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We're killing time again in Minas Morgul. We rankers don't know whether our invasion had been stymied by the Gondorian counter-attack, or if the Eye had always intended to take a breather here. Either way, we're stationed here until things pick up again. We couldn't even advance if we wanted to, since our Nazgul have taken off on a special mission way up north. Ain't no one else can keep the uruk masses in check and marching in the right direction, let alone getting them to actually fight.
Quartermaster will tell anyone dumb enough to stop and listen that the Dark Lord wants to open up other fronts to the north and west before attacking. That way, we won't have to tangle with any relief columns of men, dwarves, or even worse, elves. You hear rumors about those guys- the uruks claim that elves live forever until killed, that elven archers can shoot a butterfly's dick off at five hundred yards, that elves never have to sleep or eat so long as they drink a special potion that only they know how to brew. We are not sure how much to credit, although the gods know there is weirder shit than that sworn to in the Annals.
Quartermaster says that he traded with an Easterling merchant who has a brother who lives up north in Rhun who claims to have seen orc encampments up there that got the Red Eye painted on their shields. Proof positive, he says, that our paymaster has forces working outside of Mordor to threaten any potential allies of Gondor. We're just waiting for our auxiliary guerrillas to get in position before we strike.
Military intelligence. Contradiction in terms.
Bored. So bored. Very, very bored. We get leave, but where precisely are we supposed to go, the Plateau of fucking Gorgoroth? I spent a whole damn day leafing through the Annals for entertainment instead of knowledge. Found an anecdote about a war that got started by a farmer chasing a pig across the border to a neighboring country and accidentally breaking three international laws with a single action- Willfully Violating Border Protocol, Livestock Rustling, and Engaging in Brigandry Without a Marque from the King. 'Cause he removed the pig from another sovereign state without permission, see? That runaway pig started a war that lasted three generations. I repeated this anecdote to anyone who would listen for the entire day, until the Lieutenant informed me that I had told him that stupid bloody story three times already, and that he had overheard me telling it another five times. He then politely warned that if I told it once more, to anyone, he would stick me in plate armor and use me for Company archery practice.
So I rewrote it here in a newer volume of the Annals, so that every future brother runs across immediately instead of digging around for it like I had too. He didn't say nothing about writing it to anyone, now did he?
Also, I asked him about my new rank and the Lieutenant says that I have the pay grade of an officer, but the authority of a corporal. So I'm sort of a noncom / officer hybrid. I make more money than the sergeants but I can't give them orders. It's good to have that cleared up.
I can get into the Officer's Club, though. That's the main thing.
Bullet overheard me, Spike and Bop bitching about the boredom. We had to run his special obstacle course for two hours, then do sword drills for another three, then to cool down we did a half hour of Iron Lunges, and that's in addition to the standard two hours of training we do anyway. I was seeing spots and going deaf with exhaustion, though I managed to keep from throwing up. Give me back my boredom, for pity's sake. First rule of warfare, my future brothers- don't ever tell the Sergeant that you have nothing to do.
Murky and Crow thought our plight was hilarious, so Spike came up with the idea to dust their blankets with crushed black peppers from the mess hall. He would like to report that while his hands are still stinging from his prank, it was completely worth it.
Saintly would like me to note for posterity that he and every other fucking soldier in this outfit is going insane for lack of women. Most of the females in Mordor are uruks. You can guess how many of our boys want to sheath their daggers up those sheaths. Ain't no one dumb enough go to a whore that's got fangs, you know what I mean? All we're saying is there had better be women in Gondor somewhere, and if there ain't, we might have to go AWOL down south to the whorehouses of Umbar. Then again, maybe some fresh, curvy young thing from the Gondorian territories will be imprisoned here. And she'll have warm brown eyes; long, clean, raven hair; she's wearing nothing but a thin, tight-fitting white dress that's torn all the way up past the waist, revealing a long, white leg and a gorgeous hip for anyone to see. She's desperate for protection from these cruel uruks, and she'll do anything to keep out of their clutches, anything at all... Ah, sweet imagination, you are the only balm to sex-starved souls.
