| Previous |
It will take a while for the other team to work up the energy necessary to attack. Saintly's started his little guerilla campaign, so they've been missing a few meals lately, running low on arrows and can't replace their worn out boots. It's hard to march on an empty stomach and in crappy boots.
A few quick strikes and counter strikes to the northeast. We had them on the run, chopped them up good and sent them packing, then got struck full on by a battalion of wolves. I can't learn the details because there are few to be had- nothing but terse messages from our troops out there on the left flank. We've hurt each other bad, that's all I know for sure. We only withdrew from the fight when that son of a bitch Numenorean showed up and uncorked a few surprises on us.
The exact second the Captain found out the heavy hitter was miles to the north, he struck out hard at the troops opposite him on the grounds that we might as well get your licks in in while the rate is cheap. Get the message across that every place that he is absent from is in peril. Run the little bastard ragged trying to be everywhere at once.
Webfoot decided to go for broke and raid Grufoz, which had no defenses against naval attack, because before we came along there was no enemy on the water to defend against. He unloaded his men onto the docks and scattered the surprised guards. He then tossed about a half ton of stockpiled food in the ocean and then hightailed it before reinforcements showed up. On the way back to southern waters, he stops and launches raids inland, ambushing enemy troops on the march and raking them viciously. And then looting their corpses for any food they were carrying.
His marines are now unbearably smug, but in a good way.
"So what's it like?" I ask Angnar in our camp near the Duath river. "Working with uruks. Fighting alongside them. Aren't you bitter enemies, or something?"
Angnar is the capo of the Auxiliary Corps- an elf. He's short, but not as short as an uruk; thin as a spear; blonder than any human would have a right to be. He has also spent the last five centuries suffering in the labor camps, so it's a little disconcerting when he turns his empty, haunted gaze on you.
"A little," he says, shrugging. He is graceful in his every movement; like watching a panther wade into a pool. I would judge him to be a very dangerous man with whom to start any kind of shit at all. I was glad that he and his elves and dwarves were on our side. "I've spent so much time dreaming about killing them all, it's been a difficult adjustment to make."
"And yet you wouldn't know it to look at you."
"There's precedent for it. Orc and elf side by side on the line," he says in his light, almost musical voice. His soft blue eyes fall on me, giving me the chills. I'm not sure if Angnar has been rendered permanently scary-eyed from his time in torment, or if all elves are like this, or if Angnar is a psycho even by elf standards. Angnar has the same look that sharks do- cold, emotionless, black as pitch. Yes, I know I just wrote that his eyes are blue. But under the blue, there's nothing but night.
"Really?" I cock my head. "That's news to me. You hear them talk about it, elves have been hunting uruks since eternity began."
"True, true," he sighs. He gazes lazily at the uruks who have split themselves into small groups around the campfires. We can't hear their conversation, but having been in their situation for forty years straight I know what they are talking about- old friends, their chances of winning tomorrow, how much they hurt, how they wish they could expect some goddamned support from the idiots over in wherever. Well, actually, I suppose Angnar might be able to hear them- elves are gifted like that. Angnar quirks a corner of his mouth up. "The current crop of uruks know nothing of the past. They have no history, not the way we do." He laughs shortly. "The way we do. What a foul jest. I haven't had a people to call my own since Mordor was established so long ago. I've had to make my own family out of my unfortunate comrades in suffering."
"I hear that."
"Orcs and elves once fought together. There was an immense battle, long ago, far away to the north. Beyond the Misty Mountains. The Noldor had been waging war against Morgoth the Enemy for centuries. They were mighty, and proud, and skilled in combat. But they were complete and utter dunces. Brains made from gravel and spit." He giggles unexpectedly. For a guy with such a pleasant sounding lilt in his voice, his laugh sure is creepy. "They kept fighting each other instead of the Enemy. They kept preferring to live comfortably on their new estates instead of bringing the fight to Morgoth. This went on for a long, long time. Longer than you can easily comprehend."
He leans back and takes in the night sky, made dull black because our fires drown out the stars. He lets out a breath I don't think he knew he was holding.
