CHAPTER 33

The Caliph of Khand, having received a gift of his subjects’ skins and a stuffed relative, reacted in precisely the way the Emperor was counting on. He had the captain and crew beheaded (choose your cargo better next time!), publicly swore to have Fasimba stuffed in the same manner, and ordered his army to Harad. His advisors, forewarned by the sailors’ sad fate, did not speak against this dumb idea; they did not dare to even insist on some scouting first. Rather than supervise preparations for the expedition, the Caliph indulged in devising the tortures he was going to inflict on Fasimba once he had him.

A month later twenty thousand Khand soldiers landed at the mouth of Kuvango next to the ruins of Slaveport and marched into the country. It should be mentioned that in terms of the amount of iron they had to carry (and especially the gold-plated doodads studding said iron) the Khand warriors were unequaled in all Middle Earth. The problem was that their battle experience was limited to putting down peasant revolts and similar policing actions. It looked like this was quite enough to deal with the black savages – the Haradrim fled in panic the moment they saw the menacing gleam of the iron phalanx. The Khandians chased the disorderly fleeing enemy through the coastal jungle and entered the savannah, where they met Fasimba’s patiently waiting main force the very next morning.

Too late did the Caliph’s nephew commanding the army realize that the Harad forces were twice the size of his and about ten times as effective. Strictly speaking, there was no battle as such; rather, there was one devastating múmakil attack, followed by a disorderly rout and chase of the fleeing enemy. The casualty tallies speak for themselves: a thousand and a half killed and eighteen thousand captured Khandians versus about a hundred dead Haradrim.

Sometime later the Caliph received from Fasimba a detailed description of the battle together with an offer to trade all the prisoners for all the Haradrim enslaved in Khand.

Alternatively, the Caliph was advised to send to Slaveport a ship capable of taking on eighteen thousand human skins; by now Khand knew well that the Emperor was not joking.

Fasimba made another foresighted move when he freed about two hundred prisoners, who went home to inform the entire population of Khand as to the nature of Haradi offer. As was to be expected, the people became restless and the smell of rebellion was in the air. A week later the Caliph, whose forces have been reduced to his palace guard, gave in. The exchange Fasimba offered took place in Slaveport, and the Emperor acquired a status of a living deity among his people – for to the Haradrim a return from Khandian slavery was only a little short of resurrection.

Since then, the fearsome Harad Empire (which had neither a written language nor cities, but plenty of ritual cannibalism, gloomy black magic, and witch-hunting) had widened its borders considerably. At first the black warriors expanded only to the south and east, but in the last twenty years or so they have turned their gaze north and captured a significant chunk of Khandian territory, approaching closely to the borders of Umbar, South Gondor, and Ithilien. The Mordorian ambassador at the Emperor’s court sent dispatch after dispatch to Barad-Dur: unless swift measures are taken, soon the civilized states of Central and Western Middle Earth will face a terrifying opponent – untold multitudes of excellent warriors who know neither fear nor mercy.

Therefore, relying on a Khandian saying ‘the only way to get rid of crocodiles is to drain the swamp,’ Mordor began sending missionaries South. Those did not bother the blacks with sermons about the One too much, rather spending their time treating sick children and teaching them arithmetic and reading, for which purpose they have invented a written version of the Haradi language based on the Common alphabet. When one of its creators, one Reverend Aljuno, read the first text created by a little Haradi (it was a description of a lion hunt, remarkable in its poetic qualities), he knew that he had not lived for naught.

It would be an obvious exaggeration to say that that these activities have resulted in a noticeable tempering of the local mores. However, the missionaries themselves enjoyed an almost religious reverence, and the word ‘Mordor’ elicited the most white-toothed of smiles from any Haradi. Besides, Harad (unlike some ‘civilized’ countries) had never suffered from selective memory loss; everybody there knew full well who had helped them against the Khandian slave traders. That was why Emperor Fasimba the Third immediately responded to the Mordorian ambassador’s request for help against the Western Coalition with a select force of cavalry and múmakil – the very Harad battalion that fought so valiantly on the Field of Pelennor under the scarlet Snake banner.

