The Last Ringbearer (19 page)

“And they? …”

“Forty.”

“Can’t storm the fort, then.”

“Forget a direct assault,” Grager waved off the notion. “Whatever else, they’ll have enough time to kill the Prince in any event. Moreover, Faramir categorically demands that his freedom be attained with absolutely no bloodshed, so that no one dare accuse him of violating his vassal’s oath. No, we have another plan – an escape from Emyn Arnen; and when the Prince of Ithilien is under our protection, that’s when we can change our tune and tell the Whites to get lost.”

“Do you have a concrete plan?”

“Brother, you offend me – it’s almost fully implemented already! You see, Éowyn was our biggest problem: they’re only let outside separately, and the Prince won’t leave without her, of course. So we had to solve this puzzle: where can we arrange for both the Prince and the Princess to be, first, together, second, with no eyes on them, third, outside the fort?”

“Hmm … the bedchamber comes to mind immediately, if not for the third condition.”

“You’re almost right. It’s the bathhouse.”

“Wow!” Tangorn guffawed. “A tunnel?”

“Of course. The bathhouse is within the stockade, but away from the main building. We’re digging from a nearby mill, about two hundred yards straight, quite a bit of work. The biggest problem with tunnels, as you know, is what to do with all the dirt. With the mill we’re getting it out in sacks dusted with flour, it’s all very natural-looking. The danger is that the sentries might start counting the sacks from sheer boredom, and figure out that a lot more flour is going out than grain is coming in. So we couldn’t dig as fast as we could, but looks like we’ll be done this week.”

“And the White Company has no suspicions?”

“Beregond swears that they don’t. Of course, they won’t tell him anything of the sort, but he’d see some signs of an alarm.”

“Do they have informants in the Settlement and the hamlets?”

“In the Settlement for sure, but not in the hamlets, I don’t think. See, the White Company has a real communication problem outside the fort. The locals avoid talking to them (there’re all sorts of crazy rumors about them, including that they’re the living dead), which helps us a lot: every settler contact with the Whites stands out. They’ve wised up now and switched to dead drops, but before that they were burning their agents every day.”

“Is the tavern keeper working for them?”

“Looks that way. Makes our lives very difficult.”

“What about the merchants who travel to Gondor?”

“One. The other is my man. I’ve been waiting for them to try and recruit him, then we’d have their communication channel, but no luck so far.”

“You’re just watching them for now?”

“Not just watching. Now that we’re counting down the days, I’ve decided to cut their link to Minas Tirith – make them get a little busy. That’ll distract them some from both the miller and our hamlets.”

“Speaking of a link – anyone in the Settlement keep pigeons?”

Grager grinned. “One did, but his coop burned down. So it goes …”

“Wasn’t that too bold? They must’ve been furious.”

“Sure they were! But, like I told you, it’s the final countdown, speed matters. Besides, two sergeants investigated the arson, if you can imagine that, so now we know who’s in charge of counter-intelligence there … The only thing is,” the former resident spy said thoughtfully, staring at the lamp, “I’m really bothered by how easily I’m figuring out everything they do. Just put myself in their place: how would I build a network in such a village? But this simply means that once they find out that we exist – which they will, and soon – they’ll figure my moves out equally easily. So what we must do is move first … Aha!” His raised finger froze in mid-air. “Sounds like company! Looks like the boys from the fort have finally risked direct contact with Minas Tirith – I’ve been waiting for this for three days!”

The cart rolled down the highway in quickly gathering dusk, and its driver (the owner of the local grocery) kept getting chills behind the collar and in his sleeves. He had almost made it through the Owl Hollow – the most dismal stretch of the route between the Settlement and Osgiliath – when four shadows materialized noiselessly out of the impenetrably dark chestnut bushes on both sides of the road. The merchant knew the rules well and surrendered his purse with its dozen silver coins meant to purchase soap and spices to the robbers without complaint. However, the robbers didn’t evince much interest in the money, telling the prisoner to disrobe; this was against the rules, but the blade against his chin discouraged any discussion. The grocer was really scared – cold-sweat scared – only when the leader, after poking the soles of his boots with a dagger, carefully felt his jacket, grunted in satisfaction and cut open one of the stitches. From there he deftly extracted a small square of fine silk, covered with runes barely visible in the dark.

