Yet not three days after the accident the catapult drivers asked Grizzly to attend a test firing of a new kind of shell. The first shot from the usual three hundred yards blew eight targets to shreds; the new shell was just a hollow ceramic ball filled with powder and cut-up nails, set off with a fire cord used for naphtha bombs. The next step was obvious: put the jar of powder inside a larger one filled with fire jelly, which you get by dissolving soap in the lighter fraction of naphtha, so that the explosion flings sticky incendiary fluff in all directions. Grizzly examined the thirty-yard circle of earth scorched down to the mineral layer and turned to Jageddin in amazement: "All that done by a single jar? Congratulations, guys: finally you've come up with something worthwhile!"
That was when Kumai had the thought that one could not only sling such shells -- whether incendiary or shrapnel ones -- from catapults, but also drop them from gliders. "This makes no sense," was the objection, "how many sorties can you fly during a battle? Two? Three? It's not worth it." "Yes, sure, if all you do is simply drop shells anywhere on the enemy's army. But if you hit milord Aragorn together with milord Mithrandir, it's quite worthwhile." "You think you can hit them?" "Sure, why not? Rather than hit a man, I'd have to hit within fifteen yards of a man." "Isn't that kinda... you know... ignoble?"
"Wha-a-a-at?!" "No, nothing... The old knightly wars -- `are you ready, fair sir?' -- are anyway all done with. As the One is my witness, we didn't start this." It did look like the `noble war' was to be no more. For example, the Mordorian engineers have made serious strides in improving the crossbow -- the weapon that had always been under an unspoken ban in Middle Earth. ("Why do you think the noble knights hate the crossbow so much? It looks personal, doesn't it?" "Sure, we've all heard it: a distance weapon is a coward's weapon." "No, man, this is more complicated. Note that no one objects to bows much. The thing is that the best bow develops at most a hundred force- pounds at the bowstring, while a crossbow does a thousand." "So what?" "So an archer can only bring down an armored knight if he hits him in the visor or an armor joint, which is a high art -- you gotta start learning at three and maybe you'll be some good by the age of twenty. Whereas a crossbowman just shoots at the target and the bolt goes right through wherever it hits. Which means that after a month's training a fifteen-year-old journeyman who's never held a weapon before can wipe his nose on his sleeve, take aim from a hundred yards, and goodbye to the famed Baron N, winner of forty-two tournaments, and so forth... You know how they say in Umbar: the One created weak and strong people, and the inventor of the crossbow made them equal? So now these strong people are mad at the demise of the high art of combat!" "Yep. What's more, the taxed estates are beginning to scratch their heads: what do we need all those fancy boys for, with all their coats of arms, plumages, and all the rest? If it's to protect the Motherland, perhaps crossbowmen will be cheaper?" "You're so down-to-earth practical, brother!" "I guess I am. Plus I'm too dumb to figure out why it's noble to knock someone's brains out with a sword but dishonorable to do it with a crossbow bolt.")
But the steel crossbows with `distance glasses,' the `flying drops,' even incendiary shells dropped from the sky paled next to their unseen commanders' recent demand via Grizzly: there are several well-known gorges in the Misty Mountains where cracks in the rocks emit a fog that quickly dissipates into still air. The few who managed to escape these gorges told that the moment you breathe this fog you taste a revolting sweetness, and then drowsiness hits you like an avalanche. The myriad animal skeletons littering the slopes testify to how this drowsiness ends. You're supposed to find a way to direct such fog at the enemy. Kumai was a man of discipline, but this idea made him nauseous: to poison the very air -- some weapon of vengeance! Thank the One that he's a mechanic rather than a chemist and will not have to be involved in this particular project.
