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Amin with the Standard. Myself with the Annals. 68 roughnecks armed to the teeth. We just need to hike through the narrow, twisty paths of the Ephel mountains to reach the vaguely friendly territory of Ithilien. At which point we tell the Gondorians that, no, really, we are on their side now, and never mind that we once tried to wipe Minas Tirith off the map.
Obviously, gaining the locals' trust will be difficult. But as long as we are alive and have our past intact, we'll power through anything.
However, we are not abandoning our brothers. We'll stick around until we actually lose. We're not cowards running from the fight. We're just... more practical than honorable, that's all.
I am stationed at the foot of the Ephel Duath, far from the grim slaughter and hectic mayhem of the front lines. Life here is calm, if decidedly nervous. I sleep well in my little makeshift shelter, without being disturbed by the screaming and horrific smells and constant tension of trench warfare.
When I went to sleep last night, I had a dream. Maybe it was just an ordinary, run of the mill dream, or maybe it was something else. I don't know. But I'm assuming it's the real deal, and so I record it.
I don't know where I was. At the time it all seemed quite natural and it was perfectly obvious where I was and what I was doing there, but you know how dreams are.
Sapper was there. He looked compact and muscular- nothing at all like the chubby little spitfire I knew. His face, brown to start with and tanned by decades spent on the march, was now transformed into a noble and even handsome countenance. This was the face of a wisdom and power, containing both grace and dignity. I barely recognized him, of course, looking like that. After the intial confusion, we got to talking.
"Is this a dream?" I remember asking him. I remember having looked around at my environment. Whatever I saw seemed normal enough, but I can't remember it.
"Yes. Or, no, not really. Sort of." Ah. Sapper's face may have changed drastically, but his speech had not. Still the same old barely hidden contempt for people dumber than he is. "It looks like a dream, feels like a dream, and obeys the same rules as dreams. But it is not a dream."
"Uh huh. Is there any particular reason you look like a body builder with the face of a wise sage?"
Sapper looks annoyed. Well, he always looks annoyed, but now he looks it even more so. "Don't push me, Jack."
"What? It was just a question."
"In these kinds of not-dream, your self-image gets projected into public. Occasionally, things get a little... embarrassing."
I grin. "You see yourself as a cross between the the Grey Walker and a bare knuckle boxer."
"Don't. Push. Me."
"That's..." I search for the most appropriate insult. "That's adorable, Sapper. You really think you're the resident wise man?"
"Well, it's better than you."
I look down at myself. "As far as I can tell, I am unchanged."
He chortles. "Of course you do. When I look at myself, I see the fat old geezer that I always see. It's only when others see you that your self-image comes out."
"What do I look like, then?"
"Like a young man, not out of his teens. All lean and fit and full of piss and vinegar."
"Oh." Not out of my teens. And here I thought that I had moved on from my family.
"Mind you, yours ain't too bad. Old fella like you, who can blame you for remembering when you were younger and stronger? The worst offender so far is Saintly."
"Oh?"
"When I tried this on him, he looked like one of the villains in a bad piece of Umbar street theater. All wrapped up in a black leather cloak, hooded and cowled and sinister and shit. Like the world's gaudiest assassin."
"That shouldn't have come as a surprise."
"I know, right?" Sapper puts on his best grin, but I can tell his heart's not in it. "I contacted you for a reason, mate. What's the situation like down there?"
I fill him in. Easterners and Southrons swarming into our soft spots. That fucking Numenorean prick holding the main host together and pressing down hard on Czernograd. Webfoot joining up with Grimhald to create a mobile defense.
Although, I do not recall actually telling him this. I seem to remember a vague draining sensation from my skull. Like I was bleeding info and he was collecting it. It was weird, but in dreamland it felt natural enough
"Shit," Sapper says. He draws the word out to almost three syllables. "Fucking hell, and other comments."
"Since do you speak fluent uruk?"
"I reckon we're dead," he says matter-of-factly, ignoring my witticism completely. "I'm here to pass on some fairly bad news, and if you combine it with the shitstorm you're dealing with down south... Yeah. We're fucked left, right, and center."
