CHAPTER 63

Mirkwood, south of Dol Guldur

July 31, 3019

The rain seemed endless. Fall-like cold drizzle hung in the air for three straight days; when thunder rolled, it seemed like the gods leisurely kicking water out of an enormous mattress hanging almost all the way down to earth. Over the last three days the little creek that Grizzly’s company had just run up against had turned into a raging river tossing small stones in its path. While six men were rigging a suspended rope bridge to ferry over the seriously wounded, the rest of the soldiers stood motionlessly on the bank. Icy rivulets ran down their tired faces, turning sweaty clothing into ice packs and steadily eroding whatever fighting spirit they had left. Running, standing still, and icy chills – a winning combination.

Grizzly looked at the taut rope suspending the first of the helpless wounded on chest and waist harnesses, then at the ford where crossing horsemen fought the current, kicking up coffee-colored water, and once again clenched his teeth. Rotten luck – he had not expected to spend nearly an hour crossing this creek, what with Elves already breathing down their necks. Most of his men were still desperately fighting at Dol Guldur, their only task to preoccupy the main forces of the Elvish army that had invaded Mirkwood the day before yesterday. Grizzly himself, having miraculously slipped through the tightening noose of the besiegers with a column of Mordorian and Isengardian engineers in his keep, was now going south along the highway with all possible haste, concurrently diverting the Elvish pursuit from Wolverine, who was escaping alone with papers in his backpack – what of the Weapon Monastery archives they had not yet sent down.

Grizzly’s entire plan hinged on the Elves’ sending only a small contingent to chase them, one they would be able to repulse once joined to Aragorn’s forces guarding the Brown Lands portion of the highway against the real Mordorians. Everything was going all right until they ran into this damned creek… time, they were running out of time! Grizzly stood hidden by the mossy trunk of a Mirkwood fir, expecting to see silent shadows in gray-green camouflage cloaks flit through the trees at any second. Actually, he was not likely to see anything – his last experience would be a short whistle of an Elvish arrow.

“Lieutenant, sir!” One of his subordinates showed up by his side. “The escorted persons and personnel are all across. Your turn.”

That was fast, Grizzly congratulated himself; then he froze, looking at the raging river and treacherous water-slick boulders on its banks with a new, appreciative look. Well, Firstborn, just you wait – betcha we’ll get all the lost time back with interest.

“Sergeant!”

“Yes, sir?”

“How many steel crossbows do we have?..”

…Lord Ereborn and his troop reached the creek about half an hour after Grizzly’s company disappeared in the rain on its other side. For about ten minutes the Elvish lookouts spread around behind the trees and studied the opposite bank, seeing nothing. Then a volunteer, one Edoret, his sword tied up on his back, carefully entered the stream and picked his way forward between eddies and rapids, expecting a shot at any second. When the water reached the middle of his thighs, he got swept off his feet, but the Elf could swim like an otter; having luckily escaped the gauntlet of boulders, he soon reached a small backwater under the opposite bank, where large heads of yellowish foam piled up between the branches of semi-submerged willows strung with grassy debris. Edoret got out of the water, waved to his friends and halted, figuring the best way to get through the boulders without breaking his neck; the lookouts caught their breath and put their bows down – it looked safe. The field manual of any army in any world demands that the scout be given time to ascertain the situation, but Ereborn was in a hurry to catch his prey before dark and decided to save on the precautions. Five Elves followed Edoret at his sign.

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 Edoret, 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 slick 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 gift nor at least a warrior’s blood-tempered experience, but he did have an abundance of vainglorious courage – a 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. The Dragon’s Claw (his family sword) raised high; Ereborn blew two trumpet blasts and waded into the stream amidst tremendous splashing. The lieutenant had on 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 overwhelming numbers to charge across the cursed ford, bridging it with their corpses and overwhelming 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 the 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, 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 fallen trees – the domain of the giant ants – as far as the eye could see; those thickets came straight up to the water both up and down the stream, so Taranquil’s idea to send some forces up and down the bank to force the enemy to spread out was a no-go. “If we were to go back and around the thickets – 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?