The Last Ring-bearer - Kirill Yeskov [137]
"Captain Marandil, you're under arrest in the name of the King. Sergeant, take his weapons, badge, and keys to the safe. To the basement with him!" Standing up, he said over his shoulder: "Sir Ambassador, I strongly advise you to find the chief of security and kick his ass. There are at least four ways to get in here, but to fail to even put grates on the sewer openings – such sloppiness is utterly beyond belief! Don't be surprised to find a gypsy camp in the courtyard and a couple of sleeping bums in the lobby one day…"
No! No! No-o-o-o! It's untrue, this can't be happening – not to him, Captain of the Secret Guard Marandil, the chief of Gondorian station in Umbar! Yet already they are dragging him down the steep chipped stairs (out of the blue he remembered that there were twenty of them, with a large hole in the fourth step from the bottom); once in the basement, they shake him out of his clothes and hang him up by the tied thumbs off a large hook in the ceiling beam. Then Mongoose's face appears in front of his again, eye to eye:
"I'm not interested in your games with the Umbarian Secret Service right now. What I want to know is who advised you to point the Elves to our team by siccing their underground on His Majesty's Secret Guard? Who in Minas Tirith are you working for – Arwen's people? What do they know about Tangorn's mission?"
"I know nothing about that, I swear by anything!" he croaks, twisting with pain in dislocated joints, understanding full well that this is just a warm-up. "I gave no orders to kidnap that Algali – Aravan is either crazy or working for himself…"
"Please begin, Sergeant. So who told you to reveal me to the Elves?"
They know their job well and doze the pain just so, not allowing him to slip away into unconsciousness… Then it is all over: the mercy of the Valar is truly boundless, and Vaira's gentle palms pick him up and carry him to the safest refuge – the gloomy halls of Mandos.
You wish!
"You bastard, don't even hope to die before you tell everything you know! Which of Arwen's people are you working for? How do you communicate?"
Nothing was over. It was only beginning…
Chapter 50
Umbar, the Long Dam
June 27, 3019
The Long Dam of Umbar is not among the Twelve Wonders of the World as enumerated by Ash-Sharam in his Universal History, but that is only a testament to the biases of that great Vendotenian: he preferred pretty playthings like the Barad-Dur tower and the Hanging Temple of Mendor to functional buildings, no matter how grandiose. The seven-hundredfathom dam that joined the Peninsula to the Islands four centuries ago never failed to impress newcomers to Umbar: it was wider than any city street and allowed two-way caravan traffic. That was what it was built for, actually – so that the merchants moving goods via the Chevelgar Highway to and from the continent would not have to bother with ferries. Not for free, of course: idle tongues insisted that the sheer volume of silver coins charged as tolls over those four centuries was enough to erect another dam of the same size.
A small town of gaudy pavilions, tents, and bamboo cabins sprawled before the massive Customs House, which straddled the dam at the Peninsula end. Here, a merchant worn out by the five-day trek over the winding stretches of the Chevelgar Highway had every opportunity to spend his money on things much more pleasant than custom collectors. The gray shish-kebab smoke rising from the mangals was almost tastier than the shish-kebabs themselves, women of all skin colors and sizes unobtrusively paraded their charms, soothsayers and mages promised to predict the outcome of your next business deal for just a piccola, or forever wipe out all your competitors for a castamir… Beggars forcefully pled for mercy, pickpockets trawled the