Perilous Journeys. The Shadow over Rhudaur Part III

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Shedun Fortress, evening of November 4, 1347
Written by Angmar and Gordis
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"Oh, yes", thought Agannalo as the guards pushed him out of the chamber and down a winding stair leading to the dungeon. "The King will be quite amused when he sees me in chains, no doubt. He will laugh at me... what a shame! But I still prefer him laughing than wrathful." He gritted his teeth and set himself to endure.

The cell assigned to Agannalo was dank and damp with a trickle of water dripping down one wall. Instead of a front wall there were thick iron bars separating it from the guardroom, so the prisoner was under constant observation. Hyarion took no chances. A fat guard, awfully reeking of garlic, put iron manacles and foot chains on the prisoner's wrists and ankles and chained him to a ring in the far wall. Abjectly Agannalo sat down on a pile of dirty straw and tried to calm down.

There was something good to be found in any situation. "At least they have not noticed my Ring" he thought. Had they tried to take it, Agannalo would have had no choice but to kill them all... and head back from Angmar the way he had come to wander alone and homeless through the lands.

The Ring, invisible to mortal eyes, was still there, on the middle finger of his left hand, and it meant that he could escape, if the situation became unendurable. The sight of the Ring helped him to regain if not peace, but at least some calm and composure.

Unfortunately, not for long. One of the soldiers assembled in the adjoining guardroom brought Agannalo's harp. The sound of tortured strings made Agannalo jump to his feet. Shouting curses, he rushed to the iron bars, but the guards laughed even merrier, while one of them plucked the strings mercilessly, trying to play a village tune.

That was more that Agannalo could take. He fixed his eyes on the "musician" and muttered a Dark spell under his breath. "The Captain will understand," thought Agannalo. "There is a limit to anyone's endurance. The King will not miss this rascal."

The tune abruptly stopped as with some pathetic flailing of arms the guard sank to the ground. He trashed for some time struggling for breath, then went still. Dumbstruck, the others looked in awe from the corpse to Agannalo and back again. Nobody dared to pick up the harp from where it lay on the floor.

Agannalo returned back to his pile of straw. "This lout had no call to touch my harp," he thought, appeased.

***

After Agannalo was led away to the dungeon, Lieutenant Hyarion ordered everyone to leave the audience chamber. While he had never seen another knife like it, he knew from its glow that this was no ordinary blade.

As he stared transfixed at the sheen of the metal, he felt as though he were falling through the surface of the blade. He was being pulled down, down, down, through a world of ice, filled with swirling clouds of misty vapors and stinging snowflakes. He kept falling and falling, until at last he saw the ground before him. It was stark and white, completely covered with snow, and right beneath him was a coffin made of crystal, its lid open and waiting for someone... who? And then in an instant he knew for whom it was waiting - it was waiting for him!

"Dire sorcery!" Hyarion panted, wiping his brow with his sleeve. "I have some knowledge of the craft, but this is far beyond my power! I will keep it, though, and find out its meaning." Carefully, he placed the blade back in its black leather sheath and lay it upon the table. He would take the pale blade and the emerald dagger back to his private chamber where he could study them.

His reverie was interrupted by a pounding on the door. "Sir," came the frightened voice of the Captain of the Guards, "please, I must talk to you!"

"Come in, man, and tell me what it is that has disturbed you," Lieutenant Hyarion said, an edge to his voice. "What now?" he wondered. The day had been a strange one, and he sensed it might become even stranger before it was over.

"Sir, I do not like to interrupt you, but there has been a strange occurrence in the dungeon."

"What?" Lieutenant Hyarion waited nervously to hear the answer.

"One of the guards took a fancy to the new prisoner's harp and was playing a tune to entertain us. Suddenly he fell to the ground, gasped for breath, twitched a few times, and then died! Considering as how he was only eighteen years old and one of the strongest men in the guard, it is unlikely that his heart failed him. That harp killed him! The thing is evil! No one will touch it and the harp just lies there near the dead man's body!"

His eyes wide, the lieutenant gaped incredulously at the soldier. Clutching his forehead, he was silent for a time as he considered what should be done. Not only was Silmadan a thief and an assassin, but he was also a very dangerous sorcerer. Who had employed him to attempt the life of the king? Who else but one of the three kingdoms of Arnor! Which one? Though he was confident that his own dungeon master could get the information out of the prisoner, he thought that the matter was best left to the king. Carn Dum knew methods of torture that would oil even the tongue of a stone statue!

"Captain," he finally spoke, "have the body of the fallen guard removed. At sunrise the prisoner is to be taken to Carn Dum under heavy guard." The lieutenant caught the apprehensive look in the Captain's eyes. "The harp, you wonder? Do not fear. I have some knowledge in spellcraft and neutralizing evil incantations. Have my horse saddled, for as soon as I notify my second in command and prepare a few things, I will be going to Carn Dum with you. We will soon see if this rascal is truly a kinsman of the king!"

***

The news of the strange new prisoner spread rapidly through the fortress. Within less than an hour after the bizarre death of the guard who had dared taunt Agannalo with his harp playing, everyone from the cooks in the kitchen to the grooms in the stable had heard about the incident.

At sunset, the jailer gingerly pushed a wooden bowl of cabbage stew through the bars and used a long pike to shove it closer to the chained prisoner. Wrinkling his nose, Agannalo sent it flying back. The jailer cursed but didn’t press the matter. “They are starting to learn to keep away from me” the nazgul grinned mirthlessly to himself. He huddled in a corner and waited for the morning.

