Кирилл Еськов - The Last Ringbearer

April 9, 3019

“So why not wait until nightfall?” Haladdin whispered.

“Because if this really is a trap and the guys who set it are not total idiots, they’ll expect company by evening. What does the Field Manual teach us, doctor?” Tzerlag raised a finger. “Right – do the opposite of what the foe expects. So, don’t move until my signal, and if I’m lost, may the One preserve me, even more so. Clear?”

He cast another look at the camp and muttered: “Damn, I don’t like this picture.”

The Teshgol boundary consisted of fixed sands dotted with fairly thick copses of white saxaul in shallow depressions between small hillocks covered with desert serge and sacaton. The camp consisted of three yurts pitched in a triangle, with entrances facing in, in a small wind-protected hollow about hundred and fifty yards from their hideout, so everything in it was clearly visible. Tzerlag has watched it for an hour, detecting no suspicious movements; however, there were no non-suspicious movements, either, the camp looked deserted. This was very strange, but it was time to make some move.

A minute later Haladdin, holding his breath, watched the scout in his brown cloak fairly ooze along the barely discernible creases in the ground. He was right, of course: the only thing a field medic could do to help was to not bother a professional. True, but it is not very pleasant to sit in the relative safety of a hideout when your comrade is risking his life a few steps away. He scanned the horizon once again and then discovered, to his amazement, that meanwhile the sergeant has vanished. Nuts! One could almost believe that the scout had turned into an agama lizard and sank into the sand, the way they can; or, more appropriately, was now slithering along as a deadly saw-scaled viper. The doctor has been staring into the hillocks around the camp till his eyes hurt for almost half an hour, when suddenly he saw Tzerlag standing up right between the yurts.

Everything is fine, then! The departure of the feeling of danger was an almost physical pleasure; every muscle of his, previously tense, was now blessedly relaxing, and the world, once discolored by adrenalin, was regaining its natural colors. Climbing out of the pit under a saxaul tree that leaned almost to the ground, Haladdin easily shouldered the bag of gear and marched forward, looking closely at the ground – the slope was seriously dented by desert rats. Almost at the bottom he finally looked up and realized that something was wrong. Seriously wrong, to judge by the Orocuen’s behavior: after standing for some time at the entrance to the left yurt, he then trudged to the next one without entering. Yes, trudged – for some reason the sergeant’s step had lost its usual spring. Only a barely audible hum disturbed the unnatural quiet of the hollow, like tiny ripples on the oily surface of a swamp… Then he suddenly understood everything, recognizing it as the sound of a myriad of flies.

…Even in the sandy desert soil it takes more than a few minutes to dig a grave for ten people (four adults, six children); they had to hurry, but they had found only one spade and so had to share. Haladdin was about waist deep when Tzerlag walked up to him.

“Listen, you keep digging, I’ll go walk around one more time and check on something.”

“You think someone may have survived and is hiding out there?”

“Unlikely, seems they’re all here. But over there there’s blood on the sand.”

“But weren’t they all murdered right in the yurts?..”

“That’s the point. Keep working, but look around once in a while. I’ll whistle if I need you – one long, two short.”

He heard the signal in no more than five minutes. The sergeant waved to him from a small dune near the path to the highway, then disappeared behind its crest. Following, Haladdin found the scout crouching before a dark round object; only when he was almost there did he realize that it was the head of a man buried in the sand up to his neck, and that the man appeared to still be alive. There was a clay bowl of water a few inches from his lips, just beyond reach.

“That’s who put up a fight back there. Are we too late, doctor?”

“No, it’s all right. See, he’s still sweating, so it’s only the second stage of dehydration, and he has no sunburns, thank the One.”

“Yeah, they put him in the shade of the dune, precisely so that he’d take longer to die. By all signs he’d pissed them off mightily… Can I give him water?”

“At the second stage – yes, but only in small portions. But how did you know?..”

“To be honest, I was looking for a corpse.”

With those words Tzerlag put his leather flask to the blackened and cracked lips of the buried man. The man shuddered and gulped down water, but his barely opening eyes remained clouded and lifeless.

“Wait up, fella, not so fast! Hear what the doc says: not all at once. All right, let’s pull him out; the sand is loose here, so we don’t need a spade… Got him?”

Shoving the sand back some, they grabbed the man by his underarms and: “One-two!” pulled him out like a carrot from the garden patch. “Damn!” the Orocuen said with feeling, grabbing his scimitar; the rush of sand off the clothes of the rescued man revealed a green jacket of a Gondorian officer to their stunned gazes.

This, however, did not affect the rescue operations in the slightest, and in a dozen minutes the prisoner was, in Tzerlag’s words, “ready to use.” The cloudiness in his gray eyes gone, his gaze was now steady and slightly mocking. After a quick glance at his rescuers’ uniforms, he fully appraised his situation and, much to their surprise, introduced himself in good, if accented, Orocuenish: “Baron Tangorn, lieutenant of the Ithilien regiment. To whom do I have the honor of speaking?”

For a man who had just miraculously escaped a tortuous death only to face it once again, the Gondorian was acquitting himself very well. The scout gave him a respectful look and stepped aside, nodding to Haladdin to continue.

“Field Medic Second Class Haladdin and Sergeant Tzerlag of the Cirith Ungol Rangers. Although it doesn’t matter now.”

“Why not?” the lieutenant raised an eyebrow. “Quite a distinguished regiment. If I remember correctly, we met last fall at Osgiliath – the men of Ithilien were defending the southern flank then. By the fist of Tulkas, it was an excellent battle!”

“I’m afraid that now is not the best time to reminisce about those knightly exploits – we’re interested in more recent events. What team had massacred this camp? Name of commanding officer, number, task, direction of movement? And no fooling: we’re not inclined to dither, as you may guess.”

The baron shrugged: “Quite legal questions. The company is made up of Easterling mercenaries commanded by Eloar, an Elf; as I understand it, he’s a relative of some Lórien ruler. Number: nine people. Their task is roving patrol of a stretch of desert next to the highway and mop-up of said territory as a counter-insurgency measure. Are you satisfied?”

Haladdin closed his eyes involuntarily and once again saw a toy bactrian made of woolen threads, trampled into a pool of coagulated blood. So that’s what they call it: ‘mopping up territory.’ Good to know.

“So how did you end up in the regrettable position in which we found you, Baron?”

“I’m afraid that it’s such an unlikely story that you will not believe me.”

“Then I will tell you myself. You have attempted to stop this ‘mop-up’ and wounded one of the mercenaries, perhaps even killed one. Correct?”

The Gondorian looked at them in obvious consternation. “How the hell do you know that?”

“That’s not important. Strange behavior for a lieutenant of Gondor, though.”