CHAPTER 12

The fire was almost out by then, but the fight went on in the dark. Both Easterlings kept attacking Tzerlag non-stop; twice did Haladdin fire on them when they broke off for a moment, and twice – for shame! – he missed. Finally the lame Easterling let another thrust through; dropping the sword, he fell down to his knees and crawled away, dragging the wounded leg and moaning. Haladdin almost let him go – plenty more to deal with – but was lucky enough to notice that the man had crawled up to one of the packs and has already fished out a bow; reaching into his own quiver, he found only one arrow and shivered. They both aimed at once, but the doctor’s nerves failed and he let fly and jumped sideways, hearing the deadly hiss pass a foot and a half left of his stomach. The Easterling was less lucky: after his shot he could not evade and was now lying flat on his back with Haladdin’s arrow under the collarbone. Meanwhile Tzerlag managed to trick his opponent into opening up and struck him in the neck; the Orocuen’s face was now covered with sticky droplets, and his arm was fairly dripping. So, is that all of them? Victory, dammit…

Haladdin lost no time throwing more wood into the fire; then he sat so as not to block the light and cut open Tangorn’s sticky pant leg with a single practiced movement. There was quite a lot of blood, but not too much for such a deep wound. At least the main thigh artery is intact; thank the One that Elvish swords are so narrow, like a third of the Easterling width.

All right, a tourniquet… now a tampon… The sergeant went around the campsite, finished off the two Easterlings that showed signs of life, and crouched beside the field medic.

“Whaddya say, doctor?”

“Well, could’ve been worse. The bone is intact, so are most sinews, as far as I can see, as are the main blood vessels. Hand me that rag.”

“Here you go. Can he walk?”

“Are you kidding?”

“Then,” the sergeant got up wearily and for some reason carefully shook the sand from his knees, “it’s all over, guys. Two of them got away, and there’s no sense in chasing them in this dark. They’ll make that highway outpost before dawn, there’s no way they can get lost– just hurry north along the edge of the hamada. Soon as it dawns, they’ll be back with a dragnet search, get it?”

Tangorn suddenly raised himself on an elbow; Haladdin realized with horror that he had been fully conscious while they were busy with his wound. The firelight clearly showed the baron’s face, shining with sweat, but his voice was just as steady, even if a little hoarse:

“Don’t worry, guys. After all, I was supposed to be dead two days ago; were I to play this round again, I’d use this break in the same way…” With those words he pulled down his collar, baring the carotid artery. “So, Sergeant, just do it: one-two, and all set. I’d really rather not be stuck in the sand again. Then get away, and good luck to you both. Too bad that our acquaintance had been so short, but that’s life.”

“Baron, I’m a simple man,” Tzerlag answered calmly, “and I’m used to doing things by the book. The Field Manual, paragraph forty-two, says clearly that the ‘strike of mercy’ is allowed only when there’s an immediate danger of the wounded man falling into the foe’s hands. When such a danger appears – tomorrow, say – then we’ll discuss it.”

“Quit fooling around, Sergeant! Why the hell would you doom all three of us, when you won’t save me anyway?”

“Quiet in the ranks! We came here together and we’ll leave together; the rest is the One’s will. Doctor, check the Elf’s pack, maybe he has a medkit there?”

Haladdin called himself an idiot; he should have thought to check. What’s he got in there?

All right, an excellent bow and a quiver with thirty arrows, each with a leather sheath on the point, so they must be poisoned; a wonderful weapon, I’ll have it for myself. A coil of elvenrope: weighs half a pound, takes up a pint of space, a hundred feet long, can hold three mûmakil; this’ll come in handy. Elvish bread and a flask of Elvish wine, which isn’t wine at all; wonderful, the baron could use some right away. A purse with gold and silver coins, probably to pay the Easterlings since the Elves supposedly don’t use money; we’ll keep that, can’t have too much money. Writing implements and some notes, written in runes… damn, can’t make out anything in the dark; all right, if we live, we’ll read them. Oh, here it is, the One be praised! Having opened the medkit, Haladdin was stunned: it had everything he could think of, and all of the best quality. Antiseptic – spider webs covered with gray-green spots of healing lichen; analgesic – little balls of dehydrated Khand purple poppy juice; coagulant – powdered mandrake root from the high meadows of the Misty Mountains; stimulant – cola nuts from Harad’s swampy jungles; tissue regenerator – a brown resin-like substance capable of mending a broken bone or a trophic sore in five days; plus much more he had neither time nor need to discern right then. Just let Tzerlag figure out how to throw the pursuit off track, and he’ll have the baron in good shape in no more than a week.

In the meantime the Orocuen was going through the Easterlings’ packs in search of flasks and rations – in their position another ten or fifteen minutes meant nothing. What they needed was an idea; they were finished without one. So: they could go onto the hamada, he knew a few outcroppings nearby with suitable cracks; however, those were likely to be searched first. Hiding in the sand was not an option – with no wind, there was no way to conceal their tracks, they’d be tracked down in no time. The only thing he could think of was to head west at best possible speed, towards the mountains, and try to reach the edge of the Morgai plateau with its wind-hollowed caves, but what chance did they have of covering over thirty miles with a non-walking wounded?.. The baron, revived somewhat by a couple of good draughts of Elvish wine, interrupted his thoughts: “Sergeant, a minute of your time?