...He dropped two large stones from a hundred feet (same weight as the explosive shells; they hit right next to the targets) and set the glider down right on the highway about a mile and a half from Dol Guldur, near where the road emptied into the gloomy canyon it had washed through Mirkwood after cutting through the sickly ruddiness of the heather expanses like a white scar. He got out of the cockpit and sat on the side of the road, glancing impatiently in the direction of the fortress. Soon someone will be here with the horses, and he'll attempt to launch the Dragon right from the ground, towed by a brace of horses, like they used to do with the old gliders. Where're those guys already?.. Since Kumai was mostly looking towards Dol Guldur, he only saw the man walking the road from the direction of Mirkwood when he was about thirty yards away. Looking at the newcomer, the Troll first shook his head: no way! Then he sprinted towards the man head over heels and had him in a bear hug a moment later.
"Easy, big guy, you'll break my ribs!"
"I have to know if you're a ghost!.. When did they find you?"
"A while ago. Listen, first things first: Sonya is alive and well, she's with the Resistance in the Ash Mountains..."
Haladdin listened to Kumai's tale, staring at the busy milling of the earth bees over the heather flowers. Yeah, abandoned ruins with real hiding places, far from human habitation, where a normal person would never go... leave it to the Nazg l to hide a palant r in such a hornet's nest. I'm really lucky to have been intercepted before I had the chance to foist my clumsy story on a couple of intelligence professionals. I can't tell Grizzly and Wolverine the truth, either. Just imagine this picture. Some field medic, second class, shows up at their super-extra-secret Weapon Monastery: hi, guys, I'm only here to pick up a palant r and go right back to Prince Faramir in Ithilien. I'm working for the Order of the Nazg l, but the one who empowered me died on the spot, so no one can corroborate this fact. I can show you a Nazg l ring as proof, but it's magic-free... Yeah, a real pretty picture. They'll probably peg me as a psycho, not even a spy. They'll probably let me into the castle (poison experts aren't common) but they won't let me out -- I myself wouldn't have... Hey, wait a minute!..
"Halik, wake up! You all right?"
"Yes, I'm all right, sorry. I just had an idea. You see, I'm here on a special mission that has nothing to do with your Weapon Monastery... Have you ever heard of these rings?" Kumai weighed the ring on his palm and whistled respectfully. "Inoceramium?"
"The same."
"Do you mean to say..."
"I do. Engineer Second Class Kumai!"
"Sir!"
"In the name of the Order of the Nazg l, will you follow my orders?"
"Yes, sir."
"Mind that your superiors in Dol Guldur must not know anything about this."
"Do you realize what you're saying?!"
"Kumai, my friend... I have no right to tell you what this is about, but I swear by everything that's dear, I swear by Sonya's life: this is the only thing that can still save our Middle Earth. It's your choice. If I come to Grizzly, he'll surely want to verify my credentials. It'll be weeks if not months while his superiors contact mine, and in the meantime it will be all over. You think the Nazg l are all-powerful? Like hell! They didn't even tell me about these Secret Service games at Dol Guldur, most likely because they themselves didn't know."
"Yeah, that's no wonder," Kumai grumbled. "When you add secrecy to our usual chaos, there's no verifying anything."
"So will you do it?"
"I will."
"Then listen and remember. There's a fireplace in the Great Hall which has a six-sided stone in its rear wall..."
Chapter 58
Ithilien, Emyn Arnen
July 12, 3019
There's no harder work than waiting -- this saying might as well be cast in bronze for its resistance to wear. It is even harder when waiting is your only work after everything else possible had been done and you only have to wait for the curtain signal -- and wait and wait, day in and day out, for a signal that may never come at all, for this is already outside your control, with other Powers in charge.
Involuntarily idle at Emyn Arnen after his Dol Guldur
trip, Haladdin caught himself sincerely envying Tangorn at his deadly game in Umbar: even risking your life every day is better than such waiting. How did he curse himself for these thoughts when a week ago haggard Faramir handed him the mithril coat: "...his last words were: `done.'" Their return from Dol Guldur also came to his mind frequently. This time they failed to sneak through: the fighters from Mordorian intelligence that were guarding the paths through Mirkwood against the Elves had picked up their scent and followed them inexorably, like wolves follow a wounded deer. Now he knows the exact price of his life: forty silver marks that he paid Runcorn; if not for the ranger's skill, they would have most certainly stayed in Mirkwood to feed the black butterflies. They ran into a trap on the shore of Anduin; when arrows flew, it was too late to yell: "Guys, we're friendlies from a different service!" Back there he had shot poisoned Elvish arrows at his own people, and there's no cleansing from that...