Only a few black men survived that battle, including the head of cavalry, the famous Captain Umglangan. Ever since that day he had a recurrent vision, bright as day: two ranks facing each other in portentous silence upon a strange blue savannah, fifteen yards apart – the range of the assegai; both are comprised of the best warriors of all times, but the right line lacks one fighter. It’s time to start, but for some reason Udugvu the Fearsome has mercy on Umglangan and is delaying the signal to begin this best of men’s amusements – where are you, Captain? Take your place in the rank quickly!.. What is a warrior to do when his heart calls him to the foot of Udugvu’s black basalt throne while the commander’s duty orders him to report to his Emperor? It was a hard choice, but he chose Duty, and now, after surviving a thousand dangers, he has already reached the borders of Harad.

He brings sad news to Fasimba: the men of the North who were like brothers to the Haradrim have fallen in battle, and now there is nobody but enemies in the Northern lands.

But this is wonderful, in a way – now there are so many battles and glorious victories ahead!

He saw the warriors of the West in action, and there’s no way they will withstand the black fighters when those are an army rather than a small volunteer battalion under the scarlet banner. He will report that the cavalry gap which had so concerned them is no more: not so long ago the Haradrim didn’t know how to fight on horseback, and now they had acquitted themselves well against the best cavalry of the West. Nor do the Westerners know anything about Haradi infantry yet; of all he had seen there only the Trollish infantry could possibly match it, and now no one. And the múmakil are the múmakil – the closest thing to an absolute weapon. Had we not lost twenty in that cursed forest ambush, who knows how the tide might have turned at Pelennor… They’re afraid of fire arrows? Not a problem, we’ll take care of that when training calves. The West had chosen its fate when it crushed Mordor which stood between them.

…Mbanga the driver was concerned with a problem much less global in scope. Despite having no knowledge of mathematics, ever since that morning he had been working on a fairly complicated planimetric problem which Engineer Second Class Kumai (had he known about his partner’s plans) would have described as ‘minimization of the sum of two variable distances’ – from Mbanga to the overseer and from the overseer to the edge of the quarry.

Of course, he is not Umglangan’s equal to count on a place in the ranks of the best warriors of all times, but if he manages to die as planned, then Udugvu in his boundless mercy will allow him to forever hunt lions in his heavenly savannah. Carrying out the plan was not going to be easy, though. Mbanga, weakened by six weeks of near-starvation and hard labor, intended to kill with his bare hands a large man, armed to the teeth and far from absent-minded, in less than twenty seconds; if he took any longer than that, the other overseers would reach him and whip him to death: a piteous slave’s demise…

It happened so quickly that even Kumai missed Mbanga’s first move. He saw only a black lightning hitting the overseer’s legs – the Haradi crouched as if to adjust his shackles and suddenly lunged headfirst; so does a deadly tree mamba strike its prey, penetrating a tangle of branches with astonishing precision. The black man’s right shoulder struck the overseer’s leg full force exactly under the kneecap; Kumai imagined actually hearing the wet crunch of the joint sack tearing and the delicate cartilage menisci snapping out of their sockets. The Gondorian sagged down without even a moan in pain shock; in a flash the Haradi had the unconscious man slung over his shoulder and hurried towards the precipice in a fast shackle trot. Mbanga beat the guards converging on him from all directions by a good thirty yards; having reached the coveted edge, he tossed his burden down into the shining white abyss and was now calmly awaiting his enemies, captured sword in hand.

Of course, none of those Western carrion-eaters dared cross blades with him – they simply showered him with arrows. This, however, was of no importance: he had managed to die in battle, weapon in hand, so he had earned the right to throw the first assegai in the heavenly lion hunt. What’s three arrows in the gut compared to such eternal bliss?

The Haradrim always die smiling, and this smile boded nothing good for the Western countries, as some far-sighted men were already beginning to guess.