The King's Reckoning
IC starting date: end of January
IC year: 3187 S.A.
The last rays of the setting winter sun shone on Umbar, illuminating the roofs of the buildings and casting deep shadows, long fingers of darkness reaching out towards the eastern gate. In one inky pool of shadow stood a man, his height clearly marking him in this city of giants as one of the Lesser Men. The grey cloak that swathed his body hid his features from view - swarthy skin, dark hair and beard, amber-coloured eyes ... and the defect that set him apart even from his own kind, a cloven and twisted lip. Beside him rested a large pack. Clearly he was watching for something - within the hood came the glitter of amber eyes as his gaze darted this way and that, to the Gates themselves with their narrow exit tunnel and patrolling guards, back to the street ... And equally clearly, this man did not wish to be seen.
From the south came the rumble of wheels, a farmer's wagon on its way back from market, empty now save for a few unwanted sacks - turnips by the smell of them. As it came into view, the grey-cloaked man leaned forward -this, this was the chance he had been waiting for. First a quick glance from side to side to make sure he was not being observed. Then stooping swiftly, he hurled a smooth rounded stone, its path low to the ground, to fly between the feet of the lumbering oxen. The effect was as he had hoped - the beasts started lowing and stamping in confusion, so that their master moved forward to see what ailed them. This was the moment the cloaked one had been waiting for. Simple, then, to step behind the wagon, heaving first his pack and then himself over the rim to lie there unmoving in the dusty, near-empty interior. The wagon moved forward again, its wheels rolling on cobbles and then echoing strangely - they must be in the tunnel between the Gates now. Once more the wagon ground to a halt, and the sound of voices was heard, the soldier on guard duty questioning the farmer about his business, his goods ... The inspection was no more than cursory - after all, the Gates were here to stop enemies getting in, not farm workers from getting out - and in this dim light little could be seen - the soldier waved the man on after little more than a glance. A little further on, there was a bend in the road, at a place where it was verged with soft grass - the perfect place for the stowaway passenger to throw his pack out into the long grass and slide down himself.
The man lay still until the farmer and his wagon were out of sight, then retrieved his pack and stood with one hand resting against a tree, for this was the city's Garden Belt, where lay many orchards. It had all been so absurdly simple! A few moments all it had taken to leave the city that had held him these past three years, the place to which, in their terms, he had been 'in bondage'. His left hand crept up to feel the roughened skin below his right shoulder, tracing the pattern he knew was there. Well, no longer. He had made his choice. "I will go back to the Hills," he said in the guttural tongue of his birth, one seldom spoken in these parts.
Time to go. He looked at the tree on which his hand lay - should he cut a staff for himself? Twisted lips curled in amusement as he reflected on the outrage it would probably cause if someone were to touch the city's precious trees. But these were fruit trees, and he was no wanton destroyer of growing things. And this close to the city there would be little risk of encountering wild beasts. Time enough to cut a stave on the morrow. It was a clear evening, the first stars shimmering in the winter sky, a thin sliver of moon to illuminate the way. There would be enough light to walk by for several hours. Settling his pack more comfortably on his back, he began his journey.
A few miles down the road, where a waypost stood to mark the junction with the Great North-South Road, he stopped to look back. The City was clearly visible, a darker mass against the sky topped by myriad pinpoints of light, and above it a brighter light shining, one not made by hand of man - the evening star. His vision blurred, his throat suddenly tight. "You are like the evening star," he murmured, "a shining light in this place of darkness and broken dreams". The echo of words spoken only days earlier, yet too late - too late. A sense of regret swept over him then, regret at the differences in culture that hindered understanding, the differences in language that halted his tongue... Fool! he told himself. Would you live your days in a place where you and those like you are regarded as no better than beasts? She would see you as a beast also. Misshapen, twisted, loathsome ... better to be free, to live as a man. Yet long he stood there, gazing at those distant lights, and when at last he turned, he raised a hand in farewell.
The land through which the road led was for the most part flat, fertile farmland, a patchwork of well-tilled fields extending into the distance, beyond them plains of waving grass. The road itself showed the unmistakable stamp of the Men of the Sea, who must subdue all things on the earth to their will. It ran straight as an arrow, its course deviating neither to left nor to right, its surface hard-packed gravel, cambered to allow drainage. There were deep ditches to either side of the road, and in these grew occasional clumps of bushes, or sometimes even trees. After the first day the man carried with him a staff cut from an olive tree, its bark shaved away to reveal the smooth wood beneath.