"Tell me."
"The Gondorian army- if you can call it that- is closing in on the Black Gate."
I stare at him with dull, tired eyes.
"Yes, you heard me. We have about two days, tops."
"How do you know? You can't have scouted that far north."
"Spike and Bop went to work on prisoners from three separate regiments. All of them gave independent confirmation, unaware of the other two. All agreed the clash will occur within a week. That was almost a week ago, Jack. And once the Gondorians bite the dust, well. They'll swarm," he states with gloomy relish. "They'll swarm right across Gorgoroth and just throw waves of warm bodies at you until you break."
"How many troops do you think will get sent south after our Western buddies get curb-stomped? 100,000? At least?"
"More than that. One of the guys we caught was from fucking Rhun, man. That's, like, three hundred miles north of here. Sauron the fucking Putrid is gathering fresh troops from every corner of his little empire. I'd say there'll be about 300,000. A bit less, if the Gondorians get the same kind of unholy luck they had on Pelennor. But it'll be well over a measly little 100 grand." He favors me with a sickly smile.
"Oh, fuck it," I spit out bitterly. "We should never have stuck around. We should have picked up our Annals and hightailed it out of Nurn before the Eye could catch up to us."
Sapper shrugs. A good enough answer, by any standard.
I know why we didn't, of course. There were 10,000 of us then. How do you feed that many men? Equip them? We had no choice but to stick around the industrial and agricultural base that is the Sea of Nurnen. Moreover, where could we go? Back down south, where every tribesman and his mother takes orders from Barad-dur? East and north are right out- we have no idea of what's out there, and how far the Dark Lord's influence reaches. Even if we found a neutral state, what king or warlord would welcome 10,000 heavily armed strangers onto his turf? The only other option was west, where every single fucking nation has reason to kill us. And if they decided to accept us, well, then we'd be right where we are now- outnumbered and facing extinction.
Fuck it. Just, fuck it all. The deck was stacked against us from the start.
If only the fucking gods had left well enough alone on Pelennor, we wouldn't be here now.
I wrench my attention back to the miniature muscle-bound sorceror. "We have the Annals and Standard ready to be evacuated. The Company will survive, at least for a while."
"Yeah. I guess. And hey, if you all die hard enough down there, it'll be years, maybe decades until Mordor is ready to start conquering again. You can't forge an empire without a industrial and agricultural base, and I don't think the Cap will leave so much as a mill wheel standing by the time you all... Yeah." He scratches his arm awkwardly. "You can get all them elves and dwarves and Westrons whipped into shape in that time." Sapper shrugs again, this time more optimistically. "Me, Saintly, and the boys won't be around to see you all rise again from the ashes, but in the meantime we'll stir shit up till they catch us."
"Aye. Well. Best of luck in your guerrilla campaign."
"Thanks. Enjoy convincing all those dumb-ass westerners that you're legit. Make sure you bring that Gondorian lass, what's-her-face."
"Zim."
"That's the one. Things'll go smoother if you got a white face vouching for you."
We shook hands, and I woke up again. I'm operating on the assumption that I was not having just a mere nightmare about 300,000 screaming fighters descending upon us, so I sent a rider to headquarters to inform the Captain about the impending doom. Then I sat and wrote this entry.
I have nothing to do right now, and I suspect that it will be a few weeks before I can be of any use to anyone at all. So I think I'll go outside and star gaze for a while- just sit upright, arms propped behind me and chin pointed straight up, and soak in their celestial glory. I've had little opportunity to enjoy any kind of beauty in Mordor.
We won.
I'll be good goddamned if I know how.
In South Nurn, it was 5,000 savages against about 600 of us- Grimhald's Auxiliaries and Webfoot marines put together. Those 5,000 screaming warriors just did not stand a chance. Webfoot's boys engaged them head to head and tore them to fucking shreds, and when the Southrons and Easterners tried to back up for some breathing space, they found Grimhald sitting in their camp, with his muddy boots up on their furniture and an axe in his hands. Metaphorically speaking. Not even 2,000 of them escaped alive. We lost exactly 53 marines and 17 of the Auxiliaries killed.
