The Black Company in Middle Earth


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5. The Pelennor Fields, Part Three

So. The horse-lords of Rohan had broken our right and savaged our forward units. In these one-sided fights, they had barely suffered at all- perhaps three dozen men killed and another hundred or so unhorsed. And once they finished off slaughtering the uruks near the walls, they reformed and held fast on their left flank. A brief lull in the fighting commenced, as both the enemy and we tried to get into position to attack each other.

"Now what the hell are they doing?" the Lieutenant asks. He is looking good in his Throatslitter outfit. With any luck, the horse boys will think that as well. We all shrug our ignorance.

The enemy had sallied. They were pouring out of their broken fortress, lining up in cohorts gleaming silver. Under ordinary circumstances, I wouldn't think they had much of a chance in a straight up slugfest against us, but our line, solid and firm though it seems, is shaken and unstable. As an army, we have no fire in our bellies- the cavalry has doused it. Now, the other team is looking to break us for good. Well, so be it. We have reserves, and they don't. A straight up slugfest it shall be.

Now, if I'd been the commander of the other team, this is what I'd have done- I'd send what cavalry I had down to the field to get in contact with the heavy horse, and get them back into position on the right. I'd take advantage of the pause to refortify my broken Gate and sweep the debris clear of my walls. Then I'd sit back and twiddle my thumbs, 'cause there wouldn't be a whole hell of a lot we could do then. Any attack on Minas Tirith would be disrupted and thrown back by the damn cavalry, so we'd need to neutralize them first. But how? We have no horse. The only thing we could do is set up a huge shieldwall facing north and try to ram a horde of uruks through the walls in the south. And every trebuchet and ballista on the walls could pour crunchy death into that shieldwall's ranks. If I was in charge, that's what I'd do, because that would have been tactically sound and possibly unbeatable.

But no- they sallied.

I think it's a cultural thing. The Gondorians can't resist plowing through the weakened ranks of their enemies, even when it would be smarter to hand your opponent enough rope to hang themselves with.

"Sir! Sir!" Hassan has returned at last from his rendezvous with the Haradrim.

The Captain, his eyes blazing witch-light, pumps Hassan for information. Are the oliphaunts coming up? Where's Ali and Toad? What's happening with our scattered forces to the rear?

He informs us: the war-mumakil are on the way; Ali and Toad wanted to try riding them into battle; and fucked if he knew.

The Captain sends him back to the Haradrim with instructions to focus our oliphaunt strike on the right flank, where the bulk of the enemy cavalry has clustered. Hassan speeds off.

We start feeling better about ourselves. After all, our Captain is snapping out instructions left and right, and men are smartly obeying. Clearly, things weren't going wrong at all.

Sapper snaps out of his trance. "Hey, boss! Counterattack on the way!" The Nazgul were preparing to strike directly against the enemy forces, and required a general advance to reinforce them. Sapper quickly starts his exercises to commune with the Nazgul again.

Some of the advance units of Southrons and Easterlings collide with the Rohirrim. Our boys get trashed. The King of Hammad al Ghul is slain in the midst of his Invincibles, and this sends whole sections of the Southrons back to the protection of the slower-marching mumakil.

"Damn it," I hear the Lieutenant whisper to himself. "Stop trying to duke it out piecemeal. Get your fucking act together, then strike."

And then the fucking Lord of the Nazgul went and bought the farm, and that threw us all off-kilter.

Oh god damn you, Bullet, don't make us march anymore. We're tired, and there's no sign of pursuit outside of a couple dozen Gondorian light cavalry. My old bones can't handle much more of this, so let us stop and rest a while.

...

None of us actually saw the death of the Witch-king- we were more concerned with beating back the Gondorian line, and anyway he was on the other side of the battlefield. But we saw the effect it had on our allies, and from that point we were on the brink of collapse all the way back to Osgiliath. While we're stopped I'll interview Sapper about it, since he was the only witness, technically.

Our pet wizard is not looking good. He's pale and haggard, sweaty and gasping. If he was anyone else, I'd say he was about to keel over, but Sapper been through more shit than a fertilizer salesman. His history throughout the Annals indicates he can take a forced march as well of any of us.

