Emissary by Uvatha the Horseman

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Tent City

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Chapter 12 - Tent City

The road up the side of the promontory consisted of one switchback turn after another. Where the path was steepest, they had to dismount and lead the horses by the reins. Within a few minutes, Urzahil was breathing hard and his calves burned.

They rounded the final bend and crested the lip of the plateau. A sea of tents stretched out before him, arranged in neat rows. Fire pits were scattered here and there, the air carried the scent of smoke. In the distance, a cluster of pavilions towered over the tents around them. Banners on poles flanked the entrances to each. It looked like a military encampment, without the shields and weapons.

A mountain of loose stone dominated the background behind the tent city. The shattered rock was all that remained of the first Barad-dûr. Dark gray in color, the great pile of debris rose at least a hundred feet above the camp.

A channel excavated into it revealed the living rock below, leveled and smoothed when the original tower was built at the end of the Second Age. The channel led to a cleared area within the rubble. In it was a stone structure just tall enough to poke out above the pile of wreckage.

A crane perched on the wall lifted a massive stone block. The click-click of a ratchet reached them as if from a great distance. The wall and the engines of construction must be further away than they appeared, and much larger. The outlines of figures walking the treadmill powering the windlass seemed impossibly small.

"Oh, there you are." Berktay, who had been Sauron's steward at Minas Morgul, came bustling over to them.

"I'll leave you here, then." Dwar tossed Enigma's reins to a servant and disappeared between among the tents, presumably to report to his master.

"Let me show you around and get you settled." Steward Berktay threaded his way further into the camp, and Urzahil followed. Row upon row of tents were arranged on either side of a corridor, all exactly alike, as far as Urzahil could tell. A breeze stirred the still air, carrying with it the smell of stone dust and latrine.

"This is where people of rank are quartered. Remember the symbol over the doorway, that's how you'll know which one is yours. I'm afraid it's austere compared to what you're used to. The canvas gives you shade and privacy, but it's not much protection against real weather."

The Steward lifted the tent flap. Inside, two cots stood side by side on the bare ground. One was newly made up with a blanket and pillow. The other looked slightly rumpled, with a dark green tunic discarded at its foot. A wooden traveling chest rested on the dirt nearby. Gaerna's chest, and Gaerna's green silk tunic with the silver embroidery.

Urzahil sighed with relief. He'd heard nothing of Gaerna since the day his friend decided to stay behind in Mordor rather than return home with the rest of the delegation from Umbar. That had been six weeks ago.

"I'll leave you, then." The Steward started to lift the tent flap. "Oh, before I forget. You need to report to the Chief Ambassador first thing in the morning. Sauron has made offers of friendship to every nation that borders us on the North, South, and East. Their answers should be coming in soon. You're going to be busy."

After the Steward left, Urzahil sat on his cot, listening to the sounds of construction and the wind that never seem to stop. Someone cursed outside. The tent flap stirred, and a pair of Orcs struggled in with Urzahil's travel chest.

"Set it at the end of the bed." Urzahil told them, and they dropped it on the ground with a thunk. They left, and he opened the lid to inspected his belongings for damage. There wasn't anywhere to put his things, so everything went back into the chest. The tent canvas rustled behind him. He looked up, startled.

"Hey, look who's here! I heard you'd joined us." Gaerna stood in the doorway, grinning. "I just got back from Far Harad last week, and before I could do more than wash off the dust of travel and change my shirt, I received the summons to come here.

"With me, it was Khand, and I was ordered here two days ago. So what happens next?"

"Are you hungry? Let me show you the cook tent." Gaerna washed his hands and face from a basin, then combed his hair with his fingers. "All right, let's go."

They stopped in front of a huge expanse of canvas which enclosed an area the size of a Great Hall. Sections of the wall were open, allowing them to wander in and out with ease. Inside, row upon row of rough tables, no more than planks of wood resting on sawhorses, filled up most of the space.

Urzahil breathed in the aromas of fresh bread and roasting meat. An enormous line snaked out of the tent. Orcs, laborers, and slaves held tin plates, waiting their turns.

"Meals are catch as catch can. You go to the cook tent when you're hungry, and they'll serve you what they have," said Gaerna.

