It’s a stupid illusion that there can be any negotiations with the victorious enemy. One can gain nothing in such negotiations, either for himself or others; they’re always conducted under the principle of ‘what I have is mine and what’s yours is also mine.’ Which is why there’s a cast-in-stone rule of clandestine warfare: in all circumstances, either be silent or deny everything, including your own existence. Should I admit any role in these contacts, I will not save Beregond and only speed up the destruction of Grager and his men.
All of these thoughts went through the prince’s mind like a whirlwind, and then he raised his gaze to meet Cheetah’s and said firmly: “I have not the slightest idea of the Commandant’s contacts with the members of the Ithilien regiment, had those indeed taken place. You very well know that we have not exchanged more than a dozen words during this time; after all, this man killed my father.”
“In other words,” the counter-spy summed up drily, “you do not wish to spare your man the torture, if not death?”
He knew what he was risking, Faramir thought, and responded: “If, indeed, there is treason involved – of which you have not yet convinced me! – then Captain Beregond must be punished severely.” Then, choosing his words carefully, he finished: “As for myself, I am ready to swear by the thrones of the Valar that I have never considered breaking my word, nor will ever consider doing so: duties to the suzerain are indissoluble.”
“All right,” Cheetah drawled thoughtfully. “What about you, Éowyn? Are you ready to betray for the sake of your goal and toss your man to the wolves? Actually,” he sneered, “what am I saying here? So a mere officer, a commoner, will go to the rack; big deal for someone of royal blood, who in any event is safe!”
An ability to control her facial expressions was not one of Éowyn’s many fine qualities –she paled and looked helplessly at Faramir. Cheetah had zeroed in on the chink in their armor: the girl was physically incapable of pretending indifference when a friend was in danger. Faramir tried to warn her with his gaze, but it was too late.
“Now listen to me, both of you! I’m not interested in confessions – I’m a counter-spy, not a judge. All I need is information about the locations of the Ithilien regiment fighters. I do not intend to kill these people; I really am trying to avoid bloodshed. You’ll have to take my word for it, since you’ve lost and have no other options. I will get this information out of you, whatever it costs. Certainly no one can interrogate in the third degree the sister of the King of Rohan, but you can be sure that I will make her watch the torture of Beregond, whom you betrayed, from the beginning to the bitter end, by the silence of Mandos!”
In the meantime the prince was absent-mindedly playing with his quill atop an incomplete manuscript, as if not noticing that his left elbow had nudged an unfinished cup of wine to the very edge of the table. In another moment the cup will crash to the floor, Cheetah will involuntarily glance at it – then he’ll vault over the table and go for the counter-spy’s throat, and devil may care… Suddenly the door opened without a knock and a White Company lieutenant strode quickly into the room; two soldiers appeared in the gloom just beyond the threshold. Late again, Faramir thought with a sense of doom, but the lieutenant paid him no heed, instead whispering something apparently very surprising into Cheetah’s ear. “We’ll continue our conversation in ten minutes or so, Prince,” the captain said, heading to the door. The lock clanged, the sound of marching boots faded quickly into the distance, and quiet fell – a kind of uneasy, confused quiet, as though it realized its fleeting quality.
“What’re you looking for?” She was surprisingly calm, even serene.
“Anything that can serve as a weapon.”
“Yes, that’s good. Find anything for me?”
“See, baby, I got you into this and couldn’t save…”
“Nonsense, you did everything right, Far; it’s just that luck was on their side this time.”
“Shall we say goodbye?”
“Yes, let’s. Whatever happens, we’ve had this month… You know, it must be Valar envy: we had too much happiness.”
“Are you ready, darling?” Now, after those few seconds, he was a totally different man.
“Yes. What should I do?’
