The Last Ringbearer

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Is there a sight more beautiful than a desert sunset, when the sun, as if ashamed of its whitish daytime fierceness, lavishes a bounty of unimaginably tender and pure colors on its guests? Especially good are countless shades of purple, which turn dunes into a charmed sea – don’t miss those couple of minutes, they will never happen that way again… Or the last moment before sunrise, when the first light of dawn interrupts in mid-movement the staid minuet of moon shadows on the lacquered hardtops – for those dances are forever hidden from the uninitiated, those who prefer day to night… Or the never-ending tragedy of the hour when the power of darkness begins to wane and the fuzzy clusters of the evening constellations suddenly turn into prickly icy crumbs, which by morning will rime the bronzed gravel of the hamada?

It was at such a midnight hour that two men moved like gray shadows along the gravelly inner edge of a sickle-shaped gap between two low dunes, and the distance between them was exactly that prescribed by the Field Manual for such occasions. However, contrary to the rules, the one bearing the largest load was not the rear ‘main force’ private, but rather the ‘forward recon’ one, but there were good reasons for that. The one in the rear limped noticeably and was nearly out of strength; his face – narrow and beak-nosed, clearly showing a generous serving of Umbar blood – was covered with a sheen of sticky sweat. The one in the lead was a typical Orocuen by his looks, short and wide-faced – in other words, the very ‘Orc’ that mothers of Westernesse use to scare unruly children; this one advanced in a fast zigzagging pattern, his every movement noiseless, precise and spare, like those of a predator that has scented prey.

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