Do you know what the saddest thing is, dear Dr. Haladdin? You're now bound with blood and have lost the right to choose, the One's biggest gift. You'll now be forever haunted by the young men in Mordorian uniforms without insignia who fell in the reeds by the Anduin, and by Tangorn, sent to certain death. Now, the moment you drop the quest you'll be nothing but a murderer and a traitor. You have to win to make these sacrifices worthwhile, but in order to win you have to walk over corpses and wade through unthinkable muck, again and again -- a vicious circle. And the most horrid job is still ahead of you; that you'll be doing it with another's hands -- those of Baron Grager -- makes no difference. What was it Tangorn had said back then? "An honest division of labor: clean hands for the mastermind, clean conscience for the executor." Like hell... (Tangorn ran a grand rehearsal of the key scene before he left for Umbar and concluded dispassionately: "This won't work. You give yourself away by every look and the very tone of your voice. One can tell that you're lying from a mile away without being an Elf, who are a lot more perceptive than we are. Forgive me -- I should've realized right away that you're incapable of doing this. Even if they swallow my bait in Umbar you won't be able to angle the fish here."
"I will -- I have to."
"No. Please don't argue, I won't be able to do it, either. It's not enough to have nerves of steel to play this part convincingly knowing the full background; one has to be not even a bastard, but completely inhuman."
"Thank you, sir."
"Not at all, sir. Maybe you can become inhuman in time, but we have no time. The only solution is to use a cutout."
"Use a what?"
"It's our jargon. We need to involve an agent in the dark... sorry. In other words, the agent -- an intermediary -- has to believe that he's telling the truth. Given who we're dealing with, he has to be a top-notch professional."
"You mean Baron Grager?"
"Hmm... As your sergeant would say: you get it, doc."
"Under what pretext can we involve him?"
"The pretext is that we're afraid that during negotiations the Elves will break into your brains with their magic or whatnot and turn the exchange into a robbery. Which is totally true, by the way. Plus it will be a little easier for you if you share this crock of shit with the baron. As the famous Su Vey Go used to say: `An honest division of labor: clean hands for the mastermind, clean conscience for the executor.'"
"Who was this Su Vey Go?"
"A spy, who else?")
...The fish bit by the end of the eighty-third day of the hundred he had been allotted. The last rays of the setting sun pierced the echoing space of the Knights Hall, empty at this hour, casting orange spots on its far wall; the spots looked live and warm, seemingly trying to jump off the wall onto the face and hands of a slender girl in dusty man's clothes, who chose to sit in Faramir's armchair. She does look like a girl, Grager thought, although by human standards she looks about thirty, whereas it's scary to even think about her real age. To say that she's beautiful is to say nothing; one can describe great Alvendi's Portrait of a Lovely Stranger in police search order terms, but should one? Interestingly, Doctor Haladdin predicted the identity and rank of the respondent like a lunar eclipse -- truly excellent work -- but didn't seem at all happy about it; I wonder why?..
"Milady Eornis, on behalf of the Prince of Ithilien I welcome you to Emyn Arnen. I'm Baron Grager; perhaps you've heard of me?"
"Oh yes."
"Did Elandar send you Baron Tangorn's message?" Eornis nodded, took out a simple silver ring covered with scuffed Elvish runes from some secret pocket and put it on the table before Grager.
"This was one of the rings in the seals of your package. It belonged to my son Eloar, who's missing in action. You know something about his fate... did I understand your message correctly, Baron?"
Chapter 59
"Yes, milady, you did understand correctly. Let me dot the `i's first: like my dead friend, I'm only an intermediary. There may be ways to search my brains with Elvish magic, but you won't find anything there beyond what I'm about to tell you."
