deepening gloom and formed a semi-circle bristling with spears. Kumai first tried to block the way with one of the wagons, turning it by the rear axle, but saw that he would not be in time. Stepping back a little and keeping the enemies in sight, he called over his shoulder: “Fire it, by damn!”
“We’re not done, sir!” someone responded from behind, “the large catapults are still dry!”
“Fire what you can! The Westerners are here already!” he roared, and then addressed the battle-ready Rohirrim in Common: “Hey, who’s not a coward? Who’ll meet the mountain Troll in honest battle?”
It worked! The rank broke, and a few seconds later a dismounted officer wearing the white plumage of a cornet stood before him: “Are you ready, fair sir?” Kumai grabbed the pole by the middle, made a quick forward lunge – and found the Rohani less than two yards away; the only thing that saved the Troll was that the light Rohan blade could not cut through the pole which took the brunt of the blow. The engineer hastily backed inside the park, trying to gain precious seconds, but was unable to break away: the cornet was fleet as a ferret, and Kumai’s chances with his clumsy weapon were about zero in close quarters. “Fire and run like hell!” he yelled, seeing clearly that he was finished. Indeed, the next moment the world exploded in a white flash of blinding pain and instantly faded into comforting dark. The cornet’s blow split his helmet clean apart, so he never saw how the very next second everything around turned into a sea of flames – his people did manage to finish the job… A few seconds later the Rohirrim, backing away from the heat, saw their reckless officer trudging from the depths of that roaring furnace, bent under the weight of the unconscious Troll. “What the hell, cornet?” “I must know the name of this fair sir! He’s a captive of my spear, after all…”
Kumai came to only three days later in a Rohani hospital tent, lying side by side with the three riders he felled; the steppe warriors made no distinction between the wounded and treated them all equally. Unfortunately, in this case it meant ‘equally bad:’ the engineer’s head was in bad shape, but the only medicine he got during that time was a flagon of wine brought by Cornet Jorgen who had captured him. The cornet voiced hope that once the Engineer Second Class was healed he would honor him with another fight, preferably with a weapon more traditional than a pole. Certainly he can be free within the confines of the camp, on his word as an officer… However, a week later the Rohirrim left on the Mordorian campaign, to win the crown of the Reunited Kingdom for Aragorn, and that same day Kumai and all the other wounded were sent to the Mindolluin quarry. Gondor was already a civilized country, unlike the backward Rohan…
How he managed to survive those first hellish days, with a busted head and a concussion that kept sending him into pits of unconsciousness, was a total enigma; most likely it was simply Trollish stubbornness, to spite the warders. All the same, Kumai had no illusions regarding his fate. In his time, as required by the tradition of well-off Trollish families, Kumai had followed the entire career path of a worker in his father’s mines at Tzagan-Tzab, from miner to surveyor’s assistant. He knew enough about mining to understand that no one was concerned with economics here; they were sent to Mindolluin to die, rather than earn the quarry owners some profit. The daily food-to-production-quota ratio for Mordorian prisoners was such as to be bald-faced ‘killing on an installment plan.’
By the third week, when some prisoners were already dead and the others managed to more or less adapt to this murderous cadence (what else could they do?), an Elvish inspection team swooped in. What shame, what barbarity! those folks carried on. Isn’t it obvious that these people are capable of a lot more than driving wheel-barrows? There are plenty of experts in all kinds of trades here – take them and use them properly, damn it! The Gondorian bosses scratched their heads abashedly: “our bad, your eminences!” and instantly conducted a skill survey. As a result, a few dozen lucky ones traded the hell of Mindolluin for work in their chosen fields, leaving the quarry forever.
Whatever, the One be their judge… As for himself, Kumai did not think it proper to buy his life by building heavier-than-air aircraft for the enemy (that being his trade): some things are not to be done because they must not be done, period. An escape from Mindolluin was obviously a pipe dream, and he saw no other ways to get out of here. In the meantime, undernourishment was doing its work – he became more and more apathetic. It is hard to say how long he would have lasted in this mode – maybe a week, maybe even six months (but almost certainly not a year) – were it not for Mbanga, the One rest his soul, who managed to slam the door on his way out so spectacularly as to also solve all of Kumai’s problems once and for all.
Chapter 35
Close to evening a stranger visited the Mordorians’ barrack where the Engineer Second Class was being wracked by a consuming fever. He was wiry and quick in his movements, his swarthy Southerner’s face marked by decisiveness – most likely an officer off an Umbarian privateer who by a quirk of fate wound up at Mindolluin rather than dangling off the yardarm of a royal galley. He stood for a minute over the bloody mess already presided over by hordes of fat flies and grumbled to no one in particular: “Yeah, prob’ly a goner by morning…” Then he disappeared, only to re-appear a half an hour later and, much to the surprise of Kumai’s fellow inmates, begin treating him. Ordering them to hold the patient down, he started rubbing a yellowish ointment smelling sharply of camphor right into the bleeding welts; the pain was enough to jerk Kumai back from wobbly unconsciousness, and had he not been so weakened, his fellows would not have been able to keep him pinned down. Pirate (as the prisoners took to calling him) kept working calmly, and just a few minutes later the wounded man relaxed, melting with copious sweat, and sank into a real sleep like a stone in a pond.
The ointment was truly miraculous: by morning the welts had not only closed but started itching like crazy – a sure sign of healing. Only a few inflamed, and the Pirate, who showed up before morning call, got to work on those. Kumai, mostly back to life by then, greeted his savior gloomily: “I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but surely you could’ve found a better use for your wonderful medicine. What use is saving the one who’s going to die soon anyway?”
“Well, a man has to do stupid things from time to time, or stop being a man. Turn a bit… yes… Bear this, engineer, it’ll be better soon… Oh yes, speaking about doing stupid things. Forgive my curiosity, but why have you stayed to die in this quarry? You could have been sitting pretty in the King’s labs in Minas Tirith right now.”
Kumai grunted: “It’s the simple wisdom of prostitutes I’ve followed all my life: don’t hustle while under a client…” and cut himself short when it suddenly occurred to him: how does this guy know about my trade when I’ve told no one about it and have concealed it during that ‘skill survey?’
“A commendable stance,” nodded Pirate without a shadow of a smile. “The most interesting thing is that in our case it’s also the most pragmatically correct one; actually, the only correct one. You see, all those who have
“Dead? How do you know?”