Here's how Sapper describes the death of the the Lord of the Nazgul:

"I was in his head. Do you even understand that? I was here with you lot, talking and planning and marching, but that was just my body. My spirit, my chi, was being held inside the soul of the Nazgul. It was not imprisonment, exactly, but the creepy bastard made it clear to all of us that it could turn into that if we didn't obey. It was a cold, dark, tormented land in there, Jack. The Witch-king was not a happy man. I could sense that, in life, he had been the chieftain of a mighty tribe, and he yearned to return to his people again- to protect them from any threats, to help them prosper. But that damn ring of his...

"So. I was in his head, where I could to a certain extent see what he saw and sense his orders to me. I wasn't alone in there- I could feel the presence of the other wizards in our host. There were Black Numenoreans, the sorcerous colonists from across the sea. They once ruled this land with an iron fist, reveling in cruelty and opulence, until their cousins the Gondorians expelled them. If you could sense their hatred and lust for power... There was about a half dozen minor shamans and Shaghun marching with the Haradrim and Easterling factions, and a couple of uruk adepts. We wizards were spread across the host, the nervous system through which the Witch-king could command with unheard-of rapidity.

"Now, he had read the signs, consulted the dark and terrible spirits from Outside, and had received a prophecy. He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that no living man could slay him. Not any of them. You understand that, Jack? If you are a man, and you are alive, then Fate itself has decreed that you can't ever kill him. That's one hell of a confidence booster, let me tell you. He was all set to devour the Grey Walker once and for all when the Rohirrim struck. He got warnings from the uruk bone-chewers on the right flank, so he had to call off the duel with the enemy to save his army. People wonder why, if the big-shot wizards are so powerful, they don't just hammer down any and all obstacles with no fear at all. After all, they're invincible, yes? Why show fear at all if you know you can't be beat? Well, the thing about immortality is, it can work against you in really bad ways. For instance, if the host of the Witch-king had been scattered and the man himself captured, they couldn't kill him, true. But they could coat him in molten silver, wait for it to harden, then toss him into the deepest part of the bay. He might spend untold millions of years screaming in agony, hoping against hope that someone, anyone, would dig him up and crack him open again. Except they still remember he's down there, so of course ain't no one's going to free him. Maybe he's gotta wait until the coast shifts and a new civilization arises, and even then maybe they don't find him. This is why I fully intend to die someday. I've never made no deals with anything that has a claim on my soul once I check out, so unlike a great many sorcerors death has only the normal terrors for me. A lot of these modern day wizards swap their soul for some real power, and then find out that they can't afford to die. Not ever.

"So despite his seeming invulnerability, the Witch-king had a moment of panic when he saw the horseman appear. Even if he himself wasn't captured, what the Lidless Eye would do to him if he lost this battle would make capture seem merciful. In the interest of self-preservation he took to the sky to counteract them.

"His plan was simple and direct- kill the Rohirric king. He knew we couldn't kill enough of the horsemen quickly enough to stop them from rampaging through us all day, so he struck where the enemy is always most vulnerable- the morale. Make a big ostentatious show about slaying their leader, show them how weak and fragile they are, how powerful and invincible we are. Idiots think that warfare is killing the other guys. But like ourselves, he was wise enough to know that warfare is making the other guys run away.

"It worked, to an extent. The Witch-king came at the King like a bat out of hell on his Gharashni, scattered the Guard, and killed the King's horse. So far so good. I could see through his eyes, Jack. Feel his triumph, his joy, his relief at fulfilling his Master's command. No watery grave for him. No decade long torture sessions in the Tower of Barad-dur. I could see the King of Rohan trapped beneath his own horse with a clarity that you mundane types could never replicate. The Witch-king went in for the kill, but there was a snag. One man refused to run. His horse may have had bolted and thrown him, but he picked himself up, grabbed a shield and a sword and stood resolutely between his fallen King and the Lord of the Nazgul. Ballsy move, but a retarded one. Like everything else that happened that day, the other guys did something very stupid that turned out to be devastating.

