A man nicknamed Ferryman, a ‘clean-up man’ from Elandar’s organization, observed the scene from a nearby attic through a cobwebbed hole in the roof. He put his crossbow down, at a loss to figure out who beat him to it so neatly. DSD? Too tidy for 12 Shore Street… What if this is another of the baron’s tricks? Maybe he should plink him with a bolt, just to be sure?
By that time Mongoose had already shed his police uniform, becoming once again a duly accredited ambassador of His Majesty the Sultan Sagul the Fifth the Pious, the mighty ruler of non-existent Florissant Islands. He was moving briskly but without undue haste towards the port, where a previously chartered felucca named Trepang was waiting for him. The battle of the two lieutenants had ended the way it had to end, because a professional differs from an amateur in that he plays not until he has scored a beautiful goal or until he has a psychological crisis, but rather until the sixtieth second of the last minute of the game. By the way, that sixtieth second occurred at the port, where Mongoose had another chance to demonstrate his high degree of professionalism. He himself probably would have been unable to say exactly what it was about the Trepang’s crew that alerted him, but he turned to the skipper as the man stepped on the ramp after him, as if to ask a question, hit him in the throat with the edge of his palm and jumped into the rusty, oily water between the pier and the ship. The two seconds he gained thereby were enough to get a little green pill from behind his collar and swallow it, so Jacuzzi’s operatives only captured another unidentified corpse (the fourth that day). The game that the special command from Task Force Féanor played with the Umbarian Secret Service ended in a draw, nil-nil.
… Petrified with grief, Alviss held dying Tangorn in her arms. He would never find out the most important part: it was his death at the hands of the Secret Guard that settled Elandar’s last doubts, so that same evening his package started north, to Lórien, via routes unknown to any man. Nor was he to know that Alviss heard his last choking whisper as “tell Faramir: done!” and would do everything properly… And the certain Someone tirelessly knitting a gorgeous tapestry we call History out of invisible coincidences and rather visible human weaknesses immediately put the entire episode out of His mind: a gambit is a gambit, sacrifice a piece to win the game, and that’s all there is to it…
Part IV – Ransom for a Shadow
Chapter 55
Mirkwood, near Dol-Guldur
June 5, 3019
“That’s a fresh print, very fresh…” Runcorn mumbled under his breath. He dropped to one knee and, without looking back, signaled Haladdin who was walking some fifteen yards behind to get off the path. Tzerlag, who brought up the rear, overtook the obediently yielding doctor, and now both sergeants were engaged in an elaborate scout ritual by a small spot of wet clay, trading quiet phrases in Common. Haladdin’s opinion did not interest the rangers at all, of course; not even the Orocuen’s thoughts counted for much in that discussion: the scouts have already worked out a pecking order. The erstwhile enemies – the Ithilien ranger and the platoon leader of the Cirith Ungol Rangers – treated each other with exaggerated respect (like, for example, a master goldsmith and a master swordsmith might), but the desert is the desert, and the forest is the forest. Both professionals knew the limits of their expertise very well. The Ithilien ranger had spent his entire life in these forests.
…Back then he still walked upright and with shoulders squared (the right one was not yet higher than the left one), while his face was yet free of a badly healed purple scar; he was handsome, brave, and lucky, with his bottle-green Royal Forester uniform fitting him like a glove – in other words, a serious threat to womankind. The local peasants disliked him, which he considered normaclass="underline" villeins only like accommodating foresters, whereas Runcorn took his service with all the seriousness of youth. Being a King’s man, he could disregard the local landlords; he quickly put their courts, which used to visit the royal forests like their own larder under his predecessor, in their place. Everybody knew the story of Eggy the Chicken Hawk’s band that had wandered into their country once – Runcorn did away with those guys all by himself, not deigning to wait for the sheriff’s men to pry their behinds off the benches of the Three Pint Tavern. To sum it up, the neighbors treated the young forester with cautious respect but not much sympathy, which he did not care much for anyway. He was used to being by himself since he was a child, and socialized with the Forest way more than with his peers. The Forest was everything to him: playmate, interlocutor, mentor, eventually becoming his Home. Some people even claimed that he had in him the blood of the woodwoses – forest demons from the ominous Druadan Dell. Well, people in remote forest villages say all sorts of things during chilly fall evenings, when only the feeble light of a splinter keeps the ancient evils from getting out of the dark corners…
To top it all off, at one point Runcorn stopped showing up at village festivities (to acute disappointment of all eligible maidens in the vicinity) and instead hung out at a tumbledown shack at the edge of Druadan, where an old medicine woman from the far north (maybe as far as Angmar) had settled some time before with her granddaughter Lianica. Manwe only knows what such an eligible bachelor saw in that puny freckled girl; many supposed that witchcraft was involved – the old woman certainly knew some spells and could heal with herbs and laying of hands, which was her livelihood. Lianica was known to talk to birds and beasts in their language and could have a ferret and a mouse sit together in the palm of her hand. This rumor may have owed to the fact that she avoided people (as opposed to forest animals) so much that she was originally thought to be dumb. The local beauties, when someone would mention the forester’s strange choice, only snorted: “Whatever. Maybe they’ll make a good couple.”
It did look like they would have, but it was not to be. One day the girl ran into the young landlord, out with his company to hunt and ‘improve the serfs’ blood line a bit;’ those exploits of his have even caused some of his neighboring landlords to grumble: “Really, young sir, this propensity of yours to screw everything that moves…” It was a routine matter, nothing to get excited about, really. Who’d’ve thought that the fool girl would drown herself, as if something precious had been taken away from her? No, guys, it really is true that all northerners are nuts.
Runcorn buried Lianica alone – the old woman could not bear the loss of her granddaughter and passed away two days later without regaining consciousness. The neighbors came to the cemetery mostly to check whether the forester would put a black-feathered arrow on the grave, signifying an oath of vengeance. But no, he did not risk that. Nor was that a surprise; sure, he’s the King’s man, but the King is far, while the landlord’s company (eighteen thugs, gallows material all) is right here. Still, the guy turned out to be weaker than we first thought… So did those villagers who bet on Runcorn’s vengeance (two- or even three-to- one) grumble in the Three Pint Tavern, sourly counting out the coins they have lost onto the sticky tables.