"O Elbereth Gilthoniel! I haven't seen my stars for so long," he chokes out without the slightest sign of self-consciousness. "The air here is as bad as the inhabitants." He then goes silent, brooding. "I wish I was a mortal. Life would be so much more tolerable."
I raise an eyebrow. "I wish I was immortal. Life would be so much longer."
Angnar giggles again. I remind myself to stop amusing him; it's just not worth it. "This is funny, isn't it? Two races, each yearning for the gift the other has been given. We, the gift of everlasting life. You, the gift of death."
"Gift, hell. You grow into a fragile old man, and then you try complaining about everlasting youth."
"You experience five centuries of unending grief and torture, and then you try complaining about dying of natural causes."
"Touche."
He falls silent, sitting still. I prompt him, "So?"
"What?"
"The story. The Enemy, the stupid-ass Noldor. The uruks and elves fighting together."
"Ah." He gathers himself up and goes back into story-telling mode. "After many, many years of conflict and indescribable idiocy, the free races banded together to put the Enemy down once and for all. This time, they were going to retake the Silmarils or die trying."
"Silmarils?"
"Three brilliant jewels of ageless beauty, beyond any price. Morgoth stole them from the Undying Lands centuries before. In them, it is said, you could still see the unbroken glorious light of the newly made creation. That's what the Noldor were supposed to be after, but as I said, they were fools. In that great battle, every race was divided right down the middle, for Morgoth was a cunning Lord and had been working in the shadows to disrupt the alliance against him. He corrupted men, and dwarves, and elves, and had great hosts of all three on his battle lines when the time came to fight.
"But just as he was reaching out with his left hand to suborn our folk, loyal orcs were slipping out of his right. Over 200,000 orcs defected and came to fight against him, side by side with the Noldor."
His handsome features twist into thoughtfulness. "They were brave. They all knew what would happen to them if they were captured, so they marched forth knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that they would either die or win their lives back. And one way or another, it would be decided by sundown. Well, they never got their lives back, I'm afraid,"
I stir the fire uncomfortably. "So, the Noldor lost, then."
"Oh, yes. Rather badly. The Enemy was not only cruel, sociopathic, and narcissistic, he was also a cheater. My point is, the apple doesn't fall from the tree, you know?" He sweeps his arms around him, referring to all our recruits.
"...what?"
"The orcs," he continues on with great relish, "are elves with twisted souls. Nothing more. They cannot even by considered a separate race, technically speaking, though of course we still like to refer to them as such. The Enemy had decided to make a mockery of the elves, and so near to the beginning of time itself he captured thousands of them. He tortured and mutilated and warped them and molded them in his own image." In my humble opinion, Angnar may be more than a little uruk himself. Not physically, but mentally. "And from his sick little experiments, the orcs were born."
He lets loose another gale of joyous laughter. "And now look at them! They're reverting. You Southrons have worked wonders on them, you know? You've retaught them loyalty, courage, honor, self-respect. The greatest heroes in history have been brought low by a single flaw. Apparently, it can work in reverse as well- the most twisted and bent souls can be lifted up by a single virtue. I wouldn't be surprised if the descendants of these fellows look more and more like elves."
"Hmm," I said. I really couldn't think of anything to say to that. I decided that I liked Angnar, but that I should probably avoid him in the future if at all possible. He's a very unsettling person to be around.
And we're retreating again. Our rally point is the city of Czernograd, at the delta of the Duath river. The enemy host is slowing down- wounded and ravenous and struggling to knock their way through obstinate resistance. They can't stage any operations to the southeast, due to Webfoot's marine corps, and the terrain is rough and easily defended to the northwest, so they've been hammering away at our center as best they can. So the Captain had the last of Sapper's caltrops spread liberally about the center of our retreating line.
Some nights, we can hear the other team howling in frustration and rage. The howling becomes literal if there are wolves involved.
