The Last Ringbearer Read online

  The Last Ring-bearer

  By Kirill Yeskov

  © 1999 Kirill Yeskov, afranius999[at]gmail.com

  © 2010 Yisroel Markov (English translation), ey.markov[at]hotmail.com

  For non-commercial distribution only

  No indeed! We are not strong,

  But we know Peoples that are.

  Yes, and we'll guide them along

  To smash and destroy you in War!

  We shall be slaves just the same?

  Yes, we have always been slaves,

  But you -- you will die of the shame,

  And then we shall dance on your graves!

  Rudyard Kipling

  Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

  Winston Churchill

  PART I -- Vae Victis1

  "Gold is for the mistress -- silver for the maid --

  Copper for the craftsman cunning at his trade."

  "Good!" said the Baron, sitting in his hall,

  "But Iron -- Cold Iron -- is master of them all."

  Rudyard Kipling

  Chapter 1

  Mordor, Hutel-Hara sands

  April 6, 3019 of the Third Age

  Is there a sight more beautiful than a desert sunset, when the sun, as if ashamed of its whitish daytime fierceness, lavishes a bounty of unimaginably tender and pure colors on its guests? Especially good are countless shades of purple, which turn dunes into a charmed sea -- don't miss those couple of minutes, they will never happen that way again... Or the last moment before sunrise, when the first light of dawn interrupts in mid-movement the staid minuet of moon shadows on the lacquered hardtops -- for those dances are forever hidden from the uninitiated, those who prefer day to night... Or the never-ending tragedy of the hour when the power of darkness begins to wane and the fuzzy clusters of the evening constellations suddenly turn into prickly icy crumbs, which by morning will rime the bronzed gravel of the hamada?

  It was at such a midnight hour that two men moved like gray shadows along the gravelly inner edge of a sickle-shaped gap between two low dunes, and the distance between them was exactly that prescribed by the Field Manual for such occasions. However, contrary to the rules, the one bearing the largest load was not the rear `main force' private, but rather the `forward recon' one, but there were good reasons for that. The one in the rear limped noticeably and was nearly out of strength; his face -- narrow and beak-nosed, clearly showing a generous serving of Umbar blood -- was covered with a sheen of sticky sweat. The one in the lead was a typical Orocuen by his looks, short and wide-faced -- in other words, the very `Orc' that mothers of Westernesse use to scare unruly children; this one advanced in a fast zigzagging pattern, his every movement noiseless, precise and spare, like those of a predator that has scented prey. He had given his cloak of bactrian wool, which always keeps the same temperature -- whether in the heat of midday or the pre-dawn chill -- to his partner, leaving himself with a captured Elvish cloak, priceless in a forest but utterly useless here in the desert.

  But it was not the cold that bothered the Orocuen right now: listening keenly to the silence of the night, he cringed as if with toothache every time he heard the crunch of gravel under the unsure feet of his companion. Sure, to run into an Elvish patrol here, in the middle of the desert, would be almost impossible, and besides, for Elves starlight is not light at all, they need the moon... Nevertheless, Sergeant Tzerlag, leader of a scouting platoon of the Cirith Ungol Rangers, never relied on chance in his work, and always tirelessly repeated to new recruits: "Remember this, guys: the Field Manual is a book where every jot and tittle is written with the blood of smartasses who tried to do it their way." This must have been how he managed to lose only two men during the entire three years of the war, and in his own estimation he was prouder of that than of the Medal of the Eye, which he received last spring from the Commander of the South Army. Even now, home in Mordor, he behaved as if he was still on an extended raid on the Plains of Rohan; although, what kind of home is it now, really?..

  A new sound came from behind -- something between a moan and a sigh. Tzerlag looked back, estimated the distance, and, dropping his sack such that not a buckle clanged, made it to his companion just in time. The man was slowly sagging, fighting unconsciousness, and passed out the moment that sergeant grabbed him under the arms. Silently cussing, the scout returned to his sack to get the flask. Some partner, dammit... useful like a doorstop...

  "Here, drink some, mister. Feeling worse again?"

  The moment the prone man got a couple of swigs down, his whole body convulsed with tortuous gagging.

  "Sorry, Sergeant", he muttered guiltily. "Just wasted water."

