but it ends stumbling all over itself. The more security we post, the more disorder and delay we get. Each guard has to be checked by other guards. So on and so on. Wizard hairs! It’s not enough that we face an enemy that seeks our extermination, but now we hear they have infiltrated us with ‘small spies.’ Ball-less demons! One could walk right past us now, and in all the confusion we wouldn’t notice. No one can stop this coming battle anyway. But for some weapon of terror planted in our midst, the die is cast and this battle shall unfold within hours. I can feel the victory we deserve and the end of those haughty bastards!”
She was suited in a stolen orc-courier’s dress, without armor or weapons. Leather headgear was pulled low over her soot-smeared face. A heavy charcoal streak, black on gray, ran down her face from her forehead to below her chin. Her feet were encased in bearskin leggings. She held a leather case with the simple double-oval mark of the Source inscribed in red dye.
On a crag high above the valley, two sets of eyes watched for Ara. They had been sitting there for three days and nights. The penetrating gaze of each studied, traced movements, saw patterns and clues. Finally they found the small, scurrying form with a gait like no orc. She was moving away from the headquarters of the ‘Eye of No Tears’ Empi, an elite legion of men. His steed spied first the odd movement, far below. Its tail whipped in impatience; steam flowed from its nostrils. Their eyes locked on the tiny figure three miles away, past heat and fumes. They watched as Ara sneaked along a sidewall, filched some food and water, and then moved toward the slopes of the volcano. Pazal rose and slipped the tough, braided dwarf-skin harness about the creature’s neck in preparation for flight.
As she darted among the battle groups, Ara felt unnoticed. She was safe as long as she ran. And that she did, propelled by dire urgency and duty. The pass-sign, a quick cupped hand in the likeness of an eye, she had mastered, although none in charge seemed to notice.
To her left, the slopes of Fume rose, impossibly and neck-craningly high. Its base was less than a mile away. On the plain before it massed an army making ready for battle. A thousand clock drums relentlessly measured the final hours toward battle. Every few minutes there thundered out a single, unified, resounding
She passed through the smells of strange creatures sweating in fear and exertion. Soon she was surrounded by clanks of metal and creaks of leather, cursing, and beneath all, the ceaseless, burdened tramp and thud of feet and hooves.
She entered a crossroads, helpless to take her gaze from the mountain, when a huge hand splayed in front of her. A troll guard directing traffic had signaled her to stop. She watched as one wing of the army passed.
It was loosely formed of diverse and malformed troops. Then, moving fast, brandishing outlandish, long- stemmed weapons, boiled a vanguard more like a swarm of giant lethal insects. They were organized by no single commander. They needed no indoctrination, no order save sight and smell of the enemy. Their faces were twisted and tubered with yellow and purple bulges, as if designed to further horrify their foe.
Make way! The Swarm comes! Orcs and men stepped back warily to let the horde pass.
Next came shambling ranks of great orcs. Heavy and grunting with complaint, all faced forward, eager to bleed the haughty elves that, outside battle or blade of treachery, knew not death. They jostled on, ready to fall ten to one if only to close with the tormentors of their race.
There came a break in the march’s flow. Ara started to move but the guard’s hand stayed in her face. She kept her eyes down. The hand reached out and pulled her closer, as if for safekeeping.
A legion of men came next. Ara of the village stood in awe bordering on admiration. They were disciplined, clearly seasoned in battle, resolute in the patience that precedes great contests. Mounted captains stood high in their stirrups, exhorting them forward. “Today we meet the Meddlers!” they shouted. “The Great Imposters, the False Kings and Deceivers. Do you wish to see their Horse-flag over your villages? Show them our strength!”
And with a single, great shout and raising blades, the sound of thousands roared forth as one, a force and conviction terrible to behold.
Ara saw that this array was not purely one of craven curs whipped from behind, but was of men and orcs ready to mark their enemy, including her own people, for death and defeat. The gravity of implacable, physical opposition, the blunt, grinding purpose of war unleashed, passed her in review. Whatever was about to happen, it seemed destined for a grim field where destiny is unveiled by wager of battle.
Soon there was another break in the line. The giant hand guided her forward, as if saying, “On to your errand, little one.”
Now only a league from Fume, she continued the steady, jogging shamble that seemed her best disguise.
The unseen eyes that tracked her from above poised until she entered a small defile.
As she emerged, Pazal stood before her.
Ara stopped. She heard a displacement of air and the leathery slap and folding of great wings behind her. Worst of all, she now recognized the thing before her. It was the black wraith from the gate. The same that had picked her up like a toy.
It spoke:
“Twice I find you standing before me, small one. Are you so enamored of our power that you have deserted your band and volunteered your lot with us? Or are you but a spy to be drawn on the rack before being fed to my pet? Do you have any idea what it feels like to be eaten alive? To see your insides in its mouth? I think you will … cooperate.”
Ara knew her life was forfeit. Boldness, even to the point of folly, might still play a role, however. Bad information might help in some way. She spoke loudly, “Hold your boast, Unman. I know of a hidden trifle much desired by your master. Would you destroy the clue that points to the one thing he covets?”
The tail wrapped about her legs as a great talon thudded to the ground by her side, its scaly knuckles level with her eyes.
And there, for now, the trail of Ara the Hobbitess swerved into the vastness of unintelligible runes and was lost to Jess as surely as a blind turn in Mirkwood itself.
Chapter 38
OCTOBER 31. 3:15 P.M
Cadence jogged on, fitful in her direction and pace, until her legs found their stride. She would indulge this time to let her feet and her thoughts seek their own paths. She crossed an intersection with a construction project underway. Slabs of steel, blowtorch cut, flat like lasagna, covered car-sized holes in the street. It was surprising the weight they bore, she thought as she watched cars and trucks kaboom hollowly over them. One of the slabs had been removed, and she stopped and looked down, like an observer of open-heart surgery. In the deep she saw ghastly confirmation of her sense of the unseen anatomy of the city. Looming in the shadows was a beamed and crusted urban skeleton. Relic iron trusses lay tied with bolts the size of sledgehammers. Leaking pipes ran past, each of a size that could transport trash cans, each made of wood held together with wire. Around these were ultra-modern, blue and yellow, gooey rubber cables, intertwined in insane symmetry. This was the bare guts of urban civilization revealed. All of it overlay a deeper shadow land lurking beneath, descending to perhaps untested depths. It struck her as indecent, exposing the quiet, eternally waiting gloom of that long-hidden world to garish daylight.
A piece of older asphalt pavement was exposed. Like dinosaur tracks on ancient sediment, it hosted random fossil remnants of the twentieth century. Pop bottle caps saying Big Chief, Nehi and RC. Flattened, steel beer cans with tabs church-key cut in double v-shapes. A wondrous bird skeleton, perfectly mistakable for Archaeopteryx,