"You all exaggerate Elvish powers..."
"So much the better. Anyway, your son is alive and in captivity. He will be returned to you once we agree on the price."
"Oh, anything, anything at all -- precious gems, Gondolin weapons, magic scrolls..."
"Alas, milady, his captors are not hostage-trading southern mashtangs -- they seem to be of Mordor's intelligence service."
Her expression did not change, but her thin fingers went white in their grip on the armchair:
"I will not betray my people for my son's life!"
"Don't you even want to know how little you'd have to do?" After an eternity that lasted a couple of seconds she answered "I do," and Grager, the veteran of a hundred recruitments, knew that the game was his -- all that was left was the endgame, with an extra piece.
"Some preliminary explanations first. Eloar separated from his squad and got lost in the desert. He was dying of thirst when he was discovered, so the Mordorian insurgents saved his life first..."
"Saved his life? Those monsters?"
"Please, milady -- all these stories about smoked human meat might impress the Shire yokels, but not me. I've fought the Orcs for four years and know the score: these guys have always admired brave foes and treated prisoners well -- that's a fact. The problem is that they've found out that your Eloar had participated in so-called mop-ups -- that's a euphemism for mass murders of civilians."
"But that's a lie!"
"Unfortunately, it's an honest truth," Grager sighed tiredly. "It so happened that my late friend Baron Tangorn observed the work of Eloar's Easterlings. I will spare your maternal feelings by not describing what he witnessed."
"It's some horrible mistake, I swear! My boy... Wait, did you just say `Easterlings?' Perhaps he simply couldn't restrain those savages..."
"Milady Eornis, a commander is as responsible for the actions of his subordinates as for his own. That's how it is with Men, don't know about Elves. Anyway, I'm only telling you this so that you understand that should we fail to agree on the price of his release, your son can't place his hopes in the Convention on prisoners of war. He'll be simply turned over to those whose relatives got `mopped up.'"
"What..." she swallowed convulsively, "what do I have to do?"
"First I'd like to clarify your position in L rien's hierarchy."
"Don't they know it?"
"They do, but only from Eloar, who may have been simply trying to impress them with his hostage value. They need to know how powerful you are: clofoel is a rank rather than a position, right? If you do unimportant things like bringing up princes or supervising ceremonies, they see no reason to deal with you."
"I am the clofoel of the World."
"Aha... meaning that in the Lady's cabinet you're in charge of diplomacy, intelligence, and, more broadly, Elvish expansion in Middle Earth?"
"Yes, you can put it that way. Are you satisfied with the extent of my power?"
"Yes, quite. To business, then. There's a certain Mordorian prison
er of war in one of the Gondorian labor camps controlled by the Elves. You set up his escape and get your son back in exchange, that's all. I do believe that you can put your conscience at ease as far as `betraying your people' is concerned."
"That's because L rien would never agree to such an exchange, since the prisoner is one of the royal dynasty of Mordor?"
"I will not comment on your guess, milady Eornis, since I don't know myself. You're right about one thing: should anyone in L rien find out about our contact, it will cost both you and your son your heads."
"Very well, I agree... But first I need to make sure that Eloar is, indeed, alive; the ring could've come from a corpse."
"Fair enough; please examine this note." (This was a key moment, although Grager did not know that. But Haladdin, had he the chance to see the stony-faced Elf-woman reading the jagged, as if scratched by a drunk, runes: dear mother I'm alive they treat me well -- would have known right away that Maestro Haddami's lengthy `getting into character' process had not let them down.)
"What had these beasts done to him?!" Grager opened his hands. "They say that he's being kept in an underground prison, which isn't exactly the groves of L rien. So he's not in the best shape."
"What had they done to him?" she repeated quietly. "I won't lift a finger until I have guarantees, you hear? I'll turn all the labor camps upside down and..."
"You'll get your guarantees, don't worry. They haven't started the whole thing with setting up a secret meeting to blow the prisoner exchange, right? They've even offered..." Grager made a dramatic pause. "Would you like to see him?"
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