CHAPTER 34
“Bastard’s dead!” the huge blond overseer concluded disappointedly after carefully crushing Mbanga’s fingers with his heel (no reaction); then he trained his bloodshot eyes on Kumai, standing motionless to the side. “But devil take me,” he tossed his whip from one hand to another, “if his buddy won’t pay with his whole hide for Ernie right now…”
Kumai instinctively blocked the first blow with his elbow, immediately losing a patch of skin. Roaring with pain, he lunged at the blond man, and four others joined the fun. They beat him for a long time, attentively and with a great deal of inventiveness, until it became clear that further action was useless on the insensible Troll. Well, whaddya think – someone has to pay for the dead overseer, right?
By then the guard chief showed up, yelled: “Enough fun!” and chased them all back to their posts – he certainly didn’t want another deader on his report. See, the deal’s like this: if this animal kicks the bucket right here, then he’ll have to deal with the master of the works (another asshole!), but if it happens later, in the barracks – then it’s gonna be a ‘natural loss,’ no questions asked. He nodded for the nearest bunch of prisoners who had watched the beating fearfully to come over, and a short time later Kumai was sprawled over the rotten straw in his barrack. Anyone with experience could tell at a glance that this half-corpse covered in tatters of bloody skin was not for this world for much longer. A couple of months prior the Troll managed to cheat death after heavy injury in the Battle of Pelennor, but now his luck seemed to have run out.
…When Éomer’s riders broke through the South Army’s defenses and panic ensued, Engineer Second Class Kumai was cut off north of the camp, at the siege engine park.
Seven more engineers were bottled up with him; being the senior there, he had to assume command. Not being an expert on either strategy or tactics, he saw just one thing clearly: in a few minutes all the abandoned machinery would be captured, so the only thing left was to destroy it. The Troll established order in his company with an iron hand (one of the seven who blurted something like “run for your lives!” remained lying senseless by a bunch of assault ladders) and ascertained that at least they had enough naphtha, the One be praised.
In a minute his subordinates rushed all around like ants, pouring it over the catapults and the bases of siege towers, while he hurried to the ‘gates’ – the break in the ring of wagons surrounding the park – and ran smack into a forward troop of Rohirrim.
The mounted warriors treated the suddenly appearing lonely Mordorian without due respect, and paid for it. Kumai was strong even by Trollish standards (once at a student party he had walked a window ledge with dead-drunk Haladdin slumped in an armchair held in his outstretched arms), so his weapon of choice right then was a large wagon shaft that came to hand. Only one of the four riders managed to back off in time; the rest fell where they met that monstrous spinner.
Even so the Rohirrim were not discouraged much. Six more riders materialized out of the deepening gloom and formed a semi-circle bristling with spears. Kumai first tried to block the way with one of the wagons, turning it by the rear axle, but saw that he would not be in time. Stepping back a little and keeping the enemies in sight, he called over his shoulder:
“Fire it, by damn!”
“We’re not done, sir!” someone responded from behind, “the large catapults are still dry!”
“Fire what you can! The Westerners are here already!” he roared, and then addressed the battle-ready Rohirrim in Common: “Hey, who’s not a coward? Who’ll meet the mountain Troll in honest battle?”
It worked! The rank broke, and a few seconds later a dismounted officer wearing the white plumage of a cornet stood before him: “Are you ready, fair sir?” Kumai grabbed the pole by the middle, made a quick forward lunge – and found the Rohani less than two yards away; the only thing that saved the Troll was that the light Rohan blade could not cut through the pole which took the brunt of the blow. The engineer hastily backed inside the park, trying to gain precious seconds, but was unable to break away: the cornet was fleet as a ferret, and Kumai’s chances with his clumsy weapon were about zero in close quarters. “Fire and run like hell!” he yelled, seeing clearly that he was finished. Indeed, the next moment the world exploded in a white flash of blinding pain and instantly faded into comforting dark. The cornet’s blow split his helmet clean apart, so he never saw how the very next second everything around turned into a sea of flames – his people did manage to finish the job… A few seconds later the Rohirrim, backing away from the heat, saw their reckless officer trudging from the depths of that roaring furnace, bent under the weight of the unconscious Troll. “What the hell, cornet?” “I must know the name of this fair sir! He’s a captive of my spear, after all...”
Kumai came to only three days later in a Rohani hospital tent, lying side by side with the three riders he felled; the steppe warriors made no distinction between the wounded and treated them all equally. Unfortunately, in this case it meant ‘equally bad:’ the engineer’s head was in bad shape, but the only medicine he got during that time was a flagon of wine brought by Cornet Jorgen who had captured him. The cornet voiced hope that once the Engineer Second Class was healed he would honor him with another fight, preferably with a weapon more traditional than a pole. Certainly he can be free within the confines of the camp, on his word as an officer… However, a week later the Rohirrim left on the Mordorian campaign, to win the crown of the Reunited Kingdom for Aragorn, and that same day Kumai and all the other wounded were sent to the Mindolluin quarry. Gondor was already a civilized country, unlike the backward Rohan…
How he managed to survive those first hellish days, with a busted head and a concussion that kept sending him into pits of unconsciousness was a total enigma; most likely it was simply Trollish stubbornness, to spite the warders. All the same, Kumai had no illusions regarding his fate. In his time, as required by the tradition of well-off Trollish families, Kumai had followed the entire career path of a worker in his father’s mines at Tzagan-Tzab, from miner to surveyor’s assistant. He knew enough about mining to understand that no one was concerned with economics here; they were sent to Mindolluin to die, rather than earn the quarry owners some profit. The daily food-to-production-quota ratio for Mordorian prisoners was such as to be bald-faced ‘killing on an installment plan.’
By the third week, when some prisoners were already dead and the others managed to more or less adapt to this murderous cadence (what else could they do?), an Elvish inspection team swooped in. What shame, what barbarity! those folks carried on. Isn’t it obvious that these people are capable of a lot more than driving wheel-barrows? There are plenty of experts in all kinds of trades here – take them and use them properly, damn it! The Gondorian bosses scratched their heads abashedly: “our bad, your eminences!” and instantly conducted a skill survey. As a result, a few dozen lucky ones traded the hell of Mindolluin for work in their chosen fields, leaving the quarry forever.
Whatever, the One be their judge… As for himself, Kumai did not think it proper to buy his life by building heavier-than-air aircraft for the enemy (that being his trade): some things are not to be done because they must not be done, period. An escape from Mindolluin was obviously a pipe dream, and he saw no other ways to get out of here. In the meantime, undernourishment was doing its work – he became more and more apathetic. It is hard to say how long he would have lasted in this mode – maybe a week, maybe even six months (but almost certainly not a year) – were it not for Mbanga, the One rest his soul, who managed to slam the door on his way out so spectacularly as to also solve all of Kumai’s problems once and for all.