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Now, the Captain had worked his way up through the ranks, first as the Sergeant, then Lieutenant. His body showed every fight he ever had, every mile he ever marched. He was a big man, had to be at least six feet three inches. His muscles hadn't deteriorated with age or rank, and were still infused with strength and tenacity, like an old tiger. But as any hunter will tell you, young predators are weak and stupid- it's the oldies who'll rip your guts out. This particular old tiger was two inches from my nose, towering over me, and in his eyes I could see every man he ever killed. It was not a pleasant experience.
He calmly, fervently, and without pause or repetition tore me to pieces for twenty minutes straight. I just stood there and accepted it, like you pretty much have to do in that situation. But then, he told me that I may have endangered the Company by abusing my position as Annalist, and that got through. Like getting stabbed through the heart. I quickly clamped down on tears after that bolt hit home, and masked the fear and shame before they reached my face. Gods save me, I could handle any abuse but that.
Luckily, the Lieutenant popped his head into the tent at that point and told us that the Witch-king was sending for the Captain. The Captain growled, and told me in a deadly quiet tone of voice that this wasn't over. As he left, he stopped, paused and turned back towards me. He walked over to me very slowly, and planted himself right next to my left ear.
He said, too quietly for the Lieutenant to overhear, "I just can't believe you would do that to us. You've disappointed me very much."
Self-control. Self-discipline. Mental strength. Without these, you never leave basic training intact, let alone win on the battle field. Without these, I would have cried, right there, in front of both of them. But my mask remained in place. The Captain spun on his heel and left, pure professionalism. He hadn't ordered me to fall out or rest at ease, so I remained spear-straight, standing at attention in the Captain's tent. Outside, true night was falling, dimming the Witch-king's sorcerous clouds even further. Somewhere in Osgiliath, the trolls were hauling all the siege stuff we needed to break into Minas Tirith. The uruks were swarming off in the west. The Variags were circling the city, cutting it off from the rest of the world. None of that mattered to me right now. All I could think of was to remain at attention until the captain returned. Perhaps if he saw my dedication and obedience, he would forgive me. Perhaps if I was good enough, he wouldn't look at me like that again.
The Lieutenant entered. He was a self-assured man, possibly a former aristocrat. He had that air of effortless authority. I couldn't imagine how any nobleman could end up in a mercenary company, but that was the prevailing theory. The Lieutenant stepped in front of me, looking me in the eye.
"Haroun," he said. "God knows, you fucked up big. But you'll be alright. You hear me, son?"
"Yes, sir."
"I've had a word with Pork Chop. That girl of yours spent the last hour helping out in our field hospital. Stitching up cuts and staunching wounds, and the like. Pork Chop says that she hadn't been there to help, Murky would likely have died. Once the Captain hears that, she'll be one of us as far as he's concerned. Just give him time."
"Yes, sir."
"You're a good man, Haroun. And you know what? I think that what you did for that girl was good, and I don't care who knows it. I wish I'd have been there to watch you show the uruks how the Black Company does business."
I almost cracked a smile. "Yes, sir."
"Just don't desecrate our sacred traditions again, and you'll be right as rain." He smiled at me, white teeth contrasted on a dark face. He snapped to attention, and in response I tried to stand even more rigidly . "Corporal Haroun! On command of fall out, fall out and go get some sleep, you'll need it. We'll all need to be in top form if we want to get over the walls tomorrow. Fall out."
I fell out as gratefully as any soldier ever did.
When I got back to the barracks, I was ambushed. Just as I entered the building- a former music hall, judging by the shape of the place- torches flared up and I got serenaded by a choir of grinning idiots.
"Sometimes it seems like a beautiful dream," they sang in painful dissonance. "The girl from the Wadi Hammamat!" Saintly, Reader, Croc, Ali, and Crow. You utter bastards. I tried retreating outside to safety, but they piled on me and frog-marched me back inside. I struggled as hard as I could without hurting them too badly, but it's hard to punch your way clear when you're laughing that hard.