At first he took pains to avoid meeting others, travelling at dusk and dawn and leaving the road if he saw others approach. But then he realized that in these parts wayfarers were a common enough occurrence, and one more dusty traveller garnered little interest. After that he was less cautious, even once bargaining with a farmwife for a loaf of fresh bread, a pleasant addition to his meal that day. In this fat land game was plentiful, and all it took was a little skill with the sling to bring down a bird or small mammal. He tried to live off the land as much as possible, saving his dearly-bought journey rations for the time when there would be no other source of food. Gradually his days settled into a pattern. He would walk from sunrise till sundown, then leave the road by nightfall and find some thicket or hidden dell in which to build his small fire, well away from prying eyes. To him fire was protection, a defence against wild beasts, as much as a means by which to cook. Sometimes afterwards he slept, but more often he would sit awake for hours, staring into the flames, or turning in his hands the small green stone that was his only memento of Umbar.
Gradually, almost imperceptibly, the land changed. The farms became fewer, the soil drier, fertile fields giving way to dusty plains. Water became harder to find, the streams further apart, though still there was no sign of the Southern Waste of which the man had heard tales, a place of burning heat and terrible thirst from which few emerged. Well he would emerge, the man vowed to himself. He had prepared for the Waste as best he might, following the advice of those who had journeyed there before. Each time he reached a stream or spring he filled every waterskin he had, lest this be the last water he would see for many leagues.
He would encounter the first obstacle much sooner, however. A dark blot on the northern horizon gradually took on detail and form as the man approached, revealing itself to be a massive fort. Straight through this the road ran. There was no visible sign of sentries, yet the man did not doubt that they were there. This he had not expected. Should he simply approach, proclaiming himself an honest traveller who wished passage? But if that passage were denied - in one moment all his efforts could be brought to naught, his freedom curbed as he once more became a vassal of the Sea-Men. Daunted now, he slipped off the road, to shelter in what little cover he could find in the roadside ditch. For the remainder of the day he watched, and when evening came lights appeared in some of the slit-like windows, torches perhaps, for they seemed to flicker and waver. Yes, the place was occupied.
In the end he had to rely on the cover of night alone as he skirted the fort. No bushes grew in the area, and the grasses here were sparse and stunted. The land was not uninhabited, however - there were constant rustlings, and once the man heard the howling call of some hunting beast, eerily close. He froze then, and stared into the darkness, staff held at the ready, but the call did not come again. Morning found him in a different land, with the squat bulk of the fort left far behind.
Beyond the fort, the land lost all semblance of cultivation. Here were vast tracts of grassland, parched and wizened, interspersed by thorny thickets and sometimes patches of bare earth. It was a harsh place, pitiless and unforgiving to those unused to its ways. The man soon learned the tell-tale signs that indicated water, a stand of trees, maybe, birds circling above, a shimmering in the air. But he did not learn to feel comfortable in this alien landscape. Used to forested slopes and rocky crags, he felt naked in this open plains, exposed for all to see.
For several days after leaving the fort, the man saw no other living soul. There were hoofprints in the dust, sometimes, and once he came across the remains of a dead horse, its bones almost picked clean. A few large black birds were tearing at the last few threads of flesh; they scattered at his approach. That night he met others of the feasters. His first warning was the sound of yapping calls, dog-like in nature, distant at first but then slowly coming nearer. Then the glint of eyes in the firelight, the sound of snuffling ... A ring of dark shapes surrounded the fire, and every now and then one braver than the rest darted forward, snarling, only to retreat again. Closer they pressed, until the man dared wait no longer - snatching up a part-burnt branch from the fire, he whirled it about him this way and that until after what seemed an age the eyes receded, departing in search of easier prey. Only afterwards did he realize it was a mercy that a leaping spark had not set the grasslands aflame. He did not sleep again that night, instead spending the time thrusting one end of his staff into the fire and whittling grimly at the blackened end until he had a makeshift spear. The next night he built a much larger fire.
The track the man was following merged with another, broader road - though it appeared to be no more frequently travelled than that from Umbar - this one running northwest and southeast. The man continued his northward journey, doggedly plodding onward day by day. He felt insignificant amidst this vast empty land, shrunken to the mere size of a crawling insect, and it was a humbling experience.
Two days after leaving the crossroads, he encountered his first human being since leaving Umbar province. A lone traveller, like himself, but this one heading south. The stranger's gaudy dress was like nothing the man had ever seen, but his rich, rolling voice and expansive manner proclaimed him no threat. The fellow was a bard, it turned out, though the man learned little more about him, for the stranger's rapid delivery was difficult to follow. After a brief conversation and an exchange of food, the fellow was gone as quickly as he had come. Had it not been for the single unfamiliar white wafer now wrapped and stored alongside his own journey-bread, the man might have believed he had dreamed the whole encounter.