Note to self- do not use Annals for personal sex fantasies. It's unprofessional.
There are four of us sitting around a low wooden table playing tonk. The boredom was being temporarily alleviated through honest gaming.
"My deal?" Pork Chop asks. We assent. He deals out the cards, five each.
Bugger this up the ass. My count is forty-seven, king queen jack nine eight, no possible runs. If my luck got any worse, it would aboutface and turn wonderful again. No one declared tonk, but Saintly lays down a run of six seven eight. My nine will play there, at least.
Face cards count as ten, aces as one, face value otherwise. If your count in the first round is 49 or 50, or 13 and below, you declare tonk and win double stakes, right off the bat. Otherwise, you draw and discard to get suited runs and three of a kinds to lay down to decrease your count. If you reckon your hand has the lowest count, on your turn you go down and show your cards. If you do have the lowest count, you win the pot. If you don't, you pay double to everyone with a hand equal to or lower to you. If all your cards are tied up in runs and three of a kinds, you win the pot automatically.
I was clearly not gonna win this one.
Aya Bastard snags the initial discard- a five- and discards three fives, discards a ten. He stares at Saintly, daring him to go down. Saintly sighs, draws, discards the eight he drew. I slide my nine out, draw a two. I ditch my queen. Thirty count. I got a chance. Pork Chop draws, discards. Nothing interesting.
Aya pauses. We realize he's going to chance it a second before he lays down an eight and an ace. Nine count. Saintly bangs his head against the table, lying in the universal pose of misery accepted, holding up his hand for all to see- eleven count. Aya Bastard rakes in his winnings.
"Hey, Haroun," Aya says as he shuffles. "You're an officer now, right?"
"That's right." Sorta.
"Then do you know what the delay is? I thought we had a world to bitch-slap." He starts the deal.
"Way, way above my pay grade. Nobody tells me nothing. I don't think even the Old Man knows what the deal is." Twenty-two, possible run. I quickly scan the others' faces, looking for hints as to their hands. No one lays down. Saintly draws, discards. Useless. I draw and shave off two points, leaving me at an optimistic twenty.
"Whatever happened to the Cap? He ain't been around here for the last month," Pork asked no one in particular. "Didn't even say 'ta-ta, fare thee well' before he up and left."
Aya goes down. He's got twenty-three.
I slap my cards down. "Burned ya."
"Ay! ya bastard!" Aya got his name from playing tonk. It started out as a genuine outburst but has evolved into ritual.
I sweep the winnings to my side, smiling wide. Boredom can be kept at bay for as long as you got stakes on the table.
"The way I hear it," Saintly chips in, "is that the dopes in the upper ranks realized that only we have the slightest idea how to wage war, so they decided to get their money's worth out of the Captain. I think someone said he was down on the front lines, organizing the offensive. My deal."
That makes us all feel a little brighter. If the Old Man is in charge of the planning process, you can be pretty sure things won't fall apart too quickly. Ain't nothing worse than going into a fight knowing that the guy with the gold braid has got his head up his ass.
Sapper is in a foul mood, threatening to turn us into cockroaches and setting small fires to people's shoes. He always transforms his fear into ire. The wiser grunts keep out of his way, the younger, dumber ones start baiting him to break the tedium. Pork Chop gets his work cut out for him for a day or two.
The Nine have returned, and by the gods, they got trashed. When the Nazgul set out north all those months ago, they had taken bodies in the form of black riders, hooded and cloaked, hell bent for leather in a far off land. They came home incorporeal; deranged and weakened spirits with barely enough energy to crawl home to Mordor, and there to grovel in fear and shame before the All-Seeing Eye.
Gods, I can't even imagine what could have taken out all Nine of them. Our paymaster is keeping a real tight lid on all details of their mission, and subsequent defeat, so in the vacuum has been filled with all manner of wild theories. The elves invoked the Gods themselves to vanquish them. They were searching for lost treasure and a dragon took umbrage to their meddling, and burned their physical bodies away. The Witch-king had tried to rebel against his Master, and the eight loyal Nazgul fought him to the death; even now, the Lord of the Nazgul is suffering the penalties of disloyalty. No one believes any of it, but we can't help but swap the increasingly unlikely rumors we hear.