Mind you, not all is wine and roses. Of the 10,000 we started with, over 3,000 are dead- one third gone, erased. That is my duty in this campaign- I keep the Book of the Slain updated. This is pretty much a full-time job, so I'm given no duties at all beyond the Annals. I know better then anyone save the Captain that we are almost as roughed up as the enemy is. But as Shatarz had pointed out, we get fed well after every engagement, while they are practically reduced to eating each other.
Barring any disasters, I think we have a chance.
The Captain is one sharp-eyed fellow. He has noticed that the wolf legions of Mordor never seem to suffer supply problems like the rest of their force- they can still ride all night and fight all day, so to speak. After a few hours of investigation, he has discovered that the wolves eat their fallen comrades, gleaning sustenance in abundance off of every battleground.
First off, this is revolting. Uruks are unpleasant enough without adding them to the dinner menu.
Second, now that we know how they feed, we can hear opportunity knocking. The Old Man cooks up a scheme to put a serious stitch in the side of the other team.
First, Webfoot launches an amphibious campaign up and down the coast, trying to locate the Black Numenorean and pin him down. Once they find him and force him into fighting them, Webfoot sets up massive fires fueled by enemy corpses and generous doses of naptha. This signals Bullet and Salim to start a major offensive to the northwest, far away from that pale little bastard's sphere of influence. They retake a few miles of land, slaying thousands and reveling in the resulting chaos. Reinforcements can't arrive in time to check them, due to the general squalor and starvation and lack of command structure in their organization. Hell, if we had three times our numbers, we probably could have had them dead to rights in this stroke alone, but there you are. With only 4,000 effectives on the attack, we can only do so much before getting bogged down and losing momentum.
We make good use of the breathing space Bullet and Salim's advance brought us.
I am the one in charge of Operation: Corpse Greaser, as the uruks under my command have dubbed it. You see, the manufacturing centers around the Sea of Nurnen stock plenty of poisons; some subtle and elegant, and some as blunt and unapologetic as a hammer blow. Me and my command take it all and advance just behind our attacking comrades, sprinkling each corpse we find with some of the nastiest shit that Mother Nature and the Red Eye's imagination can produce.
I disliked the operation's name at first, but I suppose that a bad joke that's made a mile behind the lines becomes hilarious once you get into the thick of it. By the time I'm through daubing wolf-death onto the fallen enemy, I'm cracking horrible jokes and making tasteless puns like the rest of my uruks.
A message from Pork Chop summons me to his makeshift hospital in Czernograd.
"So, how did it go?" Pork Chop doesn't even bother to look up from his work as he addresses me- a silent, pale uruk with a wide gash in his abdomen is in need of stitches and painkillers, though we had no painkillers available. Early on, we had confiscated every ounce of hashish from the men, but that has long since run out.
"What?"
"The poisoning thing." He carefully snips off the thread and pats the uruk on the shoulder, as though out of obligation and habit, then sends for the next one. The new guy is missing his left hand. "Corpse Greaser."
"Eh."
"That good, huh."
"It worked. I mean, no drama on that front." I quash my instinct to rush outside as Pork Chop cauterizes the stump with a hot iron. I've been in the business for a long time, but I'm still uncomfortable around the medical side of things. Too much time spent in armies whose idea of medical care is primitive at best. I remember being astounded when I joined the Company and found out that more of us die on the field than in the hospital tent. "But I can't say it was at all enjoyable. Must've been 4,000 corpses we smeared that shit on. Not a fucking day at the park, you know? Crap jokes aside."
"I hear you." The uruk, who had remained stock still as his left wrist burned, nodded as calmly as he could and staggered away carefully, trying not to show how woozy he was. The next came in. This one had a broken off arrow through his knee.
"Of course," I add, as Pork Chop saws away at the arrowhead on the other side, "I don't imagine that all the blood and guts I had to wade through would stir much sympathy from you. I mean..."
"Yeah, whatever." The uruk squeals in torment as Pork Chop slides the wood out of his leg. "There you go. Smooth as anything. Some of you guys will do anything to get out of walking, eh?"
The uruk nods his head, eyes wide and neck tilted. "Ha," he gasps. "Lazy-ass Parckaz, they call me. I'm a fucking sloth."