The only sounds besides the footfalls of the jailer making his rounds and the occasional laughter of guards as they played a game of dice had been the monotonous trickle of water down one side of the wall. At one point during the night, a large gray rat had slunk into the chamber on its nightly search for scraps of food. Seeing Agannalo, the creature had not tarried, but raced squeaking across the floor, seeking refuge in a hole on the other side.

As dawn approached, Agannalo saw the jailer and two guards walking down the hall and then they stopped at his cell. There was the sound of a key sliding in the lock, and the jailer, a fat greasy man with a bulging paunch, walked through the doorway, followed by two guards armed with spears.

"Enjoy your night?" the jailer squinted at Agannalo. "Now you're not going to like this, but there's nothing you can do about it! Give me any trouble, and you'll have to answer to the guards!"

Agannalo found the situation bizarrely amusing. At any time he wished, he could have all three of them dead on the floor. He allowed the jailer to pull his hands roughly behind his back and manacle them there. "Now you're going with us!" The guards threatened Agannalo with their spears and motioned for him to go out the door.

Once out in the stable courtyard, Agannalo saw his mounted escort of twenty fearsome looking men. Many of them dark and swarthy, they were all armed to the teeth and appeared to be as ferocious as any criminal who might be found lurking on the docks of Umbar or in the more squalid section of any city of the east. Their black and red livery, however, was splendid, clean and unwrinkled, and their mounts were outstanding specimens of horseflesh. A number of the horses, though, were skittish, shying easily and giving their riders some difficulty. A few of the men lost their tempers at the obstinacy of their mounts, and, cursing, gave them smart blows with their riding crops before bringing the beasts under control.

Lieutenant Hyarion, already mounted on the back of his bay stallion, looked down his nose at Agannalo and then turned his head in the direction of the pack horses. Agannalo sensed that the Southron was gloating over the emerald dagger and the Morgul blade, stored safely away in one of the packs. Agannalo grinned. "The pompous fool," he thought. "At least he is still among the living, but with his ignorant recklessness, I wonder at how long."

A groom held the halter rope of a large, saddled buckskin gelding. The animal was young, no more than four years in age, yellow in color with splashes of white on its stomach and legs and a black mane and tail. Big and rangy, with placid, though intelligent, eyes, the horse had a slight bulge between the eyes which continued until it reached the nose. In appearances, the horse resembled a draft animal more than it did a riding mount. Agannalo knew, though, that such horses were usually tough and resilient, seldom getting injured, and oftentimes bold.

"Your mount," one of the guards at his side growled. "He is a lot finer animal than that old plug you rode into the fortress. Think you can ride him?" the guard asked without waiting for a reply.

Motioning to the groom, the man ordered, "Bring the prisoner's horse forward! We'll help him mount!"

The groom gave a tug to the halter rope, and the animal took a step, its ears pricking forward. As the horse drew closer to Agannalo, his right ear would flick forward, the left ear back. A tremble ran over the horse's body, then the animal balked, planting its feet rigidly. Embarrassed, the boy tugged fiercely at the halter rope, but the horse would not take one step forward.

"I cannot understand what has gotten into Prince this morning," the shamefaced boy bemoaned. "He is usually such a good beast."

"All right, you," one of the guards pushed Agannalo forward, "you are going to ride that horse if we have to tie you to him!"

The sight of the off-balance Agannalo stumbling towards him terrified Prince. The beast rose on his hind legs, pawing the air. The young groom, pulled off the ground, lost his hold on the halter rope and fell onto the cobblestones. Prince's feet came back down, and then with a kick of his heels, he galloped away across the courtyard.

"Catch that beast!" screamed the head ostler who had just come out of the stable. Then for the next fifteen minutes, the grooms and many of the guards chased the horse as it ran wildly around the courtyard before it was finally captured. As four grooms held Prince cross-tied, the ostler soundly beat the horse over the head with a long, thick stick. "He'll give you no more trouble now, and to make sure of it, I'll have him blindfolded!" the ostler said.

When calm had at last returned, the two guards hoisted Agannalo onto the blindfolded horse's back. Prince shuddered and snorted, but subdued and dazed from its recent beating, he stood steady.

Agannalo used his knees to direct his horse towards the head ostler who was still standing nearby. The man was apparently a barbarian – a stocky squat brute of a man. He jumped startled when he heard Agannalo’s whisper, venomous as a hiss of a snake.

“Make sssure my old Gray is well fed and well tended, osssstler… If I don’t find him hale and ssound when I ssend for him, I will come for thee perssonally, ossstler, and I will ssskin thee alive to make a harness for my new horse!”

In horror the man looked up at Agannalo, his watery blue eyes bulging in his ashen face. Unable to reply, he gulped and nodded many times, shaking all through. Satisfied, Agannalo straightened up in his saddle again. At least no woe would befell his old horse.

In the confusion of the departure nobody seemed to pay attention to this short conversation. Hyarion gave the signal to leave.

Soon the procession was trotting across the drawbridge and onto the road. Occasionally Prince gave a long suffering groan of protest, but followed dutifully behind a trooper who led him with a very long rope on his halter. For some odd reason that no one was able to comprehend, none of the troopers' horses were willing to get near Agannalo, and so it was decided it would be best to lead the steed on a very long rope.