The Last Ringbearer

by Kirill Yeskov

  "An abduction right out of Emyn Arnen?" Cheetah shook his head dejectedly. "But that damned Grager has practically destroyed our network there, it can hardly handle such a task."

  "Tangorn won't stay in Emyn Arnen. No doubt Faramir will send him to Umbar, where he had so much success before the war: it's full of Mordorian Nomigr Nos now, plus it's the best possible location for secret diplomatic missions. Certainly they've already hid Haladdin somewhere... actually, that's easy to check. I'll send a courier to Emyn Arnen right away -- I owe the Prince of Ithilien my best regards anyway. Should the messenger find neither Haladdin nor Tangorn there -- which is what I expect -- send your people to Umbar at once. Get moving, Captain, and get well soon: there's plenty of work to do."

  ***

  "So where is Wolverine now?"

  "He's in Isengard, commanding a band of marauding Dungarians. His mission is obtaining `blasting fire.'"

  "What about Mongoose?"

  "He's in Mindolluin, a prisoner in the quarry," answered the Task Force F Noanor member tasked with briefing Cheetah, clarifying: "He's part of Operation Mockingbird, Captain. His extraction is planned for next Tuesday."

  "Can we speed up the wrap-up of that operation?"

  "No, Captain, sir. Mongoose is working without cover, and that quarry is the Queen's men bailiwick. Should we expose him, he'll be dead in five minutes or less: `escape attempt' and finished."

  "Very well," he estimated a courier's round-trip to Emyn Arnen, "this will keep till Tuesday. Send him to me the moment he shows up."

  Chapter 32

  Gondor, Mount Mindolluin

  May 19, 3019

  From bird's eye view the Mindolluin quarry which supplied limestone to Minas Tirith builders looked like a chipped porcelain bowl, its inside covered by hundreds of tiny persistent ants looking for traces of sugar. On a nice day like today the white cavity functioned as a sunlight-gathering reflector, and its inner area, isolated from the winds, was hot as hell. And this in the middle of May; Kumai tried not to think of what it was going to be like in the summer. Sure, the prisoners who ended up in Anfalas, on the galleys, fared much worse, but that was not much of a consolation. He was actually very lucky today, drawing a work detail at the very top edge, where a refreshing breeze blew and there was almost no chocking calcium dust. Of course, those working on the outer perimeter of the quarry had to wear leg irons, but he found that an agreeable trade-off. For the second week now Kumai's partner was Mbanga, a m mak driver from the Harad battalion, who did not speak Common. Over the last six weeks the overseers had kicked into him the knowledge of all the words they considered necessary and sufficient (up, go, carry this, roll that, hands on the back of your head); however, translating the expression `lazy black ass' stupefied both sides, so they made do with `nigger.' Mbanga was in kind of a permanent semi-dreaming state and did not seek to expand his vocabulary by communicating with the other prisoners. Perhaps he still mourned his perished Tongo -- the m makil and their drivers develop a human-like friendship, far beyond anything between a rider and his beloved horse. Or maybe in his mind the Haradi was in his unimaginably distant South, where the stars over the savannah are so large that you can reach them with the tip of your assegai if you stretch, where any man can use simple magic to turn into a lion, and where every woman is beautiful and tireless in love. ...Once upon a time that area had been home to a mighty civilization, which left behind nothing but stepped pyramids overgrown with lush tropical greenery and roads paved with basalt plates leading nowhere. The modern history of Harad began less than a hundred years ago, when a young and energetic chief of a tribe of cattlemen from the interior named Fasimba swore to destroy the slave trade, and succeeded. It must be noted parenthetically that the countries of the South and the East had slave trade since time immemorial, but not on any serious scale; it was limited to selling beauties to harems, plus other exotica that had no economic underpinnings. The situation changed drastically when the Khand Caliphate `industrialized' the business, establishing a thriving trade in black slaves throughout Middle Earth.

  A well-fortified Khandian colony candidly named Slaveport arose on the shore of a deep bay at the mouth of the Kuvango, the main river artery of Eastern Harad. Its inhabitants first tried hunting for slaves themselves, but quickly realized that this was a grueling and dangerous task; as one of them put it, "much like shaving a pig: lots of squealing, little hair." Rather than abandon the enterprise, they have established profitable alliances with chiefs of the coastal tribes; one Mdikva became their main trading partner. From that point on, the live merchandise was in steady supply in Khand's markets, in exchange for beads, mirrors, and poorly distilled rum.

  Many people had pointed out both to the inhabitants of Slaveport and their respectable agents in Khand that their method for making a living was dirtier than dirt. To that they responded philosophically that business was business and as long as there was demand it was going to be satisfied by one supplier or another (this line of reasoning is by now universally known, so there is no need to cite it in full). Be that as it may, Slaveport boomed and its businessmen got rich quickly, with the side benefit of being able to satisfy their most exotic sexual fantasies thanks to the unlimited supply of young black girls (and boys) in their temporary possession.