"She's as lovely as a green parakeet!" Saintly shouted happily as they spun me around in time with their singing. Of the lot, only Reader had the slightest musical ability, and he has more lung-power than skill. In any case, the point wasn't to make good music, it was to embarrass me, and in that they were succeeding admirably.
"I awoke alone again, in the desert of my dreams," they continued, braying into my face, as close as they dared with me trying to hit them. "A fertile oasis I have seen!" When I escape, they shall all pay for this. I will invent new ways to punish them for their insolence.
At long last, they finish their song, and we all start cheering- they're celebrating a prank well pulled, and I'm celebrating the fact that they finally stopped singing.
"When Reader and Saintly told us about your heroic rescue," Croc announced, after striking a dramatic pose, "we all knew we had to greet you in the appropriate troubadour fashion. For what have we here, if not Ali ibn Jalawi himself returned from the grave? A true hero, pure of heart and noble of mind, ready and eager to right the wrongs, defeat the powers of evil, and gallantly ride to the rescue of the smokin' hot damsel in distress. Without a doubt, he is the best of us all and I would here acknowledge him as such. Gentlemen, I give you Haroun- may he score with that Gondorian bi-atch tonight! Owww yes!" Howls of raucous laughter, claps on my back. The atmosphere is awash with good will and good-natured insults, both of which are directed at me.
"Oh, Croc," I say. "You have a fly on your nose. Here, let me slap it for you..."
I would like to state this for the record- they didn't disapprove of my action- they were just bemused by it. Real heroics don't happen in real life, and when you base your entire philosophy on that, it can get fairly disconcerting to watch the good guys triumph over evil; or see justice given to the poor; or in this case, see the defenseless defended. When it does happen, the only response we have is practiced cynicism and well-honed sarcasm. No criticism from me, mind you- if Croc had been the one to ride to her rescue, I know I'd have been first in line to ambush him the next day.
That night:
"Psst!"
"Gah?"
"Is that you?
"Ah... that depends on who you think I am."
"Haroun, is that you?"
"It is. That you, Zim?" I shift in my blankets so I'm facing her. I can only see the edges of her frame by the torchlight outside. Her hair is lit up by the fires and shining- the rest, inky silhouette.
"Yes."
"Hi, Zim."
"I just wanted to thank you for what you did for me."
"My pleasure. Then again, I hear you did your good deed for the day with Murky, so I reckon I should be thanking you."
"Murky? The man who was stabbed here?" She indicates her upper belly with a light touch.
"That's the one. Pork Chop says he'd have died if it weren't for you."
"You pick up a lot of healing lore if you spend a lot of time with my gran. Which I have."
"Wonderful. So you're fitting in alright. I'm glad to hear it."
She knelt down. She smelled like blood and fear and worse, but I'm pretty sure that it was just the apron.
"I would have thanked you before, but..."
She's close. Very, very close. Many of my fantasies have started out this way, but I can't tell if she was coming on to me, or just oblivious to it. Trying to work out which is taking up most of my brain power, so I repeat the last word I had heard. "But?"
"I was upset. Those soldiers I was tending... they were my countrymen. My fathers and my sons. When you told that orc he could help himself to them, you seemed to me to be a monster yourself. Can you imagine what it was like? Hearing your savior tell the ogre that he can slaughter your brothers? I couldn't even speak to you, let alone thank you."
I try to put myself in her position. How would I react if someone saved my skin and then allowed a pack of wild dogs to eat Saintly, or Reader, or Pork Chop? Well, I don't know how I'd feel. But I suppose I wouldn't be in a hurry to offer proper thanks either.
"I see your point, and if I could have saved them, I would have. But it was beyond my power. You understand?" I suppose I should admit that that statement was half bullshit- I really hadn't had the ability to save them, but it wasn't tearing me up inside or anything. But would it really help her in the slightest to know that? She was here, wasn't she? That meant she wanted some kind of closure to what had happened to her. Like I said, lying your ass off to save a brother is perfectly acceptable.
"I know that. And I think you deserve at least my thanks, even if you are a savage barbarian out of the distant Haradwaith." She sounds teasing, warm, removing any possible sting from the words.
