
uddenly all crossbow fire ceased and a scrap of cloth tied to a scabbard waved over the boulders. The Elvish archers had already put five arrows through it by the time Taranquil snapped out of it and ordered: “Cease shooting!! For now,” he added, quieter. “Are they surrendering? Well, well …” The scrap waved for a short while longer and then the amazed Elves beheld scout Edoreth, alive and well, sword in hand. “Come over, now!”

“Where’s the rest of them?” Taranquil inquired after checking out the natural fort. There were six crossbows in the gaps between the boulders but only two corpses (dressed in Mordorian uniform without insignia, but neither one an Orc by appearance; one with an arrow in his eye, the other with half his head taken off by Edoreth’s sword).

“I don’t know, sir,” the scout replied, abandoning the flask proffered by one of his comrades and grudgingly interrupting his saga of how he, no doubt protected by Ulmo and Oromë themselves, managed to crawl to the enemy shore some three hundred yards downstream, crept through the forest and fell on the enemy from the rear. “There were six of them at first, but by the time I got to this nest there was only one bird in it,” Edoreth nodded at the half-headed corpse, “he was shooting all the crossbows in turn. I think that the others have retreated, sir – they were almost out of arrows. Shall we pursue?”

When the rider from the ford caught up with Grizzly’s team (this was the unheard-of reward for the first man to be wounded – to immediately carry the news), they were having a quick rest stop in a large heather field, which abound here at the edge of the Mirkwood in the Brown Lands. The lieutenant listened to the dispatch silently and his face thawed a little for the first time in three days – so far everything was going as he expected. So the Elves did send only about a hundred hunters after them, the rest being stuck fast at Dol Guldur … less however many the crossbowmen will get at that mad creek – you really can’t know where you’ll gain and where you’ll lose. The most important thing is that if my boys manage to hold out for at least a couple of hours (which they will, there’s no doubt of that now), then we’ll join His Majesty’s forces tonight: they had to have received messages already and even now must be on a forced march to our rescue. Watch out, Firstborn! Did we really make it?

I wonder where we should set up the new Weapon Monastery – perhaps indeed in Mordor? Wait, what am I saying – after the Gondorian army gets involved, even the densest of these smart guys will wise up. On the other hand, maybe that’s for the best – what can they do now? Guys, you’ve been serving the enemy for quite a while now – want us to turn you over to the Resistance with appropriate explanations? No? Sure they’ll keep working on the Weapon of Vengeance for us. Well, that’s all in the future; right now my job is to deliver all escorted persons safe and sound and let the commanders sort it all out. Really, who would’ve thought that all those Jageddins and such would become the greatest treasure of the Crown? Well, we won’t be unemployed, either – these guys take a lot of looking after.

Imagine, they did figure out how to turn those stupid ‘flying drops’ into a real weapon. That the drops’ accuracy would improve dramatically if they were made to spin in flight like an arrow was fairly obvious to them, but how do you make the damn jar spin along its axis? They tried attaching spiral wings to it after the manner of arrow fletching – total failure. Then someone recalled the ‘ring of fire’ – a kind of fireworks they used to have in Barad-dúr – a light ring on an axis spun by ‘powder’-filled cylinders attached to it tangentially. So they married this toy to the ‘drop’ by drilling several channels sideways through the sides of the jar’s mouth where the jet exits, and the flying jar spun like a charm.

It is the description of this particular invention that Wolverine is now carrying in his backpack on his escape through Mirkwood. Well, he’s an old hand at this, the forest is home to him, he should make it. Once he finds the boat with a stock of food hidden in the reeds, he can make his getaway good. It’s a long way to Minas Tirith and he’ll only be able to sail at night, but it’d make no sense to hurry at this point. So even if their group doesn’t make it, His Majesty will acquire a fabulous new weapon!

A lookout interrupted his musings: “Commandant, sir! There’s a rider up ahead, galloping at full speed!”