Gondor has no great sorceries, nor any special knowledge of the Black Arts. What kind of djinn or god could possibly lay a finger on the Nine greatest sorcerors in this section of the world, save their Master alone? Does the other team have some unguessed power that the Eye hadn't Seen coming?
Are we about to bring a knife to a swordfight, that's what we're worrying about.
None of us here in Minas Morgul, be we uruk, Southron, Easterling or Company, are left unshaken by this development. What started out as a straight up military campaign is starting to look like an apocalyptic world war, like something out of the old Annals. Throughout its history, the Company never comes closer to oblivion than when wizards march to war.
I leaf through the Annals sweating cold, reading of our involvement in the various world churning wars- the Siege of Dros Delnoch; the Pastel Wars; the Battle of Charm; the Matayangan invasion of Shinsan. Only now, it don't look like ancient history. Now it looks like more like a prophecy- or perhaps a promise. What did we sign up for here?
The Nine are back on their spiritual feet. It took a month and a half to get the right slab of ectoplasm in the right piece of arcanely protected armor, or whatever goes on when sorcerors get their acts together, but we all breathe a little easier knowing that they're up and running at full capacity. The official word is that they were semi-slain by an enemy wizard called the Grey Walker, a guerrilla mastermind who has been harassing the Eye for centuries. The Eye sends a company of uruks to conquer a town up north? He'll manipulate some wanna-be hero into organizing the defense. We try to muscle into a gold-mining operation in the Misty Mountains? He'll convince the dwarves that they got an ancestral right to them mines, and then we got a bloodbath on our hands. Any plan that our side cooks up, you can bet your life that he'll turn up, twisting arms and deluding the weak-minded into fighting his battles for him. Apparently he doesn't like getting his hands dirty, nor utilizing the flashy blowing-stuff-up spells that Sapper enjoys so much. He's more of a general than a warrior, so to speak. The price on his head is almost as much as our total commission, and we do not sell ourselves cheap.
The story we're given is that the Grey Walker ambushed them. Next time, our superiors say, we'll make him fight on our terms, on the Pelennor fields before the fortress of Minas Tirith, where he'll be outnumbered and outmaneuvered. Next time, they say, it's our turn.
The uruks may kept calm by such a story, but we ain't. First off, how the hell does one guy ambush Nine? He can't. He'd get one or two, maybe, but if he really was bigger and badder, the others could just run off. No, we reckon it's far more likely that they ganged up on him and got their asses handed to them. This really, really does not bode well for us. Second, you've just told us that a wizard greater than all your sorcerous Ring-Ghouls combined is waiting for us behind high stone walls with a professional army at his disposal. Was this actually suppose to reassure us, O messengers of the Red Eye? On the other hand, now we understand why you wanted us to keep Sapper out of the fray. If this Grey Walker knew about him beforehand, he could stomp him like a bug and move on. By keeping him a surprise, he'll last long enough to put some good work in.
Of course, if the Grey Walker does find him out, then it'll be up to me to protect him. Just me and five dopes in armor withstanding the onslaught of the wizard that slew all the Nazgul by himself. I can tell this upcoming campaign is going to be a fun one.
Then again, we're hearing good news from the outside world. One of Gondor's next door neighbors, Rohan, has got itself meshed in a civil war that I would bet my life has its origins in Barad-dur. A local wizard, Saruman, has recruited or possibly bred himself an army of super-uruks and made a blatant grab for power. Reports are unclear as to the exact course of the fight, but it sounds like our side is kicking ass. Even if Saruman loses, Rohan will likely be too weakened and fractured to lend much strength to the help defend Gondor.
We hear that a kingdom of men and dwarves called Dale is under attack in the north. If I had access to a map, I would be more specific, but when all you got is word of mouth, vagueness will just have to do. Dale was set up and empowered by the Grey Walker something like fifty years ago, and has been a thorn in our side in that theater ever since. A small but respectable horde of Easterlings clashed with Dale's warriors, but things have since settled into a state of siege. There's no sign that Dale can break out to help Gondor. Good thing, too- you hear stories about dwarf-made weapons.
