DIVIDED LOYALTIES
Evening of September 3, 3020
Written by Angmar
Frodo's scorched feet throbbed in pain as he sat, bound and helpless. He was unable to dislodge the strong ropes which imprisoned his hands against his knees nor the stout length of wood that prevented his legs and arms from moving. Vartang watched him intently, pleased at the appearance of Frodo's contorted face that revealed the pain and suffering that he was feeling.
The three children, Rian, Haleth and the few other women slaves who had survived the attack were led into the circle around the fire. "The children cannot see well from where they stand," Vartang said. "What an unkindness it would be if they did not have a clear view of all that transpires here tonight."
After he had given orders to some of his men, they rose from the logs where they had been lounging, wine flasks in their hands. "Tie the lads from their ankles," Vartang commanded. "Raise them high into the air so they can see!"
After unbinding the hands of the boys from behind their backs, two men held them while others tied ropes to the ankles of each boy as they screamed and kicked wildly. Despite their struggling, soon their ankles were tied and their hands were bound in front of them. The ropes that bound them were tossed over two tree branches, the ends of the ropes tied in stout knots around the base of the trees. The women screamed as they saw the boys helplessly dangling from the branches, their bound hands swinging uselessly below their heads.
"Now little maid," he said, looking over at Firiel, "we do not want you to feel neglected while your friends have such advantageous positions from which to observe. Watch while my men and I make sport with your mother and the other wenches. Men!" he shouted. "Tie her by her wrists to a high branch."
Firiel screamed and cried, tears streaming down her face, as cruel hands unbound her fettered wrists at her back and roughly pulled them forward, binding them securely with a tight rope. Then another rope was threaded through the binds around her wrists and she was hauled up, kicking and shrieking.
"Bring the women," Vartang said, his voice husky. "The maid's mother is mine first. I want to try her and later I will take Rian. When I have finished my pleasure with the wench Haleth, I will give her to my bodyguards and then to the rest of my men. Then I will savor Rian. I have had a little taste of her before and now I want a feast. The rest of you, those who are not guarding the prisoners, take the other women and wear yourselves out upon them. I would be displeased if you did not!" With that, Vartang pulled Haleth into the woods.
Frodo and the three children wished desperately that there were ways to cover their ears and hide Haleth's screams as Vartang ravished her. Then when he had finished with her, he threw her, naked and crying, out to his bodyguards, and she screamed even more as they dragged her back into the woods.
Later after Haleth and the other women lay dazed and senseless upon the ground, Vartang's deep, husky voice called from the woods. "When you are done with them, tie them in the trees. We have not finished! Bring me the wench Rian. Perhaps if she brings me pleasure, I might keep her. I can never have my fill of Gondorian wenches," he paused, his voice deep and filled with lust, "but they soon get their fill of me."
The night was deep and dark and the shadows thick upon the forest when Vartang finally returned. He held Rian tightly by the arm, her clothes ripped and torn, her hair unbraided and disheveled. Deep, wrenching sobs shook her small frame. Their lusts sated, his soldiers came out of the woods. Haleth and the other women, their naked bodies covered with bruises, welts and blood, were dragged with them.
"Tie them to the trees with the children," Vartang ordered. The vast, shuddering sobs of the children greeted the women as they were hoisted, tied to the trees.
Vartang released Rian's arm and pushed her to the ground. "Men, give her wine and food, if she will eat it. She was a most pleasant dainty and she deserves her pay."
The Variag then looked to a horrified Frodo. "Comfortable, shakh?" Vartang jeered. Silence met his sarcastic query. "I know that nobility should always be treated to only the best, and a great lord like you deserves all he receives. Perhaps you do not feel you have been sufficiently honored as you are entitled by your royal position. Men," he said as he looked about the campfire, "honor the lord! Go into the woods. Find an appropriate throne for him, and when you have found one, bring the seat of homage forth so that the king may be seated and rule over us. Hasten! We must pledge fealty."
Laughing, a number of Vartang's men took up axes and went into the woods and after a while, they returned bearing a long sappling. "Unbind him and treat him like the king that he is!" Quickly the men untied the knots binding Frodo's wrists and the long piece of wood by which he had been held slid down and rested on the ground.
"Strip him!" Vartang commanded.
Large, groping hands tore Frodo's elven cloak from his shoulders and ripped the shirt and waistcoat, the buttons popping free and rolling to the ground. Frodo shrieked in outrage as his breeches were dragged down off his buttocks and tossed into the fire. The men and orcs howled in laughter as Frodo was left naked and they made crude gestures with their hands, pointing at the Halfling. His ears burned as he heard the obscene taunts and jests made about the extent of his manhood.