"I may be savage, but I ain't from the Haradwaith. Where I come from, the Haradrim are called the Northern Tribes."
"Either way, you'll still be attacking Gondor tomorrow, yes?"
"Well. Yes."
"You may be my enemy, but I owe you one." She got up and started to move away. "Bye, Haroun."
I get up on my elbows. All around me, the men of my section are snoozing peacefully, oblivious to our conversation. "Wait a minute, Zim." She stops and faces me, her arms clasped in front of her, leaning towards me slightly as though I'm the only thing that matters to her right now. "Breaching Minas Tirith is going to be rough. Real rough. We'll bleed more than any army has in the past hundred years. I may not make it. Some dart may fell me, or a Gondorian swordsman best me. For all I know, tonight is my last night on this earth. No more dreams of better days for Haroun. No peaceful slumber for him but the grave." I pause. "Will you stay with me? Let me face my death with a brave face and... pleasant memories?"
Silence. I can't even see her face, how she's taking it.
"Do you know," she says, sounding thoughtful, "Gondor's been in an active state of war for almost thirty years?"
"I've heard something of it, yes."
"Did you know also," she continues, "that every single man of my generation who's ever marched off to war has tried that exact line on me?"
Silence from me. She relaxes her stance, hand on hip, apparently amused as all hell at me.
"Hope you don't hold it against me," I say. "Beautiful woman like you, you just gotta take your best shot, you know?"
She laughs, low and wicked. "Good night, Haroun." And she's gone. Night and silence reign once more. Then Saintly opens his fat mouth.
"Bad luck, old boy. You rescue the princess and she don't even put out for you." All thirty men in the room release long pent up gusts of laughter.
"Fuck all you guys," I tell them, chuckling myself. "Just fuck right off."
Anyway, enough cuteness. Minas Tirith is waiting for us to bust down the door and start the hazing.
Minas Tirith is a fuck-off great city, with seven strong stone walls and over thirty thousand men committed to defending it. The name translates to something like "Tower of the Guard," and that's not the kind of name that you give to a pushover fortress. Word from above claims that busting a hole in the walls themselves is impractical- it's made of some sort of special stone that can't be broken, or guarded by some major sorcery, or something. We'll be busting instead through the Great Gate. No word on how, mind. The Gate is solid iron and has a veritable death zone around it- anyone within three hundred yards of it can be hit by the ballistas, the trebuchets, and about ten thousand archers. Still, we "have a plan to deal with it." So, no sweat, apparently.
On the plus side, the first wave will be nothing but uruks and trolls. So that's a plus. It'll be the same strategy that we've been using all along basically- uruks soak up the damage and distract the other team, while we smite the weak points. In this case, that means we throw the siege towers against every inch of the wall and force them to spread their strength away from the Gate, then it's hey-diddle-diddle, straight up the middle.
As I am writing this, the trebuchets have started their preliminary shots. It's useless battering at the walls, so they're tossing fireballs over them into the city. Let their soldiers fight fires instead of us, by all means. Also, they've apparently been chopping off heads of fallen Gondorian soldiers and tossing them over the walls as well. Disgusting and vile? Yes, indeed. The only question on our minds is, will it in fact harm the enemy's morale or just steel their resolve further?
No way for us to know. But I just hope that the Eye didn't order that little tactic just to be a dick, because if it backfires we'll be the ones to pay for it.
We'll be starting soon. I'll write it up once it's over.
In those days, the Company was still in service to the Eye of Barad-dur. Except now we're not quite so bleeding enthused about it. We started the battle of the Pelennor Fields with almost 600 brothers. Six hours later, we stand 150 strong. It's been centuries since we have been so thoroughly reduced.
My predecessor fell in the fighting, making the Book of Haroun the second shortest Annal in our history. Now the Book of Papa Jack begins.