In Mirkwood, our outpost in Dol Guldor has uruks supported by magically augmented giant spiders raiding deep into the elvish kingdom there. You don't send out the troops when seven foot arachnids are trying to crawl over your own city's walls, into the parks where your own children play. So we figure no elvish archers are showing up either. Lucky thing for all the butterflies in the area.
The Corsairs of Umbar, the city that we were hired out of, have officially allied with Mordor. They'll be launching raids up and down Gondor's coast in the coming weeks. If Gondor tries calling up the militia to help defend Minas Tirith, they might find that most of them will be staying home to protect themselves from the dreaded Umbar pirates. Ho ho ho.
Here in Minas Morgul, the Witch-king has locked himself in his chamber and started up some sort of hocus-pocus. I don't know what he's doing, precisely, but the skies are darkening, black clouds reaching like claws towards Gondorian skies. Sapper refuses to comment when I ask for his views on the subject- apparently the Witch-King is whipping up some bad mojo. It's still nice for us mundane folk to know we'll be having some sorcerous support.
Best of all, the Captain's back from Osgiliath. He's got this secret smile, like he knows a wonderful secret. Like a prankster leading his dupe into a trap. That controlled grin of his does more for morale than double rations and three week's leave.
Over all, things are looking good for us. Yet we all are haunted by the conviction that as long as the Grey Walker is free to plot and scheme, things won't be going according to plan.
News from afar- the wizard we backed in Rohan got put down. Still, the basic plan worked, in that the Rohirrim army suffered grievously and is in no shape to fight. All reports agree that they won't be ready for any kind of campaign for months.
Orders came today. We're heading out for Ithilien on patrol, guerrilla hunting. Yesterday, a column of infantry and war-elephants coming up from Harad got ambushed and raked by a Gondorian company that managed to sneak past our front lines. The other team inflicted casualties at will, then flipped the Haradrim the bird with both hands and melted away into the countryside that they've spent years familiarizing themselves with. Will a large group of soldiers who don't know the countryside be able to locate the guerrillas and force them into a stand up fight in just two quick march throughs? No, of course not. Does irregular warfare require time, commitment, and specialized tactics? It does indeed. Does any of that change our orders? Not a jot. We march tomorrow.
With any luck, it won't be as mind-crushingly boring as it is here.
Marching up and down the same paths twenty damn times, looking for an enemy who's too smart to show up, is exactly as dull as staying at Minas Morgul. Except here, we have to eat the dust that we stirred up the last time we marched down the road. Why did I join this outfit again?
Orders came, and we're on the move. It's time to take the fight to the enemy, first at Osgiliath, then onwards to Minas Tirith.
All we can say is, it's about bloody time.
Upon reviewing my notes, I find that I've been inspecific about just how big our army was- I keep finding words like "masses," "skillions," and "hordes." Part of this I can't help- I'm not given nice, neat reports detailing our strength; I have to do the best I can by sight and rumor. Well, I've been asking around, and soaking in the rumors and making careful guesstimations of our numbers while we march towards Osgiliath. And despite this, I still can't tell you the strength of Mordor with any kind of precision. But I can record for posterity what I have learned:
From Khand came a regiment of Variags numbering five thousand- grim, bearded fellows with arms like battering rams. They were terrific men to have on a battle-line, 'cause they had this special kind of shortened halberd that's a joy to watch them use. It can be used against mounted knights and blocks of infantry with equal precision and ferocity. And if the other guy gets too close to use it on them? They got these back-up longknives called kukris that are bent forward at an odd angle. We watched one Variag, a guy named Ultfaln, throw a block of wood into the air and chop it in half with one quick cut. After that little demonstration, a bunch of us lined up to trade for or buy ourselves a kukri of our very own.