“Look carefully. The door opens inward, the doorposts are inside, too…”
CHAPTER 27
Meanwhile, Cheetah was leaning on the battlement over the gates, his gaze fixed on Grager’s hard hawk-like face, which he had previously known only from descriptions. The spot in front of the gate was lit with a dozen torches held aloft by riders in Ithilien regiment’s camouflage cloaks from the Baron’s entourage. The talks proceeded with great difficulty, or almost not at all; the ‘esteemed treating parties’ agreed on the need to avoid bloodshed and nothing else. With good reason, neither trusted the other worth a damn (“Suppose I simply capture you right now, Baron, thus solving all my problems?” “You’ll have to open the gates to do that, Captain. Go ahead – open them, and we’ll see whose archers are better…”); neither budged an inch from their preconditions. Grager demanded that the Ithilienians be let inside the fort to stand guard over Faramir. Cheetah wanted to know the locations of their forest strongholds (“Do you think I’m an idiot, Captain?” “Well, you’re the one suggesting that I voluntarily let armed enemies inside the fort.”) After about fifteen minutes of this back-and-forth they finally agreed that the White Company would request orders from Minas Tirith while the Ithilienians would let the courier through, and broke up the talks.
Someone else might have been fooled by this show, but not Cheetah. The moment he went up the wall and assessed the situation, he turned to the accompanying lieutenant and gave a quiet order: “Raise a quiet alarm. All available men to the courtyard. Everyone freeze and watch for an intruder; any minute now someone from the Ithilien regiment will scale the wall, most likely in the rear, under cover of all the talk-talk. Capture him alive – I will personally take apart whoever produces a corpse.”
He was absolutely correct but for a couple of small details. The infiltrator chose the front rather than the back wall. Soundlessly he tossed a tiny grapple on a length of weightless elvenrope over the shoddy stockade (less than a dozen yards from the group at the gates, where the dark pushed away by their torches seemed thickest by contrast), flew up like a spider on a strand, and then slid into the courtyard like a breath of night breeze right under the noses of sentries, who kept their attention and bows trained on Grager’s well-lit men and expected no such chutzpah. Another small detail that Cheetah got wrong was that the man who was now trying to free the prince (an impromptu attempt conceived less than an hour ago of hopelessness and desperation) was not of the Ithilien regiment, but of the Cirith Ungol Rangers.
It rates a mention that Sergeant Tzerlag’s unit identification had caused a greatly animated discussion at Blackbird Hamlet, both as to essence and as to appearances. “My friend, are you totally nuts?” was Grager’s first reaction to Tangorn’s sudden suggestion to use the ‘visiting Mordorian professional’ rather than an Ithilien Ranger to infiltrate Emyn Arnen.
“An Orc is an Orc! To trust the Prince’s life to one… Sure, it’s nice that he knows the fort layout – from when they were stationed here, right? – and can pick locks. But dammit, Baron – to let an armed Mordorian into the Prince’s bedchamber with your own hands?”
“I’m willing to trust my own life to these two guys,” Tangorn explained patiently. “I can’t tell you about their mission, but please believe me: it so happens that we’re fighting the same enemy on the same team, at least for now, and they’re as interested as we are in getting Faramir out from under the White Company.”
Be that as it may, working in intelligence had long ago taught Grager that a temporary alignment of interest can sometimes produce a totally unbelievable alliance and that oftentimes one can trust a former enemy more than certain friends. In the end he assumed all responsibility, formally enlisted Tzerlag into the Ithilien regiment
‘for the duration of the raid on Emyn Arnen’ and handed the Orocuen the appropriate paperwork in case he got caught by the Whites. The sergeant only snorted – a captured Orc will get short shrift in any case; better to hang as a Mordorian insurgent than a Gondorian conspirator – but Haladdin told him to mind his own business.
“…And remember, Sergeant: no killing when taking down sentries and such! Treat this as a war game.”
“Very nice! Do those guys understand it’s a war game?”
“I hope so.”