Jack's not my real name, obviously. The name I was born with no longer applies to me- in my clan, we are named according to our attributes, so our given names change as we do. My first name meant "Little Puma." When I grew into a man, it changed to "Tiger Hand", because I was the best unarmed fighter in my clan. When I joined the Company almost 20 years ago, I told them my name, and they told me that it sounded a lot like Slop Jack. The "Papa" was added later because I was the oldest fresh fish they had ever seen, at age 40. Other than Sapper, who's in his early hundreds, I am the oldest member of the Company. I had been the corporal in charge of D Company. Once Haroun got promoted to Annalist, I got promoted out of the ranks to the position of Standard Bearer, which is mostly out of the way of fighting. At my age, I'll never complain for having to hump around and brawl on command. The Standard Bearer's only duty is to keep our flag safe and visible, and I like to think I did a good job of it in the short time I held the honor. Now Amin has the Standard and I have the Annals. Saintly inherited Sapper's protection detail, and is now scouring our depleted ranks to replace Reader, Blink, and Haroun. Spike will return to duty once Pork Chop is sure that his wounds will be safe from infection.
As I understand it, it is my duty to record every fight and job that comes our way, and to keep us connected to our history. In this case, that means I have to give an account of the battle at Pelennor Fields.
Most of the family that I have in this world died in that battle. I am truly not up for the task of explaining how they died, not now, so soon afterwards. Besides, I need to get a head start on updating the Book of the Slain, which is certain to cramp both my heart and my hand. So, a full description will have to wait. But first-
I have read through Haroun's notes. One of his first entries has to do with his last wishes should he be killed. I am prepared to honor his request.
Brother Haroun, we here record your passing and shall remember you. You die a brother of the Black Company, and we on earth await reunion with you when our own time comes.
I'll tell of the Pelennor fields when we stop and rest on our long and bitter retreat back to Mordor. As a company, we are battered, bloodied, and exhausted. Marching is the last thing we want to do, but there is no alternative. These uruks and Southrons and Easterlings are worse off than us, and they will assuredly stop and be slaughtered where they lay by the triumphant Gondorians if we weren't around to shepherd them. The curse of being an elite is that the better job you do, the more hell they shovel on to your plate.
So. The battle of the Pelennor Fields, A.K.A. the greatest cock-up in the history of warfare. Zim, our newest medic, has been sharing some of the religious beliefs of the Gondorians- standard stuff, really. Anthropomorphic gods of water, of war, of air, and that kind of thing. The staggering display of good fortune on Gondor's part is almost enough to make a believer out of me. I mean, damn it, we had them dead to rights. They were screwed ten different ways from Sunday. And yet not only did they manage to hold us off, they sallied and crushed an army that outnumbered them ten to one.
All I'm saying is, divine intervention now has a definite argument in its favor.
The battle started off wonderfully. The Witch-king threw 50,000 uruks at the walls while sending Grond against the gate. It turns out that he and the other spooks had been supercharging this immense battering ram with sorcery specifically to knock down this particular door. It showed a pleasing amount of forethought on the part of the Eye of Barad-dur. The trolls pulled it forward into an arrowstorm, and gradually swapped enough blood for ground that they wedged it right up against the Gate itself.
I was at the Captain's side the entire time. He was decked out in his Gothmog armor- by tradition, ever since the days of Croaker, the Captain and the Lieutenant have had two suits of sorcerous armor. The actual battle magic on them is slight- just a few charms to repel arrows and turn swords, basically. Their true value lies in the fact that to someone unfamiliar with them, they are flatout scary- black chitinous spikes, glowing eyes like drops of lava, an aura of doom and gloom like all the denizens of hell have blessed this warlock with foul magicks. All illusions, of course. Psychological warfare. Make the other guys think they're fighting another Witch-king; or an Eye; or one of the Tervola of Shinsan. After all, nobody wants to fight against a big, bad, bloodstreaked warlock. In this case, the Captain named his armored persona off of a legendary prince of a demon race called Balrogs. Gothmog, Elf-bane. The Dread Oppressor. The Sunderer of Cities and the Slayer of Feanor. In short, this myth has a lot of power behind it for the peoples of Mordor, and we were more than happy to exploit that reputation. The Lieutenant has a similar armored persona which he calls Throatslitter.