From Rhun in the north came seven thousand warriors. You could tell from their equipment that these were lone wolf types- their shields aren't designed to interlock and their swords are too long to swing safely if they're standing next to someone. As duelists or brawlers they might be hot shit, but twenty Company men working together could whip a hundred of them, and that's not even an exaggeration. What sort of moron doesn't know by now that it's teamwork and cooperation that win wars? I hope they get stationed on the opposite end of the battleline than us, 'cause if things go sour they'll break like glass.
The king of the Hammad al Ghul came to fight personally, along with his elite bodyguard, the Immortals; so called not because they live forever, but because when they die they are immediately replaced by new recruits so that the regiment itself never dies. This is also roughly how the Black Company works, so they get brownie points there. The Immortals number just one thousand, but every one of those soldiers is a veteran of ten years and stand taller than six feet tall, with long, thick spears and solid shields. If any fighting unit in this madhouse can go toe to toe with the Company and come out alive, it's them. Not that we'll ever tell them that.
From out of the far eastern kingdoms come a mixed force of pikemen numbering ten thousand. From what we understand, each of the ten kings of the Eastern Crescent placed a thousand troops at the Eye's disposal for the foreseeable future. There's nothing particularly badass about these soldiers, but still- ten thousand warm bodies is nothing to sneeze at.
So that's the Easterling faction- about 23,000 fighters.
From the South, the various warring tribes of Southrons have been united only in their fear of the Lidless Eye for generations, so when emissaries of Mordor came a-calling up the troops, they turned out in droves. Sworn enemies shook hands and blood feuds were put on hold a generation in order to obey the dread command of our paymaster. The eight Haradrim tribes have coughed up about five thousand bows and thirty thousand scimitars between them. Their swordsmen are nothing special by Company standards, but they are all supported by the oliphaunts. The Haradrim have rigged up some platforms on their war-mumakils, so that each monster can carry up to eighty archers each. Twelve oliphaunts times eighty bows equals almost one thousand men holed up in what is essentially a fortress that you can pick up and carry with you. As long as the swordsmen stay within bowshot of their oliphaunts, they'll be the linchpins of any battle formation the Witch-king wants to construct. Not to mention, you could also just drive the beast into the enemy ranks and have it stomp around to its heart's content. That works too.
Also, the Eye has reached out far into the south east of his territories, sweeping in tribes of savages eager for rape and plunder. They are ill-armed, untrained, and extremely unpleasant, so I'm kind of looking forward to watching the Gondorians make mincemeat out of them. There were about 5,000 of the vicious little buggers all told.
That's the Southron faction- 40,000 thousand fighters. We're up to 63,000 already, not including the bloody great war-oliphaunts.
Now, Mordor has been churning out uruks by the thousands for decades, by breeding or magic or job listings or however it is that you recruit uruks. I can't estimate their numbers any more than I can number the grains of sand in the desert, but I figure there are about 200,000 uruks within a half day's march of the Gondorian defenses. This figure does not include the untold bazillions back home in Minas Morgul, posted in the Plateau of Gorgoroth, manning their stations at the Black Gate, or preparing to storm Cair Andros upstream of the Anduin, or on various raids into the enemy homelands. Damn it, I'm using words like "bazillions" again. The uruks, as previously noted, are badly armed and armored, but once the Nazgul start up their berserker spell their shortcomings will cease to matter.
Then there are the trolls. About 15,000 of the standard smash-puny-human-with-big-rock variety, and 2,000 of the real high class ones that are wrapped in armor and use actual steel weapons. In addition to fighting, the trolls will be hauling the fifty siege weapons we have been constructing, and pulling the siege towers towards the walls of Minas Tirith.
And, of course, the Nazgul. Nine Ring-Ghouls mounted on scaly winged beasts, zipping around the battle field like proactive vultures, slapping around any Gondorian who looks at them funny.
Just about the only thing we don't have is decent cavalry. Still, it's not like you can use mounted troops against a stone wall.
Over 200,000 soldiers marching out of Mordor, with over 150 pieces of siege equipment. 63,000 assorted men, with fuck-off great war-mumakil. The Nine greatest powerhouses of sorcery of this hemisphere. Add to all that a certain hardcore group of mercenaries and you got yourself a worldbeater.