To the north, the Captain broke the back of the host besieging Czernograd. I don't mean that he knocked them away from the walls, or that he got the better of them, or that he outmaneuvered them. He did do these things, but that's not what I'm implying. I mean, the opposition has ceased to function as a military presence. All 40,000 of them are scattered, dead, wounded, or captured. We could send out a man with a white flag right now to offer our unconditional surrender, and there just would not be anybody around to take it.
The Black Numenorean is ours now. Salim caught him trying to run after his army got wasted. He's alive, for now, although we had to chop off some fingers and gag him to keep him from busting out any major sorcerous mojo on us. I expect that his fate involves a vat of molten silver and a long-term relationship with the bottom of the Sea of Nurnen. We still remember the fall of Grufoz, and his policy of publicly torturing Black Company prisoners to death has not precisely endeared him to us.
A Free Army patrol to the north found the other tentacle monster washed up on shore, dead as anything. No puncture wounds, no nothing. Just a white blob with freaky looking arms splayed out on the rough sand.
We here in the Ephel Duath camp received never-ending streams of good tidings from the front. Messenger after messenger after messenger, giving us news of salvation and survival...
And how did we manage this? What stroke of tactical genius turned the tides? What feat of valor snatched us from certain doom? What bit of wisdom gleaned from the Annals saved our lives?
Well. Nothing. Or at least, nothing we did.
The volcano to the north erupted. That is all. It went off like the climax of one of Sapper's daydreams, threw a lot of ash and flames into the air, and killed the army of Mordor. I can't explain it better than that. They had the morale knocked right out of them. They threw down their swords, howled like wounded dogs, and ran around like chickens with their heads cut off. Beating them in that state was a bloody cake walk.
I am going to bust out some Noose and celebrate with my companions from now till the booze runs out. When I recover from the epic hangover I intend on getting, I will try to work out just what exactly happened.
Saintly's crew sent a rider today. They've established contact with a group of Gondorian knights. Saintly even managed to overcome his homicidal instincts and initiated a meeting that led to establishing a truce between Gondor and the Free State of Mordor. I would have thought that he would ambush them and steal their stuff.
Every thing to the south of Gorgoroth is ours, and not to be entered by Gondorian soldiers or their allies. Likewise, we are not to enter any section of Ithilien north of Minas Morgul. Southern Ithilien and the Plateau of Gorgoroth are both disputed territory.
It's slightly stupid, over all, since our army is about 3,000 strong and their army is about 10,000, and neither one of us possesses the capability to strike the other at all. This is not exactly a recipe for wide-scale warfare. But one day, we will rebuild our strength, and they theirs. We would prefer to have the boundaries firmly set by the time either of us becomes able to attack.
The messengers keep riding in and giving me updates to put in the Annals. In that I am still in the Ephel Duath mountain range, I am far away from the center of activity, so I can't turn this flood of data into any kind of narrative structure. So, I'll just write down the events as I hear them.
Today we tossed the Black Numenorean into the drink. We couldn't tell if he was still alive after the silver drenched him, but I hope he is. We had two Gondorian emissaries watch the ceremony. Hopefully it will convince them we are akin in our hatred of Sauron's legacy.
Webfoot is down in the dockyards, building ships and filling his vacant ranks. Much to his disgust, Webfoot has to make them as transports first and then weaponize them afterwards. The Captain wants to be able to ship anything to any shore as soon as possible. Just like how you can't throw a punch without a proper stance, you can't assert national will through war without having solid footing at home. It pains me to say it, but I detect future tension between us and Gondor. With Barad-dur's fall, we are both being sucked into a power vacuum. Since the Black Company intends on sticking around for awhile, we would prefer to be in a strong position.
The uruks in Sauron's host are scattered every which way. Most are heading east or north, where they'll either be butchered by the inhabitants or set up their own little fiefdoms. But a lot of them are coming to us, offering to be our slaves in exchange for safety. We set up a nifty little system of indentured servitude- they either serve ten years in the legions of the Free State, or eight years in the labor battalions. They can prove their dedication to our cause by rebuilding the ravaged land of Nurn or by protecting it. We've recruited 3,000 uruks in the last 32 hours. We anticipate more as word gets out that we hold no grudge against former servants of the Dark Lord. Me now, I'm hoping we can recruit some trolls into our ranks, but that may end up being a pipe dream. Either way, Bullet now has a lot more raw material to create an army that's up to our standards, and a lot more time as well.