Pork Chop grins, deftly concealing whatever is happening on the inside. "That's the spirit. Send the next one in, please."
Then, to me; "Hey, listen, you got the Captain's ear, yeah?"
I close my eyes and looked away from the black blood that's pooling on the stone floor. "Sort of, yes."
"Them tell him this, from me. I'd tell him myself, but I got a lot on my hands at the moment, and I'm not sure he'd listen to me. Tell him we can't keep this up anymore."
"I'm not sure if it's my place to correct the Old Man's tactics, Pork."
"No, listen, I ain't talking about tactics or strategy or nothing. I'm talking about cold, hard facts. If we keep charging forward aggressively, swapping body shots and shit, we're going to start losing wounded simply because there won't be enough of me to go around. I can barely keep up with the demand as it is."
The next guy has come in. It's a Company brother, a man named Dizzy who has a dagger plunged into his belly. I suspect that Dizzy's a dead man already, but what are we going to do, send him away again? Pork Chop sits him down and gets to work.
"Tell the Captain, defense only. I can only stay on top of things if he stops sending me new legions of broken bodies to fix up every hour on the fucking hour. Tell him that, will you?"
I depart, holding a hand over my mouth and nose to block the stench of blood and fear and infection gone rampant. Outside Pork Chop's surgery room, there's a line of a bit less than 300 men holding themselves stiffly, seeping blood from various holes in their bodies and/or missing significant portions of themselves. In addition to the room I'm exiting, there are three other groups taking in the casualties- there's Pork Chop's apprentice Wee Lad, an uruk shaman who has some slight knowledge of piecing people back together, and three recruits who had volunteered for the duty. I doubt that the newcomers knew how to even stitch someone up before Pork Chop taught them how.
I pass Pork Chop's message on, with my recommendation that the Captain ought to take it seriously.
Operation: Corpse Greaser is a rousing success. We just wiped out over half the wolves in the enemy host in a single day.
Hooray.
I hope that we can survive another victory like this one.
The other team is knocking on our front door in Czernograd. They immediately threw 10,000 men into our defenses and watched them get chopped to pieces. We've been setting up shop here since we took over, which they found out the hard way. They fall back, discouraged and bleeding, and then grudgingly set up barricades to prevent us from sallying.
They have little food. They cannot function, not as well as they need to. But this is our last line of defense. Behind us is flat, gentle farmland and small towns with weak defenses. We have no place else to run. We have to stand here and fight it out as best we can.
5,000 of us against 40,000 of them. We have homefield advantage and all the time in the world.
Confidence in our victory is shaky, but omnipresent. Every one thinks we can do it, but no one is sure that we will do it.
The enemy host ran out of arrows. Their archers, rearmed with bucklers and long knives, join the infantry in the trenches.
Our crossbowmen and uruk archers are thrilled beyond reason. Now, instead of having to play at sniper duels with obstinate opponents, they can just set up massive shooting contests amongst themselves, picking off the enemy one grunt at a time, often betting on who can score the most confirmed kills. If you believe the bowmen, we wiped out over 10,000 enemy soldiers, though I put it closer to 300. The other team learns quickly to hug the dirt properly, so we're not exactly inflicting massive amounts of casualties.
And then things get into a dull routine, with them digging their trenches closer and closer to our walls while we snipe their engineers as often as possible.
Once they get close enough, things will start up again.
The balance of power on the Sea of Nurnen has shifted unexpectedly.
Near the start of the campaign, just a few short weeks ago, the other team had tried to put some ships in the water to counteract Webfoot's predations. Their attempt to wrest naval supremacy from us was half-hearted and shortlived- Webfoot had contemptuously boarded the poorly constructed crafts, butchered the crew, and then sent the boats back to Grufoz in flames.
Their second attempt this morning was far more successful.
One moment, our marines were basking in the dull morning sun (for the sunlight is always dull in Mordor), shipping out to wreak some havoc on the western coast, chopping through the bitter water at a fair pace. Then, the sea around them starts boiling, and to their surprise, the boiling spot follows them at the same speed they're going. They slow down, the boiling pool of water slows down; they haul ass and try to lose it, it keeps pace.