“All right. I guess they’ll hang me with a pretend rope…”
They say that there are werewolves- nin’yokve in the countries of the Far East – a fearsome clan of super-spies and super-assassins capable of mutating into animals internally, while keeping their human appearance. Turning into a gecko, a nin’yokve can climb a smooth wall against all laws of physics, slither into any crack after turning into a snake, and should the guards catch up with him, he turns into a bat and flies away. Tzerlag had never had any nin’yokve skills (despite Tangorn’s possible suspicions), but the leader of a scouting platoon of the Cirith Ungol Rangers knew quite a few tricks involving no magic.
In any event, by the time the White Company soldiers have been roused and took their positions in the courtyard, he had already scaled one of the outside galleries and was now working on its lock, trading the grapple for other tools. The Sergeant did not have the skills of a real burglar, but he did know a few things about metalworking, and as he remembered from last year, any lock in Emyn Arnen could be opened with a pocketknife and a couple of pieces of wire. A few minutes later he was gliding noiselessly through the dark and empty corridors (all the Whites are outside – very convenient!); the Orocuen had admirable visual memory and spatial orientation skills, but he saw that finding the Prince’s bedchamber in this three-dimensional maze was not going to be easy.
…Freezing before every corner, zooming through open spaces like a lightning, climbing stairs sideways lest a step creak, Tzerlag had covered about a third of the way when his inner sentry, which was the only reason he had survived those years, moved its icy hand along his spine: beware! He immediately flattened against the wall and slowly moved sideways toward the turn about a dozen yards ahead. He could see no one behind, but the feeling of danger was still close and very clear; when the sergeant had made past the helpful turn, he was sweating thoroughly. He crouched and carefully extended a pocket mirror past the corner, almost at floor level – the corridor was still empty. He waited for a few minutes with no changes, and then he felt clearly: the danger receded, he could not feel it any more.
This did not calm him at all; he moved forward even more cautiously and ready for the worst.
…When Cheetah caught a fast-moving shadow in the corner of his eye, he plastered himself against the wall in exactly the same manner and cursed inwardly: they missed the intruder after all, the bastards! The captain’s position was not that great: only three sentries to cover the entire huge building – one guarding Faramir and Éowyn, another by Beregond, the third at the entrance to the cellar. Go get help from outside? The intruder might let the prince out in the meantime, and the two of them will screw things up thoroughly. Sound an alarm? No good: the intruder will vanish into this damned maze and get ready for battle, so the only way to take him would be with quite a few holes in him, which is highly undesirable. Yes, looks like the only real option is to follow the guest and take him down personally, hand-to-hand, something Cheetah knew very well indeed.
Once he made the decision, Cheetah suddenly felt the rush of long-forgotten joyous excitement, for what is more exquisite fun than hunting an armed man? He froze in amazement, listening to himself: yes, there was no doubt – he was feeling an emotion! So this process has a certain order to it, then. He had his memory back first (although he still could not remember what happened to him before he found himself in the second rank of the gray phalanx marching across the Field of Pelennor), then he regained the ability to make his own decisions, then he could once again feel pain and weariness, and now the emotions were back. I wonder if I will be able to feel fear, too? At this rate I might become human again, he chuckled to himself. All right, I have work to do.
Naturally, he did not go into the corridor the intruder had taken; quite possibly he had seen him, too, and was now waiting behind the next corner. Much better to make use of being the master here and being able to move much faster than the foe: no need to freeze and listen by every turn. I can go around and still be there first. Where’s there? If the unwelcome guest is moving towards Faramir’s room (where else?), then I should meet him at the Two Stairs Landing – he can’t avoid it, and I will have at least three minutes to prepare.
As he expected, the counter-intelligence chief was the first at the landing; he took off his cloak and started painstakingly setting up the trap. I must morph into my quarry; so – if he’s not a leftie, he will be moving along the left wall. Would I look at the spiral staircase that will suddenly appear on the right? Yes, definitely. Then I will be with my back to this niche? Precisely. What a beautiful niche – even up close it’s hard to believe that it can hold anything bigger than a broom. Here, let’s extinguish this lamp, so it’s more in the shadow…wonderful, all set, that’s where I’ll stand. Now: I’m here, he’s there, two yards off and facing away. Sword hilt to the back of the head? Damn, don’t feel like it… not sure why, but intuition says no, gotta listen to intuition in this business. Hands, then – a chokehold?