"General," one of Vartang's men said, "as you know, the nobles of the East use perfumed oil upon their beard and hair, as you, my lord, do yourself. Should not the king, though unbearded, still have all the honor due him? While in the woods, I found what I believe is an adequate substitute for the oil." In his gloved hand, the soldier held a plant, each toothed leaf covered with stinging hairs.
"Nay, soldier, that will not quite serve as oil," said Vartang, "but I think its application would be an appropriate stimulant for the shakh."
"I shall apply the nettle with pleasure, my lord," the soldier said. Frodo screamed and struggled as two other soldiers held him down and the bearer of the stinging nettle raked it across his skin, each tiny, biting thorn causing what felt like drops of liquid fire to fall upon Frodo's flesh. All of Frodo's body now felt on fire and he moaned in pain, itching and burning.
"Beat him!" Vartang cried.
Other soldiers walked up, bearing freshly cut boughs of pine and cedar. As Frodo was held down, the soldiers fell upon him and lashed him furiously from head to foot with the pain-dealing branches, each stroke of the bough bringing fresh welts to his skin.
"Are we giving you enough honor, shakh?" Vartang laughed sadistically.
Silence met his words.
Vartang laughed again and drank deeply and greedily for his cup. By now, he had emptied several cups of their contents. He reached inside his tunic and drew out a phial. "Shakh, I have had something prepared for this occasion. I have had it in safe keeping for a long time. It was made by a wise man of the East, a sorcerer who is well-skilled in potions and elixirs."
As Vartang uncorked the phial, a hiss escaped the phial and a puff of putrid vapor rose and steamed into the night air. "For your honor, shakh," he said, and walked over to Frodo. "Raise him to his feet!" Vartang shouted. "Hold him and I will annoint him with oil!"
Frodo cringed as he felt a cool, oily liquid running down from his head and face and then down his shoulders and back back, oozing down his haunches and legs. He shrieked in agony as he felt his body, still stinging and aching from the nettle and the beating, engulfed in a liquid fire.
"Now the king is ready to take his throne! But where is his crown? A king must have a crown." Vartang looked over to one of the women, who stood guarded near the forest. "What could be better than a favor from a lady to use for a crown? Cut Haleth's braid and turn it into a crown suitable for a great king."
One of Vartang's men, relishing the job, volunteered, and as others held her, he took out his dagger as she fought and screamed. Holding long braid of dark hair in one hand, he pulled it tightly, the roots straining, and then slashed his knife through it, taking off the long braid.
"I shall crown the king," Vartang said, taking the braid from the hands of the soldier. Frodo moved his head from side to side, but the soldiers held him tightly. Vartang tied it around Frodo's head, fastening it with the ribbon from the braid.
"Now the crown is placed and the throne is ready. He needs a robe." Vartang looked all around in mock dismay. "What shall suffice for a robe? The king must be splendid."
"General, sir," a soldier stepped up to him, "we have the robe; all we need are the embellishments and jewels to adorn it."
"Bring pillows from the wains," Vartang ordered. "They shall be the embroidery and gems of the robe. Now throne the king!"
Dragged to his feet, his body screaming in protest, Frodo was thrown over a long, stout sapling, his hands and feet fastened securely by rope. A soldier brought a pail and opened it, unleashing an oily, heavy smell. He handed the pail to Vartang. "Here, lord, the robe."
Vartang held the pail over Frodo's back. "With all due ceremony and great humility, I do place the robe, the mantle of royalty, upon the great shakh's shoulders."
He upturned the bucket, and a dark, thick oil slowly ran out of the pail and oozed down Frodo's back and shoulders, a vague scent of fir mixed with the oily smell. Soon Frodo was covered in the oil from his shoulders to his scorched feet. Vartang tossed the pail into the woods.
"Now the adornments for the great king." Two soldiers carrying pillows brought them up and slashed down the case and poured the feathers over Frodo's body. The feathers drifted down and stuck to the oily, reeking conconction, and Frodo was encased in black spotted with white down.
"Sire," Vartang said mockingly and bowed, a deep, low, courtly bow. "My liege, I pledge my fealty to thee. All my honor and loyalty give I unto thee." Then he laughed maliciously.
"Now let the king appear before his subjects," Vartang said in his deep, melodious voice. "Raise the throne in honor!" he commanded as two men bent down and took up each side of the pole. The soldiers formed into two lines, a processional route. Then raising the pole to their shoulders, the soldiers walked solemnly between the two lines. "Bow to your king!" Vartang shouted, and the soldiers fell to one knee and bent their heads.
The mockery of the parade went on for some time until Vartang tired of it. "Put the king down," he ordered. "Let him watch his coronation celebration. Prepare the festivities! Bring me the captives, except Guntha and the shakh and the woman Rian!"
