Meanwhile the troop had arrived at the outpost and the usual commotion ensued: cursing riders were pushing their way through the throng of milling foot soldiers, their commander was arguing with the local one, the guttural shouts of the Easterlings mingled with the Elves’ alarmed trilling, the roof suddenly sported three silhouettes rather than one – and then unbelieving Haladdin heard a quiet: “Now!”
He had never run so fast in his life, never mind failing strength. He made it to the blind zone under the dilapidated wall in a flash, dropped his burden and still managed to get back to help Tzerlag, who was halfway there, lugging the baron on his back. The scout shook his head – no time, it’d take longer to switch. Faster, faster! Oh One, how much longer will those dumb sentries stare at the new arrivals – a second? three? ten? They got to the ruins, expecting an alarm any moment, and dropped to the ground immediately; Tangorn must have been in bad shape, as he did not even moan. Scraping their faces and hands on the bactrian thornbush, they scrambled into a wide crack in the wall and suddenly found themselves in an almost intact room. All its walls were whole, only the ceiling sported a large gap through which they could see the rapidly graying dawn sky; the entrance was entirely blocked with a mound of broken bricks. Only then did Haladdin realize: they’ve made it after all! Now they had the best hideout possible, just like a duck sitting on her eggs right under a falcon’s nest.
He leaned against a wall and closed his eyes just for a moment, and immediately gentle waves carried him away, whispering: it’s all over, rest for just a few minutes, you’ve earned them… up, down, up, down… what are these waves? Tzerlag? Why is he shaking my shoulder so furiously? Oh damn! Thanks, friend – of course I have to attend to Tangorn immediately. Nor do I have a few minutes to rest – the cola’s effect will wear off soon, and then I’ll just plain fall apart… where’s that damn medkit?
Chapter 14
Mordor, Morgai plateau
April 21, 3019
Evening came. The molten gold of the sun was still boiling in the cauldron formed by two peaks of the Mountains of Shadow, sharp burning sparks escaping it from time to time, but a transparent purplish haze was already encroaching on the foothills colored by the sunset. The cold blue of the sky, almost azure at its eastern end, contrasted beautifully with yellowish-pink (the color of a Khandian melon) sedimentary crags of Morgai, cut by deep ink-black gorges. The sides of the flattop clay foothills adjoining the plateau were draped in ash-gray serge and salsola, dotted here and there with splashes of red – patches of wild tulips.
Haladdin was of two minds about those flowers. Just as every tulip was beautiful individually, so did the half-acre patches they formed seem unnatural and ominous. It must have been because their color exactly matched that of bright red arterial blood when in the sun, and crimson vein blood when in the shade, like right now. Serge and tulips; ash and blood. Perhaps he would have discerned different connotations at another time.
“About a mile and a half left.” Tzerlag, walking in the lead, turned to his companions and nodded towards a bright patch of green oozing out of a large dale onto the yellow clay of the foothills. “What do you say, Baron – we stop for a break now or make one final push and then settle down decent-like?”
“Guys, enough coddling me already,” the Gondorian answered somewhat irritably. He could already use his leg almost normally, although he still used crutches, and had even insisted on carrying part of the load. “I’ll never get back into normal shape that way.”
“All complaints to the doctor, please, I’ve no responsibility here. What does medicine recommend, eh?”
“Chew some cola, of course,” Haladdin quipped.
“Aw, get lost!”
The joke was indeed of doubtful quality: none of them could recall the finale of their forced march to the ruins at the outpost without shuddering. Cola does not give a body new strength, it only mobilizes the reserves it already has. Such mobilization can occur spontaneously, when a man jumps a dozen yards to save his life, or pulls a half-ton stone out of the ground with his bare hands; cola allows one to perform such feats on demand, and then comes the payback: having exhausted his reserves in a critical minute, the person turns into jelly for a day and a half, both physically and mentally.
That was exactly what happened to them that morning, right after Haladdin managed to patch up Tangorn’s thigh. The baron soon got the shakes, as the fever of his wound combined with opium withdrawal; he needed urgent help, but neither the doctor nor the scout could so much as move an eye, like beached jellyfish. Some ten hours later Tzerlag did manage to get up, but all he could do was give the wounded man the rest of the Elvish wine and cover him with all the cloaks they had; Haladdin came back to life too late to nip the baron’s illness in the bud. He did manage to prevent overall sepsis, but the wound developed a large local inflammation; Tangorn ran a fever and became loudly delirious, which was the worst part – enemy soldiers used the back of the ruins as a latrine and were constantly coming and going, so much so that the sergeant began seriously considering putting him out of his misery before he gave them all away with his mutterings.
Praise the One that this did not become necessary – by the end of the second day the Elvish antiseptics had worked, Tangorn’s fever went down and the wound started to close quickly. The adventure was far from over, though. It turned out that, unbeknownst to their officers, the mercenaries had put up a huge vat making araka – a local brew made from manna – in one of the adjoining ruined rooms and gathered there for a drink or three every nightfall. The companions mostly got used to the soldiers (just sit quietly as a mouse during the party in their well-isolated room), but Haladdin vividly pictured some overzealous corporal discovering the source of the ‘water of life’ and taking the pains to examine every room around: “Hey, you three! Ten-shut, lushes! What’s your platoon? Where’re your uniforms, assholes?” Just imagine blowing it all like that…
Still, while hiding in the ruins was dangerous, venturing forth would have been total madness: mounted and foot patrols of Easterlings and Elves kept combing the desert, examining even fox tracks. Meanwhile a new problem arose: water shortage. They had to use too much water on the wounded man, and there was no way to replenish the stock, since there was foot traffic around the outpost well day and night. After five days the situation became critical – they had half a pint between them. The baron recalled his Teshgol adventure and gloomily mentioned frying pan and fire. What rotten luck, Haladdin thought: this is the first time in our three weeks in the desert that we’re actually thirsty, and that less than a hundred yards from a well!
Salvation came from an unexpected quarter – on the sixth day the first sandstorm of the season started. A yellow wall approached from the south, slowly extending upwards – it seemed that the desert horizon was rolling up like the ragged edge of a monstrous scroll; the sky turned ashen, and one could look at the whitish noon sun without squinting, as if it was the moon. Then the boundary between earth and sky disappeared, as if two enormous hot frying pans came together, raising myriads of grains of sand into the air between them; their mad dance lasted for more than three days. Tzerlag knew better than the others what a samoom was like, and offered a sincere prayer to the One for all those caught away from shelter – not even an enemy deserves such a fate. The One must have ignored the part about enemies; later they gathered from soldiers’ talk that several patrols (about twenty men in total) did not make it back to the base in time and were certainly dead. There was no more reason to search for Eloar, not even for his corpse. In the evening Tzerlag wrapped himself in the Elvish hooded cloak and finally made it to the courtyard well under the cover of the suffocating yellow fog. So when Tangorn raised a still-wet flask a few minutes later and offered a toast to the desert demons, the scout frowned doubtfully but did not object.