CHAPTER 9

Everybody knows that Easterling infantry is far inferior to Mordor’s; Éomer’s charge scattered them like bowling pins, and the shining edge of Western cavalry crashed through the Mordorian defensive line. A little later another force slammed into their rear – a cutting edge of Aragorn’s remaining gray warriors, encased with Gondorian armored infantry. By about six in the evening those fangs met deep in the body of the South Army, near its camp.

The battle as such was over then, and slaughter began. The parked siege engines were set ablaze, and the dancing flames highlighted now an Orocuen hospital wagon stuck in the mud, then an arrow-studded mûmak dashing around the field, trampling friend and foe alike.

Éomer had just run into Aragorn in this chaos of victory and was ceremoniously hugging his brother-in-arms to everyone’s victory whoops, when he noticed a horseman approaching them at full gallop – the blushing cornet. To tell the truth, the boy had more than acquitted himself, worthy of a medal. When the Rohirrim ran into the remnants of the Southern cavalry near the camp, he took on a Haradi lieutenant one-on-one, knocking the black giant out of the saddle (to everyone’s astonishment) and seizing the enemy’s scarlet cape emblazoned with the Snake – the very cape he was now waving triumphantly. A dozen paces short of the fatherly gazing leaders the cornet dismounted, pulled off the helmet, shook his head like an unruly horse, and suddenly a mass of hair tumbled over his shoulders, the color of the sun-kissed prairie grass of the Plains of Rohan.

“Éowyn!” was all Éomer could say. “What the hell!..”

The shield-maiden stuck her tongue out at him, tossed him the Haradi cape in passing – he was left standing, stunned, clutching his sister’s trophy – and stopped in front of Aragorn.

“Greetings, Ari!” she said calmly; Nienna only knew the price of that calmness.

“Congratulations on the victory. As I see it, the wartime excuses are now void. So if you don’t need me anymore, say so now and, by the stars of Varda, I will immediately stop bothering you!”

“How can you say that, my Amazon!” and there she was in his saddle, looking at him with shining eyes, prattling nonsense, and then kissing him in front of everybody – the girls of Rohan are not big on southern ceremony, and a heroine of Pelennor could not care less…

All Éomer could do was look at this idyllic picture and get more upset by the minute, thinking: “Fool! Open your eyes and look at his face, it’s all written plainly there – what he is to you and what you are to him! Why, why do the idiot girls always fall for scoundrels – this one isn’t even handsome…” not that he was the first or the last such in that World, or any other…

He said none of that aloud, of course, only asked: “Show me your arm.” Only when Éowyn protested that she was adult enough to handle it and that it wasn’t even a scratch did he let out some of his frustration by yelling loudly and profanely enough to curl ears, describing to the heroine of Pelennor, in graphic detail, what he was going to do to her if she didn’t report to the medics by the count of three. Éowyn laughed and saluted: “Yes, my general!” and only the unusual care with which she mounted his horse told him that much more than a scratch was involved here. But the girl had already leaned on her brother’s shoulder: “Éom, dear, please don’t sulk, spank me if you want, just don’t tell Auntie, please?” and rubbed her nose on his cheek, just like in their childhood… Aragorn was watching them with a smile, and Éomer shuddered when he caught his look: it was the look in the eye of an archer right before he lets fly.

He only fully grasped the import of that look the next day, when it was too late. There was a council of war in Aragorn’s tent that day, attended by Imrahil, Gandalf-Mithrandir, and a few Elvish lords (whose army had arrived the night before, when it was all over). There, the Dúnadan explained to the heir of Rohan (the king now, really) without any pleasantries that he was a subordinate rather than an ally now, and that the life of Éowyn, under special guard in the Minas Tirith hospital, depended entirely on his reasonableness.

“Oh, dear Éomer no doubt can run me through right here and now – and then watch what will happen to his sister in this palantír; it won’t be a sight for the fainthearted. No, she suspects nothing of the sort, of course; observe how touchingly sincere she is in caring for the wounded Prince Faramir… What guarantees? The only guarantee is common sense: when I am the King of Gondor and Arnor, I will have no one to fear… How? Very simply.

As you know, the king of Gondor is dead. A dreadful tragedy, really – imagine, he went mad and immolated himself on a funeral pyre. Prince Faramir had been struck by a poisoned arrow and will not get well for quite a while, if he ever does; this depends… ah…on a number of factors. Prince Boromir? Alas, no hope there, either – he fell in battle with the Orcs at Anduin, just beyond the Falls of Rauros, and I have put his body on the funeral boat with my own hands. And since there is a war on, the heir of Isildur may not leave the country without a leader. Therefore, I accept command over the Army of Gondor and the entire Western Coalition… Were you saying something, Éomer? No?..