"There was banter, I remember that. You know the kind I mean. The Witch-king says, 'Back off.' The Rohirrim says, 'Fucking make me.' 'I'll jack your shit up.' 'Oh, yeah?' 'Yeah!' Standard stuff, really. Same posturing that goes on between kids and warriors alike. But there was a... complication. This soldier says just one thing that changed the whole game. It knocked the Witch-king flat on his ass, metaphorically speaking.

"Turns out, that soldier was a woman.

"Yeah, I know.

"These northern peoples are pretty bloodthirsty, you know. They live and breathe warfare- they gotta. Otherwise they would have been conquered by the Dark Tower of Barad-dur ages ago. I guess if you give a nation enough wars per generation, even the women will pick up swords and wade into the melee.

"Now, remember what I said about the Witch-king? That no living man can slay him? Yeah, prophecy can seriously fuck you over. The Laws of Divination and Conjuring have the same mindset that lawyers do. Abruptly the Witch-king was staring into the face of his own mortality, but let's give credit to the old terror. Even after that particularly nasty shock, he fought anyways. A lot of the older spooks of the world are inherently cowards, withdrawing the second that they encounter a threat that might actually leak through their defenses. Not so with him. He stepped up, man, you know?

"Almost won, too. He had the Rohirrim bitch on the ropes for a while, but he got blindsided by a second loophole- a sneaky little halfling stabbed him from behind. After all, halflings aren't men per se. Male, yes. Man, no.

"Halfling. Race of people up north, about three and a half feet high? Shaggy feet and curly hair?

"Never heard of them, huh? Not surprising. I only know about them from some obscure references in the Great Library of Umbar, and from the surface thoughts of the final moments of the Witch-king.

"One moment he was almost in the clear, safe from death, about to smash the impudent mortal with his mace, and then turn and destroy the army of Gondor. Then, a blinding pain in his knee as an ensorcelled blade plunged in...

"After that, oblivion.

"I returned to earth, got up off the ground, wiped the saliva from my chin, and told the Captain that we got trouble."

...

"Captain, we got trouble."

Eyes swivel away from the enemy ranks and onto Sapper. The little wizard is in full panic mode, breathing hard, eyes wide. To anyone who didn't know him, he looked like he was in a rage, but that's just how Sapper expresses his fear. Hurredly, words bumping into each other, he tries to explain that our Dread Captain had fallen.

He mightn't have bothered. Around us, the uruks are breaking- screaming in fear and panic and being routed by nothing at all. We all instinctively figure out that the Nazgul's berserker spell had been broken, and there is only one way that could happen.

Here's the creepy part- if they'd done the smart thing and stayed on the defensive, we could have organized ourselves and stayed in the game. But because they recklessly charged out from behind their walls, they were able to commence with the slaughter. It's like they knew that we were going to break before the Witch-king ever died.

I mentioned the theory of divine intervention before. Papa Jack the life-long skeptic calls bullcrap. Papa Jack the survivor of the Pelennor Fields is a little more open minded.

The Company loses two hundred men in that short retreat. We have to heel and toe it to avoid being surrounded, and we can't count on Slazari to keep his men in line to support us. We fight in perfect formation while retreating over three hundred yards. Anyone else would have broken, but we are the Black Company, and we do not break. We stay calm, we snarl and tear at the enemy like clockwork devils, and we bleed like stuck pigs. Our crossbows can keep the enemy from closing in with enough cohesion to seriously threaten our line, but that's about the only advantage we have. Sapper is hurling lightning and fireballs whenever the enemy gets close enough.

I am on the front line marching back, all the way. Underneath my elderly exterior, I am still Tiger Hand, and the Gondorians who get close enough to threaten my brothers find out my Name the hard way.

A couple of squads of archers try to close in to kill our crossbow men, and a missile duel commences that is short-lived but intense. We drive them off and continue our retreat, but we lose a dozen brothers. I believe that Haroun, were he present, would want me to note that this is where Blink died. He was always very conscious of the safety of his men. Blink caught an arrow in his right eye, dead before he knew it. If only all battlefield deaths were that clean.

The Haradrim with their oliphaunts catch up with our retreating forces and rally them. Ali and Toad get to ride in and play the hero. We check the enemy's forward advance under a rain of arrows and drive them backwards.