His men herded a group of cursing, struggling soldiers and prisoners, both captive Gondorians and men loyal to Mordor. Sador, the physician, Aradol, Frodo's man-servant, and others who had worked in Frodo's house and stables were among the condemned. "Curse you, bastards!" one man screamed. Another shouted, "May the Master follow your footsteps until He drags you from a deep hole and extracts every last measure of His vengeance!" Another screamed, "Die in hell, you traitorous scum!"
"You will be the ones who die tonight," Vartang's voice was a hiss like a serpent. "Kneel and bend your heads!" his harsh voice cried.
His men struggled with the captives, forcing them to their knees and into a line. Vartang walked behind the line. Holding his sword in both hands, he touched it to the back of the neck of the first in the line. Clutching his sword high aloft, he brought it down in a plunging arc, severing the flesh and spine. The neck rolled off in a sickening thud, the body crumpling forward.
On he went behind the line, his sword coming down in a swift touch to align the sword to the neck, then pulling back, then forward, cutting through flesh and bone. One man had screamed as he tried to turn his head and spit, "Bloody butcher!" Another had cried, "Hated blood-drenched filth!"
"Are those your last words?" Vartang had hissed before his sword came down across the man's neck, severing flesh and bone, the head rolling off, the body slumping forward.
Vartang's cloak and tunic soon were drenched in blood, but he was not finished, not until ten headless bodies lay in a row. Then he wiped his sword off against the tunic of the last man and laughed, the only sound in the clearing.
At a previously agreed upon order, a number of soldiers rushed into the woods, some carrying torches, and gathered up great armloads of dry wood. They kept piling the wood about the boles of the trees where the captive women and children hung until there were huge stacks around the base of each trunk.
"Torch them!" Vartang screamed. "Let the shakh watch in triumph!" Rian swooned and fell senseless over on the ground.
The kindling crackled as the torches hit and then the men turned and backed away into the clearing by the stream. Frodo's screams joined those of the women as a rolling inferno of flames licked up the trunks of the trees, the biting stench of burning flesh rippling over the clearing. In the flames the women writhed, their unclad forms swaying in the dance of death. Soon the bodies were flaming torches of burning flesh as the fire leaped and licked the bodies, now scorched. The wind fanned the flames and soon the fire leaped from tree to tree, catching in the oily branches of the firs and pines. The women and children consumed in the blaze, the ropes burnt from them and the bodies fell and thudded softly into the encircling flames.
Frodo watched, spellbound by the scene of horror, until the sight of the blackened bodies plunging into the fire turned his mind into a numb shroud of nothing.
So ended Haleth and her daughter Firiel and the two sons of Finduilas. Alas for these innocent and hapless ones, victims of a cruel fate, the curse of the Ringbearer laid upon him by the Lord of Darkness. Though their blood stained the hands of no man loyal to Mordor, still if they had not been emmeshed in the doom of the Halfling, they would yet be alive.
***
Frodo awakened, his body a sticky mass of pain, to the sound of Vartang's taunting voice. "Ahh, does the king slumber? Does he feign humility at the high honors paid him?" Vartang mocked. "I have saved the best for last, the best wine, the best food, the best entertainment, to honor our great lord."
He walked over and faced Frodo, crouching down and resting on his heels. "Shakh," he said, looking into the Halfling's eyes, "I do not dare defile your great robes of state by placing a lowly hand as mine upon them, but know, shakh, that I am greatly honored at being in your presence." He laughed scornfully, his wolf teeth gleaming. "But the night draws to a close and with it the festivities," he said, a feigned sadness in his voice.
"Perhaps you do not understand why such honors have been bestowed upon you. Shakh, can I explain this so that you may understand it? What are you, you miserable little creature?" he demanded, his voice scornful and rising in anger. "Not a Man, not a Dwarf, but some strange parody, spawned, by some mad whim of a God, a devising by one of the accursed Valar, perhaps in mimicry of the work of the Vala Aulë, who in his desire to procreate and breed a race, formed the Dwarves. You are a mimic of nothing, shakh! His wife Yavanna would not yield to him any fruit of the marriage bed, so, perhaps, in his misshapen ideas of fathering, created your accursed race of Halflings!
"But it is not for your foresire that I honor you, but for your finding favor with the accursed Dark Lord. Remember well, shakh, before you die, that I now have all the gold and treasures that were bestowed upon you by Him and I will use them when my father wages war against the Dark Lands. Long have we been in His bondage and now we break free and forge our own kingdom without the will of the Fiend who rules us!" Vartang shifted his position slightly, moving his weight from one foot to the other. "Die knowing that, shakh. You will burn as the others-"
His words were unfinished as an arrow fired from the forest ripped through his left forearm. "Damn!" he cursed as blood soaked through his tunic and mail and ran to the ground.