Oh, and Gondor? Unsupported by any ally, and weakened by years of raids and in general decline? With a Steward struggling to maintain internal cohesion in his kingdom, and an army diminished by years of conflict? The other team numbers about 34,000 soldiers, a couple dozen field ballista, and a couple hundred mounted knights.
Yeah, good luck with that, sports.
We found out today what the Captain's been up to in Osgiliath- he's been slapping together an invasion plan that's, dare I say it, as dirty as it is elegant.
One of the primary strategies of the Black Company is sneakery. Slyness. Devious cunning and strategic misdirection. We have a thousand years' worth of underhanded tactics on tap in the Annals, and every few years we add a new variation to it. This is our contribution to the Company's playbook:
The way Osgiliath is set up, as I told you before, is that it's got the Anduin cutting it in two. We have the eastern half; they got the west. The Anduin, at this point in its long journey towards the sea, is far too deep to ford and any boat that tries to cross would get shot up by arrows or sunk by ballista. The only way across are the six ornate bridges that used to connect the two halves until the Gondorians dismantled them. The Captain has been working furiously for the past months to construct long steel plates that can be dropped across the remains of the bridges. If we can get close enough to plop them down, we can storm across and get into the close-quarters fighting that our numbers will surely carry. The only ones buff enough to haul the plates are the trolls, so they'll be leading the assault. We'll lose hundreds of trolls, no doubt, and we'll need to repaint the stone streets black with uruk blood to even get close enough to start the melee, but this plan will work. It's basically trading away ten thousand of our guys in exchange for being on the other side of the river.
Of course, if that was in fact the plan then the Captain wouldn't have had the warsmiths banging away at all hours of the night making the six steel plates. He wouldn't have allowed the other team to see us transport them to the six bridges. And he really, really would not have had the trolls practice running and dropping the plates in full view of the other team. He was a stage magician flaunting his beautiful half-naked assistant to keep your eyes off what his hands are doing.
While the other team watched our lovely plates being set in place and nodded sagely to themselves, the Old Man was building a fleet of lightweight boats in the trenches of Ithilien. The boats varied in size; some could only hold five guys, some could hold up to fifty. But I swear to you, there were over a thousand of them. Every night, a few more boats were smuggled quietly into Osgiliath and placed in hidden caches throughout the city. The other team has a skeleton company patrolling the river while the main concentration of troops are massed at the bridges. When the orders come for us to go over the top, the Gondorians are going to be some surprised motherfuckers.
Our camp is abuzz with rumors- the other team has made their first move. Nobody is precisely sure what actually happened, but it sounds like the Nazgul and the Grey Walker mixed it up today. I sought out Sapper to get his informed opinion. He told me to piss off until I mentioned it was for the Annals.
"Oh," he said. "So it's for posterity, like."
"Precisely. So tell me, from a sorceror's perspective, just what exactly happened out there today?"
Sapper preens. Pesky questions from nimrods he detests, but give him an audience and a leading question and he'll pontificate for hours. Still, I'm Annalist, ain't I? Duty before pleasure.
"Do you remember," he began, stretching his plump frame as tall as he could, "that shadow company of Rangers that ambushed the Haradrim?"
Of course I bloody did.
"Well, it seems that they tried to regroup with their main force yesterday evening. Which is a tactical error, in my opinion. A highly motivated and self-sufficient group of commandos operating behind our lines could wreak havoc on our lines of supply, could obstruct our strategies, could sap morale and devastate our forward momentum. They could do far more good as raiders in Ithilien than fodder in the upcoming battle. As Sleepy noted during her legendary campaign against the forces of Taglios and the Protector, possessing the psychological initiative is far more vital than mere numbers on the battle line..." And he went on like that for a while. I gradually guided him back to the original question.
"After their commander dropped them off across the river, he and his officers made a break for Minas Tirith, evidently with reports of our movements that were too urgent to go through the proper channels. Their movements attracted the interest of the Nazgul. The Witch-king sent out five of the Nazgul to either eliminate or apprehend them. They mounted their Gharashni-"
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