“We are immediately moving on Mordor, for I can only accept the crown of Gondor when we return victorious. As for Faramir, I am inclined to grant him one of Gondor’s duchies…oh, Ithilien, say. To tell the truth, he had always been more interested in poetry and philosophy than in matters of state. But we should not plan that far ahead, since his condition is critical and he may not survive until our return. So pray for his health, dearest Imrahil, incessantly during our campaign; they say that the Valar especially appreciate the prayers of a best friend… When do we set out? Immediately after we clean up the remnants of the South Army at Osgiliath. Any questions? Good!”

The moment the tent was empty, the man in a gray cloak standing behind Aragorn said in a respectful reproach: “You have taken an unjustified risk, Your Majesty. This Éomer was clearly beside himself; he could have cast everything aside and lashed out…”

The ranger turned to him and bit out: “You strike me as both too talkative and too unobservant for a member of Secret Guard.”

“My apologies, Your Majesty – a mithril coat of mail under your clothes?”

Aragorn’s mocking gaze went over the speaker’s swarthy dry face, lingering on rows of tiny holes around the lips. A silence fell for almost a minute.

“Heh, I’ve almost decided that your brains must’ve dried up in the crypt and you would now question its provenance… By the way, I keep forgetting to ask: why do they sew your mouths shut?”

“Not just mouths, Your Majesty. The belief is that all openings in a mummy’s body must be closed up, lest the departed spirit re-enter it on the fortieth day and take vengeance on the living.”

“That’s a rather naïve method of… um… contraception.”

“Indeed, Your Majesty,” the gray man allowed himself a smile, “and I am living proof of that.”

“Living, eh? How about the ‘vengeance on the living’ bit?”

“We only follow orders. Our shadow is your shadow.”

“So whether I tell you to kill a child or become like a father to him, it’s all the same to you?”

“Absolutely. I will perform either duty to the best of my ability.”

“All right, this suits me. Here’s a job for you in the meantime. The other day one of my Northern comrades-in-arms, a certain Anakit, got drunk and boasted to his friends that soon he will be as rich as Tingol. Supposedly he has information about some legendary sword for which a certain someone will pay any price. This talk has to end immediately.”

“Yes, Your Majesty. Those who listened to these boasts…”

“Whatever for?”

“You think?..”

“Remember this, my dear friend: I kill without hesitation, but I never – never, you hear me?– kill unless absolutely necessary. Understand?”

“This is truly wise, Your Majesty.”

“You take too many liberties, Lieutenant,” said the ranger in a tone that would chill many a man.

“Our shadow is your shadow,” repeated the other calmly. “So, in a way, you and us are now one. May I carry out your orders?”

***

There is not much to add. The Western Coalition army (joined by the turncoat Easterlings who were ‘forgiven’ by the victors) set out for its last campaign, the highlight of which was the March 23rd mutiny of the Westfold Rohirrim and Lossarnach militiamen, who could not for the life of them understand why they had to die far from home for Aragorn’s crown.

Having ruthlessly put down the revolt, the Dúnadan brought his army to the Cormallen field at the entrance to Morannon, where he met the last defenders of Mordor; the latter had already exhausted its reserves, having invested them all in the South Army. The coalition won; that is to say, the men of Gondor, Rohan, and East simply piled the fastnesses of Morannon with their corpses. The Elves, as usual, joined the battle when it was already decided. The losses of the victors were so massive that a legend about a huge Army of the East had to be quickly invented. The Mordorians there died to a man, including King Sauron; the latter fought in the ranks of his Royal Mounted Guard in a captain’s cloak, so his body was never identified. The chronicles of the Western countries mostly gloss over the Coalition’s deeds after the victory, for the slaughter it carried out inside Mordor had been horrific even by the not-too-humanitarian standards of the time.

Be that as it may, Gandalf’s plan had succeeded (if you don’t count the small matter of the Mirror, which the Elves had no intention of returning): the Mordorian civilization had ceased to exist. However, the wizards of the White Council had somehow forgotten one factor: namely, that there is a certain Someone in the world Who rather abhors complete victories and assorted ‘final solutions,’ and is capable of showing His displeasure with same in unimaginably startling ways. Even now, that Someone was dispassionately surveying the vanquished – all that flotsam cast ashore by the passed storm – when suddenly He rested His gaze upon two soldiers of the extinct South Army among the dunes of the desert of Mordor.