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here through last week of July come hell or high water.
Right. And if we re not here by August first, drink one to the rest of our souls.
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In parting, Matun slapped Tzerlag s shoulder so that he barely kept his feet: Be well,
scout! He and the Orocuen had become fast friends during the last few days. Of course, he
did not even nod at Tangorn; had he only leave to do what he wanted to this Gondorian
dude& Whatever, the officers know better. He had fought in Ivar the Drummer s guerilla
band since the beginning of the occupation and knew full well that one is supposed to wait
for a scouting team s return at the rendezvous point for no more than three days, and here
the orders were for a full week! A mission of special importance, see? So the Gondorian
dude must not be here just for show, either.
Yes, Haladdin thought, looking at the rhythmically bobbing pack on the baron s back, it all
depends on Tangorn now: whether he can protect us in Ithilien the way we protected him up
to now. He s Prince Faramir s personal friend that s great, but we have to get to this
wonderful prince first. Plus it may very well turn out that this Faramir is nothing but
Aragorn s puppet, while the baron has rather peculiar relations with Minas Tirith authorities
he may have already been declared an outlaw& In other words, we may easily hang
together, either in the forest if we run into a Gondorian patrol, or on the wall of Emyn
Arnen; the funniest thing is that in the forest the baron will hang with us, while in the fort
we ll hang with him. Yeah, the right company is key&
Such gloomy thoughts must have bothered the baron about ten days ago, when they
confirmed that the route to Ithilien through Morgul Vale and the Cirith Ungol pass had been
sealed shut by Elvish outposts, which meant that they had to seek help from the guerillas in
the Mountains of Shadow. The worst fate would have been to run into one of the smaller
bands that acknowledged no authority and were seeking nothing but revenge; no talk about
any mission would have helped, as the guerillas now killed their prisoners with no less
cruelty than their enemies did. Fortunately, using Sharya-Rana s information, Tzerlag
managed to locate in the Shara-Teg Gorge a well-regulated company reporting to the main
command of the Resistance. It was led by a commissioned officer, one Lieutenant Ivar, a
one-armed veteran of the North Army. A native of this area, he had turned the gorge into an
unassailable fastness; among other things, he instituted a remarkable audible warning system
on all the observation posts, earning himself the nickname the Drummer.
The lieutenant had weighed Haladdin s nazgúl ring fearlessly in his hand, nodded and asked
only one question: what can he do to assist sir Field Medic in his mission? Escort their
recon team to Ithilien? No problem. His opinion is that they should use the Hotont pass;
since it s considered to be impassable during this time of year, it s most likely unguarded
from the Ithilien side. Unfortunately, his best guide, one Matun, is away on a mission. Can
you wait three or four days? No problem, then; this will let you rest and fatten up a little,
too it ll be one arduous trek& Only when all three of them got back the weapons of
which they had been relieved by the forward guard did Tangorn return the poison he had
borrowed from the doctor.
Haladdin had never been to this part of the country before, so now he observed the daily life
of the Shara-Teg Gorge with genuine interest. The mountain Trolls lived spartanly but
conducted themselves with truly princely dignity; to an outsider, only their hospitality often
went beyond any reasonable measure, acutely embarrassing Haladdin. At least now he
understood where the amazing ambience of the Barad-Dur house of his classmate Kumai
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The Last Ring-bearer
came from.
The Trolls have always lived together in large tight-knit families, and since the only way to
put up a house big enough for thirty people on a steep slope is to build up, their abodes were
thick-walled stone towers twenty to thirty feet high. The stonemasonry experience
accumulated in the building of these miniature fortresses later made Troll expatriates into
the leading city builders of Mordor. Their other line was metallurgy. First they perfected
blacksmithing, making weapons cheap and therefore widely available; then they mastered
working with iron-nickel alloys (most of the ores in the region were self-legated), and since
then the swords worn by every local male over the age of twelve were the best in Middle
Earth. Not surprisingly, the Trolls never knew any authority other than their own elders:
only a total idiot will attack a Trollish tower and sacrifice half of the attacking force only to
gain a dozen scrawny sheep as booty (or church tithe).
The Mordorian powers understood this well and therefore did nothing but recruit warriors
here, which much flattered the Trolls. Later, though, when mining and metal refining
became their main occupation, the sale of those commodities was hit with a stupendous tax,
but the Trolls did not seem to care their indifference to wealth and luxury was already
legendary, along with their stubbornness. This also gave rise to a popular legend that the
known Trolls were only a half of that people. The other half (mistakenly called gnomes or
dwarves in the Western countries, in confusion with another mythical race that of
underground smiths) supposedly were wealth-crazy and spent all their lives in secret
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