movement on the roads far below. At a crossroads a great encampment sprawled like a black, tentacled fungus reaching across a ravaged landscape.
“They round up our innocents and take them away. Some say into the Black Gate for sport, slavery and … food for the man-orcs. Anything to humiliate and destroy us. The Goblin Camp will pay this night!”
She stared at him, eyeing the swirls of stained scars that festooned his arms, legs, face and hands. “May I make my own way to the south?”
“No. I have some things to tell you, and questions to ask. But first, be still.” He watched closely, then whispered, “Since only our sentinel hounds detected you, I know your ability to move with stealth, as unseen as a passing breeze. Do you wish to see my enemy close up?”
Even as she took a deep breath and nodded, he was moving ahead of her down a ravine that cut the road beneath a small bridge. They huddled at the bridge and watched a trudging column approach. It was thick with effort, moving beasts and engines of war. As they waited beneath the timbers, they felt the beams strain and creak as the black army began its passage. All was clank of metal and thud of hard-ridden, lathering horses. Crack of whip at man and beast and orc alike. Complaint and anger moved with the cloud of dust that escorted the column.
With its passing, they crept to the very edge of the enemy camp. The general pall quickly gave way to night. A ceremony began. Dry lightning approached from the distance, the freshening breezes bringing the far-off smells of raindrops on dry soil. Camp bonfires were piled higher. Rising torrents of sparks shifted with the fickle winds. Around the fire, a thousand orcs bearing the sign of a flaming circle, ranks of men, and a hundred great drums pounding in unison. And then came the Goblins. A procession of them, each impossibly tall, heads like huge living jack-o-lanterns that grimaced as they moved. They danced, a horrible shuffling remnant of the Days-Before, as six prisoners, bound and greased, were brought forth.
“They are ours,” said Thygol. “We must get back and prepare to interrupt their party.”
They made their way back along the ravine, through the rocks, and finally to a deep, dry vale. There waited a thousand armed men of mien and marking similar to Thygol. A lonely, blasted tree served as his headquarters. After a moment of dispensing instructions, he sat on a stump and gestured for her to sit likewise.” We will be ready in a few moments. Let’s talk while we can. Why do you journey here, alone save for the raptor that circles far above our bowshot? Are you lost in search of Lyfthelm, the gate that cannot be passed?”
“I search for one with whom I began this journey. We were separated. He has since traveled by paths I know not. Sparse clues, some the castaways of a wizard, told me to come this way. I continue on the chance that I may cross his path.”
“Wizards once came and went hereabouts, but they have forsaken this land. Or perhaps it was their parting curses that left us to this.”
“Tell me, Thygol why don’t you submit? Join the forces of the Dark One? That has to be better than resisting and being slaughtered.”
“That counsel we have debated many times. Even their company may not be too great a price to pay for life. Or so some say. But I cannot. I know not the right of it. The plain fact is … they are, simply and completely, the enemy of my blood. We have fought them since the times of our grandfathers, when we came into these lands as nomads herding the auroch. And even since the times of our ancestors, a race with armor and bright helms that came to live with us in the smoky world of the Before Time. Now much runs as great storms across the steppes. One approaches even now, and will herald our attack. An omen to our liking.”
A plate of simple food was brought to Ara. As she ate, he continued. “At first we doubted you, just for your orc-like size. And even appearances must be twice studied. There are no doubt spells about….”
Thygol’s sentence was cut short by a bolt of lightning that cracked open the sky, momentarily revealing huge breakers of clouds rolling forth in purple waves. The thunder that followed, hard and swift, pressed them down with its pounding force. The moment is now!” he ordered, “Gather with us the beasts of vengeance so they may feed on our spoils.”
At the stern direction of his hand signals, Ara followed Thygol. They were headed toward the Goblin Camp. The rain swept down on them as thunder rolled overhead in hellish beats. Flashes of light revealed jagged images of men jostling, intent on havoc and destruction.
Ara remembered the final approach only as imagery torn by relentless, windswept rain. She recalled the angled rents of flame and sparks that had been the fires of the camp. The roar of the storm and the peals of thunder masked the clank of metal, creak of leather, and boot-treads of a thousand armed men. They lined the wide stone road that ran alongside the camp, waiting for Thygol’s signal.
“Young halfling?”
She came close to his side. He bent and said “Hogal, my aide, shall take you now by this western road. Three leagues from here opens the last free lands of this corner of the world. With the token of my word, you may take respite there. But beware. Prince Thorn and his advisors in that realm survive by audacity and irreverence. They parlay for neutrality with the minions of the Source even as they make jest of him. Dangerous business, this toying. Like dancing in the set jaws of a cave bear trap. Go now, and may luck accompany you on your journey. You may need it more than most.”
She thanked him and turned as Hogal beckoned for her to make haste in moving down the line and unto the road. They had just cleared the flank of the Cerian warriors when, from a nearby jumble of boulders, there sprang a great torch. Its light revealed the unforgettable, leering pumpkin face of a fully grown Goblin. Two feet wide at the head, twice a man’s height at the shoulders, he roared past them. Another six followed as the wishwash of torch sounds mixed with the storm. A great war cry rose up from the Cerians as they moved on the camp. Ara and Hogal ran into the night.
She never learned which force, each to the other embittered enemies of the blood, prevailed that night.
Dawn two days hence found the storm clearing as they approached the great gates of the castle that rested on the shoulder of the Black Lands and protected young Prince Thorn. The man-size door within one of the gates opened, and Hogal spoke to a guard. The guard gazed past his shoulder, his eyes settling on Ara.
Her escort returned to her, “You may enter and take refuge as the guest of the Prince. I leave you now, lest my entry violate the neutrality of this place. I return to what may survive of my band. Goodspeed!”
“Goodspeed to you and your people.” replied Ara, as she thought of the unprotected, silly borders of her own people. No contrivance of politic or force of arms was likely to hold back the enemy that surely approached her village by now.
Cadence reread the last passage.
After a moment she looked around the room, the piles of scribbled pages, the strange Elvish documents, the exdrug king biting his lip as he turned a page with the circular key held upside down. She shook her head ever so slightly and blew out a breath. She spoke out loud to the air, “Professor Tolkien, did you have
Chapter 28
INKLINGS VII
“So Tollers, you’re off to America?”
“Sshh, few know of this, save those who plot around me!”
“In fact, no one but my Edith and my travel agent, one of whom apparently is your general informant — and now anyone within earshot.”
“Well, it’s always a small world, and this business with the inscription on the rock has to be the puzzler — or has the Mail got it wrong again?”
“On the condition of privacy, I’ll be in New York City for a few days to examine an interesting document that has turned up. An Old English text stuffed, quite out of place, in the Thornberry Collection at King’s College or, as