  "Don't worry about it, the underground collector is really close now. What did you call that water then, Field Medic, sir? Some funny word."

  "Adiabatic."

  "You live, you learn. Alright, water's not our worry. Leg giving out again?"

  "Afraid so. Listen, Sergeant... leave me here and make for that nomadic camp of yours -- you said it was close, like fifteen miles. Then come back. If we run into Elves, we're both done for. I'm not good for much now..."

  Tzerlag thought for a while, drawing signs of the Eye in the sand. Then he smoothed out the sand and rose decisively.

  "We'll camp under the yonder dune, looks like the ground should be firmer over there. Will you make it there yourself, or will it be easier to carry you?"

  "Listen, Sergeant..."

  "Quiet, doctor! Sorry, but right now you're like a little kid, safer under supervision. Should the Elves catch you, in fifteen minutes they'll know everything: how many in the group, where headed and all that. I value my skin too much for that... So -- can you walk a hundred fifty paces?"

  He trudged where he was told, molten lead rising up his leg with every step. Right under the dune he passed out again, and didn't see how the scout first painstakingly masked the vomit, foot- and body prints, and then dug out a day hideout, quickly as a mole. He regained conscience as the sergeant was carefully leading him to the fabric-lined hole. "Think you'll be better in a couple of days, mister?"

  Meanwhile, a disgusting pus-and-blood-colored moon rose over the desert. Now there was enough light to examine the leg. The wound itself was superficial, but it refused to scab over and bled at the slightest touch -- the Elvish arrow had been poisoned, as usual. On that horrible day he had used up his entire stock of antidotes on the seriously wounded, hoping for a break. There was none. Tzerlag dug him a hideout under a fallen oak in a forest a few miles north-east of Osgiliath, and for five days he lay there, clutching with his fingernails to the icy windowsill of life. On the sixth day he managed to surface from the purple maelstrom of excruciating pain and listened to the sergeant's tales, drinking bitter Imlad Morgul water, which stank with some unknown chemical (there was no other water in safe reach). The remnants of the South Army, bottled up in Morgul Gorge, had laid down their arms, and the Elves and the Gondorians drove them somewhere beyond the Anduin; a crazed m mak from the defeated Harad battalion had trampled his field hospital, wounded and all, into bloody pulp; looks like there's nothing else to save here, time to make for home, to Mordor.

  They got started on the ninth night, as soon as he could walk. The scout chose to use the Cirith Ungol pass, figuring that not even a mouse could make it by the Ithilien highway now. The worst part was that he hadn't figured out his poisoning (some poison expert!): by the symptoms it looked to have been something new, from the most recent Elvish developments. His medicine box was almost empty anyway. On the fourth day the sickness came back at the most inopportune time, right when they were slipping by the freshly built military camp of the Western allies at the foot of Minas Morgul. For three days they had
to hide out in the ominous ruins there, and on the third evening the sergeant whispered to him in surprise: "Your hair's going white, mister!" The most likely culprit here was not the mythical undead keepers of the ruins, but the quite real gallows erected by the victors on the side of the road some twenty yards from their hideout. The six corpses in tattered Mordorian uniforms (a large sign informed in fine Elvish runes that these were "war criminals") have attracted the entire raven population of the Mountains of Shadow to a feast, and this sight will probably haunt him to the end of his days. ...Tonight's bout was the third. Shaking with fever, he crawled into the fabric-lined hole, and once again thought: how must Tzerlag be doing, in his Elvish rag? Some time later the scout slipped into the hideout; water gurgled quietly, once, in one of his flasks, then sand dribbled down from the ceiling -- the Orocuen was masking the entry hole from the inside. The moment he rested against that reliable back, cold, pain and fear began to slip away, and a calm certainty that the crisis was over came from somewhere. Now I only need to get some sleep, and I'll stop being a burden to Tzerlag... some sleep...

  "Haladdin! Hey, Haladdin!"

  Who is that calling me? And how did I come to be in Barad-Dur? All right, let it be Barad- Dur...