A small-scale attack from a local Easterner tribe is repelled by Salim, with no losses on our side. As near as we can tell, it was strictly a smash and grab raid, hoping to turn a profit while we were still trying to recover from the war. Salim pays a quick visit to that tribe's hometown and sets it ablaze. He makes it painfully clear that attacking the Free State is not only profitless, it is hazardous to one's health. However, the raid prompts the Captain to send scouts into Haradrim territory, to watch for any potential problems. We have no idea how the fall of Sauron will play out down there. Ghazi is selected to guard the passes in the mountains.
We have been reinforced down here in the Duath. 200 veteran uruks, now Company brothers. I don't know why.
We're off. I'm in charge of almost 300 brothers hell-bent for leather. We're double timing it up into South Ithilien, hoping to lay claim to it before the negotiations begin. Possession is, of course, nine tenths of the law. If there's Free State soldiers crawling all over the land that's being disputed, than it's not really in dispute, is it?
Before we left the camp, Kisander came in with an additional 400 men. Presumably, they'll be committed if things heat up.
I hope to hell Gondor and us don't go to war over this. One could make the argument that it's not really our fight.
"It's strange, isn't it?" the knight said.
"Yep," I agreed. I was willing to agree to just about any random comment he made.
King Elessar had had the same idea as the Captain, so before I knew it Elessar's men and my men made contact.
1,000 of them. 300 of us. We have the high ground, defending a fairly steep ridge, but they have cavalry. I didn't want to have to worry about cavalry on my fucking flank again while I am busy holding off the infantry.
I really, really did not want to go to war today.
The Gondorian knight is tall, pale as marble, blonde as anything. From the ease with which he moved in his plate armor, I assumed that he was strong of limb and broad of shoulder as well. His deep, grey eyes pierced mine, and I tried my utmost to pierce his right back.
He and I had met together in between our two companies, very calm and respectful and so on. He was atop his horse, I was on foot staring up at him.
"I always thought," he said, "that Sauron would be around forever. I never actually expected to see him overthrown, you know?"
"Yeah, I hear you."
"When I heard he fell, well! I figured it would be peace and prosperity for all."
"We had our sights aimed lower. We just wanted to get out of it alive."
"Quite." The knight sighed. "I assume you're here for the same reason that I am?"
"I reckon."
The knight looks north, gauging his force, then south towards mine. I made sure to keep the bulk of them behind the hill to hide our numbers. Useless. He had seen us before we got established on the ridge.
"I lost 48 men up in the Black Gate," he says suddenly. "One of the trolls burst through the footsoldiers on my right, and tore into us before we could turn and engage it."
"Sorry to hear that."
"I don't wish to lose more if I don't have to."
"I can top that, though. While you all were marching on the Gate, we were swapping body blows with a host of uruks still loyal to Sauron. When they came to our headquarters, a place called Grufoz, the Black Numenorean blasted a hole in the defenses for the trolls to attack through. We lost 600 in a single day."
The knight whistles softly, impressed. Then he gives me a bright, friendly grin. "I can top that. I got separated from my unit at Pelennor, and got integrated with the Rohirrim. I swear to you, when we charged the Oliphaunts, we suffered 50% casualties. 50%, no joke. We had to distract the archers on their backs, see, and get the beasts' attention to allow our archers to line up shots into the eyes. 500 men dead in a matter of minutes."
I grin right back. "I was at the docks when your allies sailed in on the Corsairs' ships."
The knight groans in sympathy. "Ouch. That can't have been fun." He takes off his helm and tucks it under his arm, brushing his sweaty golden hair out of his eyes.
I shake my head. "No, it was not. We were so damn sure we had you dead to rights."