"Men!" he screamed. "They have slain the pickets!" he cried as he rose, crouching, to his feet and drew his sword. A tumult of arrows crashed through the air as Vartang made his way to Rian, trying to avoid silhouetting himself against the fire. He looked down at her, her startled face awakened from her swoon. He hissed, "I would have kept you to warm my bed a while, but now no," he said as he lunged down and sank his blade into her heaving chest, piercing her heart. He jerked the sword loose from her body and wiped the blood across her still-writhing body.
By a strange twist of fate, Frodo Baggins had purchased Rian the daughter of a nobleman of Minas Tirith to save her from Vartang's foul designs, but at the last, her doom had been sealed by the very Halfling who had wished to save her.
Then Vartang rose and turned to face an orcish attacker and quickly lunged at the orc, spearing him through the heart. His men fought fiercely against their attackers, but Vartang sped away and rushed to his captain, already mounted upon his horse, leading Vartang's own steed. Vartang bounded into the back of the saddleless horse.
"Form a rear guard!" he screamed as he raked his mount's sides with his biting spurs. Then he and those of his men who had fought their way to the horses galloped away as fast their horses' fleet hooves could carry them into the night, into the east.
The fight lasted to the early light of dawn when at last the forces from Dol Guldur beat back the men of the East, and all save those Easterlings that had managed to escape, by horseback or by foot, had surrendered or lay wounded or dead upon the ground. Those who had surrendered, begging for their lives and for mercy, were swiftly put to the sword. Captain Kamyar's men made speedy work of slaying the dying until at last the captain strode into the scene of the slaughter of Frodo's servants and the Mordorian troops. Guntha, grim and shaken, was freed from his bonds, though Frodo could not see it, for he had long since fallen into a swoon.
"Bury only the remains of the slain of the shakh's household and our brethren loyal to Mordor and build cairns over them, but do not soil the ground with the bodies of the traitors. Let them be food for the carrion birds," Captain Kamyar had ordered. "Look," he said, pointing the trees that had not been touched by the fire, "they gather even now." As the detachment from Dol Guldur looked, a great host of black-sheened ravens and crows alighted amongst the branches. As they searched through the still-smouldering wreckage of the trees, the men heard the calling and chortling of the black bearers of death. Keen were their eyes as the birds watched them in their dismal task.
Some of the troops went to the banks of the stream, searching for rocks, and finding them, they carried them back in their hands and mounded them over the graves of Finduilas, Anborn, Targon, Rian, Haleth, Firiel, Sador, the other household servants and the slain troops of Mordor and Dol Guldur. The smell of the bitter stench of blood lay heavy in the air as the severed heads were reunited with the headless forms of the ten men whom Vartang had decapitated. All across the expanse of the field, the men went two by two, gathering the blood-drenched bodies, some headless, others disemboweled, their insides heaped upon their lifeless forms, as the men dragged them back for burial.
Solemn and grim was the mood of the troops from Dol Guldur, and their hearts and minds cried out for vengance, but the ravens of the forest looked forward to their own vengance and a celebration feast. If any had been present that day who could understand the tongue of the ravens, they would have heard the chief of the flock chortle between tearing mouthfuls of blood-oozing flesh, "Your tasteless body is small recompense for the loss of my comrades at the talcons of your falcons."
"Aye, my brother, but that is only partly true," said another, who perched on the forehead of one corpse. "Easterlings are often tough and stringy," the bird said as he pecked out the eyeballs in the skull, "but there are certain parts that prove most delectable!"
The fire raged away into the forest, consuming all before it, as it was driven by a western wind until, at last, the wind shifted direction and a strong, steady breeze beat the fire back into the south. By midday, the fire had exhausted itself, running out of fuel at the edge of the forest, far away from where Frodo lay, unconscious upon the ground.
Frodo awoke some time later as he was being carried on a litter by four men, but his mind was still too tortured to comprehend. Captain Kamyar, a tall man for an Easterling, walked beside Frodo's litter, another soldier leading the captain's horse.
"I am sorry, shakh," the captain said sympathetically, "but we can do little for this dark mass that encases you, or your wounds. Take comfort, though, that you are going to the Tower of Dol Guldur, and I know for a certainty, beyond any doubt, that the Lords of the Tower can heal you."
Frodo lay in the litter and looked up at the man, but he was silent. "Shakh, I have good news for you, for sometimes there is welcome news during the worst of times. We had already received word that you would be bringing certain possessions with you. My men have retrieved your sword, mithril coat, a phial, a brooch and a small wooden box and what remains of your clothing from some of the corpses that lay scattered about the field. These will be returned to you," he said, pausing and smiling down to Frodo, "in time, when it is appropriate, someday." The captain laughed and Frodo turned his eyes away.
On they went through the southwestern side of the forest that had not been burnt from the fire, until at last after two days, they came unto a vast clearing amidst the forest and beheld before them, rising upon the summit of a tall hill, the Tower of Dol Guldur in all its dark glory and majesty. Frodo closed his eyes and would look no more as the litter was carried up the slopes.