An echoing clash of enchanted steel on mundane steel reaches us. Grond just gave the Great Gate of Gondor a friendly knock. The rain of arrows slow to a trickle. I imagine all of the defenders were sucked in and rendered numb by the spectacle, and while it's unprofessional of them not to have kept up the bow work, I can't blame them. I don't imagine any of them had ever seen a weapon of war like Grond. It was titanic, easily 50 feet tall and 300 feet long. I'm not sure of the exact measurements, since I was so far away, but you can take it as granted that it was huge. Not to mention that it was carved in the shape of a gigantic wolf's head, mouth frozen in a snarl with witch-fire in its maw. No, I can't blame the Gondorians for being awed by it.
The Gate collapses, cracked and vanquished. The Captain sends off a messenger, Redneck, to initiate the Company's advance, while above us all the Nazgul shriek and spread their magic. Things are looking smooth. God damn it, I am nearly 60. I have lived long enough to have developed some healthy pessimism.
As we advance, Sapper, who's marching side to side with the Captain, hits the ground and starts writhing, frothing at the mouth and trembling. Haroun and his boys look scared, like Sapper's gonna die and it's their fault, but I know better. What's happening to Sapper has happened before, just never in their line of sight. It's how big wizards contact little wizards.
Sapper stops twitching himself into a frenzy and lays there, breathing heavily and crying a little. After a short while, he gets up and calmly informs us that the Witch-king is ordering a general halt. He's ready to throw down with the Grey Walker once and for all.
In our opinion, this is macho bull crap. Just let us swarm the old guerrilla and chop him into fishbait, that'll solve the problem. But he's the boss here, and what he says goes.
Now, pay attention here, readers. This is where things go horribly wrong. We were located in approximately the center of the second wave, having quickmarched halfway across the Pelennor fields when the command came to halt. We were too far away to see anything from the wizard's duel except maybe if they started throwing lightning bolts at each other. This information is important, because if we had been on the right flank, we would have died to a man, and if we had been on the left, we would have survived mostly intact. As the Nazgul and the Grey Walker are squaring off, Haroun calls out to the Captain, "Sir! Cavalry, right flank!"
The Captain jerks his head away from the city gate. "Impossible," he whispers. "Oh, damn you, you Nazgul son of a bitch." Louder, he cries out in his steadiest and grittiest command voice, "Sapper, get over here! I need some of your hocus-pocus to see that far."
Out of nowhere, it seems, the enemy has produced 20,000 heavy cavalry and placed them at our right rear, poised to hammer us. We all run the mental arithmetic in our heads, and blanch at what our minds are telling us. 20,000 heavily armored men, all charging down hill, their long lances outreaching any halberds or pikes that try to ward them off. We'll lose the whole right flank, maybe 50,000 uruks, right off the bat. The middle section, which includes us, gets to duke it out with them while they're disorganized, but if our ranks are frazzled by fleeing uruks, we'll be just as badly off-kilter.
"Left flank is our only hope," the Lieutenant whispers hoarsely. The Captain reaches the same conclusion.
"Sapper, contact the Witch-king, tell him to get his ass out of there and help us stem the tide." Sapper, his ordinarily ruddy face now pale with panic, obeys. He closes his eyes and drifts off into a trance as quickly as he can. "Aya, Croc, Redneck, run as fast as you ever have and make the uruks on the left prepare to receive cavalry. You have permission to use deadly force if their commanders contradict you." They run off, leaving their spears behind to run faster. "Ali, Hassan, Toad, fall back and order the Haradrim forward. Again, deadly force if necessary." The Southrons won't get themselves organized and on the bounce in time to stop the tall knights from plowing into us, but they should arrive in time to counterattack.
"Where did they come from?" Haroun sounded nauseous. I can't blame him. "Them Gondorians don't have that kind of cavalry. Only a couple hundred knights. Where..." Had Haroun been with us when the Keltoi Second Horse outflanked us, ten years back? I couldn't remember. If he was with us then, then like me he remembers with horrible clarity what happens to the poor bloody infantry when caught on open ground by heavy horse.