The merchant was an amateur, so when the robbers threw a rope over a sturdy branch, he committed a gaffe of monumental proportions by claiming to be a King’s man. What did he expect to accomplish? The night killers only traded puzzled looks: their experience suggested that the King’s men were just as mortal as all others, provided they were hanged properly. The one who was fashioning the noose observed drily that espionage was not a game of darts at the Red Deer with only a couple of beers at stake. Strictly speaking, he further observed while painstakingly tying a ‘pirate’s knot’ (in full view, so that the victim could observe the menacing preparations), the merchant was lucky. A failed spy usually wouldn’t rate such a quick and relatively painless death; it’s his good fortune that he’s only a courier and knows nothing about the rest of the organization anyway … At that, the unfortunate grocer failed to hold either his bodily wastes or whatever he knew; as Grager’s men supposed, he knew quite a lot.

The ‘robbers’ traded satisfied glances: they have done their job flawlessly. The leader led a horse out from behind a bush, gave a couple of curt orders and galloped away: Blackbird Hamlet has been waiting for this bit of silk for a long time. One of the others gave the quavering prisoner a look that was far from admiring and pushed his discarded clothing towards him with his boot:

“Over there, behind the trees, is a little stream. Go clean yourself up and get dressed – you’re coming with us. I’m sure you can imagine what’s gonna happen if your White Company buddies catch up with you.”

The cipher used to encode the dispatch was surprisingly simple. Upon discovering seven instances of the rare
rune in a relatively short message, Tangorn and Grager understood immediately that they were dealing with a so-called direct substitution (nicknamed ‘simple gibberish’), where one rune is always replaced with only one other throughout the text. Typically, a predetermined number is added to the number of all fifty-eight runes constituting the Certhas Daeron; for example, if the step is ten,
(number 11) replaces
(number 1),
(number 7) replaces
(number 55), and so on. This cipher is so primitive that in the South it is used, at most, to encode secret love letters. Having figured out the step on the second try – fourteen, the date of the message – Grager cursed elaborately, reckoning it an attempt at disinformation.

The message was anything but disinformation, though. In it, one Cheetah, captain of His Majesty’s Secret Guard, was informing his ‘colleague Grager’ that their game had reached an apparent impasse. Certainly Grager could roll up Cheetah’s intelligence network outside the fort and greatly impede communications with Minas Tirith; however, this would not advance his ultimate goal even a little bit. Would it not make sense for the two of them to meet, either in Emyn Arnen (with safe conduct guarantees) or in one of the hamlets of the Baron’s choosing?

CHAPTER 26

Ithilien, Emyn Arnen

Night of May 14, 3019

L 
isten, so you say that Princess Allandale didn’t really exist, that this Alrufin dreamed her up …” Éowyn was sitting in the armchair with her feet up, her slender fingers intertwined over one knee, and a funny frown on her face. The prince smiled and, perching on the arm, tried and failed to smooth out the frown with his lips.

“No, Far, wait, I do mean it. She’s alive, you see – really alive! When she dies to save her beloved, I want to cry, as if I had lost a friend for real … See, those sagas about ancient heroes are also great, but they’re different somehow, very different. All those Gil-galads and Isildurs, they’re like … like stone statues, you know? One can worship them and that’s it, but the Princess – she’s weak, she’s warm, you can love her … Am I making sense?”

“Plenty, honey. I think that Alrufin would have loved to hear you say this.”

“Allandale must’ve lived in the beginning of the Third Age. No one but a few chroniclers even knows the names of the
konungs
who ruled Rohan back then; so who’s more real – they, or this girl? Hadn’t Alrufin – scary to say! – exceeded the might of the Valar?”

“Yes, in a way he has.”

“You know, I just thought … imagine that someone as mighty as Alrufin writes a book about the two of us – this can happen, right? Then which Éowyn will be the real one – I or the other?”