"Is there a High Table?" Urzahil asked.

"No, there's just the trestle tables, and they're mostly for the workman. Most of the heroes, those of high rank who report to Sauron directly, take their meals in their own quarters. Their assistants, meaning folks like us, take our plates outside and find a place to sit."

Urzahil's face fell. If there wasn't a High Table, it would be that much harder for him to locate Sauron, or the Chief Ambassador, or anyone he needed to find. He didn't care for the rough-and-tumble of camp life.

Gaerna bypassed the people who were waiting and went directly into the tent. "We're the swells here. You know, the nobility. We don't have to wait in line."

Inside, they went to the serving area and were given tin plates. An Orc gave them a slice of bread, another ladled a stew onto their plates which seemed to have been made primarily from turnips.

"I thought I smelled meat roasting," said Gaerna. The Orc went over to a fire pit and returned with several thick slices of lamb, charred black around the edges are.

Urzahil followed Gaerna outside. They found places to sit on one of the long benches next to the tent. Urzahil soaked up the uninteresting gravy with hunks of bread.

"Tell me everything. What's going on in Mordor?" asked Urzahil.

"Well, we're rebuilding the Dark Tower, that's the main thing. We're also trying to form alliances with all the nations who were our friends in the Second Age. Given enough time, and more than a little bit of luck, Mordor will be a great power again." said Gaerna.

"Can I ask you something? Have you seen Sauron since you got here?"

"I saw him picking his way across the debris pile earlier today. He often does that. They say he can peer through the rock and see what's underneath."

"How did you know it was him?"

"It was obvious, even at a distance. The Nazgûl were hovering around him."

They lingered by the cook tent until the light failed, then Urzahil followed Gaerna back to their tent. He was glad to have a guide. If he'd been alone, he could easily have gotten lost.

After Gaerna blew out the lamp, Urzahil lay in the darkness, unable to sleep. The murmur of men's voices, sometimes punctuated by cursing followed by laughter, kept disturbing him just when he was beginning to drift off. Sounds of construction floated on the night air, the tink tink tink of chisel on stone, the click-click-click of the ratchet, then a shriek and an enormous crash.

He got up and padded over to the tent flap, the packed earth gritty beneath his toes. A few lights shone faintly around the Tower, but they weren't enough to work by. There was no moon, either; the night was overcast and threatening to rain.

"Does work on the Tower ever stop?" he asked Gaerna.

"No, it goes on through the night, every night. It's mostly Men on duty during the day, but the greater part of the workforce is Orcs."

Orcs hated sunlight, but could easily see in the dark. Of course they'd be working at night.

Sometime during the night, rain drummed on the tent like a handful of pebbles flung at the canvas, and after a while, a drip fell on his face. The wind picked up, making the tent flutter loudly. Rivulets of water ran across the dirt floor. Urzahil worried about the books in his wooden chest.

-o-o-o-o-

After breakfast, Urzahil made the short walk from the cook tent to the group of pavilions in the center of camp. Gaerna had told him the one in the middle was the command tent where Sauron met with his highest-ranking servants each morning. If Urzahil were to go over there after breakfast, he should be able to catch Ambassador Kiran as he left the meeting.

He reached the end of a corridor between tents, and three pavilions came into view, even larger than they'd appeared from a distance. Each was identified by a standard hung from a pole beside the door. Sauron's red device on a black background marked his headquarters, and presumably his personal quarters as well.

Urzahil licked his lips, but his mouth was too dry for it to do much good. When Ambassador Kiran left the tent, it seemed likely all the other officials would be there too, including the Nazgûl and Sauron himself. His breath caught in his throat.

Just then, the sentry stepped forward and pulled the tent canvas aside, and Steward Berktay stepped out with another man, taller and stouter than himself.

"Urzahil, what brings you here?" The Steward looked surprised.

"I was hoping to find the Chief Ambasador here. I'm the new emissary, I need to learn what I duties are."

"I'm Ambassador Kiran," said the older man. "Things are quiet at the moment. Be patient for a week or two, and then I'll find you something to do."

-o-o-o-o-

Urzahil had been at Barad-dûr, or Lugbúrz in Black Speech, for three days now. In all that time, still hadn't seen Sauron, not even from a distance. He had no instructions from his new master, and no idea what he was supposed to be doing.

