The Last Ring-bearer - Kirill Yeskov [74]
"But that lock has to be hard to pick…"
"I don't think so. It's most likely heavy and sturdy – it has to be, if the door is to withstand battering from outside – which means not too complicated. All right, let's go! Prince, did you take the palantír? We have to make it while the Whites are still waiting for me in the courtyard, and there's only one sentry by the wine cellar."
"Wait!" Éowyn spoke again. "What about Beregond? We can't leave him here!"
"Oh, so Beregond has been arrested? We didn't know that."
"Yes, just now. They know everything about him."
Tzerlag thought for only a couple of seconds: "No can do. We don't know where he's being
held and will spend too much time looking. Tonight Grager will grab every single one of Cheetah's men in the village, so if we free the Prince, tomorrow we'll trade Beregond. But if we don't get you out, he has no chance."
"He's right." Faramir tightened the cinch of the sack with the palantír and hoisted it on his shoulder. "Let's go, in Eru's name!"
…The Dúnadan standing guard at the wine cellar scanned the large dimly lit hall. The main entrance to the fort was on his left, to the right were the three main stairs leading to the north and south wings and to the Knights Hall. What a strange decision: putting the entrance to the cellar by the front entrance, rather than in some hidey hole. Then again, everything in this here Ithilien is weird and unnatural. Start with the Prince, who's not even a prince but rather a who knows what, and end with the rules of their White Company: whoever heard of passing officers off as sergeants and privates? It'd be one thing if it was a secret from the enemy, the local terrorists, say (although no one has seen any yet), but it's from each other! Allegedly we're in the same army, but we're not supposed to know that Sergeant Gront is really a captain, while our Lieutenant His Grace Sir Elvard is passing as a private! Funny, but the Secret Guard guys probably still don't know about Sir Elvard; like they told us at the briefing: the Secret Guard has its business while His Majesty's Royal Dúnadan Guard has its own… I dunno, maybe the spies like this setup, but to an honest soldier it's like glass on stone. What if it turns out that the chief here is the cook or the butler – wouldn't that be funny?
The sentry looked up: he could hear the approaching footsteps of two people in the uneasy silence of the deserted fort. In a few seconds he saw them: a private and a sergeant were coming down the north wing stair at a quick clip, almost running. They were heading towards the exit and looked very concerned; are they going for help? The sergeant was gingerly carrying a sack with something large and round inside it in outstretched arms. Almost abreast with the sentry they traded a few words and split up: the private kept going towards the exit, while the sergeant apparently decided to show his find to the Dúnadan. What's he got there? Looks like it might be a severed head…
The rest happened so quickly that the sentry knew that something was off only when his hands were in a viselike grip, while the private who showed up behind his shoulder (to his astonishment, the sentry recognized Faramir) put a blade to his throat. "One word and you're dead," the prince promised without raising his voice. The Dúnadan swallowed convulsively; deathly pallor covered his face, and drops of sweat rolled down his temples. The two impostors traded looks, and the 'sergeant' (gloomy Mandos! it's an Orc!) smirked derisively: so this is the West's fighting elite? The smirk turned out to be absolutely unwarranted: the young man desperately did not want to die, but in a couple of seconds he overcame his weakness and yelled: "Alarm!!" so loudly that echoes and clanging of