The boiling water surrounds two ships of the eight total in our navy.
And when the crews lean out over the railings to try and get a closer look at the churning water, massive pale tentacles come out and snatch them into the water. Before the surviving marines jerk away from the sides of their ships, they see the thrashing water turn black with blood.
For the two ships that were attacked, it is merely the beginning of the end. The tentacles are relentless and swift. When the marines try to seek shelter beneath the deck, the tentacles crash through the paneling and smash the crafts into splintered wood and torn bodies. The monstrous white arms then sift through the wreckage, seeking any survivors and dragging them down into the thrashing waters, into the depths...
The other six ships in our little armada were powerless to help- they're designed for shipping, not war. They had no built in ballistas, no ramming spikes. Webfoot tried shooting arrows into the boiling water, but the monsters didn't seem to even notice.
Webfoot called his men home to Czernograd before the tentacle monsters can target his six remaining ships.
In the space of a few heartbeats, our marine corps loses 72 men out of 346.
We'll have to keep an eye on Webfoot. He spoke in a near monotone when he gave his report.
Shatarz and several other veterans of the Mines of Moria have stepped forward and volunteered information. They had worked with a monster matching the marines' descriptions- they had slipped him into a largish pool by the western end of the Mines, carried by underground currents from who knows where. When the dwarves tried to sally out of that end, they discovered that the tentacles could reach onto the shore, so they retreated back into the blood-stained dark to avoid getting dragged into the water.
Shatarz's reports are not encouraging. He had never actually seen the monster in its entirety, just the tentacles and its actions. He has no idea how to kill it without entering the water and swimming down to the body that the arms are attached to- an approach that we prefer not to try if at all possible.
Webfoot broods, then approaches the Captain to gain access to our captured stores of poisons. He stocks up every ounce of nasty shit we have and stows it onboard, then takes to the seas looking for blood.
He returns three hours later, at dusk, missing another ship.
The Captain sends me to debrief him, since Webfoot's intel needs to get into the Annals as well as into his hands.
I debated with myself on how to handle the situation- should I be pure professionalism, concerned only with facts and figures and allow no room for emotion? Should I seek to be empathetic, to help Webfoot process his loss? What, if anything, is the right way to do this?
Finally, I decided to just ask him how it went and play it by ear.
Webfoot and I were in my tent, early into the night. Having more privacy then I actually needed, there were few passers-by and no interruptions.
He looked like hell. He picked up a slight injury on the left side of his face, a jagged crimson slash across his cheek; I imagine it came from a flying splinter. His shoulders were slumped, and he sat like a man too tired to remain upright.
"I know you all got beaten up," I tell him, "but did you get them?"
"No. They don't like all the shit we put in the water, but they were alive when we disengaged," He breathes deep, lets it out in a ragged rush of exhaustion. "They swarmed over Blackhawk's ship, both of the little fuckers. One started in on the bow, the other on the stern. Those boys never had a chance."
"I'm sorry." Even to my ears it sounded stupid.
Webfoot waves his right hand and shakes his head. Not a drama. "It felt like Pelennor, Papa. Just like when we had to watch those poor fucks on the right get outflanked by the Rohirrim. Except this time it was my boys and not total strangers."
Webfoot hawks and spits in the direction of the Sea. "I'll figure out how to beat those fucking tentacle monsters. Just you fucking wait."
He did. Sort of. Each ship now carries a few barrels of poison every time it goes out. Standard procedure for them is to keep a sharp eye out for boiling water. If spotted, the whole crew dips their blades and arrowheads into the poison barrels, then sloshes a couple of gallons of liquid death over the side. Then they form square in the center of their ships. I'm sure that there's a technical term for the middle part of the boat, but hell, I'm a lubber.
The monsters don't like getting close to that rancid shit, and even if they overcome their apparent revulsion, they can't snag many people and drag them overboard.