  Such was the situation when Fasimba successfully poisoned six neighboring chiefs at a friendly party (actually he was the one supposed to have been poisoned, but he skillfully struck first, as was his style), joined their domains to his own and declared himself Emperor. After assembling the warriors of all seven chiefdoms into a single army and instituting both a unified command and capital punishment for any expression of tribalism, the young chief invited military advisors from Mordor, which jumped at the chance to establish a counterweight to its Khand neighbor. The Mordorians fairly quickly taught the black warriors, who knew neither fear nor discipline, how to function together in closed ranks, and the result exceeded all expectations. In addition, Fasimba was the first to fully appreciate the true battle potential of the m makil; of course, they have been used in war since time immemorial, but he was the one to standardize and streamline the taming of calves in large numbers, thus essentially creating a new army service. The effect was similar to that of tanks in our day and age: one war machine attached to an infantry battalion is a useful thing to have, but no more than that, whereas fifty tanks gathered into a single armored fist is a force that drastically changes the nature of war.

  Three years after Fasimba's military reform he declared a war of total destruction on the coastal chiefs that were involved in slave-raiding and crushed them all in less than six months; finally, Mdikva's turn came. Spirits were low in Slaveport when a messenger of the coastal kinglet came with good news: Mdikva's warriors have met Fasimba's vaunted army in a decisive battle and triumphed completely, and soon the town will receive a large shipment of good strong slaves. The Khandians breathed a sigh of relief and complained to the messenger that slave prices at the metropolis markets were down sharply (which was a total lie). The man was not overly displeased: there were so many prisoners that there would be enough rum to last half a year.

  The slave caravan, personally led by Mdikva, arrived at the appointed time -- a hundred eighty men and twenty women. Despite the messenger's boasts, the chained men had a poor appearance: worn-out, covered in bruises, their wounds haphazardly bandaged with banana leaves. However, the women, paraded totally naked at the head of the column, were of such qualities that the entire garrison crowded around them, salivating and unwilling to look at anything else. This proved their undoing, for the chains were fake, the blood was paint, and the slaves themselves were the Emperor's personal guard. The banana leaf bandages concealed star-shaped throwing knives lethal up to fifteen yards, but the guardsmen could have done without any weapons: every one of them could outrun a horse in a short sprint, dodge a flying arrow, and break eight stacked tiles with a bare fist. The city gates were captured in mere seconds, and Slaveport fe
ll. Fasimba commanded the whole operation himself: it was he who led the `slave caravan' dressed in Mdikva's leopard-skin cape, well- known to the entire coast; the Emperor knew well that the members of the master race have never bothered to learn to tell `all these blackies' apart. Mdikva himself had no further need of the cape; by that time, the ferocious fire ants in whose path he had been staked (this was now the punishment for slave-raiding) had already turned the coastal ruler into a well- cleaned skeleton.

  Two weeks later a slave ship from Khand tied up at Slaveport. The captain, somewhat surprised by the deserted piers, went into town. He came back escorted by three armed Haradrim and in a voice shaky with fear told the crew to come ashore and help load the cargo. To be fair, the nature of the cargo they were to take on would have shaken anyone. It was 1,427 tanned human skins: the entire population of Slaveport, save seven infants whom Fasimba spared for some unknown reason. Each skin bore an inscription made by the town's clerk (who was paid honestly by being killed last with a relatively easy death) -- the owner's name and a detailed description of the tortures he had to endure before being skinned alive. The women's skins bore a notation of exactly how many black warriors have thoroughly appreciated their qualities; the town women were few and the warriors were many, so the numbers varied but were invariably impressive. Only a few inhabitants of Slaveport were lucky enough to merit a brief note `died in battle.' The top of the bill was a stuffed effigy of the governor, a relative of the Caliph himself. Professional taxidermists probably would not have approved of the material used as stuffing -- the very beads the Khandians used to pay for slaves -- but the Emperor had had his reasons. Some will say that such monstrous cruelty has no justification; the chief of the Haradrim must have simply passed off his personal sadistic tendencies as revenge on the oppressors. Others will talk of `historical retribution' and blame the `excesses' on what the Haradrim, who were no angels, have suffered over the previous years. Such a discussion seems senseless on its merits, and is in any event irrelevant in this case. What Fasimba did to the inhabitants of the ill-fated town was neither a spontaneous expression of the chief's cruelty nor revenge for ancestral suffering; rather, it was an important element of an fine strategic plan, conceived and carried out with a totally cool head.

  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 m makil 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. Some time 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 m makil -- 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 m makil are the m makil -- 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.