The Captain orders Croc, Redneck and Hassan to the Haradrim forces, and tells them to link up with Ali and Toad and tell them to act as mobile defensive positions, and having done that, to take field command of the Southrons and Easterlings still in Osgiliath and use them to batter holes in the Gondorian line. The general plan he has come up with is to circle around the mumakil, allow the other team to break on our defenses, and then counterattack once they've been thrown back. It's a long way back to the city from our position near Osgiliath, and they'll be exhausted- too exhausted to run fast enough, perhaps. Win big enough here, we might not even have to lay siege to the Minas Tirith- there won't be enough defenders to cover the Gate.

So followed about ten to fifteen minutes of unrelenting and unimaginative bloodletting. It felt like longer, of course, but it always does when you're in the middle of it.

Haroun would have liked me to note that this is where Reader died. Three Rohirrim targeted him specifically for his stature and role as a linchpin in our line. Reader slew the first rider with a single blow from his warhammer, knocked the second's spear away with his shield, and got run through by the third. I was next to him on the line, so I saw the whole thing. He was avenged, if that means anything. I speared the rider's horse and while he was trying to get himself untangled from his dying steed, Aya Bastard split his skull.

After that brief but spirited melee, the tables turn. The enemy has given us his best shot, and hurt us worse than we thought possible, but we survived it and now we have them outnumbered on open ground. They have no stone barricades between us and them, no high ground, no advantages other then force of arms. So we pour into them, gladly swapping blood for blood and straining at them to break and turn their backs so we could swallow them whole. Croc, Redneck and Hassan fling their new commands into the Gondorian flanks, are beaten back, and try and try again. As Haroun so astutely noted, the swordsmen of Rhun and the savages of Far Haradwaith are mere battle foddder, to be slaughtered wholesale, but killing them in droves tires out the Gondorian swordarms. Toad and Ali keep the Haradrim organized, pressing forward inexorably. The enemy has no strategy for dealing with the great monsters, and most importantly the damn horsemen can't get their steeds anywhere near the men fighting under the oliphaunts' protection. The Gondorians can only stumble back to the Gate of Minas Tirith, leaving a steadily thickening trail of dead men and screaming wounded. Victory, it seems, is ours.

But of course, we didn't win. You can probably tell from the fact that I'm telling this story while we're retreating back to Minas Morgul with our tails between our legs.

As we pressed forward, dashing the military might of Gondor through sheer numbers, we were reinforced further. The Black Ships of the Corsairs of Umbar came up the Anduin. We broke off from the retreating Gondorians to weigh our new position. We did the mental calculations and arrived with glee at our conclusions. There were about fifty ships, each of which could hold more than a hundred fighters- and we knew from our time in Umbar that every man jack of them could hold his own in a melee. They did not understand about shieldwalls or maneuvers or anything like that; they were strictly raiders and skirmishers. But in their own specialized field, they were the undisputed kings of mayhem. They were all tough as nails and tested in at least a dozen minor battles each- moreover, they were fresh. They haven't been humping and brawling all day long. Even better, we could see that they would arrive on the extreme left flank. One quick march could get them in between the other team and the city.

The Captain immediately sent out the word- every unit hit 'em hard. Press them, harry them, give them no chance to break off and get home to dig in. Now is the time for the big push. Give it everything you've got.

The sturm and drang of battle escalated. The enemy sensed its own demise, but as Sapper said, these northerners are raised on warfare. Finding out that their cause is lost only made them heft their shields and dig in for one massive last stand.

Well, that's fine. Once the Corsairs come for you, we all think, we'll see just how defiant you are.

The Captain needs someone to fill the Corsairs in on the battle plan. All his usual messengers are out egging our allies on, so I get the job. Since Sapper is fairly well protected behind the whole of the Company, he doesn't need any protection, so Spike and Bop are sent with me in case the Corsairs don't feel like playing well with others. We are sent with a detachment of Slazari's folk to rendezvous with the pirates.

There was a slight problem.

The lead ship unfurled it's flag- the silver tree of Gondor.