Right hand grabs the hair at the nape, pull down to raise the chin, a simultaneous kick to the knee, left arm to the exposed throat. Reliable, but possibly lethal, and corpses don’t talk much. Hadaka-jime, then, but for that it’s preferable that he expose his throat himself – say, by looking up. How can we make him look up? Think, Cheetah, think…
…When Tzerlag reached the dim weirdly shaped widening of the corridor at the end of which he could discern stairs going left, the premonition of danger returned with such force that he almost became dizzy: the unknown foe was somewhere very close. He watched and listened for minute – nothing; moved forward slowly, in small steps, noiselessly (damn, maybe to hell with their orders, get out the scimitar?) and froze: a large opening appeared on the right, with a spiral staircase through it, and there was definitely something behind those stairs. He glided by the left wall, his eyes on the opening – who the hell’s there? – and stopped, almost laughing out loud. Whew! It’s just a sword, leaned against the wall behind the stairs by one of the Whites. A strange place to keep a personal weapon, though. Maybe it’s not leaned, actually – judging by the angle, it might’ve slipped down from upstairs. By the way, what’s that there on the top step?..
Tzerlag’s inner sentry yelled: behind you! only a split second before the foe’s hands locked around his neck. The sergeant only had time to flex his neck muscles. Moving precisely, like in training, Cheetah grabbed his throat with the crook of the right arm, then the counter-spy’s right hand locked on his left bicep, while the left pushed against the back of his neck, crushing throat cartilage and pinching the arteries. Hadaka-jime – unbreakable stranglehold.
Game over.
CHAPTER 28
Banal though it sounds, everything has its price. The price of a warrior is the amount of time and money (which are really the same thing) it takes to train, arm, and equip another one to replace him. In every epoch it is useless to increase the level of training beyond a certain threshold where a basic competency is achieved, since total imperviousness is anyway impossible. What good does it do to spend the effort to turn a regular infantryman into a first-class fencer when this will not save him from a crossbow bolt or, worse, a bout of wasting diarrhea?
For example, take hand-to-hand combat. It is a very useful skill, but perfection takes years of constant training, whereas a soldier, to put it mildly, has plenty of other responsibilities.
There are several options here; the Mordorian army approach was to teach only about a d
ozen techniques, but to teach those twelve combinations of movements almost down to the level of the kneejerk reflex. Of course, it is impossible to foresee all eventualities, but the method for breaking a rear stranglehold is definitely among the said dozen techniques.
Step one! – a swift move back; stomp heel into the top of the foe’s foot, crushing its bird-thin bones encased in myriads of nerve endings. Step two! – bend the knees slightly, small turn of thighs, slide out of the grip suddenly weakened by horrible pain, down and slightly to the right, until there is room to drive the left elbow into his groin. Once the foe’s hands drop to his hammered genitals, there are a few options available; for example, Tzerlag’s step-three training had been to smash open palms over the opponent’s ears: burst eardrums and a guaranteed knock-out. This ain’t no exquisite ballet of the far-eastern martial arts, where the hieroglyphs of each position are but notation marks for the music of the Higher Spheres; this is Mordorian hand-to-hand combat, where everything is simple and to the point.
First he kneeled and pulled up the eyelid of the spirited White Company sergeant (good, the pupil is reacting, Grager’s order had not been violated), and only then allowed himself to lean against the wall in momentary exhaustion. Squeezing eyes shut, he forced himself to swallow against the pain: thank the One, the throat is intact. What if the guy had a garrote?
It’d’ve been the end for sure. How did I screw up so badly? More importantly, how did he figure me out? Wait, this means that they’ll be waiting for me at Faramir’s door, too…
The Last Ringbearer (2011) Page 16