Stalemate, of a kind. Our sea mobility has been greatly neutralized- we do not have sufficient ships to mount the kind of amphibious assaults that Webfoot loves so much. But nor can the other team try to bypass Czernograd by sea.
So we lost a lot of good men in exchange for not a whole lot.
I hope all the brevet-privates in our army are paying attention, because this kind of bull crap happens to us all the fucking time.
The other guys come at us, we greet them with a hail of missiles, and then we both get down to the grim business of hacking each other up. Same shit, different day. And after they retreat, we all lick our wounds and grab some grub.
Whoop de fucking do.
Are you happy, Captain, sir? I've updated the Annals, just like you asked. Did they need to be updated? Did anything of interest or import occur since the last time I wrote? Hell no, of course not.
I truly can't wait for this tired little campaign to wind up. My only consolation is that the other team is about a bazillion times more miserable than we are.
I consider myself a generally optimistic man. I can usually make the best of anything that life chooses to throw at me, I can stay positive and look on the bright side and so on.
However, I can't ignore reality when it hits me right between the eyes.
We're going to lose. I wish to fuck I could see some distant ray of hope, but it's just not there.
From the south just past the Mountains of Shadow, well-armed and bloodthirsty tribesmen are streaming over the mountain. From what Ghazi's scouting expedition gleaned, they number approximately 3,000, all fanatically loyal to the Red Eye and positioned worryingly close to our supply depots in South Nurn. Oh, we could turn around and whup them hard, but manpower, manpower! We can't destroy them and have enough men to fight the raggedy-ass host besieging us in Czernograd. So we send the Auxiliaries off the front lines to go Southron hunting. 450 warriors against 6 times their number. Dwarves and elves are badasses, no doubt, but they have to cover such a large area from such a large force...
In the East, a fresh block of Variags numbering 2,000 are aiming to march down the eastern shore and wreck everything in their path. We do not have soldiers anywhere near that area, nor the means to transport them there, so all we can do is let them march and reinforce Angnar once they link up with the Southrons.
On the high seas, Webfoot makes little progress fighting the sea monsters. It's as close to a stalemate as it's going to get- they can't close in on our remaining marines, but our marines can't touch them at all. But since the stalemate prevents us from mounting any amphibious offensive, they won from a strategic viewpoint.
There's just too fucking many of them and not nearly enough of us. If only the main host across the lines to the north would up and starve to death already, we could turn and rip apart the two smaller armies. But Saintly can't kill enough of the supply wagons to choke them to death instantly, so they're dying slowly. Too fucking slowly.
Once our own supply caches start getting hit by the Southron savages, we won't be much better off.
I think that when we deserted the army of Mordor and came here to recover our Annals, we made a bad bet, and now we're going to get burned. We may well have to pay double, just like in Tonk.
Just a general progress report.
Webfoot managed to drive one of his tentacle monsters into shallow water on the southern shore. His boys rammed poisoned pikes down into the water aiming at it blobbish body, while archers sent shafts into its thrashing arms. The monster died hard, apparently. Really hard. So Webfoot dragged its carcass onto dry land just to make sure it was going to stay dead. In killing it, he lost another two ships. So he may have reduced his obstacles, but his capabilities diminished as well. I don't think we'll ever regain the momentum on the seas- I suspect that soon his bold marines are going to be strictly land troops.
Angnar's dead. By all accounts he died well, like that means anything; he fell charging with three other elves headlong into a pack of Southrons in order to cover his men's retreat. A dwarf named Grimhald took command. I know nothing about him, other then that he has been given an impossible job that he doesn't dare fail. Poor little bastard.
Things are still gridlocked in Czernograd. Our casualty rate had dwindled greatly in that area, as Salim has been steadily whipping the vinegar out of the opposition.
Provisions to get the Annals out of Czernograd have been made. We picked the toughest, most durable men we have, and tell them upfront that the survival of their new family depends on them. I am aboard a barge with the Annals, floating down the Ephel Duath towards the section of the mountain range that borders nominal Gondorian territory.
| Previous | Next |