"Heh. The funny part is, we thought the same thing. Our Steward had divined that Corsairs were coming upriver to fight, and he committed ritual suicide rather than watch Gondor die in front of him. Then it turns out it was Elessar coming to the rescue. If the poor man had only held on just a little longer..."
"Yeah. Pelennor was a fucking bad day all around."
"No arguments here." The knight glances behind him. "I have an idea."
"I'm listening."
"This ledge you're on. What do you say we make it the new boundary between Gondor and Mordor?"
"The Free State of Mordor."
"Yes, the Free State of Mordor, as you say. Everything south of where you are right now is yours. Everything to the north is ours. Then you and I go back to our commanders and tell them, 'Mission accomplished.' "
" 'Don't worry, Captain, I stopped those white boys dead in their tracks.' "
The knight laughs, high and clear. " 'Fear not, my king, the Southron horde won't come a step closer to Minas Tirith.' "
"Shake on it?"
We shake. Then we return to our respective commands and start entrenching ourselves.
Zim is leaving us. She recovered, mostly, and once she heard that the war was over she cried for about a minute, or so I heard. Then she picked herself up, dusted herself off, checked all the wounded to make sure Pork Chop hadn't accidentally killed any of them, and went to the Captain for permission to return home escorted by the surviving Auxiliaries.
Apparently, it was just an alliance of convenience after all. She never saw herself as one of us. I regret that, I really do. It's always nice to think that decent people like to be around you.
I suspect that if Haroun had survived Pelennor, Pork Chop might have gained a permanent aide.
Why hold back? I'm old enough to get away with being maudlin. Haroun was reckless and dashing, funny and earnest. Zimraphel is young and beautiful, warm and courageous. I can see them in my mind's eye, belonging together and sharing each other the same way that Fragrance and I had. The worst part about being an old man is envisioning so clearly what might have been.
I wish that Haroun had made it. The world would have been a better place with those two together in it.
Well, we're back in Czernograd. Sapper's taken over from me in South Ithilien, supervising construction projects staffed by indentured uruks. Soon, there'll be a line of fortresses separating us from them. Once we build up enough population to pull it off, we'll start sending colonists to work the land down there, and soldiers to guard them from any Gondorian power grabs or Haradrim raids.
There was a lovely ceremony that most of the 3,000 Black Company brothers attended. The Captain spoke to us- the fuck ups, the stragglers, the rejects, the lost orphans that the world has no time for.
He told us we had fought for the right to survive and won. He told us that just as our past brothers had suffered and bled to give us a home, generations of our future brothers would remember the boons we gave to them over the past few weeks. He told us that to be Company was to be special, elite, a cut above the rest, and that we had proved ourselves worthy of the name. He reminded us who we were, and assured us that the pain and fear and despair we had endured had been worth it.
I half-slept through most of it. By the time you reach my age, you'll have heard it all before too. For me, the most interesting bit was finding out that during the fighting around Czernograd, Bop had picked up a wound himself. He and his brother are a matching set again.
I've been reviewing the evidence, comparing notes, and I think I understand how Sauron the Putrid met his end. I've interviewed foot soldiers who were on both sides at the Black Gate, I've heard second-hand some of the history available in the Library of Gondor, I've put two and two together and wound up with four.
Here's the story, as I understand it:
Long ago, and far away, elves created some Rings of Power. Just what this power may be, I'm not sure. I'm positive that if Sapper made a ring of power, it would shoot lightning or something, but Sapper has a vastly different mindset than the elves would. So these rings become a bit of a fad, and the other races get in on it- the men make a few, and the dwarves as well.
Sauron, then operating under a different name, charms his way into the ringmaking project and fucks around with the process. I can't get any more specific than that, I'm neither a ringsmith nor a wizard. He creates one ring to rule all the others, and pours himself into that ring- all his malice, all his cruelty, all his will. Again, I'm not clear how this works, but I'm willing to accept it.
He betrayed the elves and dwarves and men, chaining their rings of power to his. It's almost comforting to know that he was always a treacherous bastard.
It turns out, those rings of power corrupted nine men into Sauron's service; the Ringwraiths, currently deceased. And there we were, thinking they were just psycho sorcerors.
The dwarven rings were mostly destroyed, and the elvish rings kept hidden and unruined.