  Chapter 2

  Fifty miles east from the Orodruin volcano, where the light-minded babbling brooks originating from the snows of the Ash Mountains turn into staid, respectable canals and then subside quietly into the pulsing heat of the Mordor plain, lies the oasis of Gorgoroth. For ages they would gather two annual crops of cotton, rice, dates and grapes here, while the handiwork of local weavers and weapon-makers was prized throughout Middle Earth. Of course, the nomadic Orocuens have always looked with scorn on their tribesmen who chose the life of a farmer or a craftsman: everybody knows that the only occupation worthy of a man is cattle-breeding; that is, if you don't count robbing caravans. This attitude, however, had never prevented them from regularly driving their flocks to the markets of Gorgoroth, where the sweet-talking Umbarian merchants who quickly came to dominate local trade would invariably fleece them. Those crafty fellows, ever ready to risk their heads for a handful of silver, drove their caravans throughout the East, not spurning either slave trade or smuggling, or even plain robbery, when convenient. However, their main source of income had always been the export of rare metals, mined in abundance from the Ash Mountains by the stocky unsmiling Trolls -- unequaled miners and smelters, who later monopolized all stonemasonry in the Oasis, too. Life side by side had long trained the sons of all three peoples to eye the neighbors' daughters with more interest than their own, to make fun of each other ("An Orocuen, an Umbarian, and a Troll walk into a bar..."), and to defend the Ash Mountain passes and the Morannon against the Western barbarians together. This, then, was the yeast on which Barad-Dur rose six centuries ago, that amazing city of alchemists and poets, mechanics and astronomers, philosophers and physicians, the heart of the only civilization in Middle Earth to bet on rational knowledge and bravely pitch its barely adolescent technology against ancient magic. The shining tower of the Barad-Dur citadel rose over the plains of Mordor almost as high as Orodruin like a monument to Man -- free Man who had politely but firmly declined the guardianship of the Dwellers on High and started living by his own reason. It was a challenge to the bone-headed aggressive West, which was still picking lice in its log `castles' to the monotonous chanting of scalds extolling the wonders of never-existing N menor. It was a challenge to the East, buckling under the load of its own wisdom, where Ying and Yang have long ago consumed each other, producing only the refined static beauty of the Thirteen Stones Garden. And it was a challenge to a certain someone else, for the ironic intellectuals of the Mordor Academy, unbeknownst to them, have come right up to the line beyond which the growth of their power promised to become both irreversible and uncontrollable. ...And Haladdin was walking the streets he had known since childhood -- from the three worn stone steps of his parents' house in the cul-de-sac beyond the Old Observatory, past the plane trees of the King's Boulevard, which ends at the ziggurat with its Hanging Gardens -- towards the squat building of the University. It was there that his work had several times granted him a moment of the highest happiness known to man: when you hold like a hatchling in the palm of your hand a Truth so far revealed only to you, and it makes you richer and more magnanimous than all the rulers of the world... And a bottle of fizzy N rnen wine was making rounds to the din of many voices, foam sliding down the sides of mismatched mugs and glasses to the merry oaths of the drinkers, and the entire April night was still ahead, with its unending arguments over science, poetry, cosmology, and science again... And Sonya was looking at him with those enormous dry eyes -- only the Trollish girls' eyes sometimes have this fleeting shade of color -- dark gray? transparent brown? -- and making a valiant effort to smile: "Halik, dear, I don't want to be a burden" -- and he wanted to cry from the tenderness overflowing his soul.