Jaws drop. Uruks hiss and growl in confusion and dismay. Spike, Bop, and I stare at it, minds working.

"They must have captured it from a Gondorian regiment downstream somewhere," Spike says.

"Yeah, obviously," Bop says.

"They must be flying it to demoralize the enemy," I opine.

We look over our shoulders towards the battle in unison.

"Of course," I note, "it's backfiring. The other team seems to be taking heart from it."

"Ha! They must think that help is on its way," Spike says.

"Dumbasses! Just imagine that somehow the Corsairs decided to backstab us, seize this dock, and... fall onto our flank..." Bop looks suddenly thoughtful.

We all peer at the ships. Something seems off.

"How come none of those Umbar pirates are brown?" Spike asks. His normally dark skin is now an ashy grey.

"They're all white boys," Bop adds uneasily.

We all pause. The truth sinks in.

"Oh, shit," I say softly. "Not again. Oh, shit."

Spike nods his assent. "We better get the fuck out of here."

"Do we warn Slazari's boys?" Bop asks.

"No," I tell him. "If they're still hanging around when those marines come, they'll buy us time with their blood. Leave 'em to it."

I don't think they liked it, but they saw the wisdom of it. We got half way back to the Captain before our side was dealt its death blow.

Of all of us here, only Sapper has any idea of what hit us once the black ships with white men touched shore, and he ain't sharing. He only notes that in this ancient and bloody world, there are mysteries that history has forgotten; untapped areas of power that we today cannot imagine. All he will say is that we were driven off by one of the elder horrors that time forgot, and that he's pretty sure that Gondor could only use it once. Being deprived of his professional opinion, all I can say is that it was similar to the fear-spell that the Nazgul were so fond of, except much grander in scale.

The hosts of Mordor were abruptly terrified, driven almost to insanity with fear and panic. The army of Gondor and her allies had a goddamn field day, smiting us hip and thigh.

This is where most of our casualties came from. Haroun died somewhere in this shitstorm, but I didn't see it, and everyone else was too busy overdosing on fight or flight response to notice it either. However, three separate eyewitnesses claimed to have seen him lying in a pool of his own blood. We can't reclaim the bodies of our brothers from this battlefield, so no details of his death are forthcoming.

We are now legends in the army of Mordor. We alone stood our ground and did not break under the tidal wave of deadly steel that swamped us. Our allies whisper that we are immune to magic, that we are without fear, that we are blessed by Morgoth. Bullcrap, all of it. The fear spell hit us as hard as anyone else, and you'd better believe we got scared. The only difference is this: we have had the correct response to most any situation mercilessly drilled into us by Bullet. When the fear hit, we did the right thing, and 150 of us survived because of it.

Mind you, the battle wasn't over, technically. Countless uruks, Easterlings, and Southrons got caught with their backs to the river and had to fight to the death. Suicidally brave squads of Gondorian archers got in close enough to our oliphaunts to shoot them in the eyes. One by one, the only bastions of defense we possessed were killed and the troops under the umbrella of their protection were scattered. That's how we lost Ali and Toad. For that matter, most of the men we sent out to neighboring units died with their new commands. The fighting continued for hours yet, but it was bloody, pointless, and predetermined.

Spike, Bop, and I had to hit the ground and play dead to avoid death or capture. After the main host of the enemy passed us by we tried to cross the Anduin, but were caught by a group of lolly-gaggers- tall, grim, weatherstained bravos from up north. We beat them off, but Spike got stabbed multiple times in the course of it. We had to drag his sorry ass back to safety overnight. We rejoined our fellows the next day in Osgiliath, right before we had to withdraw into the trenches of Ithilien, and from there to the safety of Minas Morgul. Pork Chop says that Spike was more corpse than living man when we brought him to the makeshift field hospital. However, Zim apparently has the magical power to heal dinged-up soldiers, and kept him stabilized during the 100 mile march to Minas Morgul.

Oh, hell, that reminds me. Rumor has it that Haroun and Zim were sweet on each other. I hope I'm nowhere nearby when the news is broken to her.

...

So, that's the story of the Pelennor Fields. May future generations of Company men learn well from our defeat, and so avoid it in their own time.


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