At length the man reached a rolling river, its sluggish, shallow waters muddy and brown. Even after 'filtering' by digging a hole some distance away from the main river, the water retained its taint, and had the man been less thirsty, he might have avoided it - but already he had come to regard water as a rare treasure, one that should be bought at any cost, and so he drank his fill, and filled every waterskin he had. Across the river, it was a different world. Gone were the withered grasses, the parched scrub; here there was naught but sand and rocks, and a few prickly plants whose spiny touch the man soon learned to avoid. During the daytime, the air was still and stifling, its touch bone-dry, and though it fell short of the 'burning heat' of which the man had been warned, it was still hot enough to be unpleasant. He had reached the Great Waste.
The lone traveller soon settled into a pattern. He would travel at dawn and dusk, trying as best he might to maintain a steady course that followed the North Star. Sometimes, if the moon was visible, he continued walking long into the night - this had the advantage of staving off the bone-numbing cold that accompanied darkness, something for which the man had not been prepared. During the heat of the day, he would seek shelter in the meagre shade offered by a clump of rocks, if this had not first been claimed by others of the region's denizens - for the desert was home to snakes, spiders and strange curled segmented creatures, usually no more then a hand in length. The man might have dismissed these as harmless, had not on the first evening he witnessed a desert fox place its paw on one, and minutes later fall into howling convulsions, and then into a stupor from which it did not rise again. After that he gave the creatures a wide berth. Fortunately the Wastes harboured no larger predators - the wild dogs did not roam here - for in this barren place he had to forgo the protection of fire.
As the days passed, and still there was no sign of an end to these wastes, the man grew alarmed. He had found no water since entering this place, and though he had rationed his supplies, they were fast running out. He struggled on, trying to ignore the terrible thirst, tongue swollen and cleaving to the roof of his dry mouth, head swimming until he could no longer be sure he was steering a straight course, or even that the reports of his eyes were real and not imagined. Once he thought he saw the shimmer of water, another time the motion of a faraway stand of trees waving in a distant breeze, and once a human figure, slender and dark-haired, who beckoned him on. That night he swallowed the last mouthful of water then slept where he dropped; the next day he wandered blindly, light-headed and delirious, his destination and even the reason for his journey all but forgotten.
He did not get far before he collapsed, some last vestige of sense prompting him to crawl into the meagre shade offered in the lee of a pile of rocks. There he might have died, save for the intervention of fate, which in one single cruel stroke both gave him his life and took from him his new-found freedom. For it was there that the Haradrim found him, the people of the desert. Yet no ordinary caravan was this, but a slave train bound for the Temple of Nurn, in that black land known as Mordor.
The leader of the train, Rashan, spotted the lone traveller first, and sent a band of his followers to subdue the man. The traveller, dazed from the heat and the lack of water, barely had time to react before they were upon him. When his words to the Haradrim met with no response - scarce wonder, for in his delirium the man used his own tongue, one never heard in these parts - he tried with the last vestige of his strength to keep his attackers at bay. Perhaps they had not been expecting resistance, for he managed to wind one man and even strike their leader Rashan before a savage whip-stroke from behind brought him down. Helpless now, the man watched uncomprehending as the whip-wielder was struck in turn - Rashan dealt his subordinate a vicious blow that broke his jaw, accompanied by a stream of fast-flowing words in a tongue that the man had never heard before. He did not know - how could he - that his very defiance had marked him out as a prize. Strength was an attribute much valued in these parts, and Rashan knew that he could get a good price for this one on the open market, providing the man was kept in good condition.
The man was in no state to resist as he was bound and led away. Yet his captors gave him water, and food also, and he was allowed to rest in the shade provided by the guards' tent. It was not until that evening that they put the chains on him. Each prisoner wore a shackle round his right leg, and through this a stout chain was passed, so that the line of slaves must move as a single body or not at all. The metal grew agonizingly hot to the touch during the day, and the man soon learned why many of the slaves had oozing sores on legs, and in a few cases arms. He himself seemed to have a privileged position, for the guards avoided striking him as they did the others, and one even brought him ointment to ease the shackle-burn. This treatment did not go unnoticed by his fellow slaves, who regarded this stranger with suspicion, and all the man's attempts to communicate with them met with silence. Rashan and one or two of his men spoke some Adunaic, however, and the man learned that they were bound for a place called 'Nurn', and that while most of the others would be given to the Temple, he would be sold to the highest bidder. Bile rose in the man's throat at the thought. Had he escaped one form of slavery only to fall prey to another far harsher? Yet the will to survive was strong in him. So he endured each day as best he might, hoping beyond hope that one day freedom would once more be within his grasp.
The days settled into a regular pattern. The caravan would break camp in the evening, then travel through the night and into the dawn, before halting during the day. The guards had tents to protect them from the burning glare of the sun, but the slaves were not so lucky. Sometimes there was a pile of rocks to shelter behind, or a clump of bushes; on other days the prisoners must make do, vying with each other for the chance to sleep in the small patches of shade cast by the tents. Rashan provided his slaves with food and water - after all, it was his job to get these men to Nurn alive - but thirst was an ever-present problem.