An empty afternoon stretched out before him. He walked towards the great pile of broken stone that covered most of the promontory.

He reached the edge of the rock pile. Weeds, scrub bushes, and gnarled little trees grew between the blocks, and gray-green lichens spread across the surfaces of the blocks themselves. He counted a hundred stones tumbled together, not one of them was free from damage. A great chunk had been knocked off the corner of one, another was cracked almost in half. They were partially buried under gravel and fist-sized rocks.

Not far from where he stood, an enormous stack of stone blocks had been arranged in neat rows, three or four blocks high and as many deep. A small group was clustered in front of it. A man in the leather apron of a stone mason appeared to be giving a lecture to half a dozen scribes, clerks, and other minor officials who made up Sauron's government. Care not and Gillis were among the group. Urzahil went over to join them.

"… and these blocks were salvaged from the rubble. They may not be pretty, but we can still use them." The mason pointed to the stacked basalt behind him.

Urzahil craned his neck to see around the scribe in front of him. Each block was as tall as a man and as long as a trestle table. Most were battered. Some were chipped all over, others had broken into pieces. Not one was unscarred or without damage.

"When we arrived in Lugbúrz, we expected to find the stones had shattered when the Tower was pulled down. But when we cleared the debris from the foundations, we discovered that most of stones were still usable. They might look like a tomcat who lost a fight, but there's nothing wrong with them structurally. We're mortaring them in place as fast as we can dig them out of the wreckage, and the wall is going up at an astonishing rate."

"But why would you want to rebuild from damaged stone? The promontory is made of basalt, wouldn't it be better to quarry new blocks?" asked the scribe.

"Him the stone is the most time-consuming part of construction. It took six hundred years to raise the first Tower. Between building on the original foundations and reusing salvaged materials, we think we can rebuild it in sixty."

The group followed their guide to the next stop on the tour, a circular area cleared from the debris field. Tall mounds of gravel enclosed the small space.

Their guide led them to a rude table made from splintered planks. Small artifacts were arranged on its surface.

"Look what we pulled from the rubble. You can still see the original design." He held up a palm-sized fragment painted red and yellow, showing the jaws and teeth of a mythical animal.

"This is the neck of a glass bottle that somehow survived. And this used to be part of a door latch, a fine example of decorative ironwork. See the pattern engraved in the metal?"

More artifacts lay piled on the ground. Shattered timbers, twisted weapons, bits of paneling carved in a delicate pattern. A few strips of iron, mangled in the collapse, were still recognizable as a wall bracket for a torch. It was sobering. The first Tower had been something proud. This was all that was left of it.

"From here, we'll go on to our last stop." The mason led them into the shadow of the Tower itself. They stood at the base of the wall, which seemed to rise forever. Urzahil looked up the expanse of gray-black basalt to the blue sky overhead, then looked away just as quickly. The movement of clouds against the top made him dizzy.

"When we set out to clear the debris from the original foundations, we masons wanted to start with the highest part of the rock pile, but Sauron believed they were under a shallower area off to the side. We didn't really believe he could see into the earth, but sure enough, they were right where he said they were."

Deep trenches scraped into the bedrock laid the foundation bare in several places. The shear planes looked metallic, with a repeating geometric pattern embossed in their polished surface.

"That writing, if you can call it that, is a manifestation of the spell laid on them, that's why they're so strong. The bedrock itself would collapse under the weight of the Tower."

"Now, what do you notice? Yes, they looked metallic. What else? There's not a scratch on them. The Men of Gondor dug these sapping trenches intending to undermine the foundations and bring down the Tower, but because they're enchanted, they can't be harmed."

"Will the new Tower be just like the old, then?" asked a captain of the guard.

"The first Tower took six hundred years to finish. By rebuilding on the original foundations, and reusing as much of the original stone as we can recover, we think we can rebuild it in a couple of decades. Of course, in the interest of speed, we'll have to cut corners. The Tower won't have any luxuries, at least not at first."

"By going without things like painted floor tiles and carved paneling?" asked a thin-faced purser's agent.

"By going without things like privies and staircases," said their guide.