"The Rohirrim," the Captain says. His manner is brisk and confident, because he knows that if he shows any anxiety or uncertainty then panic is inevitable. The Gothmog armor helps a lot. "The Horse people to the north. Intelligence claimed that they were too ravaged by civil war to come to Gondor's aid."
Haroun laughs- an empty, dreadful sound. "Military intelligence, sir. Contradiction in terms."
Horn blasts! Screams in a barbarian tongue! The 20,000 horsemen start towards our right flank, slowly at first, gathering momentum.
I groan. Inexperienced cavalrymen charge haphazardly, depleting their steeds' energy and losing cohesion before ever making contact with the enemy. Not so with these fellows; when they strike, it will be as one whole, keen and prepared to deal death on a large scale.
Aya, Croc, and Redneck return. Redneck has blood streaming down from his scalp and all their swords are smeared with uruk blood. "The uruk regiments are reforming, sir. Slazari, the, uh, the uruk that's in charge now, he says he's forming in a crescent formation, bending his right flank back to connect with you. He requests that you relocate to the rear and interlock with him."
If Slazari survives the following fight, he'll advance far. Most uruks we've met don't comprehend strategy- the ones who do, tend to be valued more by the Eye. I envisioned the uruk's plan. Basically, we were abandoning the doomed right flank and reforming the entire line by bending it like a bow aimed at the Gate. With any luck at all, the horse boys will charge through our fellows and find themselves stymied by a proper pike wall that they can't find a way to flank, with us on the extreme right of that wall.
Ali, Hasan, and Toad haven't returned. We can only hope that no news is good news.
The Rohirrim collide with the uruks on the right, going through them like they weren't even there. One moment, there was a churning, savage horde of sallow little goblin-folk; the next, torn and shattered bodies being flung about like chaff in the wind. The Rohirrim maintain basic cohesion through the first seven ranks before starting to split up, and by that point our lads aren't even fighting any more. They're just trying in vain to escape the terrible lances and swords of the triumphant cavalry. It was flat, firm ground, and offered no opportunity for escape. The horsemen must have laid awake at night during their training, dreaming of fighting battles as easy as this. For them, it wasn't warfare; it was target practice.
Slazari's boys couldn't get in position in time- it is a complicated thing to shift troops around on a battle field like pieces on a chessboard, and the uruks are not known for their discipline. But we have established a basic line of defense, dissolute as it is. The horsemen see our makeshift line, decide there's no point in picking on infantry who might fight back. They fall back, rejoin and redress their lines.
"Oh, no," Sapper wheezes. He looks like he's about to cry. "They'll be charging again, soon. Oh, fuck me-"
"If they strike here," the Captain says, loud enough for the troops to hear, "then they'll break on our spears and decide to aim somewhere else. We're the Black Company, boys, and when it comes to fighting, we're always outnumbered but never outfought. Bullet, get our crossbowmen arranged for supporting our infantry. Any cavalryman who has kept hold of his lance is a priority target." A man on horseback with a sword is a threat, but it's not too bad if you're arranged in a square. That same man with a lance can trot just out of spear range and poke holes through you.
A man in the ranks starts puking from fear. Any other time, he'd be getting catcalls and jeers, but not today.
The Rohirrim turn around and charge into the rear of the uruks and the base of the walls of Gondor. They seem to judge that easing the strain on the defenders is a higher priority then kicking us while we're down.
I would estimate that their second charge slew about another 40,000 uruks and drove another 5,000 towards us. Slazari and his boys gather up most of them and integrate them into their lines. We take advantage of the time that the slaughter is giving us to quick march forward to straighten out the line.
The Captain's on edge. Ali, Hassan, and Toad still aren't back yet. We have no way of knowing whether the Haradrim are coming to the rescue or not. We turn our heads over our shoulders but we can't see clearly enough, and Bullet shouts at anyone who breaks battle discipline. He wants us focused on the task at hand, and he's right to do so. But this not knowing is driving us insane.
Story time temporarily on hold. Bullet is yelling at me to get up off my ass, that we're on the move. I'll continue when we stop again.
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