So, after taking the time to properly organize a military alliance, a massive host of elves and men came to Mordor, aiming to crack some skulls and blast Sauron's power base straight to hell. In the course of an epic battle, Sauron lost his ring. Had it chopped off his hand by some hero or another.
I ask you. What's the point of owning a Ring of Power if any idiot can just walk up to you and hack it off? Shouldn't it have some kind of, I don't know, anti-personnel abilities to keep people from chopping at you?
But I digress.
Sauron got kicked out of Mordor. He went off somewhere and did some stuff for a few centuries. That's about as specific as I can make it.
Sauron's raw power was greatly reduced by the loss of his ring- he spent an ungodly amount of time, effort, and treasure trying to locate it, all to no avail. By the time he returned and reclaimed Mordor from a weakened Gondor, his ring was lost forever. Or so it seemed.
Enter the Grey Walker. The old wizard found it somewhere called the Shire, the land of the Halflings. An emissary showed me on the map where the Shire was- it's like, at least a thousand miles away from where it disappeared. Fucked if I know how the bloody thing got up there.
Long, confusing, incomplete story short- the Grey Walker sent the ring to Mordor, to be tossed into the fires of Mt. Doom, which as far as we all had known was just a bloody volcano. Yes, that's right. The one thing that the Eye of Sauron desired most of all, and the Grey Walker sent it straight to his homeland.
I don't understand the logic of it. Perhaps he was operating on the assumption that it was crazy enough to work.
About right after the time we seized the eastern half of Osgiliath, the Grey Walker started out his plan to just walk into Mordor and destroy the ring.
It worked. Just like Pelennor, the enemy did something so stupid that turned out to be exactly right.
Two little halflings, likely the two dwarves Kisander tracked in Cirith Ungol, completed their mission. Sapper assures me that to destroy an artifact like that would be more than enough to drastically wreck whoever put themselves in it. And Sauron had built his entire empire on his own thaumaturgical power...
God, you couldn't make this shit up. Armies marching and counter-marching, clashes of arms, intricate politics and furious storms of sorcerous might, and in the end it all depended on whether or not two northern midgets could manage to chuck some jewelry into a fucking volcano.
It really is kinda funny, now that I think about it.
King Elessar isn't willing to surrender control of northern Mordor. The land has no value in itself but if hostilities between the Free State and Gondor ever occur, whoever holds the Plateau can launch attacks directly into the other side's home turf. Since neither he nor the Captain believe that peace eternal has come to the world, both are striving to occupy it, although neither is willing to commit to any military actions as of yet.
Well, I'm no diplomat. I'll report anything that happens, but I don't think I'll bother to opine on it.
Three days ago, Amin the Standard Bearer disappeared from Czernograd around the same time as Saintly, Kisander, and Sapper. I couldn't for the life of me think of where they might have gone off to, but I didn't give any more thought to it until they came back. All of them were dust-covered and exhausted, jubilant and excited.
Sapper just scored the motherlode.
What had bugged Sapper, after he read my complete account on how the Eye fell, was what happened to Sauron after. Surely, he thought, he can't have just vanished, and he certainly wouldn't die from it. So... what happened?
He hypothesized that the Eye must have been rendered a warped spirit, powerless and formless and helpless, doomed to wander a world that he can no longer dominate or harm.
This thought warmed him inside, and for a while he was content.
Then he thought, what if I can find this helpless spirit?
So he recruited his posse of bodyguards, told them what was up, and they went out into the wastelands of Gorgoroth to do a little soul searching, if you don't mind the pun.
They met with Gondorian outriders, who questioned their right to be there. They explained what they were trying to do. The Gondorians laughed their heads off and joined up to help them.
It took two days for Sapper to find what he was after. The spell he was using required him to be within a mile of his target, but when you're riding quickly, you can cover a lot of ground.
In the old days, when the Company and the Lady and the White Rose teamed up to bitch-slap the Dominator, the Company wizards came up with a spell to capture the Dominator's dark spirit and jam it into a silver spike for all time. They were kind enough to leave instructions for their future brothers on how to do it.
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