Yet abundance of water could prove as dangerous as its lack. One dawn there was a bank of cloud away on the western horizon, and Rashan did not halt as usual, but instead ordered his men to increase the pace, yelling threats at those who did not comply. This insistence baffled the newest addition to the train. They were making their way across a dry valley, which would provide plenty of flat ground to pitch the tents - why not stop? The wind picked up and the clouds rolled in, and very soon a heavy rain had begin to fall. As the first drops hit his face, the man closed his eyes and opened his cleft lips to receive the moisture, and he knew that all around him others were doing the same. Yet they could not linger long. As time went on, and the rain did not abate, the ground underfoot became slippery and treacherous, and the valley floor was soon awash, as streams that had been dry for months filled up with water. In the end, the caravan managed to struggle back to higher ground, but they lost a pack mule in the process, something that once more brought out Rashan's vicious temper as he beat the man he considered responsible.
Now that the rains had come, water was no longer a problem, though they sometimes had to detour round areas that had previously been dry but were now occupied by streams or small lakes. The terrain was also changing, and with a lift of the heart the man realized that they must be approaching mountains. Indeed, a smudge on the north-eastern horizon was soon distinguishable as a line of jagged peaks, their slopes steep and rocky, though at least here some vegetation grew - mainly spiny scrub, interspersed here and there with clumps of twisted pines. Streams made their way down from these mountains, their water bitter and ashy but still drinkable. Rashan led his caravan eastwards through the foothills at first, eventually turning northwards towards the peaks themselves. They journeyed on, climbing steadily, and the jagged peaks of the southern Ephel Duath closed about them.
The rocks here were black, in contrast to the grey weathered stone of the man's homeland, and strangely twisted - sometimes rising in crumbling spires and pinnacles, at other times striated like the rib bones of some great beast or, thought the man, like columns in the mighty works of the Sea-Kings that he had helped build. Their route took them into a region shrouded in fogs and vapours. No normal mists these; rather wisps and plumes of steam rose from the earth itself, their stench foul and rotten. The ground was strangely warm - the man could feel this through the thin soles of his shoes, worn down by many leagues of travel. Sometimes the vents from which the steam spewed were marked by splashes of colour - red, blue, yellow - but at other times they were unmarked. One unfortunate slave had the misfortune to stumble, sending him into the path of the steam, and emerged screaming, face and hands badly scalded. His moans continued for the remainder of the day, until at length Rashan lost patience. One of the guards unlocked the injured man's shackles and took him aside; that was the last they saw of him.
At last they came upon a broad track that snaked its way through the mountains, its gradients gentle. On this they made better speed, and at length the track levelled out and entered a defile, a narrow gorge between shear cliffs. They had entered the pass known as the Nargil, the southernmost gateway to Mordor. The cleft continued for several miles, then came to an end abruptly, and the man halted, blinking, as the cliffs fell away to reveal open hillside, so that he stumbled and fell as the motion of his fellows pulled him onwards. There, spread out before him in the afternoon sunshine, was the land that would be his new home, whether he willed it or no.
Immediately below the pass the road wended its way downwards between piles of sharp-edged rocks. A silvery thread sprang up beside it, broadening as the land flattened out to become a winding river. To the west of this were fields of waving grain, their soft green in marked contrast to the blackness and barrenness of the mountains. Dotted here and there amidst the plains were small settlements, linked to one another by the faint criss-crossing of tracks. In the distance the green faded to grey, and on the western horizon marched a range of jagged peaks - more mountains. To the north, beyond the green plains, the sunlight sparkled off a vast body of water. Beyond this the land was grey and hazy, its features indistinct, yet there was one thing of note, at a point in the distant north-west: a plume of black smoke rising into the sky. It almost seemed to the man that at the place from which the smoke seemed to rise he could see a reddish glow, and for some inexplicable reason he shivered.
"Hoi, you! Up!" The shout of one of the Haradrim guards brought the man's attention back to his immediate surroundings, and he awkwardly scrambled to his feet. "Move!" the guard commanded, glowering as he fingered his whip. Noting the direction of the man's gaze, the Haradrim added, "You like? Good place, grow much food. You work there, if you good slave." He nodded emphatically. "If not ..." He trailed off, drawing one finger across his throat, and chuckled. Amber eyes stared back at him unblinking, the man's face giving little indication of his thoughts. When the Haradrim looked away, the man's cleft lip curled up in a half-snarl. A 'good' slave? His pride had kept him from raging at his captors, struggling with every ounce of strength he possessed until they tired of their newest prisoner and released him to death. But there was more than one way to knap the flint, that he knew. He had escaped bondage before, he could do so again ... he was patient.
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