“Whatever for?” the scout was surprised. “I’ve already checked – dead as a snake skin.”

“That’s not what I mean. I keep thinking about that leather breastplate of his that a sword can’t pierce. Please check whether there’s anything special under it.”

Tzerlag grunted, but got up from his task and went over to the dead body. Taking out his scimitar, he stuck the blade under the bottom edge of the Elf’s armor and cut it open in one movement from crotch to neck, as if gutting a large fish.

“Hey, look, a coat of mail! Real strange, too, never saw one like that…”

“Seems to glow a little, right?”

“Right. Did you know or did you guess just now?”

“Had I known it, I wouldn’t have bought his open body trick,” Tangorn grumbled. “It’s mithril. I couldn’t pierce that mail, nor can anyone else in Middle Earth.”

Tzerlag cast a sharp look towards the baron – a pro saluting a pro. Haladdin came up, helped the sergeant take the precious scaly skin off the dead Elf and examined it closely.

Indeed, the metal was slightly phosphorescent, resembling a blob of moonlight, and warm to the touch. The mithril mail-coat weighed about a pound and was so thin that it could be rolled into an orange-sized ball; when it accidentally spilled from his fingers and pooled into a silver puddle at his feet, he thought that it would be impossible to find on a moonlit night.

“And here I’ve thought that mithril was a legend.”

“Well, it’s not, as you can see. I think you can buy half of Minas Tirith and all of Edoras to boot with one such mail-shirt. There’s no more than twenty in the entire Middle Earth and there’ll be no more, the secret is lost.”

“So why did he hide it under that leather fake?”

The scout responded for Tangorn: “Because only an idiot shows his trumps. Uruk-Hai the Great’s principle: if you’re weak, show strength to the foe; if you’re strong, show weakness.”

“Right,” the baron nodded, “and don’t forget the Easterlings. Had those carrion-eaters known about the mithril mail, they’d’ve cut his throat the first night and fled south – to Umbar, say – to become rich men there. Provided they didn’t waste each other dividing the loot, of course.”

The sergeant gave a gloomy whistle. “Hot damn! So this Eloar was some kinda Elvish big shot. Which means that the Elves will turn over every stone on the hamada and sift every dune looking for our band, and spare neither time nor effort…”

He clearly pictured how it would be done, having played the role of both hunter and hunted in many a dragnet search. Most likely they’ll gather at least a hundred fifty men for the task, foot soldiers and riders, however many can be found on this stretch of the highway. First the mounted soldiers will cut off the route to Morgai and form a half-circle against the unapproachable edge of the hamada, while the foot soldiers will move in a dragnet from the destroyed camp, checking every desert rat hole. With this approach they won’t even need experienced trackers, the superior numbers will be enough, as usual. The whole gang will be based at the nearest outpost, the only place with a large enough well; the commander’s headquarters will be there, too…

Tzerlag knew that ‘outpost’ well – a caravanserai abandoned together with the entire Old Núrnen Highway when the irrigators’ efforts have turned the Western Nürnenlands into dead salt pans. It was a large square building of clay bricks surrounded by all sorts of adobe outbuildings, with the ruins of the old one, knocked down by an earthquake, in the back, overgrown with thorn bush and serge… Wait a minute – those ruins will be the last place they’ll think of searching! Right, the last one – meaning that those will be searched as well, sooner or later, by elimination. Too bad, at first the idea looked pretty good… How about a diversion, a false trail with a sideways move… where?..

Time was slipping away like water from a torn water-skin, and suddenly the scout’s expression and posture changed subtly in a way that told Haladdin with cold certainty that the other did not see any chance of escape, either. A soft icy hand moved into Haladdin’s bowels and began leisurely sorting through them as if through freshly caught fish on the bottom of a boat. It was not soldier’s dread before a battle (he had already been through that today), but something rather different, akin to the dark irrational terror that grips a suddenly lost child. Only now did he understand that Tzerlag did not just fetch him water through the Elf-infested forest at Osgiliath, did not only carry him on his back under the nose of the sentries at Minas Morgul – no, all this time the scout had also shielded the doctor with his powerful and comforting ‘there’s a man in the house’ protective aura, and this aura was now in tatters. To be honest, Haladdin had agreed to this mission of vengeance only because he had firmly decided that it was better to be in any kind of a bind, but with Tzerlag – and had guessed wrong this time. The circle has been completed: Eloar paid for Teshgol, in a few hours they will pay for this camp… Then, frightened and despairing, he yelled in the Orocuen’s face:

“Are you happy now?! First-rate vengeance, still can’t get enough of it?! You paid with all of us for one Elvish bastard, may the earth swallow him and his ilk forever!”

“What did you say?” the scout echoed in a strange tone. “May the earth swallow this Elf forever?”