The Last Ring-bearer - Kirill Yeskov [58]
Yes, Haladdin thought, looking at the rhythmically bobbing pack on the baron's back, it all depends on Tangorn now: whether he can protect us in Ithilien the way we protected him up to now. He's Prince Faramir's personal friend – that's great, but we have to get to this wonderful prince first. Plus it may very well turn out that this Faramir is nothing but Aragorn's puppet, while the baron has rather peculiar relations with Minas Tirith authorities – he may have already been declared an outlaw… In other words, we may easily hang together, either in the forest if we run into a Gondorian patrol, or on the wall of Emyn Arnen; the funniest thing is that in the forest the baron will hang with us, while in the fort we'll hang with him. Yeah, the right company is key…
Such gloomy thoughts must have bothered the baron about ten days ago, when they confirmed that the route to Ithilien through Morgul Vale and the Cirith Ungol pass had been sealed shut by Elvish outposts, which meant that they had to seek help from the guerillas in the Mountains of Shadow. The worst fate would have been to run into one of the smaller bands that acknowledged no authority and were seeking nothing but revenge; no talk about any mission would have helped, as the guerillas now killed their prisoners with no less cruelty than their enemies did. Fortunately, using Sharya-Rana's information, Tzerlag managed to locate in the Shara-Teg Gorge a well-regulated company reporting to the main command of the Resistance. It was led by a commissioned officer, one Lieutenant Ivar, a one-armed veteran of the North Army. A native of this area, he had turned the gorge into an unassailable fastness; among other things, he instituted a remarkable audible warning system on all the observation posts, earning himself the nickname "the Drummer."
The lieutenant had weighed Haladdin's nazgúl ring fearlessly in his hand, nodded and asked only one question: what can he do to assist sir Field Medic in his mission? Escort their recon team to Ithilien? No problem. His opinion is that they should use the Hotont pass; since it's considered to be impassable during this time of year, it's most likely unguarded from the Ithilien side. Unfortunately, his best guide, one Matun, is away on a mission. Can you wait three or four days? No problem, then; this will let you rest and fatten up a little, too – it'll be one arduous trek… Only when all three of them got back the weapons of which they had been relieved by the forward guard did Tangorn return the poison he had borrowed from the doctor.
Haladdin had never been to this part of the country before, so now he observed the daily life of the Shara-Teg Gorge with genuine interest. The mountain Trolls lived spartanly but conducted themselves with truly princely dignity; to an outsider, only their hospitality often went beyond any reasonable measure, acutely embarrassing Haladdin. At least now he understood where the amazing ambience of the Barad-Dur house of his classmate Kumai came from.
The Trolls have always lived together in large tight-knit families, and since the only way to put up a house big enough for thirty people on a steep slope is to build up, their abodes were thick-walled stone towers twenty to thirty feet high. The stonemasonry experience accumulated in the building of these miniature fortresses later made Troll expatriates into the leading city builders of Mordor. Their other line was metallurgy. First they perfected blacksmithing, making weapons cheap and therefore widely available; then they mastered working with iron-nickel alloys (most of the ores in the region were self-legated), and since then the swords worn by every local male over the age of twelve were the best in Middle Earth. Not surprisingly, the Trolls never knew any authority other than their own elders: only a total idiot will attack a Trollish tower and sacrifice half of the attacking force only to gain a dozen scrawny sheep as booty (or church tithe).
The Mordorian powers understood this well and therefore did nothing but recruit