When the lieutenant recognized the man who had dismounted near the head of the group, he did not believe his eyes at first and then broke into a decidedly non-regulation grin: the Old Man brought help all by himself, rather than trusting somebody else – a real father to the troops!

“Hail, Captain!”

“At ease, Lieutenant,” Cheetah saluted curtly. His gray cloak (maybe one of those they wore on the Pelennor Fields?) and the exhausted horse were all splattered with road mud. “Make a defensive perimeter – the Elves will be here in a quarter of an hour.”

“How many?”

“About two hundred. They’ve crossed over into the northern Brown Lands the day before yesterday, took the highway and are now coming to meet you.”

“I see,” Grizzly muttered, remembering with a sudden clarity his moment of relaxation ten minutes ago: did we really make it? Should’ve knocked on some wood – my dumb head, for example.

“Captain, you see how many men I have … we can’t hold out until the main force arrives.”

“What main force, Lieutenant? There is no main force.”

“But you …” was all Grizzly could say.

“I’m here, as you can see.” The captain shrugged, the gesture momentarily making him look absolutely civilian.

“So we were simply sold out?”

“Now, now, Lieutenant – sold out?” Cheetah drawled mockingly. “Not ‘sold out,’ but ‘sacrificed in the name of the Highest State Interests.’ You know, the way you did with the defenders of Dol Guldur – sacrifice the few for the many, right? Long story short – Minas Tirith has decided that now is not the time to meet the Elves ‘edge against edge,’ so all our forces and their support structures have pulled back from the highway. Dol Guldur? What Dol Guldur? No idea what you’re talking about.”

“As I understand it, Captain, you didn’t like that decision at all, sir?”

“I’m here, as you can see,” the chief of Task Force Féanor repeated deliberately. “Our Service doesn’t allow the luxury of a resignation …”

“Elves!!” came a cry from up ahead, full of not even fear, but a hopeless despondency.

“No panic!” roared Cheetah; leaping into the saddle, he stood in the stirrups and, raising a narrow Elvish sword (yes, the very one from the Field of Pelennor!) to the solidly overcast sky, ordered: “Square formation, Lieutenant! Horsemen to the right!”

Perhaps he added something else, appropriately historic, like the “Donkeys and scientists to the middle!” that once rang over the dunes of a neighboring World under similar circumstances. But be that as it may, those words did not make it into the history textbooks of Middle Earth: the approaching Elvish line was too far to hear, and none of those now taking up defense next to Cheetah were destined to see the dawn of August the first. So it goes.

CHAPTER 65

Lórien, Caras Galadhon

August 1, 3019

T 
hey have gathered in the Blue Hall of the Galadhon Palace at the crack of dawn at the insistence of the
clofoel
of Stars. The morning felt like fall: crisp and cold like water in a forest spring, so the chills that afflicted Eornis (invisibly to anyone else) may have been due to that; at least that was what she wanted to believe. What is the Mistress of the Stars up to? Great Eru, what if her dancers had found the
palantír
? No, that’s impossible, but what if they’ve figured out where it is? In the meantime, the main problem – how to get to the Mirror, closely guarded by
clofoel
of Might’s men, today at noon – remains unsolved, and I am still bereft of ideas.

It has been clear to everyone for the past week that they had to look for a physical object after all (the possibility of swamp fire or another magical emanation, suggested by the
clofoel
of the World, has been duly checked and found untrue), and a methodical search began. When it is said that the dancers of the
clofoel
of Stars ‘sniff out magic,’ it is a fairly accurate metaphor: they do work like sniffing dogs. Throughout the last few days the girls have been walking around Caras Galadhon in a trance, feeling the air with outstretched palms, as if hunting a bird hiding in the fallen leaves or playing a game of ‘hot-cold.’ So far it was ‘cold’ – the magical object was somewhere very close but beyond their reach. That was as Eornis expected: she had been much more concerned with the Guards of the
clofoel
of Tranquility and their banal police methods than with the dancers’ magic.