  But the wings of the dream were already carrying him back to the night desert, amazing to any novice with the improbable diversity of its inhabitants, who literally drop through the earth with the first ray of the sun. Tzerlag had told him that this desert, like any other, had been forever divided into plots: every bush, every patch of prickly grass, every spot of edible lichen (manna) had its owner. The Orocuen easily named the clans owning the dells through which they were making their way now, and could precisely detect their boundaries, clearly relying on some clues visible only to him, rather than the little abo stone pyramids. The only property held in common in these parts were the cattle watering holes -- large depressions in the sand filled with bitter, salty, but still potable water. Haladdin was most amazed by the tzandoi system of adiabatic water collectors, which he had only read about before. He admired the unknown genius who had first figured out that one scourge of the desert -- the nightly cold -- can overcome the other one -- aridness: quickly cooling stones act as condensers, `squeezing' water out of seemingly dry air. Of course, the sergeant did not know the word `adiabatic' (he did not read much, not finding it much use or fun), but some of the collectors they passed were his handiwork. Tzerlag had built his first tzandoi when he was five; devastated when it had not a drop of water the next morning, he had figured out the problem himself (the stone pile was too small) and first felt the pride of a Master. Strangely, he felt no inclination to tend cattle and did it only when he had to, whereas it was nearly impossible to drag him away from tackle shops and such. The relatives would shake their heads in disapproval -- "just like a towner!" -- but his father, observing his constant tinkering, made him learn to read. That was how he got to be a mantzag -- a traveling craftsman; moving from camp to camp, in two years he could make anything. Once in the Army (nomads were usually assigned either to light cavalry or ranger units), he fought as meticulously as he used to build tzandois or put together bactrian tackle. To be honest, he was sick and tired of the war. Sure, the Throne, the Motherland and all that... but the generals kept doing things whose stupidity was obvious even to a sergeant. One needed no time in a military academy to understand that; the common sense of a craftsman (so he thought) was quite enough. For example, after the rout at Pelennor his scouting company was assigned, among other units that could still fight, to cover the retreat (the headlong flight, rather) of the main forces. His scouts were told to make their stand without long spears in the middle of a plain, and the elite rangers, each with at least two dozen successful missions in enemy territory under his belt, died senselessly under the hoofs of Rohan cavalry, who did not even have time to see who they were trampling. Tzerlag decided then that nothing could help the generals; to hell with them and this war! Enough of this, guys -- we shall learn war no more! Thank the One, they had made it out of that damned forest, where you can't even get a bearing in cloudy weather and every scratch begins to rot immediately, so now, home in the desert, we'll be fine. In his dreams the sergeant was already at the familiar Teshgol camp, which was now only one good night's march away. He pictur
ed clearly to himself how he would unhurriedly determine what needs fixing, then they'd be invited to the table, and after the second mug the hostess would casually steer the conversation to the difficulties of maintaining a household without a man around, while the grimy-faced youngsters (there's four of them there, or was it five?) would be circling around and clamoring to touch his weapons... The other thought he had while drifting off to sleep was: wouldn't it be nice to find out who the hell wanted this war, and meet him in a dark corner somewhere...

  No, seriously -- who wanted it?

  Chapter 3

  Middle Earth, the arid belt

  A natural history brief

  Two types of climate epochs follow one another in the history of any world, including Middle Earth -- pluvial and arid; the growth and shrinking of polar ice caps follow a single rhythm, which is a sort of a pulse of a planet. Those natural cycles are concealed from the eyes of historians and scalds by the kaleidoscopic variety of peoples and cultures, although it is those very changes that largely create this kaleidoscope. Climate change can play a larger role in the history of a people, or even a civilization, than the deeds of great reformers or a devastating invasion. Well, in Middle Earth the Third Age was drawing to a close together with a pluvial climate epoch. The paths of moisture-laden cyclones kept bending towards the poles, and the trade wind belts, covering the thirties' latitudes in both hemispheres, were rapidly turning to deserts. Not that long before the Mordor plains had been a savannah, while real forests of juniper and cypress covered the slopes of Orodruin; now the desert was relentlessly encroaching upon the dry steppes hugging the foot of the mountain ranges, consuming acre after acre. The snow line in the Ash Mountains kept creeping higher, and the streams feeding the oasis of Gorgoroth more and more resembled a child dying from some unknown disease. Had the local civilization been a bit more primitive and the country poorer, that is how it would have continued; the process would have taken centuries, and something always comes up over such stretches of time. However, Mordor was powerful beyond measure, so the powers-that-be decided not to "seek mercy from nature," but rather to set up an extensive irrigation system, using the tributaries of the Sea of N rnen. An explanation is in order here. Irrigation agriculture in arid regions is very productive, but has to be conducted with utmost care. The problem is high salinity of the groundwater; the main challenge is to avoid bringing it up to the surface, God forbid, or it will salt the topsoil. This is precisely what will happen if your irrigation dumps too much water on the fields and the soil capillaries fill up enough to connect the groundwater to the surface. Capillary forces and surface evaporation will immediately begin pumping that water up to the surface (exactly like oil going up the wick of a lit lamp), and this process is irreversible; in a blink of an eye your field will turn into a lifeless salt pan. The saddest part is that once you screw up, there is no way to push that salt back down.